LOST
Season 4 Episode 9
“The Shape of Things To Come”
Written by Brian K. Vaughan & Drew Goddard
Directed by Jack Bender
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

“I know who you are... what you are. I know that everything you have you took from me.”
-- Charles Widmore to Ben

Okay, this was a pretty moving installment, the first post-strike episode following the 6-week break, so let’s kick off from the Island, shall we?

The doctor from the freighter washes ashore, dead, so a plan is cooked up to fix the NaomiPhone just enough so that they can communicate through Morse code; Daniel plays electronics dude, in the absence of Sayid.
But when Daniel does send the query out regarding the doctor, he says the reply is that the helicopter will be by in the morning.
Turns out though that Bernard knows Morse, and says the reply was actually, What are you talking about? The doctor’s fine. (Hmmmm.)
So this blatant lie pisses Jack off, and he asks Daniel straight out, Were you ever supposed to take us off this Island?
And Daniel says, No. (And I’m going, F*cker! You knew about the “find Ben then kill everyone else” plan? I gave you the benefit of the doubt, Danny-boy! F*cker!)
At that point, it just killed me to see Jack as the realization sinks in that using the NaomiPhone was a monumental mistake, just as Locke had warned…
Poor Jack…

Meanwhile, the people who shot both Rousseau and Karl take Alex to the fence and have her disarm it. (So they really are Widmore’s people, and it wasn’t some evil Ben scheme to get rid of the other two people in Alex’s life… Again, sorry, dude.)
But disarming the fence triggers an alarm, which makes a phone in Ben’s house ring, the call interrupting the game of Risk currently underway (where “Australia’s the key to the whole game”; hrrrmmm). When Locke asks Ben about the recorded message (Code 14-J?), Ben says they need to hunker down at his place.
But Claire is over at her house, so Sawyer goes over there. (Locke is about go with Sawyer, when Ben says, You stay by me, because then you’ll be safe. They won’t harm me, and I need you safe because we have to get to Jacob’s cabin together. Locke later on says, But I can’t even find the cabin. Ben replies, But Hugo can.)
As Sawyer makes his way to Claire’s place, three 815 sock puppets are shot. Some bastard then blasts Claire’s house, and I’m going, Bastard! Claire can’t die! Not like that!
Sawyer searches the flaming wreckage, and finds Claire, alive. (Whew. That future Desmond flash—Claire and Aaron getting on a helicopter—has to happen…)
Sawyer carries her to Ben’s house, and Hurley has to break a window for Sawyer and Claire to get inside. (Ben’s already barricaded the door and refuses to open it.)

Within, a debate immediately explodes between Sawyer and Locke, about just tossing Ben over to the invaders, a discussion that’s interrupted by the doorbell.
It’s Miles at the door, with a walkie for Ben. They want to talk, Miles says. They have your daughter.
Ben then talks with one of the goons that we saw on the freighter, Martin Keamy (Kevin Durand, who played half-man, half-dog Joshua on Dark Angel, and Ashton Kutcher’s cellmate Carlos in The Butterfly Effect; he’ll also be seen as Gabriel in Scott Charles Stewart’s upcoming angel smackdown Legion, as well as the Blob in the Wolverine spin-off film), who takes Alex out and threatens to shoot her if Ben doesn’t surrender. Ben makes a counter-proposal, but Keamy says, You’ve got 10 seconds, or I shoot your daughter.
Ben says, She’s not my daughter. I stole her from an insane woman when she was a baby. She’s a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me.
BANG.
Alex dies, and seriously, for the first time, I felt sorry for Ben. There’s a look of complete devastation as he stares out the window at his dead adoptive daughter, and he says, He changed the rules. (And I go, What? Is this really just a massive chess game to Ben and Widmore?)

Once Ben gets himself together, he enters some secret chamber (locking everyone else out), and when he emerges, he says, When I give the signal, we’re all going to run to the treeline. (Oh, by the way, Claire’s apparently fine.)
Hurley says, What? Towards the guys with guns?
Ben says, Oh, no. We want to stay as far away from them as possible.
Just then, the house starts to shake, like there’s an earthquake, and when they look out the windows, we see Smokey, making its locomotive noises, as it starts attacking the invaders!
Everyone then runs for the treeline, except for Ben, who says he has to say goodbye to his daughter. (And his moment at dead Alex’s side is such a sad, sad moment. I hate Vaughan and Goddard for making me feel for the monster that is Ben…)

When Ben catches up with Locke and company, Locke says he’s sorry that Alex died. He also calls Ben out on the lie (that he didn’t know what Smokey was).
Ben says, You can ask Jacob what it is when we get to the cabin. (Sigh.)
Sawyer says, Screw that. I’m going to the beach and I’m taking Claire and Hurley with me. Locke pulls out a gun and says, Hugo stays with us.
Sawyer says, No way, and pulls out his gun.
Hurley says, Put down your guns. It’s okay. I’ll go with Locke.
Sawyer doesn’t like that one bit, and warns Locke, You harm so much as one hair on his curly head, I’ll kill you. (Another fantastic moment in this episode, as Sawyer clearly displays his protectiveness over Hurley; earlier on, of course, it was with Claire.)
So Sawyer, Claire, Aaron, and Miles head off to the beach, while Locke, Ben, and Hurley are off to find Jacob’s cabin.

Onward ho, flashforward (though we don’t know that right off.)
Ben finds himself in the Sahara Desert, his arm wounded, in a fleece-lined Dharma jacket (that doesn’t look at all like it was made for desert wear). He then goes into deadly bad-a$$ mode as he kills two armed Bedouins and takes a horse to presumably get to civilization.
We next see him at a hotel, where he checks in under the preferred guest name, “Dean Moriarty.”
He then makes it a point to inquire about the date, and that’s when we find out it’s October 24, 2005, and we’re in a flashforward. (Note that Ben makes it a point to confirm the year, as if, well, he wanted to make sure he was in 2005, and why do you think he’d want to do that? Hrrrm…)
He also sees on the TV, a newsbit about Sayid attending the funeral of his wife! (And the reason why Sayid ended up working for Ben begins to crystallize…)

As it turns out, Sayid found Nadia, only to have her die on him, and according to Ben, the man who killed Nadia was working for Charles Widmore. (He also claims that he used Des’ boat to get off the Island, but that smells fishy…)
Later on, it looks like Ben is tailing the purported Widmore assassin, and it looks like the assassin has just caught Ben, but of course, it’s all a set-up, and Sayid shoots his a$$ dead, till the gun is empty.
Ben then walks away, but Sayid stops him. Ben says, It’s over, Sayid. Walk away and mourn your loss. This isn’t your war.
Sayid says, I spent 8 years looking for the woman I loved and I found her, and these people took her away from me. This is my war too…
(And I’m going, Dammit! Sayid asked for it. Then I think, Oh, no, don’t let this be some despicable manipulation on Ben’s part. Not when I actually felt sorry for him for the first time, ever.)
Ben says, Don’t let your despair turn into anger because it’ll never leave you then. I speak from experience.
(And I’m thinking, Oh please, please mean what you’re saying…)
But Sayid wants to join the war, and asks, Who’s next?
Ben then says, I’ll be in touch, and walks away, and I’m going, Don’t smile. Don’t smile. Don’t—F*cker!
The smug, evil bastard smiled. He played Sayid (and me) like a second-hand fiddle. (And I hate Vaughan and Goddard even more for pulling off these astonishing reversals.)

We then close with a coda in London, as Ben makes his way to Widmore’s digs.
It’s a great face-to-face between these adversaries during which we are made to understand that Widmore believes the Island is his, and that Ben merely usurped it from him.
Widmore asks, Are you here to kill me, Benjamin?
And Ben says, We both know I can’t do that.
Ben then says, But you killed my daughter.
Widmore says, Don’t pretend to be the victim here. You killed your daughter. (And I can only assume he meant, You killed her by not just surrendering when you could have.)
Widmore then asks, So if you’re not here to kill me, what are you here for?
Ben says, I’m here to tell you I’m going to kill your daughter (a very audible gasp from yours truly). “Penny,” is it? I’m going to kill her and then you’ll understand what I feel like and regret changing the rules.
And Ben walks away.

F*cker.

Okay, explosive episode which pretty much turns on the astonishing reversals Vaughan and Goddard pull off, by toying with the audience’s emotions toward Ben.
And of course, now that it’s made clear that Ben is targeting Penny, it’s even more evil, the position the writers have put us in.
On the one hand, we can completely see Ben’s side of it, in that he truly did care for Alex, and since Widmore took his daughter away, it would only be fair that he deprive Widmore of his daughter.
But that daughter is Penny, dammit!
Penny!!!

Then there’s an ill-attired Ben popping up in the Sahara, asking what year it is.
So is there actual physical time-traveling going on in the Lost-verse, or did Ben teleport from someplace else, and just wanted to ensure he hadn’t also inadvertently moved through time?
And poor Sayid, whose happy ending with Nadia was so cruelly taken away off-screen, and who was manipulated so coldly into becoming Ben’s Crying Freeman…

And there better not be any long-term damage from that house explosion Claire found herself in…
I mean, is it just me, or was her survival a little… miraculous? That house was decimated…

COUNTDOWN: 39.

(Images courtesy of ABC, variety.com, and ew.com [images 3 & 4].)

LOST
Season 4 Episode 6
“The Other Woman”
Written by Drew Goddard & Christina M. Kim
Directed by Eric Laneuville
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Flashback time, and we see Juliet a week into her Island stay, when she meets her therapist, Harper Stanhope (Rescue Me‘s Andrea Roth) for the first time.
In short order, we understand that Ben has what appears to be a not insubstantial crush on Juliet (as Harper makes mention later on, because Juliet looks “so much like her,” which I can only assume means Annie; so that sexual vibe I picked up on before between Juliet and Ben actually turns out to be one-way unrequited lust, sort of), and after Juliet first meets Goodwin—a very loaded meeting, considering that we already know they end up being lovers—that Juliet doesn’t think very highly of Harper, and that Harper is Goodwin’s wife. (Apparently, Goodwin doesn’t think highly of Harper either, as he says later on that he’s been sleeping on the couch for a year now…)
And thus do we have a double meaning to this episode’s title…

At one of their sessions, Harper confronts Juliet about her affair with Goodwin, and then warns Juliet that if the affair continues, there will be consequences. Harper goes on to say that she doesn’t want to see Goodwin get hurt.
Juliet says, I would never hurt him.
Harper says, I’m not worried about you; I’m worried about Ben.
And thus, Ben’s reasons for sending Goodwin off to infiltrate the Tailies also becomes awfully clear.
True enough, we see a repeat of that fateful day (where we slyly edit around having to hire William Mapother on for another guest shot by showing reactions shots of the Bizarre Love Quadrangle), soon followed by Ben getting Juliet to his place under the pretense of a dinner party, when it’s actually a candlelit date. (Ewwww.)
During the dinner, Juliet says that maybe Goodwin can come back, now that the children (Zach and Emma?) who were on the list were abducted from the Tailies.
Ben claims though that Goodwin is continuing his deep cover mission since he thinks Ana-Lucia might be turned to join them. (And there’s something gleefully evil about how transparent Ben is in trying to get Juliet jealous.)

Later on, Ben brings Juliet out to the spot where Ana-Lucia left the impaled body of Goodwin, and Juliet breaks down of course, then asks, Why did you bring me here?
Ben counters with, Why you and not his wife?
Juliet says, You knew this would happen. That’s why you sent him out there.
Ben says, Don’t you understand? You’re mine. (Double ewwww.)

Now, onward ho, to the present!
At the Barracks, we once again get a clear view of Valis, as if the writers are really trying to tell us something. (Dang, why do I not have my own copy?)
We get some verbal sparring between Locke and Ben, the result of which is a deal being struck: Ben says let me sleep in a bed, eat with utensils, walk around free, and I’ll tell you what you’d like to know.
Namely: Ben shows Locke a surreptitiously shot video of ol’ Charlie Widmore beating a blindfolded someone up. According to Ben, Widmore has been searching for the Island for a very long time, in order to exploit its mysteries. The man he’s beating up: one of Ben’s people.
Again, according to Ben, that freighter off shore belongs to Da Widmore, and he gives Locke a file on Charlie W.
Locke then asks, So who’s your spy on board?
Ben says, All right, but you might want to sit down for this.
When next we see Ben, he’s looking smug and walking free around the Barracks with fresh linen, much to the shock of Sawyer and Hugo.

Meanwhile, back at the beach, Daniel and Charlotte sneak off, and Jack, Juliet, Jin and Sun search the jungle.
While Juliet is looking around, she suddenly hears that pesky whispering, and who should pop up but Harper, who tells Juliet that she was sent here by Ben to tell Juliet that Daniel and Charlotte are off to the Tempest, where they will purportedly release some deadly gas which will kill everyone on the Island. (Apparently, this is what Ben did once before, when he slaughtered the Dharma people.)
Juliet asks, How does Ben know all this when he’s a prisoner?
Harper says, Ben’s exactly where he wants to be.
She then says Ben sent her here to tell Juliet to go and intercept the strangers and use her gun to kill them both. Jack arrives, holds Harper at gunpoint, but the whispering starts up again, distracting both Jack and Juliet, and when they look back, Harper’s gone…

Meanwhiler, Kate runs into Daniel and Charlotte, and when she starts asking too many questions, is knocked unconscious by Charlotte (the b!tch). When Jack and Juliet find her, Juliet is obviously affected by the very evident emotion Jack has for Kate, so she sneaks off to the Tempest (a power station for the Island, as she quickly explained to Jack) herself.
Kate of course, is one of the Island’s best trackers, so despite her aching, bleeding noggin, she tracks Juliet and Daniel and Charlotte.

At the Tempest (which isn’t so much a power station as it is a poison gas factory), Juliet finds Daniel in full protective gear, trying to override the computer, with a recording (you know, you’ve heard the one) warning of imminent contamination.
Juliet holds Daniel at gunpoint (there’s no sign of the b!tch), but Daniel keeps on tapping at the keyboard. Juliet rips off his gas mask, and he says he’s trying to render the gases inert.
Charlotte sneaks up behind Juliet, and an all-out brawl ensues, where Juliet takes some nasty hits from Ms. C.S. Lewis. B!tch. On the plus side, Juliet does manage to rip off the b!tch’s gas mask too.
The automated countdown gets all the way down to 1, we all know this drill, before it stops, Daniel apparently saving the day. Yahoo! Go, Faraday!

Jack and Kate arrive and the b!tch explains that they were here to prevent Ben from possibly using the gas against them. Kate is unconvinced (and rightly pissed off), so she goes inside the Tempest with the b!tch to check the veracity of her claims.
Outside, Juliet tells Jack, Ben sent me here to kill them both.
Juliet then goes on to say, These people are here to wage a war on Ben, and he’s going to win.
She then goes on to say, And when Ben wins, you don’t want to be anywhere near me, Jack.
And why is that? Jack asks.
Because Ben believes I’m his, and he knows how I feel about you, Juliet says.
Jack says, He knows where he can find me, then proceeds to liplock with Juliet. (I kept on half-expecting to see Kate catch them, but she never showed up. Of course, they were kissing right in front of the open Tempest doors, so all anyone had to do was look out, and voila. But I guess Kate was too busy being pissed off at the b!tch. I so wanna see Kate smack Charlotte around some…)

So this episode basically answers the question, What exactly is the deal between Juliet and Ben, that “history” between the both of them that was alluded to by Mr. Friendly before, and re-begs the questions, What happened to Annie?
The episode also puts forward Charles Widmore as the (or at least, a) baddie. But of course, this is all The World According to Ben, and we all know he speaketh with fork-ed tongue, so, all we really see is good ol’ Charlie wailing on some poor, blindfolded schmuck.
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see…

And that whole Harper appearing (and disappearing) in the jungle to a chorus of whispers, sort’a smells like one of those Island apparitions. Is this Smokey in the form of Harper? Or Jacob?

Oh, and on the con side, the whole countdown to gassy Armageddon (all the way to 1, mind you) was a tad tired.

And speaking of countdowns…

COUNTDOWN: 42.

(Image courtesy of ABC and fanpop.com.)

LOST
Season 3 Episodes 22 & 23
(WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Through the Looking Glass” 1 & 2

Gentlemen, I asked you to dazzle me after enduring “Stranger in a Strange Land.”
Well, I’m officially blinded.
That has to go down as not just the best Lost season finale thus far, but also one of the most kick-a$$ season finales in all of TV history. When they said that this finale would change everything, that wasn’t just hyperbole.
I could go on about the twisty-turns of the episode itself (and it had that in spades), but the ultimate twisty-turn is that brilliant climax, of Jack, by the airport, as Kate drives away, because “he” might be wondering where she’s gone to.
Once again, Lost deftly toys with the show’s story structure, as what we assume to be the flashbacks (of a depressed and suicidal Jack hooked on prescription meds), turn out to be the present, and all the Island stuff is actually the flashbacks.
I said there were spoilers, didn’t I?

So it seems as if the Flight 815 crash survivors were indeed saved and rescued from the Island (at the cost of Charlie, who drowned in the Looking Glass station, just as Des saw in his flashes*).
Just before the off-screen rescue though, three crucial points:
1) Ben says that Naomi is “one of the bad guys,” and that she’s part of a group that’s been looking for the Island for a really long time, and that they would kill Jack and the survivors, not rescue them.
2) When Charlie gets the transmission from Penny at the Looking Glass, she does not know who Naomi is, and has no idea about any boat.
3) Locke actually kills Naomi and threatens to shoot Jack, since contacting Naomi’s people is the wrong thing to do.

And then of course, in the “flashbacks,” Jack is clearly a lost soul, and in his clandestine meeting with Kate, he says they should never have left the Island, and that they need to go back.

This is such a crackerjack finale, “brilliant” seems like an understatement. That ultimate twisty-turn opens the door to a whole host of possibilities, and raises all sorts of questions. (My head is doing a Linda Blair even as I type this.)
Whose viewing did Jack attend? A viewing apparently no one else from 815 went to. Locke’s? Michael’s? (Yes, I still hate the a$$hole’s guts.) Ben’s?
What happened to all the rest of the 815ers? Is Jack the only one who feels something is wrong, or are some of the others “lost” as well? (Heh. “Others.” “Lost.”)
Rousseau said she would stay on the Island since that was where she belonged. Is she still there? Is Alex? Is Locke? (If he wasn’t the one in that casket.)
As Jack suffers, where is Juliet? They did do the kissy-face back on the Island, so where is she in Jack’s time of need?
And did Kate really end up with Sawyer?
So many questions…

And of course, the other reality here is, Lindelof, Cuse, and company have again (for the time being) managed to evade addressing long-standing Island questions, among them one from all the way back to the Pilot (What is the Monster Alternately Known As Smokey?), to ones of more recent mint (Who is Jacob?), to the Mother of all Lost questions (What is the Island?**).

Having said that though, I cannot deny the guts it took to make that leap. I also cannot deny the skill with which that leap was made.
That was explosive television, gentlemen. The storytelling on this show continues to be some of the best on the cathode ray horizon, and as Carrie Fisher said over On The Lot, “My hat, wherever it is, is off to you.”

And thanks for not having Sun die horribly in labor on the Island. (Of course, for all I know, she and her baby have been abducted by Dharma or some other mysterious organization to undergo insidious tests. Her baby, after all, is the first child to have been conceived on the Island in what I guess is a very long time, assuming of course that the baby is alive and well.)
Speaking of babies, when exactly will Jack find out that Claire is his half-sister and that Aaron is his half-nephew? I mean, wasn’t that bit of info in the files the Others had on the 815ers? Didn’t Juliet read that? Surely Ben did.

Let’s just toss that on the massive pile of Lost questions, shall we?
I’ll admit it: I love this show, but it’s the biggest tease on television.
Onward ho! Season 4!

* Incredibly moving, but couldn’t Charlie have squeezed through that porthole, once the room was filled with water? And did he really need to shut the door in the first place?

** I’ve got a theory which grew over the course of season 3, and burst into my consciousness as I watched the 2-hour finale. But somehow I’d still feel like a raving lunatic if I voiced it here.
Tell you what. When Lost finally does that reveal, I’ll admit whether I was right or wrong.

COUNTDOWN: 48.
COUNTDOWN TO RESUME IN 2008.
THE DHARMA INITIATIVE NEEDS YOU.

(Season 3 promotional image courtesy of atnzone.com.)

LOST
Season 3
Episode 20
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“The Man
Behind the
Curtain”

Okay, that’s a cliffhanger. Locke, shot, in a pit filled with the corpses of the Dharma contingent Ben had a hand in exterminating.
The man is a stone cold lunatic.

While back at the camp, it becomes clear that Juliet has told Jack about Ben’s nefarious plans to abduct Sun (and any other pregnant survivors) and that Jack has been (presumably) hatching his own scheme (I apologize for not fully trusting Jack; probably lingering resentment for his having been the primary reason I had to endure “Stranger in a Strange Land,” arguably this season’s lowest point) to deal with the problem.
So everyone’s apparently on the same page now. I already apologized for calling Juliet a “two-faced lying slag,” but somehow, I still can’t bring myself to entirely trust her. Like I said, if she busts her a$$ to help Sun, then maybe.

Of course, the major focus of the episode is Ben and what he’s lied about and what he hasn’t.
“Born on this island,” my a$$. Liar.
I mean, this is the man responsible for the “hostile” takeover of the Barracks. Sure, he had a pretty miserable life, with a father who blamed Ben for the death of his mother (and perhaps herein lies the fuel for Ben’s crusade to get women to come to full term on the Island; so that other kids won’t have to endure the hell he went through), but he ends up not just killing his old man (thus giving us the back story of the VW van Hurley and company had a joy ride in in “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead,” and justifying that episode’s existence) but paving the way for the slaughter of all the other Dharma people.

And what is up with “Jacob”?
That was a masterly sequence, stretching out the question of whether Ben was completely bugf*ck crazy, talking to an apparently empty chair, then all hell breaking loose when Locke unwisely shines that flashlight (Ben did warn him that Jacob felt the same way about technology as Locke did. Refresh my memory though, ‘cause Locke never struck me as a Luddite).
Of course, it really all could have been some elaborate parlour trick, but that just seems too far-fetched (says he, as opposed to the idea of a man seen by one man but not seen by another, who hears him when the other doesn’t; that’s not far-fetched at all, is it?).

And here, I thought we’d see about the whole Alex thing, but of course, we don’t. We also don’t see what happened to Annie, though I imagine Ben got her pregnant and she died. (More personal fuel for his crusade to make the Island a conception-safe zone.)
But really, weren’t those dolls Annie gave him just creepy?
And why does Richard look like he’s younger than Ben, when he’s not?

Crackerjack episode, gentlemen.
I continue to be dazzled, as does my iguana.

(Image courtesy of sparklies.org.)

LOST
Season 3
Episode 19
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“The Brig”

Given the pet theory I’ve been nursing for quite awhile now (that Locke’s scumbag dad is the conman responsible for Sawyer’s childhood tragedy), I quickly smelled Locke’s lie. Still, it led to one of the most intense sequences this season, as Sawyer is trapped in the Black Rock with the man who destroyed his life and single-handedly made James the man he is today. (A sequence that also led directly into one of the most morbid endings I’ve ever seen on network television.)
Ultimately though, Locke used Sawyer. Sure, dear old Daddy deserved it, and yes, the old fart is responsible for Sawyer’s pain as well, but Locke used James. How honest is that in Locke’s journey to discover the Island’s mysteries?
At any rate, Sawyer now has the evidence of Juliet’s hidden agenda, so, uh-oh, Julie baby…

Speaking of mysteries though, so Juliet and Jack are sharing a secret, a secret Juliet says they should share with Kate, but Jack resists that idea. What is up with that? Has she told Jack about her secret tapes to Ben? (He was nosing around Sun last episode…)
I still think it was a mistake to tell Jack about Naomi (Parachute Girl has a name now) and the high-tech satellite phone thingie, but hey, let’s see where that goes.

Meanwhile, another of the many theories regarding the nature of the Island is tossed out there and apparently shot down. Here, it’s “the Island is Hell”; in episode 2.18 (“Dave”), it was “the Island is someone’s wild imagining.”
Of course, based on Daddy’s story of how he got to the Island, it seems that Ben’s “magic box” isn’t only a metaphor, it’s an outright lie. The man is such a mindf*cker.
So to the outside world, Oceanic 815 crashed into the ocean and all the passengers died. Is that a massive cover-up, or what? So if Dharma is keeping the gears moving so efficiently out there, how can they not know what’s going on on the Island?

Meanwhile again, Rousseau is scrounging around the Black Rock for dynamite? Whatever for? Honestly, I’m still dubious about the whole Alex is my daughter/Alex is Ben’s daughter/Ben conveniently stepped in one of Rousseau’s traps deal, that I’m leery about her motives. But, as with telling Jack about Naomi, let’s see where this one goes too.

Heading into this season’s home stretch, people.
And yes, gentlemen, you are dazzling us. (See Lost Episode 9 review. Archive: March 2007.)

(Image courtesy of aol.com.)

LOST Season 3 Episode 11 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Enter 77”

So the rescue party for Jack pretty much takes center stage (with breaks for some Sayid flashbacks and a ping pong game; yup, that’s right. A ping pong game) as the Dharma Initiative communications outpost is found, being manned by that eye patch dude we saw through the monitor at the Pearl.
And what we learn from him seems to indicate that “the hostiles” have been on the island for longer than even the Initiative, and at some point, the Initiative decided to have a “purge” and attacked the hostiles. And it looks like the hostiles won.
But it also seems as if some of the Initiative were absorbed into the body of the hostiles (like Juliet, who we know from her flashbacks was recruited by Dharma).
Of course, it really looks like the hostiles have bragging rights to the island, and the 815ers, like the Initiative before them, are the intruders.
But if we’re more or less aware of what the Initiative was up to, the question now is, what’s the deal with the hostiles? Why are they still hanging about the island?
Maybe we’ll learn a little more as Sayid and company are headed to the “Barracks,” the community we saw a glimpse of in the first few minutes of Season 3. Hopefully, that’s what we’ll see next week, if we aren’t sidetracked by another ping pong game…

Parting shot: Man, when Locke gets a bug up his a$$, he doesn’t quit, does he? I mean, you’ve got a prisoner tied up and apparently unconscious, and you’re gonna play a computer chess game?! Priorities, dude!

LOST Season 3 Episode 7 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Not In Portland”

The long wait is over and we’re back on the island (or, at least, the other island of the Others), and Ben’s still on the table and Kate and Sawyer are running for their lives.
We also see Juliet’s pre-island life in Miami, where her efforts at getting her ill sister pregnant apparently bring her to the attention of the Dharma Initiative (or what’s left of it, at any rate).
Still, we’re not shown her first arrival on the island, so we still have no firm idea of the exact state of the program some three years ago (when she claims to have arrived).
Ben, meanwhile, tough little bugger that he is, awakens while his back is gaping open and he’s bleeding to death. His words to Juliet are unheard by us, though she claims that Ben made her a deal: help Kate and Sawyer get back to their island, so Jack can finish getting the tumour out of him, and he lets her go, back to her life in the real world.
Still, I don’t really trust Juliet. She can seem really sweet (and she looks a lot like a blonde Carrie Anne-Moss; yowzah!), but I don’t trust her. At this point, anything she says and does is suspect in my eyes. Plus, Tom did say she and Ben have a “history.” (And she was making a deal with Jack to let Ben die on the operating table, fer efs sake!)
And, speaking of history, it seems that Alex is Ben’s daughter. So now we just have to determine whether that’s biological, or if he ended up adopting her after she was taken from Danielle. (I’m trying to think back to season 1, to Rousseau’s recollections, and I don’t remember her mentioning any other name except Alex’s. I was also under the distinct impression that all her other team members died. When I have time I’ll go back and check those episodes out…)
So Jack’s asking Kate to tell him the same story he told her way back in the pilot episode pays off in a big way as not only does it coincide with a little accident on the operating table, but it’s also a neat little goodbye from the Doc to Kate, with the added “Don’t come back here to get me.”
So for the time being, Jack’s with the Others. So what do the rest of the survivors do without a doctor?

Parting shot: So Ethan’s been with the Initiative for some time now…

Parting shot 2: Nice. Brainwashing through techno. See? Your parents were right when they said raves were bad for you…

(Originally posted 021407)