Lost recap, episode 4×08: ‘Meet Kevin Johnson’
We have to wait until April 24th now? After THAT episode?
The writers on Lost love to leave us hanging. I have no clue if this was a planned cliffhanger or not, but because of the writer’s strike, this episode was the last of the original eight produced. Did they know in the back of their minds that the strike would happen and thus created an episode that would keep us in suspense until the show returned?
Either way, it was good and gave us a few answers. The downside is, as Lost is fond of doing, we now have more questions.
Recap of Lost episode 4×08, “Meet Kevin Johnson”
After some great flashbacks of Michael and Walt’s journey on the Island (I absolutely LOVED the scene in season 1 when Tom takes Walt. “We’re gonna have to take the boy.” That was so chilling.) we drop into a townhall meeting in one of the cabins at John Locke City.
In the spirit of truth and honestly, Locke wants to get everything out in the open. So he brings Ben along, brings Miles and the entire camp is there to learn the truth.
We basically learn once again (thanks Hurley for pointing that out) that the freighter is there to nab Benjamin Linus. But what we find out after that, with no disagreement from Miles, is that once they have Ben, they’ll kill everyone else.
Truth hurts.
Then they tell everyone that Michael is the guy on the boat, and sometimes I think it’s easy for us fans to forget how much everyone hates Michael now after what he did. We may be excited to see him again, but certainly no one else is.
As Locke takes Miles back to his cell, Sawyer catches up and points out that Locke failed to be honest about the $3.2 million that Miles asked for from Ben.
Locke jokes that there aren’t any banks on the island, so it wasn’t important. Miles…laughs right back and points out that Ben has gone from prisoner to a free man.
He’s a man that can get what he wants. A lesson that no one ever seems to learn.
Case in point: Ben persuades Danielle, Alex and Karl to go to the Temple for safety, pointing out that if the freighter crew finds out Alex is his daughter, they’ll use her to get to him.
I think I’d take my chances, honestly. They agree to it though…a bit too quick for my tastes.
The Kevin Johnson or Michael Dawson backstory
We come onto the captain beating the crap out of a crew member who appeared to be trying to launch a motorboat into the ocean.
He’s doing it to save their lives he says. Do they remember what happened to Minkowski?
Interesting…
Meanwhile, Sayid and Desmond confront Michael, asking him why he’s there. (by the way, I’d like to thank Desmond for his non-participation in tonight’s episode. I don’t think he had but two lines)
“I’m here to die,” says Michael.
Flashback time
We flashback to Manhattan, New York, where Michael is living now and apparently trying to kill himself. But he can’t. He tries to drive headfirst into a shipping container going around 70+mph, and doesn’t die.
He awakes in a hospital and sees…LIBBY! But it’s a dream, he screams and the real doctor walks in.
When he leaves the hospital, he goes to see Walt. But as we learn from Michael’s mother, that aint happening. Michael had shown up out of nowhere, tells his mother that she can’t tell anyone they are alive and she’s not happy with that.
Walt is upset at Michael anyways, which we find out later is because Michael told Walt what he did to Libby and Ana Lucia.
Michael tries a second time to kill himself, this time with a gun he buys after pawning his watch that Jin gave him. But before he can do it, frakking TOM shows up out of nowhere. You know Tom of course. He’s an Other and dead now.
I guess it’s nice for Tom that before he bit it on the island, he got a little food, a little wine and a little sex in a Manhattan penthouse.
Tom tells Michael that he can’t kill himself, that the Island wont let him. He still had work to do. Tom prods Michael to test it for himself if he wants. So back in his apartment, he attempts to pull the trigger on the gun and nothing happens.
Just a click. He goes to try one more time but before he can pull the trigger, he sees the news about Oceanic 815 being found at the bottom of the ocean.
Michael goes to find Tom in his penthouse suite at the Carl, and asks him about Oceanic 815. It’s not the real plane Tom says, and blames the whole thing on Widmore, showing pictures of empty graves and purchase orders.
So last week the captain says Ben did it, this week Tom says Widmore did.
Who do we believe?
Tom gives Michael a mission to redeem himself in his son’s eyes: Go spy on the freighter and kill everyone on board under the alias Kevin Johnson and save everyone on the Island.
Once again comes the theme of redemption. The Island wants you to redeem yourself.
Michael goes on board, meets a few people (Miles somehow knows his real name isn’t Kevin) and opens a crate that was shipped to him. It has a bomb in it…yowsers.
Michael is struggling…he can’t kill all these innocent people. But then he sees a bunch of guys doing target practice on the deck with some pretty serious machine guns. He realizes that what Tom told him is true.
He goes to set off the bomb and out of nowhere, we see Libby again, who says “Don’t do it Michael.”
Where is Libby coming from? Is she from the Island, like Harper from two weeks ago? Or is she just a figment of his imagination?
He ignores her and hits the execute button. Nothing happens except a little flag pops up telling him “not yet.”
WTF?
Ben then contacts him via the ship’s radio and tells him to gather a list of names and to disable the radio, followed by the engines. He tells him the fake bomb was to show him that he’s not cruel like Widmore is.
Mind games, mind games, mind games.
Back to the Present
Now we’re back in the present and Sayid isn’t happy. He drags Michael into the captain’s quarters and proclaims that he’s the traitor.
And that scene ends in a cliffhanger for April 24th. Somehow, it didn’t seem like the captain was surprised at all. We’ll find out.
We bounce back to Danielle, Alex and Karl, making their way to the Temple. Karl says some nice words to Alex, about wanting to protect her just like Ben.
At that moment, I said to my wife, “Well, Karl’s dead.”
Zing! Zing! Zing! Shots ring out and Karl is hit through the heart it appeared. He falls over dead. Stone dead.
I totally enjoyed this scene by the way…there is nothing cooler I think than hearing the impact of bullets without the sound of the gun going off.
Danielle and Alex jump behind a tree, and Danielle gets Alex ready to make a run for it.
But ZING! Danielle gets hit too as they take off, and she falls to the ground. Alex stands up and yells “I’m Ben’s daughter, don’t shoot me!”
Ben always wins.
Are they both really dead?
Answers and Questions
So we found out how Michael got on the ship. It’s hard to believe this timeline on occasion, because according to Lostpedia, it’s only been around 30 days since Michael left the Island on the boat, but suddenly he’s back. Talk about a quick turnaround.
I sort of feel like we should believe that the fake wreckage is really Charles Widmore’s doing, but I’m still undecided.
We also kind of are reassured that the freighter is there to kill everyone once Ben is captured.
The Island has power outside the Island itself, as it was able to stop Michael from blowing his own head off. How and why?
So one interesting tidbit is that Michael lived in Manhattan and the dead guy in the coffin is from there as well. Hmmmmmmm….
What happens when people leave the boat? Apparently, Minkowski tried and that’s how he ended up like he was.
On a side note, the previews for April 24th showed that indeed Aaron is considered one of the Oceanic 6.
Is Libby being used, or was she just in Michael’s head? I think she’s being used by the Island.
The song playing when Michael tried to kill himself at the beginning was It’s Getting Better by Mama Cass Elliot. Gotta love the oldies that play in the background of some of the creepier scenes in Lost.
And speaking of that song, when Libby appears the second time…that song is playing again and I SWEAR in the background you can hear that little wail/horn sound that the smoke monster makes when it appears.
So what did I miss? What did you think of the episode?
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