Jacob.

This is a great episode that gave us some specifics about Ben’s background, the Dharma Initiative and the Island’s true ruler.

Well, there are more questions than answers in true LOST tradition.  Still there are a bunch of things we learned.

• Ben was not born on the Island as he said.  He came as a child.  He was born early and in Portland by the side of the road.
• Ben’s father was Roger “Work Man”, the skeleton discovered by Hurley in “Tricia Tanaka is Dead”
• Richard Alpert does not appear to age.
• Ben saw his mother in the jungle of the Island even though she died giving birth to him.
• Roger was an asshole who never got past his wife, Emily’s death and blamed Ben for it.  No wonder he turned out as he did.
• There was a volcano on the Island.
• Only Ben has ever seen Jacob.  This may be questionable since Ben is a liar.
• Ben murdered his own father – a reason why he was so insistent on John doing the same?
• The Dharma Initiative was murdered by the Hostiles with help from Ben.  Ben dumped all their bodies into a pit.
• Juliet is a double spy, having already told Jack what she was doing.  Instructions from Ben allow the 815 crew to know when the Others are coming.

This episode featured a great performance from Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson.  These two scene partners seem to be better every time they are together.  Ben is clearly jealous of John and seemed surprised when Jacob spoke to John.

When Ben shoots John at the Dharma mass grave, he demands to know what Jacob said to him.  “Help me” responded John.

The whole cabin in the woods vibe of Jacob’s cabin was really spooky and well done.  At first, one wondered what was going on and if Ben had just been playing with John, but then the scene went crazy and we see the eye and the quick glimpse of who we think is Jacob.

For a season that started out shakily and uncertain, season three has truly hit its stride.

One of the big questions gets a confirmed answer in “The Brig” as it is revealed that the wicked con man Anthony Cooper, the father of John Locke, is also the “Sawyer” who was involved with conning James “Sawyer” Ford’s parents which led to the murder-suicide by James’s father.

We had pretty much figured this out by this point, but it was nice to have the confirmation from LOST.  Plus, we had one of the most satisfying confrontations in the show’s history.

When John realized that he was not going to be able to actually murder his father, even with the horrible things Anthony had done to him, he had to come up with something else.  The suggestion came from Richard Alpert, as he gave Locke a file on Sawyer.

John took Anthony to the brig on the Black Rock and then went to get Sawyer from the beach.  Locke lured Sawyer to the Black Rock with the story that he had captured Ben and wanted Sawyer to kill him. Sawyer refused, claiming not to be a murderer.  Locke reminded him of the man in Sydney and then said that all Sawyer would need to do his hear what Ben had to say and he would change his mind.

Once they arrived at the Black Rock, Locke locked Sawyer in with Anthony and waited.

The scenes between Sawyer and Anthony were brilliant, especially since they never shared even one moment of screen time together.  The dialogue between Sawyer and Anthony, and Sawyer and Locke from the trip, really popped this entire episode.

Another one of the popular theories of what was going on here was explored a bit.  Some people believed that the Island was actually Hell and that they were all dead.  Anthony believed this.  He gave a story about being injured by a car in Tallahassee and being loaded on an ambulance and then waking up to his dead son.

Anthony confirmed the story that the parachutist (Naomi) had told that they found Oceanic Flight 815 at the bottom of the ocean.

Kevin Tighe, who played Cooper, was just tremendous as the unrepentant Sawyer/Cooper/con man.  Even when James was making him read the letter he had written as a child, Cooper was almost laughing through it.  He was truly a low life and he deserved what fate had in store for him.  Even still, you could see how much regret Sawyer had after he strangled the man with the chains.

Locke thanks Sawyer.

The flashbacks this week were actually all on the Island and told the story of John and his father from the end of “The Man from Tallahassee” until when he got Sawyer.  It was a different manner of flashback this episode and I really liked it.

Meanwhile on the Island, Hurley, Desmond, Jin and Charlie returned to camp with the parachutist, but they were nervous about telling Jack because they did not trust him any more.  Instead they went to Sayid.  Naomi said she was from a ship off the coast of the Island and she had been commissioned by Penny Widmore.

Eventually Kate found out and she went to Jack.  She did not want to tell Juliet, but Jack insisted and so Kate told him and said the reason his friends did not trust him any more was because of Juliet.

New people are coming…

Sun has that fierce lioness fighting for her cub feel and I, for one, would not want to be on the wrong side of her if push came to shove.

We see more of fierce Sun in this episode as she finds out the truth about pregnant women on the Island.  If they have conceived on the Island, they die  Juliet said that she had lost 9 women over the three years she had been here.

So she decided to take Sun to the medical station for an ultrasound to determine the date of conception of Sun’s baby.

This is made more tense for Sun since she had cheated on Jin prior to coming to the Island with Jae Lee and she is uncertain if Jin is the father.  In fact, since the doctor had told Sun that Jin was sterile, she was certain whose baby this was, even if she hadn’t spoken it out loud.

Sun did not trust Juliet, but the temptation of answers overcame her and she went to the medical station with her.  There is an ultrasound there and Juliet checked her over, determining that Sun got pregnant around 53 weeks ago, which makes it on the Island.

Sun begins to cry, and Juliet misunderstands.  Juliet believed that the tears were for a death sentence, but instead, they were tears of joy that the baby was Jin’s.  Everything else could be fought for by the Lioness, but, had this been Jae’s child, there would have been nothing Sun could have done about it.

Sun told Juliet that she had delivered good news, which was meant to comfort Juliet who had stated earlier that she missed the days when she could tell a woman she was pregnant and it was greeted as joyous news.

Of course, as Sun waited outside, Juliet left a recording for Ben updating the situation.  She has been getting samples from the women and she hopes to have Austen soon, she said.  After shutting off the tape recorder, she looks at it and said , “I hate you.”  Juliet has been pulled in a couple of ways lately and this was the first indication that she may not been 100% Others.

The other major story going on involved the parachutist, who happened to have a branch that punctured a lung.  She was dying (and she repeated that in several different languages).  Who would come along?

Mikhail.

Yes, the same Mikhail who was killed by Locke when he tossed him into the sonic fence.  Apparently, he wasn’t quite dead the last time.  Mikhail is captured by Jin, with an awesome spin kick, and he is brought back.  He said he was a medic in the Russian army and he could help the mysterious woman, but only if he is allowed to leave after.  Desmond agrees.

Mikhail saves her, tries to steal the sat phone, but gets caught again.  Charlie wants to kill him.  Desmond is having none of it.  Desmond shows how good a man he is by sticking ot his word even though it may come back and haunt them at a later date.

The parachutist comes to and asks Hurley where they were.  Hurley told her that they were survivors of Oceanic 815 and they were on an Island.  She was confused because the crashed Oceanic 815 had been found and there were no survivors.

Hurley put it perfectly as the scene went to black,

“What?”

Desmond-centric episodes are always great.

Now, I will say that “Catch-22” is not quite up to the other Desmond flashback episodes, but it is still a fine and engaging hour that keeps you guessing the whole way.

Desmond has had another of his psychic future seeing flashes of Charlie’s death, something Desmond has prevented three times so far.  However, this time is different because Desmond sees an ending to this vision that he desperately wants.  A woman arriving on the Island whom he believes is Penny.

The problem is if they change any of the pieces prior to the arrival, everything could be changed.  Does Desmond have to let Charlie die this time?

Desmond is pretty insistent that everything follows exactly as he saw it and that meant recruiting Hurley, Jin and Charlie to go with him.  But Desmond could not tell them about it because if they knew it ended with Charlie’s demise, they never would have gone for it.

The episode is great as these four actors moved across the Island, with wonderful dialogue and clever writing to slowly follow through with Desmond’s vision and the viewer has to wonder the entire time if Desmond was going to let it happen.  Finally, it was happening and Desmond could not let Charlie die.  It was a great moment of potential sacrifice by the Scotsman to save one of their own.

The woman who fell from the sky, from a helicopter that crashed in the water, turned out to not be Penny, but another woman who knows Desmond and has a photo of him and Penny in a Portuguese version of the novel Catch-22.

Desmond’s flashback was seemingly fluff, but then it turned into a perfect example of echoing what was happening on the Island, and it showed us the first ever meeting between Desmond and Penny.  These two actors have such an easy charm and unbelievable chemistry that you just see it on the screen.  Penny and Desmond are absolutely the couple to root for on LOST.

There was some Jack-Kate-Sawyer stuff too as Kate saw Jack and Juliet together and felt hurt and so she went to Sawyer for some lovin’.  I read a review at IGN that stated that this was revenge from Kate but I disagree totally.  When Kate saw Jack moving on with Juliet, she was hurt because Jack was always the ideal person for her in Kate’s eyes.  He was someone she did not believe she was worthy of.  So when it looked like their possibilities were over, Kate returned to Sawyer to lose herself in what he could offer.  It was to quench Kate’s pain, not to get revenge on anyone.  Just like Kate always does, she was running from the pain.

Was there any wonder why I hated Juliet so much at first?

This episode spent the entire time humanizing her, making the viewers connect with her plight, making us feel for Juliet’s sister and Juliet’s wish to just go home…something we all feel at some point.  They throw her into the beach group so there is isolation, another feeling that we have all felt.

And then they toss the whole thing away by showing that she is a spy for Ben.

One also has to wonder why Jack is such a supporter of Juliet.  He certainly was a first hand witness to her manipulations and he even called her on it to the Others.  It’s one thing to want to give someone a second chance to earn your trust, but it is a whole other thing to blindly forget everything you knew about someone just because you have something in common.

Both Jack and Juliet want off the Island.  That seems to be the only thing driving Jack to believe in her.  That does not seem like enough.

The great scene where Juliet is confronted by Sawyer and Sayid is a perfect example of the differing views.  These Others have tormented and terrorized the survivors for months, but then claim to be the good guys.  When confronted, Juliet slams Sayid and Sawyer with what they had done before the Island, judging them very harshly.  The Others do not subscribe to the theory that the Island is a clean slate and that everyone gets a new life on the Island.  The Others can justify any number of rotten to cruel things because they see themselves as above the survivors.  They are Jacob’s chosen.

Implanting something into Claire that will make her sick unless Juliet can ride to the rescue is just the latest in a long line of atrocities the Others perpetrated against the survivors.  Ben or Juliet probably would justify it by saying Claire was going to give up Aaron anyway so it is fine.

The Others’ claim that they are the “good guys” is just delusional.  This is just one more example of it.

I have expressed my dislike and mistrust of Juliet before.  This episode does not make it any better.

Juliet is a liar and a schemer, just like Ben.  She is responsible for handcuffing herself to Kate and taking the pair into the jungle.  And why?  Because she didn’t want to be left behind again?  That does not seem very likely.

Juliet has not built any trust with anyone but Jack.  She had the key.  She knew the Smoke Monster, but she kept lying about it.  And if I remember correctly, she’s not done with her lies.

I thought the flashbacks were interesting this week as Kate tried to see her mother and find out why she turned Kate in for blowing up Wayne.  That wsn’t the real interesting part though.  It was the girl buddy thing happening between Kate and Cassidy.  Kate helped Cassidy get out of trouble and the two bonded over their trouble with the law.

Meanwhile on the Island, Kate was handcuffed to Juliet.  This is an interesting juxtaposition as Kate is with Sawyer’s old flame in flashbacks and Jack’s potential new flame in the present.  The dynamic with the three women was fascinating to see,

I enjoyed watching Kate and Cassidy working together to get Kate to her mom.  Cassidy confided in Kate about her pregnancy (by Sawyer, though Kate does not know Sawyer in the flashback yet) and Kate told Cassidy her real name.  It was almost like Thelma and Louise.

The Others took off, leaving the Oceanic 815 folks behind, except for John Locke, who decided to go with them.  The Others gassed them and left the community.  We do not know where they are headed, but John is anxious to stay with them.  There was no mention of Anthony Cooper from the previous cliffhanger.

Back at the beach, Hurley tried to make Sawyer nicer so he could be the temporary leader.  He does this by conning Sawyer that the group was going to banish him.  This was a nice little story that did not have much story behind it.  Still, Hurley and Sawyer make an entertaining team.

Here is another episode that many people hated that I absolutely loved.

When LOST decided to cast two actors as new characters but say they had been on the Island with the survivors for the entire time, the fans rejected the idea.  Nikki and Paolo were the characters and they received a ton of heat for being there.

I never knew what cause people to hate these two so much.  I mean, let’s face it, even though they were here, it is not like they were heavily used.  They were background characters who received a line or two an episode.  It is one thing if, because of Nikki and Paolo, other more popular and long term characters got pushed to the back burner, but that did not happen.

So when the decision was made to kill of Nikki and Paolo, few people were upset.  However, many seemed to be bothered by them getting an entire episode devoted to them to tell the story of their demise.

Maybe it was where it fell in the season.  The week after the magnificent “The Man from Tallahassee” was on may bot have been the ideal place for the show to air.  However. if you give it a chance, Exposé works big time.

First of all, it is a mystery.  We don’t know what has happened to Nikki and Paolo and some of our favorites (Hurley, Sun, Sawyer, Charlie) tried to figure it out.

Second of all, the way they did the flashbacks were awesome.  Not only did we get a cool cameo from Billy Dee Williams, but also got several key moments from the series re-shot with Nikki and Paolo involved.  The initial airplane crash, Jack’s “Live together or Die alone” speech, the Pearl Station, the waterfall were all shown from Nikki and Paolo’s POV.

Third of all, the episode allowed us to see some old favorites reprise their roles.  We got Boone.  We got Shannon.  We got Arzt.  It was really fun to see these characters once again in different manners than we had seen them before.

Fourth, the pay off is one of the best single moments of the series.  Nikki and Paolo were not dead.  As the fought over the diamonds that they had stolen, Paolo and then Nikki were paralyzed by the bite of a Medusa spider.  But they looked dead, so Hurley and Sawyer and the rest buried them alive.  LOST rarely got this dark and I loved every second of it.  I couldn’t believe that they were going for it and I was sure something was going to happen to stop it.  But it didn’t.  And to make it even worse, Nikki’s eyes popped open at the last second so she would have known what was happening.  By the way, Vincent knew what was going on as he was trying to uncover their not dead bodies.

And come on… “Paolo lies” instead of “paralyzed”… that is just some creative stuff right there.

There were several fun self-depreciating meta humor here too.  When Nikki was on the Expose set and the creator of the show, Howard Zukerman, suggested that Nikki could come back next year, she joked that she was only a guest star and everybody knows what happens to guest stars.   Boone and Shannon were fighting at the airport and Nikki said to Paolo, “Promise me we won’t end up like them.” Of course they do, both dead and buried on the Island side by side.

I really do love this episode and I will defend it to the end.  It is a dark, humorous mystery (almost noir) that is a perfect send off to two of the most disliked characters on the show.

Wow.

John Locke-centric episodes are always great.  This one took a step above that.

What an unbelievable performance from Terry O’Quinn.  He would win an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this episode and it is completely well deserved.  John Locke takes us through every possible emotion and feeling and shows so many different layers to the character.  Whether it be the flashback showing how he wound up in the wheelchair or on the Island verbally jousting with scene partner Michael Emerson, Terry O’Quinn brings more to John Locke than you could ever wish to see.

I cannot imagine the pain that John had to feel when the man who conned him out of his kidney, shoved him from an 8 story window and caused him to spend four years of his life in a wheelchair.  Anthony Cooper is seriously one of the worst people on this show.

Poor John Locke in the flashbacks was already pretty broken, suffering from depression, when a young man named Peter came to see him to ask about a man John had donated a kidney to…was he a good man?  He was going to marry his mother and Peter had a doubt about him. Peter had found medical records indicating that his name was once Anthony Cooper.

John said nothing, but he went to see Cooper to make him cancel the wedding.  Then, Peter turned up dead.  John felt guilt over his lack of response and anger over his father’s evil and John went to confront him.

And Cooper shoved him through a window of the 8th floor.

Watching John plummet to the ground was absolutely crushing, no pun intended.  Then watching John being hauled from his hospital bed into the wheelchair by the physical therapist was heart breaking. The look of utter fear and denial on Locke’s face was horrible.  Such pain.

However, on the Island, his paralysis was gone.  And Ben wanted to know why. But John figured out a couple things… Ben wondered why he hadn’t recovered yet and how he got sick int he first place.  The healing powers of the Island worked on Locke but seemed to be skipping over Ben.  This explains Ben’s fascination with John.  Through John, Ben thinks he has found someone he can manipulate into giving him a stronger connection to the Island.

Ben allows John to take the C4 he brought with him to blow up the submarine.  This way, Ben can keep Jack and Juliet on the Island without breaking his word.  John knew this too, but he did not care.  Both Ben and John wanted that sub destroyed, but for different reasons.

The scene with Jack and Kate was very powerful too.  You could see that Kate felt betrayed by Jack leaving the Island, even though he promised he would come back for her.  He went to Ben and arranged for his friends to be released after he was gone, to which Ben was more than happy to agree to because he knew that Locke was going to blow up the sub before Jack could get on it.

Everything was going Ben’s way.

The cliffhanger… Ben had told John about the “magic box” that could bring anything you wished for…and John dismissed Ben.  But Ben then took John to see what came out of the box last.

It was Anthony Cooper.

Didn’t see that one coming.

“The Man from Tallahassee” is one of the best episodes of the show so far.  Season three seems to have either average episodes or episodes off the freaking chart.  This is the latter.

Desmond is saving Charlie again.

Desmond’s latest vision included Charlie getting smashed against the rocks because Claire had spotted a bird. Claire knew these birds could be tagged and wanted to catch one so they could write a note.  However, Claire got mad when Desmond kept ruining their attempts.

Finally, Desmond told Claire about his ability to see the future and how he has been trying to save Charlie.

Anything with Desmond is excellent.  He is charming and entertaining every time he is on the screen. This plot was an excuse to throw in a flashback for Claire.  A flashback that gave us a huge piece of information.

When Claire was younger, she was in an auto accident in Australia with her mum.  Her mum wound up comatose in the hospital.  Worried about being able to afford the care, the doctor said the bills had already been taken care of y an anonymous donor.

That donor turned out to be Claire’s father… Christian Shepherd.

Claire had been told that her father died when she was young, but in truth he was in Los Angeles.  Christian came to see Claire and her mum in the hospital and told Claire who he was.  He never gave her a name, though.

We see Christian come on the night he died and get into an argument with Claire’s mother so we know that she will come out of this coma at some point.  Claire is already pregnant and is talking about giving the baby away for adoption while she is still in a coma.

Meanwhile, Locke, Sayid, Kate, and Danielle continued to take Mikhail on their way to the Other’s home.  They come across a sonic fence that surrounded the barracks.  Mikhail lied to them as he had been doing the entire time.  Locke shoved him between the fence causing him to go into a hemorrhage and “die.”  They had to go over the fence, so they chopped down a tree and shimmed over.

When they arrived at Otherville, they get a shock when they see Jack tossing the football around with Tom Friendly.

Kate is determined to find Jack and bring him back to the beach.  So she, John, Sayid and Danielle head off into the jungle following a compass bearing provided by Mr. Eko’s Jesus stick in an attempt to find the Other’s home on the Island.

While that sounds a little crazy, it does not sound as crazy as some of the choices made while on the Island.

On their trip, they come across an isolated compound called The Flame and they see the eye-patch wearing man from the video feed in the Pearl.  His name is Mikhail and he immediately shoots Sayid, while pretending to be protecting the station from “Hostiles.”

Mikhail is quite the character.  He will die several times, at least it appears that way.  He will be around to cause all kinds of chaos over the next season or so.

Sayid’s Other Sense is full on tingling, because he does not fall for Mikhail’s story at all, despite the fact that Sayid allows Mikhail to take the bullet from his shoulder and stitch him up.

Kate and John search the rest of the compound.  John finds a computer chess game and starts to play.  He gets beaten and Mikhail tells him that the computer cheats.  Later, John is playing it again and wins, popping up a video featuring Marvin Candle outlining what to do in certain instances.  If there is a “Hostile” incursion in the station, they are to enter 77.

Kate had discovered that the station was rigged with c4.  They also captured Bea Klugh at the site and capture her. Unfortunately, Mikhail had gotten free and had a gun on Locke which led to a showdown.  Mikhail, from orders of Klugh, shoots her instead, killing her.

They take Mikhail captive, but may be a mistake.

The flashback was a Sayid story that was good, but did not seem to have anything to do with the story.  It is true that many of the flashbacks in season three felt as if they were stretching for things to show.  While Sayid being grabbed by a woman whom he had tortured while he was with the Republican Guard might be a compelling tale, it did not fit with what we had.

The ping pong contest between Hurley and Sawyer was fun, but was just a distraction.  Still, Sawyer unable to use nicknames for a week is full of comedic possibilities.

I do not understand the vitriol that this episode of LOST can bring up.  “Tricia Tanaka is Dead” is generally considered one of the worst episodes of the series.

Yet, I absolutely love it.

I suppose I can see the complaint that not much happened, mythology wise, in the story.  Season three had been a slow start with sprinkles of brilliance and some might have watched “Tricia Tanaka” with an eye already upset with the pace.  All of that is your own problems.  I still cannot accept that anyone who knows and cares about these characters wouldn’t be filled with joy and hope at the end of the memorable episode.

The scenes with the four actors are some of the best work of the series.  Hurley, Sawyer, Jin and Charlie have undeniable charisma and work some comfortably well together that their scenes are just magical.  You can see how much these actors enjoyed working together here.  It is their energy and fun that comes through the screen and helps to create the magic of the scene.

Sawyer teaching Jin some important English phrase all women want to hear (“You were right,” “I’m sorry,” and “Those pants don’t make you look fat”). Hurley calling Sawyer “Red Neck Man” and Sawyer appreciating the effort.  The interaction with Roger Work Man (“Skeletor”).  The Dharma beer.  Sawyer screaming at the head in the car.  There is just so much here that works wonderfully.

There has been a lot of darkness this season, and an episode like “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” which is filled with joyous fun and great humorous dialogue, is a welcome distraction.  Maybe it does not move the story forward much, but it shows you the magic that this cast is capable of and how entertained you can be if you let yourself.  Every episode does not have to be deeply rooted in mythology to be a good episode.

Although the car and Roger ARE mythologically based.  We just don’t know it yet.

I enjoyed Cheech Marin as Hurley’s absentee father.  I’ve seen some complaints because they gave Hurley daddy issues like so many other characters, but that does not bother me wither.  Cheech was solid as Hurley’s dad and fun to watch.

And the episode prepared to kick off the second half of the season with Kate going to find Rousseau to tell her about Alex, whom Kate believes is her daughter.

Take the haters away.  I loved the episode “Tricia Tanaka is Dead” and you should too.  Maybe only Tricia Tanaka should be against it.  She was hit by a meteor.  Or an Asteroid.  Hurley doesn’t know the difference.

Ever wonder where and why Jack got his tattoos?

Me neither.

But we got an episode about it.

I remember watching this episode for the first time live and thinking that it was terrible.  On the re-watch, I still think it is terrible.  I think that it is clearly the worst episode of LOST ever made.  What makes it worse is that it followed “Flashes Before Your Eyes” which was flipping brilliant and the exceptional “Not in Portland” before that.  Timing was really bad for this one.

The flashback to Jack meeting the beautiful Achara in Thailand and starting an affair and winding up with tattoos that, for some reason, offended her family.  Jack gets beat up.

Um…..

That’s basically it, I believe.

Jack’s tattoos apparently say, “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us”.  But according to Jack, that’s not what they mean.

There were a couple of interesting things happen.

• We see Cindy again.  She, and the kids, come to see Jack at his cage.  Like he’s in a zoo.  The girl asks about Ana Lucia and Jack gets mad.  That’s why you don’t feed the animals.
• Juliet is on trial for her murder of Pickett.  Jack gets Ben to pardon her.  They still “mark” Juliet.
• Sawyer and Kate fight.
• Carl cries.
• Isabel, the “sheriff,” came to give the verdict in Juliet’s trial, and she seemed important, but is never seen again. Apparently she died off screen.

Okay, so I stretched the truth about a couple of interesting things happening.  After that scene with Jack and Cindy, there was not much more.

This episode was one of the major reasons why the producers of LOST went to ABC and got them to give an end date for the series.  The argument was that they knew where the story was going, but they did not know how many episodes they had to fill.  Flashbacks like this one are completely worthless, and if they knew how many they needed, they could take the narrative towards its conclusion.  They got ABC to agree to end the series after season 6, and the seasons 4-6 would be shorter in length, not the 23 as the other seasons had been.  This helped tighten the storytelling and develop the plot in the way to lead to an ending.

What a brilliant episode.

Desmond has become, in short order, one of the best characters in all of LOST and maybe even on television.

This episode is fully original and different than anything we had seen up to this point on LOST.  It set up the world of time travel beautifully on the show, something that would be explored in much grater detail as the seasons progressed.

The flashbacks in this episode is done unlike anything else on the show prior.  Desmond, after turning the key, had his consciousness flash back to his past and he was reliving what he had seen before.  But he would have flashes of the future… of the Island and the button and of the survivors.  So while we are able to see what happened to Desmond in flashback format, we also saw him struggle to make sense of what was happening.

And then we get Eloise Hawkins.  One of the greatest riddles of the show.  Eloise was at the ring shop and showing Des wedding rings.  He was not supposed to buy one.  He was to change his mind about Penny and break her heart.  So when he went to purchase the ring, Eloise flipped out.

She then explained to Desmond (and us) how this worked.  He always did this and that is the way it has to be.  Even if you wanted to, you can’t change it because the universe will “course correct” to make what was supposed to happen, happen.

I remember watching this for the first time and having my mind blown.  It makes more sense this time through, having known what happen moving on.

In this flashback, we see what a jerk Charles Widmore is and how he taunted Desmond with his McCutcheon Whiskey.  Ironically, that was the same whiskey that Charlie and Hurley try to tempt Desmond with to loosen his lips.

On the Island, Desmond has been acting odd since waking up naked in the jungle.  In this episode, he took off running and jumped into the ocean to save a drowning Claire.  How exactly did he know she was drowning?

Pair that with the lightning from earlier this season, and Desmond has some explaining to do.  Hurley believes that Desmond can see the future, but Charlie is not so sure.

So after finishing the bottle, Charlie and Hurley go to figure out what is going on with Desmond.  Desmond doesn’t want to tell and tries to leave.  Charlie called him a coward (which is what Penny called him too) and Desmond tackled him, screaming at him about what he sees.

Finally after calming down, Desmond reveals that he did not save Claire.  He saved Charlie who drowned when he tried to save Claire.  And the lightning was supposed to electrocute Charlie, but Desmond’s lightning rod stopped it. But Desmond cried out at the end of the episode…

“No matter what I do…you’re gonna die, Charlie.”

Goose bumps.  What an amazing episode, full of emotion and drama and with a fantastic cliffhanger.  Desmond episodes have become the best of the best, even surpassing Locke episodes, it would seem.

I hated Juliet.

She was such a horrible person when we first meet her and you couldn’t believe anything she said.  She was like a female Ben.

Even with the juxtaposition of her first Juliet-centric episode, “Not in Portland,” which focused on her quest to help her cancer ridden sister to become pregnant, I could not bring myself to care for her at all.

Her on Island persona was so rotten that I had no problem hating her. It wouldn’t be until she and Sawyer get together later in season 4 (i believe) that Juliet becomes more than just a lying killer.

She has told so many lies on the Island that you are never sure exactly what she wants.  You can guess now that her main goal would be to get back to the world to her sister, but her actions are still suspect.

Kate and Sawyer escape but have to run through the jungle as bullets are fired past them.  Pickett isn’t about to give up on his desire to kill Sawyer, and quickly, Sawyer is out of bullets.  If it wasn’t for deus ex machina Alex, Kate and Sawyer would have been caught and probably killed.

Alex has a boat, but she wants Kate and Sawyer to help her save her boyfriend Carl. She takes them to a building that has Aldo as a guard.  They pull the “ol’ Wookie prisoner gag” as Sawyer puts it and get the jump on Aldo.  They find Carl in room 23, which is quote the trip.

Carl looks like he is being brainwashed with quick, flashing images and messages.  He had LED glasses on and an IV in hi arm.  The existence of Room 23 is one of the more brutal aspects of the Others and the Dharma Initiative before them.

Back in the surgery, Ben awakes and listens to Jack and the argument.  Finally, he asks to talk to Juliet.  According to Juliet, Ben told her to help Kate and Sawyer escape and in return he would let her go home.  It is unclear whether she was lying about that or if he did say it and was lying about it.  Either way, Juliet went off and helped Sawyer and Kate by killing Pickett and letting them go.

There was one scene in particular that flashed from Juliet in Miami with a bright, happy face to Juliet on the Island who looked cold, calculating and full of anger.  It was quite the stark difference.

Other things that happen:

• Juliet’s ex-husband gets hit by a bus.  Buses are dangerous on LOST.
• We meet Richard Albert for the first time.  He recruited Juliet.
• Ethan Rom is the official “THIS IS A FLASHBACK” guy.  He appears any time they want to make sure you understand that this is happening in the past.
• Tom introduced himself to Jack.  He seemed like a nice guy who could have been friends had the Others reacted differently.
• We find out that Alex is Ben’s daughter.  Sawyer repeats one of Hurley’s lines, “Didn’t see that coming.”
• Jack tells Kate not to come back for him

By this point, Season 3 is fully out of its early slump and we’ve had a couple amazing episodes in a row.

Look, Kate married Nathan Fillion!

“I Do” is a “Mini-series finale” as the show was going on a 13-week hiatus after this.  We see this more often now with shows taking their Winter Finales etc, but at the time, it was a novel approach to keep the episodes together and not have them constantly interrupted by reruns.  Because of that, the first six episodes were meant to feel like it had an over arching story, in this case, Kate, Sawyer and Jack’s capture and detainment on Hydra Island.

Of course the biggest news from the episode was that Kate and Sawyer had sex in the cage.  This was lauded by many, but I was (an am) on Team Jack (shipped Jate, if I remember correctly) and I was not happy about it.

I must say that I really liked the relationship between Kate (aka Monica) and Kevin (Fillion).  This continued the narrative of the character of Kate being unable to commit or to stay in one place.  She needed to run.  When she called Edward Mars, Kate was asking him to leave her alone so she could stop running, but Mars knew she couldn’t do it.  He even offered to let her go if she would settle down.  What would have happened if she had been able to do it? It was the pregnancy test that was the final straw, that kicked her flight response into gear. She couldn’t picture herself as a mother, which will be a real change in Kate in the later seasons with Aaron and the Oceanic 6.

Kate was probably right though when she said that Kevin would eventually find out.  He was a police officer and she did not want to compromise him.  So Kate drugged him (which seems to be Kate M.O.) and took off.

Back on Hydra Island, Jack was considering operating on Ben, but he basically told Ben to get ready to die.  Jack was pretty brutal here, not necessarily following the Hippocratic Oath.  There were certainly better ways for Ben to have gotten him to help.  The entire argument of the Others is flawed.  Ben keeps saying that they were the Good Guys and that the violence came from the survivors of Oceanic 815.  The problem was, if he would have just approached the survivors and offered help instead of abducting passengers (especially children) things would have been much easier.  Don’t forget, not only did Ethan Rom try to kidnap Claire, he hanged Charlie from a tree.  That kind of goes against the narrative of him being a “good person.”

Matthew Fox is wonderful in this episode.  You can see the betrayal on his face when Kate comes to him to ask him to do the surgery because they were going to kill Sawyer.  Then he sees them in the cage going sat it on Ben’s monitors making it even a worse feeling.  Still, Jack comes up with a plan to save Kate and Sawyer.

And what a plan it was.  Start the surgery on Ben and then stop in the middle, make a small incision and let Ben die unless the Others follow his instructions.  Let Kate and Sawyer go or he dies.

And the timing couldn’t have been better because Pickett was moments away from executing Sawyer in font of Kate.  With the rain pouring down, this scene was tension filled and frightening.

And Jack’s “Kate, dammit, Run!” really punctuated the mini-series finale.

Other important details:

• Mr. Eko’s body was buried by Locke and company.  Sayid and Locke went back and found the Jesus stick to mark the grave.
• The Jesus Stick had carved into it, “LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK NORTH” with John 3.05.  Message?
• Pickett mentions that Shepherd “wasn’t even on Jacob’s list.”  This is the first mention of the name Jacob.
• Alex shows up in a panic trying to find her boyfriend Carl.  She thinks that the Others have killed him.  She is looking for help from Kate and Sawyer, perhaps foreshadowing what will happen in the future.
• Ben asked Juliet if Alex asked about him. We know that Ben and Alex have a complicated relationship.