I Am DB

CRAZY HEART
This episode’s title, in addition to invoking Ray Romano, recalls the Season Two episode Everybody Hates Hugo. This time around, off-island Hurley is not cursed by his lottery numbers, but is happy and celebrated as a generous philanthropist who has used his fortune as owner of the world-famous Mr. Cluck’s Chicken to support all manner of charitable causes. The episode begins with Dr. Chang speaking at a benefit dinner honoring Hurley as Man of the Year for his donation of a new Paleontology wing to Chang’s (and Charlotte’s) museum. But as he leaves the ceremony with his mother, she complains that he needs a woman in his life and tells him that she’s set up a blind lunch date for him with the daughter of a neighbor.

She delivers the message with her typical hilarious, tough love chutzpah. In case this is the last time we see her, let’s acknowledge how great she’s been every time she’s showed up. I toast you, Lillian Hurst! I wish Cheech Marin had made it on as Hurley’s dad, but we can’t have everything.

Hurley sits alone at a restaurant awaiting his lunch date’s arrival when a woman approaches and says, “Hugo?” He looks up and sees Libby. A little floored by how pretty she is, he invites her to sit down, thinking she’s his date. She says she’s not his date; she saw him and had to come talk to him. She takes his hands and asks if he believes people can be connected, like soul mates. He says he supposes so, and she looks at him with sad, searching eyes. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asks.

Suddenly a man – who astute viewers may have recognized as one of Hurley’s doctors during his stay in the mental hospital back in Season Two’s Dave – comes up and asks Libby if she’s bothering Hurley. He leads her away, apologizing to Hurley and saying that she isn’t well. But before he goes, Libby tells Hurley that she meant everything she said. Hurley follows them out and sees the doctor loading Libby and others into a minivan labeled Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute.

The next day, Hurley goes into a Mr. Cluck’s and orders a whole bucket, which he proceeds to sit down and eat by himself, looking miserable all the while. He looks up when he senses someone watching him, and standing by the counter is Desmond.  He walks over and tells Hurley that he recognizes him – that they were on same flight the week before. He sits down while waiting for his order and comments on the amount of chicken Hurley is packing away. Hurley says he eats when he depressed. Assuming it must be about a woman, Desmond asks about it. Hurley tells him about Libby and how she thinks she knows him but is literally crazy. Desmond leans in. “Did you believe her when she said she knew you?” he asks. When Hurley says he kinda did, Desmond suggests he go with his gut…at least long enough to find out where she thinks she knows him from. He gets up when his number – 42 – is called. “It was nice bumpin’ into you,” he says as he leaves.

So this must be what Desmond wants to show his fellow Flight 815 passengers…or at least the ones whose names he probably recognizes from the manifest he asked for. Is he simply trying to bring the 815ers together in order to trigger these flashes to the island world? How does he know what will set off those flashes, and if they’ll even occur at all? His “memories” came back to him when Charlie made a gesture similar to one he’d made before. But to hear Faraday’s story in the previous episode, all it took for him to know something was up was seeing Charlotte across a room. And for Charlie, it happened in a state of unconsciousness. So it can’t just be sight recognition; we’ve seen too many encounters in SidewaysLand that haven’t yielded any flashes to “bizzaro alternate universe,” as Hurley calls it. Hurley and Locke have interacted, as have Locke and Rose, Locke and Ben, Locke and Jack, Jack and Sayid, Sayid and Jin, Claire and Kate, and Kate and Sawyer (whose Sideways storyline we still need to pick up on; last we saw them, Kate had just been caught by Officer Ford after slamming into his car and trying to flee on foot.)

CONNECT FOUR
Hurley goes to see Dr. Brooks at the mental institution and asks if he can see Libby. Brooks doesn’t think it’s a good idea, explaining that Libby has issues with reality. So Hurley whips out his checkbook and offers a $100k donation. That buys him entry into the rec room and a visit with Libby. When she sits down with him and he asks where she thinks she knows him from, she tells him how crazy it will sound. She says she saw him on TV and suddenly felt she’d been hit on the head; memories came washing over her, but they were memories of a different life – one in which they were in a plane crash, then on an island, and where they knew and liked each other. Then when she came to the institution, she felt like she’d been there before and had seen him there as well. He says he’s never been in a mental hospital. She says that she approached him in restaurant because she thought that if he remembered too, she would know she wasn’t crazy. Looney tunes or not, he likes her and asks if she’s allowed out on day passes. She says she’s there voluntarily and can leave at any time, so he asks her out on a date.

They get together for a picnic at the beach, which she describes as being like a date they never had. When she kisses him, he suddenly gets hit with flashes just like Desmond did in the MRI machine. Moments of him and Libby from the island appear to him, and he pulls away from her, looking a little freaked out. When she asks what’s wrong, he tells her that he’s remembering stuff. Then we see Desmond sitting in his car, watching them. He must know somehow that his work there is done, and he drives off.

This whole thing with Libby was a creative way to come back around to her unresolved storyline…even if it doesn’t really resolve it. I doubt that when Libby was revealed to be a fellow patient with Hurley at Santa Rosa (also in Dave) that this sideways premise was Damon and Carlton’s plan, but since the  mystery turned out to be one of the most consistently asked questions among the fans, they might have felt obligated to deal with it. But it still doesn’t explain Libby’s backstory. Nothing we learn in this episode addresses why she was in the mental institution to begin with…and that was what the fans kept asking about, especially since when she was revealed as a patient there, she seemed to be watching Hurley from across the rec room. So this was pretty much a cheat – but it’s a cool cheat, so I’ll let it slide.

After moving on from spying the beach scene, we find Desmond in a school parking lot, where he watches Locke roll himself toward his van. A knock at the window distracts him, and Desmond finds Ben standing there, suspicious of this man who has been parked at a school for a while, watching. Showing no sign of recognizing Ben, Desmond says he’s new in the neighborhood and looking for a school for his son. After a brief chat, during which Desmond never looks away from Locke for too long, Ben moves on. And as Locke enters the middle of the parking lot, Desmond drives toward him and then slams on the gas and smashes into Locke, who goes flying out of his wheelchair, over the car and onto the ground. Desmond keeps driving as Ben and others rush to Locke, who lies on the ground bloody and battered.

My initial reaction to this was probably the obvious one: that Desmond was trying to kill Locke. I figured the idea was that if he killed Locke in SidewaysLand it would somehow affect Man in Locke’s state on the island. But then I wondered if the point of running down Locke wasn’t to kill him, but to bring him in contact with Dr. Jack Shephard. If that was the true motive, again, it seems to be relying on an awful lot of chance. Chance that Locke won’t just die from being struck; chance that Jack will be the doctor to work on Locke; chance that the two of them coming together will result in one or both of them accessing “memories” of the island. And hell, isn’t there a better way to get Locke and Jack together without resorting to a hit and run? If Locke and Jack do end up crossing paths in the hospital, might they also run into Sun and Jin, who could wind up there for Sun’s gunshot wound?

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST
Hurley is visiting Libby’s grave when he hears the jungle whispers and suddenly sees Michael standing there, dressed as he was when he died in the freighter explosion. He says he’s there to make sure Hurley doesn’t get everyone killed, claiming that a lot of people will die if they blow up the Ajira plane and that it will be Hurley’s fault because people are starting to listen to him (thanks to his increasingly relevant gift for bringing out the dead). Michael makes Hurley realize that maybe he can exert some influence.

Ilana soon returns to the camp after a visit to the Black Rock, and she carries in her bag four sticks of dynamite, enough to destroy the cockpit of the plane. Hurley suggests this isn’t the best course of action, but Ilana insists that she has been training all her life to protect them and he has to trust her. Jacob said Richard would know what to do, she reasons, and Richard said to blow up the plane. Richard makes clear that his determination hasn’t wavered. But Hurley says Jacob never told him that, and suggests Richard might be wrong. He argues that the plane is their only way off the island, and also worries about how unstable the dynamite is…a fact that Ilana is clearly not respecting as she swings the bag around casually, loading a water bottle inside – on top of the dynamite – and removing the bag from her shoulder and placing it roughly on the ground…where it blows up.

Paging Dr. Arzt…

Ilana’s death was as shocking as it was inevitable, as she showed no care with that bag of explosives. Given that she handled it with no regard for the danger it posed, I was almost waiting for it to blow. I guess I didn’t know if it would because killing her off now seems premature. It feel like there’s still unfinished story there, seeing as we haven’t gotten her full backstory detailing her relationship with Jacob and how she wound up in the hospital where he gave her this assignment. With six hours of show left, will we find out any of these details? Maybe they’re still to come…

Hurley finds the sack filled with Jacob’s ashes among Ilana’s things. I’m not sure if he knows what it is, and we don’t see whether or not he takes it with him, but my guess is that he does. I feel like it might be important later. Richard says they have to get more dynamite or Ilana will have died for nothing. “Maybe she died to show us to stay the hell away from dynamite,” Jack says. Richard says he’ll take his chances. (And from his failed suicide attempt we can glean that if anyone can handle the dynamite safely, it’s Richard. And probably Jack too.) Jack has concerns about the plan, but Hurley now says Richard is right and asks Jack to trust him. So Jack agrees and they set off for the Black Rock. As they walk, Ben ponders Ilana’s fate.

B: Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?
J: What’s that?
B: Ilana. There she was, handpicked by Jacob, trained to come and protect you candidates, and no sooner does she tell you who are then she blows up. The Island was done with her. Makes me wonder what’s gonna happen when it’s done with us.

Maybe that’s it. Ilana’s death seems premature to me, just as Dogen’s did, but perhaps their only real purpose was to serve as vessels for the delivery of information.  On a side note, I felt like Ben’s tone of voice had the old ring of manipulation, but he was probably just expressing a legit concern. Still, has Ben played his last Machiavellian card yet?

LINE IN THE SAND
When they arrive at the Black Rock, Richard tells the others to wait while he goes in alone, but then he notices Hurley isn’t there. They discover his whereabouts roughly three seconds later, when he comes running out of the ship’s hull yelling at them all to get back…and then the ship blows. Richard ain’t happy, but Hurley said he was protecting them. When Miles asks why he did it, Hurley says that Michael – “one of the people who come back and yell at me after they die” – told him to. Miles, the one person who can understand what Hurley is talking about, asks if that happens a lot. “It happens enough,” Hurley says. Miles asks if he just does whatever the dead tell him to do. “Dead people are more reliable than alive people,” Hurley responds…in what may be the most depressing line in the history of the show.

Richard asks Ben if there are still grenades at the Dharma barracks. Ben says yes, and so Richard wants to go there. When Jack suggests they talk about it, Richard says there isn’t time. He asks if Jack has a better idea, and Hurley says he knows what to do: they have to go talk to Locke. “Are you trying to get us killed?” Ben asks. Hurley says he’s taking his direction from Jacob, and points to indicate that Jacob is there. Richard tells Hurley to ask Jacob what the island is. He says that Jacob told him once what the island is, and wants Hurley to ask him now. Hurley tells Richard he doesn’t have to prove anything to him; he can either come with him to see Locke or keep trying to blow stuff up.

“He’s lying,” Richard says. “Jacob isn’t telling us what to do, because Jacob never tells us what to do. I’m gonna make this simple. If that thing leaves the island, that’s it. It…it’s over.

“What’s over?” Miles asks.

“Everything,” Richard answers. “I’m destroying that plane. And I can use all the help I can get. Who’s coming with me?”

Ben gets up to go with him. Miles does too, saying to Hurley, “I’ve seen that thing in action, man. It doesn’t wanna talk. Sorry.”

Richard looks to the others, but Frank shakes his head no (he’s the pilot, of course he doesn’t want to blow up his baby) and Sun stays put. Jack, having sat passively the whole time as Hurley pointed to Jacob and challenged Richard’s direction,  says if Jacob told them to go talk to Locke, that’s what they should do. He sticks with Hurley. “Don’t get in our way,” Richard warns as he, Ben and Miles leave.

The “what the island is” bit is interesting, since Damon and Carlton have said that’s one question they are unlikely to answer before the series ends. Their position has been that there would really be no satisfactory answer to that question, and to even try offering one would be akin to Star Wars Episode I’s ill-advised deconstruction of The Force through the introduction of midichlorians (I think I’ve made this point before. Forgive the double-dipping). On the other hand, Jacob’s illustration to Richard using the wine bottle and the cork sort of did answer what the island is, without getting down to the details, so who knows. Maybe we will get a more direct answer. I also like how Richard knows Jacob isn’t really there because Jacob doesn’t tell people what to do. That was the whole reason Jacob offered Richard a job to begin with (although at this stage in the game Jacob has been giving explicit directions to Hurley: go to The Temple, give Dogen the guitar case, bring Jack to the lighthouse, etc.).

SPIRITS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
The groups keep sub-dividing, so we now have four island crews to follow: Widmore, Jin, Zoe and their gang; Locke and his gang; Richard, Ben and Miles; and Team Jacob. As the latter group continues on their way, Hurley and Jack talk.

H: So what do you think we should say to Locke when we get there? I mean…how do you break the ice with the Smoke Monster?
J:  Don’t worry about it. Something tells me he’s gonna do most of the talking.
H: Or he could just kill us all.
J:  Yeah. He could.
H:  I didn’t see Jacob back there. I just said it ‘cause I wanted everyone to listen to me.
J:   I know.
H: Then why’d you come with me?
J:  Ever since Juliet died – ever since I got her killed – all I’ve wanted was to fix it. But I can’t. I can’t ever fix it. You have no idea how hard it is for me to sit back and listen to other people tell me what I should do. But I think maybe that’s the point. Maybe…maybe I’m supposed to let go.
H: Unless you letting go gets us killed. Going to see Locke was my idea, not Jacob’s.
J:  Hurley, you asked me to trust you. This is me trusting you.

Maybe Jack can fix it. Maybe Jack will succeed in keeping all the promises he’s made – the promise to get Sun back together with Jin and get both of them off the island, the promise that detonating Jughead would work – and the cost will be either his life or his staying behind. Maybe Jack will remain on the island and hang out with his dad…who’s bound to show up again soon, what with only six hours left.

Team Jacob hears the jungle whispers, but this time Hurley thinks he knows what causes them. He tells Jack, Sun and Frank to wait and then goes around the corner and calls out for Michael, who steps out from the trees.

H: You’re stuck on the island, aren’t you?
M: ‘Cause of what I did.
H: And there are others out here, like you, aren’t there? That’s what the whispers are?
M: Yeah. We’re the ones who can’t move on.

Michael points out where Locke’s camp is, and when Hurley Joel Osment asks if there’s anything he can do to help, Michael tells him not to get himself killed. “And Hurley? If you ever do see Libby again, tell her I’m very sorry.”

So it looks like we just crossed off another big Lost mystery: the whispers. Did anyone else find it to be kinda anti-climactic? I don’t mind that the concept of the dead being unable to move on has been done before (Poltergeist, Ghost and The Return of the King leap to mind); it’s more that the revelation felt rushed and tacked on. I wish it had been explained with a little more weight to it. So anybody who dies on the island (or in its vicinity, as was the case with Michael) and who did some pretty heavy-duty sinning while there is doomed to remain in spiritual limbo? And collectively these lost souls cause the living to hear ominous whispers? Is there any rhyme or reason to when the whispers occur? When Ben kidnapped baby Alex from Rousseau, he gave her a warning: “If you want your child to live, every time you hear whispers you run the other way.” But if Hurley and Michael’s explanation for the whispering is all there is to it, what was Ben’s statement supposed to mean? If you think back over the series to all the times the whispers were heard, the sound didn’t necessarily portend anything “happening.” Sometimes it preceded a strange occurrence, but sometimes it was the strange occurrence and nothing else happened. I guess at this point in the game beggars can’t be choosers; if they solve a mystery, I’ll take it. I just hope they’ve put a little more thought and care into the answers than they seem to have put into this one (and if there’s more yet to learn about the whispers, then I’ll stand corrected. I hear that episode #15 is going to be a big “Island” episode, so maybe we haven’t heard the last on the subject).

Also, while I’m griping, I wish Michael’s return had been a little more substantive. I’m glad we saw him, but I was hoping he’d have a bit more to do, and that he might pop up in SidewaysLand. I still think that his story arc was badly mishandled when they brought him back in Season Four, and so I hoped this episode would finally see them make amends for that botch job. Even if Hurley had told him he had seen Walt when he left the island and that Walt was doing alright, allowing Michael to take that in, that would have been something. After all, he killed Libby and Ana Lucia in order to save Walt. (Ahem…WALT!) He’d probably be moved to know that he really did manage to save his son. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Maybe there’ll be more with him in the remaining episodes. (Yeah, I know I keep saying that even though we’re running out of time.)

A WALK IN THE WOODS
Sawyer and Kate approach Man in Locke as he carves a long wooden stick. Sawyer is increasingly impatient with the lack of activity. (When Man in Locke asks if he can do something for them, an exasperated Sawyer shoots back, “How about anything?”) Man in Locke says that waiting is not the same thing as doing nothing. When Kate asks what he’s waiting for, he points out that she and her Ajira flight companions were only able to come back to the island because they did it together. He says the same goes for leaving, and so they need Jack, Sun and Hurley. Kate says she doesn’t see that happening.

Just then, Sayid returns and asks to speak to Man in Locke privately. He takes him into jungle not far away and says that he returned from Hydra Island with Widmore’s package. Locke lays eyes on Desmond, tied to a tree but seemingly not bothered by that fact. He’s just chillin.’ Locke unties him and asks why Widmore brought him to the island. Desmond says he was kidnapped, so Widmore would have to answer that question. He says that Widmore put him into a wooden shack and blasted him with electromagnetism (which he says he recognized from experience). He answers Man in Locke’s questions with an eerie calm. He seems almost as devoid of emotion as Sayid has been since killing Dogen and Lennon. When Man in Locke asks if Desmond knows who he is, Desmond says, “Of course. You’re John Locke.” But he says it in a strange way, almost mockingly straightforward, as if he’s playing along but knows that Man in Locke knows he’s playing along. Locke sends Sayid back to the camp and asks Desmond to take a walk with him; he wants to show him something.

L: Remind me Desmond, how long were you down in that hatch pushing that button?
D: Three years.
L: And here you are, back for more. If I didn’t know better I’d think this island had it in for you.
D: Do you know better?
L: Excuse me?
D: There’s nothing special about me, brotha. This island has it in for all of us.
L: Yes it does.

And then Man in Locke sees a boy standing in the jungle, watching them. He’s dressed like the boy Locke saw when he was on his way to Jacob’s cave with Sawyer. But that boy was blonde, and this one has dark hair. (It is the same boy, however. I wasn’t sure, so I looked it up. Same actor.) Desmond sees him too and asks Man in Locke who it is. Locke says to ignore him. Desmond asks if he knows the boy and Locke repeats himself, angrily.

That first boy spoke to Locke on his trek with Sawyer and said, “You can’t kill him.” Some of you took that to mean Locke couldn’t kill Sawyer, whereas I thought otherwise (because I didn’t think Locke was even planning to kill Sawyer…at least, not on that journey). But here is Locke taking another person for an island show-and-tell, and this time his intentions are…well I’ll get to it, but if you saw the episode you know what Man in Locke does. So is this lost boy trying to stop Locke from killing his fellow travelers, or is he trying to send some other message? Who was the blonde boy talking about that Man in Locke can’t kill? Note that neither Sawyer nor Desmond were on Ajira 316. Maybe Man in Locke really only needs the ones who were on it in order to leave the island. Why did he recruit Sawyer, then? Perhaps he thought Sawyer would be leverage for getting Kate…and with both Kate and Claire he could get Jack.

Man in Locke and Desmond arrive at a clearing with a well in the middle of it. This is not the same well as the one at The Orchid with the island-moving wheel at the bottom, but apparently it shares a connection with that one.

How much easier it would have been for those people if they could have had Gatorade instead of having to dig wells to get energy. Anyway, when he gets back to camp, Sayid asks what happened to Desmond.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-In an interview with TV Guide after this episode, Jorge Garcia said something that raised my eyebrows: “[The Man in Black] did give them his word that he wasn’t going to do anything. It’s been established that he has to keep his word. So if he gives his word, then he’s bound to it.” Umm…really?  I don’t ever recall seeing or hearing that established. Does anyone else?

-Also in TV Guide, there was a viewer mail question that caught my interest. The question was, “Do you think Lost’s sideways timeline occurs concurrent with island events or after?” To answer the question, TV Guide cited this quote from Yunjin Kim: “Obviously Jin was infertile on the island, but in the flash-sideways he’s perfectly healthy. I don’t know if that’s because we spent time on the island, even though it’s a different lifeline, and the island cured his infertility, therefore in the flash-sideways he’s completely healthy. That’s what I assumed when I read the script.” (Far be it from me to correct one of the stars of the show, but for the purposes of this discussion it should be clarified that Jin was infertile before going to the island. Somehow the island fixed that little problem.)

For my part, I’ve assumed a little of both, especially more recently. I’ve been operating off the idea that the two timelines are running basically concurrently, with the understanding that the sideways stuff is taking place days after Flight 815 whereas at this point in the island timeline it’s been three years since Flight 815. Hence people who died on the island – like Charlie and Faraday – are alive in SidewaysLand. But also, the fact that people in SidewaysLand are making the connection to the island timeline means that in a weird, bending-the-space-time-continuum sort of way, the sideways timeline is happening after the island events. Kind of. Maybe the best way to say it would be that the timelines are concurrent, but the sideways line is informed by the island line. That’s my take, anyway.

-Oh, and supposedly we will find out why/how Jin was initially infertile in the original timeline vs. fertile in the sideways timeline.

-I often bring up Ghostbusters, Star Wars and Back to the Future (hmm, you don’t say) as touchpoints for Lost, but there’s another one that has come up this season which I keep neglecting to mention, though some of you have talked to me about it: Willy Wonka. The only way that Jacob bringing people to the island to find the one candidate worthy of replacing him as its protector could be more Wonka-esque is if the jungle was made of candy and the waterfalls were chocolate. Still, I found it surprising – and pretty awesome –  that the “Next Week on Lost” clip at the end of this episode directly referenced the classic Gene Wilder film by using the creepy song that Wonka sing-speaks to the children and their parents when they’re boating down the chocolate river and enter that crazy psychedelic tunnel with freaky images projected all over the walls.  I wonder if Jacob’s chosen candidate will get a lifetime’s supply of chocolate.

-Speaking of the preview for next week’s – tonight’s – episode, I’m not giving anything away to say that we know Desmond survives the fall into the well, because we see him sitting down there. (And if surviving that fall isn’t further evidence that the Island has a higher purpose for him, what is?) But it also shows us Sayid walking up to that well with a gun and firing it down at Desmond. So…we’ll get another chance to see just how special he is. Or isn’t.

-One last thing about the episode we’re about to see: now that the camps have come together, I really hope Hurley, Sun and especially Jack acknowledge that Claire is there, as they haven’t seen her since she disappeared in Season Four. I’ll be annoyed if they don’t bring some attention to that reunion. Jack doesn’t have to address their connection in his episode necessarily, but I don’t want the fact that she’s back to be treated casually by them.

-At this point, I’m pretty sure there has been a sideways-centric episode for every main character (Damon and Carlton said earlier that Lapidus, Claire and Miles would not have centric episodes of their own). If that’s the case, then tonight either starts repeating people, or doesn’t focus on just one of them but rather on Desmond’s efforts to bring them all together.

-I know that we should celebrate Hurley’s philanthropy and what the expansion of the Mr. Cluck’s Chicken franchise has allowed him to do for charity, but seeing a Mr. Cluck’s in view of an Egyptian pyramid or the Eiffel Tower is just kinda obnoxious.

-As I mentioned, Dr. Chang made a brief appearance at he beginning of this episode. If you’ve been missing him, he’s featured prominently in this week’s once-again wacky Muppet recap from the Lost Untangled series. (It appears that the puppet Dr. Chang was indeed constructed by The Jim Henson Company, though based on the way they word this, I’m not sure if Henson has anything to do with actually making the episodes. Thanks again, Lorelei.)

LINE OF THE NIGHT
Hurley: What’s she like?
Mrs. Reyes: Willing to meet you.

Tonight’s Episode: The Last Recruit (and the last episode for two weeks. After tonight, no new Lost until May 4. Bastards…)

THE POWER OF LOVE
Last week I made an accusation. I said that Lost has made a sport out of tearing couples apart, and proceeded to offer a long list of examples. But perhaps the comment wasn’t entirely fair. For one thing, as reader David Z. pointed out to me, I overlooked one couple that has stayed together through many ups and downs:

One thought on your discussion of Sun & Jin perhaps not being meant to be together – you list nearly all of the “romantic” relationships we’ve seen in the 6 seasons of Lost, all of which in one way or another, to some degree, failed, but neglect to mention the one very obvious instance of love seeming to conquer all – Rose and Bernard. They managed to re-unite despite being separated in the Oceanic crash, and they managed to make a peaceful life for themselves in the jungle back in Dharma times…well, up to the point they were (presumably) nuked in the Incident. No matter – the point still remains that their love was true and they were allowed to enjoy their lives together. While that appears to be the exception rather than the rule, I think it does leave some hope that Sun & Jin will ultimately meet again.

You’re right, of course, David. How could I forget Rose and Bernard? The fact is that while Lost has been cruel to some of its couples (and may be again), it has allowed others to triumph, and all have been handled with great tenderness and poignancy. I may have expressed concern over Desmond and Penny’s future in my write-up of The Package (based largely on the “next week” clip at the episode’s end in which Widmore was heard saying, “I’m going to ask you to make a sacrifice”) but so far their relationship has been one of the emotional high points of the series. The scene in The Constant when they re-connect by phone after years of separation – of him being trapped on the island and her searching for him – is one of Lost’s best moments ever.

My comment may also have been premature, what with love playing such a crucial role in this episode. It seems to be the link between SidewaysLand and the original island timeline, and with a little help from his old friends Charlie and Daniel, Desmond may be the key to exposing that link.

ONE OF A KIND
Desmond wakes up to find Zoe tending to his IV. He thinks he’s still in the hospital, so apparently at the time he was taken by Widmore’s people he was still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered at Ben’s hands. Seems strange that he would still have been in the hospital – a bit of time has passed since that happened – but then I’ve never been shot, so I can’t really say what recovery times looks like. Nor do I know how long it takes to travel by submarine from Los Angeles to…wherever the hell this island actually is. Widmore assures Desmond that Penny and his son are perfectly safe, and apologizes for taking him away from them and not having time to explain why, though he assumes Desmond wouldn’t have come with him even if he’d been asked nicely. When Widmore says that he brought him back to the island, Desmond’s lip quivers with rage. A moment later he’s bashing Widmore in the head with his IV stand before being restrained by a couple of lackeys. “The island isn’t done with you yet,” Widmore says – the same thing Eloise Hawking said to him at The Lamp Post station last season.

Widmore tells Zoe he wants to run “the test,” which Zoe says isn’t supposed to happen until the next day. But Widmore wants to do it now. With a confused Jin in tow, she heads to a large generator room that is one part of the island’s Hydra Station. Behind the station is some kind of pen – a small wooden shed with huge cables running back into the station itself. Zoe enters the main building and tells Pudgy-Face that Widmore wants to run the test now, throwing them all into a panic. They start flipping switches, dials and levers but something isn’t working properly. Pudgy-Face sends a crew member into the pen to check for possible problems. On each side of the small room is a huge circular coil – or what people who understand science call “solenoids.” As this crew member examines them, another technician back in the station figures out the problem and flips a switch that apparently activates these “solenoids,” unaware that somebody is in the pen. Zoe and Pudgy-Face scream and tell him to turn it off, which he does…but it’s too late. They can only watch on the monitor as their colleague gets caught in some kind of energy burst from the solenoids. When it turns off, they run to check on him. The poor dude is on the ground, charred and smoking like a well done steak fresh off the grill. Despite the accident, Widmore wants to proceed…with Desmond.

What is the sacrifice he wants Desmond to make? I don’t get the sense that it’s a sacrifice of his life, but I’m not sure what else it could be. Also, how does Widmore know about Desmond surviving a “catastrophic electromagnetic event?” Has he finally had a long talk with his old flame Eloise? Last season, they saw each other outside the hospital where Desmond was being treated for his gunshot wound. In that encounter, she too scoffed at him bringing up sacrifice:

E:  Your daughter’s in there. Why don’t you go in and say hello?
W: Unfortunately Eloise, my relationship with Penelope is one of the things I had to sacrifice.
E:   Sacrifice? Don’t you talk to me about sacrifice, Charles. I had to send my son back to the island, knowing full well that…
W: He’s my son too, Eloise.

She slapped him in the face when he said that, and then left. How long had it been since they’d seen each other at that time? I’ve asked more than once in these write-ups how it is that Widmore was never able to find the island again after his exile even though Eloise seemed to know the way back all along. Perhaps at some point after she slapped him and left he finally got her to talk to him. And maybe she’s the one who told him of Desmond’s unprecedented survival and how he could get back to the island. But I’m not sure…there are still some things about Eloise we need to get cleared up on, including her relationship with Widmore. I hope we get those answers in the remaining seven hours of the show. More on Eloise later, of course…

Watching Desmond caught between the solenoids brings two things come to my mind: Egon’s warning to his fellow Ghostbusters about crossing the streams (“Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light”)…

…and the accident that creates Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen.

I think Desmond could rock this look, don’t you?

Oh, and if you actually want to know what a solenoid is, Wikipedia is always here for you.

RIGHT HAND MAN
Next thing we know, Desmond is in SidewaysLand, picking up his luggage at LAX after Flight 815 lands. He briefly interacts with Hurley, and then helps Claire with her luggage and chats with her, offering her a ride when her own doesn’t seem to be there. (If she knew that her cab would be commandeered by a fugitive, she might have taken him up on it.)  He proceeds to find his hired limo driver, who turns out to be George Minkowski, the freighter’s communications officer who died in Desmond’s arms when his brain couldn’t handle the jumps in time it was suffering. If only he’d had a constant…

George drives him to work, which is actually Widmore’s office. Desmond enters and greets “Charles,” who welcomes him warmly and gives him a hug before they get down to business. Widmore explains that his wife is holding a large charity event at which their son – a talented classical musician – is set to perform with the rock band Drive Shaft. Unfortunately a member of the band – who happened to be on Desmond’s flight – was arrested on a drug charge. Widmore is arranging his release, but needs Desmond to babysit him.  Widmore says his wife will “destroy him” if he doesn’t get the kid to this event.

Desmond gladly accepts the task. “You really do have the life, son,” Widmore smiles as he pours them a drink. “No family, no commitments…ahh to be free of attachments.” Desmond notes with surprise that Widmore is pouring from his bottle of 60 year old whiskey. “Nothing’s too good for you,” Widmore says. Of course in the original timeline, when Desmond came to Widmore asking for his blessing to marry Penny, Widmore made a sport of pouring them each a glass from that same bottle only to tell Desmond that he was unworthy of drinking such a fine spirit. Here though, Widmore hands Desmond the glass and toasts to Desmond’s “indispensability” – a characteristic he seems to possess in both timelines.

I wondered after watching this episode if Widmore knew all along that Desmond had an important role to play on the island and if that was why he treated him so badly and tried to keep him away from Penny. What if Desmond does need to die for the sake of the island and Widmore always knew it, and therefore made an act of disliking him because in truth he was trying to spare Penny from losing him? I like that idea, but as with every other possible scenario I come up with, it has holes. For starters, there’s the time last season when Desmond, after learning that Widmore had funded Faraday’s research, burst into Widmore’s office demanding to know where he could find Faraday’s mother. After giving up the address surprisingly quickly, Widmore issued Desmond a warning. “Deliver your message, and then get out of this mess. Don’t put Penny’s life in danger. You’re getting yourself involved in something that goes back many, many years. It has nothing to do with you or my daughter. Wherever you were hiding, go back there.” If that advice was sincere, then Widmore didn’t know at the time what the island had in store for Desmond, nor is it likely he would he have known about Desmond’s close encounters with electromagnetism. Furthermore, if he really was determined to keep Desmond and Penny apart, he would probably not have given Penny’s address to Desmond when he came looking for it in The Constant. And then there’s just the general fact that Widmore doesn’t seem to have had insight into what the future has held for those in the island’s orbit, unlike Eloise, who seems plugged directly in to whole notion of fate and what is “supposed” to happen.

O BROTHA, WHERE ART THOU?
Desmond arrives at the courthouse to pick up his charge, and of course out comes Charlie, who walks right past him and out into the street without a thought of oncoming traffic. Cars screech their brakes to avoid hitting him, but he pays no attention and walks into a bar directly across the street. Desmond follows and joins him for a drink, during which Charlie shares a story that explains his current state of mind.

So…he’s talking about Claire, right? Though he mentions Kate at the beginning of the story, his description of a blonde woman that he knows and is “with” must be Claire, mustn’t it? In this moment he’s describing, he made some sort of connection with the original reality, yes? And while he doesn’t understand it and can’t make literal sense of it, he knows that it means something.

Desmond politely mocks him, but Charlie can’t be deterred. “I’ve seen something real. I’ve seen the truth,” he says. Later, as Desmond is driving him along the marina en route to a hotel, Charlie offers to show Desmond what he was talking about…

I love seeing Dominc Monaghan back on the show, and the moment Charlie and Desmond share underwater goes into my Lost hall of fame. The way Charlie comes to and looks at Desmond almost as if he’s been faking it or as if he’s not affected by being underwater, then slips back into unconsciousness as if nothing happened. Awesome.

At the hospital, Desmond is told that he needs an MRI to ensure no brain trauma. He’s anxious to find Charlie, but the doctor insists he be examined. The MRI technician asks if he has any metal on him or in his body – a question which Widmore’s men asked him while they were strapping him into chair. Desmond slides into the machine and as the scan begins and he stares into the light above him, another barrage of images hits him – Charlie with his handy message again, but also images of him and Penny. Desmond hits the panic button and tells the tech that he has to find the man he came in with. At the admittance desk, he can’t get the info on Charlie’s whereabouts, but then he sees Jack walk by and recognizes him from the flight. Jack remembers him too, and Desmond explains his dilemma. As Jack questions the coincidence of someone from their flight being in the hospital, Charlie comes running down hall in a hospital gown and runs past them. Jack tries to stop him, but the camera doesn’t linger on him to show whether or not he registers that the fleeing man is the same guy he saved on the plane. Desmond chases Charlie and finally corners him.

D: Why’re you running?
C: Cause no one here can help me. Let me go.
D: Why’d you try and kill me?
C: I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to show you something.
D: You wanna show me something, show me your hand.
C: What?
D: Your hands. Show me your bloody hands now!
C: You saw something didn’t you? In the water. What was it? What are you looking for, mate?
D: Who’s Penny?
C: I don’t know. Ahh…you felt it, didn’t you?
D: I didn’t feel anything.
C: Then why are you accosting a man in a dressing gown?
D: Alright, c’mon we’re leaving.
C: Whoa. You think I’m gonna go play a rock concert after this? This doesn’t matter. None of this matters. All that matters is that we felt it. You wanna try and stop me? Good luck.
D: Wait, where you goin’?
C: If I were you, I’d stop worrying about me and start looking for Penny.

So do you think Charlie has regained some awareness of his life on the island, or does he only think he’s experienced some kind of life-altering phenomenon that he’s trying to recapture? What I’m getting at is, does he think that by driving Desmond close to death Desmond might experience a general sensation similar to what Charlie himself did on the plane, or is it more precise than that? Is he specifically trying to make Desmond aware of the island timeline? His behavior underwater – when he suddenly seems to regain complete clarity and puts his hand up against the glass – seems pretty damn specific. Maybe Charlie knows what he’s doing, or maybe he’s being guided – even manipulated – by some cosmic force greater than himself.

WEIRD SCIENCE
When Desmond calls Widmore to say that Charlie escaped, Widmore is displeased and tells him that if he sees it as no big deal, he can go tell Mrs. Widmore about it personally. So George drives him to the charity event, where Mrs. Widmore – aka Eloise Hawking – is working with caterers and event planners. Desmond approaches her, and when she first sees him there is a flicker of alarmed recognition – a sort of, “Wait, WTF are you doing here?” expression. You could argue it’s just the brief surprise of seeing a well dressed man with a fresh gash on his forehead, but given what comes I don’t think that’s it at all.

Ha! “…a certain unpredictability comes with the territory.” Know what else has a degree of unpredictability? The space-time continuum. So…okay. Eloise appears to have full knowledge of both the island timeline and the sideways timeline. How is that? She seems surprised to see Desmond there at all, and then tries to get rid of him as quickly as possible. But the moment he shows an inkling of awareness of the original timeline, she becomes agitated and tries to deter him from his line of questioning. What is she worried about? Why is she trying to preserve the integrity of SidewaysLand? And why isn’t he ready to see the list? When will he be ready? What does he need to do in order to be ready?

I also think it’s important to say here (I touched on it earlier, but I want to be clear) that while Eloise seems to know about both timelines, I do not think that Charles does. When he locks Desmond in the pen on the island, all he’s trying to do – I believe – is see if Desmond can withstand the electromagnetic exposure. But I don’t think he has any idea of what Desmond’s previous contact with such energy did to him. I don’t think he’s expecting his little experiment to send Desmond’s consciousness traveling across space and time, and unlike Eloise, I don’t think SidewaysWidmore is aware of the other timeline. Anybody think otherwise?

Bewildered and frustrated by his encounter with Eloise, Desmond returns to the limo and pours himself a drink. A moment later, there’s a knock on the window.

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
Desmond goes to the same stadium where we once saw him running as he trained for his solo race around the world (and where he first met Jack) and there he finds Penny, doing some running of her own. As she finishes, he approaches her with the glow of a lovestruck teenager. He introduces himself, shakes her hand…and at that moment wakes up on the floor of the pen, back on the island. Widmore, Zoe and Pudgy-Face run inside, where the latter two seem freaked out that he’s fine. Widmore smiles. Desmond looks up at him and asks how long he was out. Just a few seconds, Widmore tells him.

W: I’m really sorry we had to do this to you, Desmond. But as I told you, your talent is vital to our mission. So if you just let me explain…
D:  It’s alright. I understand.
W: What?
D:  I said I understand. You told me you brought me here to the island to do something very important.
W: Yeah.
D:  When do we start?

Widmore smiles again, pleased that maybe this will be easier than he thought. But will it? Do you think that whatever Widmore has planned for Desmond – whatever sacrifice he wants Desmond to make – is the same thing Desmond wants to do now that he has established a connection between his island self and his sideways self? Hang on, we’ll come back to that in a moment.

Zoe, accompanied by the lackeys, is leading Desmond to…I don’t know where…when she asks what happened to him – why 20 minutes ago he was hitting Widmore with an IV stand and is now “Mr. Cooperative.” When Desmond tells her a lot can happen in 20 minutes, she suggests that the device fried his brain. Desmond, all smiles and optimism says, “Did it?”

“Whatever,” Zoe says. “It doesn’t change that we’re gonna…”

Just then Sayid jumps out of the bushes, snaps the lackeys’ necks and tells Zoe to run. She doesn’t need to hear it twice. “Desmond, I don’t have time to explain,” Sayid says, “but these people are extremely dangerous. We need to go now.” Desmond agrees (“Of course. Lead the way.”), as if that’s exactly what he wants. Is it what he wants, or is he just rolling with it? It goes back to the question from a moment ago, about whether his plan is the same as Widmore’s. He very much seems to have a plan now, but we don’t know what it is and if it involves following Widmore’s agenda or his own. Either way, he appears completely cooperative. He looks like a post-hypnosis Peter in Office Space.

Back at the stadium in Los Angeles, he wakes up with Penny leaning over him and saying that he passed out when she shook his hand. “I must have quite an effect on you,” she laughs. He asks if she’ll have a cup of coffee with him. Maybe she just likes handsome, vulnerable men or maybe she too feels a connection that she can’t explain, but she agrees to meet him in an hour, after she freshens up.

Desmond returns to the limo, where despite his newly retrieved memories he shows no sign of recognizing Minkowski from the freighter. He asks George to take him to the coffee shop Penny indicated, and asks him for one other thing as well: a copy of the Flight 815 manifest. “Just the names of the passengers.” Minkowski says he can get it but is as to why Desmond wants it. “I just need to show them something,” Desmond says.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-What was Zoe going to say? It doesn’t change that we’re gonna…what?

-This episode leaves little doubt that the original, “island” timeline and the sideways timeline are going to converge, and as I’ve said before, I expect that Juliet’s random dying words about meeting for coffee and going dutch will come back into play. Also, I’m sure that one of you said to me (during an actual, in-person conversation) earlier in the season that Desmond would be the connection between the two timelines. So if that was you, good call.

-Just to help me keep this straight (and I think others may find it helpful too, since it’s come up in conversations during the last week), here is the extremely condensed history of Desmond’s “uniqueness” as I can trace it from memory:

• Locke stopped pushing the button just as Desmond realized that his failure to push the button once before caused the crash of Flight 815. Locke then destroyed the computer, so Desmond crawled below the floor and turned a failsafe key.

• As a result of his exposure to the electromagnetism, he started seeing things before they happened (Locke giving a speech, Charlie’s death, etc.). Related to that, his mind also started time-traveling, so that he was re-living days in London with Penny but seeing flashes that his past-self didn’t realize were from the future (going to Widmore’s office to ask for Penny’s hand, hearing Widmore say that his foundation is sponsoring a solo race around the world and suddenly being hit with images of his boat crashing on the island).

• He leaves the island on the chopper, and when Frank accidentally veers off Faraday’s bearing, Desmond no longer knows where he is or recognizes anything about his present day (2004) circumstances. His 1996 consciousness seems to have taken over his mind, and though his consciousness travels between ’96 and ’04, his mind doesn’t recognize anything about ’04 even when he’s physically there. With Faraday’s help in both years, he is able to establish communication with Penny in ’04, thereby restoring his present-day awareness.

• His mind continues to carry the capability to experience time-shifts, as when Faraday knocks on the hatch door while Desmond is still alone inside and tells him to go to Oxford and find his mother – which results in Desmond waking up in 2007 and having a “memory” of that encounter.

-Last season’s The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham featured the long-awaited return (and sadly premature dispatching) of Matthew Abaddon. As he chauffeured Locke from one member of the Oceanic Six to the next (and to Walt…ahem…WALT), he explained to Locke that his purpose was to get people where they need to go. “That’s what I do for Mr. Widmore,” he said. I found it interesting – if probably irrelevant – that Desmond seems to fill that role in SidewaysLand. The assignment he’s given to look after Charlie fits the bill, but I’m also thinking about his statement at the end – that he needs to show something to the Oceanic 815 passengers. Now there is the question of whether that has anything to do with Widmore, but even if it doesn’t Desmond still seems to be playing an Abaddon-like role. I sure hope he doesn’t end up meeting a similar fate.

-Now that Desmond has seen what it was Charlie was trying to show him, do you think we’ll see Charlie again? Will Desmond enlist him in whatever he’s trying to do with the passengers on the plane? What about Faraday? Have we seen the last of him? The fact that Desmond bridges so many planes in space-time makes it fitting that this episode would bring back so many old favorites: Charlie, Faraday, Eloise, Penny and Minkowski. Cool to see them all again.

-Reader Lorelei D. turned me onto something this weekend that is too neat and bizarre not to share. The Lost website on ABC.com is posting weekly recaps of each episode that are hosted by what appears to be a Muppet version of Dr. Chang. The series is called Lost Untangled, and I’ve seen it a couple times during past seasons, done with action figures and comic book panels. We’re not sure if this season’s editions are official Jim Henson Company-produced material or not, but it sure looks like it. And if you know me, you know I love me some Muppets. I’ve only watched the recap of the last two episodes so far, but I’ll tell you: this thing is goofy even by Muppet standards, and Muppet Chang seems to be on the world’s largest caffeine dose ever. There is some seriously random humor in this, but I have to share it so you can see for yourself if you’re so inclined. Wokka wokka wokka and Namaste.

-Dear Lost,

Please give Frank Lapidus more to do. He’s way too good a character to waste, and he’s been sitting on the sidelines all season long.

Sincerely,
DB
Supergeek Fan

LINE OF THE NIGHT
Desmond: Is there any alcohol in this car?
Minkowski: Oh yeah.

Tonight’s Episode: Everybody Loves Hugo

HOTEL CALIFORNIA
It’s been a hard couple of years for fans of Sun and Jin. Luckily we’ve had flashes back and sideways to give us occasional doses of the couple, since the last time we saw them together in the original timeline was onboard the freighter, before Jin went below deck to help Michael and Desmond disarm an explosive. (Which didn’t turn out so well for…anyone, really.) Since then, we’ve all been waiting to see if and when those crazy kids from Korea would finally find each other again. The Package didn’t get us there, but thanks to their SidewaysLand tale, we got the next best thing. Picking up with them at LAX, Jin is released from customs, but without the $25,000 which was undeclared. He tells Sun he doesn’t know what it was for; it was given to him last minute by her father, to be delivered to his business associate along with the watch (he complains about missing that meeting). When they check in at their hotel, they get not one but two rooms, Jin pointing out to the initially confused desk clerk that he and Sun are not married.

Jin knocks on Sun’s door late at night and says he has to try going to the restaurant despite the late hour. She asks him to come inside and says that the man he’s supposed to see works for her father and that it will be okay. She unbuttons her top button, annoyed that he made her button it on the plane. He seems paranoid that people were and are watching them, but she insists no one is…then proceeds to unbutton the other buttons. At this point, Lost introduced a new feature: the Cleavage-Cam. Seriously, if that shot of her bra was any closer-up we’d have been able to see the thread fibers.

Okay, so Sun and Jin aren’t married, but they are secretly involved. Weighing a trip to a most-likely empty restaurant vs. staying put with his half-undressed lover, Jin makes what I think we can all agree is the right decision. The next morning, she says they should run away together; that she’s opened a bank account and they can use it to start a life together. Realizing this was her plan all along, he tells her it’s forbidden. She starts to say she has something important to tell him, but they’re interrupted by a knock at the door. Jin hides in bathroom and Sun opens the door to reveal Keamy, that grand bastard I love to hate and hate to love. He introduces himself as an associate of her father’s and lets himself in. Sun gives him the watch, but he also asks about the money. Omar comes in and reports that Jin isn’t in his room, but they find him hiding in the bathroom. He tries to ask about the money, but the language barrier gets in the way. Keamy asks Omar, “What’s that guy’s name,the Russian guy, speaks like nine languages, Danny’s friend?”

(Could he be talking about Danny Pickett, a runner-up for Keamy’s crown as Best Lost Asshole?)  I suggest that connection because we soon learn the guy Keamy is talking about is our old friend and one-time Other, Mikhail. Blessed with two working eyes in SidewaysLand, he translates for Sun and Jin as they explain what happened to the money. Sun says if Keamy will let her go to the bank, she can get the money. Keamy instructs Mikhail to take her to the bank while he and Omar take Jin to the restaurant, where they’ll meet.

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL
At the bank, Sun finds out that her account has been closed by her father. She realizes that he must know about her and Jin. At the restaurant, Keamy sends Omar to get “the Arab guy,” then sits Jin in a chair in the pantry and duct tapes his hands behind his back. As he binds him, he talks calmly and in a friendly tone (as friendly a tone as Keamy is capable of) about how the $25,000 is his fee for killing Jin, who has committed the cardinal sin of sleeping with the boss’ daughter. Not that he blames him, patting Jin’s chest and saying, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” All the while, Jin looks at him, not understanding a single word. As Keamy is about to leave the room, Jin thanks him. He steps back in and adds a strip of tape over Jin’s mouth. “Some people just aren’t meant to be together,” he says.

From Jin’s point of view we hear the encounter in the main kitchen with Sayid. He hears the gunshots and bangs on the door. Sayid comes in and removes the duct tape from Jin’s mouth. He’s about to leave him there, but Jin call out and repeats, “Free! Free!” He eyeballs an exacto knife on the shelf, which Sayid puts in his bound hands, wishing him good luck before he takes off.

Mikhail soon comes in with Sun and sees the bodies on the floor. Keamy is still alive, but when Mikhail bends over him, Jin puts a gun to his head and orders him to lower his weapon. Mikhail figures that Jin would already have taken him out if he had killed the others, so he spins around to shoot. As he and Jin fight, his gun goes off twice, but Jin manages to shoot him – right in the eye (Chinatown’s Noah Cross would be proud). But then he realizes that Sun took a stray bullet in the chest, possibly even the stomach. As Jin freaks out and lifts her up, she tells him that she’s pregnant.

That’s not good.

I suspect they’ll wind up at Jack’s hospital, although I’m not sure that as a spinal surgeon he can personally work a miracle for them. It may be worth noting that Sun is shot in just about the same part of the body that she herself shot Colleen Pickett, an Other who cornered Sun on Desmond’s boat when she, Jin and Sayid sailed it around the island to try and help free Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sawyer. (She was also the wife of the aforementioned Danny Pickett.) It’s definitely worth noting that Sun’s shooting serves to remind us that there have been zero significant casualties on Lost this season…and you know that’s gotta change soon. But will Sun be among the losses? What happens to someone on the island if they die in SidewaysLand? Maybe one doesn’t affect the other. People who’ve died on the island have popped up again in the sideways timeline. On the other hand, the events unfolding in SidewaysLand are all happening earlier in time – just after September 22, 2004 to be precise – than any of the island deaths. So Boone, for example, was on Sideways Flight 815 because in the original timeline he wasn’t dead yet on that date. Does this make sense? If so, please explain it back to me, because I’m not sure I understand it myself.

I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY “FRIENDS”
As Jin checks his injured leg, Man in Locke sits down with him and confirms that Sawyer told him about the caves and the names scrawled on its walls, “Kwon” included. Jin asks if it means him or Sun.

—

L: Well Jin, I’m not sure. But what it does mean is that the only way we can leave the island is if all the names that haven’t been crossed off go together.
J:  But Sun is not here.
L: Just take care of that leg. I’m workin’ on it.

This is the first we’ve heard anything about Man in Locke needing particular people. Obviously he’s been recruiting and trying to gather a group of followers, but we didn’t know why, how many he needed, etc. and I never thought to question it. I did question, in the later days of Season Five, what the real reason was that the Oceanic Six needed to return to the island, and this bit of info from Man in Locke may be the answer. All along the O6 were told that they weren’t supposed to leave and that the friends they had left behind were in terrible danger and would die if the six didn’t return. This is what both Ben and Locke told them (separately, of course). But once they got back, they (and we) realized the doomsday scenario wasn’t true. Other than being in 1977, Sawyer and the gang were just fine.

I still can’t figure Ben’s angle. He probably wanted to get back to try and reclaim his throne, but how he hooked up with Eloise Hawking to get him there – learning in the process that he would need the O6, and then Locke’s body, to accompany him – I don’t know. And I recall that last season, while Ben was driving Sun and Jack to see Eloise, he slammed on the brakes and yelled at them (when they were questioning his actions and motives), “What I’m doing is helping you! And if you had any idea what I’ve had to do to keep you safe, to keep your friends safe, you’d never stop thanking me!” I wrote at the time that this seemed like one of Ben’s more sincere moments, but also acknowledged that you never know with Ben, even at times like that.

Locke’s attempts to rally the Oceanic Six can be traced more easily. When the island first began flashing through time and Locke was on his own, he was shot in the leg by Ethan, and then – one flash later – his wound was treated by Richard. It was in that encounter that Richard told Locke that in order to save the island he would have to leave it and get his friends to come back (and sacrifice his life in the process). That was very early in Season Five. What we realized at the end of Season Five, however, is that Richard received those instructions from Man in Locke upon his return to the island (before his trip to kill Jacob). So it makes sense: Man in Black had figured out some way to kill Jacob and escape the island, and it involved John Locke leaving the island, dying and being brought back by the Oceanic Six. Why he needs them all now– as he tells Jin – I’m not sure, but this might explain why they “needed” to come back. I’ll have a bit more to say on this further down.

As Man in Locke prepares to leave on an errand, Sayid tells him that he doesn’t feel anything. “Anger, happiness, pain, I don’t feel it anymore.”

“Maybe that’s best, Sayid,” Locke says. “Help you get through what’s comin.’” I don’t like the sound of that…

As soon as Locke is gone, Jin starts to gather his things. “I’m getting out of here before that thing comes back,” Jin tells Sawyer. He says he’s sat around long enough; he has to go look for Sun. Sawyer reminds him of his deal with Widmore, but Jin doesn’t care. Widmore apparently cares about him, however, because at that moment his people attack the camp by hitting everyone with small tranquilizer darts (better than a flaming arrow attack). Widmore’s people enter the camp, and Zoe and that pudgy-faced dude who couldn’t look less tough if he were wearing a pink dress find Jin and take him.

THE WEIGHT OF THE WAIT
Team Jacob is hanging restlessly around the beach awaiting Richard’s return, though Ilana is the only one who expects him to come back. Fed up with the inaction while she remains separated from Jin, Sun storms off from the beach and into her garden (another nostalgic trip to the show’s early seasons). Jack joins her and tries talking to her, but she’s not in the mood for conversation. He asks if she thinks Richard is coming back and what she thinks about them being candidates.

J: Hurley took me to a lighthouse. To Jacob’s lighthouse. And there was a mirror, and all around it there were…there were hundreds of names written down.
S: I don’t care. I don’t care about Alpert or being a candidate.
J: Sun, there’s a reason why we were…
S: I don’t want to hear how this is our purpose or destiny! I just want you to go away and leave me alone.

Jack obliges, but soon she has another visitor, and this one is much more unwelcome than Jack. Man in Locke shows up to tell her that he found Jin and that he’s across the island with his people (he doesn’t mention that Claire, Kate, Sawyer and Sayid are there too, which might possibly have helped bolster his claim). As is, she says she doesn’t believe him and brings up that he killed the people at The Temple. He says he didn’t want to kill them and that they were confused. “Any one of them could have chosen to come with me. And I’m giving you that choice Sun, right now. I would never make you do anything against your will. I’m asking you. Please, come with me. Jin is waiting.” He extends his hand and she seems to consider taking it, but then she runs. He calls after her and follows, though not necessarily in a threatening way. I didn’t get the sense that his intention was to physically force her to come with him. When she turns to look back at him, she runs into a tree branch that knocks her out cold. He could have grabbed her and taken her with him, but he doesn’t. (And come to think of it, why not?)

Instead, Ben finds her and wakes her up. She tries to tell him what happened, but she can only speak in Korean. Jack examines her back at the beach and she indicates that she can understand what he’s saying, but can’t speak English. She does manage to say that she was running from Locke. Jack says she is most likely suffering from a temporary condition called aphasia, brought about by her impact with the tree, and that she’ll be okay.

Just then, Richard and Hurley return. With renewed purpose, Richard says they need to leave right away and go to Hydra Island to stop Man in Locke from leaving on the Ajira plane, which is his only means for departing the island. He says they have to destroy it. Sun tries to question how they’re supposed to go home without the plane, but she can’t properly express herself. When Jack explains why she’s not speaking English, Richard wants to know why Man in Locke was there, what he wanted and what he said to her. Sun blows up at him in a speech that would have really been more effective for all of them if they could understand it. She says she came back to find her husband, not save the world, and that there’s no way she’s going anywhere with Richard to help destroy their only way of getting home. She adds that according to Ilana, she’s important and that they need her. The specifics may not have come across, but they seem to get the gist of it. “I don’t think she wants to come,” Hurley says.

That night, Jack finds Sun alone by the water and sits next to her, offering a pen and paper as a temporary solution to her communication problem. She apologizes for her behavior earlier, and he asks her what Locke wanted. She writes that he said he found Jin, but that she didn’t believe him. “You trust me?” he asks her. “Sun, come with us and I’ll help you find Jin. I’ll help you find him and I’ll get you both on that plane and as far away from this island as you can get. I promise.” He offers his hand and she takes it. Jack probably feels some guilt over separating them in the first place, so the opportunity for him to help them reunite and get away is one that he likely feels strongly about.

KWON WITH THE WIND
Man in Locke returns to his camp and finds everyone lying on the ground unconscious. He frantically wakes up Sayid, asking what happened, who attacked them and most pressingly, where Jin is. He looks nervous and angry. After everyone has come around and the camp returns to life, Locke gets ready to go to Hydra Island with Sayid, but he notices Claire looking shifty.

L: Something wrong, Claire?
C: What you said to Jin – about the names on the wall? Told him you needed them all to get off the island?
L:  Yes I did.
C: Was my name on the wall?
L:  No.
C: Then it doesn’t matter if I get on that plane then, I mean, you don’t need me…
L:  No, that’s not true Claire, I need you. There’s plenty of room on that plane for all of us.
C: Now when we go home, Aaron’s not gonna know me. Stranger to my own son. Thinks Kate’s his mother. Was her name on the wall?
L:  No Claire, it isn’t. Not anymore. But I need Kate.
C: Why?
L:  Because I’m three people shy of getting off this island and Kate can help me get these people on that plane. But once she does, then whatever happens happens.

Whether it’s important or not, I’ll note that Claire’s name was on the cave wall, but was crossed out. Kate’s name, on the other hand, was not seen on the wall, though of course that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. It was seen on the lighthouse dial, and it was not crossed out there. Are these continuity errors, or is the Man in Locke lying? Lying or not, he’s definitely playing everybody, isn’t he? He cozied up to Kate with an apology for Claire’s behavior and a foreboding story about how he had a crazy mother and how Aaron now has one too. Now he’s suggesting to Claire that once Kate has served her purpose for him, he doesn’t care what happens to her. Does Claire still wish her harm? The way the scene played out, I couldn’t tell. I could see it going both ways.

While this is going on, Jin wakes up in a large empty room with speakers lining the walls. He flips a switch, and we realize this is the freaky Clockwork Orange room from which Kate, Sawyer and Alex rescued Karl in Season Three. He turns it off, and realizes Zoe has entered.

J: Where am I?
Z: It’s called Room 23. The Dharma Initiative was doing experiments on subliminal messaging in here. But you know all about the Dharma Initiative, don’t you Mr. Kwon?
J: Why did you bring me here?
Z: Relax, you’re safe!
J: I’m leaving. [She tazes him.]
Z: Sorry, but we went to a lot of trouble getting you here off of the other island. And I can’t let you leave.
J: What do you want from me? [She unfolds a large map of the island.]
Z: These are grid maps that the Dharma people used to identify pockets of electromagnetism. Whoever signed these could really help me out. I know…I know the writing’s difficult to read but that sure looks like it says Jin Soo-Kwon. So is it you or isn’t it?
J: You want answers to your questions? Then give me your boss. I want to talk with Charles Widmore.
Z: Well then you’re in luck, Mr. Kwon. Because he’d like to talk to you too.

Jin isn’t the only one seeking an audience with Widmore. Man in Locke arrives on Hydra Island via outrigger (conspicuously alone despite having left the main island with Sayid), and sees mini pylons set up all along the beach. Suddenly gunshots hit nearby, and Widmore’s people come running out of the brush with rifles. Moments later, the two bald bad-asses share a terse exchange.

Locke leaves, and Widmore goes and finds Zoe, expressing his displeasure at the apparently pre-mature capture of Jin. (But she doesn’t shrink from him, which I liked.)

W: What the hell were you thinking?
Z:   I’m sorry, I know, I know we panicked.
W: This was not supposed to happen for days. We had a timetable!
Z:  He was leaving their camp.
W: Well you should have let him leave and taken him in the jungle!
Z:  Well maybe you should put a mercenary in charge instead of a geophysicist.
W: What’s done is done. I need you to get the package from the submarine and take it to the infirmary. Can you do that for me please, Zoe?
Z:  Yeah. Sure.

As Zoe departs, Widmore turns to Jin and introduces himself, but Jin cuts to the point, asking why he was brought there. Widmore hands him a camera and says they found it in Sun’s luggage on the Ajira plane. Widmore says he thought Jin would want to see it. Jin turns it on and finds pictures of Ji Yeon…who must be back in Korea wondering why her mother abandoned her. It’s an emotional moment for Jin as he looks on his three year-old daughter for the first time. Widmore tells him her name, acknowledging that he’s never seen her.

W: I have a daughter too. I know what it’s like to be kept apart. I understand the one thing you want is to be reunited with your wife and daughter. But it would be short-lived if that thing masquerading as John Locke ever got off this island. Your wife, your daughter, my daughter, everyone we know and love would simply cease to be. I came here to make sure that doesn’t happen.
J:   How?
W: Come with me. I think it’s time for you to see the package.
J:   What package?
W: It’s not a what. It’s a who.

I’ll admit that while I’m not usually good at guessing things like this, I was right about who the package would turn out to be. But we’ll get to that. More immediately, what’s with the timetable Widmore spoke to Zoe about? What was his plan and why does the timing of Jin’s capture matter? Why were they waiting? Why did he even want Jin? I doubt it was just to give him Sun’s camera. He wants him to see this package, but why?

These scenes with Widmore pretty much blow my theory that he was here to help the Man in Locke get off the island. It would appear that they really are at odds. I seldom firmly commit to a theory about Lost, but when it comes to Widmore I’ve pretty much always come down on the side of evil, greedy, power-hungry corporate jerk-off. And I’m guessing that most people have arrived at the same conclusion. Despite what we saw in this episode, I’m not about to come around to another opinion just yet…but I will tip my hat most respectfully to Damon and Carlton if it comes to pass that Widmore has been a good guy all along…or as close to a good guy as we may ever get amongst Lost’s power players.

Other questions spawned by these Hydra Island scenes: what is Zoe’s interest in the pockets of energy on the island? Coincidentally, I mentioned these in my previous write-up, referencing the scene at The Lamp Post hatch when Eloise Hawking explained about he pockets of energy around the world that are connected to each other. We know that more than one such pocket exists on the island – there was one at the Swan site, and also one at the Orchid. There are others too, and the fact that Widmore did put Zoe in charge suggests that they are important to what’s coming. (Here, by the way, is Wikipedia’s entry on geophysics, if you’re curious.)

My biggest question though, is how would Man in Black getting off the island be so catastrophic? We keep hearing that if he escapes, everyone will go to hell, everyone will cease to be, everyone will die – what is he that could have such a sweeping and instantaneous impact on all mankind? Nuclear bombs work that fast and indiscriminately; the devil doesn’t. I questioned in the previous write-up, after Jacob’s corked wine bottle analogy, how keeping the Man in Black contained was so important in a world that was already full of darkness and evil. It reminds me of a Don Henley song, The Garden of Allah, about the devil arriving in Los Angeles and realizing that he’s become obsolete. Before it all ends, will we find out what the world literally faces should the Man in Black succeed?

DRUGGED, SEALED, DELIVERED
Kate asks Sawyer why he isn’t worried, but he admits that he his. Yet he suspects it will all be over soon, figuring that Widmore will blow Locke out of the water when he and Sayid paddle ashore (he doesn’t seem too concerned about Sayid). He admits that they’re screwed if he’s wrong…which he is, as Locke walks back into camp at that moment. Sawyer gets right up to talk to him. Locke says Widmore denied having Jin, which of course he doesn’t believe. As for Sayid? “When you were over there James, you mentioned that Widmore had someone guarding a room on his submarine? Guarding something he didn’t want you to see? I don’t like secrets.”

The next thing we see is Sayid quietly pop out of the water Martin Sheen-style by the submarine dock as Zoe and Pudgy-Face awkwardly carry someone out of the sub hatch. When they drop their captive, we see that it’s Desmond. His face hangs over the side of the dock and he has clearly been drugged. He looks seriously out of it, but not so out of it that he doesn’t recognize Sayid hovering in the water, face-to-face with him. Sayid hides himself when they come for Desmond and carry him off.

Desmond’s back!

READER’S COMMENTS
I got a few good responses after last week’s suggestion that Hurley was the embodiment of what Jacob may be seeking in a candidate. Shirley L. had a different take:

I like thinking of Hurley as ultimately crucial in the whole island mystery and conclusion, but I don’t think his innocence and purity make him an ideal candidate.  I would have to go back to hear again how Jacob characterized the people he brings to the island and the test he puts to them, but I don’t think Jacob is looking for the incorruptible, nearly-sinless person to lead, take on his job, and keep the evil from spreading as he says.  I think he’s looking for the Jack, the Sawyer, the Kate, the Jin and the Sayid…the people who know exactly the difference between right and wrong and have made decisions on both sides of that line.  You can’t fight what you don’t understand and the ultimately successful candidate can’t take on the Man in Black/temptations/sin/evil/Hell unless he or she knows what it’s like to have experienced, done and been all those things.

I dig that take, but I still think the Hurley theory has legs. I don’t think the ultimate candidate – if it even comes to that – will necessarily be Hurley, but I do think that his moral strength makes him an ideal choice from a certain point of view. The idea that you have to have made decisions on both sides of the right/wrong line, as Shirley says, also means that you are probably more susceptible to slipping in the wrong direction. With something as important (so we’ve been told) as Man in Black’s containment, can Jacob afford to take that chance? This goes to something that Gordon W. said:

I also think that Jacob is looking for a candidate because he has recognized a bit of corruption in himself and realizes that he may become the weakness that allows the Man in Black to escape.

Another cool idea – Jacob no longer trusting himself to do that job. It reminds me of Gandalf refusing Frodo’s offer of the ring in The Fellowship of the Ring. “Don’t tempt me, Frodo!” he cries. “Understand that I would use this ring from a desire to do good. But through me it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine!” Not exactly the same situation, but similar. Or just an excuse to pop some Lord of the Rings in the DVD player.

Finally, Lee P. shared with me in a conversation – so I have no writing to share – that she doesn’t see Hurley as without sin by a longshot. Like Morgan Freeman, she goes right to the seven deadly sins and points to gluttony. But I think Hurley’s food cravings can be traced to psychological issues rather than pure selfishness or sinfulness, so I’m not fully onboard with that idea. But I also hadn’t thought about the seven deadly sins specifically, and given all the theology the shows plays with, I like where Lee’s head is at.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-Seeing Sun get shot in SidewaysLand, and hearing Keamy tell Jin that some people just aren’t meant to be together, makes me seriously worried about their future. After everything that has happened, it will be terribly cruel if Sun or Jin are killed off. And if they both die, their little girl is going to need some heavy-duty therapy. Ji Yeon is headed for teenage prostitution if her life doesn’t get some positive parental stability soon. Anyway, this worrying about Sun and Jin has me concerned for other couples too. I’ve said before that with my Charlie and Claire hopes dashed by grenade-grasping prick Mikhail, my hopes now lie elsewhere. I have a bad feeling about where things are headed for Desmond, and by extension Penny. Come to think of it, Lost has made a sport out of ripping couples apart, hasn’t it? Charlie and Claire, Sawyer and Juliet, Sayid and Shannon, Sayid and Nadia, Richard and Isabella, Jack and Sarah, Jack and Kate (though I suppose they still have a shot), Faraday and Charlotte, and Hurley and Libby (the latter two weren’t really couples, but there was something there). Love doesn’t have to conquer all, but it might be nice to see it conquer something. (And honestly, the Jack/Kate relationship is nice, but doesn’t do it for me as much as Desmond/Penny, Sun/Jin and Sawyer/Juliet).

-What Man in Locke says to Widmore – a wise man once saying war is coming to the island – is true. Widmore was that wise man, and he said it to Locke when Locke left the island and Widmore found him. “If you’re not back on the island when that happens,” Widmore said of this war, “the wrong side is going to win.” So here again we come to the reason for the Oceanic Six having to return. We know what Locke’s motivation is, because he was unwittingly participating in the Man in Black’s plan. But what is Widmore’s reason? He tells Locke that he will do everything in his power to help him bring the Oceanic Six back. Maybe his interest is simply in doing whatever he needs to do to make sure Locke gets back there, and if that means getting the rest of them, then that’s what it means. “The island needs you, John,” he says. “It has for a long time.” But whatever Widmore thought Locke was supposed to do on the island, now we’re being led to believe that Locke has been used by someone else, for a different purpose. When Locke tells Widmore that Richard said he’d have to die in order to save the island, Widmore doesn’t know what the reason for that would be – which supports the idea that Widmore had a different plan in mind for Locke than the Man in Black did.

So if we trust that Widmore is truly here to battle the Man in Black, and if we trust that Ben has now committed to the same, that puts these sworn enemies on the same side of the fight. How will it affect their own years-old drama? And how does it color everything between them that has come before? Ben told Sayid that it was one of Widmore’s men who killed Nadia, which led to Sayid offering his services to Ben as an assassin, killing a series of people who Ben claimed were part of Widmore’s network. Were they really? And if so, did they deserve what they got? And what about the fact that when Miles accepted the job to go on Widmore’s freighter, he was accosted by Ilana’s buddy Bram, who tried to convince him that going on Widmore’s freighter was a bad idea? “You’re playing for the wrong team,” Bram said. And then there’s the fact that Widmore staged the Flight 815 wreckage at the bottom of the ocean and that Widmore’s plan did seem to be for Keamy and his team to kill everyone on the island. I keep talking about good vs. evil, Jacob vs. the Man in Black, Ben vs. Widmore…but are we in fact wrong to assume there are only two sides to this thing? I know Locke talked about two sides – one dark, one light – way back in Season One when he was explaining backgammon to Walt. But with all the pieces on the board, the seemingly conflicting agendas and the evidence at hand, how can this whole thing really come down to just two sides?

-In the category of “Just for Fun,” I have to share these two links. The first is to an awesome piece of Lost merchandise that I stumbled upon and thought was pretty damn clever. The second is to a segment from last Wednesday’s The Colbert Report, in which Stephen makes an observation about the previous night’s episode…one that probably annoyed all of us, though for a different reason than it annoyed Stephen. The whole clip is funny, but the Lost part doesn’t kick in until the 2:30 mark.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
Since the last couple of episodes lacked lines worthy of singling out, let’s go ahead and throw in two this time:

“Unless Alpert’s covered in bacon grease, I’m not sure Hurley can track anything.” – Miles

“I feel like I’m in a damn Godzilla movie.” – Keamy

Tonight’s Episode: Happily Ever After