Sawyer: "You got a band-aid?"
I spent most of this episode fretting about Sawyer and not getting to know Michael better. Was that their intention?
Adversity appears to bring out the best in Sawyer. What a long, long way he has come. He saved Michael's life at least twice, pulling him out of the water, giving him mouth to mouth. He actually jumped into shark-infested waters with a bleeding arm. He even had the cojones to dig a bullet out of his own arm with his fingers. (I was actually humming "Macho macho man" under my breath while he was doing it.) When I think of how much I despised Sawyer at the start of the series, it makes me smile. He's now one of my favorite characters, and I kinda want to hug him and pat him and tell him what a good boy he is.
The opposite is true of Michael. I liked him well enough at the beginning of the series, but seeing him continually bash, blame, and belittle Sawyer, a man who tried to save Walt and just saved Michael's life, turned me off completely. Yes, I can understand Michael's parental panic, his lashing out, his total preoccupation with Walt, especially since he just got him back after all those years of separation. And yes, he probably didn't realize what Sawyer had just done for him. But understanding it and excusing it are two different things. Michael is essentially a weak man who needs to blame others for his own shortcomings.
Desmond's reasons for being in the bunker are getting clearer. He believed the world was coming to an end, and he was in the bunker in order to protect himself. (Was it plague? Was it what "The Others" have?) Desmond belonged to some sort of organization, and the snowman thing was a recognition phrase. Locke, of course, did not have the correct response. Did the alarm go off because a ship or a plane approached the Island's perimeter? Was it the Others arriving back on the Island with Walt? Do Hurley's numbers make the magnet thing go off and crash whatever is approaching? Was "108.00" a countdown of some kind?
The patch on Desmond's uniform, the supplies, and oddly enough, the shark, was difficult to see, but it sort of looked like I Ching symbols. Or a stylized stadium – maybe the "tour de stade" was no coincidence. There was a snake in the center in the shape of the letter "S." I bet it doesn't stand for Superman.
Other than the extreme suicidal heroism of our man Sawyer and the oddity of flashback Michael giving young Walt a stuffed polar bear, the best part of this episode was the ending, with the Others chasing Jin on the beach. Were they on the other side of the Island? Is that where the tail section landed?
Character bits:
I was worried about Jin throughout the episode. At least Sawyer yelled out for him. Michael did nothing.
Charlie's heroin-Madonna appeared to be intact. Charlie said it might come in handy. Maybe he wasn't planning to take it, after all. Charlie said she was holy. Holy, holey, pun pun pun.
Locke appeared to betray Kate, but he was in fact protecting her, as well as the rest of the survivors. Locke is very aware of how capable Kate is.
Sawyer called Michael "Mike" throughout most of the episode. Except when he was angriest, and started calling him "Hoss."
Baby Aaron sure looked more than a couple of days old.
When Sawyer and Kate were playing the "I never" game in season one, Sawyer said he'd never kissed a man. Technically, that's no longer true.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was listed as a guest star, but I don't think we saw him. Did I miss him?
Bits and pieces:
— It has been 44 days since the crash, according to Locke. With at least five Others, Desmond, and Rousseau, I'm now totally confused about how many people are actually on the Island. At least 50, right?
— After last week's episode, the coincidence of so many car accidents started to get to me. How many have there been, now? And is it poor writing, or intentional? (I bet it's intentional.)
— The World Trade Center was visible outside the window of the lawyer's office. That fixes location and approximate time frame.
— The candy bar brand name was "Apollo." Apollo was the sun god and also the god of medicine, if I'm remembering correctly. Bet that candy tasted pretty good to Kate after forty days of Island fare.
Quotes:
"What did one snowman say to the other snowman?"
LostReviews came up with three responses:
"Do you smell carrots?"
"Have an ice day," and
"We've come a long way from 'possible flurries'".
Claire: "What do you suppose all that's about?"
Charlie: "I reckon Jack's gonna do something heroic."
Sawyer had nearly all the good lines: "You see that toothy son of a bitch, you aim and squeeze. Got it?"
Sawyer: "What you gonna do? Splash me?"
Let's say one for the Michael flashbacks and the re-Hatch scenes, and three for Sawyer and the ending. That makes two out of four polar bears,
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
I hate to say it, but I was actually bored through too much of this episode. The replay of the Hatch scenes was too much for me. I wasn’t all that thrilled with them the first time around; the second was more than I could bear. And, we didn’t learn enough new information to make them worth our time. Not to mention that the scenes on the raft were, let’s be polite and call them homages to Jaws, only nowhere near as frightening.
ReplyDeleteHowever, one thing did jump out at me -- probably because my mind was wandering. In “Homecoming,” Locke says that Ethan must have come ashore to kill Scott from the water. He most likely did as we now know that the Others have a boat, one that is not sea worthy.
Also, I am often frustrated by ret-con and there was a bad one. In the meeting with the lawyer, Michael seemed shocked that Susan wanted Brian to adopt Walt; yet, last year, we saw the conversation she had with him in the hospital where she told him herself. I’m with you on Michael. He was so unpleasant during the entire show that, by the end, I just wanted any scene that did not include him in it. Shame, because the more Sawyer, the better.
The one thing I liked about this episode was the Hurley was right about what was down in the Hatch! Good for him.
I have to agree with ChrisB on this one: a little boring. (It's more boring if you already know what's about to happen, and that boredom is looming.)
ReplyDeleteIt is fun, though, to listen to that beeping in the hatch. Once you know it's the sound of the grocery store scanner, it's impossible not to picture apples for 99 cents a pound zipping past as the timer counts down.
"Patience, Jack... Patience"
ReplyDeleteLove Ben