Metadish, Fresh from NYC

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First of all, let me apologize for getting this up a day late.  Right when my wife and I were going to sit down to watch yet another fine epsiode of Lost I noticed that water was backing up into our bathtub.  Knowing this could cause problems when I attempted to shower the next day, I ran out to get some draino/liquid plumber/hydrochloric acid.  I made the mistake of going to a convenience store that only had regular strength but I was in a hurry so I took my chances.  Here’s a hint from Heloise: regular strength drain uncloggers don’t do shit.  If you need to clear a drain, don’t fuck around and get the industrial strength stuff.  Its the cure for what ails you.

And if you’re interested in knowing, the tub cleared at some point during the night so I was able to shower after all.  If you’re not interested, then I guess you feel pretty stupid for not skipping ahead to where the review actually begins, now don’t you?  ‘Nuff said.

Everyone on this island has daddy issues:  daddy killed mommy and then himself, daddy beat up mommy,  daddy was an alcoholic, daddy left when i was a kid, i never knew my daddy, daddy is the head of a powerful international Korean mafia, daddy is a fisherman (okay, that one’s not so bad in comparison - get over it Jin), but does anyone on this island have quite as fucked up a relationship with his/her daddy as Locke?  Let’s do a recap of this relationship:

1. Locke’s dad had nothing to do with him for most of his life leaving Locke to be raised in foster homes throughout his childhood.
2. When Locke’s dad finally showed up in Locke’s life, he convinced Locke to give him his kidney and then cut him off all over again.
3. Locke’s obsession with his father destroyed his relationship with his fiance, Helen.
4. Locke’s father pushed him out of a window in an attempt to murder him.

And his mother ain’t no prize either.  Perhaps Locke should consider himself lucky to have been raised in foster care.  Better that than to be raised by the cast of The Grifters.

So this week we find out what Locke has been up to since finding out that his dad is on the island and being held by the Others.  The flashbacks only cover the few days since then.  In the present Locke is leading Sawyer to supposedly execute Ben.  Meanwhile Naomi has been secretly brought back to camp but, unlike almost everything else that’s occurred since the series began, nobody seems able to keep this secret.  It was a pretty dense episode so the summaries are long, but better olong than incomplete I always say.  Let’s recap, shall we?

Storyline A/Flashback Summary (since the two really can’t be separated):  We start with Locke sitting by a fire reading through a red file as someone struggles nearby.  Locke advises the person to “save your breath.  No one is going to hear you.”

FLASHBACK!  8 DAYS AGO.  We zoom back to when Locke first encountered his dad (who we will refer to as Cooper) on the island.  Ben tells Locke they didn’t bring him here, Locke did (presumably through the wondrous powers of the “magic box”).  Locke, ignoring Ben’s warning, pulls the gag from his Cooper’s mouth, which of course leads to Cooper biting Locke’s hand.  Cooper, in a crazed state, then says, “Don’t you know where we are?” before Tom shuts the door. 

Ben tells Locke they are leaving to go to a new place that is actually very old (like Joan Rivers’s face) and invites Locke to join them.  Locke accepts (it would be a really crappy episode if he had turned them down).

FLASHFORWARD!  Meanwhile, back at the beach, Kate and Sawyer have just gotten done knocking boots so naturally Kate heads back to her tent and Sawyer goes to take a leak.  On his way, Sawyer sees Hurley and Jin standing outside a tent (Desmond’s?) which brings about this sterling exchange:

Sawyer: What you doing?
Hurley: What are you doing?
Sawyer: Taking a leak.
Hurley: …so are we.
Sawyer: Well alrighty then.

Sawyer goes into the jungle to relieve himself when Locke comes upon him.  Locke tells Sawyer he has captured Ben and he needs Sawyer to kill him.  Sawyer refuses saying that he isn’t a murderer.  Locke tells him he knows about the man Sawyer killed in Sydney.  Sawyer says they got their facts wrong, but once Locke leaves Sawyer follows.

FLASHBACK!  3 DAYS AGO!  The Others have set up a camp.  Locke is putting up a tent with Cindy, the Tailie flight attendent and everyone is smiling at him.  Cindy tells him they are excited because they’ve been waiting for him.  Locke goes to see Ben (still in his wheelchair) who is listening to the cassette recorder that Juliette left for him.  Ben tells Locke they are gathering information on the women and will be taking them, but not to worry as they have done it before and no one will be hurt. 

Ben asks Locke to hand him his cane, which he does and Ben stands up saying its because of Locke that he has begun to feel his legs again.  Locke wants to know about the island but Ben tells him he’s not ready.  Ben tells Locke that he has to release himself from the hold his father has on him.  Once Locke kills his father it will signify his commitment to the Others and Ben will tell him everything he wants to know (how very Return of the Jedi).

FLASHFORWARD!  A barefoot Sawyer is following Locke through the jungle (dumbass left without his shoes).  Locke tells Sawyer about the file the Others have on him and that the Others know about Sawyer’s past.  Sawyer hits Locke and straddles him while putting a knife to Locke’s throat.  Sawyer demands to know where they’re going and why Locke didn’t just kill Ben himself.  Locke tells him he can’t.  Sawyer let’s Locke up but tells him he isn’t killing anyone and when they get Ben they will take him back to the beach camp.  Locke agrees but says Sawyer will change his mind when he hears what Ben has to say.

Later Sawyer tells Locke he didn’t mean to kill the man in Sydney.  Locke asks who he did intend to kill but Sawyer doesn’t answer.

FLASHBACK!  3 DAYS AGO.  Its night at the Others’ camp and Ben leads John to his father who is tied to what appears to be a very old  stone column.

Ben gives Locke a knife.  Locke is hesitant.  Cooper taunts Locke mercilessly calling him spineless.  Locke is unable to kill Cooper so Ben knocks Cooper out with his cane.  Ben then turns and apologizes to the Others saying Locke is not who they thought he was.  Locke walks shamefully through the Others as they stare at him.

NOTE ON THE COLUMN: The column Cooper is tied to appears to be ancient and is possibly the ruins of an ancient temple or some other structure - probably built by the same people who built the four-toed statue we got a glimpse of at the end of season 2. 

FLASHFORWARD: Locke leads Sawyer to the Black Rock.  Inside Locke has Ben tied up and masked in a room at the back of the ship.  After Sawyer enters the room, Locke closes the door and braces it.  Sawyer begins pounding on the door and yelling as Ben makes noises behind him.  A frustrated Sawyer tells him to shut up and rips off the hood revealing that the person tied up is actually Cooper.

Later Rousseau enters the ship and tells Locke she is there for the dynamite.  She takes it and leaves.  Huh?  Anyhoo…

FLASHBACK!  Locke is sitting on the hillside overlooking the Others camp.  He removes the bandage on his hand to reveal that his father’s bite has already healed.  Richard, the guy who recruited Juliet in Miami, sits next to him.  Richard tells him that Ben knew Locke couldn’t kill his father and wanted to embarrass him in front of the Others.  Apparently when the Others learned that someone on the plane who was paralyzed was able to walk again after landing on the island, they figured he must be “very special” and Ben doesn’t want anyone to think Locke is special.  Richard says Ben is wasting their time with fertility problems and they need Locke to show them that the Others are there for much more than that.   They need Locke to find his purpose and that means he must kill his father.  And if Locke isn’t able to, then he needs to find someone who can do it for him.  Richard then hands Locke the file we saw in the beginning of the episode.

FLASHFORWARD! Sawyer is still in the room with Cooper.  Cooper tells Sawyer he was driving in Tallahassee when someone rearended his car and he hit the divider at 100 mph.  He was put in an ambulance, someone put an IV in his arm and when he woke up he was  here looking at his dead son - the same one he threw out a window.  Sawyer asks if the fall is what suppoedly killed his son and Cooper tells him Locke died in the plane crash at the bottom of the ocean.  Cooper thinks they are all dead and that they have ended up in Hell.

Cooper reveals that he conned Locke out of his kidney.  The word “con” awakens Sawyer’s curiosity.  Sawyer asks him his name and Cooper rattles off a bunch of aliases including “Tom Sawyer.” 

Sawyer responds, “My name’s Sawyer too,” and you know no good can come about of this.

FLAHSBACK!  YESTERDAY.  The Others are packing up and Ben tells John they are leaving him and his father behind.  Ben tells John they will leave a trail that he can track but if he isn’t carrying his father’s dead body, not to bother following them.

FLASHFORWARD!  Sawyer asks Cooper is he’s ever been to Jasper, Alabama and Cooper says he has (who could forget visiting beautiful Jasper, Alabama?).  Sawyer tells Cooper he killed his daddy.  Sawyer then pulls out the letter he’s been carrying for most of his life and hands it to Cooper and demands that he read it.  Cooper starts reading the letter but trails off with a “blah blah blah.”  He tells Sawyer he ran the same con dozens of times and that if his mother - Sawyer cuts him off and tells him his mother’s name is Mary.  Cooper tells Sawyer he remembers her and that she practically begged him to take the money and save her from her sorry life, but he only took the money and if Sawyer’s father murdered her and killed himself then he’s probably “down here somewhere” and he should take it up with him.

Sawyer demands that Cooper finish the letter but Cooper tears it up instead.  In a rage Sawyer wraps a chain around Cooper’s neck and kills him.  Locke then opens the door and says “thank you.”

Later Sawyer is outside the Black Rock throwing up.  Locke tells him to go back to the camp.  Sawyer wants to know why he made him kill Cooper and Locke tells him that Cooper ruined both of their lives and he had it coming.  He tells Sawyer that Juliet is a mole and three days from now the Others will raid the Castaways camp.  Locke needs Sawyer to warn them because he’s not going back - that he’s on his own personal journey now.  Sawyer says no one will believe him since hes been saying Juliet wasn’t to be trusted from the beginning and Locke hands him Ben’s tape recorder to prove he’s telling the truth.

Before Sawyer leaves he asks if its true that Locke was a cripple, to which Locke responds, “not anymore.”  We then see Locke take his father’s body, which is wrapped up in a blanket, and head off after the Others.

Storyline B Summary: The day after Sawyer leaves with Locke, we see Charlie collecting food from the ourdoor pantry.  Jack pops up and tells them the next time they go out camping to include him.

Charlie takes the food to Jin who takes it into a tent.  Charlie tells Desmond, Hurley and Jin that they have to tell Jack.  Desmond doesn’t trust Jack and its revealed that neither do Hurley or Charlie.  He says they need to bring in someone else.

Later we see Sayid digging in the jungle (what is he digging?  no idea.)  when Hurley approaches him.  He asks if Sayid can keep a secret. 

Hurley brings Sayid to the tent.  Naomi tells them that Flight 815 was found deep in an ocean trench off the coast of Bali.  Using robotic subs, footage was captured that showed all the bodies still on the plane.  She tells them her group was hired by Penelope Whitmore to find Desmond.  They were given coordinates in the middle of the ocean and had no idea there was an island there.  She took off from a search and rescue ship and on her way back the clouds parted and she saw the island.  Her instruments went crazy and she bailed out. 

Sayid is suspicious and Naomi asks him if he thinks she’s lying.  He asks her if she has any way of communicating with her people.  Naomi pulls out the satellite phone, hands it to Sayid and says “remind me not to rescue you.”

Later Sayid tries to fix the phone but says he has never seen one so sophisticated.  He manages to get it to turn on and reveals that it has a touch pad screen instead of buttons (similar to the iPhone that was recently revealed by Apple). 

NOTE ON THE PHONE: The phone is admittedly a very advanced looking piece of equipment.  Some people are speculating that this proves that time on the island moves slower than time off the island since its unclear whether technology like this was available in 2004.  My answer is, this type of technology was more than likely available in 2004.  We’re not talking about the 80’s for crying out loud, this is only two years ago!  Of course most people wouldn’t have had anything like this back then, but then again most people don’t have access to the same kind of funds that Penelope has access to.  So of course Sayid would think it was extremely sophisticated since chances are he never worked with any piece of equipment during his time in the Republican Guard that cost as much as that phone.  Plus, he left the guard in the 90’s.  Until they reveal that this phone is powered by Dilithium crystals or shoots frickin’ laser beams, let’s just assume the technology was available back then.

Back to the summary: Kate walks up while Sayid is messing with the phone and wants to know where he got is.  Sayid says he will tell her but she has to keep it quiet.

Kate, who apparently is only able to keep a secret when it involves killing her father, goes to Jack, who is eating with Juliet, and asks if she can speak to him.  Jack tells her she can say anything in front of Juliet that she needs to say to him.  Kate agrees since Juliet is the reason no one has told him about Naomi, which she proceeds to do cause that’s what good secret keepers do.  She tells Jack and Juliet that Naomi’s ship is only 80 miles out and if they can contact her crew they can all be rescued.  Jack asks why no one told him and Kate tells him that no one trusts him.  Jack asks how Naomi can contact her crew and Kate is disturbed that Jack isn’t concerned that no one trusts him.  She tells Jack about the satellite phone.

This is followed by an ominous bit of dialogue where Juliet says they should “tell her”, apparently referring to Kate.  But Jack disagrees and walks away.  This leads me to:

It seems pretty obvious to me that Juliet told Jack about Ben’s plan at the beginning and they have been working on their own plan since then, but I don’t have any real proof to back this up.  I’m sure it’ll be revealed next week whether or not I’m right.

FINAL ANALYSIS: A very dense episode full of all kinds of info, although very little of that info has to do with some of the big central mysteries.  We know now that the magic box was just a metaphor (which I had assumed) and that whoever is running things on the island arranged to have Cooper kidnapped and brought there.  We found out for certain that Cooper was the man who conned Sawyer’s parents (which I had assumed).  That probably would have come as more of a surprise to me (as it did my wife) if I hadn’t read numerous threads speculating on that exact idea. 

It appears that Locke is very important to the Others, although whether or not Ben actually wants to prove Locke isn’t special is up in the air.  Its possible the whole thing was set up to put Locke in a position where he would have no choice but to kill Cooper.  It kind of reminded me that Morpheus line from the Matirx: “There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.”  But it is entirely possible that Ben feels threatened by Locke.  Its been hinted strongly that there are different factions within the Others and not everyone is necessarily happy with Ben’s leadership, but as of yet we haven’t seen definitive proof of this.

Its looking more and more like the ancient culture that built the column and the four toed statue is going to feature prominently next season.  This is only the second bit we’ve seen of this civilization (that I know of anyway) but I have a feeling before the end of the season we may see a lot more.

Does anyone really believe the wreckage of flight 815 that was found in the trench in Bali is real?  No?  Okay, then let’s not even bother pretending that its real.

JACK THEORY: This is a real long shot, and I avoid spoilers at all costs so don’t for a moment think I have any proof to back this up, BUT… is it possible the producers may kill off Jack before the end of the year?  Once again, no proof.  This is just a far out theory.  The main reason I believe this is a possibility is that the two part season finale is a Jack episode.  Doesn’t that seem a little odd?  My guess is we’ll find out in those episodes exactly what Jack was doing and what he learned in his time with the Others. 

It’s hard for me to imagine Lost without Jack.  It would be like what happened to Good Times after John Amos was fired, sure the show can go on, but it’ll lose something.  A lot of people like to knock on Matthew Fox and his character but trust me, if the show lost him, it would lose a lot of its heart.  Chances are the producers know this as well and have no intention of killing him off.

CINDY THEORY: Am I the only one who feels that Cindy may know a lot more about what’s going on than we’ve been led to believe?  Everything about her storyline so far is odd.  The way she disappeared as the Tailies were going across the island.  How she seems to have totally integrated herself with the Others.  I still refuse to believe that its just a coincidence that the plane happened to crash on the island with these particular people on board.  I don’t care whether Desmond didn’t press the button or not, the explanation can’t be that simple.  Its possible that Cindy was brainwashed or just found herself happy to be with the Others after the hell she had been through with the tailies, but something just doesn’t seem right about her.

QUESTION: What is Rousseau planning on doing with that dynamite?  She knows Alex is alive and she knows where Otherville is.  Is it possible she is planning on attacking the Others?  I think she’s going to play a major part in one of the upcoming episodes, but God knows what that part will be.

QUESTION: Why was Sayid digging out in the jungle?  May be nothing, may be something.  The writers might have thought it would be better to show him doing something rather than just hanging around pining for Shannon. 

Is Charlie dead yet?  We still have two more weeks till the Charlie episode.  One thing’s for certain, someone is going to die before the end of the year and he is a strong contender.

Who was MIA?  Claire, Sun, Mikhail, smokey cloud of death.

Sawyerism of the Week: (To Locke when he first appears) “Hey, Tarzan … now that you’re back from your blow-up-everything-that-can-get-us-off-the-island tour…”

What’s up next week?  MOTHERFUCKING BEN.  I’m looking somewhat forward to it.

Who’s on deck:
3.21 Charlie Pace
3.22-23 Jack Shephard

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—Charlie