Wading in the Velvet Sea

I’m Like a Bird (A Bird That Went Through a Joy Division Phase in the Late-90’s)

So this week’s flashback involved Claire. On the island, she sees a flock of seagulls, and realizes that within a day or so, they will fly…they’ll fly so far awaaaaaaay. Because, unlike the Losties, they CAN get away. Claire turns into a more alive version of The Crocodile Hunter due to the fact that she boned up on the Discovery Channel while tending to her Mom, comatose in the hospital. (Did anyone else know Claire’s last name was Schiavo? I know. Total surprise to me as well. )

News of the coma travels far and wide…all the way to the USA, where, duh duh duh, we find out that Jack’s dad? Also Claire’s dad! Only, thing is, we knew that last year, during Ana Lucia’s flashback episode, “Two for the Road”. I know this fact was blindingly obvious, because even _I_ guessed this right, and I’ve guessed like four things in total correctly during the course of the show. And sure enough, once Claire’s aunt showed up in the hospital, I remembered her whining from “Two From the Road”. A special whine, that woman has. I mean, it was during an Ana-Lucia episode, for crying out loud, so I was barely paying attention to is lest I have to watch Michelle Rodriguez act, but I remember this poor man’s Lucy Lawless. Not the “Xena”-era Lucy, the “having a 3-way with Baltar on ‘Battlestar Galactica’”-era Lucy. But I digress. Boy, do I ever.

One more thing before I leave Claire, and no, it’s not about those bangs (though when a straight guy notices how bad a girl’s bangs are, I mean, that’s super bad), but about the double-closeup of Claire’s eye (one in the flashback, one current-day). One day we’re going to look back and realize that the producers and writers were giving us a signal all along. And that signal? “Eat at Joe’s.” OK, I have no idea. But the only thing I have going in my head now is that old adage about the eyes being the window to your soul. A soul that, according to They Might Be Giants, is possible to hold a birdcage within it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I have an inkling something on the island is sparking these specific memories for the Lostaways. What the Lostaways (and Juliet, I suppose) do with this motivation is entirely up to them. The Island merely sets the stage.

As Christian Shepard tells Claire, “There is hope, and there is guilt, and believe me, I know the difference.” The Island knows as well. It’s up to the Lostaways to find out for themselves.

One final note: back in Season 1, when the psychic Malkin tells Claire of the couple in L.A. who will adopt her baby, he tells her they are “good people”. Just something to think about as Charlie, the one raising Aaron as his adoptive son, keeps catching the eye of the elements. After all, The Dharma Initiative once thoroughly investigated meteorology at one time. Just worth noting. I'll have more in the podcast this Sunday.

Monty Pylon

Oh, come on, you knew that title was coming.

So, here’s what happened on the surface on things with the Fab Five, in a situation that honestly sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. “OK, so a white chick, a former cripple, an Iraqi soldier, a crazy French lady, and a one-eyed Kiev solder walk up to a magnetic force field….” Before getting there, Mikhail reveals some ACTUAL INFORMATION about not only the Others, but the LIST as well. Jacob’s list.

Good stuff all around. The submarine getting people to and from. The EMP knocking the sub beacon out, essentially cutting them off from the world. “You are not on the list because you are flawed,” was creeptastic. Confirmation that Jacob’s higher up on the food chain than Ben. All good, I say.

But then Locke threw Mikhail into the force field and everything clicked in my mind.

Locke made a deal with Mikhail. A deal that was all but confirmed in the “next week on ‘Lost’” bit. This deal was made while Sayid and Kate were in the basement of the Flame. And the deal was essentially this: Locke would help protect all the information in the Flame by destroying it, and kill Mikhail if necessary down the line, and in return, Locke would find out just why Ben wanted him so bad.

That was the deal.

Here are the clues. One, Locke got some balls all of a sudden. Gone’s Mr. Softie, Mr. Confused. Instead, this episode featured Season 1-esque Locke with an added hint of aggression we really haven’t seen before. He pushed Mikhail into the field, precisely because Mikhail wanted him to do it. Locke had C4 in his backpack because Mikhail gave it to him. (The implication is that Locke never in fact pressed "77", but in fact rigged the place to blow. Meaning The Others, not Dharma, possible rigged The Flame in the first place.)

Now, to add another ingredient into the soup: why did Rousseau stop Mikhail when he was about to tell Locke (and by proxy, us), exactly when he said, “The John Locke I know was pa…” The logic answer is that the last word was “paralyzed”. So either it’s lazy writing and Rousseau interrupted at the perfect moment for Locke, or she’s covering for him because Krazy Kiev Man was blabbering like Becky Slater on “The Wonder Years” and they have a history together. Perhaps because she was exiled from the Others, cast away from Eden, and is angling to get back in their good graces. Couple that with her obscure reasoning for not asking about Alex, and you have an entirely hidden agenda on her side yet to be fully teased out just yet.

Re: The Others

I will say this about The Others: those people read their daily memos.

In my company, a good chunk of literature gets shuttled out via email or packet a few times a month. Often times, these missives go unnoticed, unread, unloved. OtherCo Inc, however, has a strict enforcement policy regarding company-wide memos. For instance, I managed to get hold of the cover-sheet for the OtherFax dated September 23, 2004:

“OK, everyone, big packet today. Please read this week’s newsletter, and by ‘newsletter’, I mean ‘the most intimate details of every surviving member of Oceanic 815’. You know, the one that went down on the island yesterday because I made it so. That one. Hope this helps. LOL! xoxo, Jacob.”

So there you have it.

Honestly, what’s gradually been revealed is that just about every Other knows the skinny on just about every Lostaway. It’s not terrifically privileged information at ALL. The real question, then, is not only how the information was obtained, in and of itself an excellent question, but how it was distributed, and to what purpose. Moreover, Mikhail’s comment, if indeed my theory is correct, indicates that the Lostaways may not have been merely researched AFTER the crash, but BEFORE the crash as well. Mikhail indicates that he doesn’t recognize the John Locke in front of him. That either means 1) the background information provided does not prove an adequate psychological prep, or 2) one or more of the Lostaways were pre-screened before landing on the Island.

I like the pre-screening idea better, obviously, and it does fit in with the recruiting aspect of The Others that we’ve gleaned since the season kicked off again a few weeks ago. Both Juliet and Mikhail were recruits, part of Jacob’s Outward Reach. It’s like Outward Bound, only you kidnap kids and subject them to mindf#ckery. It also fits in with all the interaction with Ben and Locke last year, especially in light of Ben’s “I want you to want to help me” speech to Jack pre-surgery. It also dovetails nicely with Locke’s first flashback this year, in which I theorized that Eddie, the hitchhiker/undercover cop, was in fact an Other doing a psychological profile on Locke.

In short, like the book says, I’m awesome and stuff. Or, more likely, grasping at straws.

One more thing about recruitment: Mikhail said last week that he’d been on the island 11 years, and this week said he came by sub at age 24. Which makes him the worlds most haggard-looking 35-year old EVER. Good lord.

Captain Jack

Don’t want to theorize too much on this until we see more, but Jack playing football with Tom was one of the best cliffhangers this show’s done that didn’t involve someone shouting “WAAAAAAAAALT!” Leading theories are 1) Jack’s playing possum, 2) Jack’s been Room 23’d, or 3) Jack’s decided to sell out his soul, as well as the Lostaways, in exchange for central air. We’ll just have to wait and see.

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OK, there’s my instant reaction. Now it’s time for yours!