posted by karmacomedian at 10:26 AM
Monday, February 06, 2012
|Tuesday, March 08, 2011
|Thursday, July 01, 2010
|Tuesday, March 16, 2010
when i was living this lie, fear was my game...
Ben’s running away from the temple, crashing through the jungle, when he finds Ilana, Sun, Miles and Lapidus. Ilana asks where Jarrah is, and Ben tells them Sayid killed Dogen and the translator. She wants to know if he’s sure. “He was standing over their dead bodies holding a bloody dagger, so yeah I’m pretty sure.”
They decide to head back to the beach.
=flashsideways=
“It was on this island that everything changed. And everything finally became clear.”
Dr. Linus is referring to Elba (anagram of Abel…), and telling his students about Napoleon, “Exile wasn’t the worst of his fate – what was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power. Sure, they allowed him to keep the title of emperor, but without any power it was meaningless; he might just as well have been dead.”
The bell rings and Principal Reynolds enters as the class ends. Something tells me we’ll want to see Bonnie Bedelia punch this dude in the face before the episode is over. Sideways Ben doesn’t seem to have much power to lose. Reynolds informs him that, due to events above his pay grade, Ben’s been assigned detention after school all week, effectively canceling his history club. Although there are only 5 kids in it, Ben feels the ones with ambition should be encouraged. “The club isn’t for them, it’s for you; it makes you feel needed. Unfortunately for now, you’re needed. In detention. Thanks for your understanding, Linus.”
What a dick. He is a dick, isn’t he?
“It’s Doctor Linus, actually.”
The shot of Ben getting his lunch from the fridge is one of the saddest in the history of the show. Just some sushi with his name written on it, and a jar of sauce with his initials on top. Ben’s mug has his name on it too... I mean I guess they’re trying to show how anal he is, how he takes control over everything he has the power to do so with, but it’s all very melancholy and bleak in a way. Humanizing… so yeah, I’m loving the directing in this episode. Anyway, here’s Arzt to liven shit up. He’s got some formaldehyde on his shirt – which is a step up from getting some Arzt on your shirt.
"You know what gets out formaldehyde? Nothing."
Doc Arzt, believe it or not, is complaining. About his shirt, about having lab equipment from the 50’s, about the science department getting no funds. Ben tells him it’s because Reynolds is an administrator who’s forgotten what the public school system is about. “Yeah, summers off in exchange for a crap pension.”
“No, taking care of the kids, that’s what important.”
Arzt tells Ben to keep dreaming.
“I know you’ve given up. I refuse to.”
Locke’s at the next table and has a suggestion, “Maybe you should be the principal.”
“So says the substitute.”
“Just sounds like you care about this place, and if the man in charge doesn’t, then maybe it’s time for a change.”
=island=
Ilana doesn’t believe Bens story of what happened at the statue. She gives Miles Jacobs ashes so he can do his thing. He does that thing, and tells her that Linus killed him. She asks if he’s sure. “Well, he was standing over Jacobs’s body with a bloody dagger so... yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
Ilana shoots Ben a look that could kill, if looks could kill, “Jacob was the closest thing I had to a father.”
Miles’ “Uh oh.” is an instant classic line, along with, “Guys, where are we?” and Hurley’s 1977 “uh...what?”
Hilarious.
L O S T
They arrive at the old beach camp. Ben is trying to get a read on Ilana, who is ignoring him. He attempts to weasel his way out of it, telling her how unreliable psychics are and that Miles tried to blackmail him. She walks away, still paying Ben no attention.
=flashsideways=
We get the mirror shot, in a microwave door. He doesn’t really acknowledge himself (like Sayid), however, only looking up when the timer goes off. He brings the meal out to his dad, who is attached to an oxygen tank and wearing incredible aging makeup. Great job there, for real. It’s an organic TV dinner, because Ben is trying to keep his dad healthy.
“Oh, it’s a little too late for that.”
Oh, the irony.
This dad is not a bitter drunk – but what changed... almost losing Ben? Because this IS the Ben that was shot and brought back with the spring on the island, right? But if 815 never crashed did Sayid ever travel through time and shoot this Ben at a young age? I lean toward this being the Ben we saw in 1977, and he and Dad just left on the sub along with Miles and Charlotte.
So it’s the same elder Linus too, and he sort of confirms it as Ben is changing out his oxygen tank for a fresh one. “This isn’t the life I wanted for you Ben, I wanted so much more. It’s why I signed up for that damn Dharma Initiative and took you to the island and we were with decent people, smarter than I’ll ever be. Imagine how different our lives would have been if we’d stayed.”
“Yes, we’d have both lived happily ever after.”
“No, I’m serious Ben. Who knows what you would have become.”
Ben turns on the gas from the new tank, “Now does that feel better?”
“Ah yes, thank you.”
Oh, the irony.
The doorbell rings... its Alex. She’s one of the five kids with ambition. They share some pleasant banter and seem to have a nice relationship. Ben agrees to help her study before school while he is busy with detention in the afternoons. “Thanks. You’re the best Doctor Linus.”
“My pleasure, Alex.”
He seems to have one of those déjà-vu moments as she walks away, or else he’s just basking in the glow of someone needing him.
=island=
Sun is desperate to continue the search for Jin, and is surprised that Ilana feels the same way. “Why do you want to find Jin?”
“Because your last name is Kwon and so is his, and I don’t know whether I’m supposed to protect you, him, or both of you.”
Sun doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “You’re candidates. To replace Jacob.”
“Replace him? To do what?”
“You’re the one selected; I imagine you’ll find out.”
She sounds bitter. Sun wants to know how many candidates there are. “Six. There are only six left.”
Hurley’s dreams of cheese curls are rudely interrupted when Jack wakes him so they can continue on to the temple. Hurley is being difficult and they’re arguing about in which direction the temple lies when Richard emerges from the jungle. Jack asks where he came from, and Richard says he wouldn’t believe him if he told him. “Try me.
“Not yet. If you want to go to the temple it’s this way.”
Jack starts to follow and Hurley doesn’t get why he would trust this guy.
"At least he's not stalling…”
Back at the beach Ben is going thru Sawyers old tent, checking out the library, or at least what’s left of it. There’s a Booty Babes magazine promising big bouncy beautiful buns – the “b” spot - going there - getting to the bottom of it – rear view mirrors.
Benjamin Disraeli – Justice is Truth in Action – which is just a quote, not a book, as far as I can tell.
Chaim Potok - The Chosen
Ben finds an Oceanic bottle and reminisces with Lapidus, who tells him he would have been the pilot on flight 815 if he hadn’t overslept, “Imagine how different my life would be had that alarm gone off.”
“How different would it have been? The island still got you in the end, didn’t it?”
Ilana comes over and points the gun at Ben. “Walk.”
She leads him to the graveyard and secures his leg to a tree, then tells him to start digging his grave.
=flashsideways=
Ben has his history book open to chapter 19, the East India Trading Company – with a painting of a ship that looks like the Black Rock. He stumps Alex when asking, “The East India’s Trading Companies power extended to all of India except for...”
Alex freaks out about her chances at getting into Yale, and how she’d even be able to afford it with her mom working two jobs just to pay the rent. No dad? How’d she end up in LA? Ben assures Alex that she’s one of the brightest students he’s ever had, “I don’t worry about your future at all.”
She says she needs a recommendation letter from that pervert Principal Reynolds, and explains by telling Ben that she caught Reynolds and the nurse having sex on school grounds. This Ben Linus goes into that Ben Linus’ calculating mode. He snaps out of it after a second or two and suggests they get back to work. “Shall we return to the high seas?”
=island=
We return to the high seas. Miles - maybe feeling a little guilty? - offers Ben some banana and green beans, then chides him for digging slowly - maybe not feeling guilty?. Ben’s not hungry and he’s in no rush. He gets that look in his eye and asks Miles if he still wants the 3.2 million. “What are you gonna do, you gonna write me a check on this banana leaf?”
Ben tells him he has a vast network off island that can get him the money if he’ll only set him free. “Why would I need your money when there are a couple of jaboneys named Nikki and Paulo who got buried alive with 8 million dollars in diamonds on top of them?” Ha!
Ben doesn’t know how Miles can be so aloof, “Ilana's going to murder me for killing Jacob, a man who didn’t even care about being killed.”
Miles tells him 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.”
Ilana breaks up the little chat by shooting the ground at Ben’s feet.
“Dig!”
Hurley is trying to get to the bottom of Richard as the three trudge though the dense jungle. “So, you’re not time traveling?”
“No.”
“But you look the same as you did thirty years ago, how is that possible?”
“Not easy to explain.”
“This like a terminator thing? You a cyborg?”
“No, I’m not a cyborg.”
“Vampire?”
Richard is getting irritated.
“Jacob gave me a gift.”
They arrive at the Black Rock. Richard tells the guys he led them away from the temple because everyone there is dead, but that he also didn’t see their missing friends there. He informs Jack that whatever he’s looking for at the temple, it’s not there. Hurley says Jacob hinted at that, and Richard asks if Hurley has talked to Jacob. Hurley confirms this, and Richard tells him not to believe a word he says. Thinking Smokey could take his form, or just untrusting of the real Jacob? Richard says there’s something he needs to do. “Need to do what?”
“Die.”
=flashsideways=
Arzt is miserably grading papers, mostly F’s, when Ben comes in to ask for a favor. He knows Arzt is good with computers and wants him to hack into the principal’s account. He confides that it’s to collect incriminating evidence so that he can usurp the ‘throne’ – Arzt has a few demands, like a better parking spot- it all feels kind of like a Buy More subplot, in a good way. Some Jeffster would make it even better. Ben agrees to the deal and Arzt is excited, “You really had me fooled with that sweater vest! Linus, you’re a real killer.”
Déjà vu-ey ness again, sort of – or just the inherent evil conniving Ben bubbling to the top? Maybe once the island was sunk the Springs and whatever they ‘changed’ forever in someone were just eradicated, so Ben doesn’t have that ‘corruption’ any longer?
=island=
Killer Ben is standing shackled in his nearly completed grave.
Richard and the others are inside the belly of the Black Rock, Richard holding the chains with pain in his eyes. He tells Jack that in all the time he’s spent on the island today is the first time he’s ever come back, pretty much confirming he was from the Black Rock originally. He opens up a crate of dynamite and Hurley freaks out. He tells Richard it’s unstable.
“I know”
“Yeah well so did Dr Arzt, and I was wiping him out of my shirt two days later.”
Richard tells them that he wants them to kill him, as he can’t do it himself, “Jacob touched me, and when Jacob touches you it’s considered a gift, but it’s not a gift at all, it’s a curse.”
So the blast killed Juliet because she wasn’t touched by Jacob in the flashbacks?
Jack wants to know why he wants to die.
“I devoted my life, longer than you can possibly imagine, in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason, that he had a plan, a plan that I was a part of and when the time was right that he’d share it with me; and now that man’s gone. So why do I want to die? Because I just found out my entire life had no purpose.”
He asks Jack to light the fuse, promising it’s long enough for them to get away. Jack agrees to help, lights the fuse, and then sits down with Richard, “Now let’s talk.”
Hurley freaks as the fuse burns down, “Jack dude we gotta go guys crazy and I know crazy. Dude you're gonna blow up!”
He assures Hurley they’ll be all right. “If you change your mind i'll be like a mile away.”
Jack tells Richard that they’re not gonna die, and launches into the story about Jacob sending him to the lighthouse to see his childhood home in the mirror.
“For some reason he wanted me to know that he had been watching me since I was a kid. I have no idea why, but I’m willing to bet you that if Jacob went to that trouble that he brought me to this island for a reason, and that is not to blow up sitting here with you right now.”
Crazy Jack closes his eyes as the fuse burns down and out. Can’t die, like Michael.
“Wanna try another stick?”
“All right Jack, you seem to have all the answers, so now what?”
“Go back to where we started.”
Ben’s still digging as UnLocke, in another grand Smokey entrance, appears before him. He’s gathering a group and they’re leaving the island, but once he’s gone someone needs to be left in charge. He can’t think of a better man for the job than Ben. He releases Ben from his shackles and gives directions to a gun in the jungle nearby, telling Ben not to hesitate, because she won’t. He disappears and Ben runs into the jungle, with Ilana taking chase.
=flashsideways=
Ben confronts Principal Reynolds with some scandalous emails and lays out his plan for taking over. Reynolds counters by threatening to keep Alex out of Yale; effectively destroying her life, or at least her dreams, “So, I put the ball back in your court. You can execute (button) your little Machiavellian maneuvers, go for my job; sit at my desk. But alas, there will be an unfortunate side effect. I will torch Mrs. Rousseau and her future. Is my job, my power, that important to you? So, what’ll it be, Doctor Linus?”
Will Ben want power so badly off-island that he’ll betray Alex again? It’s kind of like the flashsideways’ are the mirror images of the island redemptive journeys in the first few seasons. Same soul searching, different location. That should have been clear to me before but I didn’t really see it. Another hint that the Flashsideways-verse is the main story now and the island drama this season is more akin to the flashbacks of yore?
=island=
Ben reaches the gun in time and forces Ilana to drop her weapon. What follows is an Emmy waiting to happen. Michael Emerson can monologue like no one else on television. Seriously.
“I want to explain that I know what you’re feeling. I watched my daughter Alex die in front of me and it was my fault. I had a chance to save her, but I chose the island... over her? All in the name of Jacob. I sacrificed everything for him. And he didn’t even care. Yeah, I stabbed him I was so angry, confused, I was terrified that I was about to lose the only thing that had ever mattered to me; my power. But the thing that really mattered was already gone. I'm sorry that I killed Jacob. I am, and I do not expect you to forgive me because I can never forgive myself. Just let me leave.”
Ilana has tears in her eyes, she knows he’s sincere. Her acting here is almost as good as his, and it probably helps to be reacting to Emerson laying his soul bare (assuming they shot this together). She wants to know where he’ll go.
“To Locke.”
Revulsion crosses her face, “Why?”
“Because he’s the only one that’ll have me.”
“I'll have you.”
(I really gotta do something about the dust in here. That was stunning – in the same league as "You bow to no one." and "That’ll do, pig.")
An astonished Ben follows Ilana back to the beach... perhaps thinking about Napoleon, “Sure, they allowed him to keep the title of emperor, but without any power it was meaningless; he might just as well have been dead.”
=flashsideways=
Ben enters the darkened principal’s office, turns on a light and picks up Reynolds name plaque, looking kind of disgusted. Alex knocks at the door and comes in; she’s looking for the Principal, who wrote her an amazing letter of recommendation. She’s sure that Ben had a hand in it somehow.
“No, it wasn’t me, Alex. But I always say you’re a great student, obviously I wasn’t the only one who noticed.”
Reynolds bursts in and Ben takes a small measure of control and power in this life, even if it’s just over history club, “Principal Reynolds found someone to cover for detention, isn’t that right?”
Alex seems to have one of those déjà vu flickers as Ben leaves the office. Arzt is bummed about the parking space.
=island=
A weeping Ilana returns to the beach with Ben. He offers to help Sun with her tarp and she accepts. Miles has the diamonds. Razzle freakin' dazzle. What a fucking payoff there, in both regards. Who knew Nikki and Paulo would tie into the last season in any way other than zombies… Jack, Hurley and Richard show up at the beach in slo-mo. They all greet each other warmly, except for Ben, who stands off to the back of the group and makes some uncomfortable eye contact with Jack.
A periscope rises from the water off the beach and gets the group in its sights. The man operating it asks if they should stop.
Charles Widmore tells him, “No, proceed as planned.”
L O S T
They decide to head back to the beach.
=flashsideways=
“It was on this island that everything changed. And everything finally became clear.”
Dr. Linus is referring to Elba (anagram of Abel…), and telling his students about Napoleon, “Exile wasn’t the worst of his fate – what was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power. Sure, they allowed him to keep the title of emperor, but without any power it was meaningless; he might just as well have been dead.”
The bell rings and Principal Reynolds enters as the class ends. Something tells me we’ll want to see Bonnie Bedelia punch this dude in the face before the episode is over. Sideways Ben doesn’t seem to have much power to lose. Reynolds informs him that, due to events above his pay grade, Ben’s been assigned detention after school all week, effectively canceling his history club. Although there are only 5 kids in it, Ben feels the ones with ambition should be encouraged. “The club isn’t for them, it’s for you; it makes you feel needed. Unfortunately for now, you’re needed. In detention. Thanks for your understanding, Linus.”
What a dick. He is a dick, isn’t he?
“It’s Doctor Linus, actually.”
The shot of Ben getting his lunch from the fridge is one of the saddest in the history of the show. Just some sushi with his name written on it, and a jar of sauce with his initials on top. Ben’s mug has his name on it too... I mean I guess they’re trying to show how anal he is, how he takes control over everything he has the power to do so with, but it’s all very melancholy and bleak in a way. Humanizing… so yeah, I’m loving the directing in this episode. Anyway, here’s Arzt to liven shit up. He’s got some formaldehyde on his shirt – which is a step up from getting some Arzt on your shirt.
"You know what gets out formaldehyde? Nothing."
Doc Arzt, believe it or not, is complaining. About his shirt, about having lab equipment from the 50’s, about the science department getting no funds. Ben tells him it’s because Reynolds is an administrator who’s forgotten what the public school system is about. “Yeah, summers off in exchange for a crap pension.”
“No, taking care of the kids, that’s what important.”
Arzt tells Ben to keep dreaming.
“I know you’ve given up. I refuse to.”
Locke’s at the next table and has a suggestion, “Maybe you should be the principal.”
“So says the substitute.”
“Just sounds like you care about this place, and if the man in charge doesn’t, then maybe it’s time for a change.”
=island=
Ilana doesn’t believe Bens story of what happened at the statue. She gives Miles Jacobs ashes so he can do his thing. He does that thing, and tells her that Linus killed him. She asks if he’s sure. “Well, he was standing over Jacobs’s body with a bloody dagger so... yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
Ilana shoots Ben a look that could kill, if looks could kill, “Jacob was the closest thing I had to a father.”
Miles’ “Uh oh.” is an instant classic line, along with, “Guys, where are we?” and Hurley’s 1977 “uh...what?”
Hilarious.
L O S T
They arrive at the old beach camp. Ben is trying to get a read on Ilana, who is ignoring him. He attempts to weasel his way out of it, telling her how unreliable psychics are and that Miles tried to blackmail him. She walks away, still paying Ben no attention.
=flashsideways=
We get the mirror shot, in a microwave door. He doesn’t really acknowledge himself (like Sayid), however, only looking up when the timer goes off. He brings the meal out to his dad, who is attached to an oxygen tank and wearing incredible aging makeup. Great job there, for real. It’s an organic TV dinner, because Ben is trying to keep his dad healthy.
“Oh, it’s a little too late for that.”
Oh, the irony.
This dad is not a bitter drunk – but what changed... almost losing Ben? Because this IS the Ben that was shot and brought back with the spring on the island, right? But if 815 never crashed did Sayid ever travel through time and shoot this Ben at a young age? I lean toward this being the Ben we saw in 1977, and he and Dad just left on the sub along with Miles and Charlotte.
So it’s the same elder Linus too, and he sort of confirms it as Ben is changing out his oxygen tank for a fresh one. “This isn’t the life I wanted for you Ben, I wanted so much more. It’s why I signed up for that damn Dharma Initiative and took you to the island and we were with decent people, smarter than I’ll ever be. Imagine how different our lives would have been if we’d stayed.”
“Yes, we’d have both lived happily ever after.”
“No, I’m serious Ben. Who knows what you would have become.”
Ben turns on the gas from the new tank, “Now does that feel better?”
“Ah yes, thank you.”
Oh, the irony.
The doorbell rings... its Alex. She’s one of the five kids with ambition. They share some pleasant banter and seem to have a nice relationship. Ben agrees to help her study before school while he is busy with detention in the afternoons. “Thanks. You’re the best Doctor Linus.”
“My pleasure, Alex.”
He seems to have one of those déjà-vu moments as she walks away, or else he’s just basking in the glow of someone needing him.
=island=
Sun is desperate to continue the search for Jin, and is surprised that Ilana feels the same way. “Why do you want to find Jin?”
“Because your last name is Kwon and so is his, and I don’t know whether I’m supposed to protect you, him, or both of you.”
Sun doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “You’re candidates. To replace Jacob.”
“Replace him? To do what?”
“You’re the one selected; I imagine you’ll find out.”
She sounds bitter. Sun wants to know how many candidates there are. “Six. There are only six left.”
Hurley’s dreams of cheese curls are rudely interrupted when Jack wakes him so they can continue on to the temple. Hurley is being difficult and they’re arguing about in which direction the temple lies when Richard emerges from the jungle. Jack asks where he came from, and Richard says he wouldn’t believe him if he told him. “Try me.
“Not yet. If you want to go to the temple it’s this way.”
Jack starts to follow and Hurley doesn’t get why he would trust this guy.
"At least he's not stalling…”
Back at the beach Ben is going thru Sawyers old tent, checking out the library, or at least what’s left of it. There’s a Booty Babes magazine promising big bouncy beautiful buns – the “b” spot - going there - getting to the bottom of it – rear view mirrors.
Benjamin Disraeli – Justice is Truth in Action – which is just a quote, not a book, as far as I can tell.
Chaim Potok - The Chosen
Ben finds an Oceanic bottle and reminisces with Lapidus, who tells him he would have been the pilot on flight 815 if he hadn’t overslept, “Imagine how different my life would be had that alarm gone off.”
“How different would it have been? The island still got you in the end, didn’t it?”
Ilana comes over and points the gun at Ben. “Walk.”
She leads him to the graveyard and secures his leg to a tree, then tells him to start digging his grave.
=flashsideways=
Ben has his history book open to chapter 19, the East India Trading Company – with a painting of a ship that looks like the Black Rock. He stumps Alex when asking, “The East India’s Trading Companies power extended to all of India except for...”
Alex freaks out about her chances at getting into Yale, and how she’d even be able to afford it with her mom working two jobs just to pay the rent. No dad? How’d she end up in LA? Ben assures Alex that she’s one of the brightest students he’s ever had, “I don’t worry about your future at all.”
She says she needs a recommendation letter from that pervert Principal Reynolds, and explains by telling Ben that she caught Reynolds and the nurse having sex on school grounds. This Ben Linus goes into that Ben Linus’ calculating mode. He snaps out of it after a second or two and suggests they get back to work. “Shall we return to the high seas?”
=island=
We return to the high seas. Miles - maybe feeling a little guilty? - offers Ben some banana and green beans, then chides him for digging slowly - maybe not feeling guilty?. Ben’s not hungry and he’s in no rush. He gets that look in his eye and asks Miles if he still wants the 3.2 million. “What are you gonna do, you gonna write me a check on this banana leaf?”
Ben tells him he has a vast network off island that can get him the money if he’ll only set him free. “Why would I need your money when there are a couple of jaboneys named Nikki and Paulo who got buried alive with 8 million dollars in diamonds on top of them?” Ha!
Ben doesn’t know how Miles can be so aloof, “Ilana's going to murder me for killing Jacob, a man who didn’t even care about being killed.”
Miles tells him 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.”
Ilana breaks up the little chat by shooting the ground at Ben’s feet.
“Dig!”
Hurley is trying to get to the bottom of Richard as the three trudge though the dense jungle. “So, you’re not time traveling?”
“No.”
“But you look the same as you did thirty years ago, how is that possible?”
“Not easy to explain.”
“This like a terminator thing? You a cyborg?”
“No, I’m not a cyborg.”
“Vampire?”
Richard is getting irritated.
“Jacob gave me a gift.”
They arrive at the Black Rock. Richard tells the guys he led them away from the temple because everyone there is dead, but that he also didn’t see their missing friends there. He informs Jack that whatever he’s looking for at the temple, it’s not there. Hurley says Jacob hinted at that, and Richard asks if Hurley has talked to Jacob. Hurley confirms this, and Richard tells him not to believe a word he says. Thinking Smokey could take his form, or just untrusting of the real Jacob? Richard says there’s something he needs to do. “Need to do what?”
“Die.”
=flashsideways=
Arzt is miserably grading papers, mostly F’s, when Ben comes in to ask for a favor. He knows Arzt is good with computers and wants him to hack into the principal’s account. He confides that it’s to collect incriminating evidence so that he can usurp the ‘throne’ – Arzt has a few demands, like a better parking spot- it all feels kind of like a Buy More subplot, in a good way. Some Jeffster would make it even better. Ben agrees to the deal and Arzt is excited, “You really had me fooled with that sweater vest! Linus, you’re a real killer.”
Déjà vu-ey ness again, sort of – or just the inherent evil conniving Ben bubbling to the top? Maybe once the island was sunk the Springs and whatever they ‘changed’ forever in someone were just eradicated, so Ben doesn’t have that ‘corruption’ any longer?
=island=
Killer Ben is standing shackled in his nearly completed grave.
Richard and the others are inside the belly of the Black Rock, Richard holding the chains with pain in his eyes. He tells Jack that in all the time he’s spent on the island today is the first time he’s ever come back, pretty much confirming he was from the Black Rock originally. He opens up a crate of dynamite and Hurley freaks out. He tells Richard it’s unstable.
“I know”
“Yeah well so did Dr Arzt, and I was wiping him out of my shirt two days later.”
Richard tells them that he wants them to kill him, as he can’t do it himself, “Jacob touched me, and when Jacob touches you it’s considered a gift, but it’s not a gift at all, it’s a curse.”
So the blast killed Juliet because she wasn’t touched by Jacob in the flashbacks?
Jack wants to know why he wants to die.
“I devoted my life, longer than you can possibly imagine, in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason, that he had a plan, a plan that I was a part of and when the time was right that he’d share it with me; and now that man’s gone. So why do I want to die? Because I just found out my entire life had no purpose.”
He asks Jack to light the fuse, promising it’s long enough for them to get away. Jack agrees to help, lights the fuse, and then sits down with Richard, “Now let’s talk.”
Hurley freaks as the fuse burns down, “Jack dude we gotta go guys crazy and I know crazy. Dude you're gonna blow up!”
He assures Hurley they’ll be all right. “If you change your mind i'll be like a mile away.”
Jack tells Richard that they’re not gonna die, and launches into the story about Jacob sending him to the lighthouse to see his childhood home in the mirror.
“For some reason he wanted me to know that he had been watching me since I was a kid. I have no idea why, but I’m willing to bet you that if Jacob went to that trouble that he brought me to this island for a reason, and that is not to blow up sitting here with you right now.”
Crazy Jack closes his eyes as the fuse burns down and out. Can’t die, like Michael.
“Wanna try another stick?”
“All right Jack, you seem to have all the answers, so now what?”
“Go back to where we started.”
Ben’s still digging as UnLocke, in another grand Smokey entrance, appears before him. He’s gathering a group and they’re leaving the island, but once he’s gone someone needs to be left in charge. He can’t think of a better man for the job than Ben. He releases Ben from his shackles and gives directions to a gun in the jungle nearby, telling Ben not to hesitate, because she won’t. He disappears and Ben runs into the jungle, with Ilana taking chase.
=flashsideways=
Ben confronts Principal Reynolds with some scandalous emails and lays out his plan for taking over. Reynolds counters by threatening to keep Alex out of Yale; effectively destroying her life, or at least her dreams, “So, I put the ball back in your court. You can execute (button) your little Machiavellian maneuvers, go for my job; sit at my desk. But alas, there will be an unfortunate side effect. I will torch Mrs. Rousseau and her future. Is my job, my power, that important to you? So, what’ll it be, Doctor Linus?”
Will Ben want power so badly off-island that he’ll betray Alex again? It’s kind of like the flashsideways’ are the mirror images of the island redemptive journeys in the first few seasons. Same soul searching, different location. That should have been clear to me before but I didn’t really see it. Another hint that the Flashsideways-verse is the main story now and the island drama this season is more akin to the flashbacks of yore?
=island=
Ben reaches the gun in time and forces Ilana to drop her weapon. What follows is an Emmy waiting to happen. Michael Emerson can monologue like no one else on television. Seriously.
“I want to explain that I know what you’re feeling. I watched my daughter Alex die in front of me and it was my fault. I had a chance to save her, but I chose the island... over her? All in the name of Jacob. I sacrificed everything for him. And he didn’t even care. Yeah, I stabbed him I was so angry, confused, I was terrified that I was about to lose the only thing that had ever mattered to me; my power. But the thing that really mattered was already gone. I'm sorry that I killed Jacob. I am, and I do not expect you to forgive me because I can never forgive myself. Just let me leave.”
Ilana has tears in her eyes, she knows he’s sincere. Her acting here is almost as good as his, and it probably helps to be reacting to Emerson laying his soul bare (assuming they shot this together). She wants to know where he’ll go.
“To Locke.”
Revulsion crosses her face, “Why?”
“Because he’s the only one that’ll have me.”
“I'll have you.”
(I really gotta do something about the dust in here. That was stunning – in the same league as "You bow to no one." and "That’ll do, pig.")
An astonished Ben follows Ilana back to the beach... perhaps thinking about Napoleon, “Sure, they allowed him to keep the title of emperor, but without any power it was meaningless; he might just as well have been dead.”
=flashsideways=
Ben enters the darkened principal’s office, turns on a light and picks up Reynolds name plaque, looking kind of disgusted. Alex knocks at the door and comes in; she’s looking for the Principal, who wrote her an amazing letter of recommendation. She’s sure that Ben had a hand in it somehow.
“No, it wasn’t me, Alex. But I always say you’re a great student, obviously I wasn’t the only one who noticed.”
Reynolds bursts in and Ben takes a small measure of control and power in this life, even if it’s just over history club, “Principal Reynolds found someone to cover for detention, isn’t that right?”
Alex seems to have one of those déjà vu flickers as Ben leaves the office. Arzt is bummed about the parking space.
=island=
A weeping Ilana returns to the beach with Ben. He offers to help Sun with her tarp and she accepts. Miles has the diamonds. Razzle freakin' dazzle. What a fucking payoff there, in both regards. Who knew Nikki and Paulo would tie into the last season in any way other than zombies… Jack, Hurley and Richard show up at the beach in slo-mo. They all greet each other warmly, except for Ben, who stands off to the back of the group and makes some uncomfortable eye contact with Jack.
A periscope rises from the water off the beach and gets the group in its sights. The man operating it asks if they should stop.
Charles Widmore tells him, “No, proceed as planned.”
L O S T
posted by karmacomedian at 9:47 AM
you can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill...
=flashsideways=
Sayid is bringing Nadia flowers – are they married? Oh they have kids... ah, no they don’t; he’s Uncle Sayid. The love of his life is married to his brother. Rough. Sayid is away a lot. “The world traveler off on his exotic business trips.”
“Translating contracts for an oil company is hardly exotic. It’s painfully dull.”
Sounds like a boring cover? His brother, who runs a dry cleaning company and just opened a new store, leaves the table to take a business call that seems to distress him. The kids, looking for gifts, find an old picture of Nadia in Uncle Sayid's luggage. He carries his baggage around the world. The brother peers around the corner and we know he knows what’s up.
=island=
Sayid busts into Dogen’s room demanding answers. He asks what the machine he was hooked up to was for.
“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. And yours... tipped the wrong way.”
“And that’s why you tried to poison me?”
“Yes. I think it would be best if you were dead.”
"You think you now me but you don’t. I’m a good man, so if you’re trying to kill me...”
Dogen attacks. Nice long fight scene - I like these, long fight scenes are always cool cause its less to recap so i get to bed a little earlier. They’re beating on each other mercilessly until Dogen gets the upper hand. He holds his knife to Sayid’s throat and throws him against his desk, causing his baseball to fall and hit the floor.
Dogen looks over at it and suddenly gets himself under control, releasing Sayid and telling him to leave the temple and never come back. He tosses the knife away and picks up the baseball reverently as Sayid looks on. Dogen’s baggage?
Outside, UnLocke and Claire are looking at the entrance to the Temple, a thick grey line of ash laid at their feet. Claire wants to know why she has to do it.
“If I could do it myself I wouldn’t be asking you, Claire.”
She wants to be assured that he’ll do what he’s promised if she goes in there.
“I want my son back.”
“I always do what I say.”
“You gonna hurt them?”
“Only the ones who won’t listen.”
L O S T
=flashsideways=
Sayid’s brother wakes him in the middle of the night to tell him about the trouble he’s in with some men he borrowed money from. Sayid offers to pay them off, but that’s not the help his brother looking for.
“I need you to convince these people to leave me alone. I know what you did in the war. You were an interrogator for the republican guard. I know what kind of man you are. I know you care about Nadia. If you care about us, about her... you will do this, Sayid.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not that man anymore.”
Sayid NOT killing when asked? Huge Flashsideways difference here!
=island=
Sayid is explaining to Miles why he’s been banished.
“Apparently I’m evil. These people say I’m better off dead. Which is surprising, considering they were the ones who saved my life.”
Miles tells him that they just tried to save his life, but failed. He was dead for two hours.
“Trust me, when you sat up they were just as surprised as the rest of us. Whatever brought you back... it wasn’t them.”
Claire storms into the courtyard with her arms raised and walks straight up to Dogen.
“He wants to see you.”
Dogen starts to speak in Japanese and Claire interrupts, “Speak English.”
She tells him he’s right outside waiting.
“I’m not a fool. If I step outside this temple, he’ll kill me.”
“Then maybe you should send someone he won’t kill.”
Dogen, in Japanese, tells Lennon to put her in the hole until this is resolved, and to bring Shephard and Reyes to his room. Lennon tells him they’re missing and an angry Dogen tells him to look harder. He then approaches Sayid, and asks that he come with him.
“I thought you wanted me to leave?”
“Things have changed.”
Dogen unearths a box from one of the potted plants in his room, while explaining the new Claire to a curious Sayid.
“She’s a confused girl, under the influence of an angry man. 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.”
Dogen wants Sayid to kill UnLocke. He gives him some instructions and the knife he retrieved from the buried box.
“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 its already too late.”
“Since I’ve been here I’ve been drowned, tortured, and beaten - at your hands! Why would I ever do anything for you?”
“You said that there is still good in your soul. Then prove it.”
=flashsideways=
Sayid is walking the kids to the bus. I’m half expecting to see Locke face down in a lawn nearby, getting sprinkled on. Sayid tells them he’s only around for a couple of days, and then he’s off to Toronto for work. The kids like it better when Unc is around.
“Yeah, and mommy likes it too.” Worst part of the episode spoken by a little girl that looks suspiciously like Chaka. Is this the land of the Lost? Nadia rushes out of the house as the bus pulls away. Something’s happened to Omar. They go to St. Sebastian’s, where they pass Doctor Jack Shephard in the hall. No knowing/curious glances. Omar’s doc says it was a mugging but Sayid knows better and wants revenge. Nadia tells him she doesn’t want him to do that. She wants him to do this for her instead; go home and wait for the kids, and make them feel safe.
=island=
Kate finds Sayid in the jungle. Was I the only one thinking he was about to plunge the knife deep into her chest? Thank god he doesn’t think she’s dead. He brushes off her questions and tells her to ask Miles what’s happened before continuing on. Miles is playing solitaire in the temple courtyard when Kate gets there.
“Sawyer sent you packing, huh?”
It’s easy to forget that Kate knew Sawyer for a few months before leaving the island, while Miles was with him the past three years, and one of his closest friends too, it seemed.
“I thought about going after him too, but I knew he’d just end up berating me until I turned around and came back. That pretty much what happened?”
“Pretty much.”
He tells her the Australian chick that had the baby showed up acting all weird, but still hot.
Back in the jungle Sayid stops for a drink, and UnLocke puts on a wind and noise show before appearing to Sayid as Locke.
“Hello Sayid.”
Sayid plunges the knife deep into his chest. Unbleeding UnLocke pulls it back out.
“Now why’d you go and do that?”
He hands the knife back.
“Take it, I won’t bite.”
“What are you?”
“Well Sayid, you seem to have some idea about that considering you stabbed me in the chest without even saying hello.”
Sayid tells UnLocke he’s been told he is evil incarnate. Something UnLocke doesn’t deny. He tells Sayid that Dogen’s plan was to have UnLocke kill him, and knows he’d already tried it with someone else.
“…shame on you for being talked into it so easily.”
“And what is it you are trying to talk me into?”
UnLocke wants him to deliver a message.
“Sayid, if you’ll do this for me, what if I told you that you could have anything you wanted...anything in the entire world?”
“I would tell you the only thing I ever wanted died in my arms and I’ll never see it again.”
“What if you could?”
Soul sold.
Shannon and Nadia both died in his arms, so does this mean the only thing he ever wanted is love, and not Nadia specifically? Awww, Sayid. :(
=flashsideways=
Sayid is gluing together the pieces of a vase - the one that held his soul? Omar is going to be fine. Nadia seems like she wouldn’t mind if he had bit it, though. She’s miserable and would be happier with Sayid. This is the wrong life... for her. But at least she’s alive in it.
“If you care about me, why did you push me toward your brother?”
“For the last 12 years I’ve been trying to wash my hands of all the horrible things I’ve done. I can’t be with you... because I don’t deserve you.”
The kids are in bed… you think they did it? So has world traveler sideways Sayid actually just been a translator these past 12 years? I think so. But old habits die hard, as we soon find out.
=island=
Sayid returns to the temple with a message for all the Others.
“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 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. Those of you who want to go with him should leave the temple and join him. You have until sundown to decide. “
Cindy(andthekids) wants to know what will happen if they stay.
“You die.”
Smokey’s choice. Not quite free will at play here.
Kate and Lennon meet in the temple and she manhandles the scrawny Other (ha ha ha ha) into bringing her to Claire. He shows her to the pit and gives her two minutes. Claire is crazy singing at the bottom of the Silence of the Lambs well (how is it that Ted Levine hasn't been on Lost yet??) She’s excited to see Kate, who explains all about Aaron. Uh-oh.
“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.”
Raised by another... Great acting here by Emilie De Ravin – her face sells insanity well.
“I’m not the one that needs to be rescued…He’s coming, Kate. He’s coming and they can’t stop him!”
Lennon and some Others take Kate away.
Outside there’s a mass exodus happening that Lennon is powerless to stop. Miles asks Sayid if they’re leaving too. Sayid pulls out Dogen’s knife.
“Not yet. I have to return this.”
=flashsideways=
Some heavies pull up to Sayid outside Nadia’s house and threaten to get the kids involved if he doesn’t go with them. He gets in the car. The two men walk him into a restaurant kitchen, where a third man is making himself some eggs. He offers Sayid some, but is refused. It’s Keamy.
“Martin Keamy.”
He’s got a nice watch on. I wonder if he carried that uncomfortable hunk of metal... anyway, he does a good Walken creepy bad guy. He tells Sayid his brother still owes him money.
“And somebody is gonna pay me that money.”
“Did you put my brother in the hospital?”
“You think it was me? I didn’t do that. It’s a dangerous world, Sayid, you know that, you’re from Iraq; never know when somebody’s just gonna sneak up...”
BAM! Sayid takes out the two goons in a heartbeat. Keamy's eyes get really wide. Sideways Keamy sure is a pussy, aiight?
”The debt’s forgiven, aiight? Ok? Just relax and forget about it.”
“I can’t”
Sayid shoots him dead. He tried to take the high road, but ultimately was given no real choice. He hears someone kicking in the freezer and opens it up. Shocker - it’s a bound and beaten Jin.
“Who are you?”
No knowing/curious glances.
Also,”No English.”
=island=
Now we get about 8 minutes of the most exiting Lost to date. There are 12 more hours left?? This feels like the pulse-pounding third act of a fucking awesome movie. Dogen is reflecting by the reflecting pool, baseball in hand, when Sayid enters.
“That’s twice you’ve tried to have someone else kill me. You had the opportunity to do it yourself. Why didn’t you?”
Dogen tell his story; he was a businessman in Japan once. He had too much to drink on a Friday after a big promotion at work. He picked his son up from baseball later that night, like he did every Friday.
“He was 12. The accident was very bad. I survived. But my son... and then, in the hospital, a man came to me. A man I had never met. And he told me that he could save my sons 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.”
Again, not much of a choice here.
“Who was this man?”
“His name was Jacob.”
“Jacob drives a hard bargain.”
“The man outside, I take it he offered you a similar bargain.”
“Yes.”
“It is sundown. Do you choose to stay or go?”
“Id like to stay.”
Sort of a Good Bad Ugly/Inglorious feel to this scene - more Walken even, him and Hopper in True Romance. True Romance more on the nose I think - in both cases the father is dying to save his son. Dogen knows this is it, I think. Sayid drowns him violently in the pool. Lennon rushes in to help 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.”
Sayid slashes his throat.
“I know”
Will they be back as infected like Sayid became after dying in the pool? Why was Dogen the only thing keeping it out??
Outside Smokey arrives, and it is GOOD (I mean, bad, but shit… oh so good). Miles and Kate run for it, going their separate ways when Kate goes to get Claire. Ilana, Sun Ben and Lapidus meet up with Miles. Awesome.
“Where are Shephard and Reyes? And Ford?”
Why would she ask about Jack and Hurley, with Sawyer as an afterthought? The only real candidates remaining? He tells her they’re gone. Smokey’s getting closer. She asks about Jarrah and Miles tells her he’s in the pool room. Ben goes to get him.
Kate gets to Claire, who isn’t going anywhere.
“It's much safer here.”
Smokes rollercoasters by above their heads, carrying a load of screaming Others. Too fucking cool.
Ben finds Sayid and the dead men at the pool.
“I know a way out of here. There’s still time.”
Completely infected soul sold Sayid turns his blank eyes on Ben.
“Not for me.”
Ben backs away verrry slowly, not taking his bug eyes off of Sayid, then turns and runs.
Sun, Miles, Frank and Ilana are looking for the secret tunnel Jack and Hurley used. Miles tells Sun that Jin is alive. At least last he saw of him, he was. Again, these two have been friends for the past 3 years. Smokey is getting closer, making Godzilla sounds. Ilana finds the secret passage, and they enter and close it behind them just as Smokes rolls down the corridor.
Some slo-mo carnage in the temple courtyard set to Catch a Falling Star. Infected Sayid and Claire walk zombie-like to the entrance. Kate takes it all in and wisely arms herself before following them. I’m sure she’s thinking what we all are; how the fuck did she end up on this side? Free will, right? She had a choice to go with Miles or try to rescue Claire - a real choice, unlike quite a few of the others in this episode, and look where it landed her. UnLocke and the Others who left the temple earlier are waiting outside. Sayid, Claire and UnLocke share creepy looks and UnLocke regards Kate coolly (NOT good) when he sees her arrive. He turns and leads the flock away from the temple. Bad-ass Empire Strikes Back sort of vibe.
Great music, great directing, great everything except that little Chaka girls mommy line. This is one of the best seasons a television show has ever had.
Alright, I’ve been having a tough time wording this, so if it’s hard to understand I apologize. First off, I think it’s gone too far (on the basis of the final scene of this episode alone, even) for the powers that be to reveal that Smokey is the good guy. Smokey bad, Jacob good. But it gets twisty, because I’m pretty sure Smokey doesn’t think he’s bad (although he doesn’t deny he is evil incarnate). The best intentions and all that…
I think that we are definitely seeing the end of the show in the flashsidewayses as we watch the end of the island saga unfold at the same time. The trick here is to make sure that the ideal life we’re watching isn’t destroyed by UnLocke’s army. This, I think, explains Dogen’s actions, or inactions as the case may be. He says he killed his son, and Jacob came to him, at a time when he was “miserable and vulnerable” and offered him a deal to save his sons life, with the understanding that Dogen could never see him again. Dogen took this deal and has been at his ‘new job’ on the island since. Dogen KNOWS about the Flashsideways world, and knows that he and his son are alive and well there. (Sidetrack, covering my bases, maybe he isn’t alive there – did he interact with his son? – And just appeared to Jack to ‘push’ him in the right direction ala Jacob. No way, but still putting it out there) the only way to assure this realities continued existence (and not kill his son AGAIN) is to let the drama on the island play out with no interference on his part. i.e. not killing any of the possible candidates, whether they are ‘infected’ or not, and the Ankh list had Jarrah on it. So yeah, drowning him in the pool maybe not the best idea, but it was the only way they could think of to possibly save this candidates life?
Where it gets twisty for me is here: Sayid was offered a VERY similar deal. Nadia is alive in the sideways world, but Sayid cannot be with her because he needs to atone for his sins and is not worthy. This doesn’t explain why Dogen and his son ARE together, except that maybe God’s deals are a little better than the Devil’s? He is in the details, after all. Or even more simply, Sayid has much more to atone for than the others we’ve seen sideways so far, and that’s why his sidelife isn’t as rosy as the rest.
Sayid’s is also the only sideways story that didn’t contain a look into a mirror, at least not that I picked up on.
"it did have his reflection, in the door. But he looked through it at into Nadia which I thought was interesting." - Thanks Sara!
I heard there was a big spoiler voice-over at the end of the episode/during ‘next week on…’ please don’t repeat it here if you heard it. Thanks!!
Sayid is bringing Nadia flowers – are they married? Oh they have kids... ah, no they don’t; he’s Uncle Sayid. The love of his life is married to his brother. Rough. Sayid is away a lot. “The world traveler off on his exotic business trips.”
“Translating contracts for an oil company is hardly exotic. It’s painfully dull.”
Sounds like a boring cover? His brother, who runs a dry cleaning company and just opened a new store, leaves the table to take a business call that seems to distress him. The kids, looking for gifts, find an old picture of Nadia in Uncle Sayid's luggage. He carries his baggage around the world. The brother peers around the corner and we know he knows what’s up.
=island=
Sayid busts into Dogen’s room demanding answers. He asks what the machine he was hooked up to was for.
“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. And yours... tipped the wrong way.”
“And that’s why you tried to poison me?”
“Yes. I think it would be best if you were dead.”
"You think you now me but you don’t. I’m a good man, so if you’re trying to kill me...”
Dogen attacks. Nice long fight scene - I like these, long fight scenes are always cool cause its less to recap so i get to bed a little earlier. They’re beating on each other mercilessly until Dogen gets the upper hand. He holds his knife to Sayid’s throat and throws him against his desk, causing his baseball to fall and hit the floor.
Dogen looks over at it and suddenly gets himself under control, releasing Sayid and telling him to leave the temple and never come back. He tosses the knife away and picks up the baseball reverently as Sayid looks on. Dogen’s baggage?
Outside, UnLocke and Claire are looking at the entrance to the Temple, a thick grey line of ash laid at their feet. Claire wants to know why she has to do it.
“If I could do it myself I wouldn’t be asking you, Claire.”
She wants to be assured that he’ll do what he’s promised if she goes in there.
“I want my son back.”
“I always do what I say.”
“You gonna hurt them?”
“Only the ones who won’t listen.”
L O S T
=flashsideways=
Sayid’s brother wakes him in the middle of the night to tell him about the trouble he’s in with some men he borrowed money from. Sayid offers to pay them off, but that’s not the help his brother looking for.
“I need you to convince these people to leave me alone. I know what you did in the war. You were an interrogator for the republican guard. I know what kind of man you are. I know you care about Nadia. If you care about us, about her... you will do this, Sayid.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not that man anymore.”
Sayid NOT killing when asked? Huge Flashsideways difference here!
=island=
Sayid is explaining to Miles why he’s been banished.
“Apparently I’m evil. These people say I’m better off dead. Which is surprising, considering they were the ones who saved my life.”
Miles tells him that they just tried to save his life, but failed. He was dead for two hours.
“Trust me, when you sat up they were just as surprised as the rest of us. Whatever brought you back... it wasn’t them.”
Claire storms into the courtyard with her arms raised and walks straight up to Dogen.
“He wants to see you.”
Dogen starts to speak in Japanese and Claire interrupts, “Speak English.”
She tells him he’s right outside waiting.
“I’m not a fool. If I step outside this temple, he’ll kill me.”
“Then maybe you should send someone he won’t kill.”
Dogen, in Japanese, tells Lennon to put her in the hole until this is resolved, and to bring Shephard and Reyes to his room. Lennon tells him they’re missing and an angry Dogen tells him to look harder. He then approaches Sayid, and asks that he come with him.
“I thought you wanted me to leave?”
“Things have changed.”
Dogen unearths a box from one of the potted plants in his room, while explaining the new Claire to a curious Sayid.
“She’s a confused girl, under the influence of an angry man. 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.”
Dogen wants Sayid to kill UnLocke. He gives him some instructions and the knife he retrieved from the buried box.
“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 its already too late.”
“Since I’ve been here I’ve been drowned, tortured, and beaten - at your hands! Why would I ever do anything for you?”
“You said that there is still good in your soul. Then prove it.”
=flashsideways=
Sayid is walking the kids to the bus. I’m half expecting to see Locke face down in a lawn nearby, getting sprinkled on. Sayid tells them he’s only around for a couple of days, and then he’s off to Toronto for work. The kids like it better when Unc is around.
“Yeah, and mommy likes it too.” Worst part of the episode spoken by a little girl that looks suspiciously like Chaka. Is this the land of the Lost? Nadia rushes out of the house as the bus pulls away. Something’s happened to Omar. They go to St. Sebastian’s, where they pass Doctor Jack Shephard in the hall. No knowing/curious glances. Omar’s doc says it was a mugging but Sayid knows better and wants revenge. Nadia tells him she doesn’t want him to do that. She wants him to do this for her instead; go home and wait for the kids, and make them feel safe.
=island=
Kate finds Sayid in the jungle. Was I the only one thinking he was about to plunge the knife deep into her chest? Thank god he doesn’t think she’s dead. He brushes off her questions and tells her to ask Miles what’s happened before continuing on. Miles is playing solitaire in the temple courtyard when Kate gets there.
“Sawyer sent you packing, huh?”
It’s easy to forget that Kate knew Sawyer for a few months before leaving the island, while Miles was with him the past three years, and one of his closest friends too, it seemed.
“I thought about going after him too, but I knew he’d just end up berating me until I turned around and came back. That pretty much what happened?”
“Pretty much.”
He tells her the Australian chick that had the baby showed up acting all weird, but still hot.
Back in the jungle Sayid stops for a drink, and UnLocke puts on a wind and noise show before appearing to Sayid as Locke.
“Hello Sayid.”
Sayid plunges the knife deep into his chest. Unbleeding UnLocke pulls it back out.
“Now why’d you go and do that?”
He hands the knife back.
“Take it, I won’t bite.”
“What are you?”
“Well Sayid, you seem to have some idea about that considering you stabbed me in the chest without even saying hello.”
Sayid tells UnLocke he’s been told he is evil incarnate. Something UnLocke doesn’t deny. He tells Sayid that Dogen’s plan was to have UnLocke kill him, and knows he’d already tried it with someone else.
“…shame on you for being talked into it so easily.”
“And what is it you are trying to talk me into?”
UnLocke wants him to deliver a message.
“Sayid, if you’ll do this for me, what if I told you that you could have anything you wanted...anything in the entire world?”
“I would tell you the only thing I ever wanted died in my arms and I’ll never see it again.”
“What if you could?”
Soul sold.
Shannon and Nadia both died in his arms, so does this mean the only thing he ever wanted is love, and not Nadia specifically? Awww, Sayid. :(
=flashsideways=
Sayid is gluing together the pieces of a vase - the one that held his soul? Omar is going to be fine. Nadia seems like she wouldn’t mind if he had bit it, though. She’s miserable and would be happier with Sayid. This is the wrong life... for her. But at least she’s alive in it.
“If you care about me, why did you push me toward your brother?”
“For the last 12 years I’ve been trying to wash my hands of all the horrible things I’ve done. I can’t be with you... because I don’t deserve you.”
The kids are in bed… you think they did it? So has world traveler sideways Sayid actually just been a translator these past 12 years? I think so. But old habits die hard, as we soon find out.
=island=
Sayid returns to the temple with a message for all the Others.
“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 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. Those of you who want to go with him should leave the temple and join him. You have until sundown to decide. “
Cindy(andthekids) wants to know what will happen if they stay.
“You die.”
Smokey’s choice. Not quite free will at play here.
Kate and Lennon meet in the temple and she manhandles the scrawny Other (ha ha ha ha) into bringing her to Claire. He shows her to the pit and gives her two minutes. Claire is crazy singing at the bottom of the Silence of the Lambs well (how is it that Ted Levine hasn't been on Lost yet??) She’s excited to see Kate, who explains all about Aaron. Uh-oh.
“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.”
Raised by another... Great acting here by Emilie De Ravin – her face sells insanity well.
“I’m not the one that needs to be rescued…He’s coming, Kate. He’s coming and they can’t stop him!”
Lennon and some Others take Kate away.
Outside there’s a mass exodus happening that Lennon is powerless to stop. Miles asks Sayid if they’re leaving too. Sayid pulls out Dogen’s knife.
“Not yet. I have to return this.”
=flashsideways=
Some heavies pull up to Sayid outside Nadia’s house and threaten to get the kids involved if he doesn’t go with them. He gets in the car. The two men walk him into a restaurant kitchen, where a third man is making himself some eggs. He offers Sayid some, but is refused. It’s Keamy.
“Martin Keamy.”
He’s got a nice watch on. I wonder if he carried that uncomfortable hunk of metal... anyway, he does a good Walken creepy bad guy. He tells Sayid his brother still owes him money.
“And somebody is gonna pay me that money.”
“Did you put my brother in the hospital?”
“You think it was me? I didn’t do that. It’s a dangerous world, Sayid, you know that, you’re from Iraq; never know when somebody’s just gonna sneak up...”
BAM! Sayid takes out the two goons in a heartbeat. Keamy's eyes get really wide. Sideways Keamy sure is a pussy, aiight?
”The debt’s forgiven, aiight? Ok? Just relax and forget about it.”
“I can’t”
Sayid shoots him dead. He tried to take the high road, but ultimately was given no real choice. He hears someone kicking in the freezer and opens it up. Shocker - it’s a bound and beaten Jin.
“Who are you?”
No knowing/curious glances.
Also,”No English.”
=island=
Now we get about 8 minutes of the most exiting Lost to date. There are 12 more hours left?? This feels like the pulse-pounding third act of a fucking awesome movie. Dogen is reflecting by the reflecting pool, baseball in hand, when Sayid enters.
“That’s twice you’ve tried to have someone else kill me. You had the opportunity to do it yourself. Why didn’t you?”
Dogen tell his story; he was a businessman in Japan once. He had too much to drink on a Friday after a big promotion at work. He picked his son up from baseball later that night, like he did every Friday.
“He was 12. The accident was very bad. I survived. But my son... and then, in the hospital, a man came to me. A man I had never met. And he told me that he could save my sons 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.”
Again, not much of a choice here.
“Who was this man?”
“His name was Jacob.”
“Jacob drives a hard bargain.”
“The man outside, I take it he offered you a similar bargain.”
“Yes.”
“It is sundown. Do you choose to stay or go?”
“Id like to stay.”
Sort of a Good Bad Ugly/Inglorious feel to this scene - more Walken even, him and Hopper in True Romance. True Romance more on the nose I think - in both cases the father is dying to save his son. Dogen knows this is it, I think. Sayid drowns him violently in the pool. Lennon rushes in to help 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.”
Sayid slashes his throat.
“I know”
Will they be back as infected like Sayid became after dying in the pool? Why was Dogen the only thing keeping it out??
Outside Smokey arrives, and it is GOOD (I mean, bad, but shit… oh so good). Miles and Kate run for it, going their separate ways when Kate goes to get Claire. Ilana, Sun Ben and Lapidus meet up with Miles. Awesome.
“Where are Shephard and Reyes? And Ford?”
Why would she ask about Jack and Hurley, with Sawyer as an afterthought? The only real candidates remaining? He tells her they’re gone. Smokey’s getting closer. She asks about Jarrah and Miles tells her he’s in the pool room. Ben goes to get him.
Kate gets to Claire, who isn’t going anywhere.
“It's much safer here.”
Smokes rollercoasters by above their heads, carrying a load of screaming Others. Too fucking cool.
Ben finds Sayid and the dead men at the pool.
“I know a way out of here. There’s still time.”
Completely infected soul sold Sayid turns his blank eyes on Ben.
“Not for me.”
Ben backs away verrry slowly, not taking his bug eyes off of Sayid, then turns and runs.
Sun, Miles, Frank and Ilana are looking for the secret tunnel Jack and Hurley used. Miles tells Sun that Jin is alive. At least last he saw of him, he was. Again, these two have been friends for the past 3 years. Smokey is getting closer, making Godzilla sounds. Ilana finds the secret passage, and they enter and close it behind them just as Smokes rolls down the corridor.
Some slo-mo carnage in the temple courtyard set to Catch a Falling Star. Infected Sayid and Claire walk zombie-like to the entrance. Kate takes it all in and wisely arms herself before following them. I’m sure she’s thinking what we all are; how the fuck did she end up on this side? Free will, right? She had a choice to go with Miles or try to rescue Claire - a real choice, unlike quite a few of the others in this episode, and look where it landed her. UnLocke and the Others who left the temple earlier are waiting outside. Sayid, Claire and UnLocke share creepy looks and UnLocke regards Kate coolly (NOT good) when he sees her arrive. He turns and leads the flock away from the temple. Bad-ass Empire Strikes Back sort of vibe.
Great music, great directing, great everything except that little Chaka girls mommy line. This is one of the best seasons a television show has ever had.
Alright, I’ve been having a tough time wording this, so if it’s hard to understand I apologize. First off, I think it’s gone too far (on the basis of the final scene of this episode alone, even) for the powers that be to reveal that Smokey is the good guy. Smokey bad, Jacob good. But it gets twisty, because I’m pretty sure Smokey doesn’t think he’s bad (although he doesn’t deny he is evil incarnate). The best intentions and all that…
I think that we are definitely seeing the end of the show in the flashsidewayses as we watch the end of the island saga unfold at the same time. The trick here is to make sure that the ideal life we’re watching isn’t destroyed by UnLocke’s army. This, I think, explains Dogen’s actions, or inactions as the case may be. He says he killed his son, and Jacob came to him, at a time when he was “miserable and vulnerable” and offered him a deal to save his sons life, with the understanding that Dogen could never see him again. Dogen took this deal and has been at his ‘new job’ on the island since. Dogen KNOWS about the Flashsideways world, and knows that he and his son are alive and well there. (Sidetrack, covering my bases, maybe he isn’t alive there – did he interact with his son? – And just appeared to Jack to ‘push’ him in the right direction ala Jacob. No way, but still putting it out there) the only way to assure this realities continued existence (and not kill his son AGAIN) is to let the drama on the island play out with no interference on his part. i.e. not killing any of the possible candidates, whether they are ‘infected’ or not, and the Ankh list had Jarrah on it. So yeah, drowning him in the pool maybe not the best idea, but it was the only way they could think of to possibly save this candidates life?
Where it gets twisty for me is here: Sayid was offered a VERY similar deal. Nadia is alive in the sideways world, but Sayid cannot be with her because he needs to atone for his sins and is not worthy. This doesn’t explain why Dogen and his son ARE together, except that maybe God’s deals are a little better than the Devil’s? He is in the details, after all. Or even more simply, Sayid has much more to atone for than the others we’ve seen sideways so far, and that’s why his sidelife isn’t as rosy as the rest.
Sayid’s is also the only sideways story that didn’t contain a look into a mirror, at least not that I picked up on.
"it did have his reflection, in the door. But he looked through it at into Nadia which I thought was interesting." - Thanks Sara!
I heard there was a big spoiler voice-over at the end of the episode/during ‘next week on…’ please don’t repeat it here if you heard it. Thanks!!
posted by karmacomedian at 9:46 AM
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
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
we got your disease
Lennon, the scrawny Other dude, is rushing through the temple tunnels as Dogen works at his desk in what looks like the Others’ version of the hatch. He’s typing something on an old typewriter.
4 8 15 16 23 42? …kidding.
There are a lot of papers, books, and types of writing utensils scattered throughout the room. Is this guy a historian? Documenting everything? I’m sure there’s a version of this character in most mythologies, but I’m most familiar with the Dragonlance one, Astinus. Sad, I know. Lennon shows up.
“He’s alive.”
At the spring, the newly risen Sayid gets a bear hug from Hurley. Sayid asks Jack what happened.
“You died.”
Sawyer takes Kate aside and tells her he’s planning on running.
=flashsideways=
Back to Kate stealing the cab at LAX in 2004. Claire’s in the backseat and you can’t tell if she’s pregnant or not. The puppetmaster cabbie slams on his breaks to avoid running over Arzt, who is bent over in the crosswalk picking up his spilled luggage. Does this dude drop everything or what? Good thing there’s no nitro in his suitcases. He yells at the cabbie Ratso Rizzo (Marty McFly Jr.?) style, “I’m walking here!” …or is it Sawyer style – this same scene happened after he met Christian in the Sydney bar, but with Ana Lucia at the wheel. Skipping over the multiverse like a stone.
Kate glances over and sees Jack on his cell phone. He looks up at her and they sort of do a double take. Déjà vu.
Claire tries to escape; Kate pulls her back in the cab and tells the driver to step on it. He runs over Arzt’s bag.
“Hey! I got your license plate!”
Little dig at fans that read something into everything there? Um… it was 4DO(Q?)S554. Sad, I know. The cabbie jumps out at a red light, and Kate steals Claire’s purse at gunpoint before she forces her out of the cab. A very pregnant Claire wants her suitcase, but Kate takes off. Welcome to the jungle, baby, you’re gonna die!
=island=
Hurley tells Sayid the Others caught them… again, but they’re protecting them this time.
The gunshot wound is almost completely healed. Sayid is thanking Jack for saving his life when they are interrupted by Lennon and Dogen. They want to ask Sayid some questions and agree to answer any questions Jack has once they’ve finished. This is not good enough for Jack who ends up getting beat down along with Miles while Hurley cowers. A gun goes off – it’s Sawyer. Lennon tells him they won’t hurt his friend.
“He ain’t my friend. You do what you want with him and anybody else. But me, I’m walking outta here.”
Season one Sawyer is back. Dogan speaks English in front of everyone.
“Please, you have to stay.”
No he doesn’t. He gives Kate a stern, “Don’t come after me.”
Again.
L O S T
The Others want Sawyer back. Kate tells them she’ll track him, bring him back and make him stay. “I can be very convincing when I want to be.”
Jin, who still needs to find Sun, offers to go along.
=flashsideways=
That guy who’s been a guest star in every TV show (best gig was on ER) snags his LOST credit just in time. He’s a mechanic. Kate pulls into his garage, gets out of the cab, and there’s a great Tarantino-like scene I loved.
Kate, pointing the gun at him. “Where’s your tire hammer?!?”
Guy stops working, lifts up his sunglasses and looks down at her cuffs. “You got a problem.”
Gun. “So do you.” Where’s your tire hammer?”
Calm. “The hammer’ll just cut off your wrist. Your problem is you need a punch press and you’re not gonna be able to use one of those and keep that gun pointed at me.”
“You volunteering?”
“I got a steady hand but I kinda feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”
“I’ll give you two hundred dollars.”
He gets the cuffs off and asks why she had them on. She tells him she’s a murderer and asks to use his restroom. She opens up Claire’s bag to find baby stuff, including the stuffed whale Aaron had when he saw Jack and Kate fighting.
=island=
Jack and Kate share a tender moment before she leaves to get Sawyer with Jin and a couple Others. In his sanctum, Dogen has a whimpering Sayid strapped down to a table. He blows ash over Sayid’s bare chest – Smokey exorcism? – and attaches wires to his skin. Shades of Rosseau torturing Sayid. Dogan hand cranks a generator and turns it on, and up. Watches Sayid write in pain and flicks it off. Sayid asks why he is doing this, and tells him he has no secrets. Dogan uses a red-hot iron to brand Sayid on the ribs. The scarlet Smokey letter? Lennon releases Sayid.
“Sorry we had to put you through that. It was a test. We had to be sure.”
He tells him its okay, he passed. After Sayid is led out, Lennon asks Dogan if he just lied to him.
“Yes.”
=flashsideways=
Kate finds Claire (hey, it’s fate…) and she very convincingly convinces her to let her drive her to Langdon Ave in Brentwood, where the adoptive parents live.
=island=
Our old friend Aldo is one of the others with Kate and Jin, and he tells her what they are protecting her from.
“You been on this island a while, right? Ever see a big pillar of black smoke, makes a tickey-tickey sound, looks pissed off? From that.”
Aldo tells Justin, the other Other, to shut up as he’s about to tell Jin what happed to flight 316. They continue through the jungle, and Justin stops Kate just before she springs a tripwire. Jin says it looks like one of Rousseau’s traps.
“The French woman? No, she’s been dead for years; this couldn’t be one of…”
“Justin, SHUT UP.”
Aldo reminds Kate that he’s the one she knocked out to escape from the Hydra just before she does it again. She trips the trap to topple Justin (why couldn’t they have named him Tim?) and she and Jin are free. Not that Jin asked for this.
Back at the spring, Hurley is getting some inspiration for his script. Someone needs to remix this scene on YouTube and put in the plaintive wookie cry when the limp Sayid gets tossed into Hugo’s arms. He tells Jack they tortured him, but “…they didn’t ask me any questions.” They didn’t ask Han any, either. Jack heads to Dogen’s sanctum. Do is in there reading from a cookbook and mortaring and pestleing away, while Lennon is reading a plain white book. Maybe it says the beatles somewhere on it. He tells Jack Sayid is sick with something that has no literal translation.
An “infection.”
Dogen hands Jack a green pill, telling him only someone Sayid trusts can give it to him. Jack wants to know what’s in it, and Dogen deflects to play Jack like a fiddle. He asks how Sayid died.
“He was helping me.”
“So it was your fault. And there have been others who were hurt or died helping you?”
“Yes.”
He tells Jack this pill is his chance to redeem himself.
“It’s medicine. And your friend needs it.”
If Jack doesn’t give it to him the infection will spread.
Miles is quizzing Sayid about the afterlife at the spring.
“So nothing, there wasn’t anything? No white light? Angels singing? No dead relatives?”
But leave it to Hurley to ask the best question of the season so far:
“You’re not a zombie, are you?”
“No, I am not a zombie.”
That’s right; you’re infected, 28 Days Later style. Not a real zombie. (At least not til next season.)
Jack comes back and sends Miles and Hurley away. He tells Sayid about the medicine and confesses that he didn’t save his life.
“I didn’t fix you, they did.”
“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.”
In the jungle Jin and Kate go their separate ways with no love lost between them. Remember, Jin has been Sawyer and Juliet’s friend for the past three years. He only knew Kate for a few months before she left the island.
=flashsideways=
The house in Brentwood looks like a fancy Dharmaville cabin. The prospective mom is a mess; turns out her husband left her and her life is falling apart. Ok, JJ Abrams has got to have some pull with Jennifer Garner. Why not just call her up? “Jen, can you do me a solid? The role is a piece of cake; you’ve already done it once.” Juno shit aside, Claire goes into labor. Pretty sure that the first time we saw this story, she wasn’t in touch with the adopters at all, it was set up though the psychic. This time she’s been in contact before leaving Sydney.
=island=
Speaking of Dharmaville, Kate has tracked Sawyer down to his old place. Old as in he lived there thirty years ago yesterday. She watches him as he tears up and tears up some floorboards to pull out a shoebox. Kind of like a time capsule, no? No airplane or baseball in this one, though. He catches Kate watching.
“The hell are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you.”
He storms out past her.
=flashsideways=
Kate brings Claire to the hospital in the cab and goes in with her. The nurse is the same woman that was Aaron’s nanny in the Oceanic 6 episodes. The doctor is Ethan Goodspeed! Ethan, who was evacuated from the island as a baby along with his mom, and never returned, you know, due to it getting all blown up and shit. I wonder if they ended up in LA because his mom got a job at CTU? He tells Claire that Mother Nature has gotten a little ahead of herself. She can have the baby now, if she wants to.
To stop the delivery, it “would require a number of drugs…They’re perfectly safe, I just don’t want to have to stick you with needles if I don’t have to. So it’s up to you.”
Said by the guy that was sneaking and sticking needles in her every night on the island. Awesome.
Claire decides she’s not ready yet, and the monitors start freaking out. So does Claire. She blurts out, “Is Aaron okay?!?”, and it looks like Kate recognizes both the name AND Ethan for a split-second – glitch in the matrix. The baby is fine, and Claire and Kate’s hands have been clasped together through the ordeal. Awww… tugs at the heartstrings like Locke and Jack’s handshake last episode.
=island=
Broken Sawyer is sitting on the dock of the sub. Kate sits next to him and tells him she came back to the island to find Claire, and she wants his help.
“I’m sorry, I never should have followed you.”
“Which time?” Sawyer growls.
He tells Kate that he’s responsible for Juliet’s death. He convinced her (he’s very good at it) on this very dock to stick around for two weeks back in 1974, and they stayed for three years.
“I made her stay on this island ‘cause I didn’t want to be alone. You understand that, right? But I think some of us were meant to be alone.”
It was a ring stashed in the shoebox; he was going to propose. He tosses it into the sea, ala Desmond, and leaves Kate crying on the deck. She is NOT an attractive crier, by the way.
Jack enters Dogen’s room and finds him spinning the baseball – is he practicing the gyroball? Jack asks what it is.
“It’s a baseball.”
He explains to Jack that he pretends not to understand English because it keeps him separate from the people he’s in charge of. It makes it easier when they don’t like the decisions he makes for them. He’s the decider. Shit, Dubya shoulda spoken Japanese. Jack asks if he was born here, and Dogen tells him he was brought here like everyone else.
“What do you mean, brought here?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Jack refuses to give Sayid the pill until he knows what’s in it.
“You just have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust myself, how can I trust you?”
Jack swallows the pill and Dogan jumps into fucking hyper-Heimlich kung-fu mode and forces jack to eject the pill.
“Now are you gonna tell me what’s in it?”
“Poison.”
=flashsideways=
Claire is looking at her ultrasound - dated October 22, 2004 at 9:29:42 am, one month after the crash of Flight 815 in the first time line, and one day before the Red Sox start their World Series run. I hope Jack didn’t fuck that up. But maybe Bush doesn’t get reelected (something else Ben refers to when showing Jack the end of game 4)? I hope he DID fuck that up. Anyway, this is huge, it moves around everything we think we knew. Detective Rasmussen and her partner come in looking for “Joan Hart”. Claire tells them she was just the cab driver and they believe her. The teenage witch comes out from a back room to thank Claire once the cops leave. Claire asks what Kate did. Would Claire believe her if she said she was innocent? Yeah, she would. After all, Kate can very convincing when she wants to be. But hey, it could be the truth in this universe, right? She told the other guy she was a murderer sure, but maybe just to keep him wary. Claire offers Kate her credit card. Kate, about to leave, stops for a second.
“Aaron’s a great name.”
“I don’t know why I said it. It’s like, I dunno, I knew it or something.”
Kate tells Claire she should keep the baby, they wish each other luck and share a long lingering look. Déjà vu… just a glitch in the matrix.
=island=
Kate fills a canteen before heading out to find Claire, leaving mopey Sawyer alone at his house in Dharmaville.
Back at the temple, a flabbergasted Lennon asks Dogen, “He swallowed it?”
Dogen hands Jack a cup of tea to wash away the taste of deathly poison, and drinks his own cup first. Jack wants to know why they are trying to kill Sayid. They believe he is “claimed”.
“There is a darkness growing in him. Once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was, will be gone.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because it happened to your sister.”
Back in the jungle the Others have caught up with Jin. Aldo wants to kill him, but Justin stops him, saying he’s “one of them.” (the 1977-2007 group - 7707ers?). Jin makes a break for it but doesn’t get far before stepping on a bear trap. Fucking ow. Aldo is about to kill Jin when he is shot and killed instead. Another shot rings out and Justin goes down. Jin looks up to see Claire with a rifle, looking like a young blonde Rousseau. His poison angel.
L O S T
dug these quotes:
“’Course he’s fine. He’s an Iraqi torturer, he shoots kids. He definitely deserves another go around.”
“As you can see, Hugo here has assumed the leadership position so… that’s pretty great.”
“Yeah, see private talks kinda freak me out cause they usually lead to me having to do something I don’t quite understand.”
“Right there with ya.”
4 8 15 16 23 42? …kidding.
There are a lot of papers, books, and types of writing utensils scattered throughout the room. Is this guy a historian? Documenting everything? I’m sure there’s a version of this character in most mythologies, but I’m most familiar with the Dragonlance one, Astinus. Sad, I know. Lennon shows up.
“He’s alive.”
At the spring, the newly risen Sayid gets a bear hug from Hurley. Sayid asks Jack what happened.
“You died.”
Sawyer takes Kate aside and tells her he’s planning on running.
=flashsideways=
Back to Kate stealing the cab at LAX in 2004. Claire’s in the backseat and you can’t tell if she’s pregnant or not. The puppetmaster cabbie slams on his breaks to avoid running over Arzt, who is bent over in the crosswalk picking up his spilled luggage. Does this dude drop everything or what? Good thing there’s no nitro in his suitcases. He yells at the cabbie Ratso Rizzo (Marty McFly Jr.?) style, “I’m walking here!” …or is it Sawyer style – this same scene happened after he met Christian in the Sydney bar, but with Ana Lucia at the wheel. Skipping over the multiverse like a stone.
Kate glances over and sees Jack on his cell phone. He looks up at her and they sort of do a double take. Déjà vu.
I didn’t discuss this in the last post, but if the bomb went off in ’77 and the island has been underwater since then, then yeah sure, Faraday was right and the plane didn’t crash because Desmond didn’t not push the button, but did he think far enough back about why Desmond didn’t push the button? When Jack did his double take with Desmond on 815, what I thought at first was hey, the stadium, they met there. But why would Des have been there if there was no ridiculous race around the world plot device set in motion by Widmore to get him to the island? So are these double takes glitches in the matrix? Or was this look because the last time Jack saw her on 815 she was in handcuffs?
Claire tries to escape; Kate pulls her back in the cab and tells the driver to step on it. He runs over Arzt’s bag.
“Hey! I got your license plate!”
Little dig at fans that read something into everything there? Um… it was 4DO(Q?)S554. Sad, I know. The cabbie jumps out at a red light, and Kate steals Claire’s purse at gunpoint before she forces her out of the cab. A very pregnant Claire wants her suitcase, but Kate takes off. Welcome to the jungle, baby, you’re gonna die!
=island=
Hurley tells Sayid the Others caught them… again, but they’re protecting them this time.
The gunshot wound is almost completely healed. Sayid is thanking Jack for saving his life when they are interrupted by Lennon and Dogen. They want to ask Sayid some questions and agree to answer any questions Jack has once they’ve finished. This is not good enough for Jack who ends up getting beat down along with Miles while Hurley cowers. A gun goes off – it’s Sawyer. Lennon tells him they won’t hurt his friend.
“He ain’t my friend. You do what you want with him and anybody else. But me, I’m walking outta here.”
Season one Sawyer is back. Dogan speaks English in front of everyone.
“Please, you have to stay.”
No he doesn’t. He gives Kate a stern, “Don’t come after me.”
Again.
L O S T
The Others want Sawyer back. Kate tells them she’ll track him, bring him back and make him stay. “I can be very convincing when I want to be.”
Jin, who still needs to find Sun, offers to go along.
=flashsideways=
That guy who’s been a guest star in every TV show (best gig was on ER) snags his LOST credit just in time. He’s a mechanic. Kate pulls into his garage, gets out of the cab, and there’s a great Tarantino-like scene I loved.
Kate, pointing the gun at him. “Where’s your tire hammer?!?”
Guy stops working, lifts up his sunglasses and looks down at her cuffs. “You got a problem.”
Gun. “So do you.” Where’s your tire hammer?”
Calm. “The hammer’ll just cut off your wrist. Your problem is you need a punch press and you’re not gonna be able to use one of those and keep that gun pointed at me.”
“You volunteering?”
“I got a steady hand but I kinda feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”
“I’ll give you two hundred dollars.”
He gets the cuffs off and asks why she had them on. She tells him she’s a murderer and asks to use his restroom. She opens up Claire’s bag to find baby stuff, including the stuffed whale Aaron had when he saw Jack and Kate fighting.
=island=
Jack and Kate share a tender moment before she leaves to get Sawyer with Jin and a couple Others. In his sanctum, Dogen has a whimpering Sayid strapped down to a table. He blows ash over Sayid’s bare chest – Smokey exorcism? – and attaches wires to his skin. Shades of Rosseau torturing Sayid. Dogan hand cranks a generator and turns it on, and up. Watches Sayid write in pain and flicks it off. Sayid asks why he is doing this, and tells him he has no secrets. Dogan uses a red-hot iron to brand Sayid on the ribs. The scarlet Smokey letter? Lennon releases Sayid.
“Sorry we had to put you through that. It was a test. We had to be sure.”
He tells him its okay, he passed. After Sayid is led out, Lennon asks Dogan if he just lied to him.
“Yes.”
=flashsideways=
Kate finds Claire (hey, it’s fate…) and she very convincingly convinces her to let her drive her to Langdon Ave in Brentwood, where the adoptive parents live.
=island=
Our old friend Aldo is one of the others with Kate and Jin, and he tells her what they are protecting her from.
“You been on this island a while, right? Ever see a big pillar of black smoke, makes a tickey-tickey sound, looks pissed off? From that.”
Aldo tells Justin, the other Other, to shut up as he’s about to tell Jin what happed to flight 316. They continue through the jungle, and Justin stops Kate just before she springs a tripwire. Jin says it looks like one of Rousseau’s traps.
“The French woman? No, she’s been dead for years; this couldn’t be one of…”
“Justin, SHUT UP.”
Aldo reminds Kate that he’s the one she knocked out to escape from the Hydra just before she does it again. She trips the trap to topple Justin (why couldn’t they have named him Tim?) and she and Jin are free. Not that Jin asked for this.
Back at the spring, Hurley is getting some inspiration for his script. Someone needs to remix this scene on YouTube and put in the plaintive wookie cry when the limp Sayid gets tossed into Hugo’s arms. He tells Jack they tortured him, but “…they didn’t ask me any questions.” They didn’t ask Han any, either. Jack heads to Dogen’s sanctum. Do is in there reading from a cookbook and mortaring and pestleing away, while Lennon is reading a plain white book. Maybe it says the beatles somewhere on it. He tells Jack Sayid is sick with something that has no literal translation.
An “infection.”
Like Montand and the French team. Smokey takes over the dead people, you were dead, now you’re infected. RIP Sayid. If Sayid wasn’t dead before he was in the temple, then how did Smokey get in to possess him? The water? Or did Sayid die next to the van? Could Smokey have been Jacob talking to Hurley, even though there was no body? He was already infected but wanted to get this body healed so got it to the temple, and now he’s infiltrated it? He was in before they spread the ash. What is the difference between a corpse that is reanimated with the ‘infection’ and the corpses that Smokey replicates? Big question there.
Dogen hands Jack a green pill, telling him only someone Sayid trusts can give it to him. Jack wants to know what’s in it, and Dogen deflects to play Jack like a fiddle. He asks how Sayid died.
“He was helping me.”
“So it was your fault. And there have been others who were hurt or died helping you?”
“Yes.”
He tells Jack this pill is his chance to redeem himself.
“It’s medicine. And your friend needs it.”
If Jack doesn’t give it to him the infection will spread.
Miles is quizzing Sayid about the afterlife at the spring.
“So nothing, there wasn’t anything? No white light? Angels singing? No dead relatives?”
But leave it to Hurley to ask the best question of the season so far:
“You’re not a zombie, are you?”
“No, I am not a zombie.”
That’s right; you’re infected, 28 Days Later style. Not a real zombie. (At least not til next season.)
Jack comes back and sends Miles and Hurley away. He tells Sayid about the medicine and confesses that he didn’t save his life.
“I didn’t fix you, they did.”
“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.”
In the jungle Jin and Kate go their separate ways with no love lost between them. Remember, Jin has been Sawyer and Juliet’s friend for the past three years. He only knew Kate for a few months before she left the island.
=flashsideways=
The house in Brentwood looks like a fancy Dharmaville cabin. The prospective mom is a mess; turns out her husband left her and her life is falling apart. Ok, JJ Abrams has got to have some pull with Jennifer Garner. Why not just call her up? “Jen, can you do me a solid? The role is a piece of cake; you’ve already done it once.” Juno shit aside, Claire goes into labor. Pretty sure that the first time we saw this story, she wasn’t in touch with the adopters at all, it was set up though the psychic. This time she’s been in contact before leaving Sydney.
=island=
Speaking of Dharmaville, Kate has tracked Sawyer down to his old place. Old as in he lived there thirty years ago yesterday. She watches him as he tears up and tears up some floorboards to pull out a shoebox. Kind of like a time capsule, no? No airplane or baseball in this one, though. He catches Kate watching.
“The hell are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you.”
He storms out past her.
Ok, during this commercial break there was a Hawaiian Air spot that looked just like LOST and had me stopping the TiVo skip early. Well played, advertising agency, well played.
=flashsideways=
Kate brings Claire to the hospital in the cab and goes in with her. The nurse is the same woman that was Aaron’s nanny in the Oceanic 6 episodes. The doctor is Ethan Goodspeed! Ethan, who was evacuated from the island as a baby along with his mom, and never returned, you know, due to it getting all blown up and shit. I wonder if they ended up in LA because his mom got a job at CTU? He tells Claire that Mother Nature has gotten a little ahead of herself. She can have the baby now, if she wants to.
To stop the delivery, it “would require a number of drugs…They’re perfectly safe, I just don’t want to have to stick you with needles if I don’t have to. So it’s up to you.”
Said by the guy that was sneaking and sticking needles in her every night on the island. Awesome.
Claire decides she’s not ready yet, and the monitors start freaking out. So does Claire. She blurts out, “Is Aaron okay?!?”, and it looks like Kate recognizes both the name AND Ethan for a split-second – glitch in the matrix. The baby is fine, and Claire and Kate’s hands have been clasped together through the ordeal. Awww… tugs at the heartstrings like Locke and Jack’s handshake last episode.
=island=
Broken Sawyer is sitting on the dock of the sub. Kate sits next to him and tells him she came back to the island to find Claire, and she wants his help.
“I’m sorry, I never should have followed you.”
“Which time?” Sawyer growls.
He tells Kate that he’s responsible for Juliet’s death. He convinced her (he’s very good at it) on this very dock to stick around for two weeks back in 1974, and they stayed for three years.
“I made her stay on this island ‘cause I didn’t want to be alone. You understand that, right? But I think some of us were meant to be alone.”
It was a ring stashed in the shoebox; he was going to propose. He tosses it into the sea, ala Desmond, and leaves Kate crying on the deck. She is NOT an attractive crier, by the way.
Jack enters Dogen’s room and finds him spinning the baseball – is he practicing the gyroball? Jack asks what it is.
“It’s a baseball.”
Just like Locke, Alpert and the compass. “It’s a compass.” “What does it do?” “It points north, John.”
He explains to Jack that he pretends not to understand English because it keeps him separate from the people he’s in charge of. It makes it easier when they don’t like the decisions he makes for them. He’s the decider. Shit, Dubya shoulda spoken Japanese. Jack asks if he was born here, and Dogen tells him he was brought here like everyone else.
“What do you mean, brought here?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Jack refuses to give Sayid the pill until he knows what’s in it.
“You just have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust myself, how can I trust you?”
Jack swallows the pill and Dogan jumps into fucking hyper-Heimlich kung-fu mode and forces jack to eject the pill.
“Now are you gonna tell me what’s in it?”
“Poison.”
=flashsideways=
Claire is looking at her ultrasound - dated October 22, 2004 at 9:29:42 am, one month after the crash of Flight 815 in the first time line, and one day before the Red Sox start their World Series run. I hope Jack didn’t fuck that up. But maybe Bush doesn’t get reelected (something else Ben refers to when showing Jack the end of game 4)? I hope he DID fuck that up. Anyway, this is huge, it moves around everything we think we knew. Detective Rasmussen and her partner come in looking for “Joan Hart”. Claire tells them she was just the cab driver and they believe her. The teenage witch comes out from a back room to thank Claire once the cops leave. Claire asks what Kate did. Would Claire believe her if she said she was innocent? Yeah, she would. After all, Kate can very convincing when she wants to be. But hey, it could be the truth in this universe, right? She told the other guy she was a murderer sure, but maybe just to keep him wary. Claire offers Kate her credit card. Kate, about to leave, stops for a second.
“Aaron’s a great name.”
“I don’t know why I said it. It’s like, I dunno, I knew it or something.”
Kate tells Claire she should keep the baby, they wish each other luck and share a long lingering look. Déjà vu… just a glitch in the matrix.
=island=
Kate fills a canteen before heading out to find Claire, leaving mopey Sawyer alone at his house in Dharmaville.
Back at the temple, a flabbergasted Lennon asks Dogen, “He swallowed it?”
Dogen hands Jack a cup of tea to wash away the taste of deathly poison, and drinks his own cup first. Jack wants to know why they are trying to kill Sayid. They believe he is “claimed”.
“There is a darkness growing in him. Once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was, will be gone.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because it happened to your sister.”
Back in the jungle the Others have caught up with Jin. Aldo wants to kill him, but Justin stops him, saying he’s “one of them.” (the 1977-2007 group - 7707ers?). Jin makes a break for it but doesn’t get far before stepping on a bear trap. Fucking ow. Aldo is about to kill Jin when he is shot and killed instead. Another shot rings out and Justin goes down. Jin looks up to see Claire with a rifle, looking like a young blonde Rousseau. His poison angel.
L O S T
dug these quotes:
“’Course he’s fine. He’s an Iraqi torturer, he shoots kids. He definitely deserves another go around.”
“As you can see, Hugo here has assumed the leadership position so… that’s pretty great.”
“Yeah, see private talks kinda freak me out cause they usually lead to me having to do something I don’t quite understand.”
“Right there with ya.”
posted by karmacomedian at 3:05 PM
Monday, May 18, 2009
if you choose not to decide - you still have made a choice
Surrounded by ancient-looking clay pottery and a huge fire pit, a guy in homemade clothes and sandals is working a loom – creating the strands of fate? It’s an Egyptian looking tapestry with the Eye of Horus in the center, and what looks like the wings from the Grateful Dead's AOXOMOXOA album cover on top – Watchmen reference? Or just pretty framework? There’s Greek (I think) lettering across the top, but the last word looks like something in the Roman alphabet – menoinaz.
Who’s Meno and what’s he doing in Arizona?
The dude catches a fish outside for breakfast and cooks it, then leans back, watching a ship (let’s assume The Black Rock?) on the horizon. A scruffier looking guy in more homemade clothes walks up.
“I take it you’re here ‘cause of the ship?’
Scruffy tells the weaver guy that he knows he has guided the ship here, to ‘prove him wrong.’
“You are wrong.”
“Am I? They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.”
“It only ends once. Anything that happpens before that is just progress.”
“Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?”
He does.
“One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.”
“When you do I’ll be right here.”
“Always nice talking to you, Jacob.”
Nice pan out to find that they were talking in the shadow of the statue. It’s got a crocodile head, and is holding ankhs in each hand. Sobek?
(Scroll down a few comments here to FairVerona’s second post. I didn't really look any deeper into this - but check out her take, it's really cool.)
Flashback - A cornfield and some crows... looks like a shot from The Stand miniseries – or children of the corn. He who will protect us all between the rows. Lil’ Kate and her buddy that eventually gets killed because of her are in the Ames Central General Store parking lot, and he’s playing with ‘the plane’. Part of an Iowa license plate we can see is 023. They go into the store and the boy stands lookout while Kate’s shoplifting a NKOTB lunchbox, the same one she gets the toy plane from years later. Patsy Cline’s Three Cigarettes (in an Ashtray) is playing in the background, of course. They’re busted as she tries to leave with it. Always getting caught, that Kate. Great casting on the kid too. The manager is gonna call her mom and the cops, but then Jacob shows up and pays for it. Kate thanks him.
“You’re welcome. You’re not gonna steal anymore, are you?”
He boops her on the nose.
“Be good, Katie.”
The sub is on its way in 1977. Kate tells the other two prisoners what’s going on back on the island. She wants to get back and stop Jack. Sawyer’s having none of it.
“You just don’t get it Kate. We were happy in Dharmaville until you all showed up...Jack wants to blow up the island, good for Jack.”
Back under the island of the Others, Sayid uses Faraday’s notes to figure out how to dismantle an atomic bomb and gets to work. The plutonium core will be easier to carry around than that big-ass Jughead. Richard is wary of the radiation around a pregnant Ellie! Daniel! Who’s the dad? I’m still thinking Widmore, gross as it may be. They’re the upper crusty Other parallels to the Carlyle’s, Boone and Shannon – who also slept together.
At the swan, Radzinsky is acting psycho insane as usual. He’s flipping out because Pierre stopped the drilling as they got close to the pocket. Chang argues that they have no idea what will happen when they tap into the energy.
“If Edison was only worried about the consequences, we’d all be sitting in the dark. I came to this island to change the world Pierre, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Well, mission accomplished, I’d say.
Thirty years later, Locke is leading the flock of Others to Jacob. Richard is still perplexed at the resurrection of John Locke.
“You’ve been on this island much longer than I have, Richard. If anyone should have an explanation I’d think it would be you.”
“I have been here a long time John, and I’ve seen things on this island that I could barely describe but, I have never seen someone come back to life.”
“And I’ve never seen anyone who doesn’t age, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
“I’m this way because of Jacob.”
So did Richard take over for the scruffy guy at the beginning looking to kill Jacob? Or was he already there even at that time? I’m assuming he came on the Black Rock, just because he was making the model. If he did, and he’s been ageless since, maybe it’s because Jacob needed someone to take scruff’s place and cast Alpert in the part.
The Ajira castaways are landing their boat on the main island, laden with a huge crate and an unconscious Frank Lapidus. Bram wants to know why they brought him, when he didn’t even know the answer to the question. Ilana tells him that doesn’t mean he isn’t a candidate. Lapidus is awake and hears all this, and asks what it is he’s a candidate for - and doesn’t get an answer. My guess, replacing Alpert. Or Jacob. More on that later. They start to move out and Frank asks what’s in the crate. Bram tells Ilana it’s her call, so she shows him the contents.
“Terrific.”
Flashback, and now we’re at Sawyers parents funeral. I’m getting my bad robot shows confused, ‘cause I see one of the pallbearers is bald and I think I spotted the Observer! D’oh. Wrong show. James is writing “the letter” and his pen is running out of ink, when our Observer that seems to do more than just observe shows up. Jacob’s got a fresh one for him, and their fingers touch briefly as he hands it over.
“I’m very sorry about your mother and father, James.”
Jacob leaves. James’ Uncle (or something – definitely sounds like Sawyer) catches him writing the letter – he says he understands how he feels, but that he has to move on.
“They’re gone. And there ain’t nothing you can do to change that. What’s done is done.”
James promises he won’t finish the letter. The first in a long line of cons, maybe.
Back on the sub in ‘77 – Kate and Sawyer are still arguing about stopping or not stopping Jacks plan when Juliet suddenly takes out the guy with the keys and frees them. The name of the sub is the Galaga. Interesting… the game came out in ’81. They hold the the sub captain at gunpoint, and order him to surface and let them go, then continue away from the island. He wants to know what to say if Horace calls – Sawyer pulls a Han Solo and blasts the radio.
“You ain’t home”
On the island, Sayid’s dismantled the bomb, and it’s now officially a suitcase nuke. Well, backpack nuke. Alpert asks Jack about Locke – he tells him John came 20 years ago and told him he’d be their leader, Since then Alpert’s been off the island a few times to observe him and hasn’t seen anything special. Does Jack know him?
“Yeah, I do, and if I were you, I wouldn’t give up on him.”
The march toward Jacob continues in 2007 – Locke wants to know why Ben didn’t tell Alpert he was going to kill Jacob. Ben explains how he’s been doing things differently since, “…my dead daughter threatened to destroy me if I didn’t do everything you said”
This surprises Locke – and he quickly uses it to his advantage.
“You’re willing to do whatever I say, no matter what it is?”
I don’t even know how to explain the emotion Ben shows when he replies ‘yes’ under his breath. Is great acting an emotion? Locke’s happy that he now won’t have to convince him.
“Convince me of what?”
“I’m not going to kill Jacob, Ben…” (right here Locke goes out of focus briefly – how could that be an accident? But what could it even mean? Either someone behind the scenes messed up pretty bad, or the writers are playing with the fourth wall Like King does in the Dark Tower?)
“You are.”
Flashback (well, forward for Sayid time-wise, just not life-wise) - Sayid and Nadia are walking down La Brea in Los Angeles – it’s their anniversary. They get to a crosswalk and Jacob stops Sayid to ask for directions just as they’re about to cross, Nadia keeps walking and gets creamed, Meet Joe Black-style. Jacob puts his hand on Sayid’s shoulder before he runs to her side. Nadia’s dying wish is to be taken home.
In the tunnels back in 1977, the bomb is packed up and ready to go. Alpert leads the group through the catacombs, and then sledgehammers thru a wall into Horace’s Dharmaville basement. Ellie makes to go first, but Alpert knocks her out. He tells Jack he’s protecting his leader; “…she ordered me to help you, we helped you, now you’re on your own.”
Jack and Sayid go up into the village and try to hide in plain sight as the Dharma security alert is happening. It works for a few seconds, until Uncle Rico sees Sayid.
“You’re the guy that shot my kid!!”
He shoots Sayid in the gut, and Jack starts blasting away at everyone - he gets a few too. Hurley, Jin and Miles pull up in a van and rescue them in the nick of time.
Out on the ocean, Juliet wistfully watches the submarine submerge – her last chance at a real life with James slowly sinking away. The three of them land on the beach and are greeted by Vincent. Sawyer is thrilled. “HEY! How you doing boy? Haven’t seen you since the flaming arrows three years ago.”
Ha ha ha, quote of the episode so far. Rose and Bernard emerge from the nearby jungle. Sawyer wants to know why they didn’t come and join them in Dharma.
“We’re retired,” says Rose.
Bernard explains a little more, “People try their whole lives to get themselves a nice quiet place near the ocean where they can live in peace, and we did. It’s what we made for ourselves.”
Kate explains about Jack and the bomb, but they just don’t care. They’re done with the island drama.
“So we die, as long as we’re together, that’s all that matters in the end.”
Juliet watches Sawyer looking longingly at Kate during this, and knows for sure it’s over for them. They set out for the barracks, and as she’s leaving, Bernard asks Juliet if she’s sure she doesn’t want any tea? “Maybe another time.” – as she holds her stomach and walks away – is she acting out the figurative punch to the gut she just received from Sawyer - or is she pregnant? Anyway, what a great conclusion to the Rose and Bernard storyline. Who didn’t want them to end up happy? And this is almost 30 years before 815 crashes – plenty of time to live out the rest of their lives and end up as a pair of skeletons near a natural water source, no?
Forward to 2007, and the Ajira hike. Lapidus wants to know what they’re gonna do with what’s in the box. They’re gonna show it to someone to let them know what they’re up against, something a whole lot scarier than what’s in the box. Bram tells him, “as long as you’re with us, you’re fine.”
“That’d be a lot more reassuring if I knew who you were, friend.”
“We’re the good guys.”
“In my experience the people who go out of their way to tell you they’re the good guys are the bad guys.”
Ilana stops the group – they’ve arrived at Jacob’s cabin. They see that the ash circle has been broken and look pretty worried. Ilana goes to check out the cabin and we...
Flashback – to Ilana, in a dismal hospital with her face covered in bandages – the people are speaking some Russian sounding language. She has a visitor, its Jacob, but he’s wearing gloves. He’s sorry he didn’t make it sooner, and she’s happy to see him. She knows him for sure. He needs her help.
“Will you help me, Ilana?”
“Yes”
He doesn’t touch her.
Back to the cabin in 2007. Left to the elements, it’s been pretty much torn up, but the painting of the dog is still there. A piece of cloth stuck to the wall (with the knife Jacob was using to clean his fish at the start of the show, back in the 1800’s or so) also remains. She takes a look at it and goes outside. She tells them ‘he’s’ not there, and hasn’t been in a long time, but that someone else has been using it. They burn the cabin to the ground while Lapidus worries about the whole jungle going up in flames.
Flashback - A gloveless Jacob is sitting on a bench reading Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. The cover is a drawing of a dove being pierced by an arrow. Locke falls from the building behind him. He looks pretty damn dead until Jacob puts his hand on John’s shoulder... Locke gasps and opens his eyes.
“Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right. I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Ok there’s some kind of bait and switch happening here for sure – did Locke actually die way back then? Been a vessel since? Even on the plane and hammering on the Hatch? Couldn’t be… I don’t think so. Just a life meant to end extended.
The Other marchers have arrived at the losties old beachside camp. Home sweet home. Locke sits down to talk to Ben – in front of the door to the hatch where they first met. In a rare moment of honesty, Ben reveals that he is a Pisces. Locke wants to know what happened when Ben took him to Jacobs cabin.
“I was pretending, John”
But he was surprised when everything started flying around. Locke still wants to know why he would go thru the trouble to make something like that up.
“I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to know that I had never seen Jacob. So yes, I lied, that’s what I do.”
Locke gets up to walk away, but a frustrated Ben stops him
“Why do you want me to kill Jacob, John?” (smith jingleheimer?)
“Because despite your loyal service to this island, you got cancer, you had to watch your own daughter gunned down right in front of you. You reward for those sacrifices? You were banished. And you did all this in the name of a man you’ve never even met. So the question is, Ben, why the hell wouldn’t you want to kill Jacob?”
Just as manipulative as Ben at his best. Nice.
Sun finds Aaron’s old crib... that Locke built – and Charlie’s driveshaft ring is still in it. Ugh... sad. Really sad.
Flashback – Sun and Jin’s vows during their wedding ceremony. Later, in the receiving line, Jacob is there ungloved, and he touches both of them
“I’d like to offer you my blessing. Your love is a very special thing. Never take it for granted.”
Neither of them know who that white man was, but apparently his Korean is excellent.
Back in the van in 1977 – someone should be singing “you’re gonna be okaaay, you’re gonna be okaaay!” to Sayid. He ain’t looking good. They’re five minutes out from the swan when they’re stopped by Sawyer, Kate and Juliet. Sawyer wants five minutes alone with Jack. If Jack knew the Pantera song, he might’ve stayed with the van.
Flashback – Jack operating... we see where he got the whole count to five strategy he used with Kate way back in the first episode. It’s a technique from his dad – who was really trying to help, but of course Jack takes it the wrong way and thinks he was showing him up, that he doesn’t believe in him.
“Are you sure I’m the one who doesn’t believe in you, Jack?’
Jack was trying to get an Apollo bar (next to the Lindos and the Humdingers) out of the vending machine, but it sticks. A few minutes later a gloveless Jacob has gotten Jack’s Apollo bar out of the machine along with one of his own – he touches Jacks hand when he hands it to him. Jack tells him, “The machine got stuck.”
“I guess it just needed a little push.”
Ok… so the touching is done by the hands of fate, trying to guide destinies, while free will wears gloves so as not to give a hand?
’77 again. Sawyer tells Jack about his parents, and that it happened a year ago, in 1976. He could have gotten on the sub anytime and stopped his Dad. He didn’t because what’s done is done. The less said about the Jack/Sawyer melee the better – unfortunately it’s revealed that Jack is doing it all to try and get Kate back in some cosmic way. Ugh. It was better when it was just crazed faith, like Locke. They beat the shit out of each other, and, moving on, Juliet breaks it up and tells Sawyer that it all has to happen, Jack has to do it.
Flashback to lil’ Juliet and Rachael – their parents are splitting up. Mysteries of the Ancient Americas coffee table book under a conch shell on the coffee table. Nice touch. Speaking of touches – no Jacob. Juliet isn’t important in the grand scheme of things, or at least Jacob/anti-Jacob doesn’t think so. It’s all just a setup for Juliet’s current mindset, realizing that even if Sawyer loves her and she loves him, it’s nothing compared to what Kate and he have, so it seems obvious to her that they’re just not supposed to be together.
On the island in ’77, Sawyer is confused. “One minute you’re leading the great sub escape and now you’re onboard with blowing up the damn island?”
It’s because she saw who he looked at during Rose and Bernard’s tender moment. He tells her he doesn’t care WHO he looked at, he’s with her.
“And you would stay with me forever, if I let you, and that is why I will always love you.”
She gives him the whole speech we just saw her getting from her parents about loving each other but not being meant to be together. Fate or free will?
“If Jack can make it so that none of you even come here, then he should...if I never meet you, then I never have to lose you.”
Family. It fucks you up.
Things are going nuts at the swan, and Phil is calling Radzinsky to let him know that Sayid and the other new recruits are on the loose with a bomb. Jack is watching all this from a distance and Kate shows up. She worries over his busted up face and asks if he remembers when she sewed him up, when they first got there.
“Yeah, it seems like a million years ago.”
“Or 30 years from now.” Heh heh
He wants to know why she told him never to ask about Aaron. Seems it was mainly because she was so mad at him for making her come back to the island. Jack is convinced in a John Locke-ian way that he’s doing the right thing.
“Nothing in my life has ever felt so right, and I just need you to believe that.”
The incident starts at the site down below.
“Are you with me on this?”
“Yes.”
“Then lets go.”
Flashback – Hurley’s getting released from prison. Getting his stuff back – one wallet, $227 cash, a ballpoint pen, and one fruit roll up (and one used prophylactic – seriously, they couldn’t get Frank Oz for this one little scene?) He goes to get in a cab out front, and gloveless Jacob is already in it, with a guitar case. He tells Hugo they can split the fare. Hurley asks what he was in for, and he tells him he wasn’t in prison, he was waiting for him.
“Oh, then you must be dead.”
“I’m definitely not dead.”
He wants to know why Hurley refuses go back to the island. Hurley tells him he’s cursed... he caused the crash, his friends died, and now they talk to him.
“What if you’re blessed…you get to talk to the people you’ve lost. Seems like a pretty wonderful thing to me.”
“Sure, it’s wonderful, except for the part where I’m crazy.”
“I’ve got some news for you Hugo, you’re just gonna have to take my word on this. You are not crazy. Ajira airways flight 316 out of LAX, it leaves in 24 hours. All you have to do is be on that plane.”
Here’s the touching... and, “It’s your choice, Hugo. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
He gets out and Hurley stops him - “You forgot your guitar.”
“It’s not my guitar.”
Back in 1977 at the van, Hurley is assuring Sayid that everything will be ok once Jack changes the future, or the past... one of those. A dying Sayid has somehow rigged the bomb to explode on impact, and Jack tells him its going to work and it will save him.
“Nothing can save me.”
Jack runs off alone with the nuke. Ok – quibble... if they’re all just going to die and reset anyway, then why not ALL go help him to make sure it happens... I mean like right away, I know they do eventually, but still... dramatic license and all that. Boo on that decision. Anyway - Jack passes Sawyer and Juliet on the way to the swan and looks at James... “See you in Los Angeles.”
Another life, brother.
2007. The marching Others arrived at the foot of the statue a while earlier, and it’s nighttime now. Sun asks Ben what happened to the rest of the statue.
“I don’t know, it was like that when I got here.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Not really.”
Alpert and Locke are heading into the foot. Locke calls Ben over to join them. Richard doesn’t want Ben coming along.
“Only the leader can request an audience and there only one leader at a time and...”
Locke interrupts... “I think you’re making up the rules as you go along, Richard. Ben is coming in with me and if that’s a problem, I’m sure Jacob and I can work it out.”
Richard moves his second wall of the episode and tells Locke to say hello for him. Locke and Ben enter the foot... “Will you be able to do this, Ben? I know it won’t be easy, but THINGS WILL CHANGE ONCE HE’S GONE, I promise.”
My emphasis.
Back in time at the van – Miles brings up something pretty obvious that hasn’t been brought up yet... maybe the nuke IS the incident? So what should be done is nothing? Everyone looks dumbfounded.
“Ok, I’m glad you all thought this through.” They see Phil and his crew driving toward the swan, and know that if he sees Jack he’ll kill him. Sawyer looks to Juliet.
“Whadda you think, Blondie?”
“Live together, die alone?”
Jack ain’t too sneaky and gets seen pretty much right away. He’s a crack shot with that gun though... it’s almost as if the bullets are being guided by the hand of fate or something… He seems trapped, but then our buddies show up in the VW bus, tearing shit up like the Libyans in back to the future. Sawyer clocks Radzinsky on the back of the head, takes Phil hostage with Chang’s help, and the rest of the Dharma group drop their weapons. Chang can’t shut the drill down because it has already hit the pocket. Jack goes over to the hole with the bomb and Sawyer looks to Juliet instead of Kate. She is just tickled pink by this, forthcoming atomic explosion be damned. Jack gets that ‘Locke and the hatch’ look in his eyes, and he drops the plutonium core down the shaft. They all close their eyes and steel themselves, and.... nothing.
Sawyer opens his eyes. “This don’t look like LAX”
Then the magnetism shit starts happening.... big time. Chang’s hand gets trapped (it doesn’t seem like his whole arm though... has stuff changed?) and Miles runs to help free him. Jack gets knocked the fuck out by a flying tool chest. I’m guessing a lot of people liked that part. Phil is horribly impaled by some rebar. Juliet gets some chains wrapped around her and is pulled toward the opening of the shaft. Kate and Sawyer are helping as much as they can. It’s not enough though.
“I love you, James. I love you so much.”
And she goes down. Sawyer’s as broken as he’s even been on the show.
Thirty years later, The Ajira’s arrive at the foot of the statue with the crate and Lapidus in tow. Ilana puts down her gun and asks for Ricardo.
“It’s Richard, actually.”
“What lies in the shadow of the statue?”
“Ille qui nos omnes servabit”
[He who will protect us all]
“Richard. I’m Ilana. And I have something you need to see.”
They open the crate and dump out the contents... Locke’s lifeless body. They found him in the coffin in the cargo hold.
“I don’t understand. If this is Locke, who’s in there?”
Ok so the REAL Jacob is the one behind this – he’s the one wearing the gloves – trying to show Richard the John Locke he knows is a fake before it’s too late. But it is too late, isn’t it?
In there, Locke and Ben see the tapestry from earlier in the show, now completed. Jacob is sitting in the corner, in a chair.
“You like it? I did it myself. Takes a very long time when you’re making the thread, but I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Hello Jacob.”
“You found your loophole.”
“Indeed I did. And you have no idea what I’ve gone through to be here.”
Ben is surprised. Seems to happening a lot lately. “Have you met before?”
“In a manner of speaking,”
UnLocke tells Ben to do what he was asked. Jacob speaks up first.
“Benjamin. Whatever he’s told you I want you to understand one thing; you have a choice...you can do what he asks, or you can go and leave us to discuss our issues.”
“Oh, so now, after all this time, you’ve decided to stop ignoring me. Thirty-five years I’ve lived on this island and all I’ve ever heard was your name, over and over, Richard would bring me your instructions, all those slips of paper, all the lists. And I never questioned any of it, I did as I was told. When I dared to ask to see you myself, I was told you have to wait, you have to be patient. But when he asked to see you, he gets marched straight up here as if he was Moses. So why him? What was it that was so wrong with me? What about me?”
“What about you?”
stabby stab stab
Ben gets him right in the chest, a couple times. Pretty brutal. He hits the ground and whispers something through the blood bubbling from his lips. UnLocke leans in closer to hear him.
“They’re coming.”
UnLocke kicks Jacob into the fire pit and he’s engulfed in flame. Dead is dead.
Back to the incident in 1977. Jack comes to in time to help Kate get Sawyer away from the hole before everything metal in the area goes flying down it. Juliet is lying broken and bleeding at the bottom of the shaft, but alive. Barely. We can hear that electromagnetic humming… she sees the bomb next to her, grabs a rock and starts hammering on it. Only way to save her life and unbreak her heart, right?
“Come on!!! Come on!! Come on, you son of a bitch!”
Boom.
So after all this talk of science vs faith, it looks like what we really have is fate vs free will. In the flesh (sort of). Jacob vs. the anti-Jacob. This Dr. Fate has been ‘giving the machine a little push’ this whole time – throughout all of our characters lives. I like the idea that that can also explain the odd coincidences and crossovers in all the flashbacks. That shit really was Fate – messing with them. Guided by the hands of fate, quite literally. Why? The incident was his loophole, somehow? He had to make sure all the pieces were in place. Can fate and free will exist together? It’s like The Great and Secret Show meeting Weaveworld by way of Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series (less the puns). It’s hurting my head, that’s for sure. I’m thinking that ‘he who will protect us all’ has to keep fate in check on the island, but he somehow escaped and was able to manipulate people to create this outcome. The whole Ben stabbing Jacob in the heart bit. But why then would Jacob have ‘guided’ the Black Rock to the island, to prove to fate that there is free will? Seems odd – not very logical.
Poor Locke is the pawniest of all the pawns – he was supposed to die that day, after being thrown out the window, but Fate had other plans and kept him alive. That means for all the theories about the island being purgatory – had actually been correct in a manner of speaking, at least as far as John Locke was concerned. He was a dead man walking for years.
Was it Fate interfering with Michael off the island, making sure he couldn’t die? Is it fate that split up Eloise and Widmore? It’s twisty as to which side either would be on… arguments can be made either way, but I’d guess that arrogant bastard Widmore doesn’t want to be told nothing he does makes a difference, putting him on Jacob’s side – and the mystical Hawking could be on Fate’s – but why then did Widmore send the freighter – wait – because Ben was never supposed to be a part of this – and the somehow significant time-loophole 815er’s made him who he turned out to be. All part of Fate’s plan. Which I guess does tie back to the Jack/science vs Locke/faith thing.
But there are variables – the power of love. If Jennifer hadn’t been in love with Marty, she wouldn’t have written the phone number on the back of the clock tower pamphlet, Marty would have no way to know when lightning would strike, and he would have eventually just vanished in 1955. It might just save your life. For some reason Fate couldn’t see that Juliet was important (thus not visiting/touching her in the past – at least as far as we’ve seen) and would end up falling in love with Sawyer. If she wasn’t in love with him, she wouldn’t want to erase the pain of knowing that he will always love another so badly that she would want to erase ever knowing him, and find the strength to hammer the bomb, which I think is going to send the 1977 group to 2007. (Wow, sorry for that sentence. It sucked.)
“They’re coming.”
If Jacob is dead is dead… did the Ajira’s (I think we can call them Disciples of Jacob now) know he was going to die and are talking about Lapidus as a candidate for his replacement? Speaking of replacements and variables – was Desmond Widmore’s attempt at introducing a variable into the equation, which was somehow negated when Daniel managed to talk to him? Interesting that if he were on the side of free will that he would steer Des’ life in the same way fate was working the 815er’s. Or will Des still have a part to play next season? And did Widmore leading Des to the island allow all this to happen in the first place – it had nothing to do with Fate/free will for him, he just wanted back on the island so badly that he sent Des there, who ended up crashing the plane and may have started this whole mess.
Desmond - more parallels – let’s say Jacob has to keep weaving to hold fate on the island so that mankind has free will. To gain access to him, you have to know the riddle of the statue. He who will protect us all. Lapidus doesn’t know the answer, but he could still be a candidate. Des’ didn’t know what one snowman said to the other snowman, but he still became the man stuck on the island doing a repetitive task to save the world, didn’t he? Protecting us all. Until he crashed the plane and started all this loopy shit happening. Nice job there Des. If Jack somehow knows the Latin answer to the statue riddle let’s give him the job. I think he’s going to be the one who ends up crafting the next tapestry. Just like stitching a dural sac back up. It’s his destiny.
Who’s Meno and what’s he doing in Arizona?
The dude catches a fish outside for breakfast and cooks it, then leans back, watching a ship (let’s assume The Black Rock?) on the horizon. A scruffier looking guy in more homemade clothes walks up.
“I take it you’re here ‘cause of the ship?’
Scruffy tells the weaver guy that he knows he has guided the ship here, to ‘prove him wrong.’
“You are wrong.”
“Am I? They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.”
“It only ends once. Anything that happpens before that is just progress.”
“Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?”
He does.
“One of these days, sooner or later, I’m going to find a loophole, my friend.”
“When you do I’ll be right here.”
“Always nice talking to you, Jacob.”
Nice pan out to find that they were talking in the shadow of the statue. It’s got a crocodile head, and is holding ankhs in each hand. Sobek?
(Scroll down a few comments here to FairVerona’s second post. I didn't really look any deeper into this - but check out her take, it's really cool.)
Flashback - A cornfield and some crows... looks like a shot from The Stand miniseries – or children of the corn. He who will protect us all between the rows. Lil’ Kate and her buddy that eventually gets killed because of her are in the Ames Central General Store parking lot, and he’s playing with ‘the plane’. Part of an Iowa license plate we can see is 023. They go into the store and the boy stands lookout while Kate’s shoplifting a NKOTB lunchbox, the same one she gets the toy plane from years later. Patsy Cline’s Three Cigarettes (in an Ashtray) is playing in the background, of course. They’re busted as she tries to leave with it. Always getting caught, that Kate. Great casting on the kid too. The manager is gonna call her mom and the cops, but then Jacob shows up and pays for it. Kate thanks him.
“You’re welcome. You’re not gonna steal anymore, are you?”
He boops her on the nose.
“Be good, Katie.”
The sub is on its way in 1977. Kate tells the other two prisoners what’s going on back on the island. She wants to get back and stop Jack. Sawyer’s having none of it.
“You just don’t get it Kate. We were happy in Dharmaville until you all showed up...Jack wants to blow up the island, good for Jack.”
Back under the island of the Others, Sayid uses Faraday’s notes to figure out how to dismantle an atomic bomb and gets to work. The plutonium core will be easier to carry around than that big-ass Jughead. Richard is wary of the radiation around a pregnant Ellie! Daniel! Who’s the dad? I’m still thinking Widmore, gross as it may be. They’re the upper crusty Other parallels to the Carlyle’s, Boone and Shannon – who also slept together.
At the swan, Radzinsky is acting psycho insane as usual. He’s flipping out because Pierre stopped the drilling as they got close to the pocket. Chang argues that they have no idea what will happen when they tap into the energy.
“If Edison was only worried about the consequences, we’d all be sitting in the dark. I came to this island to change the world Pierre, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Well, mission accomplished, I’d say.
Thirty years later, Locke is leading the flock of Others to Jacob. Richard is still perplexed at the resurrection of John Locke.
“You’ve been on this island much longer than I have, Richard. If anyone should have an explanation I’d think it would be you.”
“I have been here a long time John, and I’ve seen things on this island that I could barely describe but, I have never seen someone come back to life.”
“And I’ve never seen anyone who doesn’t age, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
“I’m this way because of Jacob.”
So did Richard take over for the scruffy guy at the beginning looking to kill Jacob? Or was he already there even at that time? I’m assuming he came on the Black Rock, just because he was making the model. If he did, and he’s been ageless since, maybe it’s because Jacob needed someone to take scruff’s place and cast Alpert in the part.
The Ajira castaways are landing their boat on the main island, laden with a huge crate and an unconscious Frank Lapidus. Bram wants to know why they brought him, when he didn’t even know the answer to the question. Ilana tells him that doesn’t mean he isn’t a candidate. Lapidus is awake and hears all this, and asks what it is he’s a candidate for - and doesn’t get an answer. My guess, replacing Alpert. Or Jacob. More on that later. They start to move out and Frank asks what’s in the crate. Bram tells Ilana it’s her call, so she shows him the contents.
“Terrific.”
Flashback, and now we’re at Sawyers parents funeral. I’m getting my bad robot shows confused, ‘cause I see one of the pallbearers is bald and I think I spotted the Observer! D’oh. Wrong show. James is writing “the letter” and his pen is running out of ink, when our Observer that seems to do more than just observe shows up. Jacob’s got a fresh one for him, and their fingers touch briefly as he hands it over.
“I’m very sorry about your mother and father, James.”
Jacob leaves. James’ Uncle (or something – definitely sounds like Sawyer) catches him writing the letter – he says he understands how he feels, but that he has to move on.
“They’re gone. And there ain’t nothing you can do to change that. What’s done is done.”
James promises he won’t finish the letter. The first in a long line of cons, maybe.
Back on the sub in ‘77 – Kate and Sawyer are still arguing about stopping or not stopping Jacks plan when Juliet suddenly takes out the guy with the keys and frees them. The name of the sub is the Galaga. Interesting… the game came out in ’81. They hold the the sub captain at gunpoint, and order him to surface and let them go, then continue away from the island. He wants to know what to say if Horace calls – Sawyer pulls a Han Solo and blasts the radio.
“You ain’t home”
On the island, Sayid’s dismantled the bomb, and it’s now officially a suitcase nuke. Well, backpack nuke. Alpert asks Jack about Locke – he tells him John came 20 years ago and told him he’d be their leader, Since then Alpert’s been off the island a few times to observe him and hasn’t seen anything special. Does Jack know him?
“Yeah, I do, and if I were you, I wouldn’t give up on him.”
The march toward Jacob continues in 2007 – Locke wants to know why Ben didn’t tell Alpert he was going to kill Jacob. Ben explains how he’s been doing things differently since, “…my dead daughter threatened to destroy me if I didn’t do everything you said”
This surprises Locke – and he quickly uses it to his advantage.
“You’re willing to do whatever I say, no matter what it is?”
I don’t even know how to explain the emotion Ben shows when he replies ‘yes’ under his breath. Is great acting an emotion? Locke’s happy that he now won’t have to convince him.
“Convince me of what?”
“I’m not going to kill Jacob, Ben…” (right here Locke goes out of focus briefly – how could that be an accident? But what could it even mean? Either someone behind the scenes messed up pretty bad, or the writers are playing with the fourth wall Like King does in the Dark Tower?)
“You are.”
Flashback (well, forward for Sayid time-wise, just not life-wise) - Sayid and Nadia are walking down La Brea in Los Angeles – it’s their anniversary. They get to a crosswalk and Jacob stops Sayid to ask for directions just as they’re about to cross, Nadia keeps walking and gets creamed, Meet Joe Black-style. Jacob puts his hand on Sayid’s shoulder before he runs to her side. Nadia’s dying wish is to be taken home.
In the tunnels back in 1977, the bomb is packed up and ready to go. Alpert leads the group through the catacombs, and then sledgehammers thru a wall into Horace’s Dharmaville basement. Ellie makes to go first, but Alpert knocks her out. He tells Jack he’s protecting his leader; “…she ordered me to help you, we helped you, now you’re on your own.”
Jack and Sayid go up into the village and try to hide in plain sight as the Dharma security alert is happening. It works for a few seconds, until Uncle Rico sees Sayid.
“You’re the guy that shot my kid!!”
He shoots Sayid in the gut, and Jack starts blasting away at everyone - he gets a few too. Hurley, Jin and Miles pull up in a van and rescue them in the nick of time.
Out on the ocean, Juliet wistfully watches the submarine submerge – her last chance at a real life with James slowly sinking away. The three of them land on the beach and are greeted by Vincent. Sawyer is thrilled. “HEY! How you doing boy? Haven’t seen you since the flaming arrows three years ago.”
Ha ha ha, quote of the episode so far. Rose and Bernard emerge from the nearby jungle. Sawyer wants to know why they didn’t come and join them in Dharma.
“We’re retired,” says Rose.
Bernard explains a little more, “People try their whole lives to get themselves a nice quiet place near the ocean where they can live in peace, and we did. It’s what we made for ourselves.”
Kate explains about Jack and the bomb, but they just don’t care. They’re done with the island drama.
“So we die, as long as we’re together, that’s all that matters in the end.”
Juliet watches Sawyer looking longingly at Kate during this, and knows for sure it’s over for them. They set out for the barracks, and as she’s leaving, Bernard asks Juliet if she’s sure she doesn’t want any tea? “Maybe another time.” – as she holds her stomach and walks away – is she acting out the figurative punch to the gut she just received from Sawyer - or is she pregnant? Anyway, what a great conclusion to the Rose and Bernard storyline. Who didn’t want them to end up happy? And this is almost 30 years before 815 crashes – plenty of time to live out the rest of their lives and end up as a pair of skeletons near a natural water source, no?
Forward to 2007, and the Ajira hike. Lapidus wants to know what they’re gonna do with what’s in the box. They’re gonna show it to someone to let them know what they’re up against, something a whole lot scarier than what’s in the box. Bram tells him, “as long as you’re with us, you’re fine.”
“That’d be a lot more reassuring if I knew who you were, friend.”
“We’re the good guys.”
“In my experience the people who go out of their way to tell you they’re the good guys are the bad guys.”
Ilana stops the group – they’ve arrived at Jacob’s cabin. They see that the ash circle has been broken and look pretty worried. Ilana goes to check out the cabin and we...
Flashback – to Ilana, in a dismal hospital with her face covered in bandages – the people are speaking some Russian sounding language. She has a visitor, its Jacob, but he’s wearing gloves. He’s sorry he didn’t make it sooner, and she’s happy to see him. She knows him for sure. He needs her help.
“Will you help me, Ilana?”
“Yes”
He doesn’t touch her.
Back to the cabin in 2007. Left to the elements, it’s been pretty much torn up, but the painting of the dog is still there. A piece of cloth stuck to the wall (with the knife Jacob was using to clean his fish at the start of the show, back in the 1800’s or so) also remains. She takes a look at it and goes outside. She tells them ‘he’s’ not there, and hasn’t been in a long time, but that someone else has been using it. They burn the cabin to the ground while Lapidus worries about the whole jungle going up in flames.
Flashback - A gloveless Jacob is sitting on a bench reading Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. The cover is a drawing of a dove being pierced by an arrow. Locke falls from the building behind him. He looks pretty damn dead until Jacob puts his hand on John’s shoulder... Locke gasps and opens his eyes.
“Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right. I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Ok there’s some kind of bait and switch happening here for sure – did Locke actually die way back then? Been a vessel since? Even on the plane and hammering on the Hatch? Couldn’t be… I don’t think so. Just a life meant to end extended.
The Other marchers have arrived at the losties old beachside camp. Home sweet home. Locke sits down to talk to Ben – in front of the door to the hatch where they first met. In a rare moment of honesty, Ben reveals that he is a Pisces. Locke wants to know what happened when Ben took him to Jacobs cabin.
“I was pretending, John”
But he was surprised when everything started flying around. Locke still wants to know why he would go thru the trouble to make something like that up.
“I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to know that I had never seen Jacob. So yes, I lied, that’s what I do.”
Locke gets up to walk away, but a frustrated Ben stops him
“Why do you want me to kill Jacob, John?” (smith jingleheimer?)
“Because despite your loyal service to this island, you got cancer, you had to watch your own daughter gunned down right in front of you. You reward for those sacrifices? You were banished. And you did all this in the name of a man you’ve never even met. So the question is, Ben, why the hell wouldn’t you want to kill Jacob?”
Just as manipulative as Ben at his best. Nice.
Sun finds Aaron’s old crib... that Locke built – and Charlie’s driveshaft ring is still in it. Ugh... sad. Really sad.
Flashback – Sun and Jin’s vows during their wedding ceremony. Later, in the receiving line, Jacob is there ungloved, and he touches both of them
“I’d like to offer you my blessing. Your love is a very special thing. Never take it for granted.”
Neither of them know who that white man was, but apparently his Korean is excellent.
Back in the van in 1977 – someone should be singing “you’re gonna be okaaay, you’re gonna be okaaay!” to Sayid. He ain’t looking good. They’re five minutes out from the swan when they’re stopped by Sawyer, Kate and Juliet. Sawyer wants five minutes alone with Jack. If Jack knew the Pantera song, he might’ve stayed with the van.
Flashback – Jack operating... we see where he got the whole count to five strategy he used with Kate way back in the first episode. It’s a technique from his dad – who was really trying to help, but of course Jack takes it the wrong way and thinks he was showing him up, that he doesn’t believe in him.
“Are you sure I’m the one who doesn’t believe in you, Jack?’
Jack was trying to get an Apollo bar (next to the Lindos and the Humdingers) out of the vending machine, but it sticks. A few minutes later a gloveless Jacob has gotten Jack’s Apollo bar out of the machine along with one of his own – he touches Jacks hand when he hands it to him. Jack tells him, “The machine got stuck.”
“I guess it just needed a little push.”
Ok… so the touching is done by the hands of fate, trying to guide destinies, while free will wears gloves so as not to give a hand?
’77 again. Sawyer tells Jack about his parents, and that it happened a year ago, in 1976. He could have gotten on the sub anytime and stopped his Dad. He didn’t because what’s done is done. The less said about the Jack/Sawyer melee the better – unfortunately it’s revealed that Jack is doing it all to try and get Kate back in some cosmic way. Ugh. It was better when it was just crazed faith, like Locke. They beat the shit out of each other, and, moving on, Juliet breaks it up and tells Sawyer that it all has to happen, Jack has to do it.
Flashback to lil’ Juliet and Rachael – their parents are splitting up. Mysteries of the Ancient Americas coffee table book under a conch shell on the coffee table. Nice touch. Speaking of touches – no Jacob. Juliet isn’t important in the grand scheme of things, or at least Jacob/anti-Jacob doesn’t think so. It’s all just a setup for Juliet’s current mindset, realizing that even if Sawyer loves her and she loves him, it’s nothing compared to what Kate and he have, so it seems obvious to her that they’re just not supposed to be together.
On the island in ’77, Sawyer is confused. “One minute you’re leading the great sub escape and now you’re onboard with blowing up the damn island?”
It’s because she saw who he looked at during Rose and Bernard’s tender moment. He tells her he doesn’t care WHO he looked at, he’s with her.
“And you would stay with me forever, if I let you, and that is why I will always love you.”
She gives him the whole speech we just saw her getting from her parents about loving each other but not being meant to be together. Fate or free will?
“If Jack can make it so that none of you even come here, then he should...if I never meet you, then I never have to lose you.”
Family. It fucks you up.
Things are going nuts at the swan, and Phil is calling Radzinsky to let him know that Sayid and the other new recruits are on the loose with a bomb. Jack is watching all this from a distance and Kate shows up. She worries over his busted up face and asks if he remembers when she sewed him up, when they first got there.
“Yeah, it seems like a million years ago.”
“Or 30 years from now.” Heh heh
He wants to know why she told him never to ask about Aaron. Seems it was mainly because she was so mad at him for making her come back to the island. Jack is convinced in a John Locke-ian way that he’s doing the right thing.
“Nothing in my life has ever felt so right, and I just need you to believe that.”
The incident starts at the site down below.
“Are you with me on this?”
“Yes.”
“Then lets go.”
Flashback – Hurley’s getting released from prison. Getting his stuff back – one wallet, $227 cash, a ballpoint pen, and one fruit roll up (and one used prophylactic – seriously, they couldn’t get Frank Oz for this one little scene?) He goes to get in a cab out front, and gloveless Jacob is already in it, with a guitar case. He tells Hugo they can split the fare. Hurley asks what he was in for, and he tells him he wasn’t in prison, he was waiting for him.
“Oh, then you must be dead.”
“I’m definitely not dead.”
He wants to know why Hurley refuses go back to the island. Hurley tells him he’s cursed... he caused the crash, his friends died, and now they talk to him.
“What if you’re blessed…you get to talk to the people you’ve lost. Seems like a pretty wonderful thing to me.”
“Sure, it’s wonderful, except for the part where I’m crazy.”
“I’ve got some news for you Hugo, you’re just gonna have to take my word on this. You are not crazy. Ajira airways flight 316 out of LAX, it leaves in 24 hours. All you have to do is be on that plane.”
Here’s the touching... and, “It’s your choice, Hugo. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
He gets out and Hurley stops him - “You forgot your guitar.”
“It’s not my guitar.”
Back in 1977 at the van, Hurley is assuring Sayid that everything will be ok once Jack changes the future, or the past... one of those. A dying Sayid has somehow rigged the bomb to explode on impact, and Jack tells him its going to work and it will save him.
“Nothing can save me.”
Jack runs off alone with the nuke. Ok – quibble... if they’re all just going to die and reset anyway, then why not ALL go help him to make sure it happens... I mean like right away, I know they do eventually, but still... dramatic license and all that. Boo on that decision. Anyway - Jack passes Sawyer and Juliet on the way to the swan and looks at James... “See you in Los Angeles.”
Another life, brother.
2007. The marching Others arrived at the foot of the statue a while earlier, and it’s nighttime now. Sun asks Ben what happened to the rest of the statue.
“I don’t know, it was like that when I got here.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Not really.”
Alpert and Locke are heading into the foot. Locke calls Ben over to join them. Richard doesn’t want Ben coming along.
“Only the leader can request an audience and there only one leader at a time and...”
Locke interrupts... “I think you’re making up the rules as you go along, Richard. Ben is coming in with me and if that’s a problem, I’m sure Jacob and I can work it out.”
Richard moves his second wall of the episode and tells Locke to say hello for him. Locke and Ben enter the foot... “Will you be able to do this, Ben? I know it won’t be easy, but THINGS WILL CHANGE ONCE HE’S GONE, I promise.”
My emphasis.
Back in time at the van – Miles brings up something pretty obvious that hasn’t been brought up yet... maybe the nuke IS the incident? So what should be done is nothing? Everyone looks dumbfounded.
“Ok, I’m glad you all thought this through.” They see Phil and his crew driving toward the swan, and know that if he sees Jack he’ll kill him. Sawyer looks to Juliet.
“Whadda you think, Blondie?”
“Live together, die alone?”
Jack ain’t too sneaky and gets seen pretty much right away. He’s a crack shot with that gun though... it’s almost as if the bullets are being guided by the hand of fate or something… He seems trapped, but then our buddies show up in the VW bus, tearing shit up like the Libyans in back to the future. Sawyer clocks Radzinsky on the back of the head, takes Phil hostage with Chang’s help, and the rest of the Dharma group drop their weapons. Chang can’t shut the drill down because it has already hit the pocket. Jack goes over to the hole with the bomb and Sawyer looks to Juliet instead of Kate. She is just tickled pink by this, forthcoming atomic explosion be damned. Jack gets that ‘Locke and the hatch’ look in his eyes, and he drops the plutonium core down the shaft. They all close their eyes and steel themselves, and.... nothing.
Sawyer opens his eyes. “This don’t look like LAX”
Then the magnetism shit starts happening.... big time. Chang’s hand gets trapped (it doesn’t seem like his whole arm though... has stuff changed?) and Miles runs to help free him. Jack gets knocked the fuck out by a flying tool chest. I’m guessing a lot of people liked that part. Phil is horribly impaled by some rebar. Juliet gets some chains wrapped around her and is pulled toward the opening of the shaft. Kate and Sawyer are helping as much as they can. It’s not enough though.
“I love you, James. I love you so much.”
And she goes down. Sawyer’s as broken as he’s even been on the show.
Thirty years later, The Ajira’s arrive at the foot of the statue with the crate and Lapidus in tow. Ilana puts down her gun and asks for Ricardo.
“It’s Richard, actually.”
“What lies in the shadow of the statue?”
“Ille qui nos omnes servabit”
[He who will protect us all]
“Richard. I’m Ilana. And I have something you need to see.”
They open the crate and dump out the contents... Locke’s lifeless body. They found him in the coffin in the cargo hold.
“I don’t understand. If this is Locke, who’s in there?”
Ok so the REAL Jacob is the one behind this – he’s the one wearing the gloves – trying to show Richard the John Locke he knows is a fake before it’s too late. But it is too late, isn’t it?
In there, Locke and Ben see the tapestry from earlier in the show, now completed. Jacob is sitting in the corner, in a chair.
“You like it? I did it myself. Takes a very long time when you’re making the thread, but I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Hello Jacob.”
“You found your loophole.”
“Indeed I did. And you have no idea what I’ve gone through to be here.”
Ben is surprised. Seems to happening a lot lately. “Have you met before?”
“In a manner of speaking,”
UnLocke tells Ben to do what he was asked. Jacob speaks up first.
“Benjamin. Whatever he’s told you I want you to understand one thing; you have a choice...you can do what he asks, or you can go and leave us to discuss our issues.”
“Oh, so now, after all this time, you’ve decided to stop ignoring me. Thirty-five years I’ve lived on this island and all I’ve ever heard was your name, over and over, Richard would bring me your instructions, all those slips of paper, all the lists. And I never questioned any of it, I did as I was told. When I dared to ask to see you myself, I was told you have to wait, you have to be patient. But when he asked to see you, he gets marched straight up here as if he was Moses. So why him? What was it that was so wrong with me? What about me?”
“What about you?”
stabby stab stab
Ben gets him right in the chest, a couple times. Pretty brutal. He hits the ground and whispers something through the blood bubbling from his lips. UnLocke leans in closer to hear him.
“They’re coming.”
UnLocke kicks Jacob into the fire pit and he’s engulfed in flame. Dead is dead.
Back to the incident in 1977. Jack comes to in time to help Kate get Sawyer away from the hole before everything metal in the area goes flying down it. Juliet is lying broken and bleeding at the bottom of the shaft, but alive. Barely. We can hear that electromagnetic humming… she sees the bomb next to her, grabs a rock and starts hammering on it. Only way to save her life and unbreak her heart, right?
“Come on!!! Come on!! Come on, you son of a bitch!”
Boom.
So after all this talk of science vs faith, it looks like what we really have is fate vs free will. In the flesh (sort of). Jacob vs. the anti-Jacob. This Dr. Fate has been ‘giving the machine a little push’ this whole time – throughout all of our characters lives. I like the idea that that can also explain the odd coincidences and crossovers in all the flashbacks. That shit really was Fate – messing with them. Guided by the hands of fate, quite literally. Why? The incident was his loophole, somehow? He had to make sure all the pieces were in place. Can fate and free will exist together? It’s like The Great and Secret Show meeting Weaveworld by way of Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series (less the puns). It’s hurting my head, that’s for sure. I’m thinking that ‘he who will protect us all’ has to keep fate in check on the island, but he somehow escaped and was able to manipulate people to create this outcome. The whole Ben stabbing Jacob in the heart bit. But why then would Jacob have ‘guided’ the Black Rock to the island, to prove to fate that there is free will? Seems odd – not very logical.
Poor Locke is the pawniest of all the pawns – he was supposed to die that day, after being thrown out the window, but Fate had other plans and kept him alive. That means for all the theories about the island being purgatory – had actually been correct in a manner of speaking, at least as far as John Locke was concerned. He was a dead man walking for years.
Was it Fate interfering with Michael off the island, making sure he couldn’t die? Is it fate that split up Eloise and Widmore? It’s twisty as to which side either would be on… arguments can be made either way, but I’d guess that arrogant bastard Widmore doesn’t want to be told nothing he does makes a difference, putting him on Jacob’s side – and the mystical Hawking could be on Fate’s – but why then did Widmore send the freighter – wait – because Ben was never supposed to be a part of this – and the somehow significant time-loophole 815er’s made him who he turned out to be. All part of Fate’s plan. Which I guess does tie back to the Jack/science vs Locke/faith thing.
But there are variables – the power of love. If Jennifer hadn’t been in love with Marty, she wouldn’t have written the phone number on the back of the clock tower pamphlet, Marty would have no way to know when lightning would strike, and he would have eventually just vanished in 1955. It might just save your life. For some reason Fate couldn’t see that Juliet was important (thus not visiting/touching her in the past – at least as far as we’ve seen) and would end up falling in love with Sawyer. If she wasn’t in love with him, she wouldn’t want to erase the pain of knowing that he will always love another so badly that she would want to erase ever knowing him, and find the strength to hammer the bomb, which I think is going to send the 1977 group to 2007. (Wow, sorry for that sentence. It sucked.)
“They’re coming.”
If Jacob is dead is dead… did the Ajira’s (I think we can call them Disciples of Jacob now) know he was going to die and are talking about Lapidus as a candidate for his replacement? Speaking of replacements and variables – was Desmond Widmore’s attempt at introducing a variable into the equation, which was somehow negated when Daniel managed to talk to him? Interesting that if he were on the side of free will that he would steer Des’ life in the same way fate was working the 815er’s. Or will Des still have a part to play next season? And did Widmore leading Des to the island allow all this to happen in the first place – it had nothing to do with Fate/free will for him, he just wanted back on the island so badly that he sent Des there, who ended up crashing the plane and may have started this whole mess.
Desmond - more parallels – let’s say Jacob has to keep weaving to hold fate on the island so that mankind has free will. To gain access to him, you have to know the riddle of the statue. He who will protect us all. Lapidus doesn’t know the answer, but he could still be a candidate. Des’ didn’t know what one snowman said to the other snowman, but he still became the man stuck on the island doing a repetitive task to save the world, didn’t he? Protecting us all. Until he crashed the plane and started all this loopy shit happening. Nice job there Des. If Jack somehow knows the Latin answer to the statue riddle let’s give him the job. I think he’s going to be the one who ends up crafting the next tapestry. Just like stitching a dural sac back up. It’s his destiny.
posted by karmacomedian at 8:39 PM
Episode Recaps and stuff
Season 2
man of science, man of faithlyrics
down the hatch part 1
hatch map
down the hatch part 2
adrift
recap
apollo bar
orientation
recap
marvin candle
everybody hates hugo
recap
...and found
abandoned
thoughts
recap
the other 48 days
recap
dean koontz
collison
recap
what kate did
recap
the 23rd psalm
recap part 1
recap part 2
the hunting party
recap
fire + water
recap
the long con
recap
one of them
recap
materinity leave
recap
the whole truth
recap
lockdown
recap
dave
recap
S.O.S.
recap
lost:reckoning
thoughts
two for the road
recap
?
recap
three minutes
recap
live together, die alone
recap
between season video thing
Season 3
a tale of two citiesrecap
the glass ballerina
recap
further instructions
recap
every man for himself
recap
the cost of living
i do
not in portland
flashes before your eyes
stranger in a strange land
tricia tanaka is dead
enter 77
par avion
the man from tallahassee
exposé
left behind
thoughts
one of us
catch-22
thoughts
d.o.c.
thoughts
the brig
thoughts
the man behind the curtain
Links
-
abc's lost boards
the fuselage
lostmedia
lostlinks
lost hatch
series premieres
american idle
tv chit-chat
karmacomedian
parkstreetunder
Previous Posts
- Get your own customized TShirt
- when i was living this lie, fear was my game...
- you can choose from phantom fears and kindness tha...
- when men on the chessboard get up and tell you whe...
- I look all white, but my dad was black
- we got your disease
- if you choose not to decide - you still have made ...
- Bentham? I don't even know him!
Archives
- September 2005
- October 2005
- November 2005
- January 2006
- February 2006
- March 2006
- April 2006
- May 2006
- September 2006
- October 2006
- November 2006
- February 2007
- March 2007
- April 2007
- May 2007
- September 2007
- February 2008
- February 2009
- May 2009
- February 2010
- March 2010
- July 2010
- March 2011
- February 2012
l o s t
