Lost: season two (episode-by-episode)
I always promised myself I would catch up with Lost before the final season started, as I explain here.
Here’s Season One. And here’s….
episode one | episode two | episode three | episode four | episode five | episode six | episode seven | episode eight | episode nine | episode ten | episode eleven | episode twelve | episode thirteen | episode fourteen | episode fifteen | episode sixteen | episode seventeen | episode eighteen | episode nineteen | episode twenty | episode twenty-one | episode twenty-two | episodes twenty-three and twenty four
Right. Onward to season three…
Woke up this morning already plagued by a billion Lost questions, and couldn’t go back to sleep. At which time had Claire scratched up the Frog of Doom? During a time when Ethan had her? Or another point? And why had The Others/Ethan abducted Claire when it was Walt the Special Boy that they had wanted all along. SO MANY OTHER QUESTIONS.
Also I couldn’t decide what kind of image should go at the top of this post. Not having seen the season yet, so not knowing the themes or what might be involved. I might draw something more fitting later on. But couldn’t decide between the one we stuck up there and one of these…
SEASON TWO, EPISODE ONE: MAN OF SCIENCE, MAN OF FAITH
What happens in this episode
A man wakes up in a retro looking flat. He makes breakfast, showers, puts a wash on, has a turn on his exercise bike, makes a smoothie, and gives himself a shot in the arm.
Suddenly, an explosion! Oooh! There’s a man living in Locke’s hole! AND: he’s got a washing machine! Hurley will be ever so pleased, he’s only got about two t-shirts and it’s hell finding things in your size unless the Island’s got an outlet mall with specialist Big N’Cuddly shops included.
Jack and Locke peer into the hole. Locke wants to go in, Jack – who thought the purpose was finding somewhere everyone could get into quickly and hide from the Others to avoid being monstered. But that, he realised, wasn’t going to happen (why? why was the plan any different once the hole was open than it was when it was shut?)
But Jack makes them all go back to camp. Because that is sensible and responsible. Or something.
Locke and Kate later come back. Locke lowers Kate into his hole, and, though there are a couple of hiccups, it all goes fine.
Fine in the sense of ‘bright lights appear from nowhere, she suddenly gets pulled into the hole by an unseen force, and Locke follows soon after’.
That kind of fine.
This is an issue. I know there are no guides to what kind of holes you should and shouldn’t go around attempting to get into, but maybe there should be.
Jack eventually turns up, and after a tense chase through the tunnel system at the bottom of Locke’s hole. Eventually, he stumbles upon a room with lots of old computers, and someone holding a gun to Locke’s head.
When the person with the gun appears, it is not Kate (she is probably off in the kitchen washing up) it is a man that Jack recognises, and who recognises Jack.
“You!…” They both say, in quiet disbelief.
Except the other man, who says it a bit more like “Ye!…” because he is Scottish.
In other news:
Hurley tells Jack about the cursed numbers, starting with the guy in the psych ward and going all the way through the story. When he finishes, it turns out that all Jack heard was ‘psych ward’. Which is very, very stupid on his behalf. Also, he wouldn’t make a very good GP.
Shannon stumbles around in the woods looking for Waltsdog, who she has lost. She finds Waltsdog, finds herself in a clearing, finds that she can hear those whispering voices, and then finds Walt. Or rather sees him, standing in the clearing, dripping wet, whispering. Whisper whisper whisper. Frankly, it’s creepy. Creepy like ‘petting a skinned cat creepy’ or ’suddenly realising your sandwich is looking at you and softly repeating your name in a sing song voice’ creepy.
Back at the camp, people are restless. When Jack comes to tell them that they cannot climb into the hole to hide from The Others (before climbing into it himself), no one mentions the fact The Frog of Doom stole Claire’s baby, or that that Sayid and Charlie went to the site of the black smoke and got it back again. This seems somewhat remiss.
flashback section
The flashbacks were all about Jack, who is looking more and more like a walking talking mate for Barbie this season, was this time being Spinal Surgeon Jack (“Now with magic wet-me-I’m-bloody Scrubs!”). He met the woman he would later go on to marry with the worst vows in history. The main thing revealed was this: before the woman he promised to fix (and then married) Jack was a technically brilliant, but rather cold, surgeon. It was this patient that taught him humanity, and the art of really listening to people. You know. Like Hurley.
Also, he met Desmond the guy at the bottom of Locke’s hole back then – and he gave him some advice and told him he’d see him in another life. (And then he did)
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) A dripping wet, whispering version of Walt is quite a lot less cute than the other kind. And quite a lot more creepy.
2) Lift it up advises Desmond (“IT” can apply to ankles, breasts, expectations, blinds, beer and many other things)
3) Jack is getting less heroic to me by the hour. I wonder if this will be a problem.
4) There was something else but I’ve forgotten it already.
5) I remembered it!
4) It says “QUARANTINE” on the inside of the hatch door they blew off. Everyone saw it. And yet they still went in. What kind of unutterable numpty do you have to be to do that?
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWO: ADRIFT
Firstly, a the “Previously on Lost” section lasted about two and a half minutes. This is good, as if it continues expanding at that kind of rate, by the time we get to series five it should be up to twenty-five minutes long per episode, cutting down on my potential watching time over the next five days. Ace! I was getting really behind thanks to the technical arse-monkeys in the system.
Oh god, the cat’s destroying the inside of my wardrobe.
What happens in this episode
We see Sawyer pulling Michael out of the water and breathing life back into him. So that’s the second hook-up we’ve had so far, if that counts. I say it counts.
Jin is nowhere to be seen; Walt, of course, taken away by the Nasties on the boat/otherwise engaged being ephemeral and creepy in the jungle.
Revived, they start to bicker. Until a shark turns up, at which point they come together as a team. A Bickering Team. They could, in fact, enter the Bickering Olympics, in fact – and they’d almost certainly get side-podium at least. They’re really, REALLY good at it. I think it’s covering up the whole kiss-of-life thing at the beginning of the episode.
The one little bit of the raft they have left splits into two smaller rafts, and they each take one, Sawyer also taking the chance to extract the bullet from his shoulder with his bare fingers.
They end up, through things and stuff and shennanigans, back on the same raft and then, once they’re shot the shark with a gun (yeah, ok) back on one of the main floaters that broke off the raft. By sunrise they’re back at the island. Climbing back onto the the beach, Jin suddenly emerges from the trees, hands tied behind him shouting “UDDER! UDDER!”.
And slowly, doomfully, a group of people appear from behind a small hillock-like rock, and stand atop it, framed against the light so that all you can see is the shadow of the bump of the rock, and the looming sillhouettes standing proud, individually atop it againt the morning sky. YES! Like a ginormous upside down udder!
Oh no wait, I think he might have said “Others”
Back in the hole:
We are, quite literally back. Back in the hole and back in time, watching Locke climb into it, Kate being injured at the bottom of it, and Desmond capture them both.
Locke tries to bluff him. Once by claiming to be ‘HIM’, and then failing when asked the most inane password question ever: “What did one snowman say to the other snowman”.
Then, after a brief conversation in which Locke tries to reason with Desmond and fails and Kate tries to escape from the cupboard they’ve shoved her into and apparently succeeds, they hear Jack arriving. Desmond’s reaction to this is to make Locke type a sequence of numbers – the same old sequence of numbers, yes – into a very old computer, and hit execute. The number on top of the computer flaps forward by one flap. Nothing else happens. And then the same exchange between Jack and Desmond that we saw in episode one. The one ending in ‘You/Ye!…’
flashbacks
Michael, and Michael being forced to give up custody of Michael entirely. Though Michael didn’t seem to be a bad father, or objectionable, or in any visible way offensive, Walt’s mother was fiercely determined to get him as far away as possible from her child, and keep it that way. Is she just some kind of posterchild for the Fathers 4 Justice campaign, or does she know something we don’t?
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) There is a type of chocolate in the Desmond-house storeroom called the APOLLO. It is either a POTENTIAL MAJOR LOST CLUE, or just a chocolate bar I don’t happen to have come across before.
2) The list of nationalities likely to pronounce ‘Others’ as ‘Udders’ has just expanded by one.
3) Something in Desmond’s house is very magnetic… Maybe it is Desmond.
4) Michael now comes a close second to Sayid in my “I would” list of the Island. He’d come a closer second if he whined just a little less.
5) That that question is going to bug me for a long time to come. What DID one snowman say to the other snowman? Is it actually a joke, with a punchline, like “Chill out, man!”? Or is it something more rational and realistic and snowmanlike like: “I really like your hat, Grahamsnowman”? Or are you supposed to give a reasoned scientific answer like “Neither snowman spoke, for they were made up of water particles reduced to a temperature less than zero degrees celcius”? GAH! This is KILLING ME ALREADY!
SEASON TWO, EPISODE THREE: ORIENTATION
What happens in this episode
Michael, Sawyer and Jin, after being found on the beach by the Others gang, “The Udders”, are dragged into the jungle, and put in a hole-prison.
After a while, Ana Lucia is dropped into the hole with them. She’s the one that had a drink with Jack in Sydney airport. She was sitting, she said, in the back part of the plane – the bit that flew off in midair. And no, she has no idea how she got here. Thanks, AL.
Sadly, after Sawyer has shown her the gun and explained the plan of escape, the kicker comes. In that she kicks him. And takes his gun. And gets hauled out by one of the others, in fact, possibly the Leader of The Udders. So, does this mean that the WHOLE Udder Gang are from the back end of the plane, then?
Down the hole. not that hole I was talking about. The other hole. The hole under the hatch.
At Desmond’s house, it turns out that Kate has not escaped after all, she has snucked into the gun room, which she must be able to sniff out, and comes to save Locke and Jack. In the process, however, she blows a hole in the computer that Desmond made Locke input the numbers
“We’re all gonna die. We’re all gonna die” says Desmond, as the introduction to the title screen.
Oh. This isn’t going to be “Lost! The Happy Season!” is it?
No. No it isn’t.
Desmond is distraught about his computer, and the fixing of such. Hearing that Sayid can possibly fix it, he dispatches Kate to find him. Why is he so upset? Glad you should ask. Apparently he has to input those six numbers, or ‘The Hurley Sequence’ every 108 minutes, or the world will end.
Jack does not believe this (but then, Jack does not believe anything). So Desmond directs them to a video.
The video? The video is…. the video … is a WORLD OF BRAINHURT THAT I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE.
[No, wait, I can try: It's like the front part of my brain is being used in a game of boomboomstick-kerplunk by a family of squirrels with claws made of adamantine, who live in the back part of my brain, which they have to keep scurrying back and forth to because small earthquakes on the logic/wtf faultline near my left ear keep sending jars of 'WHATNOW?!?' into the 'Keeping Up' repository at the top of my spine]
Ok: here is what the video said. I think:
1) There was a thing called The Dharma Initiative
2) They started some kind of brainbank… brilliant people working on something brilliant, and something something, mumble mumble the substation – electromagnetic – one part of that, but something went wrong, and something something, something something…
3) Profit!
Oh no, wait, that’s something else.
3) Otherwise the world might end! END! MAYBE!
flashbacks
John Locke. Locke goes back in time and meets his nasty father again. The nasty father who, we remember looking at him again, is clearly a little younger than the unconvincingly beyoungened Locke. Apparently Locke keeps turning up at his house day and night, and he doesn’t like it.
“Why? You needed a father figure and I needed a kidney. You’re not the first person to ever get conned. Go away. You’re not wanted.” Gosh, what a nice man. Does display the fact that Locke was walking after the kidney, though. I’d presumed it to be a surgical complication.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) The numbers are a code that has to go into the computer so that Desmond can push a button that saves the world, every time the counter gets down too low.
2) While many people of the … [I stopped writing this sentence half way through to do something else and now have no idea what I was going to say] Um. Competition! How COULD this sentence end?
3) The Dharma Initiative. I have heard those words bandied about pop culture for so long, it’s good to finally have ABSOLUTELY NO COCKING IDEA WHAT IT MEANS.
4) Locke used to have a girlfriend. One who used to be in Futurama, no less.
5) It IS possible for your brain to dribble out of your ears. I always just assumed that to be a turn of phrase.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE FOUR: EVERYBODY HATES HUGO
What happens in this episode
Hurley’s got the job now
he’s typing in the code.
He’s being paid in biscuits
from Desmonds old abode.
The larder must be shared out
That job’s for Hurley too
but Hurley doesn’t like it
he’s feeling very blue.
He can’t do it alone now
A growing lad needs help
So from the beach he gets Rose
from her perch among the kelp.
“Everyone will hate me”
Hurley tells her ‘mongst the food.
the job of sharing out the goods
he fears will turn folk rude.
He has a very good point
When Charlie’s been clued in
He wants some special treatment
Peanut butter. And some gin.
(he doesn’t really want the booze
I had to find a rhyming word)
and soon when everybody knows
they’re treating Hurley like a Turd.
He said that it would be the case
They’re angry at his lovely face
and why should it be just his place
to sub-divide the Lostie race.
He first decides to blow it up
With boomboom from the Rock
But Rose she talks him down from that
once they have had a talk.
He speaks to Jack,
they work it out;
how it was whack
to have such clout
Hurley’s new plan
The only way
is, among the whole damn clan
split up the food. And then par-tay.
Across town, those bad Udders
Are monstering our men
Poor Mikey Jin and Sawyer
are out of hole again
But wait! They aren’t all evil
They’re actually quite nice!
They too were on flight 815
(The tail, to be precise)
There once we 23 of them
but now there are far less
The rest have been all murdered!
Or maybe died of stress.
They earnestly debate our three
but one breaks off to pose
a question: is his wife at camp?
His best beloved rose?
And yes of course she is.
We should
have known that as she said
he would,
her husband, Bernard, by and
by,
Would return. He has.
(I did a cry).
flashbacks
We have a look at Hurley’s life
Before he won the prize.
When all his luck turned into shit
Thus showing why he’s wise
to how people can treat you
When you’re the king of STUFF
and how your friends will leave you
and it all can be quite tough.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) That Sun thinks Jin’s dead.
2) That Charlie doesn’t seem to have cracked open the smack yet.
3) That this method of recap is actually far quicker than many other approaches I’ve tried.
4) That Maybe now Ana Lucia is around, a little of the honey-pressure can be taken off Kate for a bit.
SEASON ONE, EPISODE FIVE: …AND FOUND
What happens in this episode
On the new side of the island the gang that found Jin, Mike and Sawyer declare that they will all walk across the island, to rejoin The Lost Family Lostinson.
Talking more about The Others, as they are, it becomes clear that we can no longer refer to these tailend passengers as Others. Which means that they are now OFFICIALLY clear to be known as The Udders. This pleases me no end.
While everyone collects food for the walk, Mike breaks away, determined to find Walt.
After a slight kerfuffle, Jin races off to help Mike, gruffly accompanied by a strapping chap called Mr Eko – the one I assumed to be the leader of The Udders (though now think Ana Lucia might be somewhat more like it).
Jin and Mr Eko wander the jungle, until Eko senses a presence, and, as he declares it to be The Others approaching, they hide in a bush. IS IT, we wonder? Because when I want someone to hide in a bush with me, I sometimes tell them lies (like the fact that I have heard that inside this bush is a crispy bacon bush and it is totally bacon season, or that there is a tunnel to the inside of JJ Abrams brain under the bush, and if we find it we can play in the ginormous ball pool of bouncy rubber plot points he keeps in there and maybe later dance through the mystical Labyrinth of Overriding Story Arc we have heard spoken of in legend but never quite belived in).
The Others pass by. They do not make a sound. They do not, says Mr Eko, leave a track. But one of them has a teddybear on a string. It is brown.
I bet he uses that to MURDER people. But a teddybear? A teddy that is brown? HOW?
Um….
Jin and Mr Eko find Michael, and though they initially want him to return with them, they all eventually go off together. Probably to find Walt.
In other news:
Sun loses her wedding ring.
She finds it again.
flashbacks
Jin and Sun before they met – Sun interviewing potential marriage candidates, or going on dates, or some such (it’s all the same thing really, isn’t it? Let’s not pretend it isn’t…), and then meeting for the first time: he a doorman at the posh hotel she was lunching in.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) I keep forgetting to listen out for the lovely little snatches of conversation that bisect the ‘OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNAE DIE’ gloom, like Hurley and Sun waiting for Waltsdog to poo a wedding ring (the one he’d eaten, not just like a lucky dip game) and having awkward conversation while waiting. “So, are you from the good Korea, or the bad Korea?” … “Did you go to the olympics?”…
2) “They” don’t leave tracks. So, when Locke and Kate tracked Ethan, it was Claire and Charlie they were tracking, was it? Rather than Ethan?
3) The Others look like normal people. But aren’t.
4) There is heat between Sawyer and Ana Lucia, but it isn’t a very healthy kind of heat. It is an Angry Monkeysex Heat, where participants enjoy themselves, but lose clumps hair, dignity, and sometimes eyeballs in the process.
by Bobbie Johnson
SEASON TWO, EPISODE SIX: ABANDONED
What happens in this episode
The Udders continue to make their way across the island, and are joined again by Mike, Jin and Mr Eko, who hurries the lot of them along by telling them he and Jin had a close encounter with The Other’s thighs.
That’s the thighs (and calves), sorry, of The Others, rather than EACH others. Though they were pretty tightly packed into that bush.
They struggle on – some more than others. Sawyer gets weaker and weaker, until Mike and Jin have to fashion a stretcher to carry him the rest of the way. It’s because they’re carrying his dead weight that another one of The Udders gets picked off when they stray into Other territory. AL ain’t ‘appy.
Back at home camp
OH MY GOD, LIKE, YOU’LL TOTALLY NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED, RIGHT? BECAUSE I HEARD…
Oh alright. Sayid and Shannon totally do it.
The moment is slightly ruined by Shannon totally having a visitation from the All-New Creepy Dribbling version of Walt.
She spends the rest of the episode trying to get Waltsdog to chase the smell of his master, and though he initially keeps taking her to Boone’s grave instead (“Top O’ The Mournin’ To Yis”(Thank you Anna F)), eventually Waltsdog leads her toward his wet undead boy.
Sayid follows, there’s was a deeply touching moment kneeling in one of those deluges that only rainclouds of The Island and showerheads with really good water pressure in five star spa hotels can do, where he says that he loves her, and that he will NEVER abandon her like all others in her life have done.
And that turns out to be extremely true, when AL shoots her dead less than a minute later, thinking she was an Other.
In other news Locke’s found out that Charlie’s got some smack from the Little Smack Plane, and Charlie’s getting increasingly possessive about baby (and, to a lesser extext, Claire).
flashbacks
Shannon, mourning her daddy. Shannon after her father’s death, not getting on with her stepma (mainly because of her stepma stealing her inheritance, so, you know, fair enough); Shannon getting an internship with a ballet company and not being able to take it because of the money; Shannon, being abandoned by Boone after he takes a job with his mother’s firm.
All in all, Shannon being considerably less annoying than she has been, and explaining why she has become so selfish since. And it’s good to know that, because now, for the first time, I feel mildly disposed toward her. Now she’s dead.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) The visitations of Dribbly Walt may have centred around Shannon, but Sayid saw him too – so perhaps it could be more about Waltsdog.
2) If Dribbly Walt has come back for Waltsdog, there’s a possibility that Waltsdog might turn into a dribbly Other version of Waltsdog. And you could see why The Others would find that attractive: Dog Dribble is a dangerous, slippery substance. You could. kill a lot of people that way.
3)The Island is at least two days hike all the way across, possibly three.
4) What happened to the monsoon season that Dr “Arzt” Deadguy predicted? Some impressive high school teacher sciencewonk HE turned out to be. “Meh meh meh, you’ll HAVE to leave today or you won’t have a clear day for months”, indeed.
5) This site doesn’t work in IE6 yet. We’re working on it, and no one that needs to know that can read this, but there we have it.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE SEVEN: THE OTHER 48 DAYS
Suddenly taking us back to the day of the crash, to other other side of the island and to an episode with a bunch of people we only some of them know, you get the feeling you should be scoping the thing for tiny weeny clues that mean nothing now so you can store in your inventory for later. You see that screwdriver and that pile of junk mail? They may look completely pointless, but in 400 turns time, you’ll realise you needed them, and have to start the whole bloody game again.
You are in an aeroplane seat. Around you are other aeroplane seats containing other passengers. What do you want to do?
> GO TO SLEEP.
It’s a bit too noisy for that. Also, your heart seems to be racing and you’re feeling a little short of breath. What do you want to do now?
> STAND UP
You can’t stand up, your seatbelt is buckled.
> UNBUCKLE
You unbuckle your seatbelt and go to get out of your seat. Immeidiately you are quite relieved, as you float toward the surface of the water, and start bobbing up and down among the debris and dead bodies.
> SWIM
You swim like buggery to reach the shore.
> L
You look around you. There is a jungle to the West, the sea is behind you to the East. To the North there is a woman splinting someone’s leg. South, a strapping man is trying to give CPR to a small girl.
> S
You are by a man giving CPR. His name is Mr Eko
> HELP MR EKO
You bring the small girl back to life. Well done! A man runs out of the forest to the North.
> GO N
You are at the edge of a forest. There is a man here. He is dry.
> SPEAK TO MAN
“Help me! My name is Goodwin and there is a man stuck in a tree, will you help me get the man out of the tree?”
> REMOVE MAN
I don’t understand what you’re saying.
> HELP GOODWIN GET MAN FROM TREE.
The man is out of the tree. His name is Bernard and he likes you. You are very tired. What do you want to do?
>LIE DOWN
You try to sleep, but wake up a couple of hours later to find Mr Eko having killed two strange barefoot people. He has made himself a stick.
> TALK TO EKO
Mr Eko doesn’t want to talk to you. For several weeks.
…
LIE DOWN.
You wake up. It is day 12. Around you, children and fellow passengers are screaming as they are being dragged out of their sleeping places and taken into the night by the others.
> GRAB
What do you want to grab
> OTHER
That doesn’t make any sense.
> GRAB OTHER>
You grab an Other. It wriggles a bit, but you manage to keep hold of it.
> KILL OTHER
You wrestle the other to the ground and make her dead.
> CHECK POCKETS
You rifle through her pockets. There is a knife in the pocket. There is a list in the pocket.
> L AT LIST
The list has names of your fellow passengers on!
…
Nathan, one of the other survivors, returns from to the camp. He says he has been to the toilet, but he has been gone for a couple of hours.
> SUSPECT NATHAN
Ok. You now suspect Nathan of being one of the Others.
> TORTURE NATHAN
How do you want to do that?
> KICK NATHAN IN FACE
You kick Nathan in the face! He doesn’t like it.
> PUT NATHAN IN HOLE
Ok. Nathan is in a hole.
What do you want to do now?
> ANNOUNCE YOUR INTENTION TO TORTURE NATHAN
Ok, you have told Goodwin you intend to torture Nathan.
> TORTURE NATHAN
You cannot do that. Nathan is not in any state to be tortured.
> L AT NATHAN
Nathan has had his neck broken.
> FEEL GUILT
You do not feel guilt. You didn’t do it. Someone else did it.
….
You are standing in front of a disused bunker
> OPEN DOOR
You open the door. It says quarantine on the inside. y
> ENTER BUNK
You enter the bunker. There is a box here. There is a pile of disused crap here.
> L AT CRAP.
It’s crap, what’s wrong with you!
> OPEN BOX
There is a glass eye here. There is a Radio here. There is a bible here.
> TAKE ALL
Ok. You have a glass eye, a radio and a bible. Your pockets are getting heavy.
…
You are on a walk with Goodwin.
> TEST GOODWIN
You ask various questions of Goodwin to discover whether or not he is an Other
> L AT GOODWIN
Goodwin looks like an Other
> LISTEN
What do you want to listen to?
> LISTEN TO GOODWIN
Goodwin sounds like an Other.
> KILL GOODWIN
You have a bit of an up and downhill tussle with Goodwin, but eventually succeed in making Goodwin dead.
flashbacks
The whole bloody thing was a flashback.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) Ana Lucia is my hero.
2) The others can pass perfectly well as one of the survivors if they wish to. And I know there was already Ethan, but let’s face it: he was a big creepy creepy weasel-monster. I didn’t spot Goodwin.
3) So when they tested the radio, and heard a voice claiming to be a survivor from 815, that was Boone, right? In the plane? Boone actually did speak to the other survivors from that plane before it fell. Bless him, poor love, he did some good after all.
4) The last 5-7 minutes of the episode with all the clips from the last 6 episodes going over the joining of the two sides story but from The Udders point of view? What was with all the slow motion/dramatic music shit? It was such a good episode otherwise.
5) Mr Eko and Ana Lucia have a very beautiful supportive relationship. Or seem to. Perhaps one of them is eeeeviiiiiil. Who KNOWS anymore?
6) The Others only want to take people who are ‘good’ people. They pick off the strong and the threats first.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE EIGHT: COLLISION
What happens in this episode
Ana Lucia is a bit worried that having shot and killed one of the Lost Family Lostinson is not the very best first impression she can make on arrival at her new camp.
While Mr Eko announces that he is going to track his way down to the camp to find ‘the doctor’ for Sawyer, Ana Lucia remains holed up in the jungle with the remaining Udders (well, that’s just Bernard and the slightly dodgy clinical psychologist), Jin, Mike, Shannon’s corpse and Sayid, who she has tied to a tree. Not in a sexy way, sadly.
Mr Eko finds Jack, who does not trust him at first. But then Jack has other things to do. He has to save Sawyer. And Kate has to help him save Sawyer. Mostly by nuzzling Sawyer’s head.
AL decides she’s going to live in the forest, alone, and look after herself, and only herself, and dispatches Mike to go back to camp and fetch some supplies so she can do that. Soon after Jin, Bernard and the dodgy psychologist head off to the shore too, leaving Sayid and AL.
They have a wee chat. Ana Lucia explains what happened to her as a police officer, and says she’s been dead inside since then. Sayid says he’s been mostly dead since he started the whole torture gig. She raises a knofe, walks over to him, and sets him free, saying he can kill her, if he feels like it.
He says no, he’s alright thanks, and anyway he doesan’t really see much point, since they’re both half dead already.
Sayid goes and scoops up Shannon, and carries her, like Richard Gere or like the last big romantic forklift truck, heartbroken with his cold dead love. Oh god, that poor forklift: HE’LL NEVER LOVE AGAIN.
by bobbie johnson
On their way back to the camp, they’re met by Mr Eko and Jack, who had come to negotiate. Jack and Ana Lucia stare at each other. Then they stare at each other some more. The music swells. There is staring. Swelling. Staring. Swell swell swell. Stare stare stare.
By the time they are done the music is at 90,000 Decibels of Heartbreakiness, and they have VERY DRY EYES.
At the beach
They are mainly practicing their golf swing in the surf. Eeee, it’s a hard life on this side of the island, isn’t it.
And then there are lots of tearful reunions, and biffing. Tears tears tears, biff biff biff. Luckily, only half of this is emotionally intense. The rest is physically in tents.
flashbacks
We get to see Ana Lucia’s previous life. She was a police officer, returning to work after she’d been shot on duty. After her colleagues brought in a suspect that they thought might have been the miscreant that shot her, she said it wasn’t him. And then went outside and shot him five times in the multistorey carpark.
That’s a geographical location, btw, rather than a kooky nickname for his underpant region. Would be a good one, though.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) Alright, Ana Lucia is still my hero, but she could try dialling down the paranoid-psychotics, a little.
2) There’s a little too much super-symphonic high-powered orchestral heartstring-tugging and slow mo going on right now, frankly. If they didn’t have enough material to last
3) I don’t know if Jack’s face on meeting Ana Lucie was meant to be fully charged or burning with some kind of emotion, but it kind of read a bit more like gormlessness.
4) There is SOMETHING up with that clinical psychologist lady. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I’ve got an odd feeling in me waters about that one. And not in a good way.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE NINE: WHAT KATE DID
What happens in this episode
Walt’s on IM! There were many other things that happened, but the most thing is that.
I’ll summarise the rest because the rest was a little bit boring. Because it was mainly Kate.
a) Lots of Kate. Kate could see a horse. Kate was freaked by the horse. By the end of the episode, when she had thought through what the horse represented and why it had affected her in her present life (issues with trust, daddy things, bad men and bad choices etc), she ended up being at peace with the horse.
b) That was it.
c) Oh, and she snogged Jack
d) And then Sawyer got better, and she’d clearly rather snog him instead.
flashbacks
Who did Kate kill? Kate killed her dad.
See, Kate had this stepdad that she hated. He beat her mother, he was a mean drunk and letchy to boot. Kate hated her stepdad. Then one day Kate found out that the man she thought was her stepdad was actually related to her by blood – her real dad.
And that was a whole lot worse. So she blew him up.
Oh look! I thought we had one original character without daddy issues. I should have guessed I was wrong.
Anyway – More important than all that:
Mr Eko and Locke put their heads together. Mr Eko’s was large and fuzzy and quietly powerful. Locke’s was small and wrinkly and impossible to judge. Together: they were … well, slightly pornagraphic sounding, to be honest, and if you substituted ‘penises’ for ‘heads’ in that sentence, perhaps it would be. But it wasn’t.
It was all very innocent.
After watching the orientation video, Michael and Mr Eko asked Locke what he thought was said in the missing bits of film. Locke didn’t seem to think it was anything much.
Mr Eko revealed a secret. In the bible pulled out of the abandoned bunker, he said, there was a clue. I got all worried that it was going to be some kind of bloody scripture and verse thing, so it was most relieving when the bloody thing turned out to be hollow with a strip of film shoved inside.
Spliced into Desmond’s orientation movie, it simply gave a stronger warning about not using the computer for anything but putting the code into the computer. If you put anything but the code in the computer then you might cause something VERY BAD to happen.
So what does Michael do, immediately? Well, to be fair, maybe he didn’t hear the new version of the movie while he was scrabbling around behind the computer playing with wires.
But he must have attached something funny to something funny, because the computer beeped.
“Hello?”
said the computer, Michael said hello, and in response to the computer asking who it was, said his name and asked theirs.
“Daddy?”
said the computer.
Ah, even in the dribbling-midpoint between life, death and ‘Other’, children grasp technology first.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) It is the return of the daddy issues.
2) Kate is being kissy with Jack, finally, but only because she fears the fact she REALLY wants to be kissy with Sawyer.
3) Mr Eko and Locke seem to be of the same ‘fate is everything’ cloth.
4) Except Mr Eko is more badass.
5) Locke is more Crinkly Bottom.
6) That computer’s going to be a point of contention, I can just TELL.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TEN: THE 23rd PSALM
What happens in this episode
Spotlight on… Eko (Eko – eko – ko – o) after a chance conversation with Claire on the beach, Mr Eko finds out that Charlie has a small statue of the virgin Mary, picked up somewhere on the island.
He asks to see the statue, and then, without asking, smashes it. Well thank CRIPES there was heroin in it, that’s all I have to say, otherwise that would be terribly, terribly rude.
Claire does not feel the same way. She’s a little taken aback, to be honest.
Mr Eko finds Charlie and demands to be taken to the place where they found the plane. Charlie takes him to a random other spot, then, though he is as crappy a liar as ever, is, has the affrontery to be surprised when Eko does not believe him.
He takes him to the real plane, and Mr Eko communes with his dead brother. But first, and while Charlie is far up a tree, doing something useful, there is a roaring in the jungle. Trees start being torn apart, grass ripped and thrown to the sky.
The monster comes. It is not a physical monster, really – it is a gaseous monster. Like your grandad used to make on family holidays as he dozed by the fire after a large meal. But more smoky. I hope.
by bojo
A powerful force of smoke races through the forest: and Mr Eko stares it down. and it goes away again. Mr Eko eats monsters. OR maybe … wait, I’ve got it: Mr Eko is a human extractor fan!
Whatever, it’s a stunning discovery. And, after that, not so much of the episode matters much, apart from that, once back at the camp, Claire kicks Charlie to the sand-kerb. For lying. Fair enough.
And down the hatch at Desmonds, Micheal is getting addicted to that computer. He keeps swapping shifts to talk to ‘Walt’, and ‘Walt’ keeps begging him for help. And… You know, I know I might be a bit overcautious about identity and the internet and that, after I sold my boyfriend’s baby sister to that Ukranian yak-smuggling ring to pay off the whole 404 thing (seriously, one day my beloved billionaire magnate distant relative dr PICKARD’s money is going to show up in my account, and then you’ll all be sorry) but I’m just going to put it out there: I’m not wholely convinced that that’s really Walt. There. I said it.
flashbacks
Mr Eko was a bad man, and a good gangster. By which I mean, he was good at running drugs, and killing people, and generally ruling by fear, and that is a bad, BAD thing. But he was good at it. Then he tried to persuade his brother to fly in a plane full of drugs to somewhere with more market for them. From Nigeria. A little two engine plane. His brother was a good priest, and a bad gangster. In that he was bad at gangster things. He said no.
But then, when the end came and he, his brother and a plane full of drugs were standing on the runway, all dressed as preists (apart from the plane, that would be stupid), when the police came and the guns came out, Mr Eko’s brother jumped on the plane and took off, making him look like the gangster and Eko look like the priest. This saved his life. I wasn’t quite clear on the details, if I’m entirely honest with you, but it was a jolly nice thing to do all the same.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1. The monster is a smoke monster!
2) Or perhaps the smoke is just smoke, and the monster is something else.
3) No, it was definitely monstery smoke.
4) There was something in the smoke, something to do with the memories and the flashbacks. There were flickers of the statues, and of all the bits Mr Eko had spoken about. Are the memories part of the smoke monster? Or the smoke monster part of the memories. And facing them down kills them? Wait, is this just some huge metaphor for psychotherapy being GREAT?
SEASON TWO, EPISODE ELEVEN: THE HUNTING PARTY
What happens in this episode
I don’t think it is a big shock to anyone that Michael’s having a bit of an episode – so when, here he suddenly takes Jack and Locke hostage, then takes off with the biggest bangiest gun in the cupboard to find Walt, deep in Other country.
Once Kate and Sawyer come to change Sawyers bandages (nudge nudge) and let Jack and Locke out, the boys follow. Off they troop – Jack, Locke, Sawyer (even though, as Jack tries to firmly tell him, he shouldn’t because “he is on antibiotics!” – and hell’s teeth I’m getting sick of this namby-pamby nanny-state dictatorship of Jack and his slavish adherence to suggested antibitotic regimen. There, I’ve said it). Kate can’t go because she’s a girl and has to stay home and look after the button.
They track and track and track, the egos jostling against each other for superiority and who knows most about the other. Locke knows Sawyers name. Sawyer knows … um…. ANYWAY.
Up in the jungle somewhere, they hear shots fired, and find casings from Mike’s gun, but no Mike.
Suddenly, the man with the beard from the raftjacking and Waltduction comes to talk to them. They sit down by a roaring fire and try to have as civilised a conversation as you can have while trying not to mention the fact that your conversationee seems to have stuck a Santa beard and eyebrows to his face using only eggwhites.
He doesn’t want to fight, he says (though when Jack prods him he proves he has at least half a dozen other Others in the bushes), this is just their island, and they like people to be polite and considerate on it “and then we might not keeeeeeeeelll youuuuuu”, being the unspoken continuation.
They say Walt is safe (and very special) and Michael will not find him, but he’s fine too. They don’t seem surprised to see everyone here, so you can’t help but think they’ve summoned them all, through Michael and the Phishing-Walt.
The conversation is tense, but civilised. It’s all about to kick off when Kate is brought out, in blindfold and tied up. Following at a distance behind the boys, as she was (naughty girl. girl was supposed to stay home, with button)
At the end of it all, they all leave unscathed, with “I’ll be back” sneers all round.
Though mainly from Sawyer – though of course, that’s kind of just “his face”.
flashbacks
A beutiful and exotic woman and her dying father come to ask the help of the Doctors Jack. Doctor Jack and Doctor Jacksdad (who is, let’s face it, played by Tim Gunn) give the woman fair hearing, but with the massive extent of her father’s tumour, Dr Jacksdad does not consider surgery possible. But the patients do not agree. They have heard about say Jack is the best surgeon in the world because he fixed that lady and then married her, so he must do the same for this 72-year-old man. Or, you know, half of it.
Dr Jacksdad is sceptical. “Well, ohhh-kaaAAay…” He says, walking out of the room and leaving Miracle Jack, Doctor Sha-ZAM!, to his superpowers, with only a parting “…Make it work, Jack!”
Jack does not make it work. Whether it is poor concept or sloppy execution, I do not know, but anyway, the man is dead, and Jack is OUT. In the carpark, feeling sorry for himself, and kissing the exotic daughter (“Hey, my dad just died, want to taste my uvula?”). When he gets hime he confesses this to his wife, and that causes them to split up. Well, and she’s biffing another hunk. Don’t know who. Her optomotrist, most likely (“Oh my gaaaad, you fixed my reading glasses! Let’s get married!”), and that’s it.
What, really?
This is what we’ve waited all that time for?
“We don’t talk anymore! I hate what’s happening to us! I’m going to fix this!”
”
Oh dear me no.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) “This music is quite depressing”
2) The island bloke with the beard, right? Now, he’s CLEARLY got 18 layers of makeup on. Is that a lifestyle choice since coming to the island, or has he/she always aspired to live as Captain Birdseye?
3) “I’ve been seeing someone. Someone ELSE.” one of Jack’s wife’s departing lines? Well, it’s sort of a tautology.
4) The Others do not kill on sight, they’re just a little territorial.
5) Still no Michael though.
6) What’s the difference between THESE Others and the whispering, dribbling kinds of Others?
7) Where in this equation do the Others who ate the Udders fit in?
8) I’m all questions and no observations at the moment. BUT
9) I have to say that with the dribbling of progress … a little monster one week … a little Other the next … a touch of Dharma every now and again and the slow slow dripfeeding of clues in this season? It’s great at this speed I’m watching it now: it would have KILLED me to have to wait a week between each.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWELVE: FIRE + WATER
What happens in this episode
Oh, woe is Charlie, chucked out of his makeshift tent and sleeping on the stree… no. Sleeping roug…. well, just sleeping in another makeshift tent, but in a BAD way, ok?
Charlie’s been having bad dreams. Dreams that are equal parts dream, flashback, and smack-addled memory.
The problem is, here, that the dreams might be caused by the island, or the Others, or whatever the hell everything is causing things, but really? Everyone just assumes Charlie’s on heroin.
And the fact that he’s keeping some back in a tree stump doesn’t do anything to persuade Locke differently.
It’s a difficult episode. Charlie does a lot of bad things – he runs off with the baby (without knowing why) in the middle of the night. He repeatedly tries to baptise the enormous child (HOW old is he? Three weeks? Four? HE’S THE SIZE OF A BABY HIPPO! “Special”? No doubt about it, he’s a phenomenon) and he almost sets fire to the camp. But he’s not taking drugs.
No one knows whether to believe him or not. But Locke is so busy acting fatherly to Claire (who, he’s realised, hasn’t come equipped with any Daddy Issues, so is trying to help out in providing some) that he helps sway the tide of opinion into the “Charlie must be stoned” camp.
No one listens to anyone else, here. They all just talk to themselves, their former selves, and their psyche. What a boar…
Sorry, bore. It is only Sawyer’s who is a real boar.
flashbacks
The founding of Driveshaft. The death of Driveshaft. Driveshaft as children, and Driveshaft splitting up.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) SURELY it was possible to find people with some kind of passable northern – if not Mancunian – accent for baby Charlie, and baby Liam? If you’re going to have a character list that crosses several countries, can you not get casting that can tell the difference between them?
2) I’m confused as to what’s going on with Charlie. He’s not taking drugs. So what’s causing the general insanity?
3) Beneedled Jack, God of Stitches was (Tom, if you’re out there) the first time he’s been attractive since episode one. But then, he was being quite quiet at the time, so that might also explain it.
4) Who is drawing up the button rota?
5) I sense a crisis of leadership coming. That is all.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE THIRTEEN: THE LONG CON
What happens in this episode
There is a mutiny. Of sorts.
It’s basically a petty little power struggle like one might find on a town council in suburban Cheshire. But with more guns.
Locke changes the lock on the guns, and Ana Lucia is bemoaning the lack of people to join an army against the others.
Coincidenatally, poor Sun then gets attacked, in an Other-like fashion, while working in the garden, and fingers start pointing very which way. It’s like a seventies disco on speed.
Allegiances are formed and discarded, bluffs called, suspicions raised and confidences broken.
It’s like a four way pork sword fight, where only one of the competitors has to visit a sausage shop in order to compete.
And it’s all a big mess. Yes, there’s a lot going on: I’d type it out but it would be faster just to corale a dozen or so big juicy spiders onto a piece of paper, drop a dictionary on them then peel it off carefully to disclose the worlds most careful and expert dissection of how everyone related to one another by the end of this episode.
Basically? All we need to know? There’s a fractiousness that bodes ill for the rest of this season. Sawyers got the guns.
He told everyone so in a very long speech. And then he ended with these words:
(Do you know, I typed these words after seeing two minutes of this episode, which serves, I believe, to display how overtired and overLosted I am today)
“There’s a new sheriff in town, boys”
Oh, and Charlie’s now eeeeeviiiiiil. Which doesn’t suit him at all.
In fact, the only thing coming out of this episode is Sayid and Hurley playing with a radio.
“Radiowaves at this frequency travel through the ionisphere … they could be coming from any place” says Sayid, reverently, as Moonlight serenade comes booming out, clear and bright.
“Or time…” says Hurley, in somewhat loaded fashion …
“Only kidding.” he says
Or IS he?
flashback
Sawyer conned a woman he loved, once. And it changed the way he thought of all of this stuff.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) Sawyer’s idea of a disguise is putting a plaster on his nose. “All they’ll be able to tell the police is that the guy looked like he’d been a bar fight”
Really?
“Well officer, he was about six feet tall, well-sculpted, blonde hair to his chin, well groomed stubble, a denim shirt, probably Levis, I’d put him at about 35, 145lbs … oh, and he had a weird plaster on his nose for no reason at all, but it didn’t really distract from the rest of it”
2) “There’ve been some people interested in joining. Like the big guy who lives behind Scott”
“You mean Steve, Scott’s dead”
Honestly a) I will never get bored of this gag
b) I never want to meet Steve. I just want to know he’s there. I’ve come to terms with the fact I’ll never meet Scott though. But only just.
3) Charlie is an evil now.
4) You can tell by the black hood.
5) I’m a bit worried about the second half of season two being rubbish. I’d look it up online, but I know there would be spoilers. Ach well, I’ll find out soon enough…
(I’ll find out in a few hours, in fact, when I wake up and polish this season off (and more, cross fingers). Until then… I’m sleeping. And dreaming of Lost)
SEASON TWO, EPISODE FOURTEEN: ONE OF THEM
What happens in this episode
Just when I worried that pronouncements fo the end of the world, wailing descriptions of the imminent arrival of a hoarde of soulless killers and general Gallic burblings about sickness, death and ‘ow we are all going to DAH were gone forever and all very season one, Danielle Rousseau, The Frog of Doom, returns
Dere is somsing in the forest that she would lack to show Sayid – she says. and takes him to a place where trees grow giant protesting testicles as fruit.
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The giant protesting testicle turns out to be an udder dat Danielle as captured for Sayid to ave a look at.
Sayid, with a single forceful swipe renders the testicle assunder, and David Gale comes spilling out. He protests his ignorance and, scared of the crazy Frog of Doom who left him hanging from the grumpy testes tree all night, he runs away. About ten feet away, at which point he is brought down by one of the Arrows of Doom. He begins to suffer existential angst immediately, and Sayid takes him to the Button Hole.
In the Button Hole, Jack tends to the stranger’s wounds, while Sayid, quietly, persuades Locke that he should really be allowed to torture him. With words like “Please”, and “Go on, pleeeeeease?” “Ah go on, go on, go on go on goo on.” and “Pretty please with sugar fairies on top”. Eventually Locke’s heart melts, and he agrees to change the combination on the empty armoury so that Sayid can go in and torture Henry Gale wiithout Jack being able to get in and be all namby pamby moralistic on his ass. Like a GIRL.
Sayids torture, while it starts pretty standard, soon devolves into a new form of torture involving crying and talking about burying people you love the most. And here we were thinking it was all about bags on heads and some combination of boards and water that REALLY isn’t surfing.
Henry Gale sticks to his story. He flew in on a balloon. His wife is dead. He’s been on the island four months.
But there’s something about the cold, hard, calmness of Henry Gale that chills to the bone. The way that he stared at sayid as the armoury door closed. Sayid knows he’s a bad’un, that one. And he’s right.
flashbacks
Sayid learning he was good at torture. Interestingly, it was while working as a translator for the Americans after being capured in the first Iraq war. He translated, they persuaded him that the person they were interrogating had murder some of his family, he tortured them. And then the Americans said thank you very much and set him free.
And he had, in some sick, sad way, by learning that he was capable of torturing his own people and not feeling guilt, as long as they were bad enough… found his vocation. Yes, I know it SHOULDN’T be sexy, but it is always attractive to find a man with a calling, is it not?
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) I still fancy Sayid. I don’t know if that’s wrong, what with me being a big woolly liberal and him with all the kicky torturefication shenanigans and the knowing where he’s previously put it (and god rest your soul Shannon, miss you lots etc), but if it’s wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
2) There is another frog! We will call him the Frog of Urk. For that is the noise he makes. It was waking Sawyer up, so he went on a hunt with Hurley and found it. Hurley is taking care of it, though.
3) Hurley is also taking care of Hurley. He has a secret stash of food. So much for the ‘we’ll just blow it on one big feast’ idea.
4) Sayid is recruiting Charlie to try and get back to finding out more about Henry Gale.
5)If the counter goes down to zero and the Hurley Sequence is not input into the computer, red and black cards with funny symbols on start appearing where the counter numbers usually are.
6) Locke has not yet got the sequence completely memorised. How the hell NOT? Is it because he is old? It is, isn’t it?
7) See, it’s when Sayid pulls his hair in to a ponytail, and you know that it’s because he’s going to get all badass, and it’s just … Oh alright.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE FIFTEEN: MATERNITY LEAVE
What happens in this episode
Baby Aaron wakes in the middle of the night burning up with fever and miserable in the way that babies do best (loudly). Locke runs to get Jack from the Button Hole, and while he’s gone, The Frog of Doom turns up. Of course, this is bound to make Claire feel calmer. Because doesn’t every new mother love a home visit from the baby-snaffling, apocalypse-summoning, doomfrog that they only remember using as a scratching post in the jungle?
Of course they do.
Danielle asks if the baby is infected, and as she talks, Claire suddenly remembers more about her time away. There was a doctor, and a needle, and a teenage girl…. And they injected the baby with something. Of course, Claire is reasonably curious about this. The next day, she asks the weird floaty psychologist to help un-repress her memories of the two weeks she was away, and un-repress she does. It is like standing underneath a silo full of memory slurry and pulling the plug and suddenly, a flood of
PTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHHHHh…..
flashbacks:
So, when Ethan runs off with Claire, he takes her to an underground bunker set up as a hospital and there sticks needles in her stomach and gives her sedatives to make her all floaty about it.
In the “hospital” Ethan is chastised by a man that looks quite familiar – could only be more so if he stuck a cheap costume beard and eyebrows to his face with a glue made of purest eggwhites, in fact – who tells him that he was supposed to wait until he had the LIST before bringing people from the camp, and that “HE” was not going to be happy about this. Oh course, Ethan explains about The Lost Family Lostinson having found the manifest and running out of time.
Ethan says he has enough vaccine for the baby, but not for her, so, if it is ok, they will just take the baby and look after it, and was she alright with that? Oh yus-yus-yus-yus yus says Claire, happily, and carries on knitting bootees and quaffing whatever wonderful sedative they’ve flung at her.
In the present
They go and find the underground bunker. It’s abandoned. There is no vaccine there. There are some bits and pieces. But there is no medicine, nor anything too useful. But at least it gives Claire’s memory-hole a thorough douching, right? At least it fully irrigates the old flashback colon? And that’s GOT to feel better.
[NB, dear reader: Yes, I considered illustrations. No, I will not be doing them. You're welcome]
Flashback
When a teenage girl comes to her in the middle of the night – tall, blue eyed, Gallic looking teenager – who says that she is saving her: and then she does. Then Claire remembers that the scratching of the Frog of Doom in the woods was because Rousseau was trying to keep her quiet, and stop her from alerting the Others to her presence.
In the present?
Claire and The Frog of Doom? They’re all good now, blood. They’re like tight and shit.
Sorry, I don’t know why I’m talking like that, one’s French and the other’s Australian. I’m just a bit bored.
In other news: Mr Eko, coming to the Button Hole to find some tree-cutting toys, notices that there is a man in the armoury – or, as it should now be called, the nothingry.
He goes to Jack and requests a conversation and, when in the room with Henry Gale alone, confesses to the killing of the two others, the first night he was there, says he is on a more righteous path now, confesses, and atones by cutting off the two symbolic mini-beards hanging from his chinny-chin-chin.
Henry Gale says nothing. Stares blankly. One does somewhat wish he WOULD turn out to be a random stranger, because it would be funny. “Hoo was your halliday, Henry?” people would ask on his return to Minnesota. “Well, it was gosh-darned purty, but I didn’t half meet tome freaking weirdos at my resort”
He’s not, of course, he’s bad. He’s bad. He’s bad – and I know he’s bad. I can feel it in my … oh no wait, I need the bathroom.
three minutes later
No, I still think he’s bad, it’s ok. It’s obvious, though. He’s driving a wedge between Locke and Jack by suggesting to Locke that Moral Jack, Doctor of Disbelief-In-Weird-Stuff is his superior. And it’s working too! And honestly, I did not think Locke was that stupid.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) I really am getting frustrated with Jack’s stubborn refusal to admit that there are bad, weird, horrible things going on. I appreciate the fact that people can be trusting and that’s all very lovely: but frankly? Bad things have happened. You could do with your leaders being a *little* less trusting around now.
2) This deserted island is a veritable Staples Corner of traffic. It is the Times Square of deserted places. It is, in short, the least deserted desert island the world has ever (not) known about.
3) Mr Eko is a very canny man.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE SIXTEEN: THE WHOLE TRUTH
What happens in this episode
Locke, having had the germ of discontent planted in him by Henry Gale’s ever swelling insidious probe at the end of the last episode, is clearly starting to feel it growing inside him. And it’s making him power-nausous.
He goes to Ana Lucia, and asks her to do a bit of interrogating: cop-style (mainly because any more “interrogation: Sajid-style” and the only thing he’s going to be able to answer correctly is “Are you dead? say ‘no’ for no, start going into rigor silently for yes.”) – because he is the boss and he can ask her if he wants and he doesn’t have to check with Jack or ask permission or even tell him or anything because Jack’s not the boss of him, and anyone who says he is a big smelly liar, and can suck it. SUCK IT! And he HATES you and he HATES this island and he wants to go and live with GRANDMA even though she smells of WEE, because at least she’s not a NAZI.
Oh yes. Petulant Locke Iz Petulant.
So Ana Lucia talks to Henry Gale, who is quietly terrifying once more, and manages to illicit from him a map of where, precisely, he left the Hot Air Balloon with the big smily face that the he claims to have arrived on the island in. She leaves the Button Hole with the map, but without telling Locke and Jack that she has got it, as she feels the tension crackling in the air between them like pig; and thinks it is easier not to introduce a new element to the mix.
From the beach, she collects Sayid and Charlie, just because he is there – and together they use Henry Gale’s map to find the balloon. Henry Gale’s map, no word of a lie, looks like this:
But still, a day and a half of walking later, and some heart-sharing between the two contractiest killers on the island, they’re pretty sure they’ve found exactly the right spot.
HOW, if you’ll excuse me, THE TITTING HELL have they managed that? Hm?! He might as well have taken a piece of paper, drawn nothing but a child’s balloon on it and gone “There’s your map!”
Back at the Button Hole, Jack and Locke let him out of the nothinry where he is being kept so that they can share coffee and cereal and corrupting mindgames. After pushing them on the topic of the pantry and why they’re so accepting of everything, Henry Gale reveals that he gave the map to Ana Lucia, and she’s gone off to find the balloon, perhaps with some help.
And then mentions that, if he WAS one of these Others they’ve been worried about, it would have been a very good plan for an ambush and hostage-swap situation. If he was….
flashbacks
All tied in to the ‘other news’ of the episode.
Sun seems to be pregnant. Which is wonderful news, except the flashbacks show her hearing from a doctor that Jin is incapable of fermenting tiny swimmy-jins strong enough to get all the way up her sun-vent. Those were the precise technical terms he used in Korean, yes. The subtitles were wrong.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) “I yam what I yam” said Ana Lucia. Not enough characters on lost are currently channeling classic cartoon characters this way. There should be more of it. I look forward to someone pointing out that the Island Polars are smarter than the average bear any day now.
2) I had always known that power corrupts. I had no idea that it made you So Bloody Stupid.
3) They have pregnancy tests? Is there anything that DIDN’T happen to be on this plane, within lootable distance and hasn’t been used already?
Oh, hey, by the way, I wanted to thank you all for being so nice and tweeting about these recaps, and I’d relaly like to invite you all round for a drink tonight.
Here is a map to my house.
About eight, yeah? Brilliant!
SEASON TWO, EPISODE SEVENTEEN: LOCKDOWN
What happens in this episode
After the terrifying cliffhanger of the last episode – which, obviously, I watched two and a half minutes ago (seriously, how did people have the nerve and patience to last a whole WEEK?) Henry Gale offers up his explanation for the half-tease, half-threat he tendered at the breakfast table:
“I was ‘avin” he reasons “a larf”
(or that is the basic gist of it)
And is slammed back in the nothingry for it.
Lukewarm Co-Chairman Jack, Doctor of Earnestness Sciences takes himself off down to the beach, and there engages in a battle of poker to try and win back the medicine that Sawyer has stashed in his tent. And then he wins it back. Oooh, look at us being all impressed.
Back at the Button Hole, Locke’s having a jolly time on the exercise bike, when suddenly, the alarm starts to sound, a woman’s voice can be heard, even though the counter has yonks of time to go.
Suddenly, big heavy shutters come down all around, blocking every door, window, um, other shutterable thing… plughole? The underneath of a table? Anyway they’re All Shut Tight. Locke manages to get a crowbar under one door, but can’t do any better without help.
Hanry Gale is therefore released from the Nothingry on the basis that he’ll help if Locke will protect him from the rest of the Lost Family Lostinson when they return.
They manage to pry open a shutty thing to a couple of feet off the floor with a toolbox, and Lock starts trying to squeeze underneath it, but the toolbox buckles and a peg punches into Locke’s leg. This means he has to send Henry Gale through the air vent system to push the button.
When the counter counts down, and the alarm goes mental, suddenly, the lights all go out and a crazy map of the island appears on the back of one of the shutters in ultraviolet light. And then it is gone. The lights come back on, the shutters go up, and Henry appears out of the computer room saying that he did what Locke asked, and helping him with his hurty leg.
flashbacks
John Locke’s father came back. Well, no, he apparently died, but then, after Locke attended his funeral, turned out not to be so dead after all. He asked Locke for a favour, and for reasons of Daddy-Issues or humanity, I do not know, Locke agreed to do it for him. Moron.
He got some money from his dad’s account for him, refused payment for doing it – because, you know, he felt it was his filial duty over and above chucking him a spare kidney already – and lost the love of his life in the process (Although I would suggest that proposing to her in the carpark of an airport motel just after she’s been the only person in the relationship brave enough to tell Locke’s father he’s a big smelly bastard is NOT the most romantic of ideas either. Just making suggestions from a lady-POV)
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) There is a big crazy map of the island, covered in symbols like the ones that we briefly saw when the timer almost ran out the other episode.
2) There was a balloon!
3) It wasn’t Henry Gale’s balloon.
4) Not THIS Henry Gale, anyway.
5) If Henry IS an other, he now knows intimate details of the workings of the Button Hole – and that being the Lost Family Lostinson’s inner sanctum, that has to be dangerous, right?
6) Food is dropped on the island by parachute. But no one noticed until it was on the ground, parachute splayed. How does that work?
SEASON TWO, EPISODE EIGHTEEN: DAVE
Interesting fact: when this episode was originally screened on network television, the following executive advice appeared on screen for two full minutes.
Hey, Hotty! Do you got some mental lubricant and a few suspension-of-disbesheaths handy? Because your brain is looking SMOKIN’ tonight, and I’ve got a feelin’ that it ain’t going home alone…
Know what I’m sayin’ on behalf of ABC television?
Word to your mother.
Now, of course, that’s not even remotely true.
But maybe it should have been.
What happens in this episode
Hurley’s been having a nice time with that pleasant blonde psycologist lady that came with the Udders from the other side of the island. They’ve been going for walks, and ambles, and talking a lot and you know what? I think she likes him. She wants to kiss him.
She certainly wants to help him. He takes her to his secret stash of food in the woods and she helps him destroy it all, for his own good (if no one elses).
Sadly, this is the point that everyone discovers the enormous food drop that arrived, so it’s kind of an empty gesture, but never mind! never mind: the thought was good.
But suddenly, behind the food drop, a man appears, smiling at Hurley. Hurley recognises him. And of course he does. It’s Charlotte’s husband Harry, from the Sex and the City franchise. Hurley chases him. At first we assume it is he is all “OMG! I LOVE YOUR WORK! DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SECOND SEX AND THE CITY MOVIE?!”, but it turns out that he’s one of the guys from Hurley’s old mental facility; and he drops a slipper.
Hurley assumes he’s seeing things, so goes to Sawyer to see if he has any coproxymoxypholopillyphilin (TM), but Sawyer takes the piss out of him, and calls him nasty ‘you’re fat’ names. Again. hurley attacks him: which is wonderful.
In fact, Hurley ramming Sawyer into his tent and then attacking him while still wrapped up in it was a sight I will find it difficult to forget. Of course, as you may have worked out by now, in my mind it will look forever like this:
So bears little realtion to the screen, but at least it makes me happy.
The flashbacks, which are more and more intertwined and less and less easy to shove off to their own section, show the fact that Hurley was in the mental facility because of a breakdown after he was standing on a deck that collapsed and killed two people. He eats to punish himself.
And to help with that – we learn, as Hurley takes a heap of food and heads off up to the cave camp to be mad in private – he had a friend. The friend that’s come back now: It’s Dave. And the theory Dave puts forward is this:
Hurley never left the mental hospital.
Hurley’s been so deluded, for so long, that everything – the ‘breakthrough’ where he realised Dave was imaginary the first time around; the leaving hospital; the winning of the lottery (with the numbers from Leonard in the hospital) the disasters, the plane crash, the Island, the hatch (same numbers) the computer (same numbers), the fact that there’s a hot blonde who seems to fancy him and who will help him destroy food … only to find there’s more magically nearby?
All in Hurley’s head. Which, if nothing else, explains why he’s got such big hair. It got blown out by the force of the crash, see?
And after all that, after Dave leads him up to a cliff and tries to convince him that the only way to wake up is to leap off … Libby, the floaty blonde psycodiddlyist comes to find him, and talks him off the cliff with a kiss, persuading him it is not true (before we see her in a flashback, sitting in the mental facilty with red hair, staring at Hurley, wild eyed).
Anyway, the annoying thing is: it’s really fecking plausible.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) entering the code into the computer does nothing.
2) At least, that’s what Henry Gale tells Locke. He told him that the lights went off, the red and black symbols flipped around on the counter, the magnet sounded like it was moving … and then the counter reset itself, and everything was back to normal.
3) The only way of checking this is true is letting the timer run out, and Locke’s too much of a believer to do that, right?
4) Also, Henry could be lying. He could have punched in the code, just in time.
5) Which leaves us at a bit of an impasse, Mr Bond.
6) Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were Mr Bond. Let me move that impasse out of your way.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE NINETEEN: S.O.S
What happens in this episode
Everybody is fed up of inaction (except Locke) and wants to expidite change (except Locke) and so we find them, proactive and MAKING THINGS HAPPEN (except Locke).
So Bernard is sick of people just giving in to living on the island, and tries to organise a party to build a big sign on the beach. It does not go well.
Meanwhile, wanting to trade Henry Gale (who is now on hunger strike) for Walt (hang on a cotton picking second, where IS Michael? Is he still out there in the woods, searching? On his lonesome?), Jack goes up to the point where they met Captain Birdseye and his horde of angry fishsticks with matchsticks, and shout for them to come and talk about a Walt for Henry swapsie pact. No one comes. Well, except Michael, who collapses at their feet, JUST as they’re about to kiss again.
Nice cockblock, Mickster
Back at the Button Hole, Locke is the only one desperate NOT to find out what happens if you don’t try and force change. And yet, the not knowing is killing him. He’s shouting through Henry Gale’s door, begging to know whether he did or didn’t push The Button.
And the smile on Henry Gale’s face at hearing how badly it’s affecting him is one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in this show so far.
I mean, dribbling Walt was creepy, but then, you never met my last boyfriend.
flashbacks
Rose and Bernard – how they met, how they courted, the fact that she is dying: all of those things. And the fact that Bernard took Rose to a faith healer in Uluru.
But since the crash she isn’t full of the cancer anymore. She’s all better and wants to stay. And Bernard says they WILL stay, in a tearful scene on the beach. And the weird thing is, I think this the only scene I’ve seen in the last five years. No wonder it didn’t make any sense.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) THERE’S SOMEONE CALLED FROGURT ON THE ISLAND. Sorry for shouting, but it was only when Bernard asked where Frogurt was that I realised he seemed to believe somone Frogurt SHOULD be there. That someone called Frogurt could even exist at all.
2) FROGURT.
3) Not even Frobert.
4) Frogurt.
5) I am in rapture about this. Guess what someone’s first child is going to be getting called?
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWENTY: TWO FOR THE ROAD
What happens in this episode
While tending to Henry Gale, Ana Lucia makes the schoolgirl error of bending in too close to hear him mumble and ends up getting nutted, punched, and strangled half to death, only saved by Locke clocking Freak-boy with a crutch.
When Locke comes back to check on Henry later, Gale plays the most ridiculously see-through play on Locke’s meglomania to date. And yet, Locke is so desperate to believe he is special, so hungry for whatever he believes the island is saving for him, that it sinks straight in. Locke is special, says Henry Gale. So special that, when he got captured, it only interrupted his mission: his mission of coming to fetch super special John Locke.
Jack and Kate return with Michael, who says that he’s been watching the Others, and believes that, if they want to, the Lost Family Lostinson can easily take the Others in a battle. And then they will get Walt and all will be well, la la la.
With this happy plan in development, Ana Lucia goes off and has hot monkeysex with Sawyer in a stream:
by b.johnson
Meanwhile Locke and Action Jack, Doctor of Proactivity go to the beach to get the guns back from Sawyer, who says that they’ve been stolen … by … Ana Lucia.
No, wait. Those two events probably weren’t concurrent, on reflection: you’re right.
Ana Lucia, with Sawyers gun, returns to the Button Hole, instructs Henry Gale to untie himself, and then pulls out her gun … and, it seems, does nothing with it. When Michael comes into the room, she’s still sitting playing with it. She explains the situation, and says she just couldn’t kill him. Michael offers to do it, takes the gun, asks the combination of the nothingry…
And then shoots Ana Lucia stone dead.
Libby, just walking in to return some blankets from a picnic she and Hurley never quite managed to have, disturbs Michael, and he shoots her twice. (As in ‘two times’. It’s not a fancy new term for an unmentionable part of her body. “Alright darlin’ mind if I grab your twice?” “Unhand me, you cad!” etc)
He opens the nothingry, Henry Gale stands up, and Michael shoots himself in the shoulder.
Oh crumbs. I call shenanigans.
flashbacks
Ana Lucia was in Australia with Dr Jacksdad (played, of course, by Tim Gunn). After her leaving the police force, this was, and acting as his protection: against what doesn’t matter anymore. Jack’ll never know now anyway, right?
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) There is no end to the meglomania of John Locke.
2) Shenanigans are afoot.
3) Michael’s either been turned by The Others, or instructed that this is his only way of ensuring Walt’s safety.
4) Either way, Henry Gale lives. And that bodes well for the series, if not for my ability to sleep well in the next four nights.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWENTY-ONE: ?
What happens in this episode
Mr Eko has terribly vivid dreams. IN today’s dream, he sees Ana Lucia, who said that he has to help John. He then sees the inside of the Button Hole, where his priest brother, sitting at the computer, telling him he has to help John, and “make John take him to the question mark”, even though he may not want to.
Last week I dreamed I had a unicorn called Tony.
So once the valiant leaders of the Lost Family Lostinson return to the button hole, having discovered that Ana Lucia stole Sawyers gun while they were a-knobbing in the stream (NB: this is not quite how it is explained) and discover that Ana Lucia is dead1 and that Libby is only about 7% not-dead. Maybe 8%. Whatever, her health bar is hovering around the low red area, and without someone locating several health packs, it will be game over for Libby.
While Handsome Jack: Doctor of Fixing, tends to her, Mr Eko and Locke head into the Jungle – Locke thinking they are looking for Henry Gale, Mr Eko actually planning to get John to show him where the Question mark is. He doesn’t know what that means: it was, of course, the central circle on the crazy map that Locke saw in the dark. Of course.
Long story short: They do. Mainly because Mr Eko’s brother appears in John’s dream, and tells them how.
In the hatch they find several things. Some empty notebooks, a print-out logging every time that they have entered the code on their computer, a vacuum tube that leads into the roof, and sucks like your mother, and another orientation film.
The film they find in the new hatch – as well as containing some SUPERFLY collars, also contains the heartbreaking news (for John) that this station is the monitoring station, for watching the people in the other stations (like the Button Hole he fought so hard to get into) unquestioningly doing pointless repetitive tasks for reasons they do not understand as a scientific experiment. Things like, say, typing a sequence of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes.
The button is pointless. All the Dharma Initiative’s buttons are pointless.
John is angry. He thought he was special. Turns out he is: but in a riding-the-short-bus kind of way. Mr Eko, however, seems to believe this not only doesn’t change what they’ve been doing in the Button Hole, it makes it all the more vital.
“The reason to do it, to push the button, is not because were told to in a film. We do it because we believe it is what we are MEANT to do.” Says Eko – which is, in the case of John, who was kind of doing it because a film told him he had to.
“I believe the work being done in the hatch is more important than anything. If you do not continue to push the button, John. I will.”
Mr Eko is driving a train of logic that does not stop at my brain station.
Button Hole Death Fest Update
Libby was never going to make it, it seems. While she is technically still alive for a bit – which bothers Michael greatly – there are no health packs available to boost her stats enough, and Jack feeds her some of that leftover heroin till she dies. With a weeping Hurley by her bedside, she manages to croak out two last words. Or Rather one last word, twice: “Michael. Michael!”.
“It’s alright” says Razorblade Jack, Doctor of Perception “he made it through, he’s going to be fine”
And you’d think that the look of sheer terror and horror on her face at this information would have tipped him off. But no. Noooooo. He’s Handsome Jack, Doctor of Awesome: anyone need some antibiotics?
flashbacks
Mr Eko in Australia, working as a preist, and investigating a miracle (and, in the process, meeting the psychic that Claire went to see). The miracle involved – the psychic’s daughter – also saw Mr Eko’s brother in a dream. Man, that late priest has got himself some afterlife-rollerblades.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) Charlie’s NOT evil any more after all? What, so after attacking Sun and almost setting fire to the camp he was just completely absolved by meeting Mr Eko and it’s all just lovely now, then? Well. That actually is how Catholicism works, isn’t it?
2 You know how I said, in the last episode, there was no end to the meglomania of John Locke? Turns out I was wrong. There might be: and this might be it.
3)1Death is the price one pays for sex outside the holy bonds of matrimony on this island. For ladies, anyway. POTENTIALLY CRUCIAL LOST CLUE: The french for the orgasm is litte death. The Frog of Doom is French. The island version of little death is big death, or, as it is otherwise known death-death. Discuss.
4) If the vacuum tunnel is capable of taking things directly to head office, then head office is on the island, no?
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWENTY TWO: THREE MINUTES
What happens in this episode
Mainly, we get to find out what Michael did on his holidays. It’s like waking up to find that there’s been a postal strike you didn’t know about and a whole pile of postcards have been delivered all at once from someone you saw at the pub yesterday anyway.
“Dear all,
Having a lovely time, weather smashing, been doing lots of hiking with the friendly locals. In fact, one of them’s CALLED Friendly! Mr Friendly! Though, to be honest, he looks more like Captain Birdseye. Anyway, he’s the leader of our hiking group. Well, I say ‘hiking’, more of a forced march, really!
Weather lovely, except for tuesday, when it rained like a bitch out of nowhere for about half an hour. Might as well be at home!!!
Wish you were here.
Mike
xx”
Still, for someone who went out with the intention of finding the Others and getting them to take him to Walt, Michael proves himself very efficient indeed. He meets up with Captain Unconvincibeard and his band of Angry Fishsticks within hours of locking Jack and Locke up in the Armoury (as it still was at the time), and is gagged and being held by that tall, dark-haired Gallic-looking teenager in the bushes, even as Jack and the Captain had their pow-wow.
They took him off to the Village of The Others, which is, frankly, a bit of a dump.
He’s met by a jocular chap who takes his blood, and a lady called Miss Klugh. She doesn’t introduce him to her friends Mr Exposition and Jemima Hinthint, and her line manager Sgt Red Herring is, apparently, off work this week, but still, it’s nice to get proper introductions.
Dear all,
Hard to believe that I’ve been here a week already! So easy to lose track of time here in idyllic Otherville. The locals are very chatty, and certainly inquisitive! Food ok. Weather passable. Laundry facilities non-exsistent. Still: on my way back soon, (hatch sweet hatch here I come!) and look forward to seeing you soon. Especially Jack Shepherd, Kate Archer, Sawyer and Hurley, for NO SPECIFIC REASON AT ALL. Which reminds me: we really should come out here for a minibreak soon. You’d love it.
hugs and butterflies
M xx
He and we, get to see Walt. And he seems ok, if terrified and begging Michael to help him and get him away from there. Michael is desperate. Which is why, when Miss Klugh gives him a list of four names and tells him he must return to camp, free Henry Gale and then return with those people on the list (and only those people) he heartily agrees to do it.
flashforward
Actually, speaking of flashforward – almost half way through this, episodes wise, and having watched it, I now can’t believe they tried to sell that as the new Lost. Not a patch on this. Not even close.
Back in the Now, we watch Michael trying to get Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley to accompany him back to Otherville. For a moment Sayid is coming too, but Michael tells him he can’t – and Sayid, quietly tells Jack that Michael’s been compromised in some way. Whether Jack has taken this on board is another question. Because he’s Jack, and I’m starting to wonder if it would help if we had some ‘good person’, ‘bad person’ and ‘Other’ t-shirts printed out to help him along. Though let’s face it, they probably wouldn’t help.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) Many clues given by Walt. The Others are ‘not what they say they are. They’re pretending’, for the main one.
2) Also, they have ‘a room’ which was held over Walt as a threat when he said too much.
3) They make Walt take tests. Poor lad. You’d be all ‘Oh NO, we’re trapped on a desert island and I can’t go to back to school, what a dreadful shame…’ And what happens? Pop quizzes. Bastards.
4) Walt is still very cute when not dribbling.
5) Miss Klugh asked Michael lots of things about Walt such as whether he ‘ever appeared in places, even though he was physically somewhere else’. Michael didn’t reply, but you could tell he recognised the concept.
6) In other news: Mr Eko got down to embracing the gleefully pointless button pushing, and Charlie got on with building their church alone. And threw all the remaining Virgin Mother statues from the plane – The Smack Marys – into the sea.
7) Oh, and as they all stood in the ever-expanding graveyard burying Ana Lucia and Thingo, a boat appeared, sailing toward them. It looks like a yacht. Like a yacht that, say, maybe P Diddy would own. Just saying: if a multimillionaire rapper and producer gets off that boat, this show might be getting a little too obvious.
SEASON TWO, EPISODE TWENTY-THREE AND TWENTY-FOUR: LIVE TOGETHER, DIE ALONE
What happens in this episode
Plans are afoot. Also: a foot is afoot. But more of that later on.
The boat, it turns out, is full of Desmonds. Or rather, one Desmond. The Desmond that we met right at the beginning of this season, and immediately lost soon after. He’d tried to get away, on his boat, but whichever direction he sailed in, and however long he sailed for, the only land he reached was the island. Which we shall call Island Island, because I keep realising we haven’t got any other name for it.
Michael, meanwhile, has managed to fulfil the Others shopping list of Losts. Michael went to market, and he got: a Jack, a Hurley, a Sawyer and a Kate. And then they all set off so he could deliver them to Klugh and the Gang back in Otherville.
But, at the funeral, Sayid already shared his fears with Jack about how Michael might be secretly bad, and for once, Jack has listened. Sayid sets off in Desmond’s boat, Jin and Sun driving it. Running it? Sailing it? Sailing it. Let’s just get them out of the way, shall we?
On a boat, motherfucker
On the way around the island, they get to see some interesting geographical features, including the remains of an enormous statue: a single foot, with four toes. You know who has four toes? Homer Simpson. I’m just sayin. Of course, what makes up the rest of that statue is something we will consider later on in more depth, but in the meantime let us assume it is this:
Anyway, we will get back to that later on. When Sayid arrives at the village, however, it is deserted. The big important looking doors that Othertroopers were guarding with big guns? Opening them, Sayid finds nothing but the rock they were stuck to: like the whole village was set up just to fool Michael, which seems like an awful waste of energy.
Exploring the Great Outdoors, with Michael Waltsdad
It is not Otherville that Sayid is leading them to. They end up in a field with a tube in it, and a huge pile of vacuum-tube containers, filled with notebooks and reports from the observation station. They weren’t going to head office. They were just going here. This field. This field in which Sawyer, Kate Jack are shot with darts and collapse.
Coming to on a pier, gagged and bound apart from Michael, the little tug boat that stole Walt from them in the first place chugs up to the dock, and disgorges Henry Gale, who, it seems, might well be Darth Other.
He gives Michael his thanks, his boat, and his leave – and Michael takes off with Walt, who is hiding in the boat.
Hurley is released and sent back to camp to tell the rest of them to stick to their side of the island, and bags are put over the heads of Jack, Kate and Sawyer.
Dun-Dun-DAHHHHHHHHH…
At the Button Hole
Locke convinces Desmond to break in and corroborate with him in the not-pushing of a button.
They somehow tempt Mr Eko out of the computer room, and Desmond shorts some wiring to lock down the doors. In the next 98 minutes:
Outside the doors: Mr Eko gets Charlie, tries to explode the doors – and manages to explode Charlie and himself instead, injuring them both.
Inside the doors: The go back and forth about whether the button pushing actually does anything. Whether it releases the electro magnetic energy pressure a little bit at a time, or not (see flashbacks, below). Somehow in the course of this, they discover that at the only other time that Desmond let the counter run down past zero, flight 815 crashed onto the island.
When the counter DOES run down, at first there are just bleeps and lights flashing and ominous noises…
And then all hell breaks loose. And when I say hell, I mean spoons. All the spoons in the room break loose, and fly toward the central wall. Hell would follow, if hell was made of metal, because, sure enough, everything made of metal does rush toward the central pod. This place is seriously magnetic after all.
If this place was a scrap metal yard, you realise, they could totally clean up. They have the potential for spelling out the longest, filthiest sentence in the world, if they just sit back and wait for all the fridge magnet poetry in existence to arrive (and it will). You know who is drawn to the island? People with NHS fillings. True fact.
The only thing that can stop it, is the thing that Desmond does, which is the only thing the previous button-pusher told him would end this button-pushing forever. He climbs down in the hole, takes a magical key, sticks it in the overridey hole and this causes …. well, on a physical level there’s a blinding flash of light, and earsplitting noise and everyone on the island, from the Lost Family Lostinson beach party to the Others on the Pier, doubles over in pain.
This means – I think, hang on, bear with me – that the magical pool of electromagneticness that had to be drained out of the rock by magic every 108 minutes by typing in the code has all been let go at once by turning a key, and now it isn’t there anymore, it’s somewhere else. So the observation station might have been the experiment (with the reports going no where) and this might have been the real thing because while that was fake, this was real although now it is not neccessary to do the button anymore because of what Desmond just did, killing himself in the process. I think.
Just trying to put this down on screen, meanwhile, made me feel stupid. So I went and drew this bunny.
To make me feel better when Losts are making me feel stupid. So remember that, from here on in, whenever things get a bit complex: The bunny isn’t judgy. The bunny thinks you’re great. No matter how confused you might be right now? That bunny? That bunny loves you.
flashbacks
Are Desmonds. Desmond is discharged dishonourably from the Royal Scots Guard. Outside, he is met by his girlfriend’s unhappy father, who tries to bribe him to keep away from his daughter, and is also Alan Dale, Jim Robinson of Neighbours. Of course he is Alan Dale, Jim Robinson of Neighbours. Every show of the last ten years is contractually obliged to feature Alan Dale. It is the law.
Desmond runs away to America, where he, by chance, meets Libby, who lends him a couple of dollars for a coffee, and then gives him her ex-husband’s boat to sail around the world in. His ex-girlfriend Penny turns up just before he sets off in the boat, and says something soppy. HE still goes in the boat. In the middle of doing that, there is a storm, and he arrives on the island. Taken in by the previous button-pusher, the ways of button pushing are explained to him, and he becomes the button-pusher, after one day killing the old button-pusher when the old button-pusher (who I *think* might have been the man who introduced Sayid to the Joy of Torture) tried to nick P Diddy’s yacht.
Although before he did this, he explained all the shit that went into what happened above.
Epilogue
No, seriously, an epilogue
Two random European dudes were in some kind of arctic monitoring station. They picked up a huge wave of electromagnetism, they picked up a yellow emergency phone and called … Desmond’s ex-girlfriend.
Everyone still with me?
Fucking marvellous.
Things I learnt while watching this episode
1) There are the remains of a giant statue along the coastline of Island Island. It is a foot, in a sandal.
2) If you follow a compass bearing of 325,
3) Once you leave, you can never get back. Hotel California.
4) Darth Other considers the Others ‘the good guys’.
5) “Smells like Carrots.” That’s what one snowman said to the other snowman. That’s what passes for a password around these parts.
6) My degrees? All my fancy booklearnin’ I did? It meant nothing. NOTHING.
7) Claire and Charlie kissed.
8) Locke and Mr Eko are missing in action. We presume the whole Button Hole went boom, though – a hatch door marked QUARANTINE landed on the beach after the noise stopped.
9) Mr Friendly/Captain Birdseye’s real name is Tom. Miss Klugh’s first name is Bea. Darth Other’s first priority is evil. Eeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiilll!
Season three then, shall we?
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tellywonk is currently dressed in Thunderbolt by Hell Yeah Dude.
it’s 1:38pm and you’ve only watched 1 episode? are you even trying???
Comment by cal — January 28, 2010 @ 1:38 pm
Cal, I’m going to punch you in the nuts the next time I see you.
I HAVE GREMLINS.
Comment by Anna — January 28, 2010 @ 1:40 pm
GREMLINS!
Comment by Anna — January 28, 2010 @ 1:40 pm
can someone for whom it isn’t working possibly leave me a note of what browser they’re using or which link they’re coming here from?
It might help work out what I can do to fix it, I hope…
Thank you!
Comment by Anna — January 28, 2010 @ 2:10 pm
apollo is actually a clue
Comment by cal — January 28, 2010 @ 2:55 pm
Wow… the more I read, the more I realise I’ve forgotten everything that happened on Lost.
Btw, site wasn’t working for me in Internet Explorer, but is working in Firefox…
Comment by Bella — January 28, 2010 @ 3:34 pm
“2) While many people of the”
i need to know what this said?????
Comment by cal — January 28, 2010 @ 3:55 pm
ME TOO!
Um. While many people of the….
Serengeti live on a diet of maize and goatmeat, others order in?
Comment by Anna — January 28, 2010 @ 4:05 pm
The one week wait between episodes was torture, but the one DAY wait between your updates is far, far worse.
Watch faster.
Comment by mike — January 29, 2010 @ 3:36 am
Those Dharma Initiative training videos were so great, had forgotten all about them. Love the retro crappy VHS feel
Comment by Elliot — January 29, 2010 @ 3:49 am
Hey – sorry about the continued problems for people looking at the site in Internet Explorer. Apparently it’s a bug that happens all the time and it is fixable, and we are trying…
Well, I SAY we, my technical support-boyfriend is currently wrangling it.
VERY HARD. And I know that, because he is swearing.
Comment by Anna — January 29, 2010 @ 11:55 am
I love that your google ads are for the Beatles’ box-sets and a book on RSS by Ben Hammersley.
Comment by Tom 4 Jack Coates — January 29, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
Also stop being mean about Jack (Swoon)
Comment by Tom 4 Jack Coates — January 29, 2010 @ 12:26 pm
I can NOT stop laughing at swimmy-jins and sun-vents. I know technically they’re specific to those people but think we should petition for them to become the appropriate anatomical terms that we teach in schools and such. Watch faster please. I’m dying to read more of your lovely lovely commentary.
Comment by Becky Mochaface — January 29, 2010 @ 2:26 pm
I watched Lost until about episode 13 of this season. Then I got bored with it and stopped watching.
It must be said: I’m pretty confident that I’m enjoying your recaps more than I would have enjoyed the episodes if I’d kept watching!
Comment by Rod Begbie — January 30, 2010 @ 12:03 am
“I think this the only scene I’ve seen in the last five years. No wonder it didn’t make any sense.” No, that doesn’t. What’s this mean?
Comment by Anna F — January 30, 2010 @ 1:51 am
Oh, sorry, i meant: while flicking through tv in the last five years, this is the only thing I’ve watched for a few minutes before realising it was lost (that show I was going to come back to come day) – probably because it wasn’t a scene between the big name stars – I would have recognised them from magazines.
Comment by Anna — January 30, 2010 @ 2:01 am
Congratulations! You’ve made it through the weakest part of Lost, the middle-second-season, with its meandering, irrelevant flashbacks, the dodgy torture storyline (thanks ABC, like there wasn’t enough torture-is-OK-really propaganda on US TV that year) and the total waste of time and pointless Charlie evilness that was The Long Con.
There are a few more minor flabby bits in early third-season, but from there on it’s pretty much all chewy, chocolate-coated awesomeness!
[checks watch] so, a mere 73 episodes to watch before Tuesday huh? Good luck!
Comment by bobince — January 30, 2010 @ 3:10 pm
bobince – noooooo, not 73…
might be 73 if there had been an even 26 episodes per season, but (luckily) there weren’t.
I’m *just about* halfway.
Comment by Anna — January 30, 2010 @ 3:30 pm
it gets even better from here
but get ready for a lot more subtle connections and unexplainedness!
Comment by cal — January 30, 2010 @ 3:51 pm
[...] WHY?! | Season One |Season Two [...]
Pingback by tellywonk — January 30, 2010 @ 4:54 pm
“The Smack Marys” is a great name for a band!
Comment by Dave (not that one) — February 1, 2010 @ 9:53 am
Oh! Also, I don’t think you’ve paid enough attention to the man in the Orientation movies! Sometimes he has a fake arm, other times not! Is he Rod Hull?
Comment by Dave (not that one) — February 1, 2010 @ 10:06 am
[...] | SEASON ONE | SEASON TWO | SEASON [...]
Pingback by tellywonk — February 1, 2010 @ 11:28 am
[...] | SEASON ONE | SEASON TWO | SEASON THREE | SEASON [...]
Pingback by tellywonk — February 2, 2010 @ 9:45 am
[...] | SEASON ONE | SEASON TWO | SEASON THREE | SEASON FOUR | SEASON [...]
Pingback by tellywonk — February 3, 2010 @ 12:09 pm
[...] last five seasons of Lost before these episodes began, I have handily watched and summarised all five seasons right here. And now I’m going to be doing the Last season week by week, though [...]
Pingback by tellywonk — February 5, 2010 @ 4:36 pm