LOST: The Last Recruit - Take a leap of faith

Sun and Jin are finally reunited, and it feels so good. Zoe makes an explosive entrance. Jack doesn’t know how to dive. UnLocke has a dressing up as dead people fetish. Claire starts hanging with the popular kids. Sawyer tells Jack to walk the plank. The 815ers fill up a few more hospital beds. And who the hell’s Anakin?

Lost 6x13: The Last Recruit

This episode moved very quickly and I think they crammed a lot into it: new answers, explosions, reunions, allegiances, and captivity. Rather than the methodical pace of LOST, this felt more like a bit of a sprint to the end. Definitely seems the theory that the sidewayers are all assembling – by choice or otherwise – at the hospital is coming to be. So where to they go from here?

Thoughts? Comments? Leave them below.


2007, On the island:
“Hello Jack. I was hoping you’d come. I think we have some catching up to do.” UnLocke is so…rational and almost polite. It’s hard to fathom that he’s this pure evil everyone’s been warned about. Jack asks why Smokey chose Locke, and he answers, “because he was stupid enough to believe that he’d been brought here for a reason, because he pursued that belief until it got him killed, and because you were kind enough to bring his body back here in a nice wooden box.” UnLocke owns up to taking the appearance of Christian, but claims everything he’d done was to help him get off the island.

Question: So Smokey was every apparition? Harper the therapist? Dave? Kate's horse? Yemi, Eko's brother? Tall Walt?

Explaining that they all need to leave together, UnLocke becomes frustrated when Jack questions this, stating that Locke believed in the island. But UnLocke dismisses the former ‘renter’ in the body he now occupies as a sucker.

UnLocke hears someone in the jungle and calls out for the hiding Claire. She says Jack’s her brother, and UnLocke leaves them to talk. She asks if he fessed up about posing as Christian, and says she gave up hope he’d ever come back, but says she’s happy to see him again. Claire tells him that the moment he talked to UnLocke, he was with him, like it or not.

Nerd alert: Claire touched Jack when they were talking. Is this another moment of touching having some significance, as with UnLocke’s hand grabbing?

Sawyer is explaining the plan to take Widmore’s sub off the island to Hurley, including why he’s not including Sayid in the plan. Hurley reminds him that people can be brought back from the dark side…like Anakin. UnLocke returns to camp, announcing, “It’s so nice to have everybody together again.”


Nerd alert: When Jack and UnLocke walk into the jungle to catch up, it’s pitch black out. When they return, it’s bright and sunny.

Confiding in Jack, Kate says about Sayid, “he’s different now.” Jack’s thoughtful reply, “I guess we’re all different now.” (Did that feel a little earnest, like from some high school performance of “Our Town”?) Zoe comes charging into the UnLocke Flock camp asking to see the man in charge. She demands what he’s stolen from them – Desmond – back. She radios to her people and suddenly a missle flies in and explodes just a few yards from them. She hands UnLocke a walkie talkie and tells him to call when he’s ready for them to pick Desmond up. UnLocke uses his wooden staff to smash the walkie.


Nerd alert: We’ve learned that Smokey is afraid of technology in the past, going back to our first encounter with him in what we thought was Jacob’s cabin. (Can we assume Jacob has a similar distrust of technology?)

Jacob’s prepping the team for the journey, and asks Sawyer to use the sailboat to get to the Hydra Island. Sawyer asks Kate to come along. UnLocke pulls Sayid aside to talk, and Sawyer does the same with Jack, filling him in on the plot to steal the sub. He says that they are not taking Sayid or Claire, because he’s a zombie and she’s gone crazy. UnLocke tells Sayid that he has to kill Desmond if he wants to see Nadia again.

At the well, Desmond knows Sayid is there to kill him and asks him what he offered him to kill him. Desmond asks where Nadia is now, and asks how he knows UnLocke can bring her back. He answers that UnLocke brought him back. But Desmond questions what Sayid will tell her when she asks what Sayid did to be with her again. And under that zombie exterior, beat human heart as (we assume) he didn’t kill Desmond.


On the beach, Sawyer reveals his plan to Kate and the deal he cut with Widmore, and Kate is furious that Claire isn’t part of the plan. But Sawyer explains Claire’s too far gone. The two of them swim out to the sailboat.

Jack asks Claire why she’s with UnLocke, and her reply is that he was the only one who didn’t abandon her. UnLocke falls back, and Jack, Hurley, Sun and Lapidus make for the dock in a map Sawyer gave him.

Running into Sayid in the jungle, UnLocke asks if Desmond is dead. Sayid tells him to go and check. (Really, if it’s that important that he’s dead, shouldn’t UnLocke have gone all Smokey to go see for himself?) They walk off to get to the plane.

Jack’s team arrive at the dock where Sawyer and Kate are now docked. Claire shows up almost immediately behind them and Kate tires to talk her down off the ledge by offering her a slot on the plane so she can rescue and raise Aaron. Kate apologizes and convinces Claire to come along with them.

On the sailboat, Sawyer goes to Jack to talk with him in private, but Jack explains that it doesn’t feel right to leave the island. He believes that they were brought there to do something special, and Sawyer demands he either come around or get off the boat. Jack does a dainty little jump into the waves below to swim back to the main island and UnLocke. Kate tells Sawyer that they have to go back to get him. He replies, “We’re done going back, Kate.”


Jack swims up onto the beach by the still-patient UnLocke. And Sawyer’s crew swim up onto the beach at the Hydra Island and are met with a welcome party of guns. Zoe recognizes Sawyer and radios to Widmore. And just then – finally – Jin walks onto the beach, and he and Sun are reunited. Sun can suddenly speak English again, and for some strange reason, they have a full conversation in English instead of Korean.


Widmore gives Zoe the order to capture all of them, and Zoe orders the first missile, which explodes on the beach, sending Jack flying and causing him to lose his hearing. UnLocke picks him up on his shoulders and carries Jack to safety, saying, “It’s going to be alright. You’re with me now.”

Question: Is it possible Jack died and was touched by UnLocke, therefore infecting him?





2004, Los Angeles:
In an ambulance on the way to the hospital, Ben is riding along with Locke. Ben reassures him. As the gurney is being wheeled into the hospital, Sun’s gurney is being wheeled alongside his, and she wigs out at seeing John.

Question: The island has bled further into the sideways reality here, with Sun acknowledging that Locke (or rather UnLocke) is someone she should fear.


Det. James Ford offers Kate an apple and reads the list of charges, but Kate denies she did wrong. He asks if she thinks it’s weird that they were on the same flight and she ran into his car. She speculates though that he didn’t arrest her because he didn’t want anyone to know he was in Australia.
Question: Is the apple a reference to Eve’s apple?


Miles comes in with a new case – the Keamy crew murdered at the restaurant and Sun shot. Miles has the ATM surveillance tape which shows Sayid as the shooter.


Claire arrives in the lobby of an office building to meet with the Western Pacific Adoption Agency. Desmond arrives at the same moment to see a lawyer and recognizes her from baggage claim. (What a coincidence! They’re both on the 15th floor.) He coerces her to see his lawyer to discuss the adoption. Ilana walks out of her office and is shocked to see Claire in her lobby. Ilana tells Claire that they’ve been looking for her.

Nerd alert: Law firm is Sweetzer & Verdansky. And we now know Ilana’s last name is Verdansky. The coffee shop Penny told Desmond they'd meet on was on Sweetzer & Melrose, but I'm not seeing a connection. And while there's not a Verdansky connection I've found, there is a Vladimir Vernadsky who was "a Russian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism." Or that could just be another coincidence.


Question: Desmond was there exclusively to drive her into Ilana’s hands, right? He's like Mrs. Hawking now, trying to steer people toward their destiny, it seems, even if by force.

At Nadia’s house, Sayid bursts in to pack and flee. Miles rings the bell and Sayid runs out the back, but he’s apparently no match for a garden hose and Ford, who trips and then cuffs him.

Question: They i.d.’d Sayid from an ATM photo and found him that quickly? Really?


At the same office building, Jack and his son David arrive, and suddenly, David is overly concerned for his father’s happiness. (Did it seem to anyone else like too quick a transformation in their relationship?) Ilana escorts them into a conference room where Claire is sitting and waiting. She explains to Jack that Christian was her father too, and Jack gets an emergency call from the hospital to come operate on Locke’s spine.

Sun wakes up, and Jin tells her that despite the gunshot wound to her abdomen, that the baby is fine. Jack and David are passing Sun’s room on their way to the procedure that he has to perform – surgery on John Locke. Jack looks at the x-rays of John Locke and realizes it’s his Dural sac that’s been “obliterated”. He realizes that it’s John Locke on the operationg table.

Nerd alert: The injury Jack inflicted on his future wife, Sarah, when she was in for surgery was to her dural sac.

Nerd alert: Jack has another mirror moment in this episode, staring at the mirror under John Locke's face.


Drop some comments below. Next week's ep is a repeat, by the way. (Kind of looking forward to a break, actually...)

-Sean Salo

Welcome back to the circus.

Clousseau is still batsh!t crazy. Dogen and Lennon take a swim. Sayid switches teams. Smokey does a little spring cleaning around the Temple. And Kate gets sucked along for the ride.

LOST 6x06: Sundown

For someone who grew up listening to the mopiest of mope-rock to call something dark, you know it had to be DARK! Perhaps the darkest episode of LOST to date, and sets the possibility that the show will end on a down note. Certainly not what most fans would expect, but when have LOST’s writers not thrown a wrench in the works for fans? A more interesting concept, though, is that the flash sideways is actually a culmination of the deals done with UnLocke and Jacob. Nadia is still alive, but Sayid can’t be with her. If this is the case, I worry about what will happen to Claire who believes UnLocke will get her Aaron back. I’m feeling like we’re going to see some merging of the two stories within the next 10 weeks, where the realization that the deals done for happiness weren't all they were chalked up to be. It’s a Wonderful LOST. (Zuzu’s petals!)

Drop some comment love below.

2004, Los Angeles

Sayid arrives at Nadia’s house, but in this reality, she’s married to Sayid’s brother Omar, with two kids. (Torture for the torturer…) Sayid says he’d been translating contracts for an oil company. Omar’s business has been taking off, or so he claims.

Question: Was the oil company Sayid claimed to work for owned by Widmore?

Question: Was Nadia alive, but married and not with Sayid, because of the deal Sayid did with UnLocke on the island for Nadia to live if he followed him?

Omar wakes Sayid in the night to ask him to help by killing a gangster who lent him money and is putting the lean on him, even after re-paying his debt. Sayid says he’s not that guy anymore. The next day, however, Omar was beaten outside his store and Nadia begs him at the hospital to not take vengeance, but instead to go home and wait for her children and make them feel safe. (Jack was one of the doctors in the hospital.)

Nadia returns from the hospital and says that she knows Omar was responsible for getting beaten, but she clearly knows that Sayid is in love with her and doesn’t understand why he pushed her toward Omar, and he says it’s because he doesn’t deserve her.

Nerd alert: Sayid was repairing a vase that was broken with the boomerang that he brought the kids from Australia. A boomerang, in theory, always comes back to where it’s thrown – perhaps a metaphor for what may be happening on the show with a sideways timeline that may eventually be launching back with the earlier timeline. Or could it simply be an allusion to the fact that Sayid has come back to Nadia, where he started/belongs?

Sayid goes to meet his niece and nephew at the school bus and a carful of goons take him to the mob boss, who turns out to be Martin Keamy, the freighter mercenary. He tries to shake down Sayid for the cash that Omar owes him, threatening Omar’s family. And Sayid goes all Sayid on them, killing all three.

Question: In this sideways reality, did Keamy seem to be much more mortal than on the island when he seemed semi-indestructible?

As Keamy goes down, Sayid hears struggling from the walk-in freezer, and opens it to find someone being held captive. None other than Jin!

2007, On the island

Sayid pushes Dogen for answers on why he was tortured, but Dogen says that the tests were to determine Sayid’s evil-factor, and the scales tipped toward evil. Sayid claims, as always, that he’s a good man, but then he and Dogen get into a mixed-martial arts brawl. Dogen lunges to stab Sayid in the throat, when the baseball on his desk rolled off, and he commands Sayid to leave.

Clousseau and UnLocke are in the Temple garden area, standing on the line of ash. He tells her she needs to go in, but she says only if he keeps his promise to get Aaron back. “I always do what I say,” he replies.

Question: Does this set Claire up for disappointment in the sideways timeline? Sayid’s life is a disappointment, though Nadia was alive. What will happen to Claire and Aaron there?

Sayid tells Miles that he’s been banished because he’s evil. Miles tells him that he was dead for two hours and they were as shocked as anyone when he came back to life, so he wasn’t brought back by the Others. Clousseau bursts in to the Temple walls and says that UnLocke wants to see Dogen. He knows he’ll be killed if he goes, so she tells him to send someone that UnLocke won’t kill.

Dogen tells Lennon to put Clousseau in the hole and get Jack and Hurley. When Lennon says that they’re missing, Dogen wigs out and tells him to find them. Then he tells Sayid to come with him because “things have changed.” He tells Sayid that she’s under the influence of an angry man. He pulls out an ornate box (any ideas on this???) from a planter with a special dagger in it, which he asks Sayid to use to kill someone who he sees and knows is dead before he can speak, or the man “won’t stop until he has destroyed every living thing on this island.” Sayid asks why he’d do this for him, and Dogen tells him to prove that he’s still got good in his soul…by killing something. (Poor Sayid.)

Nerd alert: Ben said virtually the same line, “If you phone her boat, every single living person on this island will be killed” in the Through the Looking Glass season 3 finale episode to Desmond.

Kate arrives back at the Temple and Miles sympathetically says “Sawyer sent you packing.” He tells her that Claire was there, “acting all weird…still hot though.”

Sayid is in the jungle when suddenly everything goes quiet – no bird or bug noise – and then Smokey appears as UnLocke. Sayid stabbed him right in the chest with Dogen’s dagger, but he’d paused until Locke said “Hello Sayid.” UnLocke pulls the dagger out of his chest and hands back the dagger.

UnLocke says that Dogen sent Sayid out assuming he’d be killed. UnLocke promises him anything he wants to deliver a message to Dogen, including letting him see Nadia again. Sayid returns and delivers the message in the rain to the Others: Jacob is dead and they are free to leave the island with him, those who don’t will die. They were given until sundown to decide.

Kate gets Lennon to take her to see Clousseau, who is in a pit (“It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again...”) in the temple humming “Catch a Falling Star” – the song she’d sung to Aaron, and the song that Kate sang to Aaron after they were rescued – to herself. Kate tells Claire that she raised Aaron, though frustratingly doesn’t tell her that Mrs. Littleton is raising him. Claire says with a creepy grin, “He’s coming Kate. He’s coming and they can’t stop him.”

The Others are in a panic and most of them are leaving the Temple, as Lennon tries to get them to stay. Sayid brings the dagger back to Dogen, who tells Sayid about an accident he had after celebrating a promotion in which his son was killed. Jacob came to him in the hospital and said to him that he would save his son’s life, though he would have to come to the island and work for him and never see the boy again. Sayid says he made a similar bargain with UnLocke. Dogen points out that it’s sundown and Sayid throws him into the pool and drowns him. Lennon confronts Sayid, who then slits his throat. And the Smokey train pulls into the station, wreaking havoc unlike anything we’ve ever seen on LOST. Dozens of men and women are killed as Kate goes to look for Clousseau, when Ilana, Ben, Sun and Lapidus burst in to try to save them. Ben goes after Sayid, who maniacally smiles as he tells Ben there’s no time left for him.

Miles asks Sun where Jin is, who was thrilled to know he was still alive, and Ilana pressed on the wall at the spot that Jacob had told Hurley to look for. They open a secret door and are safe.

Nerd alert: The symbol was a Shen ring. The shen ring is most typically carried by one of our favorite LOST god references, Horus, but also Nekhbet. When the shen ring encircled objects, it was seen to eternally protect them. Is this what the rings of ash were meant to be?

The camera pans the destruction left behind, as Sayid, Clousseau and Kate join UnLocke and the rest of his now-followers.

Question: Did they look a bit more rag tag, as if they were the crew that we saw walking through the jungle when Mr. Eko and Jin were searching for Michael in the “…And Found” episode, back in season 2, when they saw the barefoot Others walking and a child holding a grubby teddy bear?

Comment with your thoughts below!

You've got ink on your forehead.

Jack pulls an Alice and goes through the looking-glass. Claire tries out as a “Before” model for a Pantene commercial, and then gets all “The Shining” on Justin. Jacob looks constipatedly at Hurley throughout the episode. Jin finds out that Alt Dogen imparts parenting wisdom. Oh, and Alt Jack’s got a teenage son. No biggie.

LOST 6x05: The Lighthouse

Vacation and work challenges have delayed the publishing of this recap. (Ep. 6x04 will go up next - sorry.) The season sadly is chugging along, with another killer episode in The Lighthouse. We find out what Infected Claire (Clousseau) has been doing on the island all these years – mostly going batshit while evading the Others – and we learn of a mysterious lighthouse that’s somehow been hidden from view in all their time there.

What did you think? Hit me with your comments below

2004 Alt Timeline

Jack’s on the phone with his mother discussing his father’s will, and somehow becomes acutely aware of his appendix scar. He asks his mom about it and it seems as though he doesn’t recall having the operation, although he was apparently 7 or 8 at the time. A kid that age would have a vivid memory of such an event. Is this a nod to the fact that this is a false timeline?

Jack arrives at the St. Mary’s Academy and picks up his son (what?!), David. (David – another Biblical name.) David storms up to his room in Jack’s house and is giving Jack the cold shoulder. Jack picks up The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll and asks David if he’s reading it, reminding him that he used to read the book to him when he was little. He said that he always wanted to hear about Kitty and Snowdrop.

Nerd alert: Kitty and Snowdrop were Alice’s black and white kittens in Through the Looking-Glass. Black and white are the recurring theme on LOST. Good vs. evil. In the book, the black kitten, Kitty, is connected to the Red Queen and Snowdrop, the white kitten, to the White Queen. Wikipedia has the following to say about Through the Looking-Glass: “Through the Looking-Glass [is] a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May, (May 4), uses frequent changes in size as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of playing cards; the second opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later, on November 4 (the day before Guy Fawkes Night), uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on.”

Nerd alert: Post Oceanic 6 rescue in LA, Jack was reading Alice in Wonderland to Aaron. So as things are mirrored in this alt timeline, it makes sense, I guess, that he would have read it as well to David. Alice has been a consistent theme throughout the series.

David storms off and Jack tries asks what’s wrong. David replies, “we see each other like once a month, can’t we just…get through it?”

Mrs. Shephard offers Jack a drink while they are looking for Christian’s will, which he refuses. They find the will on a shelf, and as she reads it, she asks Jack if he’s ever heard of a Claire Littleton. (Question: Was there a slight glimpse of recognition when she mentioned Claire’s name?)

Jack gets home with pizza and David’s gone. He goes to his mom’s house to look for him and hear’s an answering machine message confirming David’s audition slot at a music conservatory. The second message was one from Jack calling from Sydney when he went to pick up his father’s body. The message, I believe, was the message we saw Jack leave from Sydney in the original timeline, though the original message clearly couldn’t have been for David.

Nerd alert: The house number is 233 - one of the few references to the numbers we've seen in the alt timeline). And the key to David's mom's house is under a rabbit. Another allusion to Alice - down the rabbit hole and/or a visual reference to Ben's rabbit on the island?

Jack rushes to the conservatory to hear the end of David’s audition and is clearly dumbfounded that he had no idea this was happening or that music was this important to him. A random kid tells him that David’s really good. Then the boy’s father – Dogen! – says that the kids are too young for this pressure and that it’s tough to not be able to help. (A nod to Jack’s role of the perpetual “fixer”?)

As David is unchaining his bike, Jack commends his performance and they have their first real conversation of the episode. David says that he never told his father that he was still playing piano because he didn’t want to Jack to see him fail. He tells David that his own father used to say that he “didn’t have what it takes” and he spent his whole life carrying that around with him. But Jack tells him that he just wants to be a part of his life and all a wall seems to have been broken down.

Nerd alert: The sign at the entry to the audition said in large letters: "Welcome Candidates".

Question: Is David possibly a Candidate or future Candidate in this timeline? Both Jack and Christian have connections to the island, and although we don't know for sure yet, we can assume Jack's granddad did as well.

2007 On Island

- Jack and Hurley sory arc:

Dogen tells Jack that he has free will, but he would try to stop him if he did. He asks if Kate, Jin or Sawyer are coming back, and Jack says that they likely aren’t.

Hurley enters the Temple to look for some food, and Jacob is there waiting to give Hurley an assignment to help someone who is trying to get to the island find it.

Question: Who needs to get to the island?

Sayid confronts Jack with a laundry list of questions about why he’s being stared at to what the pill was that they wanted him to take, and Jack tells him that they were going to poison him.

Hurley is in a hallway looking at a wall of hieroglyphs, when Dogen questions what he’s doing there. Jacob appears and tells Hurley to say that he is a candidate, and Dogen backs off. Jacob says that Hurley should have brought Jack too and tells him how to convince Jack to come along.

Outside, Hurley tells Jack, “You have what it takes.” Clearly this was what Jack needed to hear, for reasons yet unknown, and Jack and Hurley set off.

Jack and Hurley run into Kate in the jungle, and Kate sets off to find Claire, even though Jack says that there’s something wrong with her.

Hurley and Jack are talking and Hurley asks why he and Kate never got together and had kids. Jack says he thinks he’d be a terrible dad, but Hurley disagrees. They come upon Shannon’s asthma inhaler at the caves they were living after the 815 crash. Hurley sees the Adam & Eve skeleton and poses the question that we’ve been pondering for years: “What if we time traveled again to - like - dinosaur times and then we died and got buried here. What if these skeletons are us?”

As they trek through the jungle some more Hurley remarks that it’s like old times – on a mission in the jungle they don’t quite understand. Hurley tells Jack he came back because Jacob asked him to. Jack says he thought the island could fix him.

They arrive at a lighthouse and Jack asks how they could never have seen it, to which Hurley replies that guesses they weren’t looking for it.

Question: Didn’t the lighthouse appear in strangely good shape for as old as the architecture appeared to be?

Hurley and Jack ascend the lighthouse and find a fire pit and mirrors – the design certainly seems old. Hurley checks the notes on his arm and pulls the chain to orient the lighthouse to 108^o. Jack sees images in the mirrors and then realizes his name is on the dial at 23^o and turns the dial – at which point he sees a reflection of his house. Amazed that some man he doesn’t recall meeting has apparently been watching him for…years?...he smashes the mirrors with a telescope.

Nerd alert: It seems Jacob has been using the lighthouse to watch the Candidates through the "looking-glass".

Question: Just a continuity error that “Shephard” and some of the other 815ers’ names seem to be so much more darkly written than the other names on the dial and in the cave that UnLocke took Sawyer to?

Nerd alert: Thanks to the diligence of others, here are the rest of the names that appear on the dial.

Jacob shows up and asks Hurley how it went. Although he says he failed, Jacob shows Hurley that he wanted Jack to understand how important he is by seeing the lighthouse. Jacob tells Hurley that he had to get them far away from the Temple because someone bad was coming there, and that they don’t have time to warn the folks at the temple.

- Clousseau’s camp story arc:

Clousseau frees Jin from the bear trap, but passes out from the pain after she says she’s been out in the woods since they left the island.

Jin wakes up in Clousseau’s camp as she’s bringing in Justin, who apparently was playing possum when she shot at him and Aldo in the jungle. She ties him up and Jin realizes that Clousseau’s not right. She pushes Justin for answers on where her son is, thinking that the Others have him. Justin warns Jin that they’re not safe with her.

Nerd alert: The actor playing Justin, Dayo Ade, also played “BLT” on the original late 80s/early 90s Canadian cult kids dramas, Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High. (Zit Remedy!!!)

Justin tries to convince Jin to untie him, but Claire comes in to tend to and stitch up Jin’s wounds. She says that she’s had to move around the jungle a lot to hide from the Others. She says that Christian and “her friend” told her that the Others took Aaron.

Clousseau is interrogating Justin who instists they’ve never had Aaron. Jin steps in to say that Kate’s been raising him and Clousseau is confused and upset. So she axes Justin in the gut, to Jin’s amazement.

Question: Why didn’t Jin explain that Kate was trying to protect Aaron and that they hadn’t seen Claire, so they could rightfully have assumed she was dead?

Jin tells Clousseau he was lying about Kate and Aaron to try to save Justin’s life, and that the Others do have Aaron and he says he’ll take her to the Temple through a secret entrance. She gets all wiggy and says that if he hadn’t been lying that she’d have killed Kate. Then UnLocke walks in. “John?!”, Jin says, amazed. Claire replies, “That’s not John. That’s my friend.”

Drop some comment love below.

-Sean Salo

No. I'm not a zombie.

Sayid gets some complementary electrolysis and a purple nurple from Dogen. Jack’s pill-popping habit goes to extremes. Dr. Ethan Rom Goodspeed does obstetrics right this time. The new flight clearly crossed the International Month Line. Claire takes the place of Rousseau – I claim dibs on naming her Clousseau!

LOST 6x03: What Kate Does

This isn’t my favorite episode, but it was a solid episode where we not only see how the two realities are diverging more, but also learning more about just how different they are. We learn nothing about what's going on with UnLocke, Richard and crew. More to follow on them next week, according to the previews.

What did you think? Comment below with thoughts, questions, recipes or social security numbers.

2007 On the island

Sayid awakens in the Temple, and Lennon and Dogen are genuinely concerned. Sawyer plans his escape, bitter than an Iraqi torturer gets a second chance, while Juliet’s in the ground.

Miles to Jack: “As you can see, Hugo here has assumed a leadership position, so that’s pretty great.” Sayid thanks Jack for saving his life, which Jack denies. They ask Sayid to come with them for a few questions alone.

Nerd alert: This was the same thing they were “asking” of Jack just before Sayid woke up. Was he poised to be tortured until Sayid awoke? Did they think Jack was “infected”? (Thanks Phil)

In an un-LOST-like turn of events, Jack is suddenly filled with questions – “Who are you? Why are you holding us here?...Something tells me you’re not going to tell us anything.” (No answers, of course.) They try to subdue Jack, and Sawyer breaks it up with a gunshot in the air. Dogen begs him to stay as he exits the Temple, and tells them not to come after him. And yet Kate goes following after him as always.

Dogen blows a black powder all over Sayid (the ash to keep in the smoke monster?) and shocks him, then uses a red hot poker on his skin (trying to see if the monster is strong enough to come out yet?). Lennon says that Sayid passed the test, but then says to Dogen, “I just lied to him, didn’t I?”. “Yes.”

Nerd alert: Giving Sayid electric shocks was the same thing that Rousseau did to him when she held him captive in the jungle. Clearly now, she was checking for “infection” then. So it appears they are looking for Smokey in Sayid. (Smayid?)

Kate and Jin are walking with two Others. One of them, Aldo, tells her that they’re concerned about the black smoke pillar. Jin asks if Ajira 316 that landed, and the 2^nd Other, Justin, almost gives up that it had. Kate almost trips up a trap that Jin said was one of Rousseau’s. Justin said that she’s been dead for years. Aldo reminds her that she cold cocked him when she escaped from the polar bear cages several years ago – and she does the same to him again, and then trips up the trap and knocks Justin out. She tells Jin that she’s escaping.

Sayid’s brought out from Dogen’s torture room, and Jack goes back to see him. They don’t try to stop him. They tell Jack that Sayid is infected and give Jack a pill to give him. They say that they weren’t torturing Sayid, but diagnosing him, and that he needs to take the pill willingly. If he does so, he’ll redeem himself from getting Sayid shot.

Question: Did they want Jack to give him the pill because they can’t kill him – is Jack their loophole to kill the smoke monster?

Question: What was in the pill? Was it the black ash?

Question: Does Dogen fear technology like Jacob did in the cabin? He was using a typewriter and appeared to have an abacus on his desk.

Miles asks Sayid, “So, nothing?...there wasn’t anything? No white light?...no dead relatives?” The only thing he remembers was being shot. Hurley asks if he was a zombie. “No. I am not a zombie.”

Question: Moment of levity, or is Sayid a “zombie”? Miles definitely appears concerned, and Dogen believes he’s been infected. Or is it just a nod to the fans who’ve been expecting a “zombie season” since a script page was leaked in the first season with a reference to a zombie Vincent, the dog.?

Jack shows Sayid the pill. But Sayid says he won’t take it unless Jack thinks its safe. Jack tells him that he didn’t have anything to do with saving him and he trusts Jack.

Kate tells Jin that she’s not actually looking for Sawyer, but that she’s trying to escape. (coughbullshitcough) He asks who she cares about her. Kate finds Sawyer at the house he and Juliet had lived in and he’s dug out a shoebox with an engagement ring in it. Kate starts to walk away, realizing that he had actually been in love with Juliet.

On the dock Kate tries to take blame for Juliet’s death for bringing them back to the island from the sub. But Sawyer takes the full blame as he throws the ring into the lagoon. Kate realizes she’s been a fool to think he’d pined over her all those years.

Dogen tells Jack that he doesn’t speak English because he has to remain separate from the people he’s in charge of – that it makes it easier when they don’t like the decisions he makes for them Dogen says he was brought to the island, like everybody else. He tries to get Jack to trust him to give Sayid the pill, and it doesn’t work. Instead, Jack takes the pill himself. Dogen goes medieval on him to get him to spit it out. And he tells Jack that the pill was poison.

Question: Was there the protective ash in the capsule? If not, what was the medication in there?

Question: What was the significance of the baseball Dogen was bouncing? Was it related to the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 – a game that Ben had made a point of referencing to Jack when he was being held captive? Reference to Christian Shephard, big Sox fan?

Dogen gives Jack tea and tells him that they think Sayid has been “claimed” with a darkness that will overtake him. And he knows this because it happened to Jack’s sister. (Jack’s tears almost started flowing again.)

Jin encounters Justin and the Aldo, and tries to run, but gets caught in a bear trap. Just then, the Others are shot – by Claire looking raggedy and a mess. And Jin and Claire look at each other with recognition.

Question: So has Claire literally replaced Rousseau? (Clousseau?!) She is on the lamb from the Others, living in isolation, setting up traps on the island. She was also pregnant when she arrived on the island, successfully delivered her baby, and had her baby taken from her.

Random question: All of a sudden, the birds are chirping like mad on the island. But they never did after the crash of 815. It was typically almost bird-less. Why? There was speculation that Walt had something to do with the lack of birds, but is this the case?

2004 Los Angeles

Claire’s taxi driver nearly runs over Arzt. The driver runs out of the car, and Kate hops behind the wheel and takes off, leaving Claire behind, but keeping her purse and suitcase.

Kate gives a mechanic $200 to get off her cuffs and she changes into Claire’s clothes. She finds the photo of Claire pregnant in the bag, along with a large stuffed killer whale doll.

Kate finds Claire – still standing where she was dropped off, I guess? – and Claire says that she was on her way to Langdon Street in Brentwood to find the adoptive parents, who didn’t show up at the airport to pick her up.

Claire has a full-on case of the Stockholm Syndrome and is now BFF with Katie. They arrive at the Baskums’ house (the couple who were adopting Claire’s baby), and Mrs. Baskum tells her that her husband has left her. She meant to call Claire to, I guess, say that she can’t go through with the adoption any longer.

Questions: What forces were working to split the Baskums up? And what made Claire go into labor at that very moment?

They arrive at the hospital – Angel of Mercy – and her doctor is Ethan Goodspeed, aka Ethan Rom! He’s examining her when the fetal monitor flatlines, but he finds a heartbeat again after she yells his future name, Aaron. Turned out that the monitor was in the wrong place. She decides not to deliver early, and they try to slow her down with various drugs.

A Detective Rasmussen shows up looking for a Joan Hart (the name Kate used when signing in to the hospital – a reference to the actress Melissa Joan Hart, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”?) and Claire protects her by saying she was just a cab driver. She offers Kate her credit card before she leaves.

Nerd alert: the date on the sonogram printout was 10/22/04. The date of the original Flight 815 was 9/22/04. So this is a full month later. How is that possible that all of these folks’ timelines were pushed a full month? This probably wasn’t even Flight 815. The plane itself was different (rows of 3-4-3 vs. 2-3-2), none of our 815ers were sitting in rows with the numbers, etc.

Nerd alert: The letters directly under the fetus’ image were: WRKSHT. The corresponding numbers to those letters in the alphabet are 23-18-11-19-8-20

Drop some comments below. Namaste.

- Sean Salo