Another humdinger of an episode tonight. So much happened, a lot of little things that have big impacts. The show is really gearing up for a smashing finale I think…a lot of build up, stories starting to come together…stuff is getting good.
Let’s get right into it
All about Jack
This was a Jack-centric episode, with the side story of Claire, Sawyer and Miles trying to get back to the beach.
Jack is in pain, and it’s obvious his appendix is about to burst. But before we get to that, we come to the flash-forward that sort of throws us for a loop.
When we last left Jack in the future, he had told Kate he didn’t want anything to do with Aaron…that he couldn’t be with her and Aaron.
But apparently he changed his mind. The flash-forward opens on Jack waking up in a bedroom, walking through a house and stumbling on a toy Millennium Falcon. Right when you see that, you pretty much know what’s next.
He walks into the bathroom where a women is in the shower. I think the audio people did a good job trying to disguise the voice, and for a second I thought it was Juliette, but nope, it was Kate!
Jack and Kate in the Future
We’re in August 2006 at this time, according to Lostpedia. Jack is with Kate and reading a bedtime story to Aaron.
They’re happy…if only for a brief moment.
Jack thinks he sees his father walking in the waiting area of his hospital, but you can’t be sure. Then the doctors at the psychiatric facility Hurley is being held at call Jack, ask him to come down and talk to their mental patient because he’s stopped taking his medication.
He goes, and sees Hurley, who now thinks they are all dead. That they were all happy before, and maybe it was heaven, but they are definitely dead now. They never left the Island.
Why? Because he’s still seeing Charlie. And talking to him. And Charlie has given him a note for Jack:
“You’re not supposed to raise him, Jack.”
And then next, as if that wasn’t enough, Hurley tosses him another Charlie message:
“Someone is going to be visiting you too…soon.”
Boom. The start of nutty town begins for Jack. In between now and April 2007, Jack will start his downward spiral into alcoholism and prescription medicine addiction.
Why isn’t he supposed to raise Aaron? What is going on? Who is going to be visiting him? He starts to question everything. Then he grows suspicious of Kate who he catches on a strange phone call.
But that is not before Jack comes home after talking to Hurley, asks Kate is she thinks he does a good job with Aaron, and then proposes to her!
She says yes! But even as he does it, there is a look in his eyes…of total uncertainty.
Next at the hospital late the next night…a smoke alarm starts beeping with a low battery. He finds it, takes it out and then hears his name.
“Jack!”
Yikes. It’s dad, Christian Shephard, sitting in the lobby. Hello visitor. He starts walking towards him, but then the chick from Jericho shows up, who is another doctor, and interrupts everything.
But not the psychosis going on his Jack’s head. The doctor gives Jack some sleeping prescription he asks for, because he’s stressed out.
Later he goes home, this time earlier than normal, and Kate isn’t there. In fact, she’s two hours late. Where has she been?
Jack has been drinking, is probably on sleep meds and so he confronts Kate. She asks him to trust her, but he wont let it drop. After much yelling, we find out she was on some errand for Sawyer.
Not that guy AGAIN! Jack has to be sick of hearing about him. Jack reminds Kate that Sawyer made the choice to stay behind.
Kate says she made a promise to Sawyer, and she had to do it.
What was it?
The Appendectomy
Juliette sends Jin and Sun off to the medical hatch for supplies, and after much persuasion on the part of Daniel, he and Charlotte go with them.
While they are there, Sun shows Jin the ultrasound where she first saw her baby, and Jin promised that he’ll get her off the Island.
He makes good on that next, as they return to the beach and Jin pulls Charlotte to the side and tells her that he KNOWS she can speak Korean. She had smiled earlier when Jin and Sun were talking, and he caught it.
Jin forces Charlotte to promise that when the helicopter comes back, she’ll get Sun on it, before anyone else. She nods her head.
They get all the supplies and head back, just as Jack is getting worse. He’s waiting on the table, but he wont let them knock him out with chloroform. He wants to walk Juliette through it.
Bernard, the dentist, helps numb the area and Juliette goes to work, while Kate holds a mirror so Jack can see. But it becomes too painful, Juliette orders Kate out and Bernard puts Jack to sleep with the chloroform.
The surgery is a success, of course, because we know he lives. Plus, he’s friggin’ Jack.
At the very end, Juliette brings Kate back in and while Jack is “asleep”, she tells Kate about the kiss they had. But it wasn’t a kiss for Juliette, it was for Jack…to prove who he loved. And it wasn’t Juliette.
Of course, when Kate walks out, Juliette says “I know you’re not asleep Jack.” And he opens his eyes.
Claire, Aaron, Sawyer and Miles
So after leaving Locke and Ben last week, Sawyer is leading Claire, Miles and her baby back to the beach.
We get proof of Rousseau and Karl’s death finally, as Miles walks over their graves and hears their voices and the gunshots that killed them. They wipe away some loose dirt and find the two bodies buried just below the surface, parts of them kind of above the surface.
R.I.P. you crazy French lady.
Sawyer doesn’t like the way Miles is looking at Claire, but we really have no idea what he’s thinking. Still, he tells him to stay 20 feet away. A restraining order.
We do know Claire had some weird dreams the night before, but we don’t know what they were. Ah, but we find out shortly.
They have a close call on the way as Frank comes busting through the jungle and tells them to hide NOW! Kemy is coming, he’s still alive and they have to hide.
So I guess the Smoke Monster isn’t all that great if some of the soldiers seem to have survived.
Kemy hears Aaron make a crying sound, but doesn’t investigate, instead he’s trying to find the helicopter with Frank. They are going back to the ship.
While they are camping, Claire wakes up and sees Aaron missing. She looks around and then sees…her dad. Christian Shephard. She calls him dad.
He’s rocking little baby Aaron in his arms.
Creepy.
In the morning, Sawyer wakes up and she’s gone. Miles tells him she got up and walked away in the middle of the night, and she wasn’t alone. Who was she with?
“She called him dad.”
The sound of a baby crying comes from the woods, and Sawyer finds Aaron left in a blanket under a tree.
But no Claire in sight…anywhere. She’s just gone.
Questions
A ton of interesting stuff happened tonight. We start to get the idea about how Jack turned crazy. We see how things are starting that will end up with Jin staying on the Island and Sun leaving.
But I’m starting to think, however crazy it is…that Christian isn’t really Jacob, he’s just a messenger. Sort of like Charlie might be to Hurley.
Also, Daniel and Charlotte have no idea where the power comes from for the medical hatch. I figured they knew a bit more than that.
Bernard and Rose have an interesting conversation about why Jack got sick. She points out that the Island heals people…it doesn’t hurt them. So why is Jack suddenly in pain? Perhaps…as Michael Emerson eluded to in a post I made on Thursday, he’s thrown something off balance. Maybe it’s wanting to leave the Island? Maybe that’s why he feels he has to come back in the future?
Finally, maybe you all caught on to this earlier than I did…but in last season’s finale, when Kate meets Jack at the end of the episode, she says she has to get going because…”He’s going to wonder where I am.”
Is she talking about Aaron? I think so.
i took the quote from hurley as someone is coming to visit you too, soon (not two). so he probably meant his dad.
also, did you see claire on the beach with sun in the preview for the next episode? i guess she is okay then?
nickys last blog post..Temporary Hiatus.
ohhhh, that’s why I didn’t get it…good call Nicky.
I think what Jack said about Hurley choosing to stay on the island is pretty important. It shows that they had a choice…something we didn’t know for sure until now.
I found this episode to be a bit annoying, probably because I find Jack annoying. Rousseau joining the ever increasing Island body count without having more resolved about her back story was annoying too.
Some other thoughts on the story this week…
Bernard’s background as a former Navy SEAL or other clandestine operative will come out soon.
Jin hasn’t completely left behind his old ways he learned under Sun’s Dad.
Hurley saying they were all dead was a shout out to the fans who’re holding on to the disavowed purgatory theory about the Island.
Another shout out to fans was the question about the power source. It alludes back to the conversation Locke and Ben had about giant hamsters powering the Island.
Smokey has a reason to keep the mercs alive for now so he only gave them an ass kicking and didn’t kill them.
Jack orders up an older generic sleeping pill rather than a new brand name that would be less addictive and more effective. You don’t want product placement where the character is an addict and washes down the pills with beer and scotch! Also note the sleeping problem connection here between Jack and Widmore.
Frank Cs last blog post..OpTempo Ramblings
@ Jason, you mean Sawyer staying, but I know what you’re saying.
@ Frank - Interesting you find him annoying. You know, I commented to my wife last night, that when Jack proposes to Kate, it just doesn’t have the same power that the Desmond/Penny story has in terms of a love story.
Maybe because we all knew it didn’t last anyways.
Yeah, I agree about the Jack porposal. It was pretty weak. I think he proposed out of fear of being wrong in the case of Hurley telling him he shouldn’t raise Aaron. Anytime someone tells Jack he shouldn’t do something, or he can’t he makes it a competition to prove them wrong. So that is why he instantly came home and proposed. He is growing sort of humorless, as is the show in general. It is always so freakin serious as of late.
Any way I agree with you Mike, now that we have seen this season unfold, I do think that Kate is speaking about Aaron at the end of Season 3, although I initially thought it was another guy possibly Sawyer, but not anymore. That is obviously why kate can’t go back to the island. She has a son now.
Did you see the previews for next week. Some guy is alive on the island even though he died 10 years ago or something. Maybe the dead theory is true. The people who no longer feel pain or sickness and have healed following the crash (Locke, Rose) are all dead, and the sign that Jacks’s appendix broke shows that he is still alive. What do you think?
@Mike - Yeah, I meant Sawyer. Thanks.
@Zack - I don’t know. I think that’s just too easy. I mean, they’re going to build us up all this time and then say that some of the people are some kind of ghosts or something? And what happened to all the other people who died on the plane? Why aren’t they running around somewhere? What happens if the dead people die or the live people die?
And whatever happened to all the children that got kidnapped now that I think about it? I guess I missed that episode somewhere.
I think they are all with the rest of the Others at the temple now…
But I think there is more coming.
This episode was somewhat anti-climatic after last week’s show. However, as Mike points out, there were lots of clues for future episodes.
I did love it when Sawyer was interrogating Miles about Claire. Miles mentions that he did not try and stop her because of the restraining order. classic! Sawyer got a taste of his own medicine there.
Well, I think what you all missed was the key that Sawyer, is really Tom Sawyer in disguise, who becomes so full of himself, he travels back in time and gives a note To Rush for them to write a song about himself…
@ Cap’n - Thanks for the clarification. it all makes sense now…you are the one that is crazy and not Hurley.
[...] wouldn’t be any point in me recapping an episode that’s already been wonderfully recapped, so I’ll just supplement what Mike has already said and point out some interesting things I [...]
@Frank - Amen brutha, re: Jack (and Kate for that matter) annyoing. I think I’d rather hear Michael scream Walt for an hour then make goofy faces at each other.
@Mike - that whole voice thing in the shower weak, might as well been a man’s voice.
Overall a slow episode, Jack’s surgery why the drama. Now if he would have died on the table well then that would have added some gravitas. Really not a hater but need more Sawyer, Ben and Said being a bad ass. Oh yeah more Barry Gibb, I mean Desmond.
DadofIanIs last blog post..1
Good episode, not as great as last week’s (I think it’s the lack of Ben, Saiyd, Desmond or Locke. They spice up Lost pretty good, notice how the best episodes always have one of those?)
A lot of answers for questions we had for a while from the start of the season and season 3 finale. But the thing that caught my attention the most…
Fire alarm (smoke detection) + Christian (Jack’s dead father) = Smokey… anyone? I think there is a link between the Smoke monster and the dead people that appear on or off the island. The fire alarm beeping all of a sudden with no smoke around makes no sense.. lol who am I kidding, this is Lost xD
oh yeah, my mom pointed out Jack did not have a scar on his belly when they showed him in the flash forward. weird!
nickys last blog post..Temporary Hiatus.
Wow Nicky, interesting tidbit!
Not to be nit pickey but…. Jack in the future did NOT have an Appendectomy scar when he was walking around wearing a towel and we saw him with Kate. So does he go back to the island and it heals? Or doesnt mean a thing…(probably not)
You had to figure they’d get busted on something sooner or later.
Since I was able to watch 4 seasons in a row and consume my last week and a half doing so, I caught several things like this…. but its ok, it all made up for it when they decide they were going to ‘move the island’…