Lost: Something Good Back Home

Full disclosure: I took an involuntary snooze last night during this episode, due to having been up since 5:00 AM combined with more than one/less than five glasses of wine. I watched what I missed this morning (don't even ask when I got up; you don't wanna know). It's funny--what I thought last night was a mediocre episode was actually pretty damn good this morning. I have also looked some Lost trivia up in order to write this post.

The timeline of flashforward events was tripping me up, but here's what I think is the order (Sayid and Ben not included here):

1. Hurley visits Sun.
2. Hurley sees Charlie, flips out, checks into Santa Rosa.
3. Kate's trial (could be happening while 1 and/or 2 are happening)
4. Jack visits Hurley, plays some b-ball, says he's thinking about growing a beard. Jack is already drinking in the morning.
5. Jack and Kate get together.
6. Jack visits Hurley again, Hurley is worse, has stopped taking his meds, seems resigned to the fact that he's seeing and talking to Charlie, tells Jack "You're not supposed to raise him."
7. Jack gets strung out on pills and booze, learns about someone's death, tries to commit suicide, tells Kate "We have to go back."

Incidentally, #7 is from the last episode of S3, titled "Through the Looking Glass." In last night's episode, Jack reads to Aaron from Alice in Wonderland. I flipped through previous seasons' episode titles on Lostpedia.com and recalled that the episode in which Jack first sees his father on the island is called "White Rabbit." I don't know what all this means, but I do love these little touches.

When I watched the episode last night, it didn't seem as though it was doing anything more than filling space--but it does advance a number of storylines in perhaps subtler ways. And by "subtler" I mean I wasn't sitting on the couch saying "WTF" or "Now that is some fucked-up shit" (which, since I say it a lot about this show, needs its own acronym: NTISFUS). It also serves as another set-up chapter--some big stuff is going to go down very soon. Which makes sense, because we've got what, three more episodes to go?

Jack's visions of Christian are like Hurley's visions of Charlie--both are manifestations of the island telling them they have unfinished business. The smoke detector going off was a nice touch, wasn't it? Speaking of Christian...

Claire sees Christian and the next thing you know, she's disappeared. I read a very interesting theory about this, which answers quite well the main problem I had with last week's episode, namely that Claire survived the explosion with hardly a scratch on her. This theory comes from Jeff "Doc" Jensen over at EW.com: Claire didn't actually survive the explosion. What other people have been seeing as Claire is a physical manifestation of the Island, ala Yemi. If this is the case, Doc continues, it explains why Miles is so intrigued by her. I'm kinda in love with this theory, "hard science" be damned. (Seriously, if you're as into the mythology of this show as I am, you should be reading Jensen's columns on it.)

(P.S. one of my favorite lines was Miles' "I would've gone after her but I have a restraining order." Miles = my new favorite character.)

Is this the explanation for how Keamy and his soldiers "survive" the smoke monster as well? Because they're all up in the previews for next week, but last week we saw them getting pretty well slaughtered. Were they not? Was that just a warning trouncing?

Not much to say about this, but I loved Jin's discovery that Charlotte speaks Korean and his later threats to her.

Pretty sure, along with everyone else, that Kate's favor to Sawyer was to check up on Clementine. I had this moment when I thought she was talking to Sawyer on the phone--or Ben even, but I think more likely Sawyer asked Kate before she left the island ("Hey Freckles, when you get Stateside..."). Then again, if it's 2007 (another thing I picked up from other Web sites, based on the Yankees-Red Sox game Jack reads about), that's a really long time to be following up on a favor. Unless this is something she does on a regular basis. I liked that this phone call prompts Jack's return to his paranoiac obsessive behavior. I also liked the argument Jack and Kate have in which he yells, "You're not even related to him" in response to her calling him "her son." The question is whether he knows that he is related to Aaron. Though I did not pick up on that subtext in this conversation, I think it's clear, given the show's history, that in the future Jack does know that he and Claire share a father, and that we're going to witness that being revealed in an upcoming episode.

I mean, Ben surely knows.

One final nice touch: Aaron has a Millennium Falcon, and Jack is scruffy-looking enough that Kate buys him a razor to get him to shave. Both these things refer to Han Solo  . . . but we all know that the real Han Solo character on this show is Sawyer. The love triangle is pervasive enough to pop up in references to other media. NTISFUS.

Comments

[lolly]

Great wrap up with some really good leads! I had not even considered the bit about Claire. It kind of makes sense. I was definitely curious about the soldiers who appeared to be slaughtered last week, but were alive this week. Does this mean that Eko is alive? *crossing fingers*

That bit about Jin and Charlotte was good too.

Definitely an interesting episode...