Spoiler Alert

I think this episode was worth the wait– it gave us possibly the most important reveal of the season so far: an exact date in a flash-forward!!! The flash-forwards have driven me crazy all season because the writers have been careful not to let us know when they happen or in what order. As I’ve speculated previously, the first one (with Jack at the end of last season) is probably one of the last to actually happen chronologically and I figured Sayid’s, where it’s revealed that he is an assassin working for Ben, was probably one of the first. Ben’s flash-forwards confirm this as we’re finally told he meets Sayid in October of 2005. If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll know that the events happening on the island in the present are December 2004 or the first week of January in 2005 (it was almost Christmas according to a calendar on the boat in “The Constant” four episodes ago). Which means Ben finds Sayid in Iraq about ten months after the current events.

I was thrown way off base by Kate’s flash-forward earlier in the season, which depicted what looked like a two-year old Aaron who she was raising as her own. There’s no way to know yet if those events happen before or after this week’s flash-forward but I always assumed it couldn’t be too long after the Oceanic Six got off the island because she was going to trial. But considering the legal system and how long things can get strung out, maybe ten months or more isn’t too far fetched. And maybe I was wrong about Aaron– maybe he was only supposed to be about one year old and I was off on the age.

This is important because I was right the first time. At the beginning of the season, I predicted that this season would depict the events leading up to the Oceanic Six getting off the island and that by the end of the season, the present would catch up with the future. But after the confusion with Aaron, I decided I was wrong and expected it to take the rest of the series for that to happen. If Sayid had time to find Nadia, marry her, and then have to bury her all within ten months, we have to assume that the Six will be getting off the island very, very soon. There’s only five episodes left in the season and taking a look at an episode guide, I discovered that the last three of the season are called “There’s No Place Like Home” Parts 1, 2, and 3. Will those episodes get the Six off and then fill in all the blanks about the flash-forwards? Or will they get the Six off and take their time off-island, leading up to the flash-forwards? And then next season, how much time will the show focus off-island in the present? Finally, is that title a double-meaning? I expect Jack and Hurley will try to convince the others that they need to get back to the island after all of their talk in the flash-forwards about how they “weren’t supposed to leave.” I wonder if the show will take its time in doing this or if that ultimately is how that three-parter will go, getting the Six off and then some of them back on the island all this season.

Personally, I think a whole season about characters simultaneously on and off island would be a really fun change. It might be interesting to see that for a while to take the place of flashbacks and flash-forwards– everything in the present but in a lot of different places. Or maybe that’s a little too Heroes…

I would assume that Ben’s threat to kill Whitmore’s daughter Penny is supposed to tell us that she’s the one that was next on Ben’s list at the end of “The Economist.” I didn’t call this– I really expected it to be one of the Six. Still, I’m glad it’s someone we know and have had some reason to care about. I’m still wondering what happens to Desmond– he’s not one of the Six but he’s on the boat. Does he killed before the others get off the island? I thought perhaps he does get off and he just isn’t considered one of the Oceanic Six because he wasn’t on the plane, but that theory is killed by the fact that Aaron is one of the Six but he wasn’t technically an Oceanic passenger. And yes, I realize Ben gets off the island, but it’s obviously not publicized.

And I’m going to have a heart attack if we don’t figure out who was in the casket Jack went to see at the end of last season pretty soon. I would have expected more clues by this episode.

Anyone else think Ben was lying about getting off the island with Desmond’s boat? It’s pretty well established that if you try to get off with a boat you’ll just go in circles (i.e. Michael’s raft in first season). I think Ben has had a way off this entire time– maybe another submarine no one knows about or something (just what exactly is in his secret room?) But as quick as he was to let himself get captured by Jack at the end of last season, and to be held captive by Locke lately, it’s obvious he has a lot up his sleeve and I can’t imagine that sub was his only means of escape.

Ben can control the smoke monster. Or at least summon it. I’m glad to know that because it means he hasn’t been blowing smoke (no pun intended) every time he’s claimed he has all the answers Locke has been searching for. He really does have some understanding of all these mysteries, though I think even he isn’t completely informed. Now I want to go back and see if there’s any clues in previous episodes that Ben may have been responsible whenever the smoke monster attacked people.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Well, I finally scored on a prediction. Michael is confirmed as Ben’s guy on the boat. Like I said last week, I still don’t think is a great surprise and I wish we hadn’t had to wait seven episodes for it. The big problem with Lost’s experimental format is that if you keep leaving an audience hanging, sometimes for unbearably long amounts of time, there has to be a GREAT payoff. Sometimes it works, in cases like the revelation last season of how Dharma met its fate. And then again, sometimes it doesn’t. This isn’t the only bad payoff in this episode, but I’ll revisit this theme a little later…

I certainly appreciate Desmond getting the news that Whitmore is the man behind the expedition this early after the audience found out, just last episode. The Captain of the boat is quite interesting, especially how “forthcoming” he is, as Sayid says. Considering how secretive the whole expedition h as been, this was surprising, but welcome. On the other hand, it still begs the question of why they’re so secretive and what they still aren’t telling us. And although I think we could already infer that the “wreckage of Flight 815” found back in civilization was fabricated, it was nice to have a character confirm this. Perhaps the only big revelation in the episode, besides who the last member of the Oceanic Six is, is the idea that Ben had something to do with that fabrication. I never considered this, but I’m starting to think I should have. Is it possible he went to all that trouble just over his obsession with Juliet? He wouldn’t ever let her leave the island and why else would he want civilization to think there were no survivors?

In a lot of ways this is the best Jin/Sun episode of the series. As much as I never loved the Sun affair story I’m glad to see it concluded here and in a very sensible way. Juliet lets the cat out of the bag to Jin, but she apparently only does it to save Sun’s life (keeping her from joining Locke so she can get off the island before it kills her). Jin’s mad– who can blame him?– and it looks like it might be the end of their marriage. Then Bernard, of all people, calms him down and reminds him how hard but worth it marriage is. I doubt anyone with much investment in this series didn’t get a little misty eyed when Jin and Sun worked it out. A conflict that was beautifully executed and beautifully resolved.

Some of the drama is lost, of course, by the fact that we know Sun isn’t going to die because we see her flash-forwards and know she’s going to have her baby. This is another necessary evil of the format, I think, so I can mostly forgive it. But what I absolutely cannot forgive is the way flashbacks were mixed with flash-forwards simply to throw us off to the fact that Jin dies in the future.

I’ve come to appreciate big revelations from flash-forwards. They’re hard to follow, we never know exactly when they happen, but I’m getting used to it and it’s often quite worth it in the end. But this was the most pointless and obnoxious plot device I’ve ever seen– in any show whatsoever. Jin goes to buy a panda bear. It’s a cute scene because we’ve seen his wife in labor and assume it’s part of the same flash-forward. Then later he loses the bear in a taxi and goes back to get another one. It’s still cute but now we’re wondering why he’s so obsessive that it has to be a panda. Finally, when he shows up at the hospital, we find it’s for a client of his boss, Sun’s father. After all this heart-warming stuff, I the viewer am immediately crushed. I’m not hating it yet, though, because I think it’s a reveal– I think this is the show’s way of telling us Jin makes it off the island only to go back his crappy life again and Sun’s father comes before Sun.

Then, the unthinkable happens: he says he’s only been married two months. Two months? It’s a flashback! Suddenly it only serves as a way to screw with the audience and I’m quite offended by it. It contributes nothing to the plot, gives us nothing new about Jin’s character, and doesn’t even do anything to foreshadow his death, which might have almost made it worth it. And what was with Sun calling out for Jin during the delivery and a nurse saying he hadn’t arrived yet? We’re supposed to buy that she was calling for him and didn’t even realize it, but that’s a lame excuse– it was really just the writers trying to throw us off some more so that when Jin’s footage turns out to be a flashback, we’ll all be impressed and say how clever that was because we didn’t call it. No. It’s only clever if there are signposts and you still can’t call it, so that you can look back and say, “oh, I should’ve realized that!”

The final problem with it is that I knew something was fishy going on because now there were SEVEN survivors that made it back instead of six. It’ll be a little interesting to see how exactly he dies and if it’s on or off-island, but I hate the way it was revealed.

This does raise a question, of course. Despite the age of baby Aaron in Kate’s flashback (at least two) it seems people are going to have to get off the island now earlier than we were lead to believe the last few episodes. If Juliet’s right, Sun has to get off in three weeks or she’ll die, and she must, because we know she doesn’t die. This seems inconsistent to me. Sun has been pregnant for at least two or three months, so these flash-forwards are probably about four months from now. If Kate’s was a year or two from now, it doesn’t make sense, unless it really took that long for her to go to trial. Let me know if you have ideas on this because I’m quite confused.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan