Hey. ‘Sup.
So ummmm . . . whatcha all doing?
Oh, right. Sorry. I was distracted by shirtless Sawyer. What? Like you weren’t.
Today is one of those rare days in which I have lots of stuff to do, so I can’t give this episode its full due — but I think that’s fine, since I thought it was a sort of tepid episode. Plenty to like about it, but . . .
Stuff I wasn’t crazy about
* Liam looking for Charlie — though it was great to see Liam, this felt like backsliding into the COINCIDENCE? OR NOT business the flash-sideways scenes were doing at the beginning. Though if this means that Charlie’s going to be back soon, then I’m OK.
* Sawyer — sorry, Ford — hooking up with Charlotte was also too much, though perhaps the intent of this part of the plot was to create as strong a jarring feeling in the audience is possible. In audience time, Sawyer is still flooded with grief, and to watch him jump into bed with not one but two women is . . . painful, right? Felt wrong. Sexy, but wrong.
* Also, I’m pretty sure that Charlotte was ransacking Sawyer/Ford’s drawer looking for anything but a t-shirt. It’s possible that she’d been tasked by Miles to hunt around for information, but I think that’s too much of a stretch. Though maybe. Regardless, I wish they’d followed up on that.
* The island stuff felt like it didn’t move at all. It did, with Sawyer going to the Hydra Island and finding Widmore’s people (this time around Widmore hired a pole dancer and Chip from Kate & Allie) and playing both sides of this fight that had BETTER BE EPIC. But mostly this felt like set-up, which is fine, but man, the next 8 episodes had better all feel like finales.
* The scene between Sawyer and Widmore fell flat. The final scene was Sawyer tells Kate that they’re going to just let everyone else duke it out while they make their escape also didn’t feel like the sort of ka-blammo ending that Lost usually gives us. “We’re gonna take the sub.” Ooooh. Like you know how to pilot a sub any better than you know how to pilot a plane.
Stuff I dug
* I’m not the first and I won’t be the last to say that I would watch the Sawyer and Miles cop show in a heartbeat. Sawyer is a COP. I love it. And his explanation to Charlotte makes the most sense both in terms of Sawyer’s past (which happened exactly as it did in the original timeline) and in terms of the bigger picture: Sawyer had a CHOICE between turning criminal or turning into a cop.
* Of course, his plan for revenge against Anthony Cooper blurs the morality line, which again fits in with the bigger thematic picture.
* But what interests me the most about this sideways turn of events is that it’s the first one that parallels the island in 1977. The previous eight episodes have all called back to events that either happened on the island in 2004 or, in the case of the Oceanic 6, off-island in 2007. 1977 Sawyer and Sideways Sawyer are both called Jim, they both work as figures of authority in peace-keeping situations, “LaFleur” is their codeword.
* What does it mean? I’m not sure what it means in terms of these two worlds eventually reconciling, but I think in this case what we saw of Sawyer in “Recon” is who he really is, or who he was always supposed to be — it wasn’t until he time-skipped to 1977 and became Jim LaFleur and assumed a position of authority, respected by his employees and those he protects in the DI, calmly reading a book during a crisis, that Sawyer really came into his own.
* Still — “LaFleur” is a totally random codeword. How’d they come up with it?
* I loved it when the woman at the beginning called him “Dimples.”
Other stuff
* Well, of course it would be Kate on the run at the end. That was a good way to balance out the actual ending, because I immediately wanted some follow-up. Josh Holloway’s delivery on “Son of a bitch” was one of the highlights of the episode.
* And it makes sense that Miles and Charlotte would know each other through Miles’ father — who apparently ALSO left the island. Starting to wonder whether the bomb even went off in the Sideways World, or if the DI simply ran out of funding or something. (Or maybe it wasn’t the bomb, but the “incident,” but those people would’ve been on the island then as well.)
* The Kate and Claire stuff was pretty intense. Kate’s totally out of her depth right now and much as I dislike the character I was feeling sympathetic toward her. Claire tries to stab her and Sayid just watches? Ouch. The conversation she has with Smokey was interesting, too — Smokey talks about his crazy mother, but did he mean his crazy mother or Locke’s crazy mother?
* Can Widmore actually be ON the island? I’m wondering if the conditions of his exile mean that even if he finds a way back (which he has, twice now) he can’t actually physically set foot on it.
Finally, next week’s episode looks like it’s going to center on Richard, which I wasn’t expecting given last week’s episode. I feel sort of sated on the whole Richard issue, so while I’m looking forward to this I think it would’ve been better if next week’s episode had already happened, because I fear it’s going to feel like an afterthought. Especially since Richard told Jack he didn’t have any answers! And now ABC is touting the Richard episode as one with a whole bunch of answers? Granted, that’s a network problem rather than a writing problem, but still. I am skeptical.
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