By Billie Doux

4.13 There’s No Place Like Home (2)

Locke: “Was he talking about what I think he was talking about?”
Ben: “If you mean time traveling bunnies, then yes.”

Well, that was epic.

Ben and the time machine

Ben has become one of the most fascinating characters on television. He can’t be pigeonholed as either good or evil, and we still don’t know what motivates him. But I really do think at this point that Ben believes what he’s doing is right. At the same time, Ben caused the deaths of everyone on the freighter by killing Keamy, and he didn’t seem to care.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a time travel device. But it made no sense. In the Orchid Station video that was over too soon, Edgar Halliwax said not to put metal in the Thing (which was sort of like a great big microwave, or possibly a space age shower stall). But that was just what Ben did, and he blew it up. Then Ben moved the Island by crawling through a frozen tunnel and turning a frozen wheel, just like there was a huge propeller under the Island. I’m so confused.

And did Ben go to Tunisia from there? It seems like he did, since he was wearing Halliwax’s parka and he did injure his arm. Was that the same injury he had when he popped out in Tunisia? I don’t recall. I thought he’d been shot. Ben said that if he moved the Island, he would never be able to return. Or so he said. Ben has lied before.

The Orchid station video, 6 of 6, started rewinding and we never saw the end, dammit. But we learned that the “unique properties” of the Island had a Casimir effect that allowed experiments in space and time. That might explain Richard. But it doesn’t explain the Walking Dead, does it? Or maybe it does. Like I said, I’m confused.

The freighter and the helicopter

Michael’s trick with the nitrogen saved the lives of the Oceanic Six plus Desmond and Frank. Michael redeemed himself. Several episodes ago, Michael told Sayid he was there to die; right before the freighter exploded, Christian appeared and told Michael, “You can go now.” Fascinating. What did it mean?

Was Michael supposed to make certain that the Oceanic Six, and possibly Christian’s grandson in particular, stayed alive? Was Michael only allowed to die after accomplishing this task? Or was Michael one of the Walking Dead all along? That might explain why he couldn’t die. I think.

As soon as Frank said something about two hundred pounds too many on the chopper, I knew Sawyer would sacrifice himself for the others. That con artist has developed a noble streak a mile wide. At least he didn’t end up shot when he hit the water this time. And I was really glad they didn’t make us wait for eight months to find out whether he made it or not.

Jin’s death upset me, and Sun’s grief was epic. Of course, we didn’t actually see Jin die, and on a show like Lost with so many dead characters, who knows what will happen? Dan thought that maybe Faraday would be able to pick up people in the water. But again, where could they go?

Desmond and Penny were reunited, which I hadn’t expected until the end of the series. Is that the end of Desmond’s character arc? Will he return next season? There’s still Ben’s reciprocal vendetta against Widmore via Penny. Yes, I think Desmond will be back.

The Island

Kate and Sayid allied with Richard and the Others against Keamy and his mercenaries, and I really got a charge out of that. Ben kept his word to them, and helped them get to the helicopter. Which turned out to be a bad thing, didn’t it?

I was wondering where everyone was when we saw Juliet sitting on the beach getting drunk when Sawyer arrived. I did a fast cast head count, and nearly all of the remaining cast were accounted for. I saw Vincent in the distance on the beach when Faraday was loading the Zodiac, so Vincent must still be on the Island. I assume Rose and Bernard stayed, since they were still on the beach when Faraday left with the extras.

What happened to Faraday and the extras? Did they go with the Island, or stay in the empty ocean? (Come on, Faraday. On a show as dangerous as Lost, you don’t get into a boat loaded only with extras.) If they’re stuck on the empty ocean, where can they possibly go?

Miles and Charlotte chose to stay on the Island for reasons of their own. Was Charlotte born on the Island? Really? I got the impression that Miles stayed on the Island because he’s psychic and knew it was the safest place to be.

As the last remaining members of the Island love quadrangle, maybe Sawyer and Juliet could take a little comfort with each other. At least until Jack and Kate return, which I fully expect them to do.

The Oceanic Six and Jeremy Bentham

I was surprised that the lies the Oceanic Six told were Jack’s idea.

And we found out who was in the box at the Flash Forward Funeral Parlor: our very own John Locke. But where the hell did the name Jeremy Bentham come from? Why were the Oceanic Six so careful not to mention Locke’s name? “Jeremy Bentham” seems unanagrammable, and apparently had nothing to do with Locke. (Other than it was also the name of a philosopher.)

Bentham/Locke had gone to visit them all try to convince them to go back. If Locke were exiled from the Island and his paraplegia had returned, I could definitely see him killing himself. (Did Locke move the Island, too? Was that how it happened?) But Sayid pointedly said that “they said” it was suicide. Maybe Locke was killed. Another mystery for…

Next season

Will it be three years later? It would have to be, wouldn’t it? Will we have parallel stories of bad things happening on the Island while the Oceanic Six try to return? Will we get flashbacks, flashforwards, flash sidewayses? Will Daniel Dae Kim, Jeremy Davies, and Emilie de Ravin still be in the cast? I’m assuming Harold Perrineau will be gone, since his arc appears to be over.

We were told that bad things happened on the Island after the Oceanic Six left. Maybe the Oceanic Six took the miracles with them when they left. (The eight of them surviving that helicopter crash in the open sea was certainly miraculous.) Locke was convinced that crashing on the Island was their destiny. Maybe he was right. Maybe the Island really did, or will, suffer because the Oceanic Six left.

In the season opener, Charlie told Hurley to go back to the Island. Here, Ben told Jack that the Oceanic Six all had to return to the Island together, and they even had to take Locke’s body with them. (Sort of like Locke dragging his father’s body back to Ben.) But why just the seven of them? What about Desmond and Frank? Maybe it’s supposed to be all the 815 survivors. But wouldn’t that include Walt? In Kate’s dream, creepy Claire told her, “Don’t bring him back, Kate. Don’t you dare bring him back.” Him who? Aaron? Or Locke?

Surprise!

ABC aired an enhanced version of last week’s part one right before this two-hour finale. And surprise! there was an extra added exchange in the press conference: the three who supposedly survived the crash but died later on the Island were revealed. (Yes, three. Aaron hadn’t been born yet, which I should have thought of before.)

The three who supposedly died were Boone, Libby, and Charlie. Why those three? Did Jack pick those names out of a mental hat? Really interesting that those three actually did die on the Island, and that they were all Walking Dead. (Although Boone and Libby have only been seen in dreams. But I think they count.)

Character bits:

– Desmond had six months experience with explosive ordinance disposal in the Army. Clearly not enough.

– Too bad Walt won’t get the big bucks from Oceanic, huh? As we expected, Malcolm David Kelley was a *lot* bigger. Huge. Practically an adult.

– I was glad Frank made it. I liked Frank.

– Hurley, institutionalized at Santa Rosa, was playing chess with Mr. Eko. Maybe after three years, Hurley had grown accustomed to visits from the Walking Dead. But the Walking Dead are corporeal and visible. Why couldn’t Sayid see him, too?

– Sun said that two people were responsible for Jin’s death. Her father was one. Who was the other? Technically, Ben was responsible for the freighter go boom. It might also have been Kate, for not getting Jin to the chopper. Jack said Sun blamed him, though. That would make for some interesting Sun/Jack conflict next season. She’s merciless.

– Desmond’s vision of Claire getting on the helicopter never happened. I sort of don’t know what to say about that. The writers are usually so good about continuity.

– Kevin Durand (Keamy) did a great job this season as a totally despicable villain. Although I kept looking at him and thinking “Joshua!”

– The man in the coffin was supposedly from New York. Isn’t Locke from California?

– Sawyer called Frank “Kenny Rogers” and Jack “Sundance.” Rose called Miles “Shorty.”

Bits and pieces:

– This episode began with a continuation of the flashback in *last* season’s finale, “Through the Looking Glass”. That was cool. It was three years since the Oceanic Six returned. Longer than I thought, and almost present day.

– During the finale, ABC aired a commercial for Octagon Global Recruiting. It’s a Dharma Initiative recruiting drive, to take place in San Diego July 24-27. You can insert your email address for updates. The joke, of course, is that’s the time and place of the San Diego Comic Con.

– The whispers were back. Keamy heard them right before the firefight at the chopper. And Michael heard them before Christian appeared.

– I loved the way the Orchid station looked, at least on the outside: overgrown and wild. With a time and space machine on the inside. Yeah, I could move in, a few throw pillows, call it home.

– The time traveling bunny was number fifteen. Right before Sayid shot him, the guy in the car outside the hospital said it was 8:15. And Aaron had a number one on his blanket. Not one of Hurley’s numbers, but I thought it was interesting.

– Big gun battle. They seem to reserve the big gun battles for finales. Plus we had an awesome hand-to-hand fight between Sayid and Keamy. Visceral and effective.

– Two very romantic kisses: Sawyer saying goodbye to Kate, and Desmond saying hello to Penny. And then there was Jack giving Desmond mouth to mouth. We don’t get a lot of kissing on Lost.

– Clearly, crackers on the Island don’t age. Just like Richard Alpert.

– What were they feeding the baby all that time?

– I thought I’d noticed a big continuity error. They threw everything out of the chopper to lessen the weight, but suddenly there were life jackets and a raft. When I watched the episode the second time, I noticed that they loaded the jackets and raft onto the chopper while they were covering the bullet holes with duct tape.

– Apparently, “Alcatraz” disappeared when the main Island did. I’m glad they covered that little detail, or the fans would have been all over it.

Quotes:

Jack: “There’s no such thing as miracles.”
Locke: “Well. We’ll just have to see which one of us is right.”

Locke: “Lie to them, Jack. If you do it half as well as you lie to yourself, they’ll believe you.”

Ben: “Couldn’t find the antheriums, could you?”
Locke: “I don’t know what they look like.”
I couldn’t pick an antherium out of a crowd to save my life, either.

Locke: “How deep is the station?”
Ben: “Deep.”
With a tunnel to the arctic Island-moving machine? Yeah, pretty deep, I’d say.

Locke: “You just killed everybody on that boat.”
Ben: “So?”
What, was he quoting Cheney?

Sayid: “We’re being watched.”
Hurley: “Dude, I’ve been having regular conversations with dead people. The last thing I need now is paranoia.”

Sun: (to Widmore) “As you know, we’re not the only ones who left the Island.” Was she talking about Ben? Possibly Desmond? Was she sincere about allying with Widmore?

Ben: “Whoever moves the Island can never come back.” Really? Ben does lie.

Jack: “Then I’ll see you in another life, brother.”
Desmond: “Aye. I guess you will.”

Ben: “It’s dark, Jack. Very dark.”
You could say that.

This was, without a doubt, the hugest, weirdest cliffhanger-paloosa ever; it certainly deserves four out of four polar bears. And now the long wait for season five,

Billie

BY BILLIE DOUX
4.11 Cabin Fever

Ben: “Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch.”

I guess I just got the answer to the question, how weird can Lost actually get? Lost isn’t just the name of the show. It’s also the permanent condition of the audience.

Apparently, Claire is now one of the walking dead. Surviving that explosion was really unlikely, after all. Or she could have died from her head injury while she was sleeping, which would explain why Christian came for her and why she left the baby. (As well as why ghost-sensitive Miles let her leave without waking Sawyer.) But why Claire? Why Charlie? Why Christian, who didn’t even die on the Island? It appears that the Island uses the walking dead to communicate with the living, but is that all there is to it? It feels like there’s some sort of framework to the vast Lost story and they keep giving us glimpses of the underlying structure, but it still doesn’t make sense to me.

Christian and Claire sitting in that cabin in the dark was just incredibly creepy, and the way they smiled at Locke was even creepier. A major contrast to Locke, Ben, and Hurley wandering around the jungle, which had a Three Stooges feel. Dan thinks that, while Ben’s methods are questionable, he might be on the “right” side. I don’t know. But we both loved the Ben and Hurley candy bar scene. Dan said, “That may have been the coolest moment in the entire series.”

Miracles are key. Locke was “chosen” because he cheated death several times. He originally got on Richard Alpert’s radar when he was born a six-month preemie and miraculously survived. Abbadon showed up after Locke survived his trip out an eighth story window. (Was it Cooper both times? Was he trying to kill his way out of a problematic got-a-teenage-girl-pregnant situation?) Locke was a “special” child, like Walt, but he refused to be what they wanted him to be, which was a scientist like Juliet. Locke wanted to be a superhero. And he won, didn’t he? Locke became the man of adventure he always wanted to be. And now the Island wants him, anyway.

Richard Alpert may be the most interesting peripheral character on the show. Who or what is he? Is he immortal? A clone? There’s time travel, of course. Maybe Richard bounces around in time and space, using the device Ben used to get to Tunisia. Yeah, that’s probably the best fit for the circumstances.

But Abbadon was apparently recruiting Locke, too. He showed up after Locke’s accident, talked about miracles, and encouraged Locke to go on walkabout. Doesn’t Abbadon work for Widmore, though? Did Widmore originally want Locke on the Island, but now Widmore wants to *torch* the Island? It doesn’t make sense.

And man, that freighter. People are dropping like flies. (Except Michael, who still can’t get shot and can’t die.) Keamy, who may be suffering from time sickness, killed the doctor who was already dead. Faraday’s “payload” took an extra half hour to reach the Island, but the doctor’s body washed up on shore two episodes ago *before* the doctor died. Can a time slip work both ways?

Finally, the “moving island” snowglobe theory has just been sorta confirmed. Christian wants Locke to move the Island. I bet there’s a hatch for that.

Jack: “Why aren’t you taking your meds?”
Hurley: “Because we’re dead. All of us. All the Oceanic Six, we’re all dead. We never got off the Island.”

Creepy. And heavy, what with the major ghost action and the extreme close-ups of meatball surgery on the beach at night.

Geez, Jack. Controlling much? Although actually, it was in character for Jack to insist on supervising Juliet operating on himself. It was sort of weird, too, because the flashforwards assured us that Jack was going to live, which under normal television circumstances would have lessened the suspense. Except for Hurley’s certainty that the Oceanic Six were all dead, and that they never got off the Island.

As I thought, Jack’s substance problem was indeed caused by Christian’s arrival, just as Charlie caused Hurley’s break with reality. Charlie gave Hurley a message for Jack that Jack wasn’t supposed to be raising Aaron. (Going all the way back to Raised by Another in season one.)

Geez. Maybe they are all dead. Things really were going way too well. Kate’s trial did free her, which was pretty unlikely. Jack acquired Kate and Aaron as the perfect ready-made family to replace the one he screwed up. (I wasn’t surprised that it was Kate in the shower, although my jaw dropped when he proposed to her.) They probably won’t be together for long, though, since it took about five minutes for Jack’s jealousy issues to kick in. Of course, the drugs and alcohol and seeing Christian at the hospital probably had something to do with it. It’s not paranoia if your dead father really is out to get you.

There was a clue that flash forward Jack knew he was Aaron’s uncle: he yelled at Kate that she wasn’t even related to Aaron. But Claire doesn’t know her father’s name; she only knows what he looks like. So how could Jack possibly know? The only way would be if Christian told one of them. I wish we’d gotten at least one conversation with Christian — with either Jack or Claire.

I think they were also hinting that the flash forwards weren’t real, and that Jack was dreaming while he was anesthetized. Some (but not all) of the flash forwards corresponded to Jack’s periods of unconsciousness. Bernard asked him, “Wouldn’t you rather be dreaming about something nice back home?” which was the title of the episode. I was also wondering about the towel scene in the teaser. I think they were deliberately showing us Jack’s surgery scar, suggesting that it wasn’t the afterlife. But wouldn’t Jack imagine the scar was there if he thought it was real?

While Jack was having a whole new surgical experience, Sawyer continued to be outright heroic and protective of Claire and Aaron. I thought it was a fun parallel that Miles asked Sawyer if he was Claire’s big brother, considering what else was going on in the episode. Somehow, Christian managed to take Claire away from Aaron. Freaking wow. Claire would never voluntarily leave Aaron alone in the jungle, so how did Christian do it? And even more importantly, why? How could Christian even pick that baby up? Because the walking dead are real, and corporeal. I want to know what the walking dead on the Island really are, and I want to know Right Now.

Character bits:

– The episode opened with a close-up of Jack’s left eye. Weirdly enough, it looked blue. They do that a lot with the close-ups, making the eye appear to be a color that it’s not. I just checked my list, and Jack and Claire are the only ones who have gotten both a left and a right eye scene. For what it’s worth.

– Claire said she was seeing things because of the blow to her head. Yes, let’s add some ambiguity to Claire seeing Christian, shall we?

– Jin discovered that Charlotte speaks Korean, even though she tried to keep it to herself. Charlotte cared enough about Faraday to give in to Jin’s threats. And now, clever and rather scary Jin has ensured that Sun will be on that helicopter.

– Miles’ special talent allowed him to find Danielle and Karl in shallow graves. Who buried them? Keamy and company? Why would they bother? Just to conceal them, I suppose.

– Frank Lapidus is a good guy. He protected Miles, Sawyer, Claire and Aaron from Keamy.

– There was yet another tatt on Jack’s back. And I’m sure we’ll have many debates about what it says and what it means.

– Where did Kate go, and what was she doing for Sawyer? Did it have something to do with Sawyer’s daughter?

– I assume Kate is no longer married to Kevin? I wish they would bring Nathan Fillion back. I want him on one of the shows I watch, not Desperate Housewives.

– I liked the way Juliet let Jack know that she knew he loved Kate, and not herself. I like Juliet a lot. She’s a classy woman. Plus she kept calm and saved Jack under some pretty extreme circumstances. If she hadn’t been there, Jack would have died.

Bits and pieces:

– This flashforward took place after “Eggtown” and before “Through the Looking Glass.” This must have been after “The Beginning of the End,” too.

– Rose stated the obvious. Why did Jack get sick in the first place? Doesn’t the Island heal people? Did he indeed piss off the Island gods, whatever they are? Jacob, Christian, Charlie?

– Jack’s last name is Shephard; it was on his door at the hospital. But it was “Shepard” on his white coat. Oops.

– Jack tripped over one of Aaron’s toys: the Millenium Falcon.

– I think Jack was thinking of Juliet while he was holding the razor that Kate bought him. Stomach-shaving scene.

– “Yankees bludgeon Red Sox in series sweep”. Another reference to fate. “That’s why the Red Sox will never win the damned series” was Christian Shephard’s way of saying, “It’s fate.”

– Jack was reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Aaron, and it was the passage where Alice was wondering if she was the same person that she used to be. There have been a lot of references to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass on this show. Come to think of it, Kate was holding up a looking glass, wasn’t she?

– During the hallway Jack/Kate scene in the flash forward, there was a creepy painting in the background. It was a shadowy human figure in a mist half submerged in a circle. I wonder if that was supposed to represent the walking dead?

– Do ghosts set off smoke alarms?

– Aaron was carrying a stuffed whale. I think they missed a primo opportunity to get another stuffed bear in there.

Quotes:

Rose: “The day before we’re all supposed to be rescued, the person that we count on the most suddenly comes down with a life-threatening condition, and you’re chalking it up to bad luck?”
Bernard: “Well, what are you saying? That Jack did something to offend the gods? People get sick, Rose.”
Rose: “Not here. Here, they get better.”

Faraday: “Where do you suppose all this power is coming from?”
Charlotte: “Add that on to the list, Dan.”
What list?

Miles: “Good morning.”
Sawyer: “It’s way too early for Chinese.”

Another fascinating episode.

www.billiedoux.com

For me, this episode was all about death. Death figures into what’s going on with the Island in a way that I just don’t understand.

There’s Mikhail Death, where the person just doesn’t die, even after something fatal happens to them. There’s Island Ghost Zombie Death, which has apparently now happened to Libby. (Along with Christian Shephard, Charlie, possibly Boone, Ben’s mother, and Eko’s brother Yemi. And maybe the horse.) And then there’s real death, like the Marshal, like Nikki and Paulo. What’s the difference? And how does it work? The flashback was full of dead characters, too: Tom, Naomi, George Minkowski. I assume that was intentional. It was creepy, too.

And then there’s the "Island won’t let you die" thing that happened to Michael. How could the Island keep Michael, with a fully loaded and functioning gun, from killing himself? That had a supernatural feel to it that actually made me uncomfortable, because it made zero sense. And yet, I do have confidence that the writers have something specific and logical in mind. I just wish I knew what the hell it was.

Why did Michael choose to kill himself in another car crash? People do survive car crashes; they’re hardly reliable. You’d think after his first, long-term, painful experience with a car crash, he’d choose something quicker and more definite, like jumping off a skyscraper. What would have happened if he had? Would he have survived it, anyway, or would someone have stopped him?

I am completely and totally down with what Sayid just did to Michael. Michael is still basically unlikeable and unsympathetic, a murderer and a traitor as well as weak and selfish. Even his obsession with Walt is also selfish at its base because it is less about Walt’s welfare, and more about Michael’s. Especially if Michael actually burdened Walt with a confession about what Michael did to Ana Lucia and Libby. That Mama Cass song we heard twice in the episode absolutely haunted me, and not because Mama Cass is dead, like Patsy Cline is dead. I think it was a musical echo of Michael’s double murder in the Hatch, because the first thing we heard in the Hatch at the beginning of season two was a Mama Cass song. (Not the same one, though.)

There were two big conflicts that I couldn’t resolve. (And I’m reeling from that new experience, as Buffy would say.)

The first was the timeline. Michael and Walt left the Island around Thanksgiving, and it is currently the end of December. According to the three-month calendar we saw in "The Constant," the Kahana has been waiting off the coast of the Island since at least the beginning of October, and probably longer. How could Michael have gotten on the Kahana, then? Did the Kahana break up the trip by going to Fiji to pick up supplies and also to pick up Kevin? Or was the calendar faked?

I’m also thoroughly confused about the Sunda Trench hoax. Tom told Michael that Widmore staged the hoax. But Gault said that Ben was behind it. Frank Lapidus the pilot was actually on the freighter because he had told Widmore he knew the Sunda Trench was a hoax, so Frank certainly didn’t believe Widmore was behind it. Maybe Widmore told Gault to lie, and was trying to contain Frank, though. Who actually did it?

Ben again said that he doesn’t kill innocent people, which we know isn’t true since he took out the entire Dharma Initiative. Did he just have Karl and Danielle Rousseau killed? Karl to keep Alex from getting pregnant, and Rousseau to take back parental control of Alex? The last thing in the episode was Alex yelling, "I’m Ben’s daughter!" Why would she say that to Ben’s own people, since they know very well who she is? She did it because it was the Widmore faction, and she knows they will want to use her against Ben. I think.

Too bad about Karl. I was a lot more broken up about Danielle Rousseau, a character I really liked and will definitely miss. Is she dead? (And again, what kind of dead is she?) Although I have to admit that if she is dead, Rousseau’s story has indeed resolved itself. She did find her daughter after sixteen years, and she was just hanging around the Locke group to be with Alex, after all.

Dammit, I *liked* Danielle Rousseau. Will you guys please stop killing off characters I like?

Character bits:

– Eighteen minutes in, we got an eye scene: Michael’s left eye. Michael got a left eye scene before, in season one’s "Special."

– We saw Walt at his grandmother’s for about a second, and in a window where we couldn’t see how tall he was. If they bring Walt back into the story, they may need to recast him.

– Michael pawned the watch that Jin gave him at the end of season one. Nice little detail there.

– As we thought, Tom was gay. He had a boyfriend named Arturo in the New York flashback.

– Tattoo guy was shooting skeet with a machine gun. No, we’re not going nuts, are we?

– Naomi’s last name was Dorrit. We saw that in a pop-up "enhanced" episode, but I don’t think it’s been mentioned in a regular episode until now.

– Okay, I give up. The preview for the next set of episodes confirmed that Aaron is indeed one of the Oceanic Six. Did they want us indefinite and confused about this up until last week’s so that we would dither about Jin? If so, it certainly worked on me.

Bits and pieces:

– Locke’s group is ready to rebel because of Ben. I wanted more, but there was too much other plot stuff going on. At least Locke was sharing information, something Jack hasn’t been good at doing. Not all of the information, though.

– The 324 bodies in the Sunda Trench came from a graveyard in Thailand. But weren’t most of the bodies supposed to be of Caucasians? Yes, the staged wreck is impossible to reach, but still.

– We got a good look at the side of the Kahana. It appeared that it once had a longer name, and that the second part of the name was scratched out. Or am I nuts?

– I think I heard Kurt Vonnegut mentioned. He wrote Slaughterhouse Five, which has most certainly been discussed before because his character Billy Pilgrim jumped around uncontrollably in his own lifetime.

– One month break. The next new Lost airs on April 24, at a new time, 10:00. So I don’t have a conflict with Supernatural any more. Yay.

Quotes:

George: "What, are you going Nicholson on us?" The Shining was also about seeing dead people, come to think of it. And suicide.

Karl: "I just have a bad feeling about this." And he was right, poor kid. And of course, this is the famous Star Wars line. It was said in each of the six Star Wars movies.

This was by far and away the most interesting Michael-centric episode. If I were rating it for complexity and shock value, I’d give it four out of four polar bears. What’s your rating?

BILLIE DOUX 

Jack: "You people had therapists?"
Juliet: "It’s very stressful being an Other, Jack."

We got a couple of Big Answers. Numero Uno was that Ben’s big enemy on the outside is Charles Widmore. Not a big surprise, since Widmore has popped up everywhere in the story, and I always knew he had to be a major player.

And we finally learned what was at the core of Juliet and Ben’s dysfunctional relationship. He loved her and considered her his, and she disappointed him by having an affair with Goodwin instead. Although "disappointment" is a major understatement. Ben deliberately put Goodwin in danger for longer than necessary, hoping that it would get him killed, and it worked. A little David and Bathsheba action there. (Did Ethan piss Ben off, too?)

Ben, that insidious little expletive deleted, has talked his way out of another cell. I’m ready to grab Locke by the shoulders and shake him. Why is he being so gullible? Manipulating Locke is turning into Ben’s biggest hobby, and wow, does he love doing it.

The title of the episode referred to Juliet, but not just in relation to the unhappily married Goodwin and Harper. At the end of the episode, Jack kissed Juliet, officially inducting her into the Island Love Triangle, which is now the Island Love Quadrangle. (Has Jack finally given up on Kate?) And Harper mentioned that Juliet looked like "her." I’m assuming that was Ben’s "her", his dead beloved, the one who gave him the doll.

Or maybe Harper was the other woman. Juliet and Jack heard the whispers before Harper appeared. It felt for a moment like she was one of the Walking Island Dead, but I guess not. Harper told Juliet to kill Faraday and Charlotte. But how could Ben have sent her when he was locked up? And where was she before? At the Temple with the rest of the Others?

We got a new Dharma station: the Tempest. That whole scene with the alarm and Faraday frantically typing felt a lot like the Hatch and the Button. I’m really unclear about the gas thing. I assume it was intended to keep anyone from tampering with the Tempest station. Did Ben set that up? He’s certainly used gas before. But if it was going to kill everyone on the Island, wouldn’t it have killed, say, him? And what were Faraday and Charlotte really there to do? Disconnect the Monster?

Character bits:

– The flashbacks started right after "One of Us" and then skipped through other flashbacks. We saw the breakup of 815 again and the scene where Ben gave Goodwin and Ethan their assignments, but we didn’t actually see Ethan. But they did manage to insert Harper.

– Faraday and Charlotte don’t know that they’re working for Charles Widmore, do they? I bet Miles knows, though.

– Kate knows that *they* know she’s a fugitive. Which makes her becoming one of the Oceanic Six even more confusing.

– Hurley is as good at horseshoes as he is at table tennis.

– The two kids from the tail section, Zack and Emma, were mentioned. I think we knew Emma’s name before, but not Zack’s.

– One of the nice things about Lost flashbacks is we get to see dead characters all the time. When Tom walked in the door, it was like seeing an old friend.

Bits and pieces:

– Very clever opening scene. Harper’s reference to Juliet being a celebrity made us think for a moment that Juliet was one of the Six. Which she couldn’t be, of course, since she wasn’t on the plane. (I’m not going to make that mistake twice.)

– The combination to Ben’s safe was 36-15-28. The tape he had of Widmore beating Ben’s guy up was taped over the Red Sox vid he showed Jack, so it was recent. The Red Sox never winning the series symbolized fate to Christian Shephard, so did that mean Ben was defying fate? Maybe it was just a fun detail. Attention to detail is what they do best on this show.

– I didn’t realize Harper was Andrea Roth at first. The brown hair threw me off.

– I couldn’t make out any of the whispered words. What were they? If you know, email me at billiecats at hotmail dot com.

– Ben: "So. Has the revolution begun yet?" It’s only a matter of time, Locke. You idiot.

Another good episode. Three out of four polar bears. What’s your rating? Vote below,

BY BILLIE DOUX

Desmond: "Eight years from now, I need to call you. And I can’t call you if I don’t have your number."

Okay, Sherman. Set the Wayback Machine to 2.342, and oscillate at eleven hertz.

So. Now we know. The "side effects" of the Island combined with the Hatch explosion made Desmond bounce back and forth in time like Billy Pilgrim alternating between Dresden and Tralfamador. It wasn’t actual, physical travel because only his consciousness took the trip. Desmond remembered the present while in the past, but had amnesia in the present. I’m sooo confused. And what on earth does Daniel Faraday’s pink hairdryer in 1996 have to do with the Island?

I do like Desmond and his beloved Penny, our Island-crossed lovers, and that final scene on the phone really got to me. I was mildly disappointed that Desmond wasn’t "special", that anyone could basically get unstuck in time… but I must admit that Daniel Faraday telling Desmond to go find him at Oxford in 1996 was pretty freaking cool. And I think I like Daniel now. I get the feeling he’s not evil, that he means well. (I think Frank’s okay, too. Not so sure about Charlotte, though.) And I really want to find out what happened to Daniel. Why was he crying when they found the wreckage of 815? If he was jumping back and forth, he must have known the wreckage was a setup, right?

The big news for me was the three month calendar in the communications room: October, November and December, 2004. Every day until December 24 had been crossed out, and George Minkowski said they had been waiting there, bored to death. What would be on the previous page? Did they happen to arrive around September 22, for instance? I’d think the calendar was a lie, except that Penny told Desmond she’d been searching for him for three years, too. So much for my handy time distortion theory that explained "taller ghost Walt." Although it didn’t really explain why the helicopter took off at dusk and landed in the middle of the day.

My favorite little crossover flashback cool moment was Charles Widmore bidding on a journal written by the first mate of the Black Rock. She set sail from Portsmouth, England on a trading mission to the kingdom of Siam and was lost at sea, we know where. The journal was owned by the family of Tovard Hanso. Was that how the Dharma Initiative found the Island in the first place? Widmore won the journal in the auction. He is up to his ears in all this, somehow.

One big question about that men’s room scene. Why did Widmore leave the water on, and carefully not touch the faucet handles? It made absolutely no sense, but it was so deliberate that it had to mean *something.* And I mean, more than a Howard Hughes phobia sort of thing, because Widmore did flush the john.

Character bits:

– This episode’s Desmond flashbacks must have taken place before the season two finale. Desmond’s unauthorized trip to Oxford didn’t explain how he ended up in prison. He was a private here, but a corporal in the other flashback. And he wasn’t AWOL; he had two days leave, so this wasn’t how he ended up in jail for "not following orders."

– Speaking of ranks, Desmond is obviously a major commitment phobe. He joined a monastery to get out of marrying Ruth, and he joined the army to avoid Penny. Desmond, Desmond, Desmond. At least he regretted it this time.

– Sayid was a good friend to Desmond. And he hasn’t known him long.

– "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant." That means something definitely went wrong for Daniel Faraday. But we knew that already.

– We finally met time-tripping George Minkowski, and now he’s dead. There were several other characters: Ray the nasty doctor, the guy with the tatts who said he was from Vegas, and Omar from Florida. We didn’t see Regina. And who left the sick bay door open? Their "friend on the boat"? Again, I’m thinking Michael. Although I wouldn’t call him a friend.

Bits and pieces:

– No eye scene at the beginning, but we sort of got one in the middle. When Ray the nasty doctor checked Desmond’s eyes, we got a close-up of Desmond’s left eye, then the right. And then Desmond immediately went back to eight years ago. Later, Desmond tried to use the light in his eyes to make himself go back. Was this a hint about what the "eye" scenes actually mean?

– Daniel said it was a random effect, sometimes hours, sometimes years. That explained Desmond’s Charlie-visions.

– There were a huge number of, well, numbers. I’m sure I didn’t catch them all because I never do, but here we go.

Frank’s heading was 40 miles north at 305 degrees, 7 K (knots?) east.
Five minutes in Desmond’s present took 75 minutes in the past.
The Black Rock set sail March 22, 1845.
The journal was lot number 2342, same as the device setting.
Widmore’s bidder number was 755.
The journal sold for 380,000 pounds.
The date was December 24, 2004.
Penny’s address was 423 Cheyne Walk.
Her phone number was 79460893.

– I’m glad we didn’t spend all that much time with the army stuff, because I have to say I wasn’t all that interested in the Private Benjamin, Officer and a Gentleman pushups in the rain.

– Was Henry Ian Cusick wearing a wig in the present or the past? That military haircut was convincing, but it wasn’t quite as short as some of the other soldiers. Interestingly, in 1996, Desmond had no hair, but Daniel Faraday had a ton.

Quotes:

Desmond: "What’s that for?"
Daniel: "Radiation."
Desmond: "Do I get one?"
Daniel: "You don’t need one. It’s for prolonged exposure. I do this twenty times a day."
Desmond: "So what do you put on your head?"
Does that explain what happened to Daniel?

Desmond: "You believe me? You still care about me?"
Penny: "I’ve been looking for you for the past three years. I know about the Island. I’ve been researching…" At this point, an entire phrase was garbled. Argh.

I always have a hard time choosing a rating. So this week, I’m going to let you guys do it. Cast your vote below,

Billie

www.billiedoux.com

We have yet another mysterious faction on the Island.  And more questions.  I love Lost, I really, truly do.  But having yet more questions layered on top of the already ginormous number of existing unanswered questions just bugs me.  Can’t we have *some* answers?  I mean, come on.

And now for something completely different: brief multiple character flashbacks that introduced us to the Chopper Four.  The Chopper Four knew that the discovery of Oceanic 815 in the Sunda Trench was a hoax.  (Which indicates that the Island probably isn’t an alternate universe.)  They weren’t there to rescue anyone; they came to find Ben.  And evil, clever Ben has a man on their freighter.  Why do they want Ben?  Um, let me see.  The mass murder of the Dharma Initiative people, perhaps?  Kidnapping Juliet, and possibly others?  Could be anything.

But why send a head case, a ghostbuster, an anthropologist, and a drunk?  All of whom were hearing about the discovery of Oceanic 815 in the Sunda Trench in their flashbacks.  All of whom were selected for a specific purpose.

Daniel Faraday, Essex, Massachuetts:  Dan is a physicist with mental or emotional problems who was oddly affected by the discovery of 815.  Dan was trusting and indiscreet, and didn’t appear to have a lot of answers.  Or he’s a more effective liar than he appears to be.   He was lying about the gas masks, after all.  A physicist might have been included because of the weird physical properties of the Island.

Miles Stromm, Inglewood California:  I thought Miles was the most intriguing of the four.  He is apparently a genuine medium.  He really did communicate with Ms. Gardner’s grandson (loved the dustbuster), and the dead Naomi told Miles that Jack and Kate were telling the truth.  Miles’ inclusion just has to relate somehow to the Walking Island Dead.  Will Miles be able to see Jacob, too?  Miles was suspicious and sarcastic.  Greedy enough to keep all of the money he found, but he did refund half of Ms. Gardner’s money.  So he kinda sorta might have a conscience.  Hard to tell.

Charlotte Staples Lewis, Medenine, Tunisia:  Now, the presence of a cultural anthropologist makes sense, because of the Others.  And she discovered the skeleton of a polar bear with a Dharma Hydra on its collar… in the desert.  That was just fascinating.  It was funny, but when Locke’s group showed up and we saw them through Charlotte’s eyes, our Lostaways looked strange, alien and somewhat scary.

Frank Lapidus, Eleuthera, the Bahamas:  Frank knew the pilot of 815, Seth Norris (Greg Grunberg’s character finally got a name) because Frank himself was supposed to be the pilot of 815.  His bedraggled beachcomber alcoholic appearance and the fact that he wasn’t working for Oceanic any more suggested that the disappearance of 815 affected him pretty strongly.  His presence is easier to explain, since he’s a pilot and he knew at least one member of the flight crew.  Why isn’t Jeff Fahey in the cast?  Is he going to die quickly?

There was lots of fun Island action, too.  I think my favorite scene was Sayid and Juliet doing the take-down.  Jack commands loyalty.  He may not be a perfect leader, but Locke’s ineffectuality makes Jack look pretty darned good.  Locke’s high-priest-of-the-island leadership mysticism wasn’t going over well;  he’s so inner-directed that he has trouble explaining himself to others.  Locke was also noticeably perturbed that Hurley knew about the cabin.  Can’t have anyone else connected to the Island, can we?  (I noticed that Ben was also perturbed.)

Locke and Sawyer were actively battling for control of the Barracks group.  I think I’ll back Sawyer.  I just don’t like Locke any more.

Character bits:

– Naomi didn’t have a sister, after all; it was a code phrase.  Will Naomi return as one of the Walking Island Dead?  I wish we knew what the Island Zombie rules were.  Is it burial that stops it from happening?

– We also learned that Naomi was working for Supercreepy Abbadon.  And it was implied that Naomi had military training.  The Chopper Four have not had military training.

– It was Sawyer’s turn to beat up Ben.  Everyone gets their turn.  And Ben still managed to shoot Charlotte.  Why was Charlotte wearing a vest?  That seemed pretty damned odd to me.

– Ben told Locke he had answers, but then admitted he didn’t know what the Monster was. Unless Ben was lying.

– The only people on the freighter that have been mentioned are Regina and Minkowski.  If Ben was being literal about having a *man* on the boat, then it’s not Regina.  Of course, we don’t know who else is on the boat.

– Charlotte was born in 1979, which makes her 29.  No, wait.  It’s still 2004, so that makes her 25.  That seems young for a Ph.D.  If she is indeed a Ph.D.

– Seth Norris, the pilot, married his high school sweetheart and never took off his wedding ring.  Do I need to pull out my DVD of the pilot episode to see if Greg Grunberg was wearing a ring?

– I think it’s fun that they acknowledged that Walt looked a lot taller.  It’s like the fact that they keep having to cast new babies to play Aaron. Maybe they should mention that Aaron keeps looking different, too.

– Vincent the dog inadvertently changed camps from Locke’s to Jack’s.

– Flashback Charlotte had a roll of money.  So did flashback Miles.  Interesting coincidence.  Daniel and Frank had an emotional reaction to the loss of 815.  Are Charlotte and Miles there just because of money?

– Sawyer, back in fine nicknaming form, called Ben "Yoda" and Locke, "Colonel Kurtz."  Wasn’t Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now"?
 
Bits and pieces:

– Dominic Monaghan is out of the cast.  It’s funny, but I only grew to like Charlie as a character at the end of season three, and now I’m sorry he’s gone.  Since he’s one of the Walking Island Dead, maybe we’ll see him again.

– I wish we’d gotten a date for the flashbacks.  But it had to be between September and December 2004, right?

– Sayid’s bullet wound was apparently completely healed.  Locke’s was almost healed.

– The chopper must have crashed because of the Island’s unusual "properties."  Daniel Faraday mentioned that the light didn’t scatter quite right.

– The shots of 815 in the Sunda Trench off the coast of Bali reminded me of the discovery of Titanic.  The Sunda Trench is a real place.  At first, I thought it was another anagram.

– The Oceanic family member phone number was 888-548-0034.  I called the number.  There was a recorded message telling family members that Oceanic was sorry for their loss and that there was no more information available at that time. 

Quotes:

Sawyer: "Taller?  What, like a giant?  Okay, what exactly did Walt tell you?"
Locke: "He said I had work to do. That I had to stop this woman, Naomi, from bringing the rest of her people here."
Sawyer: "You didn’t ask any follow-up questions?"

Miles: "Like right now, Jack here would say, tell my sister I love her.  Get it?"
Which reminded me that Jack actually does have a sister on the Island.  He just doesn’t know it.

Karl: "Keep your mouth shut, Mr. Linus."
Ben: "Karl. Now, if you’re going to sleep with my daughter, I insist you call me Ben."

Ben: "James. Look at yourself. Yes, on this Island, you’re brave, daring, handsome. You’re someone.  But if you left with them, back in the real world a low-life scam artist like you could never compete with a first class surgeon."  I mean, did Ben *want* Sawyer to beat him up?  I think he did.  He wants Locke’s group to implode, and Sawyer was the obvious imploder.

Miles: "How stupid do you think I am?"
Jack: "I don’t know, Miles. How stupid are you?"

Sayid: "It can’t hurt to try and call someone else."
Miles: "Oh, it can hurt."
This didn’t make sense.  Is there yet another faction out there?

Miles: "Where’s the chopper?"
Frank: "I saw a cow."

Solid episode.  Three out of four polar bears,

Billie
–
Billie Doux
http://www.billiedoux.com/

Hurley: "I’m one of the Oceanic Six! I’m one of the Oceanic Six!"

When we last left our heroes, Charlie was dead. Locke killed Naomi, who didn’t stay dead. Desmond killed Mikhail, who didn’t stay dead. And we were all confused by the shift from flashback to flashforward. Looks like we get to stay confused.

Flashforward Hurley was seeing dead people. Mental illness, or Island weirdness? (I vote for Island weirdness.) Was that what was wrong with flashforward Jack, too? Maybe Christian Shephard is following Jack around, like Charlie was following Hurley. Maybe Christian and Charlie are both telling Jack and Hurley that they have to go back to the Island. That would explain why the stoned Jack thought his father was still alive in Through the Looking Glass. Yes, I like that explanation.

Actually, "Charlie" was real. One of the other mental patients saw him. And Hurley also saw Christian Shephard sitting in the rocking chair in Jacob’s cabin, which I find so utterly bizarre that I have no theories about it. Who was in the cabin with Christian? Whose eye was it? It looked like a dark eye, so it wasn’t Locke. And how could the cabin actually move?

Jack must be near the end of his rope; he would have killed Locke, but I kind of get that. From Jack’s perspective, Locke has really gone off the reservation: blowing stuff up, killing Naomi, and so on. The continuing conflict between Jack, man of science and Locke, man of faith just caused a serious division among the Losties, like season one’s division between the caves and the beach. Jack was wrong then, too… that is, if he’s wrong now.

Hurley told Jack that he should have gone with him instead of Locke. And yet, in the flashforwards, they were two of the "Oceanic Six." Does that mean that the current division between the Barracks and the Beach doesn’t have anything to do with who ends up leaving the Island? Did everyone else stay, possibly voluntarily? If Kate is another of the six, who are the other three? Are we going to continue getting flashforwards instead of flashbacks?

What do I want for the abbreviated season four? I’m not sure. I love this show, and they’re definitely still on their game; I think I’m going to let them take me wherever they want to go. And I certainly want more than eight episodes, so let’s hope the writers strike is resolved soon.

Character bits:

– I loved the way they made us think this was a Jack episode before we realized it was about Hurley. Flashforward Jack was drinking, but clearly hadn’t gone off the deep end yet. Since he said he was thinking about growing a beard, this must have taken place before "Through the Looking Glass."

– Hurley did an OJ car chase with Cheech’s Camaro. Yet another car crash. One of these days, I’m going to rewatch the series and keep count of all the car crashes.

– There must be barbers in the Afterlife, because Charlie had short, darker hair. There was a black bird, a harbinger of death, on Charlie’s tee-shirt.

– Ben spent the entire episode at the end of a leash. It was a good look for him. He and Danielle were acting almost like battling, homicidal divorcees.

– Why did Naomi cover for the Losties before she died the second time? "Tell my sister that I love her." Was she a good guy, trying to secure rescue, or a bad guy determined to carry out her mission, perhaps for the sake of her sister? (Little parallel there to Juliet.)

– I thought Kate would be reluctant to leave the Island. Isn’t she still wanted? Of course, the marshal is dead and buried on the Island. Maybe, in her flashforwards, she’ll be followed around by the marshal.

– Sawyer tried to get Hurley to talk about his grief for Charlie. That was actually sweet. Maybe Sawyer is recovering from the trauma of killing the original Sawyer.

– Rose suggested that Claire reward Charlie with sex. Too bad he missed that. Lucky for Bernard, though.

– The cop in the flashforward was Ana Lucia’s partner, and asked Hurley about her. Why didn’t Hurley tell him anything? Was it part of the deal with Oceanic?

– Creepy Oceanic attorney Matthew Abbadon wanted Hurley to tell him if *they* were still alive. The rest of the Losties on the Island? Abbadon had no business card. Maybe he isn’t from Oceanic. Maybe he works for the still amorphous bad guys.

– Fisher Stevens was listed as a guest star, but I don’t think we saw him. Was he George Minkowski? And who parachuted in at the end?

Bits and pieces:

– Dominic Monaghan was still in the cast (probably because we saw him), and Harrold Perrineau (Michael) returned (but we didn’t see him). And we have three new cast members: Jeremy Davies, Ken Leung, and Rebecca Mader. Was Jeremy Davies the parachute guy?

– The story began right where it left off. Ben told Jack that making the radio phone call was the beginning of the end, so that was where the title came from.

– Gold acting stars for Jorge Garcia. This was the best Hurley-centered episode yet, and Jorge was just terrific. He even made me cry.

– Hurley, Sawyer, Claire, Danielle, Ben, Alex, and Karl went with Locke. Kate, Juliet, Desmond, Sayid, Sun, Jin, Bernard and Rose went with Jack. Looks like Kate and Sawyer just broke up.

– There was another return to season one: Jack and Kate looking into the front section of the plane, and remembering Charlie.

– Action 8 news in Los Angeles. There’s no channel 8 here. But 8 is one of Hurley’s numbers.

– In the mental hospital, Hurley was doing a watercolor painting of someone in a parka in front of an igloo. Which we can add to all of the other arctic or antarctic references.

– In this week’s hair report, Hurley’s was noticeably longer.

– The night before this episode aired, ABC aired a pop-up video version of "Through the Looking Glass". It was tremendous fun; I loved it. There were a few tidbits I hadn’t known before: a semi-confirmation that the coffin contained a man from New York. (Michael? He couldn’t have been one of the Oceanic Six, though, because it would have been a big article in the paper, not a tiny one.) We learned for certain that Christian drank himself to death. Richard’s last name is Alpert. Bernard’s is Nadler, which is the same last name as the doctor who operated on the woman Jack pulled out of the wrecked car. And they pointedly did *not* explain Jack saying, "Get my father down here."

– During the premiere of "Eli Stone" that aired after this episode, there was an Oceanic commercial about the "golden pass" that gave a web site address: