s2e06: Abandoned

I'm guessing the title of this episode refers to Shannon, post-Boone death (and also in the flashbacks where her evil stepmother steals all her money), which is kind of a curious choice when they were just going to kill her off.

Yes, Shannon dies. It's kind of odd that they would crush that entire angle by killing off both characters, but I guess the case I would make is that the deaths of those characters had larger ramifications on more important ones - Boone's death gave some depth to Locke, and Shannon's looks like it's going to do something major to Sayid. (Something so major they're not even coming right back with it next week, instead spending a whole episode on 1.25 seasons' worth of tail-section survivors' plot.)

What else went down in this episode? Let's break it down in bite-sized form, because you could read a streamlined recap pretty much anywhere:

1. Locke realizes that Charlie knows about the heroin from the plane when Claire mentions that he carries around a Virgin Mary statue. (Though Charlie doesn't appear to actually be using, since he's evidently carrying around an unbroken statue if Claire is anything to go by. Of course, he could just be replenishing his supply constantly. I'm sure we'll find out more about this later.)

2. Fake-out deaths galore, as Sawyer collapses in the jungle and Cindy Lou Whoever vanishes. (When the tail sectioners start calling for Cindy, I muttered to Drew, "That better not be it.")

3. Shannon and Sayid get it on. Then Shannon sees Walt in the tent and freaks out, and gets Vincent to lead her into the jungle. Sayid catches up with her and also sees Walt; Shannon chases after him and gets shot by Ana Lucia. The tail sectioners, along with Jin and Michael, had started hearing the whispers and assumed Shannon running up was the Others.

4. In flashbacks, we learn that Shannon got jerked around by her stepmother after her father died (thanks partially to Jack's decision to operate on Sarah instead; the brief shot of Jack walking past Shannon in the hospital is also all we get of him in this episode). Boone tries to help but she ends up telling him she can manage on her own. (Of course, as we found out last season, this "management" largely involves her tricking Boone into giving money to guys she's sleeping with, so I guess she never really got settled.) On the other hand, what does any of this matter now? They're both dead.

That's about it. It was a pretty good episode; Drew noted that some of the scenes near the end provided more genuine tension than just about any this season; it's hard to disagree with that. Certainly not since the first episode back, I would say.

So... Walt. I think we all assumed that Walt's appearances to Shannon were hallucinations on her part, what with the backwards talking and that he could apparently show up anywhere at any time and then vanish again. (Plus, we've already seen this sort of thing with Jack's dad in S1.) But since Sayid saw Walt, that would seem to confirm that Walt is, in some measure, real.

So how can he move so easily without being detected until he appears in front of your face? A couple possibilities here:

a) He has somehow been drawn into whatever the Others use to move as silently as they do (see s2e05), as a result of his abduction by them.

b) It's some sort of shared hallucination inspired by the island's strange magical powers.

c) The writers are just jerking us around to make Walt's appearances seem more mysterious than they actually are.

I don't buy that last one, largely because there's enough crazy crap going on that I don't think the writers need to turn the pedestrian into the mysterious as well. I like (a) myself. It could also explain the backwards whispering - the suggestion behind Ana Lucia's shout of "Run!" is that the mysterious whispers in the forest signal the presence of the Others. So Walt's ability to walk softly and carry a big backwards-whisper stick could be indicative of a connection to the Others... what, I don't know, but of course we should eventually find out, if that's the case. (I mean, yes, he was presumably abducted by them - not that we know for a fact that the boat people and the Others are really the same people, we just assume - but how exactly would he get these "abilities" from them?)

Shannon's death appears that it may be a turning point in a way that Boone's, frankly, was not. The look on Sayid's face alone suggests that he will never in a million years be able to coexist with Ana Lucia, and possibly by extension no one in that party (certainly no one in the tail section).

I wonder if this coming week we'll see anything current, or if it will all be flashbacks. (I hope they don't use a cheesy "here's what happened" framing device, at least.) Previously on Lost: ker-blooie, there goes the plane... and I guess they'll probably have to throw in a couple scenes like the one in the pit where Michael says to Ana Lucia, "You were in the back?" because otherwise casual viewers will be all, "Why don't I recognize anyone on Lost?" At least I expect that's how it will go. And then come back next time for more important stuff. Because unless there's a big revelation about the Others coming, I'm not sure I care what Ana Lucia and Mistereko and Bernard and Libby have been doing for seven weeks.