I look all white, but my dad was black
Poor Locke can’t get a break... his crappy vanagon has a crappy chairlift that sticks a couple feet above the ground. He decides to try and jump it, tumbles out of his chair, and lands face down on the front lawn. Then the sprinklers go off, soaking him. And John motherfucking Locke laughs it off?? Who the fuck is this guy? I’m really surprised to see Helen came out the front door – with a nice rock on her finger to boot! Amazing what you can do with your life when the hand of fate hasn’t been tugging you toward some mysterious island in the south pacific against your free will. Not poor Locke here after all.
The wedding is in October – next year? According to Claire’s ultrasound its late October now. Regardless, Helen wants to ditch all the formalities and have it shotgun style in Vegas, with her parents and John’s dad. (Shotgun thing just a joke or is she pregnant?) Getting along with dad – wow. John is choosing the fabric for the chair backs from a couple swatches that look like the colors of the few shirts he’s worn on the island. Just sayin’. Helen is asking him how the conference went when she finds Jack’s business card in his pants and asks about it.
“I met him at lost luggage”
“Nice guy. He offered me a free consult.”
Helen wants him to take Jack up on the offer.
”What are the odds of you just running into a spinal surgeon?”
quite a few people were asking that about Ben and Jack back in the day.
“Who knows? Maybe it’s destiny.”
“Maybe it is.”
=island=
Smokey POV is awesome, rollercoaster sounds and all – chains rattling more like it? Is the clicking some kind of tether device playing out? He’s searching – for anyone, it looks like. Empty jungle and creek, then to Dharmaville, where he/it hears music coming out of Sawyers place. Iggy and the Stooges! Nice reflection of Smokey in the window. Back thru the jungle until he comes across a rusty machete on the ground. POV stops and we see Locke picking it up. He uses it to cut down a trap from a tree, containing a beat up Richard Alpert.
“All right, Richard. Time to talk?”
L O S T
=flashsideways=
Locke wheels into work at the box factory. Got a picture of himself (standing) and Helen in Hawaii, and another of him with hair and his dad, who is wearing a jaunty beret. Asshole Randy is still his boss, so it’s not all unicorns and rainbows over here.
“Welcome back, colonel.”
Randy is curious why he blew off Ken Fisher and never picked up his credentials at the conference. John tries to apologize for flying to Australia on the company’s dime and explains it was for a personal matter, but Randy fires him.
=island=
UnLocke apologizes to Richard for punching him in the throat and dragging him off the beach. Alpert asks what he wants.
“What I’ve always wanted. For you to come with me.”
“Why do you look like John Locke?”
“I knew he’d get me access to Jacob. Because John’s a candidate... or at least he was a candidate.”
Alpert doesn’t know what he means by ‘candidate’, and Locke acts surprised that Jacob hadn’t explained anything to him.
“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. I would have treated you with respect. Come with me and I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
Smooth talker – way out on a hyperbolic limb here, but is this all Satan and God keeping the balance of souls in check on this island?
Alpert refuses.
“Are you sure about that Richard? Because people seldom get a second chance” (except in the flashsideways’).
Locke is suddenly distracted by a barefoot blonde boy in a yellow shirt and brown vest (otherwear tm), with his palms out, arms dripping blood. Alpert doesn’t see him and he is gone when Locke looks back. Is Smokey as Locke now subjected to the islands attempt at ‘fixing’ or ‘judging’ people, ala Kate and the horse, etc? I don’t think he was expecting that. Does it mean he is a candidate as well?
Back at the foot, Ben comes across a weeping Ilana. She wants to know what happened to her friends. “John Locke killed them. He turned into a pillar of black smoke and he killed them right before my eyes.” “Did he kill Jacob as well?”
“Yes”
“Then where’s his body?”
“Locke kicked him into the fire and he burned away.”
Great John Williams style strings here as Ilana gathers some dust from the fire pit and puts it into a bag. “Do you know why he carried Richard out into the jungle?”
“He’s recruiting.”
UnLocke is in Dharmaville, hoping to recruit. Sawyer is still blasting Iggy and the Stooges.
The ideal UnLocke/Smokey theme song, no?
He finds Sawyer trashed in his trashed bedroom.
“Hello James.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I am.”
The song ends and does a cool loud reverse thing before breaking to commercial.
Sawyer pours a couple drinks and toasts to Locke's death. UnLocke is surprised at how well James is taking that fact.
“I don’t give a damn if you’re dead. Or time traveling, or the ghost of Christmas past. All I care about is this whiskey. So bottoms up. And get the hell out of my house.”
UnLocke tells him it’s not his house; he just lived there for a while.
“Who are you? Cause you sure as hell ain't John Locke. Cause Locke was sacred, even when he was pretending he wasn’t. But you, you ain’t scared.”
“What if I told you I was the person who could answer the most important question in the world?”
“And what question is that?”
“Why are you on this island?”
“I’m on this island because my plane crashed, because my raft blew up, because the helicopter I was on was riding one too heavy.” Interesting when you put it that way…
“That’s not why you’re here. And if you come with me, I can prove it.”
“Well I guess I better put some pants on.”
=flashsideways=
Don’t tell Locke he can’t park in the regular space next to the empty handicapped one! There’s a big yellow hummer parked too close to Locke’s van to get in. After trying to deploy his ramp into the side of hummer (it jams, of course) he pounds on the offending vehicle and the alarm goes off.
“Dude dude...”
Hugo comes around the corner and keys off the alarm. He’s all apologetic and nice and disarms Locke.
“I haven’t seen you before. You work here?”
”Actually I own the company.”
He introduces himself and they shake. After 5 years of these guys, these simple handshakes in the flashsideswayses are really effective. They mean a lot, if that makes sense. Anyway – Locke tells Hugo he just got fired by his boss, Randy.
“Randy Nations? Yeah, that guy’s a huge douche. Tell you what, John. I own a temp agency too. Call this number and tell them that Hugo said to hook you up with a new job, pronto. And chin up – things are gonna work out.”
Locke gives him a big smile. Goddamn it’s dusty in here.
=island=
Locke’s corpse has a similar smile - and a crab behind his ear.
“He’s getting pretty ripe.”
Ilana and Ben join Lapidus, Sun and rotting Locke. Ilana is ready to lead them to the temple. When Sun questions this, Ilana tells her she knows she wants to find Jin.
“What do you know about my husband?”
“I know that if he’s on the island and he’s alive, then he’ll be at the temple.”
Sun doesn’t want to leave without burying Locke.
UnLocke and Sawyer are trudging thru the jungle. UnLocke is trying to get some answers from James (he now knows the others are at the temple) when Sawyer sees the blonde kid. UnLocke is shocked that he can see him, and takes off after the kid.
He trips over a root and is thrown at the kid’s feet.
“You know the rules. We can’t kill him.”
Of course he knows the rules! He got John Locke to kill himself. But was breaking the rules in the first place what got him trapped here?
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”
The kid walks away
“DONT TELL ME WHAT I CAN’T DO!!!”
Did Smokey not know that the baggage comes with the body? It really seems like that is what is happening here. A little transference... is Smokey now the substitute for Locke's candidacy?
Richard comes across Sawyer waiting alone in the jungle for UnLocke’s return. He wants to take Sawyer to the temple, but Sawyer tells him he’s already been there and he’d rather stick with Locke.
“That man is not John Locke”
”I know”
“Then why are you with him?”
”Because he’s got answers, says he knows why I’m on this island.”
Alpert tells him he wants to kill him.
“He doesn’t just want you dead, he wants everyone dead. Everyone you care about, all of them. And he won’t stop...” he runs away as Locke approaches.
Locke asks who he was talking to.
”Nobody. You ever catch up with the kid?”
“What kid?”
“Riiight. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
”Yes James, let’s get on with it.”
=flashsideways=
...where Locke is dealing with a crazy job interview at the temp agency (lots of “dream” job posters), and asks to see the supervisor. It’s Rose! She agrees to dispense with the bullshit and asks what kind of job John is looking for. He wants to be a coordinator on a construction site. Rose is straightforward about the limitations he has, and asks him to be more realistic.
“And what do you know about realistic?”
She tells him she has terminal cancer.
“When the doctors first told me I had a hard time accepting it. But eventually I got past the denial part and I got back to living whatever life I’ve got left. So, how about we find you a job you can do.”
No more fool’s errands.
=island= (just noticed smokey noises bring us back to the island instead of the old 'whoosh')
Sawyer is asking UnLocke if he reads books. Tells him his favorite Steinbeck is Of Mice and Men (East of Eden guy myself). Steinbeck was a little after UnLocke's time. Sawyer gives the cliffs notes to him.
“'Bout these two guys, George and Lenny. Lenny's kinda slow, causing George problems, so George walks him out in the woods, tells him to look out yonder and picture the pretty little house they’re gonna live in one day. Then he shoots Lenny in the back of the head.”
“Doesn’t sound like a happy ending.”
“It ain't.” Sawyer pulls a gun on UnLocke and asks what would happen if he put a bullet in his head.
UnLocke tells him to give it a shot. Sawyer is puzzled.
“What are you?”
“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. 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. If you want to shoot me, shoot me. But you’re so close James. It would be such a shame to turn back now.”
He can be very convincing.
Sun and the others have carried Locke’s body to the graveyard. Ilana tells them she had to take the corpse to the foot to show the Others; they needed to see the face of what they’re up against. Ben wants to know what would stop him from changing his face.
“He can’t. Not anymore. He’s stuck this way.” Wow. Huge.
Win one for the reaper, John. They put him in the grave and Ben says a few words.
“John Locke was 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.”
Lapidus picks up the shovel and starts burying the late John Locke.
“This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.”
=flashsideways=
After his usual morning routine, Locke decides to call Jacks office. He hangs up after the secretary answers, but Helen (wearing a peace and karma, joy and tranquility t shirt) wants to know who he was calling. He tells her and she asks when he’s going to see him. John says he isn’t going to see him and breaks the news about his firing, then the doorbell rings. It’s his baggage.
He tells Helen he got fired for lying to his boss about going to the conference in Sydney and asks her to open the luggage before she can ask why he lied to her, too. It’s his knives.
“What are these for?”
“My walkabout. An adventure in the outback. Man against nature. But they wouldn’t let me go. And I sat there yelling at them; shouting at them that they couldn’t tell me what I can’t do. But they were right. I’m sick of imagining what my life could be out of this chair, Helen. What it would be like to walk down the aisle with you. Cause it’s not gonna happen. So if you need me to see more doctors, have more consults, if you need me to get out of this chair I don’t blame you. But I don’t want you to spend your life waiting for a miracle, Helen, because there’s no such thing.” - was Abbadon still the one that put the walkabout idea in his head?
“There are miracles, John. And the only thing I was ever waiting for was you.”
She tears up Jack’s business card and they kiss.
=island=
UnLocke and Sawyer are at a steep cliff edge, and UnLocke tells Sawyer they need to descend. They climb down rickety ladders and UnLocke saves Sawyers life after a ladder breaks free of the cliff. They enter a cave when they reach the bottom and I get the chills. Scales evened out with a white and black rock. Maybe the skeletons weren’t Rose and Bernard after all... There’s a compass and a lute on the table. UnLocke picks up the white rock and tosses it into the ocean. Sawyer asks what that was about.
“Inside joke.”
UnLocke lights a torch and leads him further into the cave. The ceiling here is filled with hundreds of names and numbers in chalk, most scratched out. THE numbers are the ones remaining, with our castaways names!
“That’s why you’re here. That, James, is why you’re all here."
=flashsideways=
Locke is teaching a gym class and later, a health class. He goes to the teachers’ lounge (“teachers touch lives forever” plaque – can kinda be read two ways… did Alpert get the teachers touch?), where Benjamin fucking Linus is being a little tyrant about the coffee pot etiquette.
“All right, I know I sound like a broken record but how many times do we have to go over this? If you have the last cup of coffee, you remove the filter and throw it away. Fear not, I will make a fresh pot.”
Locke just wants some Earl Grey.
“Tea? Now there’s a gentleman’s drink. I don’t believe we’ve met, Ben Linus, European history.” (not vice principal?)
“John Locke, substitute.”
They shake and Ben welcomes him. A banner on the wall behind him reads “live in the present”. Are they gonna become friends? Will we see either of them ‘off island’ again, or are their stories done? Happily ever after?
=island=
Sawyer asks who wrote it all. Locke tells him it was Jacob, who died yesterday.
“You don’t seem too upset about it.”
“I’m not.”
Sawyer reads the names not crossed out
23 – Shephard
we see the Jacob touches as they go through the names and numbers.
8 – Reyes
“What's the 8?”
Locke shrugs “Jacob had a thing for numbers."
16 –Jarrah
42 – Kwon
UnLocke doesn’t know if it means Sun or Jin. Ilana seemed to think it was Jin... I think.
4 – Locke
“I think we both know him”
Last but not least is 15 – Ford
“That would be you.”
“Why would he write my name on this wall? I never even met the guy.”
“Oh no, I’m sure you did meet Jacob. At some point in your life James, probably when you were young, when you were miserable and vulnerable he came to you, he manipulated you, pulled your strings like you were a puppet and as a result choices that you thought you made were never really choices at all, he was pushing you James, pushing you to the island.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because you’re a candidate”
Sawyer wants to know what for.
“He thought he was the protector of this place. And you, James, have been nominated to take over that job. You’ve got three choices...you can do nothing and see how this all plays out, and possibly your name will get crossed out.”
He crosses out Locke’s name. Did Austen get crossed out last week? Were all the people on 815 ‘candidates’? Are all the numbers and names on the wall people that Jacob had ‘touched’?
“Second option, you can accept the job, become the new Jacob and protect the island.”
“Protect it from what?”
“From nothing, James. That’s the joke, there’s nothing to protect it from - it’s just a damn island and it will be perfectly fine without Jacob, or you, or any of the other people whose lives he wasted.”
“The third choice James is that we just go. We just get the hell off this island and we never look back.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Together. So what do you say James? Are you ready to go home?”
“Hell yes.”
Once they get there, I’m sure if Sawyer wants a little whisky they can just sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. Is the con man being conned? I’m afraid he’s not long for ‘this’ life.
The wedding is in October – next year? According to Claire’s ultrasound its late October now. Regardless, Helen wants to ditch all the formalities and have it shotgun style in Vegas, with her parents and John’s dad. (Shotgun thing just a joke or is she pregnant?) Getting along with dad – wow. John is choosing the fabric for the chair backs from a couple swatches that look like the colors of the few shirts he’s worn on the island. Just sayin’. Helen is asking him how the conference went when she finds Jack’s business card in his pants and asks about it.
“I met him at lost luggage”
ok – so was sideways Jack’s dad missing because that he represented the physical manifestation of his ‘baggage’. Sideways Locke is getting along with dad, laughing when life trips him up instead of railing against it – he lost his baggage too.
“Nice guy. He offered me a free consult.”
Helen wants him to take Jack up on the offer.
”What are the odds of you just running into a spinal surgeon?”
quite a few people were asking that about Ben and Jack back in the day.
“Who knows? Maybe it’s destiny.”
“Maybe it is.”
=island=
Smokey POV is awesome, rollercoaster sounds and all – chains rattling more like it? Is the clicking some kind of tether device playing out? He’s searching – for anyone, it looks like. Empty jungle and creek, then to Dharmaville, where he/it hears music coming out of Sawyers place. Iggy and the Stooges! Nice reflection of Smokey in the window. Back thru the jungle until he comes across a rusty machete on the ground. POV stops and we see Locke picking it up. He uses it to cut down a trap from a tree, containing a beat up Richard Alpert.
“All right, Richard. Time to talk?”
L O S T
=flashsideways=
Locke wheels into work at the box factory. Got a picture of himself (standing) and Helen in Hawaii, and another of him with hair and his dad, who is wearing a jaunty beret. Asshole Randy is still his boss, so it’s not all unicorns and rainbows over here.
“Welcome back, colonel.”
Still wargaming here, or hell, was he a colonel that was paralyzed in the first gulf war when being tortured by Sayid? Heh heh
Randy is curious why he blew off Ken Fisher and never picked up his credentials at the conference. John tries to apologize for flying to Australia on the company’s dime and explains it was for a personal matter, but Randy fires him.
=island=
UnLocke apologizes to Richard for punching him in the throat and dragging him off the beach. Alpert asks what he wants.
“What I’ve always wanted. For you to come with me.”
“Why do you look like John Locke?”
“I knew he’d get me access to Jacob. Because John’s a candidate... or at least he was a candidate.”
Alpert doesn’t know what he means by ‘candidate’, and Locke acts surprised that Jacob hadn’t explained anything to him.
“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. I would have treated you with respect. Come with me and I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
Smooth talker – way out on a hyperbolic limb here, but is this all Satan and God keeping the balance of souls in check on this island?
Alpert refuses.
“Are you sure about that Richard? Because people seldom get a second chance” (except in the flashsideways’).
Locke is suddenly distracted by a barefoot blonde boy in a yellow shirt and brown vest (otherwear tm), with his palms out, arms dripping blood. Alpert doesn’t see him and he is gone when Locke looks back. Is Smokey as Locke now subjected to the islands attempt at ‘fixing’ or ‘judging’ people, ala Kate and the horse, etc? I don’t think he was expecting that. Does it mean he is a candidate as well?
Back at the foot, Ben comes across a weeping Ilana. She wants to know what happened to her friends. “John Locke killed them. He turned into a pillar of black smoke and he killed them right before my eyes.” “Did he kill Jacob as well?”
“Yes”
“Then where’s his body?”
“Locke kicked him into the fire and he burned away.”
Great John Williams style strings here as Ilana gathers some dust from the fire pit and puts it into a bag. “Do you know why he carried Richard out into the jungle?”
“He’s recruiting.”
UnLocke is in Dharmaville, hoping to recruit. Sawyer is still blasting Iggy and the Stooges.
I'm a street walking cheetah
with a hide full of napalm
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys
Honey gotta help me please
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby detonates for me
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology !
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a fire fight
Honey gotta strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby penetrates my mind
And I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy
And honey I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy
Forgotten boy, forgotten boy
Forgotten boy said
hey forgotten boy
The ideal UnLocke/Smokey theme song, no?
He finds Sawyer trashed in his trashed bedroom.
“Hello James.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I am.”
The song ends and does a cool loud reverse thing before breaking to commercial.
Sawyer pours a couple drinks and toasts to Locke's death. UnLocke is surprised at how well James is taking that fact.
“I don’t give a damn if you’re dead. Or time traveling, or the ghost of Christmas past. All I care about is this whiskey. So bottoms up. And get the hell out of my house.”
UnLocke tells him it’s not his house; he just lived there for a while.
“Who are you? Cause you sure as hell ain't John Locke. Cause Locke was sacred, even when he was pretending he wasn’t. But you, you ain’t scared.”
“What if I told you I was the person who could answer the most important question in the world?”
“And what question is that?”
“Why are you on this island?”
“I’m on this island because my plane crashed, because my raft blew up, because the helicopter I was on was riding one too heavy.” Interesting when you put it that way…
“That’s not why you’re here. And if you come with me, I can prove it.”
“Well I guess I better put some pants on.”
=flashsideways=
Don’t tell Locke he can’t park in the regular space next to the empty handicapped one! There’s a big yellow hummer parked too close to Locke’s van to get in. After trying to deploy his ramp into the side of hummer (it jams, of course) he pounds on the offending vehicle and the alarm goes off.
“Dude dude...”
Hugo comes around the corner and keys off the alarm. He’s all apologetic and nice and disarms Locke.
“I haven’t seen you before. You work here?”
”Actually I own the company.”
He introduces himself and they shake. After 5 years of these guys, these simple handshakes in the flashsideswayses are really effective. They mean a lot, if that makes sense. Anyway – Locke tells Hugo he just got fired by his boss, Randy.
“Randy Nations? Yeah, that guy’s a huge douche. Tell you what, John. I own a temp agency too. Call this number and tell them that Hugo said to hook you up with a new job, pronto. And chin up – things are gonna work out.”
Locke gives him a big smile. Goddamn it’s dusty in here.
=island=
Locke’s corpse has a similar smile - and a crab behind his ear.
“He’s getting pretty ripe.”
Ilana and Ben join Lapidus, Sun and rotting Locke. Ilana is ready to lead them to the temple. When Sun questions this, Ilana tells her she knows she wants to find Jin.
“What do you know about my husband?”
“I know that if he’s on the island and he’s alive, then he’ll be at the temple.”
Sun doesn’t want to leave without burying Locke.
UnLocke and Sawyer are trudging thru the jungle. UnLocke is trying to get some answers from James (he now knows the others are at the temple) when Sawyer sees the blonde kid. UnLocke is shocked that he can see him, and takes off after the kid.
So Jacob did his own ‘infecting’ of them all off-island with his touch. Now Smokey is in a body that has been touched/infected by Jacob, and he’s dealing with this kid from his past on the island. A young Jacob?
He trips over a root and is thrown at the kid’s feet.
“You know the rules. We can’t kill him.”
Of course he knows the rules! He got John Locke to kill himself. But was breaking the rules in the first place what got him trapped here?
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”
The kid walks away
“DONT TELL ME WHAT I CAN’T DO!!!”
Did Smokey not know that the baggage comes with the body? It really seems like that is what is happening here. A little transference... is Smokey now the substitute for Locke's candidacy?
Richard comes across Sawyer waiting alone in the jungle for UnLocke’s return. He wants to take Sawyer to the temple, but Sawyer tells him he’s already been there and he’d rather stick with Locke.
“That man is not John Locke”
”I know”
“Then why are you with him?”
”Because he’s got answers, says he knows why I’m on this island.”
Alpert tells him he wants to kill him.
“He doesn’t just want you dead, he wants everyone dead. Everyone you care about, all of them. And he won’t stop...” he runs away as Locke approaches.
So is this the twist here – all the Jacob touched people on the island need to die, so that their sideways lives will be the real ones. Will Sawyer be the next to go on the island, with a happy sideways life where he and Juliet are buying each other coffee?
Locke asks who he was talking to.
”Nobody. You ever catch up with the kid?”
“What kid?”
“Riiight. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
”Yes James, let’s get on with it.”
=flashsideways=
...where Locke is dealing with a crazy job interview at the temp agency (lots of “dream” job posters), and asks to see the supervisor. It’s Rose! She agrees to dispense with the bullshit and asks what kind of job John is looking for. He wants to be a coordinator on a construction site. Rose is straightforward about the limitations he has, and asks him to be more realistic.
“And what do you know about realistic?”
She tells him she has terminal cancer.
“When the doctors first told me I had a hard time accepting it. But eventually I got past the denial part and I got back to living whatever life I’ve got left. So, how about we find you a job you can do.”
No more fool’s errands.
=island= (just noticed smokey noises bring us back to the island instead of the old 'whoosh')
Sawyer is asking UnLocke if he reads books. Tells him his favorite Steinbeck is Of Mice and Men (East of Eden guy myself). Steinbeck was a little after UnLocke's time. Sawyer gives the cliffs notes to him.
“'Bout these two guys, George and Lenny. Lenny's kinda slow, causing George problems, so George walks him out in the woods, tells him to look out yonder and picture the pretty little house they’re gonna live in one day. Then he shoots Lenny in the back of the head.”
“Doesn’t sound like a happy ending.”
“It ain't.” Sawyer pulls a gun on UnLocke and asks what would happen if he put a bullet in his head.
UnLocke tells him to give it a shot. Sawyer is puzzled.
“What are you?”
“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. 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. If you want to shoot me, shoot me. But you’re so close James. It would be such a shame to turn back now.”
He can be very convincing.
Sun and the others have carried Locke’s body to the graveyard. Ilana tells them she had to take the corpse to the foot to show the Others; they needed to see the face of what they’re up against. Ben wants to know what would stop him from changing his face.
“He can’t. Not anymore. He’s stuck this way.” Wow. Huge.
Win one for the reaper, John. They put him in the grave and Ben says a few words.
“John Locke was 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.”
Lapidus picks up the shovel and starts burying the late John Locke.
“This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.”
=flashsideways=
After his usual morning routine, Locke decides to call Jacks office. He hangs up after the secretary answers, but Helen (wearing a peace and karma, joy and tranquility t shirt) wants to know who he was calling. He tells her and she asks when he’s going to see him. John says he isn’t going to see him and breaks the news about his firing, then the doorbell rings. It’s his baggage.
He tells Helen he got fired for lying to his boss about going to the conference in Sydney and asks her to open the luggage before she can ask why he lied to her, too. It’s his knives.
“What are these for?”
“My walkabout. An adventure in the outback. Man against nature. But they wouldn’t let me go. And I sat there yelling at them; shouting at them that they couldn’t tell me what I can’t do. But they were right. I’m sick of imagining what my life could be out of this chair, Helen. What it would be like to walk down the aisle with you. Cause it’s not gonna happen. So if you need me to see more doctors, have more consults, if you need me to get out of this chair I don’t blame you. But I don’t want you to spend your life waiting for a miracle, Helen, because there’s no such thing.” - was Abbadon still the one that put the walkabout idea in his head?
“There are miracles, John. And the only thing I was ever waiting for was you.”
She tears up Jack’s business card and they kiss.
=island=
UnLocke and Sawyer are at a steep cliff edge, and UnLocke tells Sawyer they need to descend. They climb down rickety ladders and UnLocke saves Sawyers life after a ladder breaks free of the cliff. They enter a cave when they reach the bottom and I get the chills. Scales evened out with a white and black rock. Maybe the skeletons weren’t Rose and Bernard after all... There’s a compass and a lute on the table. UnLocke picks up the white rock and tosses it into the ocean. Sawyer asks what that was about.
“Inside joke.”
UnLocke lights a torch and leads him further into the cave. The ceiling here is filled with hundreds of names and numbers in chalk, most scratched out. THE numbers are the ones remaining, with our castaways names!
“That’s why you’re here. That, James, is why you’re all here."
=flashsideways=
Locke is teaching a gym class and later, a health class. He goes to the teachers’ lounge (“teachers touch lives forever” plaque – can kinda be read two ways… did Alpert get the teachers touch?), where Benjamin fucking Linus is being a little tyrant about the coffee pot etiquette.
“All right, I know I sound like a broken record but how many times do we have to go over this? If you have the last cup of coffee, you remove the filter and throw it away. Fear not, I will make a fresh pot.”
Locke just wants some Earl Grey.
“Tea? Now there’s a gentleman’s drink. I don’t believe we’ve met, Ben Linus, European history.” (not vice principal?)
“John Locke, substitute.”
They shake and Ben welcomes him. A banner on the wall behind him reads “live in the present”. Are they gonna become friends? Will we see either of them ‘off island’ again, or are their stories done? Happily ever after?
=island=
Sawyer asks who wrote it all. Locke tells him it was Jacob, who died yesterday.
“You don’t seem too upset about it.”
“I’m not.”
Sawyer reads the names not crossed out
23 – Shephard
we see the Jacob touches as they go through the names and numbers.
8 – Reyes
“What's the 8?”
Locke shrugs “Jacob had a thing for numbers."
ties to Valenzetti Equation in a real way. "The numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, are explained in the Sri Lanka Video, as the numerical values to the core environmental and human factors of the Valenzetti Equation." The numbers are the names and the names are the numbers.
16 –Jarrah
42 – Kwon
UnLocke doesn’t know if it means Sun or Jin. Ilana seemed to think it was Jin... I think.
4 – Locke
“I think we both know him”
Last but not least is 15 – Ford
“That would be you.”
“Why would he write my name on this wall? I never even met the guy.”
“Oh no, I’m sure you did meet Jacob. At some point in your life James, probably when you were young, when you were miserable and vulnerable he came to you, he manipulated you, pulled your strings like you were a puppet and as a result choices that you thought you made were never really choices at all, he was pushing you James, pushing you to the island.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because you’re a candidate”
Sawyer wants to know what for.
“He thought he was the protector of this place. And you, James, have been nominated to take over that job. You’ve got three choices...you can do nothing and see how this all plays out, and possibly your name will get crossed out.”
He crosses out Locke’s name. Did Austen get crossed out last week? Were all the people on 815 ‘candidates’? Are all the numbers and names on the wall people that Jacob had ‘touched’?
“Second option, you can accept the job, become the new Jacob and protect the island.”
“Protect it from what?”
“From nothing, James. That’s the joke, there’s nothing to protect it from - it’s just a damn island and it will be perfectly fine without Jacob, or you, or any of the other people whose lives he wasted.”
“The third choice James is that we just go. We just get the hell off this island and we never look back.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Together. So what do you say James? Are you ready to go home?”
“Hell yes.”
Once they get there, I’m sure if Sawyer wants a little whisky they can just sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. Is the con man being conned? I’m afraid he’s not long for ‘this’ life.
posted by karmacomedian at 1:06 PM
