Hey there wonderfully wacky wanters of wonder, and JIN! It's Jin! AND Rousseau!! Seriously, my head just blew open into little bits and I got to watch while they all tried to reassemble themselves in the right order, it was that good. A few flashes, the Oceanis Six come together and the Left Behinders get shot at by... well, I don't know. This week I'm going to do my impression of Missy Elliot – check it while we flip it, reverse it and start with the off-island gear for a change.
Hey Hurley! So awesome to see you in thi- oh. That's all we get?! I got so excited at the prospect of Sayid and Ben breaking Hurley out all-Prison Break style... a guy's gotta have dreams. While Hurley's place in this episode was small, it was because of him that all the dots began to join around the mysterious lawyer Dan Norton. We'd seen him hassle Kate before, but having him interact with her separately and then the reveal of his client through the completely unrelated matter of Hurley's short jail stay was a cool move. I loved the fact that he was staring Sayid in the eyes when he was discussing Hurley's innocence. I wish Sayid had said, "Dude... I KNOW."
At this point, I'm not sure who is a worse mother between Kate and Sun. Kate essentially stole someone's child and came up with the plan to claim it to be her own in order to wrangle her way out of legal hassles. She was right to be pissed at Ben for messing with her, but when it comes down to it, Ben was right – Aaron isn't Kate's. Sun has taken Aaron along as a spotter on her mission to kill Ben, and who knows where her own daughter is. On a side note, she's now getting her mail from the same mailman in The Godfather III.Sayid was incredibly sharp this week. Even after being unconscious for 42 hours, he can spot an ambush coming from a mile off. It was nice of him to not use the multitude of medical and surgical devices to skewer the guy, instead just opting to give him a long nap from his own dart. Two questions – What was the assassin's mission at Kate's house, and why was he only using tranq darts?
Then we had Jack. Poor Jack finally found a situation to fix this week, only to find he'd misread it, it didn't need fixing and he now had to be tricksy with the girl he likes instead. We learnt that he was eventually disbarred for substance abuse, but that's not going to stop Dr Jack from saving the heck out of Sayid. What did I take away from the meeting with Carole Littleton? Somehow, the lie has stuck in the real world, and they're all coming together to correct it. Amazing.
Now, with an almighty flash, let's check out what our Left Behinders are up to.
One of the biggest mysteries of this episode was around the nosebleeds. I'm certain this is a different set of circumstances than what happened to Minkowski on the boat, I just don't know how to explain it clearly. Minkowski's was caused by his brain going elsewhere on his body's timeline, while Charlotte's body was moving along her brain's? Yeah, as I said... I can't explain it, but that's what I think.The bigger bomb was that Faraday believes the nosebleeds are related to the length of time spent on the island. I think Faraday has nothing to worry about here, as he already met with his constant. Wouldn't his theory suggest that Juliet's nose should've bled long before Miles'? Or, and I'm just throwing this out there, could Miles perhaps being Pierre Chang's son, the baby we saw in the first minute of this season's premiere?
I loved the way clues were dropped for us to work out where the first flash took place, initially with the beam of light. I got so excited the second I saw it, but then I remembered it only came about because of Boone's death and I got a little sad. Then, Sawyer got to watch past-Kate help past-Claire give birth to past-Aaron. Seriously depressing stuff, but I have to give Josh Holloway his due – he knocked this ep out of the park, especially in his conflicted confession to Juliet.
If you were worried about Rose and Bernard like I was, stop stressing – Sawyer was thoughtful enough to call out for them when the group re-entered the camp. I'm sure they'll be back. They have to be, right? Maybe they were the ones who took the Zodiac raft. But who are behind the outrigger canoes, who are attacking the LBs on the water and who on earth brought the Ajira Airlines water? Locke wants to go to the Orchid to try to fix things at the source – what if they're not just skipping through time, but also re-writing and causing course-correction everywhere they go? What if there never was an Oceanic 815, but rather an Ajira 815?
Finally, the emotional happy one-two of the simultaneous reveal of the fact Jin is alive and that it was Danielle Rousseau '88 version who was the one who saved him. Kind of ironic that he once again is forced to team with a group he can't understand after being blown sideways off a boat. If you're lucky enough to speak French, you might've noticed that the men arguing in both scenes confirm everything Rousseau ever said about her initial arrival on the island.... Everything except finding a Korean man floating in the water, the same Korean man she would see with a group of people on a beach sixteen years later.
Get excited for next week's episode, ominously titled "This Place Is Death"...
Namaste,
The Heroic Lost Ninja