Well, well, well friends. After what was approximately the longest two weeks of my life, Lost was back in full force last night. As with “LaFleur”, we found ourselves being bounced back and forth between two times. Except, this time, instead of three years’ difference we had three decades worth of distance between our reunited castaways and the landing of Ajira flight 316. Both stories were interesting, though I’d be lying if I said that the present-day Hydra Island arc didn’t get interesting until the last few minutes.
Brace for Impact!
I’ve been trying to be more brief when it comes to spitting out these recaps so, in the interest of time, I can pretty much sum up the thrust of the present-day story as follows:
- Frank lands on what we previously thought was a completely useless runway we saw being built in Season 3 (pretty nice bit of writing there, actually, and I have something of a theory on this later.)
- Frank wants to take care of everyone, as a good captain should. But Caesar wants to explore the abandoned Hydra station. and He’s really antagonistic about it. Also, he’s a weird, off-putting lisp. This dude is starting to annoy me.
- Sun follows Ben around the jungle. They’re set to boat it back to the Island, but she goes upside his head with an oar, thus explaining how Ben ended up in that pseudo-triage unit.
- Sun and Lapidus head to the Island, only to be met by the Smoke Monster. I mean…Christian Shephard. I’m pretty sure they are the same damn thing at this point. He lets Sun know that finding Jin is going to be a lot harder than she thought, considering he is currently living the sweet DHARMA hippie lifestyle in 1977. Damn.
Yeah, that’s pretty much that. We were pretty much filling in the blanks regarding what happened on the plane after Jack and company flashed back into the Island’s past. Everything involving Christian of course awesome, as usual. Put yourself in Sun’s shoes there for a second. She’s looking for her husband, goes to the island to find him, then sees him in a picture with the DHARMA Initiative from 1977. Damn, I love this show.
New Sheriff in town
I think we can agree the real nuts and bolts of last night’s outing took place in DHARMA time. James (I don’t know if I’ll ever even bother calling him Sawyer again) was tasked with the difficult job of seamlessly integrating his friends into the DI’s society. That seemed easy enough, as they would just fill the roles of some newly arrived recruits. Simple enough. But then we found out that everyone’s favorite Iraqi torturer also got his ass zapped out of the 316 cabin and was mistaken for a Hostile, making for some truly inconvenient circumstances for ol’ Jim LaFleur
Before Jack, Kate and Hurley hopped on board with the idea of joining up with the DI, we got some nice moments between Jack and Sawyer (alright, I caved) where the former leader sort of threw up his hands and knew that the slick con man was their best chance at pulling off this ruse. These “nice moments” became pretty nasty later on.
Hurley, always the moral compass of the show, implored Sawyer to warn the Initiative of their impending doom, prompting Sawyer to say that that is not his responsibility and that Faraday has very strict guidelines about what can and cannot be changed. He then answered Jack’s question of “Faraday, he’s here?” with the most loaded line of the evening. “Not anymore.” What the Hell?
Where have I heard that name before?
Sayid’s adventures as a falsely identified hostile got us acquainted with one of the all-time biggest mythology-bending names in the Lost pantheon: Radzinsky. In case you’d forgotten, Radzinsky was an occupant of the Swan station, who made the edits to the orientation film and began the work on the glow-in-the-dark blast door map. We learned this from the words of Kelvin Inman, Desmond’s hatch partner, who was previously paired with Radzinsky. At some point Radzinsky blew his brains out all over the Hatch ceiling. If this is confusing you, rewatch the Season 2 finale “Live Together, Die Alone” again. It’s all there.
Well, when he was alive, Radzinsky was something of tempermental ass. He was working at the Flame station and when Jin got on his case about finding a plane, he completely wigged out. He wigged out even further when he thought Hostile Sayid caught a glimpse of his nifty Swan model. Also, I had originally surmised that the Jughead was buried in 1954 and the Swan was built around it, but that theory may have gone by the wayside since the Swan isn’t even built yet in 1977. hmmm…
The leaders lock horns, and another Lost cliffhanger for the ages…
So, while Jack seemed content to go along with James’s undercover plan initially, he dropped by his casa to discuss their next move. This lead to a painfully awkward reunion between Juliet and the Doc, who quickly realized that Sawyer was now shacking up with isalnd’s hottest mechanic. From there, Jack pressed Sawyer about what in the world was going to happen next and suggested Sawyer put down his book and think of a good plan. In the ensuing dialogue, we received an insight into the Sawyer’s leadership skills. He been portrayed as an avid reader throughout the series, and he says the Churchill read a book every night. He thinks about things before acting, unlike Jack.
Now, I’ve never really cared for the word “pwned” or “owned” in that sense, but man oh man, I can’t think of any other way to describe how Sawyer just dropped all that leadership knowledge onto Doc Shephard’s world. He said and I quote: “I’m gonna THINK. ‘Cause that’s how I saved your ass today. And that’s how I’m gonna save Sayid’s tomorrow.” Game. Set. Match. James Ford.
Meanwhile Sayid was in the DHARMA prison ward, where he was served a mustard-less sandwich by none other than a young Ben Linus. This brings me to the point about the runway earlier. I believe that Ben Linus as we’ve come to know him is much, MUCH smarter than we even realize. I think he always knows what to do and is always a step ahead because he has done this before. I also think he is going to meet all the castaways in 1977 time, which explains the distinct psychological advantage he has over them when they crash on the island in 2004. That’s how he knew to begin a project to build a runway. He knew he would eventually end up on a plane that would need to make a landing on that very runway. You dig?
“Other” concerns
Amy’s baby is creepy other Ethan. That was a pretty sweet little reveal there, huh? Also, here are some other tidbits of note that I couldn’t cohesively fit into the recap.
Best line of the night: “And how did that work out for everyone?” said by a very sarcastic Ben, after Frank pointed out that he was originally on a boat with a mercenary team sent to take Ben out.
After Christian tells Sun “You’ve got quite a journey ahead of you”, pause those DVRs. There is a woman milling about in the background in the darkness behind Sun. Who is it? The logical choice would be Christian’s daughter Claire.
Alright. So that’s it. What did you think of the episode? Did you think the Sun-chasing-Ben plot dragged a bit? Why didn’t Sun flash back into 1977 with the rest of her friends? Did you find it funny how in this episode people had to keep playing along with hare-brained schemes like in Three’s Company or some other goofy sitcom? Where did Faraday go? Sound off, readers, Lost is back and better than ever.
