when men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go...
First a podcast update - the date on Claire's ultrasound was a fuckup. Flashsideways Oceanic flight 815 landed in LA on 9/22/04.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
=flashsideways=
Jack enters his bachelor pad . There’s a Photoshop disasters-looking picture with 90's mushroom hairdo-ed Jack in a tux, posing with Mom & Dad, and also a real picture of Jack and Dad years later as docs. Green mug like the hatch. Jack walks in (past a lot of mirrors) and starts getting dressed quickly. He stops to look at himself in the bathroom mirror, and it seems like he notices the appendix scar on his belly for the first time – he searches for the memory but can’t find it. The phone jars him back to reality(?). It’s his mom freaking out – Christian’s coffin is headed for Berlin, they still haven’t found the body, and she can’t find his will. Jack tells her not to worry, he’ll be over later to help search for it. He asks when he had his appendix taken out . Mom says he was 7, 8 maybe (didn’t the scar look a little fresher and bigger than it would be if he had had it removed that long ago?), he collapsed at school and his dad wanted to operate but they wouldn’t let him. Doesn’t he remember?
“Yeah, I... I guess I do.”
He sees the time (2:51) and freaks out, tells mom he’s gotta go.
"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
He pulls up to Saint Mary’s Academy and approaches a sullen kid waiting on the stairs. Jack apologizes for being late.
“Sorry, David.”
“It’s okay, dad.”
Whoa.
Plane whoosh back to the
=island=
Smokey clacks reserved for Locke episodes? Something to keep an ear out for.
Jack’s reflection is staring back at him from a pool outside of the temple. He looks up and seems to be looking right at us for a bit in a long shot. Almost Truman showy. Dogen comes up behind him, relieved to find Jack didn’t leave the temple.
“Is leaving an option?”
“Everything is an option, but I would have to stop you.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty.”
Dogen asks if Ford, Austen and Kwon are coming back, to which Jack replies probably not.
“I appreciate your honesty.”
In the courtyard Hurley and Miles have apparently been playing tic tac toe to a draw for a while.
“Tied again, dude.”
“Shocker. That’s it for me.”
Hurley goes off to look for some food, and finds Jacob at the magic spring. He needs Hugo's help and tells him to get a pen to write a few things down.
“What kind of things?”
“Someone is coming to the island. I need you to help him find it.”
Desmond is my first thought… will he end up being Jacob’s loophole somehow?
L O S T
=flashsideways=
Jacks pad – the kid’s room, where Jack has hooked up cable so David can watch the Red Sox. But there’s a Dodger Stadium picture on the wall? Jack sees that he’s reading The Annotated Alice.
“I used to read this to you when you were little. You always wanted to hear about Kitty and Snowdrop, they were Alice’s...” (…black and white cats)
David just gets up and leaves. Jack follows, trying to connect, but the kid isn’t having it.
“We see each other like once a month, cant we just... get through it?” ouchie.
Grandma calls to remind Jack she needs his help looking for Christians’ will. He tells David he’ll be back in an hour and they’ll have some dinner.
=island=
Sayid joins Jack in the courtyard, wanting to know why all the Others are staring at him.
“You told me that these people think I have an infection, that they wanted to give me some mysterious pill you instructed me not to take, and then you disappeared. What are you hiding from me?”
Jack tells Sayid about the poison and that what the Others believe has happened to Sayid also happened to someone else.
“Who?”
Infected Claire (someone on the podcast this week came up with “Claireseau” – I like it, but it’s too long. She’s just Claire.) frees Jin from the bear trap. She tells him she’s been in the jungle since he left three years ago.
Hurley’s traversing through the temple tunnels, checking the notes on his arm against the symbols on the wall when Dogen arrives and demands to know what he’s doing.
“Nothing. I’m just, you know, looking, cause I’m a big fan of temples and like… history, Indiana Jones stuff.”
Dogen orders him back to the courtyard and Jacob appears (standing next to a block in the wall carved with the symbols from the countdown in the Swan) to Hurley. He instructs Hugo to tell Dogen he’s a candidate. Hurley can get behind this.
“I’m a candidate, and I can do what I want.”
“Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Why don’t you go back to the courtyard?”
Dogen hilariously goes nuts in Japanese and storms off. After telling Hurley he doesn’t want to know what was just said ["You're lucky I have to protect you, otherwise I'd have cut your head off !!"], Jacob asks why Hurley didn’t bring Jack along as instructed.
“You have to bring him with you, Hugo.”
”Ok, it’s bad enough you already made me write down way too much stuff and I just lied to a samurai… look, if you have any idea how to get Jack to go on your little adventure, I’m listening.”
Jacob smiles.
He had an idea, ‘cause next we see, Hurley is meeting with Jack in the courtyard. He tells him about Jacob and a secret tunnel, and that Jack needs to come with him. Jack tells him he’s not going anywhere.
“He told me you’d say that, so he told me to tell you ‘you have what it takes.’”
That hits Jacks execute button and, kinda tearing up, he demands to see Jacob. Hurley explains that - ”he’s kind of dead – turns up whenever he wants like Obi-Wan Kenboi. But... if you want to talk to him he’s where we’re going, dude”
“Well then let’s go see Jacob.”
Jin comes to in Claire’s ...shacky kind of thing. He’s got some funky boxers on, but they’re not as funky as Sawyers last week. The dynamite from the Black Rock is there, some baby books including 'Wish Upon a Star', which reminds me of Catch A Falling Star – the song Claire loved as a baby and wanted sung to Aaron. Also, 'Best Loved Stories'. There’s a bloody pan with surgical tools on top of a first aid kit – and a baby blue cradle with some freaky goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre Hills Have Eyes animal bone and fur baby nesting in it. Claire comes back with Justin in tow. She ties him up with plans to interrogate him about Aaron’s whereabouts, but first she tends to Jin.
“Gotta get that cleaned up. If there’s one thing that’ll kill you around here its infection.”
Heh heh, don’t she know it. Jin wants to know if she’s been here the whole time by herself.
“Oh no, I’m not by myself.”
She leaves the hut for a minute and Justin tells Jin they have got to leave.
“If we don’t get out of here now, she’s gonna kill us both.”
Jack and Hurley are walking through the jungle, with Hurley checking his arm for directions. They find Kate filling her canteen and Jack startles her, which almost results in Kate shooting him. They laugh about it, though. Hurley gives her instructions on how to get back to the temple, but she tells them she’s going to find Claire. Jack tells her to come along with the two of them and this freaks out Hurley, who tells Jack Jacob said just the two of them, that she’s not invited. Jack’s inviting her anyway, but she still wants to find Claire, and Kate heads off on her own.
=flashsideways=
Jack and mom in dads study, looking for the will. She’s frustrated, wondering why he wouldn’t have just left a copy with his lawyer.
“Why would he make it easy on us now?” Jack asks.
Mom pours herself a drink (bottle of McCutcheon on the bar, of course) and Jack declines. Is she the alcoholic here? She tells him David was really upset at the funeral, which Jack was unaware of.
“Communication’s not one of his strong suits”
”Well, it runs in the family.”
Jack tells her he was terrified of his dad.
“How do you know David isn’t terrified of you?
"Why would he be?”
”I don’t know Jack, maybe you should ask him.”
She finally finds the will and looks it over, perplexed.
“Jack? Did your father ever mention a Claire Littleton?”
Can recognition flash across your eyebrows? Because it can across Matthew Foxes.
=island=
Claire’s busy outside the hut, sterilizing the surgical instruments and sharpening an axe. Justin is busy inside the hut, trying to convince Jin to free him. They’re soon interrupted by Claire's return. She explains to Jin that she had to stitch herself up once when the Others shot her in the leg. She’s convinced they have Aaron because first her father told her, and then her friend.
“You’re still my friend, aren’t you Jin?”
“Yes of course.”
So Smokey has infected (infecdoctrinated?) Claire ‘against’ the Others using the specter of her dad and her ‘friend’– his version of room 23? She finishes with Jin and turns toward Justin, while picking up the axe. “So... now it’s your turn.”
Jack and Hurley are opening up on their trek. Hurley is wondering what happened to Jack and Kate back in LA; he thought they’d be married with a dozen kids and is sure Jack would make a great dad.
“I make a terrible dad.”
Does Hurley become Jacob and grant his friends the life they should have had, and that’s what we’re seeing in the sideways? Doubt it, but it would be a happy ending. I hope somehow Hurley is the hero when all is said and done, dude.
They come across an asthma inhaler and Hurley recognizes it.
“Dude. It’s Shannon’s.”
They’re at the caves they used to live in, with the Adam and Eve skeletons.
“I totally forgot these were in here, man. Wait a sec – 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??”
awesome.
Jacks distracted by the sight of his dad’s smashed up coffin, and he confesses to Hurley.
“Did I ever tell you how I found this place? I was chasing the ghost of my dead father. He led me here. That was his coffin before I smashed it to pieces.”
”Why’d you do that?”
“Because he wasn’t in it.”
Chasing the ghost of his dad back in the first season mirror episode, White Rabbit, just like he’s spending this episode searching for David and Jacob... "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
=flashsideways=
Jack’s back with pizza, but David is nowhere to be found. Looks like Jack's got an Aaron’s dad painting on the wall. Some time seems to have gone by as Jack is sitting in front of his ‘sliding doors’ with a beautiful view of LA behind them. He’s drinking – non alcoholic beer? Calls David (not for the first time, it seems) and apologizes if he did anything wrong. He tells him he’s heading to his mom’s house to look for him.
who is mom? We know in the old timeline he was married to Sarah a few years before the crash, and she left him for another man because he was working too much. When she sees him in the hospital after the return of the oceanic 6, she’s pregnant. Jack almost had an affair with Gabriela Busoni during the marriage, and honestly the kid kind of looks like her. More so than Sarah at least. Regardless, the kid is in his teens, not a toddler, so who knows if either of these women are involved.
He gets to house number 233 (23, 2+3+3=8) and it’s locked. He lifts a stone rabbit next to the door, revealing a key. Follow the white rabbit. David’s room – the kids a musician. And a Dodgers fan. He’s been working on Chopin’s Fantaisie – Impromptu. Jack notices messages on the answering machine and hits play. Dr Sutherland from Williams Conservatory is calling to confirm David’s timeslot – 40 minutes from now. Jack looks at his fancy watch ("Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”) as the messages continue to play, and he hears himself calling from Australia.
“Hey David, its dad. I’m in Sydney Australia. Something happened and I just needed to hear your voice. I guess I’ll try you again later. I love you.”
=island=
Hurley’s having fun trudging thru the jungle with Jack; just like old times. He tells him he came back to the island because Jacob popped in to the back of his cab and told him he was supposed to, so he came. He asks Jack why he came back.
“I came back here because I was broken. And I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.”
Hurley is sympathetic. They get to the lighthouse soon after. Very cool. Ancient ancient at least. Jack asks the question the entire viewing audience is asking at the same time. How come we haven’t seen it before?
“Guess we weren’t looking for it.”
Claire’s interrogation. Scary shit, Cheney would be proud. She’s convinced they have Aaron, and we find out she was taken and given the same test as Sayid, with the same results; branded and all. She says if she hadn’t escaped they would have killed her. Justin says she isn’t remembering things right.
So why not just kill her and Sayid? Why trick Jack into doing it? Justin is willing to snap Claire’s neck... but he was the one reminding Aldo last week that they couldn’t kill... candidates. Even infected ones? They have to trick others into doing it for some reason, or is that just on the temple grounds.?
Claire’s about to lose it and thwack Justin with the axe when Jin stops her by telling her that Kate took him.
“What do you mean she ‘took’ him?”
"He’s been with Kate for the past three years. Aaron is three."
Justin tells her it’s the truth and asks to be untied; he promises he won’t tell anyone he saw her. She looks over at the fucked-up crazy crib while Justin pleads, and Claire starts to cry before burying the axe in his chest. Thunk.
Jack and Hurley are outside the lighthouse and the door won’t open.
“Doesn’t say anything on your arm about the door being jammed?”
”No.”
Jack kicks it open.
=flashsideways=
Jack arrives at Williams Conservatory, where a sign for the tryouts reads "Welcome all Candidates." He’s just in time for David’s audition. It’s the most beautiful music Jack’s ever heard in his life, I think. At least the directing would lead you to believe that. He’s moved to tears. However, David looks almost ashamed of himself when he’s finished. A young boy next to Jack asks if it’s his son up there, and tells him he’s really good. Holy shit, this kid’s dad is Dogen, who stops Jack as he’s about to leave the room.
“They are too young to have this kind of pressure, aren’t they?”
“Yes, yes they are.”
“It’s it’s hard to watch and be unable to help. Your son has a gift. How long has he been playing?”
“I... I don’t know.”
Hard for Dogen to watch everything on the island and be unable to help? Going to be hard for Jack to do the same?
=island=
Jack and Hurley have climbed to the top of the lighthouse. Panels of mirrors are arranged above a stone circle with degrees etched around it and a fire pit in the center. Looks a little like the watch Jack checked earlier.
“Dude this is cool. They musta built this to help ships get here and stuff. I guess they used the mirror because electricity hadn’t been invented yet.”
Hurley checks his arm for directions 4 levels stairs giant mirror pull chain @ 108 deg
He starts pulling.
“Tell me when it gets to 108 degrees”
The chains look new, this place is used often? Oh, fucking cool, the numbers around the base of the mirror have names next to them. Jack looks up to see the image in the looking glass change from the sea behind him to an older-style Oriental building – the place where Jin and Sun were married? Something to do with Dogen? It goes back to normal when he looks away. Hurley keeps pulling and a church goes by - Yemi’s? Sawyer’s parents funeral? Jack tells Hurley to stop and check the mirror, but it’s just the reflected ocean again.
Jack looks down to see the names and numbers. 108 is a scratched out Wallace. Sayid isn’t crossed out yet. 51 is Austen, also not crossed out. 20 is Rousseau. He sees Shephard at 23 and turns the chains to it – the mirror image changes and Hurley can also see it this time. It’s the house Jack grew up in.
are the lighthouse mirrors the white version of Smokey itself? Able to see into people and show them what it sees, ala Eko?
“That’s weird.”
“I haven’t lived in that house since I was a kid. He’s been watching us the whole time, all of us, he’s been watching us.”
Jack is entering freak-out mode. He grabs a bronze telescope/sextant thingy from its stand and starts grilling Hugo.
“Why was he watching me? Why is my name written down on this thing? What does he want from me?”
“I don’t know, Jack!”
Jack swings and smash go the mirrors.
=flashsideways=
Jack meets his son outside the conservatory, and tells him he was great. The kid thinks he missed a few notes. Jack thinks he was perfect.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
David thought he could get back before Jack got home.
the ‘hour’ timeline seems ridiculous – intentional or not, Time has a dreamlike quality to it in the flashsideways world during this episode. One of those dreams where you know you’re supposed to be doing something, but keep getting sidetracked as time goes by.
David has been keeping Jack in the dark about his piano playing because he didn’t want dad to see him fail. Jack recognizes this kid.
“You know when I was your age my father didn’t want to see me fail either. He said that I didn’t have what it takes. I spent my whole life carrying that around with me, and 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.”
Fixed. Or at least mended pretty well.
=island=
Jack is off on a cliff staring at the sea when Jacob appears to Hurley at the lighthouse.
“You’ve got ink on your forehead.”
”I have ink on my forehead? That’s all you have to say? Jack broke your lighthouse dude. Mission unaccomplished! Whoever you said we need to help get to the island is totally screwed.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll find some other way”
Hurley realizes this was probably Jacobs plan all along. Less sinister than Smokey but still manipulation. “Jack is here because 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 gotta let them look out at the ocean for a while.”
He tells Hurley he had to get them out of the temple because someone’s coming there.
"Someone bad.”
Hurley wants to go back and warn them.
“We can’t warn them Hugo. I’m sorry, it’s too late. “
Miles, Sayid, Dogen, Lennon, Cindy and the kids – is there anyone else we know by name there?
Claire’s camp. Jin knows she’s batshit crazy now, so he’s going along with her delusion to placate her. He tells her he only said Kate was raising Aaron to try and save Justin’s life.
“But you were right; the Others have your baby. Aaron is at the temple. I know because I saw him there. But you will need me to get to him.”
He tells her there’s a secret way in, where no one will see them.
“Thank you Jin. 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.”
UnLocke pops his bald head in.
“Am I interrupting?”
Jin is shocked!
“John?”
“That’s not John. This is my friend.”
Crazy smiles all around.
Poor Jin.
UnLocke is building his army, and now he has a way into the temple and a box of dynamite. This can’t end well.
So, Smokey and Jacob’s “game” theory: Jacob has the list of the candidates up in the lighthouse, which Smokey has copied on the ceiling of the cave, maybe?
Now it’s a race (around the world?) to counter the other’s moves, and for Smokey to scratch out the names before they become the candidate – kinda like tic tac toe.
“Tied again, dude.”
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
=flashsideways=
Jack enters his bachelor pad . There’s a Photoshop disasters-looking picture with 90's mushroom hairdo-ed Jack in a tux, posing with Mom & Dad, and also a real picture of Jack and Dad years later as docs. Green mug like the hatch. Jack walks in (past a lot of mirrors) and starts getting dressed quickly. He stops to look at himself in the bathroom mirror, and it seems like he notices the appendix scar on his belly for the first time – he searches for the memory but can’t find it. The phone jars him back to reality(?). It’s his mom freaking out – Christian’s coffin is headed for Berlin, they still haven’t found the body, and she can’t find his will. Jack tells her not to worry, he’ll be over later to help search for it. He asks when he had his appendix taken out . Mom says he was 7, 8 maybe (didn’t the scar look a little fresher and bigger than it would be if he had had it removed that long ago?), he collapsed at school and his dad wanted to operate but they wouldn’t let him. Doesn’t he remember?
“Yeah, I... I guess I do.”
He sees the time (2:51) and freaks out, tells mom he’s gotta go.
"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
He pulls up to Saint Mary’s Academy and approaches a sullen kid waiting on the stairs. Jack apologizes for being late.
“Sorry, David.”
“It’s okay, dad.”
Whoa.
Plane whoosh back to the
=island=
Smokey clacks reserved for Locke episodes? Something to keep an ear out for.
Jack’s reflection is staring back at him from a pool outside of the temple. He looks up and seems to be looking right at us for a bit in a long shot. Almost Truman showy. Dogen comes up behind him, relieved to find Jack didn’t leave the temple.
“Is leaving an option?”
“Everything is an option, but I would have to stop you.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty.”
Dogen asks if Ford, Austen and Kwon are coming back, to which Jack replies probably not.
“I appreciate your honesty.”
In the courtyard Hurley and Miles have apparently been playing tic tac toe to a draw for a while.
“Tied again, dude.”
“Shocker. That’s it for me.”
Hurley goes off to look for some food, and finds Jacob at the magic spring. He needs Hugo's help and tells him to get a pen to write a few things down.
“What kind of things?”
“Someone is coming to the island. I need you to help him find it.”
Desmond is my first thought… will he end up being Jacob’s loophole somehow?
L O S T
=flashsideways=
Jacks pad – the kid’s room, where Jack has hooked up cable so David can watch the Red Sox. But there’s a Dodger Stadium picture on the wall? Jack sees that he’s reading The Annotated Alice.
“I used to read this to you when you were little. You always wanted to hear about Kitty and Snowdrop, they were Alice’s...” (…black and white cats)
David just gets up and leaves. Jack follows, trying to connect, but the kid isn’t having it.
“We see each other like once a month, cant we just... get through it?” ouchie.
Grandma calls to remind Jack she needs his help looking for Christians’ will. He tells David he’ll be back in an hour and they’ll have some dinner.
=island=
Sayid joins Jack in the courtyard, wanting to know why all the Others are staring at him.
“You told me that these people think I have an infection, that they wanted to give me some mysterious pill you instructed me not to take, and then you disappeared. What are you hiding from me?”
Jack tells Sayid about the poison and that what the Others believe has happened to Sayid also happened to someone else.
“Who?”
Infected Claire (someone on the podcast this week came up with “Claireseau” – I like it, but it’s too long. She’s just Claire.) frees Jin from the bear trap. She tells him she’s been in the jungle since he left three years ago.
Hurley’s traversing through the temple tunnels, checking the notes on his arm against the symbols on the wall when Dogen arrives and demands to know what he’s doing.
“Nothing. I’m just, you know, looking, cause I’m a big fan of temples and like… history, Indiana Jones stuff.”
Dogen orders him back to the courtyard and Jacob appears (standing next to a block in the wall carved with the symbols from the countdown in the Swan) to Hurley. He instructs Hugo to tell Dogen he’s a candidate. Hurley can get behind this.
“I’m a candidate, and I can do what I want.”
“Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Why don’t you go back to the courtyard?”
Dogen hilariously goes nuts in Japanese and storms off. After telling Hurley he doesn’t want to know what was just said ["You're lucky I have to protect you, otherwise I'd have cut your head off !!"], Jacob asks why Hurley didn’t bring Jack along as instructed.
“You have to bring him with you, Hugo.”
”Ok, it’s bad enough you already made me write down way too much stuff and I just lied to a samurai… look, if you have any idea how to get Jack to go on your little adventure, I’m listening.”
Jacob smiles.
He had an idea, ‘cause next we see, Hurley is meeting with Jack in the courtyard. He tells him about Jacob and a secret tunnel, and that Jack needs to come with him. Jack tells him he’s not going anywhere.
“He told me you’d say that, so he told me to tell you ‘you have what it takes.’”
That hits Jacks execute button and, kinda tearing up, he demands to see Jacob. Hurley explains that - ”he’s kind of dead – turns up whenever he wants like Obi-Wan Kenboi. But... if you want to talk to him he’s where we’re going, dude”
“Well then let’s go see Jacob.”
Jin comes to in Claire’s ...shacky kind of thing. He’s got some funky boxers on, but they’re not as funky as Sawyers last week. The dynamite from the Black Rock is there, some baby books including 'Wish Upon a Star', which reminds me of Catch A Falling Star – the song Claire loved as a baby and wanted sung to Aaron. Also, 'Best Loved Stories'. There’s a bloody pan with surgical tools on top of a first aid kit – and a baby blue cradle with some freaky goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre Hills Have Eyes animal bone and fur baby nesting in it. Claire comes back with Justin in tow. She ties him up with plans to interrogate him about Aaron’s whereabouts, but first she tends to Jin.
“Gotta get that cleaned up. If there’s one thing that’ll kill you around here its infection.”
Heh heh, don’t she know it. Jin wants to know if she’s been here the whole time by herself.
“Oh no, I’m not by myself.”
She leaves the hut for a minute and Justin tells Jin they have got to leave.
“If we don’t get out of here now, she’s gonna kill us both.”
Jack and Hurley are walking through the jungle, with Hurley checking his arm for directions. They find Kate filling her canteen and Jack startles her, which almost results in Kate shooting him. They laugh about it, though. Hurley gives her instructions on how to get back to the temple, but she tells them she’s going to find Claire. Jack tells her to come along with the two of them and this freaks out Hurley, who tells Jack Jacob said just the two of them, that she’s not invited. Jack’s inviting her anyway, but she still wants to find Claire, and Kate heads off on her own.
=flashsideways=
Jack and mom in dads study, looking for the will. She’s frustrated, wondering why he wouldn’t have just left a copy with his lawyer.
“Why would he make it easy on us now?” Jack asks.
Mom pours herself a drink (bottle of McCutcheon on the bar, of course) and Jack declines. Is she the alcoholic here? She tells him David was really upset at the funeral, which Jack was unaware of.
“Communication’s not one of his strong suits”
”Well, it runs in the family.”
Jack tells her he was terrified of his dad.
“How do you know David isn’t terrified of you?
"Why would he be?”
”I don’t know Jack, maybe you should ask him.”
She finally finds the will and looks it over, perplexed.
“Jack? Did your father ever mention a Claire Littleton?”
Can recognition flash across your eyebrows? Because it can across Matthew Foxes.
=island=
Claire’s busy outside the hut, sterilizing the surgical instruments and sharpening an axe. Justin is busy inside the hut, trying to convince Jin to free him. They’re soon interrupted by Claire's return. She explains to Jin that she had to stitch herself up once when the Others shot her in the leg. She’s convinced they have Aaron because first her father told her, and then her friend.
“You’re still my friend, aren’t you Jin?”
“Yes of course.”
So Smokey has infected (infecdoctrinated?) Claire ‘against’ the Others using the specter of her dad and her ‘friend’– his version of room 23? She finishes with Jin and turns toward Justin, while picking up the axe. “So... now it’s your turn.”
Jack and Hurley are opening up on their trek. Hurley is wondering what happened to Jack and Kate back in LA; he thought they’d be married with a dozen kids and is sure Jack would make a great dad.
“I make a terrible dad.”
Does Hurley become Jacob and grant his friends the life they should have had, and that’s what we’re seeing in the sideways? Doubt it, but it would be a happy ending. I hope somehow Hurley is the hero when all is said and done, dude.
They come across an asthma inhaler and Hurley recognizes it.
“Dude. It’s Shannon’s.”
They’re at the caves they used to live in, with the Adam and Eve skeletons.
“I totally forgot these were in here, man. Wait a sec – 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??”
awesome.
Jacks distracted by the sight of his dad’s smashed up coffin, and he confesses to Hurley.
“Did I ever tell you how I found this place? I was chasing the ghost of my dead father. He led me here. That was his coffin before I smashed it to pieces.”
”Why’d you do that?”
“Because he wasn’t in it.”
Chasing the ghost of his dad back in the first season mirror episode, White Rabbit, just like he’s spending this episode searching for David and Jacob... "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
=flashsideways=
Jack’s back with pizza, but David is nowhere to be found. Looks like Jack's got an Aaron’s dad painting on the wall. Some time seems to have gone by as Jack is sitting in front of his ‘sliding doors’ with a beautiful view of LA behind them. He’s drinking – non alcoholic beer? Calls David (not for the first time, it seems) and apologizes if he did anything wrong. He tells him he’s heading to his mom’s house to look for him.
who is mom? We know in the old timeline he was married to Sarah a few years before the crash, and she left him for another man because he was working too much. When she sees him in the hospital after the return of the oceanic 6, she’s pregnant. Jack almost had an affair with Gabriela Busoni during the marriage, and honestly the kid kind of looks like her. More so than Sarah at least. Regardless, the kid is in his teens, not a toddler, so who knows if either of these women are involved.
He gets to house number 233 (23, 2+3+3=8) and it’s locked. He lifts a stone rabbit next to the door, revealing a key. Follow the white rabbit. David’s room – the kids a musician. And a Dodgers fan. He’s been working on Chopin’s Fantaisie – Impromptu. Jack notices messages on the answering machine and hits play. Dr Sutherland from Williams Conservatory is calling to confirm David’s timeslot – 40 minutes from now. Jack looks at his fancy watch ("Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”) as the messages continue to play, and he hears himself calling from Australia.
“Hey David, its dad. I’m in Sydney Australia. Something happened and I just needed to hear your voice. I guess I’ll try you again later. I love you.”
=island=
Hurley’s having fun trudging thru the jungle with Jack; just like old times. He tells him he came back to the island because Jacob popped in to the back of his cab and told him he was supposed to, so he came. He asks Jack why he came back.
“I came back here because I was broken. And I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.”
Hurley is sympathetic. They get to the lighthouse soon after. Very cool. Ancient ancient at least. Jack asks the question the entire viewing audience is asking at the same time. How come we haven’t seen it before?
“Guess we weren’t looking for it.”
Claire’s interrogation. Scary shit, Cheney would be proud. She’s convinced they have Aaron, and we find out she was taken and given the same test as Sayid, with the same results; branded and all. She says if she hadn’t escaped they would have killed her. Justin says she isn’t remembering things right.
So why not just kill her and Sayid? Why trick Jack into doing it? Justin is willing to snap Claire’s neck... but he was the one reminding Aldo last week that they couldn’t kill... candidates. Even infected ones? They have to trick others into doing it for some reason, or is that just on the temple grounds.?
Claire’s about to lose it and thwack Justin with the axe when Jin stops her by telling her that Kate took him.
“What do you mean she ‘took’ him?”
"He’s been with Kate for the past three years. Aaron is three."
Justin tells her it’s the truth and asks to be untied; he promises he won’t tell anyone he saw her. She looks over at the fucked-up crazy crib while Justin pleads, and Claire starts to cry before burying the axe in his chest. Thunk.
Jack and Hurley are outside the lighthouse and the door won’t open.
“Doesn’t say anything on your arm about the door being jammed?”
”No.”
Jack kicks it open.
=flashsideways=
Jack arrives at Williams Conservatory, where a sign for the tryouts reads "Welcome all Candidates." He’s just in time for David’s audition. It’s the most beautiful music Jack’s ever heard in his life, I think. At least the directing would lead you to believe that. He’s moved to tears. However, David looks almost ashamed of himself when he’s finished. A young boy next to Jack asks if it’s his son up there, and tells him he’s really good. Holy shit, this kid’s dad is Dogen, who stops Jack as he’s about to leave the room.
“They are too young to have this kind of pressure, aren’t they?”
“Yes, yes they are.”
“It’s it’s hard to watch and be unable to help. Your son has a gift. How long has he been playing?”
“I... I don’t know.”
Hard for Dogen to watch everything on the island and be unable to help? Going to be hard for Jack to do the same?
=island=
Jack and Hurley have climbed to the top of the lighthouse. Panels of mirrors are arranged above a stone circle with degrees etched around it and a fire pit in the center. Looks a little like the watch Jack checked earlier.
“Dude this is cool. They musta built this to help ships get here and stuff. I guess they used the mirror because electricity hadn’t been invented yet.”
Hurley checks his arm for directions 4 levels stairs giant mirror pull chain @ 108 deg
He starts pulling.
“Tell me when it gets to 108 degrees”
The chains look new, this place is used often? Oh, fucking cool, the numbers around the base of the mirror have names next to them. Jack looks up to see the image in the looking glass change from the sea behind him to an older-style Oriental building – the place where Jin and Sun were married? Something to do with Dogen? It goes back to normal when he looks away. Hurley keeps pulling and a church goes by - Yemi’s? Sawyer’s parents funeral? Jack tells Hurley to stop and check the mirror, but it’s just the reflected ocean again.
Jack looks down to see the names and numbers. 108 is a scratched out Wallace. Sayid isn’t crossed out yet. 51 is Austen, also not crossed out. 20 is Rousseau. He sees Shephard at 23 and turns the chains to it – the mirror image changes and Hurley can also see it this time. It’s the house Jack grew up in.
are the lighthouse mirrors the white version of Smokey itself? Able to see into people and show them what it sees, ala Eko?
“That’s weird.”
“I haven’t lived in that house since I was a kid. He’s been watching us the whole time, all of us, he’s been watching us.”
Jack is entering freak-out mode. He grabs a bronze telescope/sextant thingy from its stand and starts grilling Hugo.
“Why was he watching me? Why is my name written down on this thing? What does he want from me?”
“I don’t know, Jack!”
Jack swings and smash go the mirrors.
=flashsideways=
Jack meets his son outside the conservatory, and tells him he was great. The kid thinks he missed a few notes. Jack thinks he was perfect.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
David thought he could get back before Jack got home.
the ‘hour’ timeline seems ridiculous – intentional or not, Time has a dreamlike quality to it in the flashsideways world during this episode. One of those dreams where you know you’re supposed to be doing something, but keep getting sidetracked as time goes by.
David has been keeping Jack in the dark about his piano playing because he didn’t want dad to see him fail. Jack recognizes this kid.
“You know when I was your age my father didn’t want to see me fail either. He said that I didn’t have what it takes. I spent my whole life carrying that around with me, and 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.”
Fixed. Or at least mended pretty well.
=island=
Jack is off on a cliff staring at the sea when Jacob appears to Hurley at the lighthouse.
“You’ve got ink on your forehead.”
”I have ink on my forehead? That’s all you have to say? Jack broke your lighthouse dude. Mission unaccomplished! Whoever you said we need to help get to the island is totally screwed.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll find some other way”
Hurley realizes this was probably Jacobs plan all along. Less sinister than Smokey but still manipulation. “Jack is here because 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 gotta let them look out at the ocean for a while.”
He tells Hurley he had to get them out of the temple because someone’s coming there.
"Someone bad.”
Hurley wants to go back and warn them.
“We can’t warn them Hugo. I’m sorry, it’s too late. “
Miles, Sayid, Dogen, Lennon, Cindy and the kids – is there anyone else we know by name there?
Claire’s camp. Jin knows she’s batshit crazy now, so he’s going along with her delusion to placate her. He tells her he only said Kate was raising Aaron to try and save Justin’s life.
“But you were right; the Others have your baby. Aaron is at the temple. I know because I saw him there. But you will need me to get to him.”
He tells her there’s a secret way in, where no one will see them.
“Thank you Jin. 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.”
UnLocke pops his bald head in.
“Am I interrupting?”
Jin is shocked!
“John?”
“That’s not John. This is my friend.”
Crazy smiles all around.
Poor Jin.
UnLocke is building his army, and now he has a way into the temple and a box of dynamite. This can’t end well.
So, Smokey and Jacob’s “game” theory: Jacob has the list of the candidates up in the lighthouse, which Smokey has copied on the ceiling of the cave, maybe?
Now it’s a race (around the world?) to counter the other’s moves, and for Smokey to scratch out the names before they become the candidate – kinda like tic tac toe.
“Tied again, dude.”
posted by karmacomedian at 9:44 AM
