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s4e12: There's No Place Like Home, Part 1

We get our earliest flash-forward yet, as it starts with the Oceanic Six on the plane about to land in Hawaii. I'm beginning to suspect (well, maybe not beginning) that the end of this season might do something like connect the "present" to the "flash-forwards" (in other words, could it possibly end with the same scene that this episode started with, or with what happens directly before it?). But as we've seen before, I am horrible at guessing where this show is going next.

Anyway, in flash-forward, we see that Sayid and Nadia get together; Hurley sees the numbers in the odometer of the car his dad fixed and freaks out; Sun somehow gets so much money from Oceanic that she can buy majority control of her dad's company (seriously? I didn't realize Paik Industrial was a lemonade stand), as she blames him for Jin's death; and Jack finally delivers the eulogy at his father's funeral, only to be told by a no-longer-comatose Claire's mom that Claire was/is his sister. I've long wondered how and when they were going to present this news to Jack, and I have to say it went off pretty well. Also have to love the irony they squeeze in there; Claire's mom mentions how Jack would have been a few rows from Claire without ever knowing she was his sister, then compliments Aaron to Kate, of course not realizing that he's really her grandson.

In present times, Jack and Kate go into the jungle after hearing that Keamy is headed for the Orchid. Kate swaps with Sawyer after they run into him (with Aaron and Miles in tow), and Sawyer and Jack make for the chopper. When Frank (cuffed to the chopper by Keamy) tells them that Locke and Hurley are probably going to be killed when Keamy finds Ben, Jack heads for the Orchid.

Meanwhile, Sayid arrives at the beach to get people off the island. When Kate arrives at the beach, she and Sayid head back into the jungle to warn Jack about how dangerous the mercenaries on the helicopter are; Kate leaves Aaron with Sun. In the jungle, Kate and Sayid are ambushed and captured by Richard Alpert and the rest of the Others. (I kind of wonder why those guys still bother to wear those outfits when everyone on the island knows they don't really live in huts or whatever; possibly something necessary due to one of the various mythological island factors?)

In lieu of Sayid, Daniel starts ferrying people back to the boat. Michael has fixed the engines, but due to some interference, the sonar isn't working properly, so the helmsman refuses to move the boat closer to the island (lest it run aground on the reef). When Desmond and Michael look for the source, they find a room full of explosives. Some connection here between this and the device on Keamy's arm?

Ben, Locke and Hurley make their way to the Orchid (Ben has some communication with the other Others by mirror first), which is already surrounded by the mercenaries. After telling Locke what to do to move the island once he's inside the Orchid, Ben surrenders himself, and Keamy hits him in the face with his gun (he apparently really likes doing this).

Two-hour second part of the finale coming on May 29. So what can we expect? Well, someone will probably be dying; the likelihood of Jin's survival in one form or another seems slim at this point, but I think Desmond will survive because of the integral part he has to play in the Ben/Widmore battle. Not sure about Michael; possibly he would sacrifice himself to save everyone else? Will the island actually move? And if so, will it move to the location of "Membata," or are the castaways moved there first, or is that entirely a fish story? With the various members of the Oceanic Six in four different places at the moment - Sun and Aaron on the freighter, Sayid and Kate with the Others, Jack heading for the Orchid, and Hurley at the Orchid - how exactly are they all going to be pulled together and yet no one else will be saved? It's seemed for a while that some sort of deal will be cut by the six who do get off, but why those six, and what kind of deal, and with whom?

Excited.

s4e11: Cabin Fever

A plot: Locke, Hurley and Ben go looking for Jacob's cabin.

This plot really kind of mixed the amusing and the creepy. Just look at the first scene where they're arguing about who's leading the way, or where Hurley splits his Apollo Bar with Ben... then, at the same time, look at, well, the entire scene in the cabin, or Locke's dream sequence where Horace tells him how to find the cabin. (It turns out that Horace built the cabin, apparently.) Oh, and Locke's very literal use of "pit stop" made me smile.

Anyway, Christian (dead) and Claire (not dead?) are inside the cabin, and they tell Locke what he needs to do - move the island. What in the fuck?

B plot: Various confrontations on the boat as Keamy plans to return to the island in force.

A very tense, action-heavy plot. Keamy comes back and confronts Michael for ratting him out to Ben, but the gun misfires when he tries to kill him. (Michael is impervious right now, apparently.) Keamy gets the "secondary protocol," which apparently tells him the only place Ben can go to hide if the island is "torched." Captain Overacting doesn't exactly agree with Keamy's plan and gives Sayid (and Desmond, who elects not to return to the island) a boat. Also, we see the ship receive the Morse code message about Dr. Ecklie, who's still alive and well - and then he's killed and tossed overboard. So clearly there's a big time issue here. In a big confrontation, Captain Overacting is shot by Keamy, and Frank decides to fly them back to the island after initially resisting. Meanwhile, Keamy has had some odd device attached to him, which I'm sure will come into play later.

C plot: In our brief view of the beach, Jack et al. receive the radio/GPS that Frank drops. Aaaand that's about it.

Flashback: In our first full pre-crash flashback since the second-to-last episode of Season Three (Charlie's "Greatest Hits"), we learn significant and confusing information about Locke's long-term ties to the island's mythology.

So Baby Locke was ridiculously premature but he managed to battle off all kinds of infections and survive. Then we see - dum dum DUM! - Richard Alpert, who visits Baby Locke in the hospital and then Kid Locke, giving the latter some sort of Dalai Lama test, as Drew noted. Kid Locke fails, but that's clearly not the end of it, as Mittelos Bioscience tries to recruit Teen Locke, who might have gone for it if he'd been getting laid. Sadly, he's unpopular, and rejects the idea as he has no intention of being more unpopular. Finally, we see Wheelchair Locke during his rehab, where he meets with - dum dum DUM!!!! - Matthew Abaddon, who, we discover, is responsible for planting the idea in Locke's head that he should go on the walkabout.

So the question thus is: did Matthew Abaddon, who appears to be on the Widmore side later, point Locke towards Australia because he knew Locke's plane would crash, ridding the world of the Others' "chosen one?" Or because he knew it would crash in such a way that Locke would get to the island? Either way, how did and could he know? And the whole "when you and me run into each other again, you'll owe me one" - time traveling? Or just knowing the future somehow?

All in all, a pretty strong episode. Now we just have three hours of finale left over the next three weeks (one, off, two). Can you say awesome?

s4e10: Something Nice Back Home

When you consider the fact that three episodes (though, ultimately, only two hours) had to be dropped from this season, doesn't that make "Something Nice Back Home" feel like kind of a missed opportunity? Let's run down the major plot points of the episode really quick.

A plot: Jack gets appendicitis and Juliet has to perform surgery.

Has there ever been a Lost plot with less inherent tension? We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jack survives well into the future. So the only thing that we really gleaned from this entire segment came at the end, when Juliet reveals that she knows Jack really loves Kate, in spite of the seemingly blossoming relationship between Jack and Juliet.

B plot: Sawyer, Claire and Miles head back to the beach, run into Frank (and have to hide from a shaken-but-alive Keamy), come across the bodies of Rousseau and Karl, and have Sawyer claim the "overly-protective of Claire, to no benefit" mantle from the late Charlie. Claire winds up vanishing, leaving Aaron behind, having apparently gone off with Christian, who was certainly corporeal but about whom we can't say much else with certainty.

I guess this plot was fine, but the Keamy thing was kind of cheap tension (since it turned out to be window dressing) and the final scene was frustratingly inconclusive even by Lost standards. Miles has calmed down a lot in the few days he's been on the island, though, hasn't he?

C plot: Charlotte turns out to speak Korean, and Jin asks her to make sure Sun gets off the island.

Again, this seemed fairly irrelevant, other than setting up Sun getting off the island while Jin does not - but that's also something we already knew and obviously doesn't even come close to answering the main question about that plotline, which is: Is Jin secretly still alive, and if not, how does he die? We'll probably find that out by the end of the season, one would suspect, but at any rate this added very little to the effort.

FF plot: Overcoming his reservations about Aaron, Jack begins a serious relationship with Kate, eventually proposing to her. But the seeds of the relationship's downfall are sown when Jack goes to see Hurley at the mental hospital, where Hurley passes along a message from Charlie: "You're not supposed to raise him." Jack begins to see his father and eventually starts drinking again, finally confronting Kate about who she's been off to see behind his back. It turns out she's been running errands or something for Sawyer. By the end of the episode it's pretty clear how we got to the point Jack was at in last season's finale.

This was probably the best part of the episode, which is kind of sad because the idea of Jack and Kate being all lovey-dovey in the future - even if the entire scope of their relationship fit into this episode - really sort of bothers me. The scene between Jack and Hurley was really well-shot, though, and the introduction of Sawyer back into the mix was interesting although fairly implausible. (Jack wants to kill himself because he can't find the island, but Sawyer, apparently still there, can just pick up a phone and call Kate whenever he wants? I guess we've established that voice transmissions aren't affected by the island's power while the jamming is off, but it seems odd somehow.) You also wonder what Kate is even doing for Sawyer - something related to his daughter? The end of the flash-forward also all but confirmed what we suspected based on "Eggtown" - that Jack has, at some interim point, found out that Claire is actually his half-sister (as his rant that Kate isn't even related to Aaron was dripping with "While I, on the other hand, am" implication). When he finds that out seems to be up for quite a lot of debate; I would have assumed that Christian would have confirmed this for Jack at some point, but given how shocked he is to see his father off-island in the FF here, I can't believe that he would have spoken to his father (or any avatar thereof) to be able to find that out. Perhaps he finds out from Ben at some point, or perhaps he finds out after getting off the island from some sort of investigation into the lives of people on the plane (done by whoever seems like they might do that and publicize it). I don't really know at this point but it appears it's not Christian.

Next week: do you realize that there is only one episode remaining before the start of the two-part finale on May 15? Of course, the finale is three hours over two nights (two weeks apart, no less), so it's not like we're going to be hurting for Lost over the next month, but we're really coming right up against it here. Hard to believe that episode 11 is going to tread as much water as this one did, with that in mind.

s4e09: The Shape of Things to Come

On island, we find out that the people responsible for killing Karl and Rousseau were in fact the team of soldiers on the boat. They drag Alex back to the camp and make her turn off the sonic fence; she uses a special distress code, warning the village of the approach. The soldiers arrive with "shock and awe," as Ben puts it (I suspect this may have been intended as political commentary of some sort), killing several Socks and blowing up Claire's house (miraculously, she is unharmed). The soldiers send Miles in with a walkie-talkie so they can communicate with Ben; he won't come out, so they threaten to kill Alex. When Ben attempts the old "Go ahead, she means nothing to me" ploy, they kill her. A stunned Ben remarks that "He changed the rules" and proceeds to loose Smokey on the soldiers. Everyone else runs into the jungle. Sawyer, Claire and Miles head for the beach; after a confrontation between Locke and Sawyer over who gets Hurley (who is needed to find the cabin, according to Ben), Hurley heads off with Locke and Ben to find Jacob.

On the beach, Dr. Ecklie washes ashore with his throat slit. Daniel repairs the radio enough to send Morse code to the boat, asking what happened to the doctor. The boat replies that the doctor is fine - but Daniel lies, claiming that they've said the helicopters are coming in the morning. Bernard, who conveniently knows Morse code, catches him, and Jack demands to know if there were ever plans to rescue the crash survivors. "No," Daniel says.

In flash forward, Sayid has married Nadia (which is like post-Season 1 fanfiction) only to see her killed. Ben teleports to the Tunisian desert (I think we can safely assume this is what happened; did you notice that he was wearing a jacket that belonged to Dr. Edgar Halliwax, by the way?), then makes his way to Iraq, posing as a member of the press. Sayid notices him taking pictures and attacks him as a "vulture" - clearly life in the public eye has been quite stressful - but Ben reveals that one of Widmore's men killed Nadia. Later, Ben tracks the man responsible as what appears to be a distraction; in other words, he distracts him just long enough for Sayid to kill him. Sayid all but begs Ben to let him be a killer for him, which kind of contradicts Sayid's suggestion in "The Economist" that Ben had virtually blackmailed Sayid into becoming a killer for him. Ben's smile as he walks away makes it clear that this was what he wanted to happen, however, so maybe that's what Sayid was getting at. In the final scene, Ben breaks into Charles Widmore's penthouse suite and tells him that because Widmore "changed the rules" and killed Ben's daughter, Ben is going to kill his daughter - of course, this is Penelope, and I think this means Desmond is getting off the island because you get a lot more potential conflict out of this reveal that way. Widmore says by way of exposition that everything Ben has, he stole from Widmore, including the island - this continues to suggest that Widmore was, decades earlier, Dharma's bankroll. This is also kind of a classic "Who am I supposed to be rooting for?" scene; depending on who you tend to believe in this scene, one or the other of them is really evil.

Quite the upping of the body count, no? If we include the last five minutes of "Meet Kevin Johnson," that's more than a dozen people who have died in just slightly over the last hour of the show - Alex, Karl, Rousseau, the three Socks, Dr. Ecklie, and presumably all six soldiers. And we haven't even been back to the boat - I assume next week we will be.

s4e08: Meet Kevin Johnson

Not much beating around the bush this week. Miles reveals to Locke's camp that he's here for Ben, and doesn't exactly deny it when Ben says that if he is captured, the Freighters will kill everyone else, per Widmore's orders. Ben then reveals at Hurley's prompting that Michael is his spy on the boat. It's off to the boat, then, where Sayid forces Michael to tell his story. And tell he does, over most of the rest of the episode.

Michael attempts to kill himself by crashing his car, with a note to Walt pinned to his chest. Walt is now living with Michael's mother and won't speak to his father - it is implied that at some point, Michael had to explain to Walt just what he did to get them off the island. Also, this way we don't have to see clearly-older Malcolm David Kelley for more than a second. Pretty crafty, writers. Michael tries again to kill himself, this time with a gun, until Tom steps out of the shadows. They fight, and Tom eventually points the gun at Michael, who urges Tom to shoot. Tom says that Michael can't die even if he wants to, because the island won't let him. Michael tries to shoot himself again but the trigger just clicks, even though it's fully loaded. After seeing that 815 has been found, Michael runs back to find Tom.

Tom (who is briefly shown to be gay, because why not, I guess) explains that Widmore faked
the Bali crash site so that no one would go looking in the right area and possibly stumble across the island. Naturally this contradicts with the suggestion in the last episode that Ben was behind the fake. Tom's explanation seems a little more convincing - he actually has evidence, and of course it's possible that Widmore would have lied to the freighter's captain - but who ever knows with the Others. At any rate, Tom tells Michael to join the crew of the freighter so that he can kill everyone on board. Michael tries, via bomb, but it's a dud - a little flag goes up saying "Not yet." Ben, pretending to be Walt, calls Michael on the boat (clearly the only way he could call without arousing suspicion) and tells him that the difference between Ben and Widmore is that Ben doesn't kill innocent people. Michael is instead ordered to make a list of the people on the boat, then sabotage the radio and engines.

After hearing the whole story, Sayid drags Michael in front of the captain and reveals that Michael is the saboteur and a spy for Ben. I guess Sayid really wants to get back to the real world, huh? Makes you wonder just how bad things have to get for Sayid to end up killing for Ben himself.

To wind up, Ben sends Alex, Karl and Rousseau towards the Temple, but, fulfilling the teaser's promise that someone would die, Karl and Rousseau are shot by unseen assailants. Alex jumps up and yells that she's Ben's daughter, and we go to Lost logo. The last scene was a little weird; was it perhaps intended to show that in spite of what he may want people to believe, Ben is just that dangerous? He seems to have sent them into a trap that would bump off Alex's boyfriend and biological mother, thus leaving Ben as her only family on the island - as verified by the fact that she leaps back to her connection to him to save herself. Pretty fucking diabolical, no? Kinda makes you wonder if we're supposed to end up rooting for either side in the Ben/Widmore conflict.

April 24: Lost is back. It sounds like it's going to spread over six weeks, with the finale coming in two parts over two weeks thanks to dumb-ass Grey's Anatomy. Should be pretty awesome. By the end of the season we're supposed to at least have some idea how the Oceanic Six get off. Works for me.

s4e07: Ji Yeon

Well, that was a fucking downer.

In the A plot, Sun decides she wants to go off to Locke's camp, because she doesn't trust the Freighters. Juliet warns her against doing so because it would lead to her death, due to the fact that pregnant women (at least those who conceived on-island) do not survive past the middle of the second trimester or so. Sun notes that Juliet doesn't exactly have the best history of veracity, and starts to head off with Jin anyway. Juliet pulls out all the stops and tells Jin about Sun's affair with Jae Lee, forcing them to stay at the beach. Jin goes off fishing with Bernard and, in a fairly nice scene, Bernard says he believes that staying at the beach is good karma. Jin forgives Sun for the affair, saying he knows that the person he used to be, pre-island, pretty much deserved it, and Sun confirms for him that the baby is his. They decide to stay at the beach, hopeful that they can get off the island soon.

In the B plot, Sayid and Desmond meet the captain of the ship, who shows them the black box from Flight 815 and tells them that Charles Widmore is financing the whole thing. He tells them about the discovery of the plane with all 324 dead bodies aboard, and asks them what it means to them that someone could have gone to the trouble of faking the entire thing - including presumably killing 324 people just to serve as dead bodies. And that, he says, is why Widmore wants Ben. We also see that the crew of the freighter is going nuts due to their proximity to the island, but the captain has been unable to move the ship because a certain someone has sabotaged the engines. As should come as no surprise to anyone, that someone is... Michael, now posing as the ship's janitor under the name Kevin Johnson.

In the flash-forwards, Sun is rushed to the hospital, heavily pregnant, and keeps asking where Jin is. He's in transit, but having some difficulty buying a large stuffed panda. Finally he makes it to the hospital... where we find out we're actually in flashback in his half of the flashes, as he presents the panda to the daughter of the Chinese ambassador on the birth of her new son as a way of helping to curry favor for Sun's dad, Mr. Paik. As Jin leaves the hospital, a nurse mentions that maybe someday he'll be a father too. "Don't rush me," he jokes. "I've only been married two months!"

In the final flash-forward, we find out where Jin was when Sun was calling for him at the hospital - the same place he'd been for a while, presumably, six feet under in a Korean cemetery. Hurley, who has come out to visit, and Sun visit Jin's grave with the baby, which Sun has named Ji Yeon, in accordance with wishes stated by Jin on the island at the start of the episode. Sun cries and tells Jin how much she misses him. I cried a little bit too. Lost logo.

Holy shit. Could that have been any more of a depressing ending? It's interesting that this was how they chose to kill a character - it's certainly in keeping with something William Mapother (aka Ethan) once said, about how he'd made far more appearances on the show after being killed than he ever had while alive. So is Jin one of the Six, and Mr. Paik had him killed for returning to Korea? Is he one of the eight mentioned in Jack's story at Kate's trial, supposedly surviving the crash but dying soon after? Neither? Damon and Carlton said that the Oceanic Six would be cleared up after this episode, but frankly I'm still not sure whether Jin or Aaron is supposed to be the last one. (I really don't think it's anyone else.)

I resented the storytelling a little bit, I have to say. Last year, with the initial flash-forward, there were at least ways to pick it up. The combination flash-forward/flashback seemed like kind of a cheap trick because even though there were, in retrospect, clues that Jin's half was a flashback, they were all negated by other evidence. Jin having large amounts of cash available - well, if he's one of the Oceanic Six, he would, wouldn't he? Jin having short hair again - big deal, maybe he got a haircut. And Sun kept calling for him, a similar trick to Jack mentioning his father in the present tense in last year's finale. Wouldn't it have been just as easy not to show Jin in the flashes at all, rather than having to pull the wool over our eyes like that? It's not that I don't like twists, but unlike last year's, which was amazing, this one just felt like a cheat.

Aside from that, though, it was a pretty strong episode. Like the best of past seasons, it was able to combine some good emotional character moments with other scenes in which information was actually doled out. With the rush being put on the final five episodes, I'm a little worried that some character bits are going to go by the wayside, so at least we got a couple good character episodes in (this one and "The Constant") before the flood of information starts in six weeks or so.

s4e06: The Other Woman

Coy start to this one, as it's briefly made to look like Juliet (wearing way too much makeup) has gotten off the island and is now meeting with a therapist. But oh, we tricked you! It's actually a therapist of the Other variety. We're on the island for the whole of the episode, as Charlotte and Daniel make their way to a power station where apparently there is a way to release a toxic gas that would kill everyone on the island - the therapist, Harper, appears to Juliet and tells her that Ben wants Juliet to go after Charlotte and Daniel and kill them if necessary. So that part of the episode is mostly split between walking/talking in the jungle and Juliet's flashbacks, where we see the trajectory of her previously-revealed relationship with Goodwin, who it turns out was married when he and Juliet met. To Harper. B'oh! Ben, who has a big crush on Juliet and is creepily possessive of her, sends Goodwin to his death at Ana Lucia's hands. (How could he have known that, some have asked? I say he just figured it was likely that eventually the Others were discovered. You could also make the case that he was just getting Goodwin away from Juliet, and then once Ethan was killed, not retracting Goodwin was Ben's way of leaving him for dead, when he had to figure Goodwin would also be discovered eventually.) Eventually we get to the Tempest station, where it transpires that Daniel and Charlotte are actually trying to turn the gas mechanisms off, presumably so that they can do their thing on the island without fearing that a loosed Ben could use it on them (we know he hasn't hesitated to gas his enemies in the past). Juliet and Jack kiss again, with Jack telling her that he's willing to take Ben on for her. Drew has said that one thing he didn't like about the flash-forwards from last season is seeing Jack at such a low, depressed point, and I guess I would agree in one sense - we know from the flash-forwards that Jack and Juliet don't end up together (at least not off the island), so the little courtship going on seems like kind of a waste. This episode wasn't "Eggtown" bad, but it did tread a lot of water in the main plot.

But then there was the "B" plot. In this case, B stands for Ben. Ben shows Locke a video with unsurprising master bad guy Charles Widmore, who Ben says has been looking for the island for some time. When Locke asks why, Ben compares the island to a piece of mold shaped like the Virgin Mary that drew 5,000 pilgrims to Gainesville, Florida - he asks Locke if that many people would go to see mold, how many people would come to see Locke, a man healed by the island's mystical properties? Locke has one more question - who is Ben's man on the boat? Ben tells Locke while we have to watch some commercials instead of finding out. Come on, show - we know it's Michael. Ben told Locke he had to sit down - it's not like it's going to be some character we've never met, and no one else got off the island. And we know Michael's coming back, and we know that next episode has a cliffhanger good enough that the episode split was made 7-6 rather than 8-5 even though the first eight episodes were produced. Are you really going to tell me it's not Michael? There's no way it's not. Everyone has suspected this since episode 2. Quit fucking around. Anyway, the episode ends with Sawyer and Hurley seeing Ben out walking around and expressing surprise and anger (at least on Sawyer's part). This combined with Locke's shutdown of Claire when she asked if she could talk to Miles and Ben's question of whether the revolution had started yet might not be so far off.

Next week: a Sun/Jin episode! We learn the last of the Oceanic Six - so, Sun and Jin, right? I mean, presumably Sun and someone. And a face we never expected to see again! Jesus. It's Michael. You are fooling nobody.

s4e05: The Constant

I'm not even sure how to recap this one, since it involves a lot of time-jumping of Desmond's consciousness between 1996 and 2004 - or really, it involves Desmond's consciousness being knocked back to 1996, and then that 1996 consciousness jumping back and forth between 1996 and 2004. God, I'm already confused.

The episode starts without a "Previously on Lost" bit, which I found curious. Frank is flying the helicopter directly towards a large storm cloud, following the bearing that Daniel insisted he stay on. They make it through the storm okay, but Desmond appears to get jolted and no longer knows who Sayid is or where he is. He bounces back to 1996, where he is in the Scottish army, and gets in trouble for the lapses he experiences when he comes back to 2004. The freighter people are upset that Desmond and Sayid have been brought to the ship; Desmond is taken to sick bay and told to wait for the doctor. There, he runs across Minkowski, who has been having the same problem - which, he reveals later, was caused by going too close to the island. Meanwhile, Sayid calls Jack to discuss the situation; despite Daniel's suggestion that Jack and Juliet's perception of how long the helicopter has been gone may not match the reality, it certainly seems that traveling through the cloud has also propelled the helicopter in time, as Sayid comments that they took off at dusk but they land on the freighter around midday.

Daniel gets Desmond on the phone and tells him to seek out Daniel at Oxford back in 1996, giving him some information so that '96 Daniel will be convinced. '96 Daniel is working with radiation, which is hinted to have given rise to his later memory problems. He shows Desmond how he can transport the consciousness of a rat forward one hour so that it can learn how to run a maze in the future, then come back and apply it in the present. However, a short time later the rat dies. '96 Daniel explains to Desmond that he needs a constant in his life in both 1996 and 2004; otherwise, he will keep jumping back and forth until his brain overloads and he dies. Not long after this, Minkowski does just that in 2004. Desmond realizes that Penny is his constant; not knowing how to reach her, he manages to find Total Bastard Mr. Widmore, who is all smug assholishness as usual. But, confident that Desmond can now do nothing to win back Penny, he gives Desmond her new address. Desmond goes there and convinces her that if she gives him her new phone number, he will not call it for eight years, until December 24, 2004. She does so, then asks him to leave.

In 2004, Sayid manages to get the radio up and working again, and Desmond calls Penelope, fortunately reaching her. This grounds him back in 2004, as they profess their love and Penny tells him she'll do everything she can to find him. Back on the island, Daniel looks at a note in his journal - presumably from his 1996 self to his 2004 self - saying that if anything happens, Desmond will be his constant.

All in all, a pretty crazy episode, even more so than "Flashes Before Your Eyes." It doesn't tell us a ton about the problem, though. It seems that the storm is some sort of island barrier, and that people exposed to high levels of radiation or electromagnetism - hence, Desmond, and presumably Daniel later - have "side effects" when passing through it. This doesn't do anything to suggest what the deal is with time, however; as I mentioned earlier, it seemed like we were getting the answer when Daniel started talking about perception being different than reality - except it didn't seem like perception was different from reality, or at least, while the trip only did take 20 minutes, it covered a day's span of time both for the people on the island and the people in the helicopter. It's just that the people in the helicopter didn't really have to sit through it. This then returns to the issue of the missile from a couple episodes ago, which should have made it to the island in about 30 seconds but instead took 31 minutes, or ~60 times as long. Thus, a flight that should have taken maybe 20 minutes took 1200 minutes - or 20 hours - instead? Ultimately, though, I'm not sure how much effect this is going to have on the ability of anyone to get off the island; indeed, given what we know about the future, it seems like the answer is "Not a whole heckuva lot." Given that Ben seems to come and go from the island all the time, it can't be that big a deal, can it? Still, if the writers introduced it, there has to be something to it, I think, so I'll withhold judgment for now. Reading back in this blog reveals that nearly all of my guesses have turned out to be wrong, so I'd hate to make an assumption like that.

With that in mind, I'm more convinced than ever that Michael is Ben's man on the boat; someone had to open the door for Sayid and Desmond, and Minkowski comments that they have a "friend" on the ship. Since it's unlikely to have been Frank, doesn't that leave someone who knows Sayid and Desmond? Michael could also have been the one to sabotage the radio, preventing contact with the mainland, although that's not really uniquely identifying. Still, we know he's coming back - can you think of a more plausible way?

Oh, and how about Ecklie as the doctor? I wonder if Marc Vann gets tired of being cast as snotty authority figures all the time.

s4e04: Eggtown

I'm not a big fan of Kate episodes. In fact, aside from "Exposé," this episode was probably the worst overall since s3e06, "I Do," which was - surprise! - a Kate episode. Frankly, the writing just wasn't very good - the "surprises" were all forced in by a clunky writing style that required the characters to talk unnaturally around names just so we could hold for the big reveal at the end of the episode which a lot of people, including me, had already guessed anyway.

Locke's group is living in the Barracks and Locke has actually assumed a sort of Ben-like role, which I assume isn't an accident. But he doesn't know what to do next, a fact that Ben - held captive in Locke's basement - taunts him over. Meanwhile, Kate wants to know what Miles knows about her. Locke won't let her see him, so she tricks Hurley into revealing the location. Miles agrees to tell her what he knows if she gives him a minute with Ben. Kate finds out that Ben is under Locke's watch, so she uses Sawyer to lead Locke down to the boathouse where Miles is kept; Miles is gone, moving with Kate back to Locke's, where they break in and find Ben. Miles asks Ben if he knows who Miles is and who he works for; Ben confirms this. Then Miles asks for 3.2 million dollars to lie to his boss and tell him Ben is already dead. He gives Ben a week to come up with the money. When Ben asks why Miles thinks Ben has access to that kind of money, Miles barks, "Do not treat me like I'm one of them!" and gestures to Kate. Miles then confirms for Kate that the freighter people know she's a fugitive. Locke returns and banishes Kate from the compound, then sticks a grenade in Miles' mouth so he can't talk. Sawyer offers to keep Kate under his protection, but she acts weird and ends up leaving for the beach.

At the beach, no one on the freighter is answering, so Jack and Juliet have Charlotte call the secret line only to be used in emergencies. Regina says that the helicopter - which left the previous day - has not arrived. Worried, puzzled looks are exchanged.

In the future, a rather annoying Kate is on trial for her various crimes. Jack is called as a character witness and tells the story of 815 as it was apparently agreed upon - he does say that the plane crashed on a deserted island, but that only 8 people survived the crash, with only 6 making it back to civilization. When asked by the DA if he loves Kate, he says, "Not anymore," though he later claims to her that that was a lie. (Dammit, Jack!) Kate's mom, still alive, is wheeled in to be the star witness, but even though Kate treats her pretty bad, she ends up refusing to testify. Kate gets off with time served and ten years' probation. At the end of the episode, she invites Jack back to her house to see her son, but he won't go - and it becomes pretty clear why, as Kate greets her son with a "Hi, Aaron."

(Astonishingly, there were a huge number of dipshits on the Lost message board insisting that Kate said "Eric," even though the fact that there was a big reveal at the end of the episode should have made it clear that the baby was Claire's even if Kate's pronunciation of the name was a little muddled. This also explains Jack's reluctance to see the baby - whether he knows by then that Aaron is his nephew or not, surely being reminded of whatever happened to Claire is something he wants to avoid.)

By far the most interesting parts of the episode were the fact that the copter hadn't reached the boat (or was claimed not to have), which will be addressed in next week's episode, and the Miles/Ben conversation. The fact that Kate has Aaron in the future is interesting, but Kate's behavior in both the present and future was so generally annoying that I just checked out on her parts of the episode, which was most of it. To say nothing of the fact that I would consider myself a Jack/Juliet shipper and the future seems to make clear that that isn't happening. Bah.

s4e03: The Economist

It wouldn't be a Lost episode if we didn't have one question answered - usually the one that most people had already guessed the answer to anyway - and five or six more pop up.

On the island, Sayid makes a deal with Frank that if he returns Charlotte safely, Frank will take him off the island on the helicopter. Sayid and Kate, armed, and Miles head off to find Locke. Meanwhile, there seems to be some dissent in Locke's camp, as Hurley isn't sure that keeping Charlotte as a hostage is such a good idea. Locke attempts to travel to Jacob's cabin, but when he finds the ring of powder, the cabin is nowhere to be seen. Hurley, perhaps remembering when he saw it move, looks nervous and suggests that maybe they just took a wrong turn. Locke continues to lead the group to the Others' barracks.

When Sayid and Kate find the barracks, Hurley is tied up in a closet, saying he was left behind by Locke. It turns out to be a ruse, however; Sawyer guards Kate (although she is armed and he appears not to be) and Miles is taken somewhere that we don't see. Kate asks Sawyer why he doesn't want to leave the island and he points out that there's nothing for him in the US, then asks why Kate wants to get off given that a prison term is likely all that awaits her. Sayid is captured by Locke shortly after discovering a hidden room in Ben's house full of clothing, international passports, and various currencies. It's pretty obvious now that not only can Ben get off the island, he likely does so all the time. Sayid and Ben are held in the game room; Ben won't disclose his man on the boat, and Sayid admits to Locke that he doesn't trust the "rescuers" any more than Locke does. He still wants to get to the boat, and trades Miles for Charlotte to fulfill his deal with Frank.

Meanwhile, Daniel has been doing an experiment in the clearing where the helicopter is. He has Regina (from the boat) send a rocket with a clock inside of it. When the rocket finally arrives, the clock is found to be roughly 31 minutes behind island time, which Daniel describes as "not good." He cautions Frank to fly out on the helicopter on the exact same bearing on which they flew in, no matter what. Sayid and Charlotte return, with Kate apparently electing to stay behind and Miles having been traded. Juliet comes back from the beach with Desmond, who demands to know if Daniel and Frank know Penelope Widmore, given that Naomi was carrying her picture. They claim not to, but both look uncomfortable before doing so. Desmond decides to go on the helicopter. Sayid goes as well, and when Charlotte, Daniel and Jack all decide not to go, Sayid suggests that Naomi's body be the third person they carry. The helicopter flies off over the ocean.

In flash-forward, we see Sayid on a deserted golf course in the Seychelles. A man pulls up to him and offers to bet that he can hit the ball closer to the pin with his choice of club. When Sayid discloses that he is one of the Oceanic Six, the man gets nervous and, though he wins the bet, attempts to leave without collecting. Sayid reveals that he knows the man's name (Mr. Avellino) and shoots him dead. Later, Sayid is in Berlin, where he fakes a casual meeting with a German woman, Elsa. Sayid falls for her although his job is to mark her so that he can use her to track her employer, who she claims is an economist. When her employer contacts her, Sayid tells her to stay away, but she shoots him in the shoulder and seems like she was actually spying on him the entire time; he manages to kill her, though he is upset about doing so. In the final scene, Sayid goes to what appears to be an animal hospital to meet his boss... who turns out to be Ben. Ben reminds Sayid that the last time he thought with his heart instead of his gun, something bad happened, and states that Sayid must continue working for him if he wants to protect his friends. Sayid says that now the people on Ben's list will know he is coming after them. Ben stares at him and says, "Good." Logo.

This shakes things up rather a lot, doesn't it? When we saw Jack and Kate meet, or Jack and Hurley, I think we all assumed that the people whose secrets they were keeping were the people on the boat. And maybe they still are? But at least one of the people who gets off the island is in direct contact with Ben, and what's more it becomes apparent that Ben has some travel secrets that we don't know about. There has been speculation among the fans that Locke didn't actually blow up the submarine, but I'm not sure I buy that - given Locke's mental state at the time, it doesn't make sense that he would have a desire to fake blowing it up. So Ben likely has still another way off the island. The time issue, of course, is also a big one, although 31 minutes isn't exactly the difference that many have been positing.

The WGA strike is over and we're getting five more episodes this year. Supposedly, it will run seven, then a six-week break, then six more. So we've got four more to go before the break. The three episodes missing from this season will go into future seasons. Damon Lindelof has said that the storytelling is going to get very compressed in the five new episodes so as to end Season 4 at the same point as it would have; this might not be that bad a thing, frankly. Five new jam-packed episodes? Works for me. Better than nothing, which is what we might have gotten had the strike lasted another month.

s4e02: Confirmed Dead

We get our first-ever four-way flashback - five-way, even - as we see what Daniel, Miles, Charlotte and Frank, the four people on the helicopter that Daniel dropped from at the end of the previous episode, were doing before they got to the island. The episode starts by revealing the plane in a trench off Bali, as Naomi mentioned at the end of last season. Daniel, watching footage on television, is upset, though he's not sure why. Miles, we find out, is a kind of exorcist or ghostbuster - oddly, he manages to be both legitimate and a bit of a con artist at the same time. Charlotte is an anthropologist who finds a polar bear with a Dharma collar in the Tunisian desert. Frank is a pilot who was, apparently, supposed to be piloting Flight 815 when it crashed, and recognizes that something is off about the wreckage. The four are gathered together to bring in Ben; the team is headed by Naomi, who describes it as "covert ops," and headed by Matthew Abaddon, the sinister guy claiming to be from Oceanic who talked to Hurley last episode. Why exactly they want Ben is not revealed (shock!), although it appears that most or all of them don't even know. Their professions are somewhat telling - anthropologist, physicist, psychic/exorcist; presumably, as Abaddon says, each is intended for a specific purpose in terms of what they might come into contact with on the island.

Speaking of on the island: so Jack and Kate meet Daniel, who is kind of fidgety. He admits that rescue is not concern #1, but they go after Miles' transponder signal before he can say what concern #1 actually is. Miles is the exact opposite - on edge and aggressive, pointing a gun in Jack's face right away. That's because he thinks they killed Naomi, though, due to her final message which was apparently a code. He makes Kate take him to Naomi's body so that he can confirm her story, which he does, doing his ghosty thing, I guess. Then Juliet and Sayid pop out of the jungle and disarm Daniel and Miles, putting the survivors back in control of the situation. They go to look for Charlotte, but Locke has put her transponder onto Vincent and turned him loose to throw the pursuers off (I successfully called this as soon as I saw how fast the transponder signal was moving); instead, they find Frank after he shoots off a signal flare. Frank reveals that he was able to put the helicopter down safely. Miles attempts to call the boat, but George is suspiciously unavailable. Juliet tends to Frank's head wound, but when she tells him her name, he knows - from having read the manifest many times - that she wasn't on the plane. Miles freaks out and demands to know where Ben is, admitting that the freighter is there to look for him.

In the other group, Sawyer has taken to pummeling Ben as a way of withstanding Ben's mind games. Locke says it's important to keep Ben alive, but after they find Charlotte, Ben attempts to kill her; luckily (?), she's wearing a bulletproof vest. Ben explains that he knows the people are here for him, rattling off Charlotte's bio to prove it. As we go to Lost logo, Ben states that he has an insider on the boat.

Clearly, other people are aware of the Dharma projects. But how is that possible? Is this Dharma, or a related offshoot of the Hanso Foundation, coming to exact its revenge on Ben and the natives? And how did a fully-preserved and buried polar bear skeleton wind up in the Tunisian desert? The hint we got last summer about time travel definitely seems to be creeping more into the plot.

What's up with the plane off Bali? Part of a cover-up? (Assumedly, yes.) Who's masterminding this cover-up? Based on the little we've gotten from him, I don't think it's Abaddon, so that probably leaves someone we haven't met yet - another possibility being Dharma/Hanso, trying to distract so no one finds the actual island. But Abaddon can't be both Hanso and not Hanso.

And who, pray tell, is the insider on the boat? I'll give you my guess: Michael. We know he's coming back this season, and given that his name has already reappeared in the opening credits, it's probably going to be soon. There's clearly been more contact between the island and the outside world than previously revealed - where else would that photograph of Ben have come from, since it's clearly pretty recent? So perhaps Ben made contact with Michael somehow (sometime during Season Three in island time), knowing that people out there were looking for him?

Rumor has it the writer's strike will be ending in the next few days. I wonder if there's any chance of more episodes getting produced for this season - could they possibly write and film the remaining eight in a three-month period? Wishful thinking, I suppose. But would they really go 8-24? Any chance of 12-20, even? We'll see.

s4e01: The Beginning of the End

We're in full-on flash-forward mode, as the show opens with Hurley in a drawn-out car chase; as he's dragged away by the cops, he screams if they know who he is. "I'm one of the Oceanic Six!" So right away we know that only six people got off the island, and we already know who three of them are (Jack, Kate, and now Hurley). Suspicious, to say the least. Anyway. Hurley ends up getting grilled by Ana Lucia's old partner; he claims not to have known her or even met her. (To be fair, the cop's description was a little vague had Hurley only met her in passing. "Dark hair, gorgeous?" Well, there isn't anyone else like that on the island!) Hurley was running because he saw something in a convenience store and fled from it, but he won't say what. The cop ends up offering to commit him, which Hurley gladly accepts. Then he receives a visit from a sinister dude who claims to be a representative of Oceanic; he offers to put Hurley up in a swankier mental hospital. Hurley sniffs out the dude as not really from Oceanic; the guy asks what happened to everyone else. Hurley freaks out and the guy takes off. Later, Hurley is sitting outside when a fellow patient tells him he's being stared at. The starer turns out to be - bum bum bum!!! - Charlie. Charlie tells Hurley he has to go back to the island, but Hurley doesn't want to listen. He closes his eyes and counts to five, and Charlie vanishes. In the final bit of flash-forward, Hurley gets a visit from Jack, clearly not yet the bearded freako of last season's finale. Jack is mostly there to make sure that Hurley isn't going to tell people about... well, it's a secret for now, clearly, but it's obviously the same sort of deal alluded to in the finale (when Jack tells Kate he's sick of lying). The fact that only six people made it back when we know there are dozens alive is, after all, suspect. Hurley says to Jack that he doesn't think they did the right thing. Jack tells Hurley they're never going back to the island; "Never say never, dude," Hurley calls after him.

Back on the island in "present" times, Naomi crawls into the jungle as she thinks Locke hit her with the knife on behalf of the whole group. Kate convinces her otherwise and Naomi conceals the true nature of her injury from the guy on the boat before dying of it, but she manages to fix the signal first and another guy (Jeremy Davies with an oddly island-looking beard) parachutes in at the end of the episode. Before that, the news is broken to everyone that Charlie died and that he revealed that Penny was not connected to the boat before doing so. While walking through the jungle, Hurley stumbles across Jacob's house, where it appears Locke may have been having a conversation; it looks like Hurley was able to see Jacob. When everyone finally meets up, Jack jumps Locke and tries to kill him, but Locke's gun isn't loaded. Sayid and Sawyer still have to pull Jack off Locke. Locke repeats Ben's talking points that the people on the boat are not there for anyone's benefit, but of course people aren't exactly queueing up behind him. Then Hurley gives an impassioned speech about trusting Charlie's final message, and he decides to go with Locke (although when talking to Jack in the flash-forward, Hurley apologizes for going with Locke); subsequently, so do a lot of people, including Claire and Sawyer. Jack also relinquishes Ben to Locke's charge. And then, again, Jack and Kate are hanging out at the fuselage piece in the jungle when Jeremy Davies parachutes in. Jack seems wary; I don't know if it's supposed to be that he's having second thoughts about the whole boat thing, or because Jeremy Davies is kind of creepy-looking (Upham, you bastard!) and has a weird beard going.

I was watching online (sadly, I have class Thursday nights now and my TV isn't working with TiVo at the moment, so I have to watch it Friday online and hope no one ruins anything in the interim) so I didn't get to see the "Next time on Lost," so let's start a new feature wherein I pose the most interesting questions this episode left us with:

1. Charlie admits to being dead and he seems to vanish awfully quick when Hurley closes his eyes, but if he's a hallucination, how did the other patient know that he was there?

2. What kind of deal (or something?) was struck, and why did only six people make it back? If only six were allowed back - we can assume that everyone else is not dead as Charlie states that they need Hurley's help - what happened to the rest of them?

3. Who the fuck is on that boat?

4. Why does Hurley apologize for going with Locke, especially when he seems at that point to fall into the camp of "shouldn't have left"?

There's plenty more, of course, but there always is. I'm really looking forward to this season, although I wish that goddamn writer's strike would just end already so we aren't held to eight episodes. I don't think there's been a bad Lost episode since that stupid Nikki and Paolo one, and if you don't count that since it barely had anything to do with anything, there hasn't been a bad one - bad is maybe kind of strong, but certainly "lesser" - since that "teaser" six-episode block at the start of last season. 16 episodes a year is going to suit this show just fine, methinks.