Lost: James and the Giant Beach

Brought to you by a delicious glass of Redbreast Irish Whiskey, here’s what I thought about last night’s episode of Lost (Recon), in more-or-less realtime:

1. Last week on Lost: just read what I wrote last week, slacker. But, oh yeah, there was a SUBMARINE!
2. Sawyer’s still on this show? Apparently. He’s making some jungle tea, which is just regular tea brewed in the jungle. He’s making it for busted-leg Jin. Apparently they’re all bunking with Claire and MIB. Sawyer’s obsessed with getting off the Island again. But he promises Jin they won’t leave without Sun. Crazy and MIB return with a giant crew of unwashed hippies. Also, Sayid and Kate. She and Sawyer do not make out.
3. In LA, however, Sawyer just did more than make out with some tart. They’re naked in bed together. Scandalous. Anyway, he’s running late for an appointment with “that guy” and he’s dropping a suitcase filled with money. It’s extremely reminiscent of that Season 1 episode. BUT THEN SHE PULLS A GUN ON HIM. Awesome. She’s double-conning him! But he’s triple-conning her! Maybe. Unless he’s lying about being a police operative. Haha, he IS a police operative! And his secret codeword is “Lafleur”! And Miles is his partner! This is pretty great. And yes indeed, I do smell a buddy-cop spinoff!
4. Commercials. Some French woman is lying about creating Windows Sept. Maybe she’ll turn out to be Rousseau’s real daughter. After that, ABC is really trying to get people to watch Flash Forward. “There’s gonna be another blackout!” But, then again, nobody’s gonna give a crap. Might as well be watching V, or Leno’s Cavalcade of Mediocrity. Thankfully, we’re back to a good program now.
5. Claire’s rifling through a rucksack. She grabs a knife that I have no doubt we’ll see used sooner or later. She makes a doleful face at her creepy skullbaby, which she explains to Kate is all she has. Whatever. MIB gathers the motley crew around to give them a pep talk. The former stewardess asks what happened at the temple, and MIB explains that the black smoke killed him. Meanwhile, I see Rebecca Mader’s name in the credits and I am both delighted and infuriated at getting spoiled. I should be delighted at some later point in the episode, this is bullshit! They wander off into the jungle to go somewhere or do something or whatever. Kate and Sawyer chat about how they don’t know what happened to the rest of their people. Then we go back to Det. James Ford’s desk at LAPD!
6. He’s doing some boring-ass paperwork crap, calling around trying to track down an “Anthony Cooper”. Hmm, that name sounds familiar. He’s lying to Miles about who Cooper is. Miles says he’s setting him up with a friend of his. I wonder who she’ll turn out to be. HAVE I BEEN SPOILERED ALREADY? Dammit. Anyway, he and Miles are besties. Miles says “you know you can tell me anything.” A thousand slashfictions were just born.
7. Back on the Island, they are trudging through the jungle some more. This really is like Season 1. Sawyer and MIB talk in private. He tells Sawyer that he’s the smoke monster. He says it’s either kill or be killed, and adds reasonably that he doesn’t want to be killed. MIB tells Sawyer he’s sending him to Hydra Island, to do some “recon” (hey, that’s the title of the episode!) to see what happened to the rest of the Ajira survivors. I don’t really understand this plot, but at least it’ll put somebody in one of those canoes with a sidecar. I suppose this is all just to set up that scene from last season where somebody in one of those canoes was chasing/shooting at some of our time-traveling losties (including Sawyer). Remember? I guess the idea would be that it’s MIND-BLOWING to have Sawyer shooting at himself. Or not. Anyway, there are some commercials and then we’re back to…
8. Some fancy hotel bar in LA. Sawyer’s there for his blind date. Aw man, she’s a redhead. You and I both know what’s up. And… it’s Charlotte! Please, let’s get through this episode without her bleeding from the nose and babbling about chocolate. They’re flirting it up. Sawyer says he became a cop because he reached a point where he had to choose between being a criminal or a cop, so he chose cop. Ugh, they’re making out. STAY AWAY FROM HER, SAWYER. He didn’t stay away from her at all, you guys, they are not fit to wear their promise rings! FYI, he has a copy of Watership Down on his dresser. I guess he likes anthropomorphic animal stories in any timeline.
9. Charlotte looks through his stuff while he’s in the loo. She finds a folder labeled “Sawyer”. This probably ties in with his search for Anthony Cooper, don’t you think? Anthony Cooper, remember, is Locke’s dad, with whom he appears to have a strong relationship in alternate LA. This could get weird. Anyway, Charlotte sees the newspaper stories about Sawyer/James’s dad killing his wife, then himself. He comes in and is like, why are you looking at my private things! He’s freaking out, which you can understand. He yells at her to get out. And so she does. Nosebleed-free, thankfully.
10. Back on the Island, he’s managed to get the outrigger across to Hydra Island. He found the bear-cages! Loyal fans are like, oh yeah, remember when he and Kate were locked in those for the most boring half-season ever? But I am like, actually that was pretty awesome. Assuming you buy the theory that those cages had been used to train polar bears to turn the frozen donkey wheel (which is why they found a polar bear skeleton in the middle of the desert, remember?).
11. Meanwhile, Kate asks Sayid if he believes MIB can get them off the Island. He’s acting kinda passionless. Then Claire tackles Kate and tries to knife her as Sayid watches dispassionately. Then MIB SLAPS CLAIRE IN THE FACE. Whoa. She wanders away, dazed. Kate’s distrubed by her brush with death. And also with Sayid’s willingness to just sit there and watch it happen.
12. Sawyer wanders some more, and eventually finds the Ajira plane. It’s seen better days but it’s more or less intact. There’s stuff scattered across teh beach nearby, including a recently-set campfire. Also, tracks of something heavy being dragged into the sand. Something… dead-body-ish. And, yep, he finds a pile of dead bodies. They have flies buzzing around them but they don’t look that old. He hears something behind him! It’s someone running! He runs after him/her! It’s… some girl with glasses! She says “I’m the only one left.” Oh good, another new character whose entire backstory we’ll have to sit and listen to while we learn nothing about the stuff we’ve been wondering about for the last 5 years. Commercials.
13. YESSSSSS, Charlie’s brother is at LAPD! He asks James about him but James is like, not my problem. Miles corners him and is like, why did you say you were in Palm Springs when you were in AUSTRALIA? He’s upset about the lies. He asks what James was doing there. He retorts, “that’s none of your damn business.” The bromance is totally over. Poignant string music as James looks at himself in the mirror and then PUNCHES THE SHIT OUT OF HIS OWN FACE.
14. The last one left is Zooey. They swap stories as the audience refills its drinks. She says she was out collecting wood when she heard screaming. I’m guessing it came from all her friends, who were dying. She came back to their bodies. I dunno guys, I’ve got a suspicion that she’s a grifter or something. But anyway, he tells her that he can help her by taking her back to the main Island, which I bet is a bad idea.
15. On said Island, Kate is weeping in a bamboo copse. MIB apologizes because it was his fault that Claire went nutty as a fruitcake. He says Claire needed an enemy, something to keep her going without Aaron. God this is atrocious. I mean, the thoughts are fine but there’s no need to express them aloud. Use your words to explain why the statue had four toes, MIB. She asks where Sawyer went and he says he’ll show her.
16. Speaking of which, Sawyer and the girl are walking back to the outrigger. She’s asking a lot of questions, dude. Maybe because she’s working with WIDMORE? She’s like, do you have a lot of guns? C’mon now. This is ridiculous. She’s about to knock him out and kill him. Oh good, he figured it out. He pulls his gun on her and asks who she is. She whistles and a bunch of people pull guns on Sawyer. Tee hee. So yeah, I think these will turn out to be the guys who shoot at them in the time-travel world! Anyway, Sawyer says “take me to your leader” in a sardonic tone, as is his wont. Commercial.
17. MIB and Kate sit on the beach facing the Hydra Island. Their t-shirts are super dirty. They chat about how he’s not a dead man. He says he knows what she’s going through, because his mother was crazy. His mother who??? This is awesome, actual backstory we care about! So yeah, his mother was crazy and thus he “had some growing pains” which he won’t clarify. Anyway, he says his problems were avoidable “had things been different”. It’s as if he wants to go back and change them. He says that Aaron has a crazy mother too. I think he means Claire!
18. The new dudes with guns walk Sawyer through the jungle. They walk past some dudes setting up portable sound fences like the ones they used to have around the Dharma village. Anyway, they go to the submarine, as we all knew they would. In goes Sawyer. But first we flash back to LA.
19. He lives in an apartment with orange juice and beer and frozen dinners. How sad. He watches old TV while he eats and drinks. It’s Michael Landon! One Day at a Time! Michael Landon basically says “don’t worry, be happy”. He adds that when people die they go to heaven and we’ll see them again someday. That was kind of odd. Anyway, James feels sad so he brings a flower and 6 beers to Charlotte to apologize. She says he blew it. Good work, Charlotte!
20. Okay, back to the submarine. They really stretch out his walk through the vessel. He notices a locked room which will come up later. Then he comes in and sees Widmore. He calls him “Mr. Ford”. Sawyer remembers that Widmore send the freighter filled with assassins (and Charlotte!). They talk. Sawyer says he’ll sell MIB out in exchange for a ticket home for himself and his friends. Widmore is delighted. But I don’t believe it. Widmore asks how he can trust Sawyer. And Sawyer doesn’t really explain. Because there’s no way he can trust him! But they shake hands anyway so it’s time for some more freaking commercials.
21. Back in the jungle, Kate walks back. Claire corners her to apologize for, er, trying to murder her. She cries and thanks her for taking care of Aaron, then jumps in for a gigantic hug. Claire’s acting kinda weird lately, you guys.
22. Sawyer gets back with the boat thingy. He tells MIB everything. Duh. He mentions that they’re setting up the smoke monster fence, and says he told Widmore he would set MIB up. And I say, remember two paragraphs back when I said this would happen? Some things about Lost are predictable.
23. In LA, James tries to make nice with Miles. Which is important if we’re ever going to get that cop show. He shows Miles the Sawyer file. Turns out Cooper conned James’s folks in this timeline, too (which, to pat myself on the back, I also predicted up there). Anyway, he tells Miles that he’s been hunting “Sawyer” down ever since he joined the force. He says when he finds Cooper he’s going to kill him. AND THEN A CAR CRASHES INTO THEIR CAR! Someone in a hoodie runs away from it! It’s obviously Kate! Sawyer tackles her! It turns out… it’s KATE!
24. Who, back on the Island, is staring into a campfire mopily. Sawyer chats with her. She asks why he’s working for MIB. He tells her about Widmore. He says he’s going to let the two sides fight it out, and he and Kate will leave the Island while they do. He intimates that they will be stealing Widmore’s sub. Spooky music plays and then…
25. LOST

Not bad. The James/Miles cop part was fun. A lot of the surprising twists were utterly unsurprising. Charlotte was awesome. I missed Hurley and Charlie and Jack and Sun and Lapidus and Desmond and Walt and Aaron and Jin (who completely disappeared — is he hiking along with MIB and the hippie patrol?). It’s hard to say this episode compares favorably with last week’s, but it advanced the on-Island story and expanded the alternate timeline meaningfully. Of course, none of that explains why Sawyer and Widmore pretended there was any way either of them could/should trust the other’s word, but I suppose that’s a problem for another day. Next week I presume Claire will begin the 4-episode process of sacrificing herself for Aaron, while Kate and Sawyer start making out again despite the fact that Sawyer should still be in deep mourning for Juliet (with that entire plotline concocted just to delay the inevitable Kate/Jack reunion), and while Jacob tells Hurley how to build a flux capacitor for the Dharma van.

I think we’re done with boring/uneventful episodes. I expect the rest of the season should move quickly and maybe even answer a question or two (like: where the hell is Shannon???). I also expect to learn the whereabouts of Desmond, Penny, Charlie, Rose, Bernard, and Vincent. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to see Arzt blow himself up in the high school chem lab!