A determined Michael convinces Jack and several castaways to help him rescue Walt from “The Others.” Meanwhile, Charlie struggles with Eko’s decision to discontinue building the church. Comment here, via e-mail to lost@hawaiiup.com, or by calling the LostLine at (808) 356-0127, by Saturday, Dec. 26.
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Meta
Big emphasis on time in this episode. Both Michael and Charlie looking at watches. Hmmm….
Just a quick comment about Michael. I know a lot of people hate Michael for murdering Ana Lucia and Libby. I certainly miss Ana Lucia and I wish that Libby’s story could have played out more thoroughly, BUT–watching this episode again while holding my sleeping baby, I burst into tears during the scene with Michael and Walt. I know that there is VERY little I would not do to save my kids if I believed they were in danger. I empathize with Michael, and really wish he’d had a chance to reconcile with Walt before he died on the freighter. (There’s also something to be said here about Ana Lucia, and how she murdered the man who effectively killed her child.)
There is a nice common thread going on here, too, with Claire and the vaccines, with her wanting to ensure Aaron’s safety.
I was happy to see Charlie’s nice part in this episode. He was my favorite character. (Love his scene with Vincent!) And I’m glad we may learn more about Walt in Season 5. Hopefully he’ll play a big role there.
January 21st is my birthday! Usually I’m not so stoked about growing a year older, but this year I can’t wait. 😉
this was an interesting re-watch. for me, it’s hard to get through the episodes where michael acts so irrationally in so many ways. aside from all his yelling and rudeness at everyone else, one big thing that really stood out to me was his conversation with “walt” via the computer. does he really think that that’s walt talking to him? walt is what, 9? 10? can he _really_ type that fast? and if he were in trouble, would he be using such good grammar with no typos? that is hard to imagine.
this episode also raised a lot of questions in my mind.
-why did pickett take michael’s blood? is there something genetic in michael that made walt special, or did it come from his mother? (maybe we can assume mother, because they let michael go.)
-was walt acting at all when he visited michael in the tent? did bea mean to let some information about them slip by means of walt? what michael heard certainly made him angry and desperate enough to agree to anything. they spent a week frustrating michael until he reached a breaking point.
-bea says that they couldn’t just go rescue ben from the Swan hatch. why not? the hatch is not well guarded. they probably could have sneaked in and made off with ben without anyone realizing.
-danny uses the phrase “see you in the funny pages”, which is sort of an older-generation phrase. it made me wonder when he came to the island, and it also seemed to make it obvious that he probably wasn’t a native, unless that was a popular dharma initiative phrase.
-ironic that a couple of episodes ago, jack chose kate to go out to the line with him because they knew the others didn’t want her. now, they’re both on the “wanted” list.
This was, I believe the second time we saw Alex. I got used to seeing her by the time she was killed, but I remember how, the first time I saw THIS episode, how perfect I thought this piece of casting was. Could there have been anyone more of a dead ringer to play Danielle’s daughter??
A few thoughts:
Michael: I think we all can empathize with Michael, and the desperation he felt to get Walt back. But what I can’t empathize with was the way he went about getting Walt back. Since I first viewed this episode, I’ve tried to put myself in Michael’s shoes. And I’ve always thought, why didn’t Michael come back to his friends, and explain to them what was going on. I mean, couldn’t Sayid, Jack, and company come up with a plan to use Ben as bait to get Walt back? Further, if Michael had explained “the list” to Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, even Sayid, I have to think they would have, in the spirit of getting Walt back, gone along. What makes Michael’s efforts to free walt repulsive is the way he went about it (double murder, luring friends into trap) when he didn’t have to. Maybe that was the goal of the writer’s though….to turn Michael into a character we no longer can empathize with. All said, I do wish his return in Season 4 had lasted longer and been more redeeming. Unfortunately in Lost, as in real life, the ending for characters isn’t always happy. And I think that the creators have always said that this is a story that will not end happily for everyone. While that’s hard for us as viewers at times because we grow to care for the characters, it ultimately adds to our enjoyment of the show–knowing that there is real danger and real consequences for our characters and story.
Jack: I didn’t quite believe that Jack would just buy Michael’s explanations for his irrational behavior (snapping at everyone, asking how Libby was doing with the guilty look on his face, throwing up in the jungle, and ESPECIALLY Michael’s explanation for ONLY taking jack, kate, hurley, and sawyer). I don’t think the Jack we’ve come to know would be fooled so easily.
The Others: Have we eve had an explanation for the the fake clothes, teepee’s, and fish? Why the need to dress like primitive people? In Season 4’s finale, they return to the drabby clothes when they ambush kate and sayid and take out keamy’s crew. Who are they trying to fool and WHY?
The vaccine: Hopefully in season 5 we will get an explanation for this. Was the vaccine created to protect against developing “time-sickness”, i.e. what Desmond experienced on his trip to the freighter? Or was it to protect against the poisonous gasses released by the tempest station? Or something we haven’t seen yet?
Wow, this episode really asked for a huge ‘suspension of belief’. So much unrealistic and unbelievable scenes. One of the strongest is that only Kate and Hurley can dig the graves? C’mon! Witness all the people that walk up to the gravesite at the end.. The entire epi was sort of jerky and didn’t flow for me. The way Michael so easily manipulated everyone. It was really had to accept.
This episode also raised so many new questions and answered so few.
You can tell there was an attempt to keep many possible story arcs in the air.
I like Sayid and Jack’s interaction here, which panned out in season 4. But so many threads seemed to have been ‘lost’. Mr Eko’s departure a keen disappoint, for example. The building of the Church. etc…
Well we now know thqt the whole “other’s” camp was fake – even the Darma doors so that is why Walt must have said they “aren’t who they say they are” . Maybe it is just a way to ensure that the losties don’t find their real location’ I wonder if the reference to the room that was made by Mrs. Kugh was the torture room that Karl was held in. It was nice seeing so much of Vincent – I still think that we have much more to find out about the dog. And how great is Sayid – figuring out that Michael has been “compromised”.
Overall though, like much of season 2, there are more questions than answers – and given what we know now, I don’t think that most of them will be ever answered like why did Echo stop building the church; why did the others take blood from Michael; what is the vaccine for; what are Walt
‘s special abilities etc and why can he appear in different places than he actually is. I hope this last one is explained. We have consistently seen Walt appear to people and from Michael’s look when asked, it seems as if he has as well. Walt seems too important to not have his abilities explained at some point.
My favorite Sawyer line about Pippi Longstockings, the great ape and the red beret. Very funny!
Jen and Ryan – all this pressure! Hope we can respond!
I liked the ‘on the island’ flashback in this episode which echoed back to the claire kidnap flashback in series 1. It was good to see why michael acted the way he did BUT I don’t think it was enough to justify what he did. Michael is pain in the proverbial but it was moving to see Walt beg him not to leave. however, killing those girls was unforgivable and I disliked him more than ever in this episode. I could have kissed sayid for figuring out what he was up to.
This episode made me reflect on Ms Klugh. At the time I assumed we would see a lot more of her and that she’d be a central baddie. Then of course she asks mikhail to shoot her. We still don’t know what motivates the others. Why was she prepared to sacrifice herself like that. It’s a shame – she was genuinely creepy.
I don’t really buy that sawyer thought that ‘caught in a net’ was a euphanism for jack and Kate getting it on. Sawyer knows jack well enough to know he doesn’t have enough of a sense of humour for that. Also jack would never tell sawyer if he’d had his way with Kate, even using euphanisms.i know it was only put in to lighten the mood but it didn’t really work for me.
Thank you so much for your podcasts – I love them. I listen to them on my walk home from work and I especially like the forward cabin!
Mary Ann
Edinburgh
Scotland,UK
oh AND how selfish was Charlie chucking all the heroin in the sea??? Just cos he’s decided not to be a junkie (at last – how tedious are tv show junkies?!?!) there’s no need to destroy medical supplies. Just use will power you mancunian twit! He’d just seen it be used to ease lobby’s pain too. Wasn’t sorry to see Charlie go -just wish it had been sooner.
Merry Christmas you two! I hope you had a good holiday with the kids despite all the secret service guys flooding the island.
I am writing you for the first time from my new MacBook, my first Mac ever. I do not know why it took me a good 25 years to try it but I believe that this is the best notebook I have ever seen. Well, here is another idea for podcasting after “Lost” you could do either Parenting or MacStuff 🙂 Half a world away Christmas was good and taking a break from work to focus on family and cooking is always great.
Now on to Lost, well this episode left so many questions open and it reminded us of questions that we had and of questions that we still have.
Who are the Others, really? Why were they dressing up and pretended to be something that they are not clearly or are they? In some episodes we are led to believe that they live a nomadic lifestyle moving camp every so often but then as we see in S3 they have a permanent settlement, problems with plumbing and a Book Club. The two just do not add up, they were in a power position from day one so they could just show up the way they were.
Now the other thing is MIchael, he is one of the characters that I cared less than others. The “Walt screaming” got very boring very fast, he knew that the other were not really trustworthy so why did he just do what they asked him? I believe that a parent would do a lot to save his child but is my kid’s life worth two or more of people I consider friends? I mean Sawyer tried to save Walt by putting his life in danger and now he is just going to give him up? I have no sympathy for Michael. So I was not glad to see him back on the show and I did not particularly care when he went down with the freighter. He had to live with the consequences of a fatal decision that cost the lives of two innocent people and the torment of others. I have to backtrack a bit here to the time when Michael communicated with Walt. How did Walt communicate with Michael, I believe that he used his special abilities, telepathy or whatever to communicate. It is like that bird in Australia, he thought of it and …. ….there it was. Also, if the Other wanted Jack, Sawyer and Kate why did they let them go earlier. Although that might just be again some liberty that the writers took.
Now about the test with Walt. What was that all about, what were they trying to find out? Was Ms. Klugh a doctor of some kind? We know from the mobisode that Walt is very capable, I hope we will know more about that in the coming season.
Another person that intrigued me in this episode for some reason is Alex. She had been on the main island apparently and knew the island quite well, so how come that in 16 years she had never seen her mother. She is also shown to be a willing part of the dressed up mob and use violence. In S3, we see a very different Alex, more the teenager in love but in this episode she had a different face on.
Also that wall with the big hole in the middle that is shown as Michael is taken into their camp, is there any significance there? Why did they take a blood sample from him? As a side note I wish they could take a blood sample as easy as Pickett did from me when I do my yearly 🙂
Now what about the vaccine? Why, why , why? …and OMG why give them to Claire without knowing what it is? Jack should have been the one to give the green light on that one and not the ex-heroin addict who wants to get on good terms with the hot chic from Aussie land. The issue for the vaccines has never been resolved, I want to believe that it is placebo but then Ethan made it clear that there is some real significance and they keep falling from the sky so there must be more to them that we know.
The whole …”caught in the net” thing was very funny.
Sayid is very astute and he can read people pretty well, traits that Jack is missing but thankfully he listens this time. I liked the fact that Sayid reminded him of who was right about Henry.
In this episode we finally see Eko taking Locke’s place, we have mentioned it many times on this blog but the story was very promising. What made it clear to me that Eko took his place is when he refuses to go to the funeral as he believes that he has more important things to do, kinda like Locke with Boone’s funeral earlier.
I remember my disbelief at the ending of this episode when I first watched it. It was incredible “Boat!”. Then we found out that it was a coward scottsman who was drunk, but just Sun’s expression I thought they were rescued there for a split second.
Well it is getting late here and I cannot think of anything else at the moment so I will finish my post here. I appreciate that you take the time to do this, I would humbly suggest to do the two final episodes in one go as they are really one episode and not two.
Finally I would like to wish you a Happy New Year! All the best for 2009, may it bring health, fun and luck!
So long…
Ilias