I Am DB

Yes, S6E3. Apparently last week’s episode counts as 2 even though both hours were contained within the LA X heading.

First off, I would like to begin with an apology. If you read last week’s message, you may have noted that I referred to the character Cindy as a “stewardess.” Reader Chelsey S. offered a friendly reminder that the proper term in this day and age is “flight attendant,” and that I should get with the times and stop clinging to sexist, politically incorrect terminology. So let me take this opportunity to assure all of my readers that I meant no disrespect to any of the devoted women and men who fly the friendly skies and attend to our needs and comfort at 20,000 feet.

Now then, this episode’s title references the Season Two episode What Kate Did, in which we learned that she tucked her stepfather Wayne into bed for a drunken night’s sleep and then blew up the house, sending her on the run from the most persistent on-screen U.S. Marshal since Tommy Lee Jones. This episode doesn’t offer anything so revealing – at least not as far as we can tell at this point – but we did get a number of interesting tidbits throughout the hour.

TAXI DRIVER
We pick up with L.A. Kate as she jumps into that cab occupied by Claire and demands at gunpoint that the driver take off. She looks out the rear window and sees Jack standing by the curb, talking on a cell phone. At the sight of him, Kate seems to experience a déjà vu moment similar to the ones that Jack had on the plane. I asked in my last write-up why Jack was the only one experiencing that sensation, but I guess we’ll see the others have it at different points. Seeing Jack from inside the cab isn’t the first time she’s laid eyes on him; they bumped into each other on the plane. But the look she gives definitely says that he is familiar to her in a deeper way.

As they cab driver makes his way out of the airport, he has to abruptly stop at a crosswalk for Arzt, whose bags have fallen into the road. Arzt’s presence also sends me back to last week’s rumination about why we’re seeing characters that died on the island re-appear in this new timeline. I wondered about Arzt specifically last week because unlike Charlie and Boone, he was a side character who didn’t have a big story on the island. So whereas there might be things to explore with Charlie and Boone in L.A., what purpose could Arzt serve? It’s still early in the season, but I wonder if his role is to continually pop up in all of their lives, appearing in these small ways and reinforcing that fate connects these people whether or not they ever landed on the island. He might not influence the story in a big way, but maybe he’s a poster boy for the interconnectedness of the Flight 815 family.

After they clear the airport and the cab driver abandons ship, Kate jumps into the driver’s seat and orders Claire out of the cab, leaving her stranded without her luggage and purse. Once she has a chance to breathe and get the cuffs off, she goes through Claire’s bags. Upon seeing the baby gear and a photo of Claire pregnant, her conscience kicks in. She goes back to the spot where she booted her, and finds her on a bench waiting for a bus. She returns her bags and after asking where she’s headed, offers to give her a ride. Claire is skeptical, but given her unfamiliarity with the area, Kate’s calmer demeanor and a general lack of options, she agrees.

When they arrive at the Brentwood home of the adopting couple, Claire asks Kate to go to the house with her. But the woman who answers the door says that her husband left her and she can’t take the baby. Perhaps due to the sudden onset of stress, Claire starts having contractions, so Kate takes her to the emergency room. I tried to recall Los Angeles geography to see if Brentwood was near Jack’s hospital, but realized seconds later that this was still just a short while after the plane landed and Jack wouldn’t be there anyway. Another familiar doctor is there, however: Ethan.

I FEEL THE NEED…THE NEED FOR GOODSPEED
Ethan introduces himself as Dr. Goodspeed. Makes sense, seeing as he is the son of our Dharma Initiative friends Horace and Amy, though it is a little jarring to hear him use that surname. (On the island, he was known as Ethan Rom – an anagram for Other Man).

Ethan’s appearance here got me thinking – always a bad sign since half of what I think about is 95 percent likely to be utterly irrelevant to the plot. I assume, based on his name, that Ethan is still the son of Horace and Amy. Remember though, that the first time we met Horace, it was outside Portland when he came upon Roger Linus carrying his pregnant and barely conscious wife Emily. She gave birth to Ben right there, and then died. The woman with Horace at the time was named Olivia (played by actress Samantha Mathis of Pump Up the Volume, Little Women, The American President, etc.). Some years later, when Roger and Ben arrive on the island to join the Dharma Initiative at Horace’s invitation, Olivia is still there. She was teaching Ben’s science lesson about volcanoes when there was supposedly an invasion of the Dharma compound by the Hostiles.

Now jump ahead to last season’s 1970’s storyline. Olivia is gone, and Horace is married to Amy. The show offers no explanation for this, though the behind-the-scenes story is that Mathis was either unavailable or uninterested in returning, and so Amy was created and paired with Horace. These things happen, but the fact remains that Olivia is now part of Lost‘s history. It was never officially established on the show, but visual clues and press information from ABC seemed to make it clear that Olivia was Horace’s wife. And it’s fair to guess that if Ethan is now living a respectable life off the island, he might never have been to the island at all. So was Horace ever on the island? If he wasn’t, how did he meet Amy? Is Ethan Amy’s son, or Olivia’s? Was the Dharma Initiative ever on the island in the new timeline? The sweeping camera shot across the underwater island revealed the Dharma barracks, but were those houses and swing sets actually built by the Dharma Initiative, or did they belong to another group first? Does anyone else care about this? No? I should move on?

Okay, so Ethan tells Claire that she can deliver her baby then and there – a little early but not dangerously so – or wait. You gotta laugh when he tells her that waiting will involve him administering some drugs. “It’s perfectly safe. I just don’t want to have to stick you with needles if I don’t have to.” Not a concern he had on the island…

During a brief moment of beeping-machine induced alarm, Claire shouts, “Is my baby okay? Is Aaron okay?” Kate has another moment, very brief, when Claire says the name Aaron. Like the appearance of Jack back at the airport, this jogs something inside her, but the moment quickly passes. Later, when they’re alone in the hospital room and Kate is about to leave, Claire asks why she’s wanted. “Would you believe me if I said I was innocent?” Kate asks.

“Yeah,” Claire answers. “Yeah I would.”  In fact, Claire and Kate have come so far in so short a time that Claire even gives her credit card to Kate as a thank you…and a little something to help her as she remains on the run. Kate then tells her that Aaron is a great name. “I don’t know why I said it,” Claire laughs. “It’s like…I don’t know, I knew it or something.” Kate says Claire should keep the baby, and then departs. So what is Kate’s crime in this timeline? Did she still kill her stepfather? Or is it someone else’s murder she is wanted for?  During the Lost panel at last summer’s Comic-Con, Damon and Carlton played a video containing an excerpt from an America’s Most Wanted-type show. The segment was on Kate, and said that in an attempt to blow up her stepfather at his place of business – a small office he operated out of as a plumber – she inadvertently killed his co-worker instead. Don’t know whether that will come up on the show or not…

RESURRECTION REDUX
Like John Locke before him, Sayid appears – and that’s the key word, here – to have come back to life. He is weak and confused and obviously doesn’t know what the Temple is or how he got there. His wound is almost completely healed, and he thanks Jack for saving him. Mr. Miyagi comes bursting onto the scene, having been notified of Sayid’s return by Daniel-san. (Maybe significant, maybe not, but when Miyagi hears the news, he instinctively clutches whatever it is he’s wearing around his neck. It looks like a narrow capsule.) They want to take Sayid for a private talk, but Jack says that’s not going to happen until he gets some answers. The ensuing scuffle is broken up when Sawyer fires a gun and says that Miyagi can do whatever he wants to the others, but that he’s leaving. “Please, you have to stay,” Miyagi calmly but firmly implores him, as if so much depends on it. Sawyer ain’t buying it. Before ditching the party he warns Kate, “Don’t come after me.”

But of course, that’s what Kate does. That’s “what Kate does.” She goes after people who tell her not to go after them. So when Daniel-san can’t get an answer out of Jack about where Sawyer is headed, Kate says she can track him and bring him back. Jin offers to go with her. Miyagi agrees, sending along two Others to accompany them: Aldo and Justin.

I instantly recognized Aldo from an earlier season; it’s a symptom of my unhealthy knowledge of the show, although his adult-Haley Joel Osment looks make him easy to recall. Before he even brought it up I placed him as the guard that Kate, Sawyer and Alex knocked out when they rescued Karl from that crazy Clockwork Orange room back in Season Three’s Not in Portland.

THE IRAQI PATIENT
Miyagi straps Sayid down, blows some sort of dust or ash over him (the ash?), attaches electrodes to his chest and cranks a machine which electrocutes him. It was a lot smaller and more high-tech, but I still thought about Count Rugen’s Machine from The Princess Bride, which he used to torture Westley (also known as the Man in Black!). I missed the Albino, but I guess since Sayid’s wound was already healed, he had no purpose there.

After the electrocution, Miyagi goes a bit more primitive, burning Sayid with a hot poker. Sayid keeps asking what he wants and why he’s doing this, but Miyagi says nothing. Daniel-san returns with a couple of men and offers yet another unhelpful explanation – the kind that the Others are so good at. “I’m sorry we had to put you through that,” he says. “It was a test. We had to be sure.”

“Test to be sure of what?” Sayid counters.

‘Don’t worry, you passed,” Daniel-san says reassuringly as the men lead Sayid out. When he’s gone, Daniel-san says to Miyagi, “I just lied to him, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Miyagi answers solemnly.

When Sayid is brought back to Jack and the others and he tells them what happened, Jack storms out and finds Miyagi and Daniel-san, who…okay wait. Since we find out later in the episode what Miyagi’s real name is, let’s go ahead and start using it: Dogen. And since we’re not calling him Miyagi anymore, Daniel-san doesn’t make much sense. His real name hasn’t been spoken on the show yet, but he has been named behind the scenes as Lennon. So with that…

When Jack arrives, Lennon is looking at a book – a little casually if you ask me, given all that’s going on. “Hey Shephard,” he says. “We were hoping you’d come on your own.” Lennon tries to explain that Sayid is sick, and says there’s not really a literal translation for Dogen’s explanation, but that the closest thing is “infected.”

L: He says you have to give your friend this pill.
J: Are you serious? Why don’t you give it to him?
L: Because it won’t work unless he takes it willingly, and he won’t take it willingly from us.
J: Well then maybe you should have asked him to take it before you tortured him.
L: We didn’t torture him. We were…diagnosing him.
J: To see if he was infected?
L: Yes.
J: I’m not going to give anything to Sayid unless I know what’s in it.

Dogen decides to put aside the bad taste English leaves on his tongue at this point, and joins the conversation directly.

D: Tell me Shephard. Your friend, how did he get shot?
J: He was… he was helping me.
D: So it was your fault?
J: Yes.
D: And there have been others who were hurt, or died, helping you?
J: Yes.
D: Well, then this is your chance to redeem yourself. It’s medicine. And your friend needs it.
J: What happens if I don’t give it to him?
D: The infection will spread.

Once again, as in last week’s episode, Dogen asks how Sayid got shot. And once again, Jack doesn’t answer the question directly. Oh Jack, why must you make everything so complicated? Couldn’t you just say, “We were in 1977, carrying the core of a hydrogen bomb through the Dharma Initiative barracks hoping to slip through unnoticed since they knew we weren’t who we claimed to be, and then Benjamin Linus’ father shot him?” Sounds perfectly simple to me. But no, Jack can never take the simple route. Instead he says only that Sayid got shot helping him. Dogen uses that to play on Jack’s guilt, but I don’t feel like that’s where his line of questioning is going. Why do they keep asking what happened to Sayid? Why does it matter?

Jack returns to Sayid and presents the pill, explaining their claim that he is infected and that the pill will help him. When Sayid asks Jack’s opinion, he admits he’s not sure what to think.

J: You know before, when you thanked me for saving your life, I didn’t have anything to do with it Sayid. I didn’t fix you; they did.
S: I don’t care who fixed me. I only care about who I trust. So if you want me to take that pill Jack, I’ll do it.

Jack soon returns to Dogen and takes a seat across from him as Dogen rolls a baseball around his table.

J: You speak pretty good English for someone who needs a translator.
D: We both know that I don’t need a translator.
J: Then why do you have one?
D: Because I have to remain separate from the people I’m in charge of. It makes it easier when they don’t like the decisions I make for them.
J: Who are you?
D: My name is Dogen.
J: Are you from here? The island?
D: I was brought here, like everyone else.
J: What do you mean “brought here?”
D: You know exactly what I mean.

What do you mean “brought here?” It’s not the first time Jack has heard this. In Season One’s finale Exodus, while transporting the dynamite from the Black Rock to the hatch, Locke and Jack had a conversation that is one of the most pivotal in the entire series: the one in which Locke says they were all brought to the island for a reason.

Jack wasn’t buying Locke’s theory then, but we know that he’s since come around to accept much of what Locke had told him. Now when Dogen talks about being brought here, Jack doesn’t question it. His silence is admission that he does understand…even if he doesn’t quite understand.

He admits to Dogen that he hasn’t given Sayid the pill, because he doesn’t know what’s in it. Dogen keeps harping on the “infection” and Jack keeps asking what’s in it. Dogen finally tells Jack that he has to trust him. “I don’t trust myself,” Jack says. “How am I supposed to trust you? Let’s see where trust gets us,” he adds, before taking the pill himself. Dogen leaps forward and Heimlichs the shit out of him until he spits up the pill. “Now are you gonna tell me what’s in it?”

“Poison,” Dogen admits. When Lennon rejoins them a few minutes later, Dogen pours Jack a cup of tea.

J: Why would you people want to kill Sayid?
D: We believe he has been…[something in Japanese]
L: The closest translation is “claimed.”
J: Claimed? By what?
D: There’s a darkness growing in him, and once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was will be gone.
J: How can you be sure of that?
D: Because it happened to your sister.

Now a few people have asked me if Jack knew he had a sister. The answer is yes. At his father’s funeral, Claire’s mother approached him and told him about her affair with Christian and about Claire. But Dogen’s statement doesn’t answer how he’s sure of what’s happening to Sayid, so is he just saying this thing about Claire as a way to get Jack invested in what they are trying to do? What do they know about Claire?

After Jack asks why they would want to kill Sayid, there is an ominous bit of music that plays before Dogen answers that Sayid has been claimed. And I’m almost certain that faintly contained in that brief bit of music is the mechanical sound of the Smoke Monster. In my previous write-up, I pondered two questions. Well…I pondered a lot more than two, but two in particular are relevant at the moment. The first is the idea that Jacob and the Man in Black are “collecting” the 815ers and perhaps others on the Island, in some sort of cosmic chess game. The other was that the ash around Jacob’s cabin was being used to keep the Man in Black trapped inside. The hole in that theory was that the Smoke Monster has been running wild all over the island. I wasn’t sure if that wrecked my theory or if there could be an explanation. All this new information – the idea of Sayid being “claimed,” along with that sly foreshadowing in the music, brings me back to those questions.

If the Man in Black has been “claiming” people on the island, do they have to die in certain ways or under certain circumstances? Is that why Dogen and Lennon keep asking how Sayid was injured? If Claire has indeed been claimed by the Man in Black, then it lends credence to the idea that Christian Shephard has been claimed as well and has been doing the Man in Black’s bidding, seeing as the last time we saw Claire alive she was with Christian. (If she was alive then; many fans speculate that she did not survive the explosion of her house when Keamy’s team attacked New Otherton, despite the fact that she got up and was walking around with Sawyer, Locke, Hurley, Ben and Miles.)

And to the second question, if the Man in Black was confined to the cabin, could he have somehow been using these claimed souls to do his work in Smokey form?

Also, let’s not forget that this concept of “infection” dates back to Season One. From the beginning, Rousseau spoke of an infection that claimed the members of her team. We even saw it in action, sort of, during one of last season’s flashes when Jin came upon Young Rousseau having an argument on the beach with her lover Robert. With her gun pointed at him, she said, “You’re not Robert. You’re someone else. That thing changed you. You’re not Robert. You’re sick. That monster made you sick.” (Robert and the rest of her team had gone down the opening at The Temple wall to try and rescue Montand, who had been dragged down there by the Smoke Monster.)

Robert replied, “It’s not a monster. It’s a security system guarding that temple.” When he convinced her that he meant no harm to her or their baby, she lowered her gun. Then he raised his and fired at her. But it jammed, or was empty, and she shot him down.

Other allusions to a sickness on the island include the vaccine used by the Dharma Initiative to inoculate new arrivals on the island, by Desmond when he was manning the hatch and by Ethan on Claire when the Others had her in the medical station. Also, Desmond was convinced that the island air was unsafe and that he could not go outside without a hazmat suit. Even though he eventually realized that was a lie told to him by his hatch-mate Kelvin, he still seemed to cling to the idea until the arrival of Locke, Kate and Jack in the hatch.

So what is the true nature of this infection? Does Claire really have it? Does Christian? Does Sayid? How did the torture diagnose him? He seemed to react just as one would be expected to react to electrocution and burning: with a lot of pained screams. So what did those tests tell Dogen and Lennon that led them to diagnose him as “claimed?” What does the long delay in Sayid’s revival suggest to them? And if they successfully administered the pill and poisoned him to death, what’s to stop the Man in Black from claiming him again? Oh, and why would the pill only work if Sayid took it willingly?

IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN NEW OTHERTON
On their journey to track Sawyer, Kate asks Aldo and Justin why they’re being held at The Temple. Aldo says it’s to protect them from the pillar of black smoke that “looks pissed off.” Jin then asks if they know anything about the Ajira plane. Justin replies, “I think he means the one that landed…” but Aldo obnoxiously cuts him off with a curt, “Justin…shut up.”

He has to repeat that warning a minute later, when they come across a trip wire for a net filled with rocks hanging above them, which Jin says must be one of Rousseau’s traps. All Justin has a chance to say before Aldo intervenes is, “The French woman? She’s been dead for years, this couldn’t be one of…”

At first that line caught my interest in a big way. Later, in talking with reader David E., I remembered that it has been a few years since Rousseau was gunned down by Keamy’s team, so maybe there’s nothing about Justin’s comment to read into it. But still, three years is not that long a time. The way Justin says it suggested to me that Rousseau has been dead for much longer. And why does Aldo get so testy? What’s the harm in talking about Rousseau? Or the Ajira plane? By this point, Kate’s had about enough of Aldo’s attitude. She knocks him and Justin out and starts to continue moving.

J: Where are you going?
K: Catchin’ up with Sawyer.
J: So you never planned to bring him back to The Temple?
K: No. I’m not interested in being a prisoner, are you?
J: Where did your plane land, Kate?
K: What?
J: The Ajira plane that you, Jack and Hurley came in on. Where did it land?
K: I don’t know.
J: Sun was on that plane too. I have to find her.
K: You think they’re gonna tell you? You think they care about you, or about Sun, or about any of us?
J: Who do you care about, Kate?
K: Good luck, Jin.

A) Am I the only one who still finds it weird to hear Jin speaking fluent English? And B) Kate sounds pretty put out by his questions, and is especially dismissive when she says, “Good luck Jin.” Call me crazy, but I think she could stand to be a little bit less of a bitch considering that she is somewhat responsible for Jin and Sun being separated in the first place. Or so one might argue.

She arrives at New Otherton and finds Sawyer in his house. She watches undetected as he pries up a floorboard, removes a shoebox and takes out what looks like a small piece of fabric. He sees her there and she follows him to out to the old submarine dock. She tells him that she came back to the island to find Claire and followed him from The Temple because she thought he could help find her. If she could bring Claire back to Aaron, than this wouldn’t have all been for nothing.

Sawyer tells her that Juliet’s death was his fault, recalling how in the very spot where they’re sitting he had convinced her not to take the submarine home. “I made her stay on this island because I didn’t want to be alone. You understand that, right? But…I think some of us are meant to be alone.”  He holds the piece of fabric in is hand, and we see that it’s a pouch containing a ring; the ring he was going to give to Juliet when he asked her to marry him. Now he stands up and throws the ring in the water.

There’s something about seeing how far Sawyer has come that makes his loss of Juliet that much sadder. They both came from troubled backgrounds, but after all of their bad deeds and failings and heartaches, they brought each other hope and a fresh start. Each was the good thing that the other had come to deserve. Now that she’s gone, what will Sawyer’s new path be? Based on the preview of tonight’s episode, perhaps we’ll find out. It didn’t look too bright…

Once again, I have to praise Josh Holloway’s performance. He portrays Sawyer’s sense of loss with such honesty, building on his sensational work last season. You watch him in these scenes – the way he walks, the way he sits, the way he breathes – and you really, really feel it. This is what grief looks like. The writing and direction doesn’t showcase his grieving; they just allow it to happen, and thanks to Holloway it happens with incredible truth.

Movie Geek Moment: As he holds the ring, Sawyer says that maybe some people are meant to be alone. He might be right. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel says to Frodo, “You are a ringbearer, Frodo. To bear a Ring of Power is to be alone.” And what ring is more powerful than one that represents love? It’s the power of love, which is of course the theme song from another movie oft mentioned in these write-ups: Back to the Future. And once again I make a completely irrelevant pop culture connection seem like it was planned by the producers all along. That takes a special kind of genius, people. I hope you appreciate it.

Back in the jungle, Aldo and Justin catch up with Jin, demanding to know where Kate went.

Ji: I don’t know. You don’t understand; I’m going back to The Temple.
A: Yeah, right.
Ju: It looks like he’s alone. Maybe we should take him back.
A: Or maybe we didn’t find him alive.
Ju: Aldo, no! We can’t! He’s one of them!
A: He may be one of them.

Hmmm…one of who?

Jin tries to run but gets his leg caught in a bear trap. Aldo raises his gun to shoot him when suddenly he takes two to the chest from off-screen instead. Justin is shot as well. Jin looks up, and standing on a ridge just above him…is a rifle-toting, dirty-faced, Seattle grunge-wearing Claire. So…that should be interesting.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-The sound effect that transitions between the flashes is not the same as it’s been for the past five seasons. It’s still got the airplane “whoosh,” but there’s something else mixed in there that I can’t identify. What does it say about the flash-sideways device?

-Dogen is seen at different points using a typewriter and writing in books. What is he recording?

-In the previous episode, Lennon advised Jack that there were risks to bringing Sayid into the spring. Does what’s happened to him now have anything to do with those risks? Is “infection” one of the risks?

-In my last write-up, I asked why Man in Locke went to the effort of leading Ben to The Temple tunnels for his judgment from Smokey rather than turning into the monster earlier. In thinking about it since then, I suppose it’s because he didn’t want to reveal that side of himself to Ben, and only did so in Jacob’s chamber because he was forced to deal with Bram and his other attackers. Hence the line, “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”  So what are his intentions with Ben? Has he had to change his gameplan as a result of Ben finding out he’s a smoker?

-Something I noted in LA X but forgot to mention: when the customs officer leads Jin away, and the other officer stays and asks Sun if she understands English, the officer addresses Sun as Miss Paik…Paik being her maiden name. There’s no way this was just a slip-up. But what does it mean? Are Sun and Jin not married in the L.A. timeline? Would she have still learned English if they weren’t together? And if they aren’t married, why are they traveling together?

LINE OF THE NIGHT
There were so many to pick from in his episode, I couldn’t begin to single one out. For your consideration…

“Course he’s fine. He’s an Iraqi torturer who shoots kids, he definitely deserves another go-round.” – Sawyer

“As you can see, Hugo here has assumed the leadership position so…that’s pretty great.” – Miles

“I’m sorry, is this a press conference?” – Aldo

“We’ll be in the food court if you need us.” – Miles

Tonight’s Episode: The Substitute