5.9 Namaste

Summary and Spoilers

This episode picks up where La Fleur left off; Sawyer is reacquainted with his ‘friends’ Kate, Hurley, and Jack on the North Point. After shocking them by mentioning that the year is 1977, he rushes back to camp. Juliet helps him formulate a plan: a sub is arriving the following day with new Dharma recruits. Juliet will add three names to the list, and the new arrivals will take jobs at Dharma. That part goes well, although Jack is appalled at being handed a ‘workman’ suit and janitorial duties.

Back at this first meeting, Jack tells Jin that Sun was on the plane that crashed. Jin rushes off to the Flame station, where Dharma employee Radzinsky grudgingly checks with the other stations but finds no evidence that a plane has crashed (of course, we know this is because the plane crashed 30 years later). An intruder breaks through the perimeter and is assumed to be a hostile, but on closer examination, it’s a handcuffed Sayid who is forced to pretend to be a hostile to avoid possibly getting shot. Jin alerts Sawyer to Sayid’s capture; Sawyer arrives and safely takes him back to camp and locks him up (for his own safety) while trying to figure out the next step.

The other people on the plane have crashed on the sister island; they are ½ mile and 30 years away in the present. Ben sneaks away from the group and Sun follows him (and Frank follows Sun). Ben has discovered 3 outrigger boats; he plans to take one across to the main island. Sun agrees to accompany him. But when Ben turns his back, Sun oars him in the head and takes Frank with her instead. On the other island, they are greeted by Christian, who shows them a dusty group Dharma photo from 1977, and tells them that they have a big journey ahead of them.

On the first evening, Jack visits Sawyer at his house and is shocked to find out that James and Juliet are now a couple. Up to now, Sawyer has seemed like a sensible, controlled, fair man since he joined Dharma, but with Jack in the room, he becomes a bit more confrontative. It’s obvious that these guys don’t like each other and are highly competitive. Jack wonders why Sawyer is reading a book and not coming up with a plan; in rebuttal, Sawyer questions Jack’s leadership in his last island stint. Juliet leaves them alone to catch up on old rivalries.

Sayid is alone in his cell. In the evening, an owlish young bespectacled boy who calls himself Ben brings him a sandwich.

Comments

Sayid, Kate, Jack, and Hurley have landed in 1977; the remainder of the people on the plane have landed on the sister island in the present (about 30 years later). It looks like Christian can lead people through a doorway to travel from one time frame to the other.

We meet Ben as a boy, and Ethan (Anna and Horace’s child) as a baby.

Lost is much improved now that the setting has returned to the island(s).

I’m normally not a big fan of time travel, but here it is used well to place our survivors within a different part of known history. It also now gives more value to all that we learned about the early days of Dharma.

If young Ben is on the island, and older Ben arrives there, will he get sick and die the way Charlotte did? Even if you accept the theory of time travel, I don’t think it can be used to have two of you where there is only really one of you.

Memorable Moments

• The crash landing

Quotable Quotes

Sawyer: We're in the Dharma Initiative.
Jack: They came back to the island?
Sawyer: No. We came back. And so did you. It's 1977!
Hugo: Uh... What?

Sun: Why are you leaving?
Ben: Why are you staying?

(Sun knocks Ben out with an oar.)
Frank: I thought you trusted this guy.
Sun: I lied.

Hurley: Okay, so it's 1977.
Sawyer: Yep.
Hurley: And you guys are all members of the Dharma Initiative.
Sawyer: Yep.
Hurley: Well you do realize those dudes get wiped out, right? I mean, I saw the pit where all the bodies got dumped.
Sawyer: I ain't here to play Nostradamus to these people. Besides, Faraday's got some interesting theories on what we can and can't do here.
Jack: Did you say Faraday? He's here?
Sawyer: Not any more.

Jack: We need to find the rest of the people from the plane.
Sawyer: If there was a plane, Jin'll find it. So we got about ten minutes to make Intake, or you're all going to be camping in the jungle for a long time. There aint another batch of recruits due in for six months.
Jack: What do you think?
Kate: I think we should listen to Sawyer.
Hurley: I vote for not camping.

Kate: So the woman who told you how to get back, did she mention it would be thirty years ago?
Jack: No. No, she left that part out.

Hurley: What if they start asking us questions we can't answer, like who's President in 1977?
Sawyer: It's not a damn game show, Hugo.

Juliet: Have you and Horace settled on a name for him?
Amy: Yeah, we have. We're going to name him Ethan.

Young Ben: Are you a hostile?
Sayid: Do you think I am?
Young Ben: What's your name?
Sayid: Sayid, what's yours?
Young Ben: I'm Ben.
Sayid: It's nice to meet you Ben.

Jack: So, where do we go from here?
Sawyer: I'm working on it.
Jack: Really? Because it looked to me like you were reading a book.
Sawyer: I heard once that Winston Churchill read a book every night. Even during the blitz. Said it made him think better.

Jack: I got us off the island.
Sawyer: But here you are. Right back where you started. So I'm going to go back to reading my book and I'm going to think. Because that's how I saved your ass today. And that's how I'm going to save Sayid's tomorrow.

5.8 LaFleur

Summary and Spoilers

Our timeframe begins just as Locke descends into the well in his attempt to leave the island. But this story is not about Locke; it is about what happened to the people he left behind. When Locke turned the donkey wheel, there was one more big earthquake flash, and then silence. Immediately, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Jin knew that this was different. The headaches were gone. Later, when they rejoined Daniel, he confirmed what they already knew: time travel was over – they were not jumping anymore. And wherever they were now, this was where they were going to stay.

Daniel’s alone-ness meant that Charlotte was not among them. Her body disappeared during one of the flashes. This is explained much later in this episode, when a little red-haired Dharma girl waves at Daniel. Charlotte lives again on the island as she did the first time, and for whatever reason, she wasn’t able to co-exist at another stage in her life in this same place. Or something like that.

Speaking of Dharma…this is where the castaways find themselves. It is ‘That 70s Island’, 1974 to be exact. Dharma is heavily entrenched on the island, and they are in conflict with The Others.

As the survivors are heading back to the beach, they come across a conflict where they see a Dharma member dead, and two men putting a burlap sack over the head of a protesting Dharma woman, Amy. Sawyer and Juliet win a gun battle and bury the two dead Others. The woman takes them back to the Dharma compound, but she does it according to protocol, which means she tricks them at the sonic fence and they are brought in unconscious.

The Dharma leader, Horace, questions Sawyer, who is using a fake name (Jim LaFleur) and a fake story (their salvage boat crashed on the reef). Horace believes the story but still insists they leave the island on the next sub bound for Tahiti, despite Sawyer’s request that they be granted time to find the missing members of their crew. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Richard Alpert, who has easily penetrated the Dharma defenses. There is a tentative truce between Dharma and the Others; Richard has come to find out why the truce was broken and where his missing men are. Against Horace’s wishes, Sawyer speaks to Richard alone and drops a few time-travel hints like ‘Jughead’, ‘bald guy leader’, and ‘John Locke’. He admits to killing the men. Richard agrees to keep the peace but he takes the injured body of Paul, Amy’s husband, as payment

Horace agrees to let Sawyer stay for two more weeks to search for his crew. That night, Juliet says she has been trying to get off the island for years and she will leave the next day, but Sawyer convinces her to stay just two more weeks.

Flash forward three years. The castaways have been accepted at Dharma and are working members of the community. Sawyer is head of security, with Jin and Miles working under him. I’m note sure where Daniel is. Juliet is an auto mechanic; she is not only still on the island, but she and Sawyer are living together and very much in love. It has been a good day: Juliet overcame her fear of failure with helping women on the island deliver babies; she successfully helped Amy give birth to a boy. But the big story comes the following morning, when Jin rings Sawyer with a big surprise: he has found Jack, Hurley, and Kate.

In the final scene, Sawyer stands in a remote section of the North Valley and gazes on his long-lost friends, including a woman named Kate. He seems to remember her very much, which is different to the story he just told Horace about how she had faded from his consciousness.

Comments

This episode fills in the gaps in what happened to those that Locke left behind, while we wait for the Next Big Thing to advance the plot – namely, for Jin to tell someone about finding Jack, Hurley, and Kate.

Although Ben is not in this episode, I found myself once again surmising on whether he is good or evil. It is a credit to the way his character is written and the way it is acted (by the talented Michael Emerson) that we still don’t know for sure. But a bit more light has been shed. We see that when Richard led the Others, they had a hard line, but they kept to a truce. Ben came in and killed all the Dharma people. And I don’t think making a judgment on Ben says anything about Widmore. Widmore could be more or less evil than Ben – we really know little about him.

Maybe if Locke can take over leadership of the Others, he can maintain the peace with Dharma and avert the Dharma massacre. Surely there is room on the island for both groups. But how does Widmore fit into this, and why didn’t Widmore try to get back onto the island as well?

Memorable Moments

The meeting of Sawyer and his old companions

The chemistry between Juliet and Sawyer

Nits

After the big flash, Sawyer lies on the ground and sees that the rocks surrounding the well are back. Without looking, he jumps over the side and grabs onto the rope – then looks down and sees that there is still solid ground inside the well. I find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t at least look down first before jumping over the side of the well.

Also after the big flash, Juliet says it is all over – the time jumps have stopped. This is a big leap of logic to make in a short amount of time, yet she seems very sure of herself.

Quotable Quotes

Richard: You're not a member of Dharma Initiative, then what are you?
Sawyer: Did you bury the bomb?
Richard: Excuse me?
Sawyer: The hydrogen bomb, with Jughead written on the side, did you bury it? Yeah, I know about it. I also know twenty years ago some bald fella limped into your camp and fed you some mumbo jumbo about being your leader. Then, puff, he went and disappeared right in front of you. Is this ringing a bell? That man's name’s John Locke, and I'm waiting for him to come back. So, you still think I'm a member of the damn Dharma Initiative?
Richard: No. Guess I don't.

Sawyer: All right, listen up. When we get there, there's gonna be a lot of questions. So just keep your mouth shut. Let me do the talking.
Miles: You really think you can convince them that we were in a boat wreck?
Sawyer: I'm a professional. I used to lie for a living.

Sawyer: You do realize it's 1974. Whatever it is you think you're going back to, it don't exist yet.
Juliet: It's not a reason not to go..
Sawyer: What about me? You really going to leave me here with a mad scientist and Mr. I Speak to Dead People? And Jin, he's a hell of a nice guy, but not exactly the greatest conversationalist.
Juliet: You'll be fine.
Sawyer: Maybe. But who's gonna get my back?

Sawyer: Let me talk to him.
Horace: Excuse me?
Sawyer: Your buddy out there with the eyeliner. Let me talk to him.
Horace: We had a truce with these people. You don't understand.
Sawyer: I understand I'm the one who killed his men. And I'm the one who's going to go out there and tell him why I did it.
Horace: I can't let you do that.
Sawyer: It's a good thing I ain't asking your permission.

"I had a thing for a girl once. And I had a shot at her, but I didn't take it. For a little while, I'd lay in bed every night, wondering if it was a mistake. Wondering if... I'd ever stop thinking about her. And now I can barely remember what she looks like. I mean, her face... it's.. She's just gone, and she ain't never coming back. So... Is three years long enough to get over someone? Absolutely."
- Sawyer

5.7 The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

Summary and Spoilers

The passengers on flight 316 are now stranded on the island, and their leader, Caesar, is wondering who is the well-dressed bald guy who nobody remembers seeing on the plane. It’s John Locke, fresh out of his coffin and locking very much alive. He has little memory of how he got there.

Flashback:

John Locke spins the Donkey Wheel and pops out at the entrance slash exit point in the desert of Tunisia. All he has is the hope that someone is on the other side of the video camera that is trained on his position, because he cannot move – he lies prone in the desert. A number of hours later, he is dumped in the back of a pickup truck by Arabs, and transported to a simple hospital, where he is painfully patched together. When he comes to, Charles Widmore is at his bedside. He was at the other end of the camera, watching for John to be booted off the island, and he takes credit for bringing in a specialist to re-patch his leg. Widmore’s story is that he was banished from the island by Ben – he doesn’t say why. He also says that John is special and is meant to bring everyone back and be the new leader of the Others. John is skeptical, but accepts Widmore’s offer of help. Widmore provides transportation and a driver/companion in Matthew Abaddon, and John begins his quest to convince everyone to return.

He starts with Sayid, who is building houses for the poor in Santo Domingo, but Sayid thinks John is being manipulated, and has no interest in returning to the island.

Next, he visits Walt, who is all grown up. John isn’t there to convince Walt to go back, just to say hello. Ben is seen lurking nearby, watching and unseen.

Kate has no interest in returning to the island, and Hurley takes one look at Abaddon and runs away.

John also asks Abaddon to find the love of his life, Helen; they visit here grave, as she died of a brain aneurysm.

Their next step is interrupted when Abaddon is shot numerous times. John drives away in a panic and crashes the car. He wakes up in a hospital with Jack at his bedside. This is Jack’s bearded phase, and he isn’t open to ideas about going back to the island, either, until Locke mentions meeting Jack’s father, Christian. Jack seems affected by this by still uninterested.

Depressed, John retreats to a grimy hotel room, writes a short note to Jack (which we saw in the episode 316), and prepares to hang himself. A knock at the door stops him temporarily. It is Ben, there to convince him that he should not off himself. Ben says John has much more work to do. When John says that he hasn’t been able to convince anyone, Ben cheers him up by telling him that Jack bought a ticket to Sydney. Ben also tells John that he is special and that he is meant to lead the Others. Ben talks John down. During their subsequent talk, John tells Ben that he will not speak to Sun because Jin told him not to bring her back. Strangely, when John mentions that he needs to speak to Eloise Hawking because she can get them back to the island, Ben strangles him, then makes it look like a suicide.

Back in the present, John speaks to Caesar and admits to have spent 100 days on the island. John asks for a passenger list, but Caesar says the pilot took it when he left with a female passenger and one of the outriggers. Together, they tour the people who were hurt in the crash. One of them is Ben, and John identifies him as "…the man who killed me."

Comments

Who is the bad guy: you make the call!

Is it Widmore, who sent in a team to assassinate Ben, and who seemed to want to reveal the location of the island? Or is it Ben, who murdered John; who will use the information about Jin to lure Sun back to the island against Jin’s wishes; who deceived Sayid?

We know that Ben Linus and Charles Widmore have been feuding for a long time; they have admitted as much. But why? Why did Ben kick Charles off the island? Is it a simple power struggle, or is there good and bad, right and wrong?

Why does Ben go through all the trouble of talking John out of committing suicide, only to strangle him when John mentions Eloise Hawking? This makes no sense, and the events that follow do not shed any light on it. As we know, Ben then proceeds to assemble the castaways and take them all back anyway, which is what John was going to do. It seems that Linus, Locke, and Widmore all have the same objective – so why are they fighting and killing each other?

Memorable Moments

• The look of disgust John makes when Abaddon readies a wheelchair for him

Quotable Quotes

Locke: Why would you help me?
Widmore: Because there's a war coming, John. And if you're not back on the island when that happens, the wrong side is going to win.

Ilana: Nobody remembers you being on the plane
Locke: Well, I don't remember being on it either.
Ilana: What do you remember?
Locke: I remember a lot.
Ilana: Like why you're dressed up so nice?
Locke: No, but I can guess.
Ilana: Please. Guess.
Locke: I think this suit is what they were gonna bury me in.
Ilana: Sorry?
Locke: You asked what I remembered. I remember dying.

Caesar: (about Ben) You know him?
Locke: Yeah. He's the man who killed me.

5.6 316

Summary and Spoilers

Eloise Hawking brings the survivors into a secret subterranean room where a huge pendulum swings back and forth over a floor map of the earth. For some reason, I kept expected to see Homer Simpson suddenly appear on that pendulum, swinging and shouting, "Woo hoo!". This doesn’t happen; instead, Eloise explains that the room is a Dharma station called The Lamp Post. At least, that’s what it sounds like she says. Dharma created it to pinpoint the location of the island, which moves through time and is connected to other electromagnetic time portals.

Desmond delivers his message from Daniel, then storms from the room. Eloise says the island is not done with him, but he says he is done with the island.

Eloise has modified her stringent conditions that all survivors must return to the island. Now she says that if they all do not attempt the return, the results could be unpredictable. She says that if they get on flight 316 leaving for Guam in a few hours, they will get back to the island.

Finally, Eloise takes Jack aside and tells him he must give something belonging to his father to Locke. She gives him an envelope containing Locke’s suicide note. Jack doesn’t open the envelope.

After meeting with Eloise, Jack returns to his apartment and finds Kate in his bed. She has agreed to go back to the island, but refuses to answer any questions about Aaron, and makes Jack promise never to ask. This seems like a bad way to start a relationship – with an important question that must never be asked or answered – but maybe they are not starting a relationship – maybe it is just an elaborate one-night stand.

Jack gets a call from a nursing home where his grandfather has made his fourth attempt to escape. It’s only a brief visit, but a fateful one – his grandfather had packed a pair of Jack’s father’s shoes in his bag. Jack identifies them and takes them back with him.

Ben, badly beaten up after a visit to someone he said was an old friend, rings Jack to ask him to pick up Locke’s coffin and bring it to the airport. Jack takes this opportunity to puts his dad’s shoes on Locke, and to slip the unread suicide note into the coffin. Like a bad penny, it turns up again when airport personnel find it during a routine scan of the coffin. Finally, Jack reads it on the plane – its one line reads, "I wish you had believed me."

It seems unlikely that Sayid or Hurley will make the flight, but they both magically show up at the airport. A mystery surrounds how either of them found out about the flight.

Fittingly, the pilot of the plane is Frank Lapidus – who better to take them into the time portal. Sure enough, turbulence increases, there is a white out, and Jack wakes up much like he did on his first trip to the island – face up in a grove of bamboo trees, with a camera trained on his eye. He rushes to calls for help and rescues the drowning Hurley and his guitar case from a pool beneath a waterfall. Along the shore, Kate opens her eyes – she’s okay. Before they have a chance to look for the others, the Dharma van drives up, and Jin emerges, rifle drawn. Jack says his name, and there is a glimmer of recognition on Jin’s face – but the rifle isn’t lowered.

Comments

If you love  Jack, you’ll love this episode – he’s in every scene!

After a slow start to season five, the last two episodes of Lost have returned strongly, reaching entertainment levels that approach those of the first two seasons. Aside from too much exposition from Mrs. Eloise, everything else about the episode clicks.

Jin arrives in a Dharma van that looks to be brand new. Does this mean that we have arrived in an earlier time period, and has Jin been stuck here long enough to get a job with Dharma?

What has caused Kate to do such a stunning reversal regarding Aaron? One moment, she was fiercely protective of him, and she had no intention of going back to the island. The next moment, she has ditched him, and she is going back to the island.

This is one of the rare episodes that was shown out of original order. Originally, the next episode (The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham) was supposed to be shown before this one.

Memorable Moments

·          Jack’s almost-happy expression at finding out he is back on the island amid the bamboo

Nits

The scene where Jack find Hurley and Kate at the waterfall is shown twice, and the second time, what Kate says is different. Was this a simple continuity error, or are the creators inferring that the scene actually did happen twice, and Jack is caught in a time loop?

Quotable Quotes

Jack: Did you know about this place?
Ben: No, No, I didn't.
Jack: Is he telling the truth?
Eloise: Probably not.

Ben: Thomas the Apostle. When Jesus wanted to return to Judea, knowing that he would probably be murdered there, Thomas said to the others, "Let us also go, that we might die with him." But Thomas was not remembered for this bravery. His claim to fame came later... when he refused to acknowledge the resurrection. He just couldn't wrap his mind around it. The story goes... that he needed to touch Jesus' wounds to be convinced.
Jack: So was he?
Ben: Of course he was. We're all convinced sooner or later, Jack.

Jack And the other people on this plane - what's gonna happen to them?
Ben: Who cares?

5.5 This Place is Death

If I was stranded on The Island and had to pick a partner for Pictionary, I would pick the member of the French team who fingers a perfect line drawing of a radio tower as an example for Jin. As we discovered at the end of the previous episode, Jin has somehow survived the boat explosion, and is now hanging with Danielle’s team. The team have picked up the repeating numbers radio signal and want Jin’s help to find the tower. Jin says he wants to go back to his camp to find his wife, but the best he can hope for is to run into one of his Significant Others. He agrees to help them find the tower first. But on the way, they encounter the Smoke Monster and lose two members of their team (well, they lose one member, and he other member loses an arm and disappears down the Smoke Hole). The entire team decides to go into the hole to attempt a rescue, but Jin manages to convince the very pregnant Danielle not to follow. Soon after, Jin flashes away.

When Jin emerges, it is a few months later (based on the state of the decomposed arm, which looks mummified). Danielle’s crew have gone mad, and she is in the process of putting them out of their misery. She shoots and misses Jin, then pursues him. He is saved by another flash, and finds himself rejoined with Locke, Sawyer and gang.

As Locke and company head for the Orchid, a series of flashes mean nosebleeds all around and a weakening condition for Charlotte. She is babbling now, but scattered among the nonsense, she says some important snippets:

• She tells Jin not to let Sun return to the island, because ‘this place is death’.
• She tells Daniel that she grew up on the island with her mother and father as part of the Dharma initiative, and that her mother later took her back to England and told her the island was all in her imagination. She became an anthropologist for the sole purpose of finding the island again.
• She said there was a scary man on the island that told her if she returned she would die, and that the scary man was [drumroll] Daniel! At least I think she said ‘scary’; it might have been ‘hairy’).

Having exhausted her confusing quips, Charlotte passes away.

At the site of the Orchid, there is only a well, but Charlotte tipped Locke that this was the place. Based on the words of Charlotte, Jin makes Locke promise not to bring Sun back. He gives his wedding ring to Locke and tells him to tell Sun that he died. Locke descends by rope but a flash buries him in an underground chamber and he injures his leg badly in the fall. He is met at the bottom by Jack’s father Christian, who admonishes him about letting Ben move the island when he had been specifically instructed at the cabin that he, Locke, should move it. Locke receives explicit instructions to bring everyone back to the island. He struggles to his feet, turns the donkey wheel and disappears in a flash of light.

Back on the mainland, Sun points a gun at Ben and is ready to kill him to avenge the death of Jin, when Ben drops the bombshell by claiming the Jin is not dead. He says proof is 30 minutes away (not allowing for traffic). Sun agrees to accompany him, as does Jack, but Kate is incensed at knowing that Jack is in bed with Ben – she leaves in a huff, as does Sayid. With Hurley still incarcerated, Ben is going to have some serious problems getting everyone together.

Outside the location of the mystery woman, Ben produces Jin’s wedding ring and gives it to Sun. Ben had made no promise to hide the survival of Jin, and he is playing it – in fact, if he can get Sun on his side, she can probably convince more people to come back to the island. Desmond walks up out of nowhere, and together, they enter the church. Inside is Eloise Hawking, ready to reveal important information (but not until the next episode).

Comments

I’ve made no secret that I’m not a big fan of time travel, but in this episode, it is used to good effect to go back to a time on the island that was a lot more enjoyable to me. It was great to see campfires, basic survival, and the Smoke Monster.

When Jack’s father appears underground, I had a sudden flashback to long ago, when I was watching another show called Twin Peaks. It felt almost the same – and it wasn’t necessarily a good feeling, because Twin Peaks ended up going off into areas that it could never resolve.

Locke does not know that the mystery man who is giving him save-everyone instructions is – or was – Jack’s father.

So does Locke have to bring back everyone who left the island, or only major cast members? Weren’t there some other people who made it to the boat that blew up? Do they have to be brought back (dead or alive) too? And what about Michael, and Walt, and Claire?

Memorable Moments

• The Smoke Monster is one of the most original entities ever created, an exhilarating combination of vapor, mechanical sounds, and sentience

Nits

Jin’s English has improved markedly since we last saw him, despite the fact that very little time has passed since we last saw him, and he spent most of that time alone floating at sea.

That mummified arm should probably simply be stripped down to the bone by organic creatures. What would cause it to be mummified in a damp, creature-filled rainforest environment?

In early episodes of Lost, why didn’t Danielle remember Jin from these encounters? According to my theory anyway, if you travel back in time and meet someone, they should have that memory of the meeting from then on.

Quotable Quotes

Jin: Please! Translate.
Sawyer: You heard the man – translate!
Miles: Uh…he’s Korean; I’m from Encino.

"Run!!!"
- Jin (oft-repeated basic strategy/advice on Lost)

Daniel: So, you speak any other languages?
Charlotte: Only Klingon.

5.4 The Little Prince

Kate is trying to find out who wants to take Aaron away from her. She meets with the lawyer who came to her door demanding blood samples a couple of episodes ago, and offers to give the samples in exchange for talking to the person – but it’s no deal. Instead, she tails the lawyer. She is joined by Jack. He is trying to assemble everyone as per Ben’s instructions, and, having found a piece of paper with Kate’s address in an assassin’s pocket, he is a little concerned. The lawyer leads them to Claire’s mother, but it’s a red herring – she does not even know that Aaron exists. The real culprit is Ben – he admits to wanting to take Aaron away, but never really explains why.

Jack has finished ridding Sayid of most of the horse tranquilizer that was shot into his body. There’s no respite, as Sayid is visited by an orderly who tries to shoot him with more darts. Sayid bests the guy in true Sayid style, somehow springing from the bed quickly and quietly despite the fact that just seconds ago he looked almost catatonic.

Meanwhile, Kate has left Aaron is the capable babysitting hands of Sun. But Sun is not your conventional babysitter – she’s been twisting the Forrest Gump script into ‘Death is like a box of chocolates’. I’m referring to her unusual delivery of a handgun hidden under a box of chocolates, of course.

Ben has assembled as many survivors as he could wrangle at a pier; Sun drives up with her gun ready and Aaron asleep in the back, watching Ben and getting ready to pounce.

Back on the island, Charlotte’s condition is worsening. The latest jump knocks her out for more than 10 minutes, frustrating Sawyer and causing Juliette to start asking some hard questions to Daniel, who finally admits that he thought something like this might happen.

Meanwhile, Locke convinces Sawyer that they must get back to the Orchid, so he can leave the island, bring everyone back, and fix all this. He tells Sawyer that they must come back to save everyone – and he says he knows everyone is still alive.

The flashes continue, bringing glimpses of earlier times on the island. It’s like walking through a clip show. In one clip, Sawyer, who is ahead of the group, watches Kate helping Claire give birth.

On the beach, the group find an outrigger. They take it, and are soon pursued by people in another outrigger, firing at them. A flash once again saves them. They make it to the shore and find French-labelled wreckage.

We now see French-speaking people in a raft. They also make it to shore (a different shore). In the morning, they find a stranger washed up as well – Jin! He is comforted by a young pregnant woman who identifies herself as Danielle Rousseau.

Comments

The numbers figure prominently in this episode: Sun has 16 chocolates delivered; Kate lives at 42 Panorama Crest; Sayid was unconscious for 42 hours.

The name ‘Canton-Rainier’ on the side of Ben’s van is a anagram of ‘reincarnation’.

Memorable Moments

• It was great to see Jin again

Nits

When Locke and gang are in the outrigger and a flash occurs, they reappear, still in the outrigger, but in stormy conditions. Shouldn’t the outrigger have disappeared?

Quotable Quotes

Jack: Tomorrow morning I'm going to have to convince everyone to lie. If it's just me they're never going to go for it. So I'm going to turn to you first. Are you with me?
Kate: I have always been with you.

Daniel: It’s like really bad jet-lag.
Juliette: Really bad jet-lag doesn’t make you hemmorhage, Daniel.

"I think they want their boat back!"
- Miles (paddling and avoiding bullets)

5.3 Jughead

Lost just wouldn’t be Lost without perennially worried man Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) crinkling his brow as he sets out on another dodgy mission. He has decided to follow up on the dream/memory implanted by Daniel: to pursue Daniel’s mother at Oxford, despite the Widmore dangers that this may inflict. By the way, if Cusick was able to time travel, he could go back to the 1940s and become the quintessential ‘worried man’ character actor, appearing in the credits of countless films as "Worried Man………..Henry Ian Cusick". Time traveling even further to the 1980s, he could have a spinoff series called Worried Man, in which each week he is given something huge to Worry about.

Desmond could also have played Obsessed Man. Here, he is completely dedicated to fulfilling Daniel’s wish and saving everyone on the island, but he also has put a ridiculously short time limitation on it – if he can’t save everyone by the end of the day, he’ll just forget about the whole thing and go back to serenely sailing. A lot of things happen on his sojourn – he doesn’t find Daniel’s mother, but he finds a deserted lab where Daniel was conducting bizarre rat brain time travel experiments. He also finds a comatose woman, her brain ruined by one of Daniel’s experiments. The woman’s sister also tells Des that Daniel (drumroll, please) works for Widmore. Angered, Des visits Widmore and demands answers. Widmore gives Desmond the Los Angeles address of Daniel’s mother, but says she won’t be happy to see him. Back on the boat, Des keeps his promise and tells Penny that he is willing to drop it, but she knows he cannot and insists that they all go along. She doesn’t know about the dire warning that Widmore delivered to Desmond, a warning to keep his family away from this whole conflict.

Back on the island, Sawyer, Locke, Daniel, Miles, Charlotte and Juliet are in the past. The island is occupied by Others, but they are in para-military mode, engaged in a war with American troops who invaded ‘their’ island and used it for testing nuclear weapons. They left behind a big leaking bomb called Jughead. A survivor rendezvous at the creek is interrupted by another staple of latter-day Lost: big explosions. This time, they are land mines, planted by the now-dead Americans. Soon after, Locke and gang capture some Other troops; conversely, Daniel and crew are captured by Ellie, an Australian Other with a big gun. Daniel manages to keep them alive by claiming that he can disarm the nuclear device.

Meanwhile, Locke arrives in camp, demanding to speak to Richard. He assures Richard that he saved him in the future. Richard isn’t exactly willing to accept any of this, since he has no memory of it, but neither is he dismissing it. Locke asks Richard to explain how he can save everyone, but a flash occurs, and it’s off to another time. Before Locke leaves, he has a little run-in with a young, trigger-happy soldier who identifies himself as none other than a younger version of Charles Widmore.

Comments

This show completely ignores the USA-based survivors (Jack, Ben, Sayid, Kate, Aaron, Sun, and Hugo…did I leave anyone out?) and focuses instead on Desmond and family, and the people remaining on the island.

It appears that Charlotte is suffering from a reaction to all those time travel jumps – and Daniel seems to know what is happening to her. Something similar probably happened to the comatose woman that was a victim of Daniel’s experiments at Oxford.

Memorable Moments

• If you like explosions, you’ll enjoy land mines blowing up anonymous survivors in the background, while Daniel, Charlotte and Miles scatter

Nits

I’m not a big fan of time travel as a plot contrivance, and here’s why. Let us look at how time travel has been used in Lost. Daniel travels three years into the past and tells Desmond to contact Daniel’s mother at Oxford. Three years from when this happened, we see Desmond wake up, seemingly suddenly possessing this ‘memory’. It’s as if these two points in time (‘three years ago’ and ‘today’) are all important and somehow interconnected. But what is so important about ‘today’? Today is only important so far as it is when we are watching Desmond. If Daniel truly did travel back along the timeline and change the past, then Desmond should have had the experience and memory of what happened immediately after it happened, not three years later. To prove this point, let’s take a look at another timeline intersection. John Locke travels back in time and demands to see Richard. Among other things, he tells Richard that Richard saved his life in the future. Locke then flashes and disappears. Richard is still there. Richard has just had this experience, and it is now part of his memory – immediately, not at some arbitrary unimportant point three years later.

Quotable Quotes

Cunningham: That idiot shouted out 'Meet at the creek'. We knew exactly where they were headed. Sent a group after them.
Sawyer: Maybe I should've said it in my secret language.

Locke: And because I'm your leader.
Richard: You're my leader?
Locke: That's what you told me.
Richard: Well, look, I certainly don't want to contradict myself.

"Look, right out there, beyond where you can see, there’s an island, and it's a very special island. I left it a long time ago -  never thought I'd see it again. It’s called...Great Britain."
- Desmond

Richard: How do I know you weren't sent here on some suicide mission? That I'll take you out to the bomb, and you'll just detonate it?
Faraday: Because... I'm in love with the woman sitting next to me. And I would never... I would never do anything to hurt her.
Richard: Alright. Take care of your bomb, but if you try anything else, you will hurt her.