I Am DB

I read recently that Damon and Carlton see this season playing out in a traditional three-act structure. The first act centered on events at The Temple. This episode began Act II, which will focus on the ongoing gathering and actions of the two camps: Team Jacob and Team Smokey. And Act III we can safely assume will amount to the showdown…and an avalanche of answers.

Among the many things I liked about this flippin’ great episode, with its multiple Napoleon Dynamite references (well, not exactly) was that we got to spend some quality time with characters who’ve been only briefly seen during the last few episodes – namely Ilana and Richard (still not enough Lapidus, but I’ll take what I can get…). Before we get to the titular Dr. Linus, let’s pick up with Jack and Hurley on their way back from an emotional visit to the lighthouse.

FIRESIDE CHAT
Jack is anxious to get back to The Temple, and though Hurley tries to stall based on Jacob’s warning about someone “bad” heading there, Jack sees though his efforts. As they debate which way is the route back, Richard emerges from the jungle and points them in a third direction, saying The Temple is that way.

J: Where did you come from?
R: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
J: Try me.
R: Not yet.

Having left them with that mystery, he walks off toward The Temple and sure enough, they follow. As they walk, Hurley grills Richard on why he looks the same as he did 30 years ago. He throws out time traveling, cyborg and vampire as possible explanations, but Richard says no to all of them.  I was curious about this exchange, because if my memory serves, I don’t think Hurley and Richard have ever met before. I can’t think of a time when they came across each other in the normal island timeline, nor can I recall them meeting in the Great Dharma Debacle of 1977. If any of you remember differently, let me know…but I’m pretty sure I’m right. Overlooking that possible error in continuity, Richard’s only answer to Hurley is that Jacob gave him a gift. This piques Jack’s interest, and he asks what Richard knows about Jacob. All Richard says is that he knows Jacob is dead.

When they come out into a clearing, they have arrived not at The Temple, but the Black Rock. He admits to lying about leading them to The Temple, informing them that everyone there is dead. Jack asks with alarm if that includes their friends, naming Kate and Sayid specifically. Richard says they weren’t there and maybe got out alive. When Hurley admits to Jack that Jacob hinted at this, Richard looks stunned. “You spoke to Jacob?” He shakes his head, more frustrated. “Well whatever he said, don’t beleive him.” He walks toward the shipwreck, saying there’s something he needs to do. When Jack asks what, he answers, “Die.”

Richard enters the galley, looking around as if recalling a haunted past. He touches a pair of shackles, suggesting that the Man in Locke’s recent remark, “It’s good to see you out of those chains” may indeed mean that Richard was a “guest” on the Black Rock’s final voyage.

Richard, you trickster! You lied about The Temple and where you’d been just to arouse their curiosity so they would follow you and play Kevorkian. I like that even though Richard admits he’s not a cyborg, he does share a common trait with Schwarzenegger’s T-800, as revealed at the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day: he can’t self-terminate. The scene continues…

“I’m not.” The last time Jack expressed such certainty was when he dropped Jughead down into the chasm at The Swan, believing it would negate the crash of Flight 815. As far as he knows – as far as any of us know for sure – that was a failure. So given his track record, I’d agree with Richard that he’s taking a pretty big risk. Still, I love that he is so confident in his logic. I also love that Jack really has come to accept what Locke told him all along: that he – that all of them – were brought to the island for a reason. The tables have turned again, and Jack is the Man of Faith trying to convince someone who has lost theirs that there is a higher power guiding them. Jack has become a man of both science and faith.

One other comment here is that when Jack tells Richard about the lighthouse and Jacob wanting him to see the mirror, Richard asks why. Richard has already admitted that he wasn’t in on Jacob’s plan, but did anyone else get the sense that he didn’t even know about lighthouse and the mirror? That surprises me. The lighthouse seems like a major tool of Jacob’s modus operandi, and it’s hard to imagine Richard hasn’t had some idea of what it does and how/why Jacob is using it. But maybe not.

It was nice to finally get some teases into the mystery of Richard Alpert, voted by fans in an Entertainment Weekly poll last year as the number one mystery they wanted solved. We dangled our toes in the water here, but I’ve heard that next week’s episode will be the deep dive into Richard’s full backstory.

I BELIEVE THE CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE
And from dynamite to Napoleon: turning away from the island and toward the man of the hour, our trip into SidewaysLand gave us a deeper glimpse into the life of Benjamin Linus, European History Teacher. We first see him talking to his class about the French emperor’s exile to the island of Elba, where he was frustrated not by his isolation so much as his loss of power. It’s a direct parallel to Ben’s own arc, as we’ve seen ever since he woke up on Hydra Island with a resurrected John Locke sitting at his bedside.

Ben clearly cares about his job and his efforts to help the students with potential, so much so that when he’s grousing in the lunchroom about how the school principal is disconnected from the classroom experience and the importance of reaching the kids, substitute teacher John Locke suggests that Ben be the principal instead. I love that it’s Locke who makes the suggestion, setting Ben on the path to a moral conflict. Oh, and let me also say how much I love that in this timeline, Ben and Arzt are disgruntled pals. Add them to my growing list of Lost spin-off sitcom duos…

Here in SidewaysLand, Ben is living with and caring for his ailing father Roger, who requires an oxygen tank to breathe. (Roger Linus is once again played by Jon Gries, or as he’s known in certain circles, Uncle Rico.) They appear to have a much better relationship here, and Roger regrets that Ben feels dissatisfied.

 

R: This isn’t the life I wanted for you, Ben. I wanted so much more.
B: I know.
R: That’s why I signed up for that damn Dharma Initiative and took you to the island and…they were decent people. Smarter than I’ll ever be. Imagine how different our lives would have been if we’d stayed.
B: Yes, we’d have both lived happily ever after.
R: No, I’m serious Ben! Who knows what you would have become?

Whoh. That’s the first time that anyone in SidewaysLand has referenced the island, which was sitting on the ocean floor when Flight 815 flew over it. Sure, the submerged island had the Dharma houses, swing set, etc. but we didn’t know for sure that those structures were associated with the Initiative. Now we can assume that they are.  So how long were Ben and Roger there? Why did they leave? How did the Island sink? It couldn’t have been as a result of the Swan explosion, right? If the island sank when the bomb detonated, Roger and Young Ben would have sunk with it. Was Ethan still born on the island, to Horace and Amy? Do Ethan and Ben know each other in SidewaysLand? What about Dogen? Was he ever there?
Ben’s doorbell rings and he opens it to find Alex, looking much sleeker and less disheveled than she ever did on the island. She asks about that day’s cancellation of the History Club, and says she was counting on some tutoring before her next test. Ben arranges to meet with her at the library the next morning. When they do, they discuss the East India Trading Company (an illustration of a pirate ship is deliberately shown to us in their textbook). Alex struggles under the stress of scoring a good grade, getting into college and succeeding in life. The pressure we put on these high school kids…

Ben remarks that Alex is one of his brightest students and that he doesn’t have any concerns about her future prospects. Although for such a supposedly bright girl, she seems to be struggling with some pretty basic stuff. I mean…tutoring in history? Math, science, even English I can understand…but history? You read the text, memorize the facts…and you’re done. What’s to tutor? Regardless, Alex has her sights set on Yale, but needs a recommendation from an alumnus to have a shot at getting in. The only one she knows of is the school’s Principal Reynolds, the bureaucrat whose job Ben has come to covet. He sees an opportunity when Alex offhandedly refers to Reynolds as a “pervert” and tells him that once after school, she heard Reynolds and the school nurse engaged in some Sex Ed of their own while she recuperated from a stomach ache in the next room.

Ben goes to Arzt and asks if he can tap into another staff member’s school e-mail account. When he tells him why, Arzt says, “You’re makin’ a play! You’re going after the Big Job, aren’t you?” He rhymes off a list of things he wants if Ben comes to power – new equipment, a cush parking space, etc. Arzt says Ben had him fooled with the sweater-vest. “You’re a real killer,” he laughs.

Ben soon goes to Principal Reynolds (played by the great William Atherton) and shows him print-outs of illicit e-mails he’s exchanged with the nurse during a six month period. In exchange for not exposing Reynolds to the school board and his wife, Ben comes up with a scenario for Reynolds to resign and name Ben as successor. But then Reynolds shows Ben an e-mail. It’s from Alex, requesting a letter of recommendation to Yale. Reynolds gives Ben a choice: follow through with his power grab and watch Reynolds “torch” Alex’s future, or back off and allow Alex to get what she wants. It appears at first that Ben sticks to his plot, but then we realize that he made the right choice and nixed his scheme. Somehow he manages to keep his own job and not get his ass tossed on the street by Reynolds (I guess Reynolds has to be careful in case Ben reveals what he knows at some later date). So it all works out in the end – even for Arzt, to whom Ben offers his parking space.

So Ben Linus, with a little love and respect in his life, turns out to be a nice guy who cares about his family, friends and students. How sweet. But what of Island Ben?

TO SERVE AND PROTECT
After fleeing from Creepy Sayid, Ben re-joins Ilana, Lapidus, Sun and Miles as they make their way from The Temple. He suggests that they go back to the 815ers beachfront property, and with no other logical alternative for the time being, Ilana agrees. As they travel there, Ben tells Miles that the thing at The Temple is what killed Ilana’s friends at the statue. But Ilana is suspicious when Ben doesn’t include Jacob in the list of victims…rather like Buttercup doubting Prince Humperdinck’s dispatch of the four fastest ships in his armada. She asks Miles to confirm that he can talk to the dead, to which he says he can only pick up on how people died and what their last thoughts were. She gives him the sack of Jacob’s ashes and asks him to do his thing. Reader Lorelei D. thought she recalled Miles telling someone in his flashback last season that what he does works best when there’s a body. My recollection is that while Miles did say that, he never said that he absolutely had to have a body in order to commune with the dead. So while this was probably a continuity error, it still plays. And whether consistent or not, it certainly works this time, as Miles tells Ilana that Ben stabbed Jacob. Ben looks incredulous, while Ilana stares daggers at him. “Jacob was the closest thing I ever had to father,” she says.

Wow, really? This is a reminder of how much we have yet to learn about Ilana. The only slice of backstory we have on her is that Jacob came to see her in some kind of hospital that looked like it was probably in a third world country. Her face was heavily bandaged, and Jacob came and sat down at her bedside. She said she was very happy to see him, and he told her that he needed her help. Next thing we know chronologically, she’s pretending to hit on Sayid at a Los Angeles bar, later claiming to be in the employ of one of Sayid’s Widmore-web murder victims, but even that’s a ruse to get him on Ajira 316. So when will we know what Ilana’s story is? Some have wondered if she, like Richard, has been around for an unnaturally long time. I hadn’t thought about that, but when Jacob visits her he’s wearing gloves. It didn’t show whether or not he touched her, but in light of what Richard said about Jacob’s touch, it might be worth noting.

As the group tries to make the wrecked beach site habitable, Sun approaches a still-upset Ilana.

S: How long are we going to stay here?
I:  I told you, I don’t know yet.
S: I need to find my husband!
I:  Trust me, if anyone wants to find him it’s me. But I don’t know where to look.
S: Why do you want to find Jin?
I:  Because, your last name is Kwon. So is his. And I don’t know whether I’m supposed to protect you, him or both of you.
S: Protect us, what are you talking about?
I:  You’re candidates. To replace Jacob.
S: Replace him? To do what?
I:  If you’re the one selected, I imagine you’ll find out.
S: Wait…you said candidates. How many are there?
I:  Six. There are only six left.

So who are the six? Definitely Hurley (8), Sawyer (15), Jack (23) and at least one Kwon (42). Although she doesn’t have one of the numbers assigned to her, Kate’s name was not crossed out yet on the lighthouse dial, so can we assume she’s still in the running? Sayid’s name wasn’t crossed out in the cave, but surely Ilana has now ruled him out since Ben told her that he killed Dogen and Lennon and chose to go with Locke. So if Kate and both Sun and Jin are candidates, that’s the six. But what if only one Kwon is under consideration? Who might be the missing link? And if Ilana doesn’t know whether she’s meant to protect Sun and Jin or just one of them, how can she even be sure how many candidates are left?

As Ben sifts through items in one of the tents, he passes over a copy of The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, a book that I’m pretty sure every teenage Jew is required by international law to read. Does the title offer some foreshadowing for Ben? When Lapidus comes by and tells Ben to help him gather firewood, Ben finds a bottle of Oceanic Airlines water and says he can remember the plane breaking in half overhead like it was yesterday. Frank says he sounds nostalgic. “Maybe I am,” Ben says. Frank says he was supposed to be flying 815 but he overslept that day (Wow, that’s the reason? I think somebody owes Mrs. Captain Seth Norris a big fat apology).

He wonders how different his life would have been if his alarm had gone off. “How different would it have been,” Ben asks? “The island still got you in the end, didn’t it?”

GRAVE MATTER
Right about that time, Ilana shoves her rifle in Ben’s face and marches him around the bend to the castaway’s cemetery, where she puts a makeshift clamp on his leg, ties it to a tree and forces him to dig his own grave. That’s never fun. Under her watchful eye, he doesn’t have much choice. When Miles walks by later on, Ben asks him if he’s still interested in the $3.2 million he tried to extort not so long ago. He says that if Miles lets him loose, he can get off the island, where he has “a vast network of people and resources that will get you that money.”

(This goes back to my question from last year about what seemed like a whole group of off-island Others like Jill the butcher, who helped Ben out in his efforts to reassemble the Oceanic Six.. Are these people like some kind of Illuminati? I doubt we’ll learn more about them, but that will always be one of the minor mysteries that rattle around in the recesses of my brain.)

Miles says he doesn’t need the money, since they’re standing steps away from a couple named Nikki and Paulo who were buried alive with $8 million in diamonds. Ha! So Damon and Carlton found a way to make Nikki and Paulo relevant after all! Ben says that Ilana is going to kill him for killing Jacob, who didn’t care about dying anyway. But Miles corrects him. “No, he cared. Right up until the second the knife went through his heart, he was hoping he was wrong about you. I guess he wasn’t.”

As Ben nearly completes digging, he hears the Smoke Monster – who must be quieter than usual, as the noise doesn’t attract Ilana, who’s maybe a half-yard away. Staying out of her sight, Man in Locke asks what Ben is doing. Ben fills him in on what’s about to go down, describing Ilana as Jacob’s bodyguard. Man in Locke used the same term back at the statue, when Bram and his companions came into the chamber. I thought he was being facetious, but now I wonder if that’s what it boils down to. Are Ilana and her people essentially Jacob’s Secret Service?

Man in Locke explains that despite Ben’s assumptions, he doesn’t want him dead. He even went back to the statue to find him. He says that he’s gathering a group of people to leave island for good. “But once we’re gone, someone’s gonna need to be in charge of the island.” But why is that? He told Sawyer that the island didn’t need protecting. Maybe we can mince words and say that being in charge of the island doesn’t equal protecting it, but to me the concepts seem interchangeable.

“Me?” Ben asks? Man in Locke says he can’t think of anyone better. With a little Jedi Mind Trick, he undoes Ben’s leg brace and says he and his group will be on Hydra Island. Ben says Ilana will follow him, but Man in Locke tells him there’s a rifle leaning against a tree stump in a clearing 200 yards away. If he runs, he can get drop on her.

“See you soon, Ben” he says and walks away. Why does he leave? Why not just kill Ilana? Is it that he wants Ben to act for himself? To make the choice to come with him?

Ben looks toward Ilana. She looks back at him. And then he runs. She pursues him, but he makes it to the clearing in time and aims the rifle at her. She puts hers down, and for a moment they just stand there until finally a look of heartbreak and defeat settles on her face, as if she wants to die. The exchange that follows is a powerful one.

Emotional stuff. I just might have gotten a little misty-eyed. Hey, wouldn’t be the first time Lost has moved me to tears. When he says Locke is the only one that will have him? Wow. If they gave Emmy’s for single line readings, Michael Emerson would be a frontrunner for that one. Ben is usually lying about something, but this is one of the cases where he appears to be telling the truth. The raw honestly is something I don’t think even Ben could fake. But the way he talks about choosing the island over Alex seemed inaccurate. Was it really a choice so much as a leap of faith? When Keamy held Alex at gunpoint, Ben seemed to think he was bluffing. He called the bluff and lost, uttering in disbelief, “He changed the rules.” “He” meaning Widmore. Ben didn’t think Alex would be killed, at least according to how it was presented to us. Just something to chew on…

So Ilana walks away and leaves Ben to make his choice. And just as he did in SidewaysLand, just as I’ve said he would all along when the time came, Benjamin Linus makes the right decision. He always claimed, cryptically, that he was one of the good guys. Now he might actually be living up to it.

Unless of course Jacob is the bad guy, Man in Black is the good guy and the whole world is wild at heart and weird on top. Cue Chris Isaak…

DOWN PERISCOPE
Ben walks up to Sun and asks if he can help her as she hangs a tarp over a tent. The look of “are you for real?” surprise on her face is comical, and Frank and Miles also look surprised to see that he and Ilana have made peace. Everyone takes refuge in solitude. Frank sits by a newly lit fire. Ilana clutches the sack of ashes. Miles sit alone admiring a small diamond between his fingers. Looks like he did partially dig up Nikki and Paulo. Damn, they couldn’t have smelled too good. I wonder how things will play out for Miles. He’s always been motivated by greed, but what role does he have to play? Is there a redemption arc for him? Will his greed be his undoing, or is it the reward he’ll get for the difficult life he’s endured?

As they each have their moment, Jack, Hurley and Richard come around the corner, making for a beach reunion scene that recalls the old days – Michael and Jin returning after the raft incident, Jack returning after his stint with The Others…it’s nice that the writers have been able to tell the story at this season’s level of required intricacy, dealing with all there is to deal with, while still invoking the simple pleasures of earlier seasons. As the two groups reconnect, Jack looks toward Ben, who stands meekly off to the side. I actually feel bad for him.

But then we get the feeling they are all being watched from afar. A periscope pops out of water and spies them. We see a submarine below the surface, and the officer inside says, “Sir, there are people on the beach. Should we stop?”

And there, seated next to him and looking at a laptop, is Charles Widmore. “No,” he says. “Proceed as planned.”

Huh?!? How did Widmore finally get back to the island? We know he was keeping tabs on the whereabouts of the Oceanic Six. Is that why he helped Locke find them all? Did he have them followed to The Lamp Post, Eloise Hawking’s holy Dharma station? He was in Los Angeles last time we saw him, outside the hospital where Desmond was recovering from a gunshot wound inflicted by Ben.  He spoke to Eloise, who slapped him when he said that Faraday was his son too, so I don’t think she was inviting him back to the hatch for tea and a shag. Yet I’ve long wondered how he could have spent 20 years desperately trying to find the island again when his ex-special ladyfriend, whose whereabouts he’s always known, held the keys to the kingdom. So what is he doing there? What plan is he proceeding with?

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-Only one comment here this time. Many fans have speculated that the final scene of Lost will echo the opening scene of Season Five’s finale, in which we first met Jacob and the Man in Black. The assumption is that the roles will of course be re-cast, with Locke as the Man in Black and…who as Jacob? Some think Jack. Some think Ben. And maybe those opinions have changed in light of some of the things we’ve learned so far this season. I’m still thinking that Ben is not going to survive whatever is coming. He seems to have chosen the right side, but if there is redemption to be had for Ben, I believe it will involve a noble sacrifice. Not that it couldn’t work out that he remains eternally stuck on the island, playing out the Jacob/Man in Black drama; I suppose there might be a poetic justice to that. And what about Jack? To have Jack and Locke transfer their dichotomy as Man of Science/Man of Faith to Man of Free Will/Man of Fate offers some poetic justice of its own. But if Jack survives, isn’t he owed a chance at a happy life back home? I think so. But maybe Jack is a tragic hero, destined to remain on the Island forever. And perhaps his path toward staying would somehow clear the way for everyone else who’s still alive to leave once and for all – allowing him to fulfill his longtime promise to get everyone off the island. Remember that when he and Ben were off-island, attempting to reunite the Oceanic Six for a return trip, Ben told him to pack a suitcase, saying “If there’s anything in this life you want, pack it in there. Because you’re never coming back.” Not that Ben knew at the time what would happen once they got back to the island. I think he had a very different plan. Another thing to remember about Jack, even though it’s ancient history: the creators of the show originally intended for him to die three-quarters of the way through the very first episode. Maybe they want to come full circle and finish that thought.

Anyway, this whole tangent is based on the idea of the final scene being a take on the Jacob/Man in Black beach scene, so it doesn’t really matter. But it’s fun to speculate…

-A friend of mine sent me this today. This artist applies Simpsons style to all kinds of other pop culture material. I recommend checking out his blog for a larger picture of this and to see his other work. Fun stuff…

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“If you change your mind I’ll be like a mile away.” – Hurley

Tonight’s Episode: Recon

Last week, I mentioned that the current season was following a pattern from Season One in terms of the order of the character-centric episodes, suggesting that the sixth hour of the season would focus on Sun. Even the title invoked her name, but they fooled us by shining the spotlight on Sayid.

FAMILY GUY
Sayid arrives at a house in L.A. where he shares a warm greeting with Nadia, but when two little kids come running down the hall cheering “Uncle Sayid,” we know things between these two have gone differently in Sideways Land. Still, I thought I saw some sexual tension between the two, despite her being married to Sayid’s brother Omer. Later, at the dinner table, Sayid refers to his job as “translating gas contracts for oil companies” around the world. So…what kind of lethal, violent, highly dangerous work do you think that’s a euphemism for?

When Omer steps away, Nadia asks Sayid if he got the letters she sent him. He says yes, just as his niece runs in saying she found a picture of Nadia in Sayid’s bag. (I did! I did see some sexual tension!)

The way Sayid grabs Omer’s arm when the latter wakes him up in the middle of the night suggests that he’s accustomed to doing more than translating contracts, though maybe he really is a legit businessman now, with only his past experiences in the war to haunt him. Omer explains that he’s in trouble with some people he borrowed money from, claiming that despite having paid them back they are demanding ongoing payments. He asks Sayid to get these people off his back. Sayid knows what his brother is asking and says he will not commit violence because of Omer’s bad business decision. When Omer tells him it’s to protect Nadia and the family, Sayid says, “I’m sorry. I’m not that man anymore.” The scene reminded me of a flashback to Sayid’s childhood, when his father demanded that Omer kill a chicken, which he couldn’t bring himself to do. Sayid walked up and did it without blinking. It seems they’re still playing out a similar behavioral pattern – Omer the weak looking to Sayid the strong to do help him with what he can’t do for himself. Enabler…

The next day, Omer is hospitalized in an apparent mugging. As Sayid and Nadia walk down the hospital corridor to find him, we see Jack walking their way and briefly noticing them. It’s probably too quick for either to recognize that they interacted on Flight 815 to save Charlie’s life, but I did wonder if Jack had a flicker of recognition. When Omer’s doctor mentions the possibility of a mugging, Sayid knows better. He starts to leave, but Nadia knows what his intentions are and begs him not to do whatever he’s thinking. Sayid agrees; he makes a choice and stays true to his word. That night, she asks why he didn’t want to be with her and pushed her toward his brother despite his obvious feelings for her. “For the last 12 years I’ve been trying to wash my hands of all the horrible things I’ve done,” he tells her. “I can’t be with you. Because I don’t deserve you.” Trying to wash his hands for the last 12 years? Maybe he really does translate gas contracts now. How incredibly boring.

The following afternoon, Sayid leaves to pick the kids up from school when a dark minivan pulls up. Out steps a familiar face: Omar, Keamy’s right hand lackey from the freighter, and another nameless goon. Omar suggests Sayid get in, lest they all go pick up the kids together. Sayid complies, and they bring him to a restaurant kitchen. What is it about Sayid and bad luck involving restaurant kitchens? We already saw him held captive in one by the husband of a woman who believed he had tortured her during the war. Now he’s brought here and introduced to Keamy himself.

Keamy, while enjoying a plate of eggs, says that Omer (not to be confused with Omar) owes him money and that somebody is going to pay him. But before he knows it, Sayid has Omar’s gun, Omar and the other goon are dead and Keamy’s on the defensive. He tells Sayid that Omer’s debt is forgiven and they can just forget about this, but Sayid says he can’t. He reverts to old habits and shoots Keamy. Then he hears a noise coming from a nearby room – a muffled voice and a banging. He goes to investigate and finds…Jin(!?) sitting with his hands tied behind his back and a cut above his eye. How the hell did he get here? Last we saw of Jin in Sideways Land, he was stuck in customs at the airport. (According to Lostpedia, his Korean exclamations to Sayid translate as, “Don’t kill me! Please! Let me live!”)

Seeing Jin here – tied up in Keamy’s kitchen – got me thinking. In the original timeline, Keamy was onboard the freighter in the employ of Charles Widmore. His dealings with Omer Jarrah might be his own thing, but the fact that he is holding Jin prisoner? Back during Season Four, I brought up the idea that Charles Widmore and Sun’s father, Mr. Paik, were probably business associates to some degree, and likely traveled in the same circles. That idea was confirmed later when Sun introduced herself to Widmore as Paik’s daughter and Widmore inquired after him, even remarking that he still owed Paik a dinner from their last golf game. So knowing that Jin is still in Los Angeles to deliver a watch as a business gift from Mr. Paik, I wonder if being in Keamy’s hands means he’s really in Widmore’s hands. And if so, why? And where is Sun?

By the way, great to see Keamy again. He’s a true son of a bitch, played to hilt by Kevin Durand.

FIGHT CLUB
On the island, in the wake of Jack’s revelation that he almost inadvertently poisoned him, Sayid storms into Dogen’s study and demands answers, starting with an explanation of the machine they hooked him up to for his torture.

D: For every man there is a scale. On one side of the scale there is good. On the other side, evil. This machine tells us how the scale is balanced. Yours tipped the wrong way.
S: That’s why you tried to poison me?
D: Yes. I think it would be best if you were dead.
S: You think you know me but you don’t. I’m a good man. So if you’re trying to kill me…

And then Dogen springs, launching the two into a knockaround that finds them crashing all over the room. They’re throwing plant pots, using clubs and brooms, and just as Dogen has Sayid pinned on the desk with a knife to his throat, that baseball we’ve seen him play with rolls off the table and hits the floor. This stops him in his tracks. My theory (debunked later in the show, of course) was that the baseball featured an original Babe Ruth autograph, and Dogen was afraid of getting blood on it. Why not?

“Go,” he tells Sayid. “Leave this place. Never come back.” He lets Sayid up, and Sayid looks frightened at how close he came to dying. Not a look we see on his face too often. To no one’s surprise, Dogen doesn’t tell us how that machine works, or why Sayid has become the way he’s become…and of course Sayid doesn’t ask. Why? Because characters on Lost don’t ask the obvious questions.

Just across the pond, at the ash line that surrounds The Temple, we find the Man in Locke and Claire. She seems reluctant to do what he’s asking, wondering why it can’t be Sawyer (where is he?) or Jin (where is he?) or even him. “If I could do it myself, I wouldn’t be asking you, Claire.” She says that if she goes in there, he has to do what he said he would; she wants her son back. “I always do what I say,” he says. And curiously, at least to me, Claire expresses unease with the fact that he’s going to hurt The Temple’s inhabitants. “Only the ones who won’t listen,” he says.

THE MESSENGERS
Sayid prepares to leave, telling Miles he finds it odd that these people want him dead even though they’re the ones who saved his life. Miles replies that in fact, they didn’t. He says they tried to save him, but it didn’t work and he was dead for two hours. “Whatever brought you back, it wasn’t them.”

So how did this work? If Sayid’s resurrection had nothing to do with the spring, and if there is a Man in Black-related darkness growing in him, how did that happen? How was Sayid “claimed?” Does it mean Claire died too? If so, when? Was it when her house exploded in New Otherton? She came back around from that a lot sooner than Sayid came back after “dying.” Why can’t the Man in Black take control of anyone who dies on the island? (I’m assuming he can’t, given how many people have died that we haven’t seen running around alive again, doing his bidding.) What is it that allowed him access to Sayid, and possibly Claire and Christian Shephard, who was already a few days dead before he got to the island?

As Miles and Sayid are talking, Claire suddenly enters the courtyard, surprising Dogen and Lennon…and Sayid and Miles, though not nearly to the extent that it should. Claire approaches Dogen.

C: He wants to see you
D: [Starts to say something in Japanese.]
C: Speak English.
D: Who wants to see me?
C: You know who.
D: If he wants to see me, then tell him to come him.
C: No, he wants you to go to him. He’s waiting outside beyond the outer wall.
D: I’m not a fool. If I step outside this temple, he’ll kill me.
C: Then maybe you should send somebody he won’t kill.

She turns to go.

D: Stop her! [In Japanese] Put the girl into the hole until this is resolved. Then bring Shephard and Reyes to my room immediately.
L: That’s gonna be a little difficult. We can’t find them.
D: [In Japanese] Look. Harder!

He looks at Sayid.

D: Come with me.
S: I thought you wanted me to leave.
D: Things have changed.

Why does Dogen want Jack and Hurley? Had they been there, what would he have said to them? Sayid follows Dogen back into his study, where he asks what Claire was talking about.

D: She’s a confused girl, under the influence of an angry man.
S: What man?
D: For years, he has been trapped. But now Jacob’s gone. He’s free. This man will not stop until he has destroyed every living thing on this island. He is evil incarnate.
S: And you want me to speak with him?
D: No. I want you to kill him. He will come to you as someone you know. Someone who has died. As soon as you see him, plunge this deep into his chest. If you allow him to speak it is already too late.
S: Since I’ve been here I’ve been drowned, beaten and tortured at your hands. Why would I ever do anything for you?
D: You said that there is still good in your soul. Then prove it.

We’ve heard this line before, about someone wanting to kill every living thing on the island. It’s what Ben and Locke kept saying about the freighter crew. Is the re-introduction of that phrase supposed to tie the Man in Black to Charles Widmore? Also, is there some special significance to the dagger that Dogen tells Sayid to use? He pulls it from a well-concealed hiding place, so something tells me it’s not just some ornate knife he ordered off TV at 2:00 in the morning because it could cut through tin cans. Also, the idea of evil incarnate certainly furthers many fans’ theories about the religious nature of the Jacob/Man in Black dynamic – i.e. God and Satan, a parallel which reader Nic A. commented on in the previous write-up. This will come up again shortly.

On his way out of The Temple, Sayid encounters Kate returning. I guess she’s coming back to ask about Claire, based on her conversation with Jack. She walks over to Miles, who smiles at her and says, as only Miles can, “Sawyer sent you packing, huh?” Then he tells her about Claire’s return. Sayid continues away from The Temple…

(I love Sayid’s look, as Man in Locke pulls the knife out of his chest, that goes from uncertainty to “Oh shit, now what?”)

So is Man in Locke’s offer a lie – the temptation of the devil – or can he really deliver on that promise? Does it have something to with the sideways reality? Is Sayid walking into a Pet Sematary scenario? Sometimes dead is better, Sayid…

Whatever occurs next between them we don’t see. Sayid returns to The Temple, and just outside the door Dogen asks him what happened. Sayid strides past him and makes an announcement to all those in earshot. “There is a man in the jungle, about a mile south of us, by the outer wall. He sent me back here to give you a message. He wants you to know that Jacob is dead. And because he’s gone, none of you have to stay here anymore. You’re free. The man that I met is leaving the island forever, and those of you who want to go with him should leave The Temple and join him. You have until sundown to decide.”

Cindy the stewar…sorry, flight attendant…asks, “What happens at sundown if we stay?”

“You die,” Said replies. Dogen doesn’t look happy.

So first of all, did Sayid strike some kind of official deal with the dev…I mean with the Man in Locke, or is he going on faith? He claimed to be a good man, yet the message he will soon deliver to Dogen is not one of words, but of violence. Also, I ask again, who are these people at The Temple? They look like a bunch of peasants and shirpas. Are all the Others who had been with Man in Locke at Jacob’s statue here too now? Have these people all felt like they had to stay at The Temple, or even on the island itself, all this time? What has kept them here? What were they doing for Jacob? Cindy would be the ideal vessel to explore this, since we saw her as a survivor of Flight 815 who was then taken by The Others and apparently threw her lot in with them. But something tells me we may never know.

ENEMY AT THE GATES
As The Temple is gripped in panic, Lennon sees Kate and wants to know when she got back and where Jack and Hurley are. But she demands to see Claire first, so he takes her to a wide pit in the ground, where Claire sits in a corner singing “Catch a Falling Star” (Aaron’s theme song apparently, based on its ongoing use in the show). Last week, I wrote that Claire’s animal-skull baby was very Buffalo Bill/Silence of the Lambs. Well now Claire looks like one of Bill’s victims, sitting down at the bottom of a dirty hole in the ground. When Kate leans in to talk to her, I was waiting for her to lower a basket and say…

Claire is happy to see Kate, and tells her that the Others have Aaron. Kate thinks she’s putting Claire at ease when she smiles, almost cries, and tells her the truth. “Claire, they don’t have Aaron. I took him. I took him off the island. You were gone and we couldn’t find you so I raised him. And he is the most beautiful, amazing little boy. But I came back here to rescue you so that you could be with him, so that you guys could be together again.”

The expression on Claire’s face when Kate says she took him is pretty sinister, and the words “I raised him” really send her to a bad place. That phrase has been of particular significance around Aaron, going back to Season One when psychic Richard Malkin used it repeatedly, telling Claire that she had to raise Aaron herself. Is that why Claire feels what she does toward Kate? Why she told Jin she would kill Kate if she’d taken Aaron off the island? Has she gained some insight into why raising Aaron herself is so crucial? Or is there another reason…beyond a mother’s obvious desire to be with her child?

“I’m not the one that needs to be rescued, Kate,” Claire says, suddenly smiling. What does that smile hide? How does the Man in Locke intend to keep his promise of reuniting her with Aaron anyway? And what does that plan mean for Kate? The conversation is cut short when Lennon tells Kate her time is up and drags her off, leaving Claire calling up, “He’s coming, Kate. He’s coming and they can’t stop him.”

Is there any chance Kate can convince her that she had no choice but to take Aaron off the island? Claire disappeared, she left Aaron behind, the island vanished, the chopper crashed…surely she can make the case! And will we ever find out what exactly happened when Christian Shephard came to Claire in the jungle and lured her away from Sawyer and Miles…and Aaron? When Locke found the two of them in the cabin and asked where the baby was, Christian said that Aaron was exactly where he was supposed to be. And Claire looked super chill, like she’d just smoked some primo island grass. I really want to hear her version of what happened since that time.

As people flee The Temple, Lennon tries to assure them all that their enemy can not get in and that they’re safe. Cindy says that with Jacob dead, she can’t take that chance. She goes, with the kids. Miles asks Sayid if they’re leaving, but Sayid says he has to return the knife first. He finds Dogen sitting on the steps of the spring. “You let him talk to you,” Dogen says.

“I stabbed him in the chest like you told me to. Then I let him talk to me.” He drops the knife on the ground. “That’s twice you’ve tried to have someone kill me. You had the opportunity to do it yourself. Why didn’t you?”

Dogen tells Sayid he was once a successful businessman at a bank in Osaka. One Friday night after receiving a promotion, his associates took him out to celebrate and he had too much to drink. Afterwards he went to pick up his 12 year-old son from baseball practice and they got into a car accident which his son did not survive. “And then in the hospital,” he says, “a man came to me. A man I had never met. He told me that he could save my son’s life but I would have to come here, to this island, where I would have a new job. And I could never see my boy again.”

S: Who was this man?
D: His name was Jacob.
S: Jacob drives a hard bargain.
D: The man outside, I take it he offered you a similar bargain.
S: Yes.
D: It is sundown. Will you choose to stay or go?
S: I’d like to stay.

Sayid suddenly grabs Dogen and leaps into the water with him, holding him down the way Dogen’s men held him down in their effort to revive him. But this isn’t about revival. Sayonara, Dogen. Sayid walks out of the spring as Lennon comes in and sees what he’s done. He runs into the water hoping to save Dogen, but it’s too late. “Do you realize what you just did? He was the only thing keeping it out! Idiot! You just let it in!” Then we hear the howl of Smokey, just as Sayid grabs the knife, slices Lennon’s throat and tosses him in the water. “I know,” he replies.

I wonder if Dogen knew for sure that his son was saved, or if he had to take Jacob’s word. Why would Jacob do this? It’s an act that again seems to handily reinforce the idea of Jacob representing that Judeo-Christian God, both benevolent and punishing. Yet the Man in Locke has made a similar offer to Sayid, so what’s to say that Jacob isn’t just as much the tempter that his nemesis is? And we aren’t sure exactly what Dogen’s job on the island was. Why/how was he the only thing keeping the Man in Black out? Why doesn’t the ash matter all of a sudden? What power did he have? How long has he been there? How long has Lennon been there? Does the fact that they’re both dead mean I’m never going to get answers to any of these damn questions?

With Dogen doing the dead man’s float, the Smoke Monster gains admittance to The Temple. He makes the most of it, blowing here, there and everywhere, grabbing people and doing his pissed off Smokey thing. Kate and Miles run for it, but get separated when Kate goes for Claire. Miles runs down a hallway and through an open door which he tries to hold closed as something pushes at it. It bursts open and in comes Ilana, immediately asking where Shephard, Reyes and Ford are. Does she know who Miles is? How? He says he’s the only one left, and that Kate went to get Claire. Lapidus, Sun and Ben follow her in and Ilana asks about Jarrah. Miles says he was at the spring, so Ben goes to get him despite Ilana calling for him to stay. As they run, Miles asks Sun where her husband is. She is relieved to know Jin was there and alive, but distressed that once again she’s missed him. Where is Jin? He wants to get back to The Temple…or he did when there was something there to get back to. Is the Man in Locke keeping him from that goal?

Ilana goes down the hall Hurley used to get outside and finds the familiar symbol on the wall. She pushes it and a door slides open. They all step through and it closes behind them just as Smokey turns the corner and comes blowing past. At the spring, Ben finds Sayid sitting on the steps in eerie calm. Ben says he knows a way out and that there’s still time. Sayid looks at him, a creepy smile of contentment and amusement on his face and says, “Not for me.” Ben observes the floating bodies and the knife, still dripping blood, and backs away almost comically slowly.

I think the “infection” Dogen spoke of to Jack has finally reached Sayid’s heart, cause the dude on steps ain’t the Sayid I know. Is redemption still possible for the tortured torturer, or has he made a final, fateful choice? Why has he embraced his dark side so easily? Ben once told Sayid that like it or not, he’s a killer; it’s in his nature. Sayid always wants to believe that’s not true of himself, but he admitted it when he picked up Jin’s gun and shot Young Ben in the chest. In the sideways timeline, he initially respected Nadia’s wishes to not exact revenge for Omer’s attack, but when Keamy draws him in, Sayid strikes. And now he’s done it again. Or has he? Was the choice to give in to the Man in Locke’s temptation and murder Dogen really a choice, or was he overpowered by a force stronger than he could contend with? Does this turn mean that like Locke of old, Sayid as we know him is dead?

But wait, there’s more! Kate finds the pit and kicks a rope ladder down so Claire can climb up, but she won’t go. Claire says they’re safer there. Just then, Smokey turns into the room. Kate flings herself onto the dangling ladder just in time and watches as Smokey flies by above her. Then in an unsettling final sequence that plays out in slow motion, Sayid walks into the courtyard, strewn with dead bodies. Claire follows, then Kate, who is now kind of stuck with them. She stops and picks up a rifle from one of the bodies. The darkness and carnage is juxtaposed with Claire (I think it’s Claire) singing “Catch a Falling Star” on the soundtrack, like that ominous, “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you” nursery rhyme from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Outside the Temple door, the Man in Locke and those who accepted his offer wait to receive Sayid and Claire, who walk out looking satisfied, each smiling as if reporting to their master after a job well done. They look like The Keymaster and The Gatekeeper returning to Gozer for duty.

Kate emerges and looks confused to see Locke. He doesn’t say anything; just looks at her for a moment before turning and leading everyone away. It’s pretty much the same look he gave Jin when he found him in Claire’s hut.

And with that, we leave The Temple behind for what is shaping up as the final island showdown between the disciples of dark and light.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-I know some people were annoyed about new characters being introduced so late in the game, but I liked Dogen and Lennon and am sorry to see them go. On the other hand, it is sort of nice to have the Temple business over with. Despite the adventures outside its walls – Kate’s search for Sawyer, Jack and Hurley’s trip to the lighthouse, Jin’s run-in with Crazy Cat Lady – the location was still starting to feel like a hindrance. We need to get things moving. Will we see Dogen and Lennon again in the sideways reality? Can we at least add them to the list of Lost characters who deserve a spin-off sitcom? (Hurley and Sayid, Hurley and Miles, Locke and Ben, Smokey and the polar bear…)

-I was just thinking that I still don’t know who Jacob meant when he said to the Man in Locke with his dying breath, ‘They’re coming.” We haven’t seen any obvious payoff of that yet…

-As you probably know, the Oscars were Sunday night, and it happened to be a great year for the Lost family. The show’s excellent composer Michael Giacchino took home the Best Original Score award for Up (in Lighthouse I was admiring anew his excellent theme for Jacob. His contributions are such an underrated part of the show.) In addition, The Hurt Locker, which features Evangeline Lilly in a small role, took six awards including Best Picture; and Best Documentary went to The Cove, earning an Oscar for its producer Fisher Stevens, the actor who played (and from what I’ve heard will be seen again as) the freighter’s communications officer George Minkowski. Further proof that Lost is everywhere….in case anyone was trying to disprove it.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“She just strolled in here a couple hours ago, acting all weird. Still hot, though.” – Miles

Tonight’s Episode: Dr. Linus

THE GOOD SHEPHARD
Jack walks into his apartment to change out of his scrubs and notices a scar on his abdomen. As with the cut on his neck that he noticed on the plane, he doesn’t seem sure where it came from. Moments later, while on the phone with his mother, he asks when he got his appendix taken out. She says he was 7 or 8 years old. But is the scar from that long-ago operation, or is it somehow from the appendectomy Juliet performed on the island?

When I saw Jack driving up to a school, I remembered that his one-time wife Sarah was a teacher, and wondered if they were together in this timeline as well (though this would be a different school than the one we saw her at previously). But to my surprise – as I’m sure just about everyone else’s – Jack was there not for his wife, but for his teenage son David. Definitely didn’t see that coming.

David Shephard appears to be a typical moody, monosyllabic teenager, or maybe he’s just in a bad mood because Jack is late picking him up. Whatever the case, David thwarts all of Jack’s attempts to engage him. Back at his apartment Jack tells his son, “I’m just trying to have a conversation with you, David.”

“Why?” the boy asks. “We see each other like, once a month, can’t we just…get through it?” Ouch. That’s pretty brutal.

Jack has to go to his mother’s house and tells David he’ll be back soon for dinner. David doesn’t much seem to care. At his mother’s, she and Jack go through papers in his father’s office trying to locate his will. (The body, Jack tells her earlier, has still not been recovered.) She asks how David is doing, noting that he had a hard time at the funeral. When Jack says he can barely get a word out of his son, his mother tells him it was the same with him and Christian. Jack says that’s because he was terrified of his father. When his mother suggests that David might feel the same way about him, he can’t understand what reason there would be. “I don’t know, Jack,” she says. “Maybe you should ask him.”

Just after this, she finds the will and sits down to read it. As Jack ponders her remark about David, his mother, reading from the will, asks him if his father had ever mentioned someone named Claire Littleton. The scene ends there, leaving us without a follow-up to that thread…for now.

When Jack goes home, David is gone without a trace. Unable to reach him still hours later, Jack drives over to David’s mother’s house. No one is home, so he lets himself in with a hidden key and goes into David’s room. Desperate for clues, plays David’s voicemail and hears a message from a conservatory confirming a spot for David’s audition that very evening, at that time.

Jack goes to the audition site and finds his son on stage kicking ebony and ivory ass. His eyes well up with pride as he watches. When David finishes and exits offstage, Jack leaves the auditorium, but is stopped by another student’s father, who looks a lot like…wait…holy shit, that’s Dogen! This threw me, I have to say. Whatever the meaning of the sideways timeline is, I’m still assuming it connects to the island timeline and is not, well, an island unto itself. And for reasons completely invented in my head with no evidence whatsoever to back them up, I assume that Jacob is aware of both timelines and can maybe bridge the gap between them. So seeing Dogen there makes me wonder if, through his affiliation with Jacob, he is also aware of both and is crossing paths with Jack for a reason that the Island intends. Or is he really a part of this reality, like Ethan and Ben appeared to be, free of any history with the island? And again, the question may be moot since I’m making total assumptions about Jacob and the sideways reality. But still…weird.

As David gets his bike outside, Jack approaches and tells him how good he was, leading to a heartfelt exchange.

J: David, you scared the hell out of me.
D: You were at grandma’s. I thought I could get back to your place before you got home.
J: I didn’t even know you were still playing.
D: I made mom promise not to tell you.
J: Why?
D: It was always such a big deal to you. You used to sit and watch me practice. You were so…into it. I didn’t tell you I was coming here cause I didn’t want you to see me fail.
J: You know, when I was your age, my father didn’t want to see me fail either. He used to say to me that…he said that I didn’t have what it takes. I spent my whole life carrying that around with me. I don’t ever want you to feel that way. I will always love you. No matter what you do. In my eyes you can never fail. I just want to be a part of your life.

More so than anything else yet this season, this storyline with Jack and David has invested me in the sideways reality, which makes me nervous about what will ultimately become of it (more on that later).

Incidentally, I’ve heard that we will eventually find out who David’s mother is and that it is someone we’re familiar with. Whoever she is, they – or at least Jack – must have been pretty young when they had David, because he’s gotta be in 8th or 9th grade.

WHAT IT TAKES
Jack’s sideways story may have thrown a few curveballs, but the island storyline sees us back in our comfort zone, with Jack emotionally crippled…just the way we like him. In the first shot we see of him, he’s staring at his reflection in the pond outside The Temple as a drizzle creates distorting ripples in the water.

Dogen comes out and sits with him, a little surprised that he’s still there. Last time we saw them together, Dogen described what he believes is happening to Sayid and said the same thing had already happened to Jack’s sister. When Darth Vader mentioned Luke Skywalker’s sister to him in Return of the Jedi, Luke flipped out and launched a brutal attack that culminated in cutting Vader’s hand off. Dogen’s mention of Claire obviously didn’t inspire a similar response, but what did it do? Jack is clearly in a contemplative state by the pond, so how much more did Dogen tell him about Claire and this “darkness” that infected her and now Sayid? Whatever he heard, Jack doesn’t seem too riled up about it.

Later, Sayid comes out to Jack asking why people keep looking at him and why Jack disappeared after advising him not to take the pill Dogen had prescribed. “What are you hiding from me?” he asks. Jack tells him that the pill was poison. “Whatever it is they think happened to you Sayid, they say it happened to someone else too.” Sayid asks who, but of course the scene ends before we see Jack’s response. Does he respond? How would Sayid take that news? How exactly does a conversation like that end? Where does Sayid go after learning that he’s surrounded by people who think he’s evil and want to kill him?

Nearby, Hurley and Miles are passing the time playing tic-tac-toe with leaves and sticks. When Hurley enters The Temple in search of food, he finds Jacob crouching on the steps of the spring with his fingers in the water…the water that apparently turned brown after Jacob died. He tells Hurley he needs his help and advises him to write down instructions. “Someone is coming to the island,” he says. “I need you to help them find it.”

We next see Hurley down a corridor with hieroglyphics on the wall. He’s looking for a certain symbol, and just as he finds it Dogen shows up and says he shouldn’t be there. Jacob appears and tells Hurley that he’s a candidate and can do what he wants. When Hurley says this aloud, Dogen asks with surprise how he knows that. Hurley tells him it doesn’t matter and to leave him alone.

Jacob tells Hurley that he is supposed to bring Jack with him on this “assignment,” but Hurley says you can’t make Jack do what he doesn’t want to. As Hurley expresses his frustration with Jacob’s complicated directions and with making him piss off a samurai, Jacob just looks at him with that blank stare he gave as Ben plead with him, just before killing him. “Look,” Hurley says, “if you have any idea how to get Jack to go on your little adventure, I’m listenin’ dude.” A small smile comes over Jacob’s face.

Hurley finds Jack alone outside and tells him there’s a secret passage out of The Temple that Jacob told him about. “He said you and me have to go…” but Jack cuts him off and says he’s not going anywhere. “He told me you’d say that,” Hurley continues, “so he told me to tell you ‘you have what it takes.’” This gets Jack’s attention. “He said you have what it takes,” Hurley says again. “He said you’d know what that meant.” Jack asks where Jacob is and Hurley says he’s dead and just shows up when he wants, like Obi-Wan Kenobi. But when he adds that Jacob will be at the place where they’re going, Jack agrees to the trip.

OLD SCHOOL
Early in their journey, Jack and Hurley run into Kate, who tells them that Jin went back to The Temple and Sawyer’s on his own. She says that she’s going to look for Claire, saying that she’ll try their old beachfront property first. “Kate, she’s not at the beach,” Jack says with certainty. “The people at The Temple said that something happened to her.”

“Do they know where she is?” Kate asks.

“I don’t know, they didn’t say.” And I’m sure you didn’t ask, Jack. Just like you didn’t ask Eloise Hawking who the hell she was and how she knew so much about the island last season when she spoke to you privately in her office. Like so many characters on this show fail to ask the obvious questions that any normal person would ask in all these crazy situations.

Kate says she has to keep trying. Jack tries to get her to come with them, but she says no and tells Jack she hopes he finds what he’s looking for. Jack watches her walk away, clearly pained to see her go…and to see that she doesn’t seem pained at all.

As they move on, Hurley asks Jack what happened with him and Kate; why didn’t they get married and have kids? “I guess I wasn’t cut out for it,” Jack says. Hurley says Jack would make a great dad, but Jack disagrees. Jack then steps on something that Hurley recognizes as Shannon’s inhaler. They realize they’re back at the caves which had once served as their living quarters. This visit was a clever way for the show to remind us of the Adam and Eve skeletons, one of Lost’s oldest mysteries. Hurley probably speaks for many of the show’s viewers when he says he forgot they were there. “Wait a second,” he wonders. “What if we time traveled again, to like, dinosaur times. And then we died and then we got buried here? What if these skeletons are us?” Some form of that question has been on fans’ minds for six years. Who will the skeletons turn out to be? I’ll come back to this…

Jack finds his father’s smashed coffin and tells Hurley how he found the caves in the first place, “chasing the ghost of my dead father.” If anybody could understand that, it would be Hurley. As they continue on, Hurley gets nostalgic…and Jack gets uncharacteristically introspective.

H: This is cool, dude. Very old school.
J: What?
H: You know…you and me, trekking through the jungle, on our way to do something that we don’t quite understand. Good times. Do you mind if I ask you something?
J: Sure.
H: Why did you come back? You know, to the island?
J: Why’d you come back?
H: Back in L.A., Jacob hopped into the back of my cab and told me I was supposed to, so I came.

Jack laughs and shakes his head, as if he can’t believe Hurley came back because some stranger got in his cab and told him he was supposed to.

H: What? If you have a better reason for coming back, let’s hear it man.
J: I came back here because I was broken. And I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.
H: Dude…I’m sorry…
J: How much further we got, Hurley?

Hearing Jack judge himself so openly reminded me of how much he has changed since coming back to the island. In Season Four’s finale There’s No Place Like Home (Part II), Locke gives Jack a parting message before he and Ben descend into The Orchid to move the island. “Lie to them, Jack. If you do it half as well as you lie to yourself, they’ll believe you.”

It would seem Jack isn’t lying to himself anymore.

They finally emerge from the jungle onto a cliffside overlooking the ocean, not unlike the one Locke and Sawyer found themselves on, though this one has more grass and vegetation around, not just rock. Right on the edge of the cliff is a tall stone tower, which Hurley says is a lighthouse. “I don’t understand,” Jack says. “How is it that we’ve never seen it before?”

“I guess we weren’t looking for it,” Hurley says.

I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE SOMEBODY’S WATCHING ME
Jack and Hurley ascend to the top, and since I couldn’t find the best words to describe the contraption that greets them, I’ll steal from both Lostpedia and Doc Jensen’s column at EW.com to say that they find a giant dial surrounding a firebowl, with a panel of four mirrors to reflect the firelight and with a list of names handwritten all along the perimeter of the dial, each following a number.

Hurley says they should “get started” while they wait for Jacob. Following the instructions written on his arm, he starts pulling on a chain to turn the dial, asking Jack to tell him when he gets to 108 (one of the show’s magic numbers, of course: the total of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, as well as the number of minutes on the countdown to pushing the button in the hatch).

But as the chain spins the dial number by number, Jack sees reflections in the mirrors, then sees the names written on the edge, including Sawyer’s, Sayid’s and his own. He grabs the chain from Hurley and moves it to 23, the number next to his name. When they look in the mirror, Jack sees the house he grew up in. It dawns on him that Jacob has been watching them their whole lives. He can barely sustain the weight of knowing that Jacob may have been influencing events in his life since childhood. When Hurley can’t tell him why Jacob has been watching them and why his name is written on the dial, Jack grabs a spyglass and shatters the mirrors.

Now that I’ve recounted it, take a look at the real deal.

Maybe Jack hasn’t changed so much after all. Another great observation that was made about him came in last season’s Namaste, when Sawyer said that when Jack was running things, he didn’t think; he just reacted. Smashing the mirror seems to fit that side of Jack’s personality to a tee.

It’s all very sad. Jack looks angry and heartbroken as realization dawns on him in the lighthouse. Hurley looks sad and confused as Jack becomes volatile and smashes the mirrors. Jack goes to sit down a little ways down the cliffside, while Hurley sits alone by the lighthouse door. Jacob shows up, looking unconcerned when Hurley tells him what happened.

H: Wait a minute? Did you want Jack to see what was in that mirror? Why?
J: It was the only way for him to understand how important he is.
H: Well if that was your plan I think it backfired, man.
J: Jack is here ‘cause he has to do something. He can’t be told what that is, he’s got to find it himself. Sometimes you can just hop in the back of someone’s cab and tell them what they’re supposed to do. Other times you have to let them look out at the ocean for a while.
H: Well next time, how about you tell me everything up front? I’m not big on secret plans, okay?
J: I couldn’t risk you not coming, Hugo. I had to get you and Jack as far away from that temple as I possibly could.
H: What, why?
J: Because someone is coming there. Someone bad.
H: Dude…we gotta warn them.
J: You can’t warn them, Hugo. I’m sorry, it’s too late.

I don’t like the implication that Hurley is weak or easily manipulated, but what I’m more interested in is Jacob’s attitude about the person coming to the island.  It appears that the name at 108 on the dial, which Hurley was instructed to turn to, is Wallace. There has not been anyone known by that name on the show up to this point, so is Wallace (see here at a different angle) a new character of some unknown significance? Is he the person that Jacob said is coming to the island? Or is it possible that nobody is really coming to the island and that the purpose of the journey was entirely a ruse designed to get Jack to the lighthouse? And what will Jack do once he’s done staring at the ocean? What is Jack on the island to do? Might he be Jacob’s chosen one, the last candidate standing? Could that be why his name is written differently than all the rest on the dial? While most of the names have the first letter capitalized and the rest lowercase, “Shephard” is in all caps, the handwriting looks different and it looks as though it were written more recently, in darker ink.

There are other observations about the lists of names worth mentioning. For one, I wanted to pose the possibility, after seeing the name “Littleton” in the Jacob’s cave in the previous episode, that the name could refer not to Claire but rather to Aaron. More on him in a bit…

And what do the names on the dial reveal that the names in the cave did not? Well, this time we see Kate’s name, at #51 (and not crossed out yet.) Additional names I noticed were Linus (Ben or Roger?), Rousseau (Danielle or Alex?), Lewis (Charlotte, or perhaps one of her Dharma-member parents),  Montand (Rousseau’s team member who lost his arm at the Temple wall) and Friendly (as in Tom Friendly, The Other Formerly Known as Bearded Dude Who Took Walt). Now according to Lostpedia, there are a number of other familiar names which were seen either in the cave (C) or on the lighthouse dial (L) or both:

32 – Rutherford (Shannon, C & L)
48 – Stanhope (Goodwin or Harper, L)
58 – Burke (Juliet, C & L)
62 – Inman (Kelvin, L)
101 – Faraday (C & L)
124 – Dawson (Michael or Walt, C & L)
171 – Straume (Miles, C)
195 – Pace (Charlie, C)
226 – Carlyle (Boone, C)
301 – Mars (Edward, C)

I didn’t see any of those initially, and I did a lot of freeze framing and slow motion tracking through these scenes. Many names were just not clear enough to read, and maybe if I had an HDTV that wouldn’t have been an issue and I would have been able to make these out. But I’m not convinced. Lostpedia does offer a freeze-frame confirming Faraday’s name in the cave (lower right, a little above the ABC logo). They also claim that this picture shows Charlie’s name, and I’ll admit I can make out the number 195 starting just below the “A” of Mattingley, but there is no way you can tell that the rest says Pace, especially since it’s obscured by Sawyer’s torch. There are no other pictures on the site confirming the appearance of these other names, and frankly I don’t think they’re seen at all, so I don’t know where the Lostpedia people are getting their info. But just for yuks and giggles, let’s say I’m wrong and those names are confirmed. It should be noted, then, whose names aren’t on that list: Desmond, Ana Lucia, Eko (though we don’t really know his last name), Libby, Bernard, Rose, Frank, Arzt, Charles Widmore, Eloise Hawking and other miscellaneous characters who have been connected to the island.

Oh and finally, is it the Man in Locke who is headed to The Temple? Is that who Jacob is worried about? And whoever it is, he says it’s too late to warn them. So what’s in store for Sayid, Miles, Dogen, Lennon, Cindy and everyone else there?

GIRL GONE WILD
While all this has been going, we’ve also been getting reacquainted with Island Claire…though reacquainted may not be the best word since she seems like an entirely new person. Last seen on a ridge saving Jin’s life from Aldo, she comes down looking all Jane of the Jungle with her dirty face, tangled, unkempt hair, plaid shirt and rifle. Jin asks how long she’s been out here. “Since you all left. How long ago was that?” she asks, casually. When he says three years, she doesn’t have much of a reaction. She doesn’t seem too surprised to see him and she doesn’t have questions about what happened to all of them. She helps him up and says she has to get him somewhere safe.

He wakes up later in a sort of thatched hut, a primitive structure of sticks and branches, partly covered by a tarp. He is alone, and sees that the hut is filled with all kinds of junk and materials, as well as a box of dynamite that must have come from the Black Rock. It seems that in Rousseau’s absence, Claire has won the role of the Crazy Island Lady who lives in the jungle and sets traps (she confirms that the bear trap Jin stepped in was one of hers). Need further evidence of Claire having flown over the cuckoo’s nest? How about the bassinet with the freaky animal skull and fur all made up to look like a baby. It looks like something Buffalo Bill would do in The Silence of the Lambs.

Claire returns with Aldo’s companion Justin, still alive. She ties him up across from Jin and says she plans to have a talk with him about where they’re hiding her son. She treats Jin as if no time has passed, as if it’s not strange that she hasn’t seen him in three years and he suddenly showed up. Where has she been? Did she move through time with the rest of the 815ers and freighter folk? She also doesn’t comment on the fact that Jin speaks fluent English, a completely new development since last she saw him. “Claire, have you been out here all this time, by yourself?” he asks her with concern. “Oh no, I’m not by myself,” she says, once again very casual.

As she stitches him up, Claire says she’s had to move around to avoid being caught by Justin’s people. When Jin asks what she’s going to do with him, Claire says, “He’s gonna tell me where they’ve got my baby. Where they’ve got Aaron.”

“We don’t have your kid!” Justin insists, but she is convinced he’s lying.

J: Claire, how do you know they took him? How can you be so sure?
C: How can I be so sure? Okay well first my father told me, and then my friend told me, so I’m pretty damn sure.
J: Your friend? Who’s your friend?
C: My friend. You’re still my friend, aren’t you Jin?

This exchange is the first time she calls Jin by name. Of course he’s still her friend, he tells her, but he is clearly freaked out by her personality makeover. After fixing him, she picks up an axe and begins questioning Justin. When Jin tries to calm her down, she says the Others took her to The Temple, stuck her with needles, branded her and tortured her. She says they would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped. Justin counters that they captured her because she was out in the jungle alone, picking off his people. He says she’s remembering wrong. She’s had enough and is about to go in for the kill when Jin shouts, “Kate took her! Kate took Aaron. She took him with her when she left the island.”

“What do you mean she took him?” Claire asks with confusion.

“He’s been with her, with Kate, for the past three years. Aaron is three,” Jin says.

Justin says Jin is telling the truth. “We had nothing to do with this.” Claire looks confused and distressed, not unlike the way Jack looks when discovering his house in the lighthouse mirror. Justin says if she lets him go, he won’t tell his people he saw her. But Claire suddenly swings the axe at him, landing a fatal blow. She walks outside, leaving the axe buried in his chest. Too bad. As Others go, Justin seemed like a nice guy and a straight shooter. He was willing to reveal info, even if Aldo kept shushing him Dr. Evil-style; he seemed to be looking out for Jin and Kate’s safety; and he was upfront with Claire, even if she couldn’t see it.

When she comes back in, she tells Jin that if she hadn’t killed him, he’d have killed her.

J: Claire, please, whatever you’re thinking…
C: Why’d you say that Kate was raising Aaron?
J:  I was lying.
C: Why?
J: Because I wanted to save his life. But you were right. The Others have your baby. Aaron is at The Temple. I know because I saw him there. But you’ll need me to get him.
C: How do we get in?
J: There’s a secret way. No one will see us.
C: Thank you, Jin. Thank you. And I’m so glad to know you were lying, because if what you said was the truth, if Kate was raising Aaron, I’d kill her.

At first she looks like she sees through him when he says Aaron is at The Temple, but she comes around so suddenly it’s like somebody flicked a switch inside her. Is Claire in command of her own faculties, or is she being manipulated by an outside force? Perhaps a force like the one who enters her hut at that moment: the Man in Locke. A quick look of surprise crosses his face when he sees Jin, who is equally surprised to see him. “John?” he says.

“This isn’t John,” Claire says with a smile as if it should be obvious. “This is my friend.” How does she know this isn’t John? And who or what does she think he is? What does she remember about previous events on the island leading up to her disappearance?

I’m now worried about Jin, not just because he’s with the Man in Locke, but for saying he saw Aaron at The Temple. What happens when they go there and she finds out he was lying? Just please tell me that Jin won’t die. After Sun thought he was dead, found out he was alive, came back to island but ended up in the wrong time and is now finally getting close to reuniting with him…if he dies before she reaches him, or just after, it will be beyond cruel.

READER’S COMMENTS
Last week, I put a question to you all asking if you think Jacob is essentially a good guy and the Man in Black a bad guy, or if their presumed roles might be reversed. Thanks to everyone who sent me their thoughts. All three of you. Okay, so the responses didn’t come gushing in, but as I expected, each reply I did receive offered some great opinions and perspectives, so allow me to share.

We’ll begin with Denise B., who thinks we’re in for a wide-open ending:

I think we will get to a point where the writers will set it up so that the audience will have to decide for itself whether Jacob is the good guy and the Man in Black is the bad guy. And the new storytelling convention of the sideways timeline indicates to me that the writers want to show the fanbase the range of possibilities to please those who would want to see our favorite characters have a different life without a devastating plane crash on a mysterious island AND to please those who want to see most of the mysteries solved. I think the finale will leave it open-ended in way. I keep thinking it will end like The Sopranos where at first we’ll be like “WTF?! They ended it like that!” but then we’ll see the great genius behind it – we’ll just have to fill in our version of a happy ending – or not. I could be totally wrong and maybe they’ll resolve everything important but I just doubt they’ll be able to hit it all in the next 15 hours or so left.

I agree that not everything important is likely to be resolved, but of course we probably all have a different view of what’s important. But I don’t think we’re headed for as open-to-interpretation a scenario as Denise does. I think there will be some things to keep us talking after the final scene, even some big things, but I think Damon and Carlton have a pretty solid end in store. My guess is this will not be a Sopranos repeat. Also, I don’t think that the sideways timeline is just a way to please everyone. I don’t think the show would go so far to cater to the fans. In my mind, there has to be a significant reason for the sideways timeline and it has to connect to the island events that we’ve been observing all along. But Denise is onto something when she comments on the 15 hours that are left (only 13 actually, as we head into tonight); there’s an awful lot of ground left to cover.

Next up is Nic A., who drew some insightful comparisons between Jacob/Man in Black and a couple of minor characters from The Bible. I’m sort of reluctant to post his comments, as they’re smarter and deeper than anything I’ve written in three years of doing this. But I’m ready to have my thunder stolen:

Personally I don’t think we’re headed for a total flip of who represents good versus evil. I think they will stick to Jacob being the ‘good guy’ and MIB the bad. But to quote one of your comments, I wouldn’t be surprised if the overall message ends up being “often times, the water does get muddied.”

 

I also get the sense this feeds into the common Western myths of good and evil. Jacob’s agenda is ‘good,’ he cares and loves humanity. But like the God of the Old Testament he acts in ways that appear cryptic, at times frustrating.  Calculated, manipulative even. MIB of course is the other side of human nature: he appears more impulsive, passionate, genuine even in some sense. Someone (something?) we can all relate to, closer to the human animal.

 

It’s a notion commonly used to depict the way Evil lures us away from good: the Devil whispers in our ear that he is one of us, that he cares about us and is just another pawn in the game played by an uncaring God. All He wants is to return to the home He’s been cast from, take the power that should never have been kept to just one being and spread it among us all, where it all belongs. The ultimate man of the people versus the ultimate captain of industry.

 

And isn’t that almost exactly the story MIB tries to sell those he wants to ‘recruit’ That all he wants is to go home? That he was a man who could feel anger, love, sadness, just like the rest of us? After all, who is Satan but God’s once most powerful, faithful angel? The one whose original sin was only to question God’s omnipotence and demand the infinite knowledge be shared with all instead?

 

In his own version of the facts the Devil was struck by a vengeful, selfish God, punished and imprisoned. Merely for being human. Of course in the myth that’s a warped truth, the better to seduce us into giving in to our basest instincts.

 

And in that lies another critical device that is often used in popular myths (and in Lost) to help us examine the question of ‘free will’: Temptation.

That’s good shit, Nic. Good shit indeed.

Finally, Taryn I. didn’t say much about this Jacob/MIB question, but had some interesting thoughts on the blonde kid who showed up in the jungle. First, this:

When the blonde kid says “you can’t kill him,” isn’t he talking about James because he is one of the candidates? It seems like the kid shows up because he knows Man in Locke might kill the people he’s not supposed to (Richard and James) and is reminding him of the rules.

This is interesting to me, because while in some ways it definitely makes sense that the kid would be there to warn Man in Locke that he can’t kill Sawyer (or Richard, earlier), I never got the sense that Man in Locke asked Sawyer to accompany him so that he could kill him. From their initial encounter at Sawyer’s house, I absolutely got the impression that Man in Locke did want to show Sawyer the cave and then enlist his help. Now maybe he is planning to use Sawyer for his plan and kill him later, and the boy detected that. But I didn’t think that his intention was to kill Sawyer at this time. Maybe I’m in the minority, though. Nic got the same feeling that Taryn did:

Cool to see how the same moment can be interpreted by different people; when ‘Young Jacob’ tells MIB “You can’t kill him” I didn’t think for an instant he was referring to anyone other than Sawyer. A writer’s trick to draw out the suspense and make us anticipate MIB’s intentions re: Sawyer – but you’re right, he could in fact be talking about any number of ‘hims.’ Interesting.

Taryn’s second musing on the mystery tyke also sparks my interest:

I like the idea that the kid is little Jacob, but if that’s the case, why would Man in Locke tell James that Jacob is dead? The blonde hair reminded me of Aaron, but that might be a stretch. You’ll remember what the build up was about Aaron when Claire saw the psychic…wasn’t there some gravity to what Aaron could become? The fact that they never really played that out fully makes me think that he’ll have a bigger role in this final season, especially with Claire back.

She is definitely correct in saying that Aaron has been built up over the years. In the past, I’ve cited a comment from J.J. Abrams going way back to Season One that Aaron is supposed to factor into Lost’s conclusion in a pretty major way. Now that was a long time ago; Abrams hasn’t been directly involved with the show’s storyline since Season One, and lots of things could have changed since then as Damon and Carlton have plotted the meta-arc. Still, the idea that this kid could be Aaron…I dig that.

Thanks to Denise, Nic and Taryn for stepping into the spotlight. The rest of you are condemned to obscurity.

IF YOU BUILD IT HE WILL COME
Feeling the pressure to compete with Nic, I decided to share something I was going to hold off on. Don’t get overexcited, but I’m pretty sure I’ve solved a huge piece of the Lost puzzle. Are you ready to have your minds blown? Here it is: Remember Field of Dreams? Well take out the word “Field” and replace it with the word “Island.” In Field of Dreams, protagonist Ray Kinsella built a baseball field on his farm so that his late father’s hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox, could return from the dead and play ball. But really, Ray was trying to make peace with his father, who he’d had a contentious relationship with since his teenage years, even refusing to play catch in the yard. His father died before they made peace, and that has affected him ever since.

Okay, now stay with me. At one point in the episode What Kate Does, Jack finds Dogen sitting at a desk and rolling a baseball around. When Jack asks him what it is, Dogen answers directly: “It’s a baseball.” Then in the preview for tonight’s episode, I saw a quick shot of that baseball falling onto the ground. And it hit me! Jack just wants to play catch with his dad! This whole thing is about Jack trying to make peace with his father!  The whole damn thing is a delusion playing out in Jack’s head. He “built” the island and created this complex mythology because he was never able to deal with Christian’s disapproval head-on. Now that Christian is dead, Jack has created this elaborate fantasy as a coping mechanism.

It’s all gonna fall into place. Just watch.

You’re welcome.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-For the record, I do not actually think that (well no, I do think there’s a little bit of truth to the Jack-needs-to-make-peace-with Christian thing, but the whole Island of Dreams scenario is just me wasting your time). And because I feel guilty for subjecting you to my mostly dumb, mostly fake theory, I’m going to make it up to you with some real intel about the rest of the season. For starters, and you may have heard this one already, it has been confirmed that Shannon will return to the show before all is said and done. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg o’tease. What else have Damon and Carlton said lately?

Frank, Ilana, Miles and Claire will not receive sideways-centric storylines, though they will feature prominently in other character’s sideways experiences; Jacob was telling the truth about someone coming to the island; we will learn more about Libby’s backstory, like perhaps why she was in the mental hospital with Hurley; we will see Charlie again; we will see Vincent the dog again; we might see Walt again; we will find out whether Desmond was really on Sideways Flight 815; we will probably not find out what happened to Ben’s childhood gal pal Annie; we will probably get an answer about the Hurleybird (if you don’t know what that is, check out these brief clips: uno, dos, tres); and they wouldn’t say whether or not we’ll learn why pregnant women were dying on the island. Episode 15 is currently shooting, and the series finale – episodes 17 and 18 – are being written right now. Quite possibly as you read this, Damon and Carlton are holed up committing the finale of Lost to paper. So far off, and yet so close.

-I want to come back to the skeletons in the cave and a few other things related to them. There is an interesting pattern unfolding this season, which Doc Jensen predicted last year in his EW.com write-ups. Back in Season One, the flashbacks in the two-hour pilot episode didn’t focus on one character in particular. Then beginning with the third hour, the character-centric flashbacks began. First Kate. Then Locke. Then Jack, in the series’ fifth episode, which was called White Rabbit. So far, this season is following the same course: a two-hour premiere with no central figure in the flashes. Then a Kate-centric sideways episode, then Locke, and now Jack. It was in White Rabbit that Jack discovered the caves and his father’s empty coffin. Now in this episode, we re-visit the caves and the coffin. The bodies weren’t actually seen until the following episode, House of the Rising Sun, which centered on…well, take a guess. And then see tonight’s title below for a clue as to whether this pattern might continue.

So in House of the Rising Sun, Jack, Kate, Locke and Charlie go to the caves and discover the bodies. Jack examines the remains and says that as far as he can tell, there is no trauma to the bones. He also says it takes clothes 40 to 50 years to degrade to the point of the rags on these corpses. And in a pocket on one of the bodies, he finds a pouch. And in that pouch he finds this.

Just after Locke dubs them Adam and Eve, the scene cuts away…to Jin and Sun.

I’m just sayin.’

Oh and one other thing. When Jack goes to his ex’s house to see if his son is there, he lets himself in with a key that is hidden under a little ceramic statue. A statue of a white rabbit. Just one of many direct and indirect uses of rabbits over the show’s history. But still…pretty cool.

-If there was still any question as to whether the Man in Black has been using Christian Shepherd, this episode settles it, right? After all, Claire was last seen on the island in Christian’s company, and now she tells Jin that she’s sure the Others have Aaron because first her father and then her friend told her so. And seeing as her friend is the Man in Locke, it all connects. But why did the Man in Black/Christian go after Claire? And if the Man in Locke is now stuck in the form of Locke, as Ilana told Ben in the previous episode, will we see Christian again? All those times we saw Christian, was it really the Man in Black, just as it’s him when we see Locke now? Or was it actually Christian, somehow quasi-resurrected and being controlled indirectly by the Man in Black? I have to think that we’ll see Christian again, especially as whatever is in store for Jack unfolds. Maybe they aren’t really headed for a sentimental game of catch, but “father” and son have to meet, don’t you think?

-On a related note, in the opening scene, Jack tells his mother over the phone that Oceanic thinks Christian’s coffin went through Berlin. Should we assume this is true, or is the airline just saying that to cover up that they still haven’t found him? Even in this timeline, could the island still have a role to play in Christian’s vanishing…even though Ben and Ethan’s (and maybe Dogen’s) presence in the sideways timeline suggests that the island is “inactive” and possibly on the ocean floor?

-Cheers to Matthew Fox for a great performance in this episode.  Whether assuring his son of his unflagging love and support, admitting to Hurley – and to himself – that he’s a broken man or pleading with Hurley to tell him why his name is on the dial, he gave us Jack at his most vulnerable and broke our hearts each time. Check out the clip of the lighthouse scene in the link further up, if you can. After seeing his house reflected in the mirror and realizing that Jacob has been watching them, he asks again, “Hurley, where’s Jacob?” Fox’s delivery in that three-word moment – the quiet desperation in his voice, the redness of his eyes – is pitch-perfect. And Jorge Garcia deserves praise too, as he always does, for matching Fox in those scenes.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
It’s the line Dogen says when Hurley hesitantly stands up to him and sends him away. According to Lostpedia, it translates as, “You are lucky that you are protected. Because if you were not protected, I would cut your head off.” Ha! Love it.

Tonight’s Episode: Sundown

 

SUBURBAN COMMANDO
As the episode began, I thought for a moment that I had mistakenly tuned into Desperate Housewives, as a minivan rode down a rather Wisteria looking lane. Turned out this suburban paradise was home to Locke, and in this opening sequence I got answers to some questions I had asked about him after watching the season premiere. Yes, he is still with Helen in this timeline, and no he did not wind up in the wheelchair as a result of an altercation with his father (which we know because Helen suggests they ditch the big to-do and instead have a shotgun wedding with her parents and his father). Helen finds Jack’s business card in Locke’s pocket and says he should take the doctor up on his offer for a free consult.

Locke still works at the box company under the supervision of Randy Nations (who will later be described by Hurley – accurately, I might add – as “a huge douche”). Although this time around, I have to side with Randy. He’s totally within his rights to fire Locke for going to a conference in Australia on the company’s dime and then not attending the conference. The bigger questions here, of course, are A) what the hell kind of conference does someone from a box company need to attend, and B) what the hell kind of conference does someone from a box company need to attend that would be worth the company paying for a trip to Australia? Two of Lost’s questions that I suspect will remain mysteries forever…

After his firing, Locke goes to the parking lot and finds the wheelchair accessible door of his van blocked by a yellow Hummer, which we soon find out is Hurley’s. After venting his frustration, Locke calms down and Hurley introduces himself as the owner of the company. This too is consistent with earlier events. Back in the Season One episode Numbers, Hurley learned from the accountant who was managing his lottery winnings that his growing collection of assets included a box company in Tustin. Also consistent is the yellow Hummer; we saw it when Hurley drove his mother to the house he had bought for her – which was on fire when they arrived.

To make up for the blocked parking space and the firing, Hurley tells Locke to go to a temp agency which he also owns and have them hook him up with a new job. His initial interview there is with some freaky lady who asks him questions about what kind of animal he would describe himself as and whether or not he sees himself as a people person.

There was something odd about this scene, not just because the lady was creepy but because there seemed to be an extended bit of time devoted to her. When Locke asks to see her supervisor, the camera holds on her close-up for an inordinately long time before she says yes and gets up. Unless her appearance is significant and foreshadows something (and I can’t imagine what that would be) then why are we lingering on her?

Wait…I think maybe I just found my answer. Turns out we’ve seen this woman before. In Season Three’s Tricia Tanaka Is Dead, Hurley’s dad takes him to see a psychic who claims she can rid him of his curse. Turns out his dad had paid her off. But guess who the psychic is?

Now that that pointless side trip is over…

I felt better when Rose showed up and announced herself as the office manager. When she hesitates to place Locke in a position at a construction site, calling it “unrealistic,” he asks her what she knows about realistic. She frankly reveals that she has terminal cancer, and that her initial reaction to the news was a refusal to accept it. Eventually she decided to stop the denial and live whatever life she had left. I bring this up because it is yet another plot point that ties to an earlier episode: Season Two’s S.O.S., in which Rose’s cancer is revealed. There is a scene where she and Locke briefly meet at the airport in Sydney, him in his wheelchair. Later on the island, she alludes to him that they’ve both been healed (she explains to Bernard still later that she knows the cancer is gone; she can feel that it’s not in her body).

On a side note, it’s kinda weird that Rose works for Hurley and just happened to be on the same flight from Sydney to Los Angeles with him. Maybe everyone from the temp agency had been to a conference. For temp agency employees. In Australia.

Back at home, just as an Oceanic rep arrives with his suitcase of knives, Locke tells Helen about being fired because he ditched the conference to go on a walkabout. He says they wouldn’t let him go (another of my questions from two weeks ago answered) and that he yelled at them not to tell him what he can’t do. But this time, he acknowledges that they were right – showing an insight that the other Locke didn’t posses (and which the Man in Locke mocked him for when he spoke to Ben in Jacob’s cave). He pulls out Jack’s business card and tells Helen that he doesn’t want her to spend her life waiting for a miracle because there’s no such thing. She assures him that he was the only thing she was ever waiting for was him, but also says, “There are miracles, John.”

Soon we see John is his new temp position: middle school substitute teacher. He seems to like it, and when he heads into the teacher’s lounge for lunch, he exchanges a friendly introduction with the European History teacher: Ben Linus. So it appears that Ben, like his younger colleague Ethan, has a whole other life in this timeline that suggests he was never on the island.

Huh.

THE FUNERAL PARTY
Ben enters Jacob’s chamber and finds Ilana alone crying – probably more over the death of Jacob than the death of her team members (sorry Bram). She asks how they died, and Ben tells her that Locke turned into a pillar of black smoke and killed them all. He lies when he says that this was how Jacob died as well. Whether this is significant or not I don’t know, but Ilana is now under the impression that the Man in Black killed Jacob while in the form of the Smoke Monster. I wondered previously if the Man in Black can harm Jacob when he’s in smoke form. If the answer is no – which it probably isn’t, but if –  Ben’s lie might be a signal to Ilana that something is amiss.

When Ben says that Locke kicked Jacob’s body into the fire and it burned away, Ilana walks to the now-flameless pit, pulls out a sack and fills it with ash. Will these ashes provide the same protection that the ash around Jacob’s cabin provided? That the ash Bram poured around himself or that The Temple inhabitants used around the perimeter provided? The ashes Ilana takes can’t just be Jacob’s, can they? Wasn’t there wood burning in the fire? How exactly do the ashes we’ve seen provide protection against the Man in Black? That’s starting to emerge in importance to me as far as our many, many mysteries go. Is the fire pit the key to the protection? Does anything burned in this location take on a protective quality?

Ben asks llana if she knows why Locke carried Richard out into the jungle. With no tone of doubt, she says it’s because he’s recruiting.

The real Locke is still lying on the beach. I felt a pang of sadness at seeing him lying there with a crab on his head. It scurries away as Frank covers him up and says, “He’s gettin’ pretty ripe.”

When Ilana and Ben emerge, only Sun and Frank are left on the beach. Sun says the others all went to The Temple. “Right now it’s the safest place on the island,” Ilana says. “We should go there too. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

S: What makes you think that I’m going with you?
I:  Because you want to find Jin.
S: What do you know about my husband?!
I:  I know that if he’s on the island and he’s alive, then he’ll be at The Temple.

Why does she think that? It’s a big island, lots of people, lots of places. Why would she assume Jin would have found his way there?

Sun says they have to bury Locke – an especially generous gesture given how anxious she must be to arrive at the place where Jin supposedly is. As they carry Locke’s body across the beach, Ben asks Ilana why she had to bring Locke’s body to the statue.

I:  Because the people there needed to see the face of what they’re up against.
B: And what’s to stop what they’re up against from changing his face?
I:  He can’t, not anymore. He’s stuck this way.

So how much does Ilana know and understand about what’s happening? She seemed unphased upon hearing that a man turned into a giant puff of smoke and killed her comrades. Presumably she knows that the Man in Black and the Smoke Monster are one and the same, and she knows that he can’t change his form again now that he’s picked Locke. Although there must be some way of taking on a new form, however difficult it may be, seeing as he’s done it once (that we know of). We still don’t understand exactly how the Man in Black took over Locke’s body. I’ve speculated that he used Christian Shephard to get Locke off the island so that Locke might be killed and brought back, enabling him to take over the body (though he didn’t really “take over” Locke’s body; he just took on his form). I don’t know how he would have guaranteed Locke being killed off the island, but maybe there was some way he would have been able to arrange it had Ben not stepped in and taken care of it for him. When the Man in Locke first entered Jacob’s chamber and confronted his old nemesis, he said that he had found his loophole and that Jacob had no idea what he – the Man in Black – had to do to get there. At this point, we don’t have any idea either. So why is he stuck in the form of Locke?

Getting back to Ilana, she also knows that The Temple is the one safe haven left on the island. And she knows about Jin, which means she probably has information about some of the others too. Sayid, for example, who she “escorted” onto Ajira 316…

The group comes back upon the old 815 camp, and they bury Locke where some of the other island bodies are buried (I think the makeshift cemetery is home to Libby, Ana Lucia, Boone and Shannon). The skeleton of Eko’s unfinished church is nearby. When Ilana asks if anybody wants to say something about Locke, Ben finally steps forward. “I knew him. John Locke was a…a believer. He was a man of faith, he was…a much better man than I will ever be. And I’m very sorry I murdered him.” This is one of the few things Ben has ever said on the show where I actually believed him. I think his growing understanding and remorse, as well as being thrown into the position of not knowing what the hell is going on – a position to which he is unaccustomed – will continue to fuel him toward a sacrifice he will ultimately make.
Ben’s brief eulogy is touching, and as much as I love all things Frank Lapidus (seriously, how much does that guy rule?), I sort of wish the scene hadn’t ended with a joke. (Frank’s line, a runner-up for the episode’s best: “This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.”)

RECRUITMENT
With the arrival of Season Six and the revelation of the Man in Locke as the Smoke Monster comes a brilliant new device I hope we’ll get more of: SmokeyCam! I loved watching the Smoke Monster’s POV as he barreled around the island, stopping right outside Sawyer’s house (his billowing reflection visible in the window) and then retreating…the crazy sound effects – something mechanical as well as what sounds like an animal’s cry – on full audio display. That’s such a cool sound effect. What the hell is it?

After locating Sawyer, Smokey retreats back to the jungle and unties a sack from a tree which contains Richard. (That cracked me up. He had poor Richard strung up in a sack in a tree.) The Man in Locke tells him it’s time to talk.

R: What do you want?
L: What I’ve always wanted. For you to come with me.
R: Why do you look like John Locke?
L: I knew he’d get me access to Jacob. Because John’s a candidate. Or at least he was a candidate.
R: What do you mean? What do you mean a candidate?
L: Didn’t Jacob tell you any of this?
R: Any of what?
L: Oh Richard…I’m sorry. You mean you’ve been doing everything he told you all this time and he never said why? I would never have done that to you, I would never have kept you in the dark.
R: And what would you have done?
L: I would have treated you with respect. Come with me and I promise I’ll tell you everything.
R: No.
L: Are you sure about that, Richard? Because people seldom get a second chance.
R: I’m not going anywhere with you.

Man in Locke stops short when he looks past Richard and sees a boy standing there, looking all Children of the Corn. Dressed in Others garb, he is standing Christ-like with bloody arms and palms facing outward. Richard turns to see what Man in Locke is looking at, but the boy is either gone or invisible to Richard. This creepy moppet’s appearance is among the biggest WTF moments of the new season, and the fact that it seems to scare the Man in Locke fascinates me.

But he’s not the only one who’s frightened. Richard is still completely unnerved by the Man in Black’s presence (and especially in this new form). He also looks genuinely bewildered by the talk of candidates. Is it true that he has had no idea what Jacob was up to for all these many years? I also wondered if there’s any particular reason that the Man in Black has always wanted Richard to come with him, or if his desire for Richard’s allegiance is just part of an attempt to win followers.

Of course, the Man in Locke’s line that “people seldom get a second chance” carries a nice irony since he himself seems to be enjoying exactly that. And most of the 815ers seem to be as well, thanks to the alternate timeline (although since we don’t understand the nature of that yet, we can’t really say if it’s a second chance).

Man in Locke leaves Richard, promising to see him sooner than he thinks, and returns to Sawyer’s, this time in human form. Sawyer is just beginning a new stage of mourning: severe intoxication. The house is a mess, music is blaring and he’s sitting in the bedroom in boxers and a wifebeater, drinking whiskey from the bottle (sounds like my typical Wednesday night). Locke walks into the room, and Sawyer slowly takes in his visitor. Luckily he’s not too drunk yet, though he must think he is. “I thought you were dead,” he says.

“I am,” Locke answers.

When Sawyer tells him to get out of his house and Locke counters that it’s not his house but just the place where he lived for a while, Sawyer seems to take him in more fully.

S: Who are you? Cause you sure as hell ain’t John Locke.
L: What makes you say that?
S: Cause Locke was scared. Even when he was pretending he wasn’t. But you? You ain’t scared.
L: What if I told you I was the person who could answer the most important question in the world?
S: And what question is that?
L: Why are you on this island?
S: I’m on this island because my plane crashed. Cause my raft blew up. Cause the helicopter I was on was ridin’ one
too heavy.
L: That’s not why you’re here. And if you come with me, I can prove it.

WHEN YOU GOT NOTHING YOU GOT NOTHING TO LOSE
So they head off into the jungle, and while making their way, Sawyer sees the boy from earlier standing beyond the Man in Locke. This time the boy’s arms are by his side and don’t appear to be bleeding. Man in Locke is surprised that Sawyer can see him. He runs after him and trips on the way (why doesn’t he just turn into Smokey?). When he looks up, the barefoot, blonde boy is standing right above him, staring down at him with contempt.

“You know the rules,” the boy says. “You can’t kill him.”

The Man in Locke gets to his knees and borrows his physical predecessor’s common refrain: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

The boy shakes his head dismissively and walks away. Locke repeats himself, yelling this time.

So who’s the kid? Well I had no idea upon watching the show, but a number of friends have suggested with confidence that it’s young Jacob…though they all admit they don’t know why or how that makes sense. I confess that this possibility didn’t even enter my mind, but it certainly seems to make sense. Well…okay, it makes sense in Lost-world. He does look sort of like Jacob (actually I’d say he looks more like a young David Marcus, who you Trekkies know as the son of one James T. Kirk. But I digress…).

More importantly, he and the Man in Locke recognize each other and speak to each other with common understanding. But if this is Jacob, who is the “him” he refers to? Is he saying that he himself can’t be killed by the Man in Black? If so, why does he say “him” instead of “me?” When Man in Locke and Ben first entered Jacob’s chamber, even Jacob acknowledged that the Man in Black had found his loophole. So could the boy be referring to someone else that the Man in Locke intends to kill? Again with these rules and who can and can’t be killed. According to Ben, Charles Widmore broke the rules when he repeatedly left the island and had a daughter with an outsider, and when Keamy killed Alex. Upon visiting Widmore on the mainland, Ben says they both know he can’t kill Widmore. So many unexplained rules…

Is the boy even real? If he is Jacob, will he re-grow at an accelerated rate? Reader Nic A. pointed to (if I might make another Star Trek reference) Spock’s resurrection and rapid growth from boy to man in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. What does the boy’s presence mean for the Man in Locke’s plans? Whatever it means, Man in Locke doesn’t seem too concerned about it when he returns to Sawyer, even playing dumb when Sawyer asks if he caught up with the kid. “What kid?” he asks.

—

But before that happens, while Sawyer is alone, Richard runs out of the jungle in a panic.

Richard runs off as the Man in Locke returns. He and Sawyer continue their trek through the jungle, but now Sawyer is thrown off by Richard’s warning. He soon pulls a gun on Locke and asks what would happen if he pulled the trigger. Cool as can be, Locke asks, “Why don’t we find out?”

S: What are you?
L: What I am is trapped. And I’ve been trapped for so long that I don’t even remember what it feels like to be free. Maybe you can understand that. But before I was trapped I was a man, James, just like you.
S: I have a hard time believin’ that.
L: You can believe whatever you want, that’s the truth. I know what it’s like to feel joy, to feel pain, anger, fear, to experience betrayal. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. You wanna shoot me, shoot me…but you are so close James, it would be such a shame to turn back now.

Sawyer relents and they press on.

CAVE OF WONDERS
They arrive at a cliff face overlooking the ocean. A number of ladders descend to a cave opening. Man in Locke goes first, and as Sawyer follows, his ladder snaps and falls. The Man in Locke saves him and they make their way down to the cave. A scale sits on a table, holding fist-sized rocks – one dark, one light. The dark one seems to be slightly heavier. Locke picks up the light one and throws it into the ocean, telling Sawyer it’s an “inside joke.”

He leads Sawyer further into the cave and makes his revelation: names, scrawled in white all over the cave walls and ceiling, each preceded by a number and almost all of them crossed out. “That’s why you’re here,” he tells Sawyer. “That’s why you’re all here.”

Of all the names I could discern which were crossed out, the only one I recognized was Littleton (Claire). I didn’t see Cortez (Ana Lucia), Carlyle (Boone), Rutherford (Shannon), Dawson (Michael), Pace (Charlie) or Smith (Libby). I think I saw Goodspeed (Horace?), but didn’t notice any other names of people from the Dharma Initiative, the freighter or the Others. The only other names I could make out – and I didn’t recognize any of them – were Mattingley, Troupe, O’Toole and Sullivan.

But of course there were those names which were not yet crossed out, as Sawyer and Man in Locke discuss:

The absence of Kate’s name among the un-crossed out strikes me as quite conspicuous, as I assumed that the list hidden in Jacob’s ankh – which Dogen found when Jack and Co. arrived at The Temple with a dying Sayid – would correspond to the names remaining on the wall. So has she been crossed out? She must have been on there to begin with, right?

And the questions keep coming. Why did Jacob choose these people as potential candidates? What happens when someone’s name is crossed off? Claire’s name is struck out, but we don’t know how long ago that happened. She appears to be alive, but we also don’t know yet what her story is, so we can not be sure how long one can survive on the island after being crossed off. We don’t even know if being crossed off means that person is going to die (though Man in Locke refers to the names in the cave as “people whose lives he [Jacob] wasted.” And then there’s the fact that Locke had not yet been crossed off; his surrogate does that now.

Why did Jacob decide these people weren’t candidates? Is this list related to the lists that I assume have been handed down from Jacob to Richard to Ben? What about the list that Michael was given, instructing him to bring Hurley, Sawyer, Jack and Kate to the Others? Is everybody from Flight 815, or at least all those who survived the crash, on the island because of Jacob? What about the Ajira passengers?

What does it mean, if anything, that Hurley and Sayid were selected by Jacob after coming back from the island? Did they just happen to be on the plane and survive, only being identified as candidates later and prompting Jacob to lure them back to the island? Does the Man in Black have a place like this, where he has been scoring names, perhaps with a dark rock?

A QUESTION…AND THIS ONE’S NOT RHETORICAL
Okay, enough of me talking at you. It’s time to let the people speak, and I have a question to pose. I think we all assume that in this great duel of the fates for the island, Jacob is the good guy and the Man in Black is the bad guy. But what if we’re wrong?

What if Jacob is the selfish manipulator and the Man in Black is the one trying to save everyone? What if everybody who’s been doing Jacob’s bidding – Richard, Dogen, Ilana, Ben, etc. – have all been misled and misguided? I know some fans out there on the internets have mentioned this possibility. Considering that Jacob has been represented as “white” and the Man in Black, well, there it is, it would be a bold move to subvert a lifetime of cultural conditioning as to what those two colors represent. Or at the very least, it would muddy that viewpoint enough to show that we all have the capacity for both sides – something Lost‘s producers have always aimed to explore.

The show has provided clues that could suggest either outcome. In this episode, Richard told Sawyer that the Man in Locke is “not gonna tell you anything. He’s gonna kill you.” But the Man in Locke shows Sawyer exactly what he promises. And not only does he not kill him, he saves his life. He then talks about Jacob’s belief that that the island needs protecting and refers to all the names in the cave as lives Jacob has wasted. On the other hand, the way Man in Locke talked to Ben after Jacob’s death showed him to regard the castaways’ pre-island lives as pathetic and miserable. He seems to have a healthy contempt for them.

So in the spirit of interactivity, and of me finding out if more than three people are reading these things, let me know what you think. Is Jacob the good guy in all of this, with the Man in Black as his murderous enemy? Or are we headed for a flip?

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-I’ve noticed that Henry Ian Cusick’s name is still listed among the main cast members. I had read that Desmond would not be a series regular this year, though this suggests otherwise. I wonder why he wasn’t in any of the Lost Supper photos. And speaking of regulars, I’m wondering how Ilana and Frank will factor into the story as we move through the final season. I would think that if they’ve been bumped to regulars this year, there must be some pretty big stuff coming down the pike for them. I can’t wait to find out what.

-You gotta love that Helen was wearing a shirt that says “Peace & Karma.”

-I wanted to circle back to Locke’s conversation with Helen about miracles. While many elements of Locke’s flash-sideways connected to Locke’s original backstory, there were some notable differences (like acknowledging that the walkabout organizers were right to tell him he couldn’t go). Sideways-Locke’s opinions of miracles is another stark contrast to the Locke we’re familiar with. His belief in miracles comes up directly in the Season Four finale, There’s No Place Like Home (Part II). Locke tells Jack he’ll have to lie about everything that happened since they got to the island. He says it’s the only way to protect it. “It’s an island, John. No one needs to protect it!” Jack shoots back.

L: It’s not an island. It’s a place where miracles happen.
J: There’s no such thing as miracles.
L: Well…we’ll just have to see which one of us is right.

Not only does Locke feel differently in the sideways world, but apparently Jack “Nothing is Irreversible” Shephard does too.

-Seeing Locke’s body laying in the ground as Lapidus and Ben threw dirt over him was a final, sad reminder that Locke as we’ve known and loved him for years is no more. We have the sideways Locke and the Man in Locke, but we’d be remiss not to say goodbye to the original Man of Faith. RIP, John.

-Obviously one the Lost’s big themes is destiny vs. free will. Do we control our own fate, or has our course been predetermined? Eloise Hawking believes in destiny, as she told Desmond when they first met, using the example of a man on the street who gets killed in an accident. She says it wouldn’t matter if she had intervened to save him. If it wasn’t one thing today, it would be something else tomorrow. She also sets her own son, our friend Daniel Faraday, on a course that she knows will result in his death.

Faraday, on the other hand, winds up at the opposite end of the spectrum. His whole argument for detonating Jughead is that the past can be changed because people are variables. “We think, we reason, we make choices, we have free will. We can change our destiny,” he tells Jack and Kate. And until we know the meaning of the alternate timeline, we won’t know if he’s right.

But the question raised its head again in this episode, and I was obviously intrigued by the Man in Locke’s assertion that ever since Sawyer’s contact with Jacob, his choices have not been his own. Jacob met Hurley a day before Ajira 316 departed, so his influence in that case is a lot easier to consider than Sawyer’s, or Kate’s, both of whom met Jacob in their childhood. There are a lot of decisions to be made between the age of 10 and…whatever age they are now. I’m left wondering if this is the kind of issue the show would even attempt to resolve, or if in the end we’ll see that neither fate nor destiny control our lives in full, leaving Jacob and the Man in Black – or perhaps their replacements – to play out their game for all eternity. If that mysterious boy on the island is indeed Jacob, maybe that’s why he’s there and that’s what he means about the rules and not being able to kill the unknown “him.” If one is light and the other is dark, then both must exist, always. Like The Joker says to Batman in The Dark Knight, “I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

There you go: destiny.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“Well I guess I’d better put some pants on.” – Sawyer

Tonight’s Episode: Lighthouse

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