Hey there daring doers of devilry, and what a mind-bending episode built on pure awesome! Travels through time, Smokey, Rousseau's music box, Montand's arm, Christian, the frozen donkey wheel, the Orchid, the Well... Seriously, was their anything this episode didn't have?I will now sum up the off-island action: Sun is back with Ben and Jack, they're cool now, and Desmond has joined their team. Sayid, Kate and Aaron all separately spat dummies and left. Hurley is in jail... I guess? Ben knew Jin wasn't dead and uses this to not get shot in the face. He then gets really, really cranky because they just want to kill him, and they have no idea of "all I've done to protect you". I loved that it was a total Dad-snapping-on-a-road-trip, I'll-turn-this-car-around moment and it put Jack in his place. Oh, and Sun is still a crappy mother because she didn't call to let her mother, looking after Ji-Yeon in Korea, know that she was staying on in LA. Or whatever. Baby, schmaybe. Kate might want it?
Enough with that. The island stuff was way, way, way too good this week to waste anymore off island. Rather than try and string everything together, I'm going to address a bunch of thoughts, bullet-point. Take cover.
• Jin, once again stuck on a beach with people he doesn't understand. Did you notice the similarities to the 815ers though? Montand's douchey behaviour screamed Sawyer and Robert had that same, "I can fix this!" look in his eyes as Jack. One guy wanted to keep the peace, another had a guitar. Rousseau had a baby in her belly, and Nadine ended up shredded in the trees thanks to Smokey. • Did you hear anything oddly familiar about the voice reading the numbers on the radio signal? It sounded exactly like a certain number-paranoid friend of ours...
• I want the SCHLOOP Montand's arm popping off as a ringtone.
• There was no way, and I mean noooo way, that Montand was calling out to them from Smokey's lair. We saw Smokey take on Yemi's form, and I'm guessing it took Montand's voice here. If this area, the Temple, is anywhere near the Well, I'm theorizing Smokey is a lot more than just the security system...
• We can pretty much discredit Rousseau's theory that Smokey is a security system as we originally thought. "Robert" was either a fake, infected somehow or brainwashed. The rubbish he was spouting sounded like the lines from the Room 23 video Karl was forced to watch. Whatever happened to the guys that went down in the Cerberus Vent, they weren't the same when they came back out and I'm guessing this is The Sickness. They got sick when Jin led them astray, and then he reappeared to Rousseau when she had killed all her team only to disappear again. In her warped mind, she probably thought Jin or someone was watching her, ready to pop out at anytime, hence the silent Others that she has never seen.
• There were more hieroglyphics in this episode than any other, and they all pointed towards time, the control of it – and the master of it.
• Seriously though, that arm coming off bit? That was rad.
• I'm sad to see Charlotte go, but I'm glad she got to share her Important Pieces of Information: "I was born here, but made to leave without my Daddy! Jin, I'll tell you what you need to know, in Korean, because I speak it, remember! Dan, you scared the hell out of me as a girl and said not to come bac-------", and, Total Recall-style, her brain overloads from the failed attempt to merge realities. Or something.
• I'm struggling to find another way to refer to "constant flashing" without sounding like I own a dark trench-coat and loiter in parks. Also, Juliet needs to time her thankful statements of exposition for timely. "Hey, who would've thought we'd be here the same time as..."
• It appears my stressing about the final order of nose-bleeding doesn't really matter, as it happened so many times both Juliet and Sawyer got them. It did seem that no one else was suffering the same side-effects as Charlotte, which was strange.
• Christian was truly disappointed in Locke, but not as disappointed as Locke was in himself. Good thing he said the one thing Locke needs to hear to super-charge his batteries, the "special" guy! A few questions: Did Christian not help Locke up because he's a ghost, Locke had to do it himself or because he's a tool? Just how many times can Locke's ability to be able to walk before he realizes it only ever happens when he tries to follow his own path?
• Sawyer holding the rope creates another what-was-first question for us to twist ourselves into knots, as in, was the rope there because of the well, or the well there because of the rope? Paradoxes make my head hurt.
• Is Eloise Hawking Lost's version of The Oracle? She knows everything going on, all paths are leading towards her and she's not above putting a hero in his place...
• The flashes are Locke's fault, via Ben. If Locke had faced his destiny, turned the wheel and left the island like he was supposed to, the wheel wouldn't have gone off axis and things wouldn't have gone as badly as badly as badly as badly.
Namaste
The Heroic Lost Ninja