I feel very jumbled about all of this though. Remember last week, when I was feeling so certain and psyched that I had figured some things out? Well, I don't feel that way now. There were a whole lot of "WTF?" moments while watching this one, and not a lot of "I get it!" to counterbalance. We'll see.... here are my thoughts as of now, but I know I've got a lot of blog-reading to do before I have more of an idea of what we just saw.
Island Mysteries:
We got it confirmed pretty easily by annoying Aldo and his strong/silent sidekick Justin that the Temple people and the Others are one and the same. Aldo's bearing some strong resentment towards Kate for clocking him when she escaped her cell 3 years ago over on the Hydra. He also confirmed that they are trying to protect them from Smokey back at the Temple. He refused to answer poor Jin's questions, though... with the great line, just as I was thinking "finally, they're starting to ask questions!" Aldo replied "What is this, a press conference???"
There was a whole lot of Jack-Dogen-Lennon talk, which I'll get to more below, but for the most part the only other thing we learned was Dogen's leadership philosophy. Ehhhh.
Kate:
It's hard for me to comment much on the LA storyline, since we're just not sure yet if these are flashes to an alternate reality, to the future version of 2004, to some past version (check out this blog for a cool very different theory, Brian's Scenario 3, about what the LA timeline means), etc. What we did get from Kate's LA story: Kate and Claire are still drawn together, Kate is still an important figure in the birth and survival of baby Aaron. Not sure why.
On the Island, I was having a flashback of my own thinking that we were stuck seeing Season 4 Kate all over again -- that she was back to running back and forth across the Island between Jack and Sawyer with no purpose other than to be the short side of their Isosceles Love Triangle. Phooey on that. But, it looks like Kate has grown up maybe a little bit. Even though she was fully confident in her ability to talk Sawyer into coming back with her, then seemed to shift into thinking she'd just go on the run with him, once Kate finally talked with Sawyer I think she realized that she really doesn't have a place with him anymore. I hope that's the end of that, but I'm sure we'll see another few rounds of Kate ping pong before we're done.
Sawyer:
Speaking of my favorite guy.... wow, he's in a whole world of pain. His line about Sayid's rebirth - "Of course he's fine. He's an Iraqi torturer who shoots kids. Of course he deserves another go-round." - may be the one of the darkest things he's ever said.
After his rage at Jack last week, and his brushing off of Kate's apologies, we see that he really holds himself to blame for Juliet's death, going back to that moment in 1974 when he talked her out of going on the sub and leaving the Island, which was all she really wanted. Sawyer's in a dark place, regretting that decision and the fact that he never got the chance to propose. "I think some of us are meant to be alone." My guess is he's going to try to be just that, but the Island's forces and factions won't let that happen.
Sayid:
To the interested viewer, it appears that Sayid is still Sayid. The spring has healed him, but what else has it done? Dogen's torture test was brutal - at first, I thought he was trying to make sure he was flesh-and-bone, and not another manifestation of Smokey. If that wasn't it, then I don't know what in the heck the electric shock and the branding could show them as a "diagnosis." Methinks there's some nasty stuff in store for Sayid (but good work for Naveen Andrews after a few down seasons), which leads us to...
The Infection:
It's back! I'm hoping other bloggers out there have better memories about the Infection, cuz I've got some brushing up to do. Rousseau was convinced her French team were infected after they, too, went into the Temple. Is it something in the water of that spring? Is it a physical condition, or mental, or spiritual? Were those injections the Others had in the very early seasons an antidote to the infection? Is the only way to get it at that Temple, or can someone be infected elsewhere? Jack's trying to figure all this out, to learn what darkness could be consuming Sayid, until it gets to his heart. And that's when he learns that Dogen saw the same thing happen..... to Jack's sister! da-dum-dahhhhhh! (Yeah, it was a WTF twist, but also a really clunky melodramatic line!)
Claire:So..... Claire. First off, in LA, I was glad to see she was still pregnant. Some folks on blogs had thought she was not preggers, and that was another major difference from the original 815. Nope, she still had the bun in the oven, and was still planning to give the baby up for adoption. The psychic's original pleas must've been heard by someone, though, cuz the adoptive parents backed out, and Claire ends up ready to deliver baby Aaron, with Kate's support.
But... here was the big WTF.... her doctor in LA was Dr Ethan Goodspeed??? Oh, my, goodness. First of all, Ethan is still super-creepy, even if he's supposedly good like we saw him here. (I'm just guessing.) But this brings up all kinds of questions about the LA timeline. If the nuke did go off and sink the Island in 1977, was Ethan on that sub that Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate left? So are there other Island inhabitants, like Ethan's mom Amy Goodspeed, around somewhere? Or -- does Ethan's presence mean somehow the Island is still intact, and he's just not-so-coincidentally in LA to deliver Aaron??? The mind boggles.
Back to the Island: Last time we saw Claire definitely alive, it was in the shootout at Dharmaville in Season 4, when the Freighter folks were coming for Ben. She was in a few scenes after that, acting very strange. I'd assumed she was dead and was another Island manifestation and/or Smokey. But what if she was alive and was instead infected?
Cuz in that last scene in the end, I was sure expecting to see a resurrected Rousseau saving Jin, rather than a very rough, ragged, crazy-looking Claire. What's her story??? Is she infected? Is she still a good guy, or a bad guy, or totally possessed by something else?
I do not have any good answers about these major questions - and I still don't have good feelings about those creepy Temple people. Hopefully next week will give us more answers, and more forward motion as these 2 sides approach what has to be a final battle for the fate of the Island, and maybe much, much more.
What did you think?
Image source.
8 comments:
Oops, forgot to mention.... Zombies! Loved it when Hurley asked Sayid if he was a zombie now. Props to Sayid for answering with a straight face.
OK, need to process more I think, but I really am not a Kate fan in the slightest anymore. I guess we needed someone to go after Sawyer, but her ping ponging is old.
Regarding the temple people and Jack...need to process that more!
I think the LA storyline is definitely an alternate timeline (no past or future). I think one telling sign is the sound effect when they switch scenes. Remember it was always the "woooosh" in the past, but now it sounds more like some mechanical malfunction. I read in Entertainment Weekly that that was a clue that they were not in the past or future (although technically they are in 2004 and the rest of the Losties are in 2007). The article was in last week's issue, talked about LA X.
I freaked out when I saw Ethan too! But I actually forgot we saw him born on the island. I thought maybe he was making up the Goodspeed name, so I thought something sinister was up. But, now I remember the whole thing and that really was his name. He is still creepy though. Kinda like those Saturday Night Live skits where Kenan Thompson and Bill Heder play sportscasters, and Kenan has to keep telling people that "Greg is not an alien", although he obviously is.
Ethan just might be an alien... he is, after all, played by Tom Cruise's cousin.
The thing that bugs me is that Ethan was born on the Island in 1977. There's no way that dude is 2 years younger than me!!!
More required reading, as Alan Sepinwall has a great post up, as usual:
http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2010/02/lost-what-kate-does-fugitive-pigeon.html
Claire was SO very Rousseau-ian that it made me think of their similarities - she is kind of abandoned, may be infected (maybe not), and she loses her child. Wonder what's up with that... and if they're leading us closer to the answer of why all the problems with mamas having babies on the island - I think it's something more sinister than simply 'the incident'.
maybe there is a previous event gets changed. then LAX may actually happen.
hmmmm. are the "infected " people, the army, so to speak, of MIB?
also, i like claire when she isn't crying/ screaming, which was most of the time before this episode.
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