LOST: Pros and Cons

Sawyer and Miles play cops and robbers in LA. UnLocke plays Sawyer and Kate. Clousseau tucks in her furry, animal carcass. Kate makes s’mores on the beach. Charlotte cleans up nicely. A Tina Fey wannabe cons Sawyer. Widmore has Sawyer over to the sub for tea. And we catch up on our L.H. on the P. reruns. It’s another nail in the coffin of the final season of LOST.

Lost 6x08: Recon

Dr. Linus, last week’s episode, had some of the more incredible acting we’ve seen this season, if not the series, so I was surprised that the writers didn’t give us more of a deep storyline. The fandom is mixed on this episode. I put it in the good-to-really good category, while others thought it was among the best of the season. Some cool "nerd alerts" in the flash sideways section, including what might be my first "nerd alert inside a nerd alert". (See below) All I know is that I ended the episode more excited about the promo for next week’s “Ab Aeterno” episode focusing on Richard Effing Alpert!

So what did you think? Take a read and leave your comments in the bowl below, and don’t forget to flush!


2007, On island:

Sawyer wakes Jin in Clousseau’s camp, telling him he’s with Locke, just as Team UnLocke arrives. Jin says he can’t leave if Sun might be on the island, and Sawyer promises he won’t leave if she’s there. When Kate asks, Clousseau says that the furry skeleton doll in the cradle, she answers “It’s all I had.” (Creeeepy.)


UnLocke addresses the clan, telling them that those who stayed at the Temple were all killed by the Black Smoke Monster. But in a strangely caring manner, UnLocke tells Zack and Emma that he is going to do everything in his power to take care of them all. Kate says that Jack and Hurley made it out, but she didn’t know what happened to Miles. “So you’re with Locke now?”, she asks. “I ain’t with anybody, Kate.”

Later, walking through the jungle, UnLocke tells the flock to set up camp, and Sawyer questions him. UnLocke pulls him aside and chides him for interrupting. “Sorry, I forgot my manners.” “I forgive you.” (UnLocke forgives Sawyer, and we’ve seen UnLocke as Smokey as the judge, doling out a death sentence or forgiveness.) UnLocke admits that he’s “the smoke thing” and killed the Others because they would have otherwise killed him.

Sawyer’s told to take the boat over to Hydra Island and do reconnaissance on the people remaining there from Ajira 316. He tells Sawyer that he’s sending him because he’s the best liar he’s ever met. And once he completes this, they’ll get off the island. (See the On Hydra Island section.)


Kate asks a catatonic Sayid if he believes UnLocke will get them off the island. Sayid answers all zombie-like that he does, when Clousseau jumps Kate and tries to cut her throat. Sayid doesn’t move a muscle to help – no one does – but UnLocke steps in to save her - and slaps Clousseau something awful, and tells her he’ll deal with her later, and asks Kate if she’s alright. “No, I’m not alright.”

Question: Did Locke tell Clousseau to cool it because he needed Kate? Or did he put her up to attacking Kate in the first place? It seemed odd to me that no one there came to Kate’s defense.


UnLocke apologies to Kate for Clousseau’s behavior and takes the blame for the misunderstanding. He says that he needed her to focus on something, and he gave her something to hate. “That’s very insightful coming from a dead man.” “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he answers. He promises to protect Kate and offers to show her where Sawyer is.

Clousseau finds Kate in the jungle and apologizes to her and thanks her for taking care of Aaron.

Question: Was the attack by Claire a rouse to get Kate to trust the UnLocke flock? No one came to her aid except UnLocke himself.

Sitting on the beach, UnLocke tells Kate that he sent Sawyer to Hydra Island. He tells her that his mother was crazy and that he “had some growing pains” that he’s “still trying to work [his] way through”, that “could have been avoided if things had been different.” He says he’s telling her because Aaron now has a crazy mother too. This was some great acting by Terry O'Quinn.

Nerd alert: So if we go back to the Egyptian mythology, we can assume that UnLocke is Set, I believe. Set was the god of storms and chaos. Set's mother's name was Nut. (A fun play on words by the writers, as UnLocke was talking about his mother being crazy?) Set was an enemy to Horus, and the gods tired of them fighting one another over control of Egypt.

2007 On Hydra Island:


Once there, Sawyer visits the bear cages and sees the dress Ben made Kate wear. He gets a lump in his throat at the sight.


Sawyer comes across the Ajira plane, and follows a trail in the sand to a pile of corpses from Flight 316, when he sees a bespectacled woman running away. He chases after her and, and she tells him, “I’m the only one left.” She, Zoe, says that the others died when she was collecting wood, but then asks if he was alone or if he and his friends have more guns.


Turns out that Zoe is doing reconnaissance on Sawyer, and he pulls his gun on her. Then the now-grown up kid from “Kate and Ally” pops out of the woods with rifles trained on him.


Saywer is marched past some men setting up pylons like the ones in the perimeter fence. He’s led into the sub, where he passes a padlocked room. He asks what’s in the room and, no surprise on LOST, is told to keep walking.

Question: What – or who – is in the room? Desmond and Penny or Faraday or Mrs. Hawking, one or all of whom he would have needed to get back to the island. Another in the long string of who/what is inside: the hatch, the casket, Ben’s magical box, etc.

Widmore introduces himself and Sawyer accuses him of sending the freighter to kill them all, and Widmore says that it’s sad how little he knows. He tells him that John Locke sent him, though he knows it’s not really Locke, but offers to tell UnLocke that the coast is clear for Widmore to kill him in exchange for his friends not being killed and for safe passage off the island.

Sawyer arrives back on the island and he accuses UnLocke of not really sending him there to find the passengers from the plane. Sawyer says that Widmore won’t let them get off the island without a fight. He tells UnLocke of the deal that he made with Widmore and that they’re setting up the pylons. He admits that he told them that he’d bring UnLocke to them, but they should surprise attack.

Joining Kate by the fire, where she tells Sawyer she thinks they’re having rabbit for dinner (rabbit references are multiplying like rabbits on LOST - also a nice callback to the book in Sawyer's flash sideways, Watership Down. He tells her that Widmore is there for UnLocke, but he’s going to just let them fight it out, and while they are, they’ll escape in the sub.

2004, Los Angeles:


Sawyer is trying to pull his patented con on a woman he’s just sleps with, when she turns the table on him and says she’s onto him. Sawyer tells her that he’s a cop and then uses his safe word, LaFleur, and the LAPD burst in, led by his partner, Miles Straume. “You’re a cop?”, she asks. “Surprise.”

Nerd alert: The time was 8:42. Both numbers.

Sawyer – aka Det. James Ford – is making cold calls to various Anthony Coopers, trying to find the one who conned his family. Miles asks him what’s up and if he’s lying about anything.

Question: As Sawyer's role is opposite here, and he's a cop instead of a con man, is Miles' ability opposite, having a sense about the living?


Miles sets up Ford on a blind date and it turns out it’s with Charlotte Lewis. She works with Miles’ dad in a museum. She asks why he became a cop, and she says it was either criminal or cop, and he chose cop.

Question: Wouldn't it have made more sense for it to have been Ana Lucia, who was an LAPD cop? And weren't you hoping it would have been Juliet?

Nerd alert: Ford asks her if she’s like Indiana Jones, and she says yes. One of many Indiana Jones references on Lost, over the seasons.

They leave the restaurant before dessert and go back to his place. As she’s looking for a t-shirt, she finds a file of photos and news clippings marked “Sawyer”. He walks in on this, and throws her out.

Nerd alert: The news clipping stated that James Ford was 9 years-old at the time of his parents' murder-suicide. In the normal timeline, he was 8 when this happened. Yet another in the dates being off in this reality. (Remember that Claire's sonogram was off by a month from the actual date of the crash.)


Nerd alert: There were three books on Ford’s dresser:
• Watership Down, a story about a group of rabbits who seek to escape the destruction of their warren and a new home, while encountering perils along the way. Originally Boone’s book, Sawyer was seen reading this book on the island in season one.
• Lancelot, a book about King Arthur’s most trusted of knights. However, Lancelot betrayed Arthur, with his love affair with Queen Guinevere, the act of which led to the downfall of the kingdom of Camelot. So is Sawyer’s love of Kate going to lead to the downfall of UnLocke’s kingdom, or prevent Widmore from starting his…or both?
• A Wrinkle in Time, another book Sawyer read on the island, this book features a character named Charles Wallace Murry. Charles and his family travel to another planet where “they find that all the inhabitants behave in a mechanistic way and seem to be all under the control of a single mind...they discover a man with red eyes with telepathic abilities who can cast a hypnotic spell over their minds... Confronting IT, Meg realizes that the evil IT is unable to stand the emotion love, and by focusing all her love at Charles Wallace she is able to free him from IT's control.” Regarding Charles Wallace, he “is the youngest Murry child, the most extraordinary and the most vulnerable of the novel's human characters… Charles Wallace seldom speaks to anyone but his family, but can empathically or telepathically "read" certain people's thoughts and feelings, and has an extraordinary vocabulary. A biological "sport," he is intellectually curious, loving, and unfazed by extraordinary people and events.”

Nerd alert inside a Nerd alert!!: Wallace was the name on the dial in the lighthouse at #108. As one of the important numbers, we have yet to meet anyone on the island or off with the name Wallace. So is Wallace perhaps...Widmore?


At the police station, a man asks Sawyer about his brother who was arrested when Miles pulls Ford aside and tells him that he knows he was in Sydney and not Palm Springs, and Ford refuses to tell him anything. Miles says that he’s not Ford’s partner any more. Sawyer punches a mirror (similar to how Jack broke the mirror?)


Nerd alert: The man asking about his brother arrested on a drug charge was Charlie’s brother, Liam.

Ford gets home and pops in a TV dinner and turns on a Little House on the Prairie. In the episode, Pa is telling Half Pint that even when our loved ones die, they’re still with us in memories and in our hearts. Ford decides to go to apologize to Charlotte. He brings a single sunflower and a six-pack of beer, and she sends him packing.

Nerd alert: Sawyer told Kate that he used to watch LH on the P when he was sick (in the “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead” episode), and she made fun of him for it.

Question: With her piercing blue eyes, is it possible in the flash sideways that Charlotte and Jack were together at one point, and that she is David’s mother?


Ford explains about Anthony Cooper to Miles and says he’s going to hill him if he ever finds him, when a blue car sideswipes Ford and Miles’ car. Sawyer chases after the driver who, “son of a biiitch”, turns out to be Kate.


Nerd alert/Question: OK, this one isn’t fully fleshed out, but I’m giving this some thought. (Thanks to Phil for this one.) The story of Lilith: The mystical writing of two brothers, Jacob and Isaac, which predates Kabbalah by a few decades, states that Samael and Lilith are in the shape of an androgynous being, double-faced, born out of the emanation of the Throne of Glory and corresponding in the spiritual realm to Adam and Eve, who were likewise born as a hermaphrodite. The two twin androgynous couples resembled each other and both "were like the image of Above"; that is, that they are reproduced in a visible form of an androgynous deity.

So is it possible that Jacob and the Man In Black are the same person, explaining why they cant kill each other directly? This could explain the mirror imagery – mirrored personalities and why we are seeing all the 815ers as mirrors of themselves in the flash sideways.


Help me out with some of the questions posed, and/or tell me why you loved or hated this episode in a comment below.


- Sean Salo