• We see that Widmore’s crew is setting up Pylons similar to the ones that surround Dharmaville. Are they meant to keep the Smoke Monster out, or pen it in?

Michael Landon: “’You can spend your whole life worrying about what’s going to happen. People aren’t really gone when they die, because they live in memories. Memories that sustain us until we see them again.”

I liked that Sawyer’s wordless Little House on the Prarie scene was a call-back to an earlier time, where we learned that Sawyer used to watch the show as a kid when he was sick. Still, in an episode that was unusually full of “on-the-nose” moments, this one took the cake for me. I don’t need Michael Landon to repeat for us (yet again) the idea that the dead remain with us. I wouldn’t have minded a brief snippet of this dialogue, but the whole thing runs weirdly long, and is yet-another instance of time being devoted to something questionably meaningful when there’s a heavily-laden banquet table full of story details to explore before this show ends.

• Sawyer shows up at Charlotte’s door, toting a “sad sunflower” and a six-pack. He brought a single sunflower to Juliet during Season 5.

• Widmore’s got something/someone locked away on his submarine. Survey says “Desmond.” I tend to agree. What/who else could it be? Eloise Hawking? A Smokey-containment device? A closet full of McCutcheon? The entirety of the ’86 Mets? A gimp?

• Widmore has established himself on Hydra Island, and he and his crew appear to be preparing for the arrival of the Smoke Monster. Again I ask: How did he return to the Island? Why has he remained on the sub? Can he physically not set foot on it again due to his “banishment”? Is he simply protecting himself from Sudden Smokey Attack?

And more importantly: Why is he there? He was instrumental in getting Locke to petition the Oceanic 6 to return to the Island, which led to Locke’s body returning, which lead to the Man in Black’s successful coup. But he also commissioned a team of men to extract Ben Linus from the Island. Had he been successful, Ben would not have been present to kill Jacob. Has Widmore been on Jacob’s side this entire time? Is he operating his own game – seeking the Island’s “immortality” in exchange for helping the Man in Black?

And on a related note – the last time around, Widmore sent trained mercenaries. This time around he sends…what looks like the office staff of an insurance company. What up with that?

• Learning that Widmore is hiding on Hydra Island potentially clears up something about Anti-Locke/the Man in Black: by telling Ben to meet him there, isn’t Anti-Locke essentially delivering Ben into Widmore’s hands and/or encouraging the two of them to take one another out? That strategy should sound familiar, since its more-or-less what Sawyer is attempting to pull off as well – setting two enemies against each other.

This was also pointed out by Chud commenter “Wadeisdead” (I love the internet), who also wrote the following: “So either way, Ben would have been killed, but for some reason UnLocke would rather it happen by Widmore’s hands than by Jacob’s servants.”

I’d like to suggest that I have a pretty good reason for Anti-Locke’s actions. Letting Ilana kill Ben arguably doesn’t do anything for Anti-Locke or his plans. Ben’s death removes a slippery wild card from the game table, but that’s it. However, sending Ben to Hydra Island potentially removes that wild card (because Widmore harbors a serious vendetta against the “boy” who supposedly stole the Island from him), and it also potentially removes Widmore from play as well. Two for the price of one. If we assume that Widmore’s goal is to stop the Man in Black from leaving the Island, then removing Widmore is an obvious step for the Man in Black to take before he can leave. More interestingly, if Widmore has actually been HELPING the Man in Black (remember: he’s the one who tells Locke in Season 5 that unless Locke returns to the Island, “the wrong side is going to win.”), then Anti-Locke’s motive in pitting the two men against each other becomes even darker. He’s eliminating everyone – ally or enemy – as he progresses to his “freedom.”

I’m completely baffled by Claire. Is she being controlled? Does this “infection” mean anything? It doesn’t seem to take away your free will, since Claire tearfully apologizes to Kate for, y’know, trying to murder her. So maybe all of this comes down to the idea that people like Claire and Sayid are giving in to the darker halves of their personalities thanks to Anti-Locke’s persuasive chit-chats, and not because they’re “zombies.”

Only, I’m not convinced that Claire is being honest in her apology and tears here. I’ll be happy to be wrong about this, but I’m waiting for the Other shoe to drop here.

• In the off-Island universe, Sawyer/James runs into Kate again, and this time it looks as though he’s set to arrest her. Some folks on the message board have asked why Sawyer didn’t stop Kate in the airport, now that we know he’s a cop. But, to my recollection, Sawyer didn’t have any idea that Kate was a fugitive when they first crossed paths. And note also that Kate is hooded in this episode, so Sawyer tackles and apprehends her without any idea of who she is.

Like “Sundown,” this episode’s “flashes” clearly indicate that there’s more story to be told here, and I’m looking forward to it. Near as I can tell, there’s nothing in “Recon” that contradicts my wacky Second Snake theory.

• When Sawyer reveals his actual plan to Kate – they’re going to let Widmore and Anti-Locke fight it out and slip off in the submarine while they’re busy trading punches – I couldn’t help but remember the title of the book we saw Sawyer reading in the off-Island reality: Watership Down. Water-Ship, Down, as in a submarine.

• Let’s talk about Sawyer’s long-con strategy here – his initial agreement with the MiB, his subsequent conning of Widmore (who doesn’t appear to have bought Sawyer’s patter, but it doesn’t seem to really matter), and his subsequent Re-conning of Anti-Locke (get it? Re-con? Recon? See what they did there?). Sawyer spends this episode telling Anti-Locke and Widmore what he thinks they want to hear – and he tells nothing but the truth in the process. The only lie he tells is one of omission: he’s not on anybody’s side but his own.

Interestingly, that’s pretty much been my perspective on the Man in Black’s approach this season – that he offers people the truth (or some of the truth), but not to help or enlighten them. He offers them the truth because it advances HIS agenda. I believe that the Man in Black has promised to keep these people safe, and that he intends to do so. But I don’t know that he has the ability to follow through on that promise (see: Claire’s freakout, and the possibility that his leaving the Island will be catastrophic for everyone on it).

While I had some serious problems with “Recon,” I was glad to find myself less critical of it on a second viewing. I’m sure I’ve missed any number of notable things, and that I’ve made mistakes in this column. I invite you to point this stuff out in the comments section below. Next week’s episode promises to obliterate any complaints like the ones I’m making here. If you haven’t seen the previews or heard the rumors I won’t spoil a thing for you. But I’ll leave you with this cryptic hint, which also doubles as the episode’s title:

Ab Aeterno.

*****

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There are three Lost-significant books resting atop Sawyer/James’ bureau: Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, and Lancelot. All three novels have been seen on the show before – and all were seen being read by Sawyer. As for their potential significance to Lost, here are some quick facts:

A Wrinkle in Time deals with time/space distortions called “tesseracts,” which allow people to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye, involves the struggle of children against a formless entity called “IT,” who wants to control their thoughts, and casts the struggle between IT and those children as a struggle between God and evil.

Watership Down is about bunnies, as Sawyer’s described it. More specifically, it’s about a ragtag group of rabbits who flee their home warren to find someplace new and safe to live. The story of their journey mirrors the journey of Moses and his people in Exodus, the Black Rabbit in the book recalls the Smoke Monster, the rabbit Fiver’s visions recall Desmond’s “flashes,” and the dictatorial leader of the enemy warren in the book resembles a pre-confessional Ben Linus.

I rambled on about Walker Percy’s novel “Lancelot” in the Rewatch Column for Season Two’s “Maternity Leave.” Feel free to wade through that column, or just read this excerpted summary:

The novel concerns the title character’s theological/philosophical quest for “The Unholy Grail” – i.e. true sin, true evil. Its main character has been jailed for murdering his wife and three others, and the near-entirety of the novel is a diatribe from his perspective. “Lancelot” operates as a dark mirror to the title of the book we see Jacob reading in the Season 5 finale – Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” This is not an accident

O’Connor and Percy have been compared and contrasted more than a few times, both of them ‘Southern Gothic’ authors fascinated by themes of sin and redemption. In the book “Peculiar Crossroads,” author Farrell O’Gorman examines the two authors and discusses their continued influence (considerable), their similarities (also considerable) and what O’Gorman considers to be their essential ‘Christian Existentialist’ outlook

The title of O’Connor’s novel is a reference to the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit Priest/Philosopher/Paleontologist/Geologist (!!!) credited with inventing the term “Omega Point” to describe “a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which the universe appears to be evolving.” This is, in the view of O’Connor and Teilhard, a moral, spiritual, and intellectual rising up toward a kind of universal consciousness (another Lost reference to the idea of a universal mind, Philip K. Dick’s “VALIS,” will be popping up later on down the line). You can read up on a ‘secular’ version of Teilhard’s Omega Point by taking a look at Raymond Kurzweil’s “The Singularity Is Near.”

From the (very very) brief encounters the audience has had with Jacob, it would seem that the Island’s resident Christ/Ra-figure is attempting to achieve this convergence in some as-yet-unexplained way. As he tells the Man In Black, “It only ends once. Everything that happens before that is just progress.”

By contrast, the title character of “Lancelot” could stand in for the Man In Black and his argument that “it always ends the same.” Lancelot believes that the Omega Point that the universe is evolving toward is not a higher level of consciousness, and is not the cooperative model envisioned by Teilhard, but is instead a state of primal selfishness. These two opposing viewpoints set up another mirror between the seasons

“We should not mistake Lance’s proposal of a new ethical absolute as Percy’s own. It serves, if anything, to confirm Lance’s damnation. All his talk about stern morality and knightly intolerance is nihilistic to the core. For it is based on the graceless conclusion that only such moral supermen as himself can put an end to the universal buggery. Anyone finding themselves encouraged by this courtly righteousness should remember that as Lance slits the throat of his wife’s lover he feels nothing except his neck itching.” – Author Ralph Wood, in a 1977 review of “Lancelot”

• It’s a nice touch that Charlotte, who’s an Archaeologist, unearths Sawyer’s carefully-buried past by digging through his drawer. That said, it’s really weird that she goes digging through his drawers like that.

• Kate was the focus of many of my favorite scenes in this episode, which is something that typically isn’t the case. What is the deal with Claire and Sayid? Should we just assume that they’ve given in to their darker impulses, and that this whole “infection” business is just a metaphor, essentially? Is there more to it? Sayid’s passive, not-quite-disinterested stare as Kate’s about to have her throat slit is chilling. The Sayid we’ve known would never have let that happen. Surely there’s more to his inaction than just nihilism? The uncertainty that the show seems to have intentionally created around this issue is starting to tick me off. It’s hard to know whether we’re supposed to feel bad for Sayid (because he’s not in control, the “infection” is), feel disgust toward him (because if he is in control, then he’s simply stopped caring) or something else entirely. And it’s hard to get dramatically invested in this without that knowledge – at least, it is for me.

• What’s your verdict on Anti-Locke’s intervention? Was it genuine? Did we just see the Man in Black lose control of his recruit? Or did we see Anti-Locke conning Kate, scaring her with Claire so that he could step in and save her, earning a little trust, or at least a moment of time to speak with her (and what was Dogen’s warning? If you allow him to speak, it is too late?)? Just what is it that he says to Claire privately? Does he threaten her and demand she apologize? Or does he tell her that he needed to slap her to make it look convincing to Kate, and that he’s grateful to her for trusting in him even though he mislead her (because, I imagine he’d say, he was really just trying to give Claire something to hold onto – and that something really had to be burning hatred for a group of (in this case) relative innocents, because hate seems to be what has defined this man for a long time)? It really seems as though it could be either, and I like that O’Quinn looks as if he might be genuinely rattled by Claire’s sudden desire for some murderdeathkill.

Sawyer’s discovery of the Ajira bodies eerily mirrors Locke’s discovery of the Dharma Purge mass grave. Is this meaningful? I suspect it might be. We still don’t understand why it was that the Purge was eventually ordered, nor whether Jacob actually ordered that Purge. Is it possible that the Man in Black was responsible for that act of mass homicide? It’s implied (though left agonizingly open) that Anti-Locke killed these people, not Widmore (there’s no blood around the bodies, no bullet holes, and no obvious cause of death, which to me says “Death By Smoke Monster”). If the Man in Black orchestrated the Purge, what does this in turn say about the rest of the orders that the Others have been carrying out? Do the Others function as go-betweens for both Jacob and the MiB? Were they duped into thinking that their orders were coming from Jacob/the Island? Or did Jacob actually order the Purge?

Zoe: “I’m the only one left.”

• I’ve seen a bunch of comments from people comparing “Zoe” to Tina Fey. I think that this says something semi-interesting about how we process our entertainment: There’s apparently room in our collective head for just one woman with dark, near-shoulder length hair and bookish-yet-stylish glasses at a time. And if you think about it, Really Famous People never have an equally Really Famous Person who looks substantially like them. If there’s another, lesser-known actor who looks somewhat like the Really Famous Person, that less-known actor will always “look like the Really Famous person” because there’s only room in our heads for one of these people at a time.
 
If you’re a likable/talented actor, but aren’t yet Really Famous and there’s another actor who is basically indistinguishable from you in appearance and/or name, neither of you is getting Really Famous in the Hanksian or Nicholsonian sense of the term. This is the Dermot Mulroney/Dylan McDermott Dilemma. If you’ve got someone else who you kinda-sorta look similar to (or share a too-similar name with), but not Mulroney/McDermott similar, then both of you get to be slightly more famous than the other, but only for brief alternating periods of time, and never at SuperFamous Levels. This is the Applied Rule of Thomas Jane/Josh Lucas Dynamics (see also: The Pullman/Paxton Parallel).

• Charlie’s terrible brother Liam shows up at the police station, looking for his brother. This is in sharp, surprising contrast (so far) to what we’ve seen of Liam before on this show. I’ve talked about Liam before, and what a tremendous douchenozzle he is. That Liam would never fly from Australia to LA just to bail his brother out. Which makes me wonder – is Liam there because he loves his baby brother? Or is he there for a more selfish reason?

• As seen in the picture at the top of this column, Sawyer takes a good look at himself in the mirror and doesn’t like what he sees. So he smashes that thing good. I’ve talked your ears off about the whole “mirroring” thing on this show, and I’ve pointed out that in each episode a character takes a look at himself in a mirror or reflective surface, which in turn serves as a possible visual metaphor for the themes of reflection in the show, the “mirroring” that takes place in it, and for the way in which the off-Island and on-Island “universes” reflect each other. Here, we’re looking at Sawyer as he shatters the glass of his reflection in the literal sense, and then spends the remainder of the episode struggling to open himself up to his friend, Miles. Like Jack in “Lighthouse,” Sawyer needs to smash something literal in order to reevaluate himself. This recalls everything I’ve been talking about with regard to Sartre, the concept of the Other, Aldous Huxley’s notion of Good Being, etc., et al. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just pop “Lost,” “chud,” “rewatch,” “recap,” and any of the above terms into your Google search field. You’ll be swiftly rewarded by an avalanche of my purpled prose.

• Sawyer talks to Zoe, the apparent “last survivor” of the Ajira flight. But it becomes clear that, like Sawyer, she didn’t arrive on the plane. And with that, we get STILL MORE new characters, which are fine if they’re going to be cannon fodder for whatever conflicts are coming, but less fine if they’re going to take time away from the characters we already know and care about. I suspect it’ll be the former.

Anti-Locke: “Have you ever had an enemy – someone that you needed to hate? Very powerful, isn’t it? Claire was devastated without Aaron. She needed something to – something to keep her going so, I gave her something to hate.”

• And that, to bring things back to my thoughts from earlier in the column, seems to be the crux of the Man in Black’s M.O. He runs on negative energy, and he encourages others to run on it as well. Which is why I’m so baffled by the way he can seem so open and understanding. It’s led me to think a little bit about his mindset, and I’ll get into that down below.

Anti-Locke: “You referred to me as a dead man. I am not a dead man. I know what you’re feeling, Kate. I know what you’re going through.”
Kate: “And how do you know that?”
Anti-Locke: “Because…My mother was crazy. A long time ago, before I looked like this, I had a mother just like everyone. She was a very disturbed woman. And as a result of that I had some growing pains. Problems that I’m still trying to work my way through. Problems that could have been avoided, had things been different.”

• Anti-Locke sounds genuinely emotional as he doles out a few pieces of his back story, and we’re left wondering about the significance of this. First, for a show that’s chockablock with Daddy Issues, not much attention has been paid to the Mommy Issues bouncing around. And maybe we should be paying attention, because while the Bad Dads have been hogging the spotlight, the Bad Moms have been popping up all over the place. There’s Kate’s mom, who turns her in and starts out willing to testify against her daughter. There’s Boone’s mother, who cuts Shannon off from the family fortune entirely. There’s Walt’s mom, who takes Walt away from Michael entirely so she and her new husband can move three times in something like ten years, from Amsterdam to Italy to Australia, working their way up the law firm ladder and assumedly leaving Walt to be raised by a succession of well-paid nannies. There’s Locke’s real mother, who’s mad as a hatter, and works with Locke’s con-artist father in his bid to nick Locke’s kidney. And then there’s Eloise Hawking – a woman who drove her son along a path that she knew would kill him. There’s also, as you know, the whole issue of Island maternity, and the fact that mothers who get pregnant on the Island end up dying. When Anti-Locke tells Kate that his mother was crazy, it could just as well be the “real” John Locke talking. I don’t mean that literally – the Man in Black was speaking abut his mother, not John Locke’s. But remember that John Locke’s mother WAS crazy. And remember what it was that Anti-Locke/the Man in Black shouted at that creepy/mysterious Peter-Pan-like boy: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”

These weird shared character traits make me think that John Locke and the Man in Black were a “perfect fit” in more ways than we’re aware of just yet. They’ve both got that (don’t tell me what I) can (‘t)-do attitude, they both had crazy mothers, they both suffered a loss of some portion of their freedom. Anti-Locke, like Season 1’s Classic Locke, is an alternately spooky and empathetic figure. A self-appointed leader with issues he’s suppressing that have hinted at an inner instability. They’re spiritual kin in a way.

• Who was the Man in Black’s mother? Will we see her this season? Will she be a mirror of Eloise Hawking, who pushed her son Daniel Faraday down a road she knew to end in death? Will she instill in the young Man in Black an inflated sense of “destiny”? Will she tell him that he’s special? She would if I were writing this show. But I ain’t.

• I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Anti-Locke chooses to talk about mothers with Kate, who’s still reeling emotionally from her quest to reunite Claire and Aaron and all that’s come with it. By circling that topic, he’s touching on what matters to her most now. He’s recruiting her, or so it seems. And his words at the end of the scene – that Aaron has a crazy mother now too – suggest that Anti-Locke thinks Claire isn’t fit to raise Aaron, or that he wants to plant that idea in Kate’s head. Because what have we seen Kate want more than anything? To be a mother. And what would she probably want more than anything? To be a mother again. Can Anti-Locke offer that to her?

• As I’ve already said, I’m struck by what appears to be Anti-Locke’s sincerity in his interactions with the castaways. This could all be an act, a mask he wears. But it’s just as possible that it’s not – that he’s sincere in wanting his freedom, in not caring about the Island, and in his feelings in general. This doesn’t mean that he won’t lie and sacrifice and do what must be done to achieve what he wants, but it does seem to mean that he’ll be well-mannered about it. And that brings me to my weekly dose of Things You Probably Don’t Want To Know This Much About:

“The worst corruption is a corrupt religion.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

“Anarchism is therefore not only a libertarian protest against unjust power. It is also a spiritual protest against corrupt religion….Of course the anarchist distinguishes himself from the Christian saints by implementing and corrupting his spiritual vision. It is nevertheless important to recognize the spiritual source of his politics and to know that it is a reaction of sincerity to hypocrisy. A utopian religion that seeks to eliminate all power from society is the curious stepchild of a religion that has given power a too uncritical justification.”

“Anarchism is, in short, a disease. It is the psychosis of infantile idealists who do not know what kind of a world it is in which we are living, what human nature is really like, and what the necessities of government are…”  – Reinhold Niebuhr, Catholicism and Anarchism in Spain

• Reinhold Niebuhr lived through harrowing times. He witnessed firsthand the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. He has been called a “Christian Realist,” in that he attempted to engage with the reality of the world around him as he saw it – a place with the capacity for infinite cruelty and horror, and a place with the capacity for imperfect Grace. If I can be so bold as to try and sum up some of his deep thoughts with a couple of shallow sentences: He did not expect the world to evolve naturally to a state of perfection, nor did he expect to see the Second Coming. He believed that mankind was responsible to itself, and capable of the creation of a better, if still irrevocably-imperfect society.
 
If you’ve never heard of Niebuhr, I’m not surprised. We tend to value volume over veritas when it comes to theological debate as a general rule, and when someone’s got bullhorns, power chords, a laser-light show and crazy costumes (Stryper!), you don’t pay a lot of attention to the guy with the acoustic in the corner (Niebuhr!). But Niebuhr’s worth paying attention to, and his books are readily available for your head-consumption through Chud’s Amazon.com link. Might I recommend the Essential Reinhold Niebuhr?

I pulled the quotes above, not in an effort to somehow tie Niebuhr’s philosophy into Lost (Niebuhr’s never been mentioned in the show), but because it nicely sums up my feelings at this point about Anti-Locke, aka, the Man in Black, aka, Smoke Monster, aka Peaches. It also helps me to sum up how I feel about Jacob and his Others. What we’ve learned about Peaches so far suggests a righteousness to his crusade. He’s spooky, prone to murder and manipulation, but the dude’s clearly feeling wronged. Deeply, deeply wronged. His anger feels sincere – a reaction to what he paints as Jacob’s hypocrisy. And his response – his choice regarding that anger – is a kind of Anarchism. He provokes the killing of the island’s “God”/”Christ”/”Aslan”/”President”-figure, destroys or converts that figure’s loyal followers, plunges Island society into chaos, plots to abandon abandon that society and dismisses Jacob’s “meaning” and value entirely, endorsing a self-centered outlook focused on getting what he wants most – personal freedom.

His fervor in this is messianic; quasi-religious. And that desire to murder Jacob, to destroy the Others, to abandon the Island – to eliminate all of Jacob’s power from society – seems to grow directly from the pseudo-religious culture of Jacob and the Others, a society that inarguably gave power “a too uncritical justification.”

I’d like Jacob to be revealed as an essentially benign/benevolent guy at the end of this show, but there’s no denying that the people who served him were a corrupted group. In the allegorical sense, the Others were Jacob’s priests, but they weren’t angels. There was Ethan, the glassy-eyed hillbilly murderer of Season 1 (who, inexplicably, was never that bizarre and scary again). There was Pickett, the sadistic dude with a thing for Sawyer. There was Tom, who may have been Friendly in surname, but had no problem blowing up a boat with three people on it and stealing a boy from his father. And then there’s Ben (sung to the theme song of “Maude”).

You get the picture. Anywho, the point is that the Others exercised (and have continued to exercise) their considerable power on the Island without justification, explanation or apology. Their “religion” trumps any rights that the castaways might have in civilized society. This means that when Walt gets hauled off into the dark by greasy hobos in a souped-up bathtub Michael is left to imagine the absolute worst. Can you put yourself in that character’s place for a moment? Your boy was taken (Right! Out! Of your! HANDS!) by Deliverence-level-creepy men to god knows where and they’ve blown up your boat, not appearing to care one way or the other whether you die (maybe because they knew that Sawyer, Michael and Jin were candidates, and that they couldn’t die yet?), and left you in the middle of the ocean.
 
That’s some hardcore scary right there and Jacob’s Others do this kind of stuff all the time. Based on the evidence we’ve seen Anti-Locke isn’t wrong in his anger – the Others were a corrupt group controlled by a power-mad man associated with Jacob in some unspecified way, and Jacob’s machinations have resulted in bad ends for many people. Accountability is seriously lacking on this Island, and the “priest” caste seems to have gotten entirely out of hand. The “real” John Locke pointed this out back in Season 3:

Ben: “Why are you so angry, John?
Locke: “Because you’re cheating – you and your people! Communicate with the outside world whenever you want to, you – you come and go as you please…you use electricity and running water and guns…You’re a hypocrite! A Pharisee. You don’t deserve to be on this Island. If you had any idea what this place really was…you wouldn’t be putting chicken in your refrigerator!”

Ben and Co. have become decadent and corrupt, and the worst corruption is a corrupt religion. But despite the reality of this hypocrisy, Anti-Locke’s anger may ultimately be the anger of an infantile idealist – one who has soured on the promise of Jacob’s plan (and who is most likely the cause of his own suffering). I don’t doubt Anti-Locke’s sincerity, but I do question his sanity. His anger at the way in which the Island’s “God” figure has conducted himself has already prompted him to murder/help murder an extraordinary number of people, and its driving him to do something which we have been lead to believe will have profound consequences: leave the Island.

The Island isn’t “just” an Island, as we’ve heard Anti-Locke claim. The Island is something more than that. John Locke – the real John Locke – told us so. The Island is a place where miracles happen. We know this to be true because we’ve seen those miracles with our own eyes. On the Island, the lame walk, the sick are healed; men are made “immortal,” people visit the past, glimpse the future, experience visions. None of this means that the Island is “good,” or even worth saving. But it does mean that the Island is clearly not “just” an island. And leaving it will have consequences, consequences that Anti-Locke does not know or care about. Like the Anarchist, he has not considered (or does not care) about the practical realities of his actions. He’s too caught up in the mindset of revolution. If the Island is “necessary” in some way, and Jacob’s plan has a goal that’s meant to benefit someone, change something, avoid some catastrophe, then Anti-Locke’s actions have jeopardized that plan.

Which is to say: uh-oh.

YET-MORE LOSTY SCRUMPTIOUSNESS AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!

Recon (S6, Ep. 8)

Miles: “Who’s Sawyer?”

This was not my favorite episode of Lost. I typically watch each week’s episode twice – once with my wife as it airs for the pure, un-distracted thrill of it, and again the next night after she hits the hay, writing this column as I go. After “Recon” ended, she and I had the same shoulder-shrugging reaction. Not a lot “happens” in Recon, and there’s a lot of people – walking – about – while – talking – about – stuff – that – doesn’t – seem – very – important. Some of Sawyer’s off-Island scenes are great, but more than a few of them feel slack, second-hand, even clichéd. There are nine hours of Lost left, and this is what we get? What feels like an echo of that Sawyer-goes-to-jail episode?

Lost is sometimes criticized for being a show about “people who walk places.” The castaways squabble on the beach, walk to the caves, resume squabbling, walk to, oh, say, the Black Rock and engage in a spirited bout of more squabbling, rinse and repeat. This complaint has never made sense to me until tonight, where there were a number of wordless marches through the jungle, or snippets of conversations that seemed almost purposefully circuitous. I appreciate a good tease as much as the next guy, but you’ve either got to give me some red meat on the bone or distract me with something shiny. I didn’t feel like Recon managed either of those things very successfully.

Then I watched the episode again. While I still feel like there are multiple missed opportunities in this installment, I’ve warmed to it to some degree. There are portions that just do not work for me, but there’s some good stuff here also – most of it free of enough context or firm meaning that it might feel more insubstantial than it actually is. As things play out in Lost’s final season, I suspect that this episode may look better in retrospect, because things that are frustratingly unclear now will (I assume/hope/DEMAND!) be made clear, and it’ll be easier to look back at a moment like Sayid’s eerie non-response to Claire attacking Kate and enjoy it because we’ll know what the hell’s going on. But there’s still a frustrating lack of momentum to the Island proceedings, and at this point a lack of momentum really shouldn’t be one of the show’s problems.

Making up for that to some extent are the ways in which the show’s writers continue to underline their themes without bashing us over the head with them. Miles’ question (“Who’s Sawyer?”) refers to the folder that James Ford hands him. But it more generally refers to the Sawyer we’ve come to know. Who is he?

Over the course of this story, Sawyer has gone from hard-hearted double-dealing con man to prickly outsider to reluctant member of a community to lovable scoundrel to bearish, protective defender of “his people” to broken, angry loner without a people, to possible Anti-Locke recruit to double-dealing con man again, but with an interest in the people around him. It could be said (and will be said, because I’m about to say it) that Sawyer’s journey represents a kind of loop, an ouroboros, wherein he takes from his past what he needs to survive, and takes from his recent past the experiences that have made him a “warmer” man. And while most of us had guessed that he hadn’t fallen to the “dark side,” that he was in fact pulling a con on Anti-Locke, it was nice to see that confirmed tonight, and to hear him expressing concern for his fellow castaways.

Thoughts:  

• The title “Recon” is a play on words. It serves to refer to Sawyer’s recon effort on Hydra island, and it also serves to describe Sawyer’s manipulations throughout the episode – he’s “re-conning” the MiB after conning Widmore.

• Sawyer promises Jin that they won’t leave without Sun. Will these two ever manage to spend five minutes together in the same place without something separating them?

Girl: “You’re a lousy con man.”

• Sawyer is a lousy con man in these off-Island flashes.  He doesn’t fool anyone with his smirky, too-cool attitude. That’s somehow nice to see, and I really like the reveal that Sawyer is a cop. That said I’m pretty sure that sleeping with the wife of someone you’re trying to bust is against all sorts of laws and ethical codes. And while I like the idea of Sawyer as lawman, I don’t think much of the scene that surrounds it. It feels overblown, rushed, somehow “fake.” And I don’t think that feeling is intentional.

• The time on Sawyer’s clock is 8:42 – another instance of the numbers. Those specific numbers correspond with Hugo and Jin/Sun, three characters who have yet to receive an off-Island flashback.

• Similarly, I really like that Miles is Sawyer/James’ partner. It nicely mirrors the sort of dynamic that developed between the both of them on the Island, and it gives Miles heart and sincerity, something we’d only seen in regard to his father before this season. Should they make a Lost spin-off about the buddy-cop team of James Ford and Miles Straume, it needs to be named Lafleur and Order.

• Claire’s frightening bone-baby makes a reappearance, and Kate learns that Claire’s been treating it like a real child. Why? Because:

Claire: ”It was all I had.”

That’s awfully sad. And it speaks, I think, to Anti-Locke/the Man in Black’s apparent Modus Operandi, which we’ll get into a little further down. Suffice it to say that I once wrote of the Island:

Most religious traditions teach us to divest ourselves of the ‘corrupt’ world around us and to strive for a spiritually-deeper, non-materialist life of service. That’s ultimately what the Island offers its visitors – the chance to attempt this without the trappings of the modern world, to connect and to evolve, to build community. But, dualistic as it is, the Island also offers each individual the chance to stop making choices, to wander Lost in the jungle of solipsism, to refuse change and embrace both literal and figurative isolation.

It seems to me that Anti-Locke offers that isolation and solipsism to his recruits. He seems to offer Sayid and Claire the chance to stay stuck in their anger, their past, so that they won’t have to get over their pain. And I suspect he does this not because he’s evil, but because he’s clearly not been able to move past his own.

• Anti-Locke lies to his new followers and tells them that “the black smoke” killed the people in the Temple, making it clear that these “lower level” Others don’t know who Anti-Locke really is. I’d talked a while back about what I thought the power structure of the Others might actually be, and it looks as though those ramblings were more-or-less correct. There’s an elite, who control most/all of the information, a kind of “middle management” level whose members (Ben, Richard) know varying degrees of information but not as much as the elite, and the lower level Others, like Cindy and the kids, who seem more like drones or hangers-on, permitted to live among the Others but not privy to anything too important. As I said back then:

I think the ‘regular Others’ perhaps aren’t told the full picture any more than the 815ers or we, the audience, are. They’re not told ‘We’re doing this because of *Insert Jacob’s ultimate plan here*.’ They’re told ‘you’re doing this, because I’m paying you/because I brought you here.’ As example: “Go get that weird kid who can summon birds,” “Go arrange for a bus to hit Juliet’s ex-husband. Then recruit her.” If they ask why, I suspect the answer is always the same: “Because Jacob says so.”

The leader/high priest dictates the word of God/Jacob, and the people/Others follow that word. You can see that the regular Others aren’t totally happy with this situation from the way that they react to Anti-Locke’s rabble rousing in the season five finale. Devoting yourself to a sect that demands utter faith is intensely difficult. It’s difficult if it’s a ‘religion’ in our real world sense of the word, and it’s (I imagine) just as difficult when there may be an actual ‘God’ involved. Both instances rely completely on faith, not proof.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the power structure of the Others essentially mirrors both the power structure of Dharma and the 815ers – in those instances, as appears to be the case with the Others, a few people in the ‘circle of trust’ were given information considered sensitive. The vast majority though, were there to cook, to clean, to mend…in other words, to serve those in ‘real’ power.

Anti-Locke: ”I know what happened back there was really scary, but it’s over. You’re with me now and I promise that I’m going to take care of you.”

• What I’m really enjoying about Terry O’Quinn’s performance, and about the way his character has been written this season, lies in how enigmatic Anti-Locke/the Man in Black is. We’ve been told he’s “evil incarnate.” We’ve been told that he wants everyone dead. And yet, we’ve also seen him treat children with a gentle warmth, and we’ve watched him grant the castaways real answers to some (but not all – and I think that’s on purpose) of their questions. What do you think? Do you like the way this ambiguity has been preserved? Are you tired of it?  

• Sawyer asks Kate about his fellow castaways, and it’s clear that he’s no monster. He’s “uninfected,” still clearly cares about the safety of his group, and even asks about Jack before any of the others. I was curiously relieved by this. I’m enjoying the weird, possibly-biological-or-spiritual malaise that Sayid’s undergoing, but it’d be almost unforgivably dark to have someone like Sawyer fall from redemption.

• We learn that Anthony Cooper, aka “Sawyer,” is still apparently responsible for James’ family tragedy. It seems that in the off-Island “universe,” Cooper still seduced his mother and conned his father, driving Ford’s father to shoot his wife and then himself. What does this mean for off-Island Locke’s narrative? We’ve seen it subtly implied that Locke and his father have a relationship in this reality – has Anthony Cooper repented his old ways? Has he simply hidden them? Is he still a con artist, but with a better relationship with his son?

• Another tantalizing tidbit: Miles’ dad is alive, off the Island, and working “at the museum” with Miles’ friend. That friend, of course, is Charlotte, who I was surprised to see in this episode. What’s significant about Miles and Charlotte’s friendship? They were both on the Island at one point. Are they friends because of this connection? I assume that Miles’ father was in the Dharma Initiative at one point, just as Roger Linus was.

• So did Josh Holloway get a haircut or something? It’s weirdly distracting. Is there a Super Cuts Station located somewhere on the Island?

Anti-Locke: “I forgive you.”

• I’m both amused and intrigued by the way that Terry O’Quinn is playing his role on-Island this season. His embodiment of the Man in Black is curiously mannered and almost courtly, yet also prone to moments of seeming self-doubt, weakness, anger, and homicide. I like his honesty with Sawyer about his true nature, and I like the look on Anti-Locke’s face just before his tells the truth on this. It reads two potential ways to me: (1) almost endearingly unsure, like a grown man admitting he can’t read or something, or (2) nervously calculating, as if hoping that the truth will be “the right move” here.

• Anti-Locke tells Sawyer that the Others were convinced that they were protecting the Island from him, when all he wanted was to leave. It seems to me that by preventing him from leaving, the Others may be protecting the Island – a scenario that the Man in Black conveniently omits. Since I’m listing out things I like about O’Quinn’s performance today, I should also mention that his delivery of the “kill or be killed” line (and I don’t wanna be killed) is the stuff great actors are made of.

Anti-Locke: “You are the best liar I ever met.”

• Once again, the Man in Black seems able to see through the people he encounters, and I’m reminded of the way in which we saw the Smoke Monster “scanning” the castaways in the past seasons. How much does he know about Sawyer? About all of the people on the Island? Lost has consistently featured characters like the Others, Jacob and now the Man in Black, who seem to know the castaways better than they know themselves.

• Anti-Locke sends Sawyer over to Hydra Island, where he, Kate and Jack were held in the beginning episodes of Season 3. I don’t think that Sawyer’s been back there since then, and he seems less than thrilled to go. Who can blame him? The last time he visited Sunny Hydra Island he was psychologically manipulated, beaten, and imprisoned. Anti-Locke tells Sawyer that there are other Ajira survivors there and that he has “reason to believe” that those survivors want to hurt them. This suggests to us that Jacob may have had more agents aboard the flight, but whether or not that’s the case doesn’t matter, as we’ll discover. More on this directly below.

• And as far as Anti-Locke’s temperament/general aura go, remember that this guy told Richard they’d need to “take care” of the Ajira survivors last season. Anti-Locke has no qualms with lots and lots of murder – making me wonder whether the order to start the Purge of Dharma was given by Jacob or by the Man in Black. That question will pop up again in this episode. More on it below.

• It seems to me that Anti-Locke is sending Sawyer over for one of two likely reasons: (1) He is testing Sawyer, because he’s killed the Ajira people (rendering the question of whether they’re also “Jacob’s people” entirely moot), he knows they’re dead, and either wants to see what will happen when Sawyer runs across them, or wants to send Sawyer a message and/or (2) He’s sending Sawyer off with the knowledge that Widmore’s men are over there, and he’s comfortable with Sawyer being shot or captured or whathaveyou.

• The character of Charlotte makes her off-Island appearance as James’ ridiculously-good-looking blind date. I mean – good lord. I’m enjoying the way that characters like she and Keamy have been popping up this season. It reinforces the sense that these people were more or less “meant” to draw together for some as-yet-hidden reason, and for me it hasn’t reached a level where it feels any less believable than, say, a column of smoke that impersonates dead folk or a time-traveling Island.

MORE LOST AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!