I Am DB

“AS LONG AS IT TAKES”
The episode begins immediately after Locke disappeared down the well in another violent flash, leaving Sawyer holding a rope that disappears into the ground. In fact, it was so immediately after that moment that I thought we were still watching the recap of that episode. That is, until Miles pointed toward something and indicated that they were quite a ways back in the past. Jin, Sawyer and Juliet follow his gaze over the tree line and see an enormous statue facing out toward the water, its back to them.

From behind, I first thought it appeared Greco-Roman…but the more I looked at it, the more I thought about the Anubis warriors from Brendan Fraser’s Mummy movies (I’m not proud that The Mummy occurred to me, but hey, I worked at ILM all through the making of the second flick. It was hard to avoid). Anyway, the Anubis vibe would suggest that the statue has Egyptian origins…which would fit with some of the other things we’ve seen on the island – mainly the hieroglyphics on The Temple exterior, on the door in Ben’s secret room when he summoned the Black Smoke and on the 108 minute countdown panels in the hatch. There are also the columns that surrounded the well down which Locke climbed. The pillars had a distinctly ancient look to them. And isn’t Egypt kinda sorta close to Tunisia, which contains what Widmore described to Locke as the island’s “exit?” What if the door between the island and Africa swings both ways? (That’s what she said.)

Bottom line: it looked pretty damn cool. Hopefully this intriguing glimpse of what is probably (but not definitively) Season Two’s four-toed statue isn’t just thrown in there to satisfy us, but rather will be explained more thoroughly later on. Because…wow.

Their viewing is interrupted by another flash, which is the most violent one yet. Miles even remarks when it stops that it was different than the others; more like an earthquake. We know this is the one that occurs when Locke turns the wheel, transporting himself off the island. After a moment, Juliet realizes that her headache is gone. They all realize the same, and that their noses are no longer bleeding. Whatever Locke was attempting to do down below, they figure it must have worked. Now they just have to wait for him to come back. “For how long?” Juliet asks. “As long as it takes,” Sawyer answers.

Three years later, we’re in a Dharma Station with a couple of security guards named Jerry and Phil, who notice something odd on the monitor. One of their own seems to be drunkenly stumbling around the large pylons that surround their territory’s perimeter. A closer look reveals the man to be Horace, a familiar face to us: he delivered baby Ben before moving to the island; he brought Ben and his father to the island and gave his father employment as a Work Man; he was among the people killed by Ben in The Purge; and he appeared to Locke in a dream telling him to find his body in order to locate Jacob’s cabin.

As seen on the security monitor, Horace has dynamite and is blowing up trees. Jerry and Phil debate whether they should go wake someone called LaFleur, who we gather would not be pleased about being disturbed…or about letting this Horace situation continue. So they run out into the Dharmaburbs and knock on the door of one of the recognizable yellow houses. The unseen LaFleur opens the door and listens to their explanation of the situation. Then we get a look at him: Sawyer. He steps back inside and grabs his Dharma uniform, identifying him as Head of Security. Upon laying eyes on Sawyer, one big question came immediately to mind: what kind of conditioner is he using to make his hair so straight and shiny, with such healthy body?

It looks like Sawyer wasn’t kidding when he said “as long as it takes.” He has ascended to a position of major authority and respect in The Dharma Initiative. Now behind the wheel of a Dharma van, he picks up Miles, also uniformed in Dharma garb. They go out to the pylons to get the now passed-out Horace, and while Miles stays to put out the fires, Sawyer brings Horace back to his extremely pregnant wife, Amy. She addresses Sawyer as Jim, and tells him that she and Horace had a fight about Paul. She’s about to elaborate when she suddenly goes into labor.

GOOD SAMARITANS
Three years earlier, Sawyer, Juliet, Jin and Miles return to where they left Charlotte and Faraday, but only the latter is there – kneeling, crying and mumbling things like, “I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna tell her.” He manages to explain that Charlotte died and that her body disappeared during the last flash. “She moved on, and we stayed,” he says. This prompts Sawyer to ask if they’ve stopped moving through time. Faraday says yes, it’s over. “Wherever we are now…whenever we are now, we’re here for good.”

Sawyer says they should go back to the beach, the most logical place for Locke and the others to look when they return. Miles argues that after the assault of flaming arrows, the beach doesn’t sound too welcoming, adding that their camp is probably not even there. Sawyer says they don’t have a better option and Juliet agrees, so they head off. As they walk, Sawyer thanks her for getting his back. Their banter is playful as she says, “You should thank me. It was a stupid idea.” They’re smiling. It’s cute. If they were Muppets, the next scene might show them riding bikes together through Hyde Park.

The Great Muppet Caper? Anyone? Alright fine…

They are interrupted by the sound of gunshots and a woman crying for help. Off in the distance is a body on the ground, a crying woman and two guys putting a bag over her head. Miles is hesitant to step in, turning to Daniel. “We don’t get involved, right? That’s what you said?”

“It doesn’t matter what we do,” Faraday says through his glass cage of emotions. “Whatever happened…happened.”

Sawyer’s not about to stand idly by, so confirming that Juliet again has his back, he approaches the group and calls for the men to drop their guns. One swings around and takes a shot at him, only to take a fatal bullet himself – not from Sawyer, but from Juliet. When the second guy fires, Sawyer takes him down. They tell the woman she’s safe and remove the bag. It’s Horace’s wife, Amy. Though she’s not his wife yet…

The first dead guy – the one who was with Amy – has a Dharma jumpsuit, so Juliet figures they’re in the 70’s or early 80’s. The assaulters have a walkie-talkie and Sawyer worries they may have reinforcements on the way, so he tries to keep his group moving. When Amy asks who they are, Sawyer says their boat shipwrecked en route to Tahiti. But she pleads with them to help her, saying something about a truce and that they have to bury her attackers and take Paul, her husband, back with them. (So this is obviously the Paul that she and Horace have a fight about in the future.) Amy is distraught and upset, so they reluctantly agree to help bury the assailants. I’m not sure what they did this with, considering they’re in the middle of the island without a shovel. But no matter. They finish the job and follow her lead with Paul’s body.

Sawyer: Alright listen up. When we get there, there’s gonna be a lot of questions. So just keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.

Miles: You really think you can convince them that we were in a boat wreck?

Sawyer: I’m a professional. I used to lie for a living.

They come up to the pylons, which Daniel is about to cross until Juliet screams for him to stop. She tells Amy to turn them off. Amy plays dumb, asking what she means. Juliet tries to play dumb back, saying they look like some kind of sonic fence. Amy is definitely suspicious, asking again where their ship was going. Sawyer says that since they saved her life and are continuing to help her, she can show them a little trust. So she turns off the fence and walks through. When the others follow, they immediately feel the effects and collapse to the ground. Amy removes earplugs and looks down at her unconscious rescuers.

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS OUT, THEY PULL ME BACK IN
Three years later, Sawyer/LaFleur is in a Dharma hospital with Amy, who is experiencing serious labor pains. An internist wants to know where Horace is, but Sawyer brushes off the question and keeps the focus on Amy. The internist says her baby is upside down and two weeks early. Amy was supposed to leave on a sub for the mainland for her delivery, and he doesn’t know if he can help her. He says all the babies get delivered on the mainland. Desperate, Sawyer runs to get Juliet, who he finds laying underneath a Dharma van doing mechanical work. He tells her that Amy is in labor and in trouble. Juliet stands up alarmed and reminds him that they have an agreement.

Sawyer: Screw our agreement, we gotta help.

Juliet: Don’t you understand that everytime I try to help a woman on this island give birth, it hasn’t worked?

Sawyer: Well maybe whatever made that happen hasn’t happened yet. You gotta try. You gotta help her. You’re the only one who can.

Sawyer could be right about the baby issue not being a factor yet…although the internist did say that all babies are delivered off the island. Hmm. Regardless, Juliet (whose Dharma uniform looks like it says Motor Pool) follows Sawyer and tells the internist what she needs. She’s nervous, but Sawyer tells her she’ll do great, and even Amy says she wants Juliet to do it when the internist expresses his doubts.

While Sawyer waits outside, Jin arrives wearing a Security uniform. Sawyer explains what’s happening and that he had to pull Juliet “out of retirement.” Jin’s English is solid by now, and when Sawyer asks if he had any luck, Jin says they swept grids one through three (or something like that) and had no luck. So Sawyer says they’ll move on to the next one. “How long do we look, James?” Jin asks. Sawyer repeats his answer from three years earlier. “As long as it takes.”  Juliet comes out and says it worked; she delivered a healthy boy. She’s crying with relief and Sawyer is literally beaming. Sawyer! Beaming! What a softie.

Three years earlier, Sawyer awakens on a couch after the pylon incident. He’s alone with Horace, who tells him that his friends are fine, but that they’re waiting for him to explain who they are and why they’re on the island. He also says that Amy filled him in on what happened, and he appreciates what they all did to help. When Sawyer says they have a funny way of showing their appreciation, Horace explains, “Look, we have a certain defense protocol. There are hostile, indigenous people on this island and we don’t get along with them. So why don’t you tell me who the hell you are.”

Without missing a beat, Sawyer says his name is Jim LaFleur and that he’s the captain of a salvage vessel that shipwrecked while searching for an old slave ship out of Portsmouth, England called The Black Rock. He asks if Horace has heard of it. “Can’t say that I have,” Horace answers. (Can’t say because he doesn’t know, or can’t say because he knows but doesn’t want to say?) Why were they wandering in the jungle, he wants to know. Sawyer says they were looking for some of their missing crew members and that’s when they found Amy in trouble.

Horace says if he finds any of LaFleur’s people he’ll send them along, but that LaFleur and his present company have to leave the next morning on an outbound submarine. Sawyer asks if their good deed can buy them a little time to try and find their missing men, but Horace denies him. “No, the only people who are allowed to stay on this compound are members of The Dharma Initiative. And look, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, please Jim, but you are not Dharma material.”

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND, BABY, RIGHT ROUND
Juliet, Miles, Daniel and Jin are seated around a table outside, Juliet staring at the house she lived in as an Other and explaining to her companions her familiarity with the barracks. Jin asks Daniel if there will be more flashes. Daniel, still lost in his grief and not totally with the program, says, “No, no more flash. The record is spinning again…and we’re just not on the song we want to be on.” Then, as Dharma people continue to pass to and fro, he sees a little girl, maybe three years old, with red hair trailing after her mother. She turns and looks at Daniel, and he at her. It’s Charlotte.

Horace and Sawyer come out and join them, and Horace says someone will come by shortly to take them to their rooms for the night. He leaves them alone, and Sawyer explains his improvisation and informs them that they have to leave in the morning. Miles is wondering how this is bad news, but suddenly an alarm starts to sound throughout the compound and people scatter. Phil, the security guy from the beginning of the episode, runs up to Sawyer and the rest and brings them inside a house to hide. They look out the window and see a lone man enter the compound carrying a torch, which he sticks in the ground. The man keeps walking and when he passes under a streetlamp, he is illuminated to Sawyer and Juliet: Richard.

He waits in the now empty “village square,” where Horace walks out to meet him.

Horace: Hello Mr. Alpert.

Richard: Hello Mr. Goodspeed.

Horace: I wish you would have told me you were coming, I would have turned the fence off for you.

Richard: That fence may keep other things out, but not us. The only thing that does keep us out, Horace, is our truce. Which you have now broken.

Horace: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Richard: Where are my two men?

So what is the nature of this truce? How did these two groups first come into contact with each other? What is their arrangement? What does Richard get out of allowing Dharma to stay? Why doesn’t the electrofence keep out Richard and his people?

Horace comes back inside a minute later and asks Sawyer how well he buried the bodies. When Sawyer says it depends on how hard they look, Horace turns to Phil and says, “Call The Arrow. Tell them we’re at Condition 1. Take the heavy ordinance, and make sure the fence is at maximum.”

The last time we heard mention of The Arrow station was at the beginning of this season, when Dr. Chang was taping an orientation video for it, only to be interrupted by news of an incident at The Orchid. Before that interruption, he said that The Arrow’s “primary purpose is to develop defensive strategies and gather intelligence on the island’s hostile, indigenous population.” At the time, I didn’t think we had seen The Arrow yet, but I’ve since learned that we have. Way back in Season Two, when Ana Lucia and Eko finally accepted the truth that Michael, Jin and Sawyer were also from Flight 815, they all went to an abandoned Dharma hatch where the other Tailies – including Bernard – were staying. That was The Arrow, and if you recall, it was completely run down and virtually empty.

Back to the scene, Sawyer tells Horace he’ll go out and talk to Richard. Horace protests, but Sawyer makes it clear he’s not asking for permission. So out he goes, telling Juliet as he exits that he’ll figure something out. He approaches Richard, who is sitting casually on a bench as if waiting to pick up a to-go order of food. What follows is a great scene between these two, in which Sawyer plainly, truthfully explains that he killed Richard’s men, and why. He says that he’s not with The Dharma Initiative, so any truce they might have has not been broken. When Richard asks who he is if not part of Dharma, Sawyer takes a seat next to him.

Sawyer: Did you bury the bomb?

Richard: Excuse me?

Sawyer: The hydrogen bomb with “Jughead” written on the side, did you bury it? Yeah I know about it. I also know 20 years ago some bald fellow limped into your camp and fed you some mumbo jumbo about being your leader. Then poof, he went and disappeared right in front of you. Any of this ringing a bell? That man’s name is John Locke, and I’m waiting for him to come back. Still think I’m a member of the damn Dharma Initiative?

Richard is clearly stunned by Sawyer’s statements, and accepts that whoever he is, he’s not part of Dharma. But nevertheless, two of his men are dead and his people need justice. Uhh, why don’t we talk about the fact that your two men attacked a couple who were trying to have a picnic? Okay, I guess we don’t know how the skirmish got started. Maybe Paul and Amy were in territory they weren’t entitled to be in based on the terms of this truce. But whatever happened, it sure looked like Richard’s men were the instigators.

By the way, you gotta love Sawyer’s ability to play such a badass and still make the term “mumbo jumbo” sound acceptable.

Finally, the mention of Jughead reminds me of something interesting that I failed to mention before. In the wake of that episode, when Faraday told Ellie to bury the hydrogen bomb and pour concrete over it, there has been speculation amongst fans that the bomb was buried beneath the hatch that imploded at the end of Season Two (the hatch known as The Swan). I didn’t recall this, but early in that season, Sayid and Jack went into the crawlspace below the floor of the hatch and found a huge block of concrete that they could not get around. Their trip below the floor was prompted by Sayid discovering this same concrete block above them, behind one of the walls. So obviously, it’s pretty damn big. When Jack asked Sayid for his thoughts, Sayid answered, “The last time I heard of concrete being poured over everything in its way…was Chernobyl.” The Swan might have been destroyed, but it certainly wasn’t H-bomb level destruction. Is Jughead buried beneath that spot? And wherever it’s buried…could it still go off?

TWO WEEKS NOTICE
Horace and Sawyer find the grieving Amy, and Horace explains that LaFleur has worked things out with Richard, but in exchange for what happened they need to let him take Paul’s body back with him. Amy starts to cry, and Horace says that if she doesn’t want to do it, he understands and they’ll accept the consequences. Amy reluctantly agrees that if it will keep them all safe and maintain the truce, they can take him. Before leaving the body, she removes a chain from around his neck. It’s a small wooden symbol, which according to Lostpedia is an ankh, an Egyptian hieroglyph for fertility and eternal life. (Egyptian. I’m just sayin’…) In the meantime, Horace tells Sawyer that he and his people can stay there until the next sub run in two weeks.

Sawyer finds Juliet sitting on the dock, the submarine anchored behind her, and shares the good news. It’s a still, quiet night. She points out that the submarine brought her to the island, and for three years she’s been trying to leave. She says she’s taking her opportunity now. Sawyer says that whatever she thinks she’s going back to doesn’t exist yet, but she counters that that isn’t a reason not to go. Sawyer asks if she’s really going to abandon him with the “mad scientist and Mr. I Speak to Dead People? And Jin, who’s a hell of a nice guy but not exactly the greatest conversationalist?” He asks her to stick around and give him two weeks. Again, their conversation is light and playful. How far they’ve come from the days, just weeks ago in the show’s timeline, when he was a prisoner doing manual labor under her watchful eye.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF DHARMA
Three years later, they’ll have come even farther. The two are living together in domestic bliss. He even picks flowers for her. Who’d have thought Sawyer had such a creamy soft center? He’s like a human Cadbury egg. He tells her she was amazing that day, delivering Amy’s baby. She thanks him for believing in her, they hug, they kiss, she tells him she loves him, he says he loves her…all I can say is enjoy it while it lasts, kids.

Later that night, Sawyer is in the same room where he first met Horace, only now the positions are reversed, with Horace on the couch waking up with a headache. Sawyer tells him that he’s father to a newborn boy. Then he asks what happened to lead him on his bizarre escapade. Horace says he was looking for a pair of socks when he found Paul’s ankh buried in the back of Amy’s drawer. Sawyer can’t believe they got into a fight about that. “Yeah I know,” Horace says.  “But…it’s only been three years, Jim. Just three years that he’s been gone. Is that really long enough to get over someone?”

Sawyer looks like he understands, and a small smile comes over his face. “I had a thing for a girl once. And I had a shot at her, but I didn’t take it. For a little while I’d lay in bed every night, wondering if it was a mistake. Wondering…if I’d ever stop thinking about her. And now I can barely remember what she looks like. And her face is…she’s just gone. And she ain’t never coming back. So…is three years long enough to get over someone? Absolutely.”

Next thing we know, it’s morning and he’s asleep with Juliet when the phone rings. He answers it grumpily, and receives some news that startles him. He tells the caller not to “bring them in,” but that he’ll meet them. He jumps up to put his uniform on and tells Juliet it’s nothing, but that he has to go meet Jin. He drives a jeep along the coastline and gets out to wait as Jin’s van approaches and stops a few yards away. And out comes Hurley, Jack and Kate. They all look at him. He stares back,  barely believing his eyes.

Is three years long enough to get over someone? Let me get back to you on that.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-Although his uniform simply labels him as Mathematician, Horace seems to be the leader of The Dharma Initiative during this era. How did that come to pass? Where are Gerald and Karen DeGroot, the scientists who conceived The Dharma Initiative in the first place?

-Those with sharp memories might remember that the first time we met Horace – when he delivered Ben and then brought young Ben and Roger into The Dharma Initiative – he had another female companion, named Olivia. From what I heard, the actress who played her – Samantha Mathis, for you Pump Up the Volume fans – was not available to return. So they gave Horace a new girl.

-Where the hell are Rose and Bernard?!?

-So the flashes have stopped, and our travelers have settled into life on the island sometime in the 70’s, working for The Dharma Initiative. The implications of this are wide-ranging and mind-numbing.

Are they really stuck in this time period for good, or will they be able to return to 2009? Jin and Sun have a daughter waiting for them after all, and I have a hard time believing that at least one of them won’t make it back to her (though Sun didn’t seem to give a thought to leaving her behind and returning to the island).

What future events will be affected/changed by their presence on the island? Will Daniel alter Charlotte’s fate? Will young Ben Linus meet the 815 survivors? Now that Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Miles and Daniel are all part of the Dharma Initiative (and Jack, Kate and the rest may have to join up too), where does that position them for The Purge, which granted, is still years away? Will the Adam and Eve skeletons in the cave near the beach turn out to be the bodies of a pair of 815 survivors?

Whatever the answers to these questions turn out to be, this episode really feels to me like the beginning of the end. If the shifts through time have indeed stopped and everyone is settled in 1970’s Dharmaville, then this episode feels like the one that sets the stage for the series climax. The final chapter of Lost may have just begun.

STATE OF THE SEASON
With two weeks between episodes, I had been hoping to find some time to meditate on what we’ve seen so far this season and what it all means going forward. But as Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast,” and I didn’t get to give it the thought I’d hoped. (I believe the second half of Ferris’ statement goes, “If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss is it”…which might hit too close to home for a guy who devotes hours every week to sitting alone at a computer geeking out over a TV show).

Anyway, the big picture stuff continues to elude me, so I have no new theories to put forth about Ben and Widmore, Eloise Hawking, Jacob, Christian and Claire, Walt, time travel, The Dharma Initiative, the JFK assassination, the Watergate tapes, the Lindbergh Baby, Jimmy Hoffa or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. But in reviewing my write-ups thus far, here’s a recap of some questions/thoughts:

-When Jack and Ben first meet up over Locke’s coffin, Ben asks Jack what Locke told him when they met weeks earlier. Jack says that Locke told him some very bad things happened after Jack and the others left, and that those things were their fault for leaving. Now that we’ve seen that encounter between Jack and Locke – and please correct me if I’m wrong about this – but Locke said no such thing. He only said that Jack and the rest needed to come back with him.

-When Ben brings Locke’s coffin to his butcher friend Jill, he tells her to keep the body safe or else everything they’re trying to do will be useless. So even though he killed Locke, he makes the point that Locke is still a vital part of his plan and must make it back to the island. Why?

-When and how will Desmond re-enter the story?

-Will we learn more about Teresa, the woman Faraday left behind in England after his research went awry?

-Have the interferences by Flight 815 survivors on past island events resulted in the creation of new timelines? For example, when Jin stopped Rousseau from following her companions beneath the Temple, wouldn’t that have caused a splinter in the space-time continuum, seeing as Jin would not have been there to stop Rousseau the first time she landed on the island? Ditto for Locke confronting Richard Alpert, Daniel telling Ellie to bury the hydrogen bomb, Daniel meeting Charlotte as a little girl, etc.

-While my guesses are never deep or too risky, I was pleased to see a few of my mini-theories along the way bear fruit. Like the idea that Locke would realize Jack was Christian’s son, and that telling him about his father’s presence on the island would be the deciding factor in Jack trying to return. I was also right that when the time jumps stopped, Sawyer and company would land in the middle of the Dharma years – not a hard call to make given that we had already seen Faraday appear during construction of The Orchid, but still, that could have been a short, flash-induced visit. So I’ll give myself half a point.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Another great episode, featuring terrific developments for Sawyer and excellent work by Josh Holloway. Elizabeth Mitchell was awesome as well; she’s two seasons overdue for an Emmy nomination.

Tonight’s Episode: Namaste

Click here for a larger picture of the full statue. It’s pretty cool. And apparently, though it’s hard to tell, he/she/it is holding one of those ankh symbols in each hand…