It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a lot of blood.
….sweat…
….and tears.
It is an awesome responsibility. Adults have the power to form children.
And to deform them.
The great chain of cause and effect all starts back in the womb. So, who exactly is responsible for the masterpiece that is Benjamin Linus?
Because Roger beat him, he was filled with anger, so he turned to Sayid.
Because Sayid shot him, he was dying, and Jack Shephard was the only man who could save him.
Because Jack refused to save his life, Juliet sent him to the hostiles, seeking their magical healing powers.
Because Kate and Sawyer delivered him to Richard, he was forever changed.
And because he was forever changed, he could not ever be anything other than the Ben we know and love. So who is to blame for Ben?
“Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen happens again. All of this, however, doesn’t necessarily happen in chronological order. “
– Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Our Losties can only wish the answer was something as simple and quaint as fixing the flux capacitor.
Instead the time loops that are spinning them around in eddy currents of cause and effect are starting to morph into growling ethical whirlpools. The domino effect of cause and effect is going to rattle on relentlessly regardless of what any of them do.
Ben is always going to grow up to be Ben. Because he already has grown up to be Ben. If whatever happened, happened…and if it’s going to happen whatever you happen to do…then what difference does it make if you decide to do nothing?
You can see why Jack has just decided to check out. Having survived the fires of drug addiction, Jack is just going to spend some time here reconnecting with his inner asshat. You can’t really blame him. He’s smart enough to realize a time loop when he’s trapped in one. It seems like only yesterday Kate was begging him to save Ben’s life, to help Sawyer,
and now here he is again, back on this motherbugging Island, living in one of these tacky yellow cottages, and here’s Kate doing it AGAIN!!! Again he’s being asked to save the evil dweeb’s life. And this time, Sawyer’s not only back in the picture, he’s running the whole damn show!
Jack’s midlife crisis is happening at a most inopportune point in his personal timespace continuum. Since he can’t fix the course of history, he’s just going to fix himself a sandwich and a nice hot shower instead.
Since nothing he does matters, he decided to do nothing. He’s gonna just turn on, tune in and drop out, man. Let’s stick with Lost’s Alice in Wonderland subtheme and give the Namaste Nihilist a nice mushroom to feed his head on.
Can you make nothing happen? Or do things just keep happening, only now they’re happening because you decided to do nothing? Jack refusing to save Ben’s life only brings Ben into Richard’s sepulchral clutches, changing Ben forever into the monster who one day will bring Sawyer and Kate together in the cage o’ love, just so he can scam Jack into saving his life anyway. See, Jack! You have only yourself to blame!
But New! Jack! doesn’t have to deal with any of that. He’s not bothering his mind on piffle like the physician’s Hippocratic Oath. He’s got enough to do. I’m sure it’s keeping him plenty busy maintaining that waxy smooth fishbelly chest, while he waits around for the Destiny Express to come clattering down the tracks and give him a clue.
It’s a good thing Jack’s not a parent. Nihilism is not an acceptable parenting strategy. Above all else, parenthood is an act of faith. Faith in the future. No one knows for sure that their little bundle of joy won’t turn out to be the next Hitler, but parents are in love. The little buggers first grab hold of your heart with those adoring toothless grins.
Next thing you know, they’re dragging you around a megastore in the middle of the night demanding consumer goods,
but by then they’ve got you owned. It is almost terrifying to love someone the way a mother loves a little child.
When Kate lost Aaron in the store, it was every mother’s primal fear, but for Kate it was worse than that. Her subconscious coughed up a chaser of guilt to go with the panic. The sight of her trusting, vulnerable toddler walking away with Claire’s body double triggered something in Kate that, in a flash, made her get right with the universe.
It all became tragically clear to her. She had taken something that didn’t belong to her and now she had to give him back. It wasn’t for nothing that a Patsy Cline song was played again in this episode. Patsy Cline songs are Kate’s theme music, and the song that played in this episode has been played before – as background music in the last scene Kate ever shared with Claire, the living ghost who has been haunting Kate’s happiness with her little son.
“I’ve got your picture.
She’s got you. “
Even Kate’s lullaby to baby Aaron was a reminder that she needed to make things right. “Catch a Falling Star”, the song we heard Kate singing to her baby son, was not only the song Claire had a dim memory of daddy Christian singing to her, it was the song that played on the Oceanic plane mobile that played in the nursery Ethan had prepared for Aaron, in The Staff Hatch, back in Season One.
Getting right was what this whole episode was all about. When Kate left Aaron, the theme from Exodus played. Was this Kate’s great Hero moment, her redemptive epiphany?
It was great to have an episode where we could feel for Kate again, cheer for her even. Kate busted back out through that looking glass she’s been trapped in, where everything – even our friendly neighborhood numbers – have been all backwards and mixed up.
Finally Evangeline Lilly’s Kate was given a chance to do something besides simper and bawl in Jack’s shadow. I think even the myth fans might agree that, for a shippy episode, this was a damn good one.
We learned a lot of things we didn’t know before about our characters and their intertangling ‘ships.
We found out that Juliet and Jim LaFleur will do the right thing by each other a little while longer, or at least until their fairytale village completely implodes around them.
There was a tease of a possible new ship on the horizon, with the unexpected bonding of this pair of dysfunctional semi-parents. Wasn’t it weird to see Uncle Rico flirting with Kate?
We saw that Juliet really would have loved a chance to kick Jack’s saggy ass, but she settled instead for trying to shame him. To her surprise, however, she found out that Dr. Dropout has become truly shameless since last she saw him.
He didn’t even flinch flashing his shrinkage, and nothing Juliet had to say was able to sway him from his path of self involved detachment.
We found out that not only does Kate not like new flavor Jack, she didn’t like old flavor Jack either!
No idea what took you so long, but better late than never, girl. Besides, looks like you might be eligible for an upgrade pretty soon.
We found out that all those Sassidy shippers hoping for Sawyer to reunite with his true love Cassidy are in for a big letdown. Sawyer’s ex is bittah!
It was funny to hear her refer to Son of a Bitchin Sawyer as “that sonuvvabitch”. She plans to nurse that grudge all the way to the grave. She had Kate thinking that maybe Sawyer wasn’t in fact the shining knight who jumped to save her life. Maybe, according to Cassidy, he just didn’t want her. Cassidy was selling her old con-buddy short, but you could see the seeds of doubt planted in Kate’s mind, and we got, however belatedly, an explanation for Kate’s apparent apathy about her lost cowboy all these years.
It was easy to see why Kate responded to Cassidy. She was reading Kate like a book. She knew right away that Kate was lying. About where Aaron came from. And about where all Kate’s feelings for Sawyer had been buried.
Just as Kate had told Jack she “had to” beg him to save Sawyer’s life back in the Hydra, she told Cassidy she “had to” lie about her love for him now.
And so began the many years of her becoming Kate’s confidante.
She was like a combination heart-of-gold barmaid and cruel-to-be-kind psychotherapist. All this time, even after it meant violating parole, Kate has been traveling to Cassidy’s New Mexico home, watching Sawyer’s little one grow into his spitting image,
and sharing boozy girls’ nights with her BFF, cracking each other up and crying it all out.
Like the disrespected seer Cassandra, Cassidy was forcing Kate to face the many truths she’d been in denial about.
Kate may have known all along that she was guilty about taking Aaron, but it wasn’t until Cassidy opened her eyes that she realized she had been clinging to Aaron to fill the hole that Sawyer’s leap from the helicopter had torn in her heart.
Kate may have gotten a free pass at her clown trial, but judgment day came anyway.
She finally told Claire’s mama the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The verdict was Guilty and the penalty was a life sentence of heartbreak. But she did the right thing. Not because she had to, but just because she finally understood it was the right thing to do.
And it turns out that doing the right thing might just be the only thing a person ever really has a choice about in this life. Charlie’s death was predestined, and Desmond couldn’t change that. Still, Desmond didn’t just let Charlie die. He kept trying to save him. Because it was the right thing to do.
If Charlie had taken the arrow in the throat, as Desmond originally envisioned, whose tragically beautiful death would have brought Penny to the Island?
Now, sure, Charlie’s heroic act also served to bring Widmore’s Death Ship to the Island, but it turns out that’s all beside the point. A virtuous act, as Aristotle would have told us, is virtuous in and of itself, regardless of consequence. The universe may be absurd and maybe everything we do is futile and irrelevant, but the choice we are given is actually very simple. You must act. You are going to die someday, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother to get out of bed. You must do something. And even if you know it’s all in vain, even if you don’t get to choose the choices you get to make, the thing you must always choose to do is The Right Thing.
“I refuse everything which, for good reasons or bad, leads to death or justifies putting someone to death”. – Albert Camus, The Plague
When Daniel told Sawyer it didn’t matter what he did when they saw Amy being attacked, Sawyer immediately did the right thing and ran to Amy’s rescue.
When Sawyer saw that the child who would grow up to torment him was dying, he did the right thing and saved him anyway.
We have seen Sawyer carry a child to safety before.
The same child Kate is now mourning. I loved seeing these two share scenes again. I know it’s too early for any hints of romance, and it will be a long time before we get to see them hot and heavy, but don’t tell me the phallic imagery of this shot was entirely unintended.
Nor the parental tableau they made carrying their future nemesis through the jungle, ferrying him from boyhood to manhood in the most literal of ways.
Sawyer and Kate have been on parallel journeys all the years they’ve been apart. Juliet has taught Sawyer the meaning of commitment and Aaron has taught Kate the same thing. The last time they had a heart to heart at this creek,
they were like two mutes trying to communicate in dolphin language.
But they are both real grown ups now. Kate was achingly vulnerable asking him to explain why he jumped from the chopper.
And Sawyer’s discomfort on hearing that his daughter looks just like him was sad and real.
It’s going to take a while. Right now, Kate and Juliet are all mixed up in Sawyer’s confused heart,
but I’ve got no doubt the truth will set them all free soon enough. After this beautifully written chapter in their ongoing story I think all the Sawyer and Kate fans can take a chill and just enjoy the rest of this ride.
Some people are finding it hard to believe that Kate has been in love with Sawyer all these years. I don’t know why that’s so hard to accept. What woman isn’t in love with Sawyer these days? Juliet, Kate, Cassidy…I’m sure if Carole Littleton met him, she’d be heels over head as well.
Besides, we Lost fans take far more unbelievable things in stride every episode. Like how the hell did Sawyer tell Kate his daughter’s name, address and serial number during that whisper in the helicopter? That gives an entirely new meaning to fast talker.
And why wasn’t Kate surprised to discover that Sawyer’s kid’s mother was – mother of all coincidences! – Kate’s very own longlost pal, Cassidy?
How did Kate get back and forth from Albuquerque to L.A. (an 11 hour drive according to Google Earth) in just 20 hours time, with room for a good long cry in between? We’ve got license plate evidence that she did in fact drive her CA registered car to a cactus-y neighborhood full of NM registered vehicles, so how do we explain that?
Teleportation?
How did Miles know about the Frozen Donkey Wheel that Ben turned in the Orchid? I know the writers wanted to give Miles some meta facetime ragging on our time travel induced befuddlement, but seriously, guys…pay attention! Miles would not know that.
Why do the high security Dharma-bots give the keys to the prison cells to Janitors? Better yet, why do they give the keys to Janitors that just arrived the day before? All that big brother surveillance and they’re letting drunks and newbies have the keys to the kingdom?
Why did the entrance wound on Ben’s left chest cause him to bleed profusely from his right side?
Do Dharma guns have crooked bullets?
Is nobody in Dharmaland at all suspicious about the fact that their truck mechanic is equally at home taking apart human transmissions? Do they just expect this kind of multitasking from all their recruits?
Most importantly, how did Juliet know that Richard would be able to heal Ben? This is one question I hope they have an answer for. Richard was very serious when he accepted Ben’s broken body. He gave Kate and Sawyer the choice – let the boy die or allow Richard to transmogrify him into a soulless gremlin. They had already decided that there was only one right thing to do – that no matter the outcome, it was wrong to let a kid die.
And so Richard took him into the temple from which he will emerge as One of Them. The jokes about Richard taking Ben’s innocence write themselves, and they’re way too icky for me to write out anyway, so I’ll just let your wicked imaginations come up with your own punchlines on that one.
“Give us a room, close the door
Leave us for a while.
Your boy won’t be a boy no more
Young, but not a child.” – The Who, Acid Queen
But what does go on in that freaky Temple? Is it like a sarcophagus near a Stargate, where illness can be healed, even recent deaths reversed?
Does that explain why Richard never ages? Is he an avatar of the Island, an incarnation of its spiritual power? Or is the Temple something like a vampire’s crypt, where bloodstreams mingle to create demonic beings?
Does that explain why, when Kate woke up on Hydra Island, her blood had been taken?
She has shared blood with Ben Linus before, and never even knew it. Kate’s blood has been running in Ben’s veins since thirty years before she gave it to him!
Perhaps the Temple is also the source of The Sickness that caused Rousseau to execute her crew after they had been inside it. Did they return as demons, the way she always thought?
What happens inside the Temple?
One thing that makes it so confusing is that Richard himself just doesn’t seem evil. He almost seems paternal, like a sexy hot, underworld dwelling Daddy.
He sounded a little testy about Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore’s claims to authority. So those two are still living on the Island at this point in time. And Richard is not necessarily their ally.
Who was this eager young man, the one who reminded Richard about Charles and Ellie’s authority? Is there any chance we just saw our old friend Tom, circa 1977?
Are we misunderstanding the “loss of innocence” comment? Perhaps the change Ben undergoes is akin to eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. It may yet turn out to be true that Ben was born on the Island, as he originally claimed. Whatever happens in the Temple stays in the Temple, I guess. They never speak of it, but they worship it. It makes me wonder, given Juliet’s preternatural knowledge of the Others and their mysteries, has Juliet ever been to the Temple?
Do the Right Thing was a nice, clear message to take away from this episode, but it’s not as if it exactly clears anything up. Doing the right thing can very well lead to a very wrong result. Just like doing the wrong thing can lead to something very right.
Next week Ben is welcomed back to the land of the living by the man he just killed dead. So it’s not as if this is getting any less confusing anytime soon. But for this week, they went easy on us. A lovely episode to remind us, that underneath all the puzzlement and riddling and undecipherable clues, Lost is also about something very simple. It’s about the love between crazy freaks and their beloved freaky Island, between men and women, between parents and children.
Deep down, Lost is always, in one form or another, a love story.
65 Responses to “It Takes a Village – 5.11 “Whatever Happened, Happened””
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Great article Fishbiscuit! Your write-ups are always so well thought out and interesting! Thanks!
well done
What? Nothing on Jack/Juliet in the shower?
C’mon I thought you wouldn’t let that one go. It was a great recap no matter what 
70% of fishbiscuit’s are about how Jack is big meanie jerkhead because he yelled a lot and the other 30% are about how dreamy Sawyer is. I don’t know why you were expecting anything else.
… and 100% of you is being a douche.
Great article Fishbiscuit … as always!
Come on, she does basically bash him for most of the article. You can’t say she isn’t. It does seem that no matter what Jack does Fish aint gunna like it.
Try dropping the douche part next time.
I do believe Fishbicuit is known all over the internet for being the BIGGEST Jack Hater Ever. Ok, maybe only on the Lost Blogs part of the internet.
I’m a total Fishy-Fan!
I love your intelligent, insightful, and funny write-ups. Thanks!
“The last time they had a heart to heart at this creek they were like two mutes trying to communicate in dolphin language,”
LMAO. So true. As always, excellent read.
I didn’t even notice the children theme in this episode. Sometimes I feel really dense.
And while I couldn’t care less who ends up with whom, I think Cuse and Lindelof have pretty much telegraphed now that Kate loves Sawyer more than Jack. They seem to be trying to distance Jack from the triangle storyline anyway. So unless they decide to be really cruel bastards (always a possibility) and have Kate end up with the guy she loves less, then she’s going to end up with Sawyer. That’s probably the better choice on their part, but the only bad thing is that it spells doom for Juliet.
Great recap! Always my favorite. I know I’m probably the only one who doesn’t know, but is Fishbiscuit a guy or girl?
FB is a girl
Loved this Recap!
where is she from?
She got her start at DarkUFO. He still has all her old recaps on the site. I’m surprised she hasn’t told him to take them down since their falling out.
The Fish had her own blog before Dark started posting her recaps. Back in those days she was on the Greatest Journal platform before she moved. In fact I think her first ever recap was for “Not in Portland” IIRC, and that was on her Greatest Journal blog, I’m not sure if she moved everything over to her new one, but yeah, she was around before DarkUFO.
^^
Before Dark started posting her recaps that is.
I couldn’t respond to your other post below.
I stand corrected. I thought she was always on Darks site until they had their falling out.
Come on you may not like Jack but shrinkage? After a hot shower with juliet in the room? I REALLY doubt it. More like “Baby THIS ain’t Lost!”
Anyway, I have had problems with your recaps in the past, but this was a damn fine one. I have read a few articles completely passing over the importance of this episode and a few that totally missed the very real reason Kate let Aaron go and why she went back to the Island; but you nailed it. ThankYou!
Juliet knows that the island or the Others is able to accomplish miraculous healings because of her sister. Her sister had terminal cancer yet the island/Jacob/whom or whatever from the island healed her and the price was that Juliet had to stay. Juliet may (not sure about this) also know about Rose’s cancer and Locke’s paralysis being healed by the island. So, she may assume that the others can tap into that ability to heal and that’s why she sends Ben to them.
Yeah, her sister. Thanks for saying that so I didn’t have to.
Also, I think you missed the part where Sawyer says he is trying to save Ben not for Kate but for Juliet. But you keep dreaming about Kate and Sawyer because thats all you have, a fist full of nothin’. Here’s to Juliet and Sawyer may they live happily ever after in the 70′s.
LOL… Guess you haven’t heard the bad news about Elizabeth Mitchell getting her own show. Or this, from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse in a video message to a fan re: Sawyer/Juliet -
Lindelof: I think Lily’s a little concerned that Sawyer’s living in some sort of fantasy world with Juliet.
Cuse: Hmmm.
Lindelof: We’ll see how long that lasts. We’re not sure.
Cuse: We’re not sure.
Lindelof: Fantasies have a way of–
Cuse: Being fantasies. That’s why they’re called fantasies.
Lindelof: Precisely.
Sure sounds like happily ever after to me! As for Skaters having a fist full of nothing… I think you’re thinking of that other ship that rhymes with Skate. Because the longterm outlook for Kate and Sawyer has never been better.
Ok, thats fine. just as long as it is not Jack. I’ve been liking Jack this season but he and Kate would bore the sh** out of me.
Wow, I thought this episode was an ode to Kate and her feelings for Sawyer and showed that she’s been in love with him all this time, but was hurt by his actions and now fears he doesn’t and never did love her enough to try for a future with her. Now it’s too late, since he’s committed to Juliet. This sets up some lovely angst. YMMV.
Jim and Juliet are nice and sugary sweet, but insta-romance IMO. I don’t think we are supposed to get too invested in them since it was crammed into two minutes of build up in the middle of the fifth season and has been mostly an off screen affair.
Darlton (who wrote this episode) have described J/J as a fantasy in one of the liveauto vidcasts for Lyly Ford here (not too spoilery):
http://lylyford.blogspot.com/2009/04/liveautos-videos-or-one-of-best-day-in.html
And we all know how fantasies turn out. They don’t last. IMO just as the Jack/Kate idyllic interlude off island imploded once reality intruded so will Jim/Juliet’s.
I think eventually both of them are going to wake up from their Dharma-induced snooze and smell the coffee.
Fishbiscuit: Love your write-ups! Love all the pics and your insightful thoughts. You asked how Miles could possibly know about the FDW. Remember when Daniel was frantically telling Charlotte that the mercs moved on to the “2nd protocol?” He had that file on the Orchid, most likely Dan, Charlotte, and Miles knew the FDW existed there.
In “Because You Left,” Daniel talks about “whatever Ben Linus did down in the Orchid” that made them start skipping in time, even though Daniel was on a zodiac out in the ocean while that was going down. That plus him being down there while the Orchid was being built in Dharma times is probably how Miles would know.
This was a lovely recap, Fish. It truly moved me to tears a couple of times in recapturing the heartbreak Kate went through. I loved that you reminded us what a parent feels, how Jack’s self absorbed intellectual exercise was heartless and ultimately futile in doing anything but causing Ben’s transformation into the ‘monster’ everyone reviled in the future.
And I totally believe that if the future is written, and you know that it is, then all you are responsible for and can control is how you choose to conduct yourself. Jack got an epic fail on that test IMO.
I have no idea why people think he’s becoming more like Locke. Locke believed in the island, but he also always acted on what he thought was best for both the people on it, and the island itself. He didn’t sit around, detached, and refusing to take action in case it was he was wrong in what the island wanted. Look at what happened at the end of season 2. He caused the hatch to implode and even admitted he was wrong. He’s been proactive from the start, knocking out Sayid and destroying the transceiver because he believed that they were meant to be there, and shouldn’t bring the outside world to the island. Even when Boone was dying, he didn’t just shrug and go, Oh well, the island wanted it that way. He carried him all the way back on his shoulders to get him to Jack in order to try and save him. He took a leap of faith and descended down a well, and even offered up his own life in order to save his friends who were dying of the time flashes on the island. Jack? He’s not taking a leap of faith, he’s digging himself a hole, a bunker. Hunkering down to wait for some big cheesy destiny sign to blink on, the rest of his friends and comrades be damned. Every man for himself. Ironic, I think.
I loved that the recap reminded us that the episode was an ode to Kate and Skate, finally giving Kate a voice again, some agency and independence. It reminded us that this woman loves, she cares, she wants to do the right thing. She’s made some in roads on growing up. Cassidy helped her face herself. Jack did not feature at all in helping her grow as a person. She turned to Cassidy instead for the reality check, for the shoulder to cry on, for the emotional bolstering that Jack could never provide being the self absorbed twat that he is.
Yes, there can’t be any full blown romance for us Skate fans yet, but we are finally seeing some emotional pay off, and the foundation being laid for a stronger, more unbreakable romantic bond between Sawyer and Kate going into the next season.
In fairness to Jack, he also acted unselfishly many times during his first time on the island. He gave Boone half of his blood supply for goodness sake. Just because he didn’t do any of those things “for the island” doesn’t mean he was a bad, selfish person who didn’t care. There is ultimately the very selfless act of actually returning to the island where so many awful things had happened to him knowing that he would never return to the real world just to “save those they had left behind”.
I think that Jack will eventually be revealed as Jacob and this change in behavior with the “lifting it up” to a higher power & not intervening everytime there is a crisis is the first step to preparing us for that transformation. (Just my opinion cause I really like Jack)
I agree with you that Jack has acted selflessly at times. And done the right thing many times. But I also think he has one heck of a hero complex, and often did what he thought should be the right thing because he had something to prove to his dead father.
In this particular case, I think he was in the wrong. He’s gone too far the other way, into some kind of fatalistic apathy. Hopefully he’ll find a good middle ground between control freakish actions and island bong-induced inertia.
I also don’t believe for one second he was going back to the island to save anyone but himself. He’s known Claire was his sister for how long? Never bothered to go back, not for three long years. He stridently denied going back until Locke mentioned his father was still alive and said hi. Then the daddy issues reappeared and Jack finally changed his mind. He’s come back to find his Dad – not his sister – and to look for his special destiny. I wouldn’t call that selfless. And Juliet wasn’t too impressed. She nailed him with that ‘You came back for YOU.”
You have an excellent point with Jack’s motivation regarding his father. That has been a huge issue for him his entire life. I just (blindly) think his reasons for returning to the island are more complex than merely finding himself. He realizes he is an outsider and different (brilliant, neurosurgeon, child of an alcholic) in many ways but struggles to do right by those who depend on him.
We should also be giving Faraday grief about the same hands off attitude he has displayed if we are judging Jack. He is the true proponent of “what’s the point in doing anything since it already happened”.
I think you tapped into a great point there. Jack is going back to find his father. Is that an act of selfishness, though? Back in season 1, he only went to find his father in Australia because his mother told him to do so. He returned empty-handed, but that doesn’t mean he has to stop trying. Besides, every great hero needs to resolve his/her daddy issues.
I wonder why everyone is so hard on Jack. He can be unlikable, most certainly, but lots of other characters can be as well, yet often get a pass. Sawyer got all the heat when the series began, but now he is seldom criticized. What I love best about this series is that there isn’t any one character we can look at completely positively or negatively. Everyone is seen clearly, warts and all — it’s just a matter of perspective.
Jack will be a hero at the end — maybe not the only hero, or the hero he thought he would be, but he will be a hero.
I always look forward to your recaps, brilliant again as usual!! Thanks FishBiscuit
Good article..
Didn’t Locke tell the magical mystery crew that he had to go down there and fix the wheel because Ben took it off its axis? Add thus Miles would know that. Or am I confusing scenes?
Nope, Locke couldn’t have told them; he only found out the wheel was off its axis from Christian, once he’d fallen down the well.
Nicely done, Fish! I was looking forward to this recap all week!
..THIS TASTED LIKE FISHBISCUIT!!.. Besides.. How come a guy named Fishbiscuit still wonders about phallic imagery hidden somewhere around?! ;>>
The Fish is a gal. And it’s fairly well known that there were some deliberate production in-house gags put in regarding Sawyer’s and Kate’s sexual chemistry.
The main one that comes to mind is the big stick positioning in that flirty scene in The Hunting Party. http://gallery.lost-media.com/displayimage-887-95.html
The one where she cheekily tosses him a…banana.
..a gal?! Wow she got brain, uh.. yet this explains the nick.. LOL
..seriously, her fishbuiscuitland site is magnificient. she knows how to tell stories
I love your recaps, Fishbiscuit. I love that you attend to ‘shippy elements — namely, characters’ emotions and interactions — but shippiness doesn’t distract you from all that’s *awesome* about the show. I think you did really well by Kate and Sawyer’s parallel growths here, without demeaning Juliet.
More importantly, though, your Aristotelian gloss on doing the right thing is fantastic and really gets at the heart of the story. Thank you for such a great examination.
And! Thanks for the reminder about Kate having blood taken on Hydra! I’d totally blanked on that.
Love your recaps, FB, love the spare use of text coupled with the pictures to make your points.
Now that Kate has a purpose –find Claire and reunite her with Aaron– I hope we’ve seen the last of weepy, simpering “Jack [sob] Jack”/”Sawyer [sob] Sawyer” Kate and get a lot more of willing-to-blow-Aldo’s-knee-off kick-ass Kate.
Juliet just sliced and diced New Calm Jack to ribbons in that scene. Loved it.
As for that Other being Tom, his name is listed in the call sheet as Erik. Whoever he is, the actor is a hottie.
Fishbiscuit, thank you for a beautifully rendered and insightful recap.
Enjoyed the recap. Thanks. I thought that Juliet’s comment to Jack, “You’ve already shown that you’re not interested” (paraphrasing), was about more than him not intervening in Ben’s surgery.
Good point, Sabrina! I’ve always thought of the love triangle as more of a quadrangle. We can’t forget that Juliet had something for Jack back in the day (future, whatever).
FB, I am so glad you are here on this site and not on Dark’s anymore. It was so annoying to read thru haters comments… the idiocy of some people who keep reading the same recapper each week knowing full well they’re not going to like their recap???
FTR, I love Jack’s character. But I love the way you skewer him, too.
Yes, my feelings precisely. You hit it square on.
Great synopsis, Fishbiscuit–
I really liked the “do the right thing” turn of phrase which opened up a real can of worms for me ( maybe old news for some here, but here goes):
it led me to this site regarding the nature of “dharma”
http://www.emergence-mindfulness.com/massagearticles/Do%20the%20Right%20Thing.doc
lots to apply here to character development on the show, I’d say.
Even though the concept of the Island being Purgatory (at least in a Catholic sense) has been largely discounted, it seems to have, instrumentally, been just that for Kate, Jack and Sawyer so far:
Kate, the runaway bride, is now fiercely committed to restoring the integrity of Aaron’s family line (after nurturing him for 3 years)
Jack has refused to treat “young Ben”, acting appropriately against the larger sin of his own Atlas complex because ( I think because he’s stared into the abyss of his own insufficiency to account for his experience through Science) it’s not his Problem to Solve–
Sawyer, the amoral manipulator, is now serving and protecting Dharmaville and (as he knows) a good deal besides.
They’ve all walked through fires and are, for the rest of the show, better people now– I hope the show’s writing, in the season to come, holds true to this notion of “Dharma”
I really enjoy Fish’s recaps, but the jack brutality is kinda over the top. Jack can do no right in her eyes. If you don’t feel for jack when he tells kate that you never liked the old me, then you dont have feelings. I really enjoy her recaps, but they do lose a little bit of merit when you just flat out hate on jack and refuse to believe anything he does can be a positive. Jack is finally figuring things out, i think he acted perfectly in this episode. You gotta give the guy credit where credit is due. You can’t say jack caused ben to be bad by not doin the surgery in one breathe and then in the next breath say that kate and sawyer did the right thing in brining him to richard. regardless if whatever happened happened, all jack did was not act in preventing a horrible person from dying.
She’s always been a Jack hater. Go to her blog and look and all the posts. She was the same way on DarkUFO’s site before their falling out.
DarkUFO has all her old recaps there. It’s where she got her start.
I don’t think Dark and her had a falling out. It sounds like she just chose to move to a different site and Dark acted like a jerk about it. I don’t think he should be allowed to hold on to her old stuff, but it’s probably like how he pretends Jeff Jensen and J.Wood write for his site, when he only cuts and pastes their public reviews.
All posts from Doc Jensen on Darks site says it’s from Doc Jensen (I’m assuming Jeff Jensen is Doc Jensen). How is that stealing? Or are you trying to start a fight?
I don’t know about J. Wood. But, when Dark posts something from someone else, he states it from them.
Whether or not Dark was a jerk, they still had a falling out.
I meant to say “Or are you trying to start something?” Fight is too strong a word.
im aware that she has always hated him, im just saying that it takes away from the recap to blatently hate somebody no matter what he does. he could probably save santa claus from dying and she will still find a reason to hate him.
This is why I believe most people on THIS site like her recaps. To each their own.
I actually enjoy her recaps (without all the photos) most of the time. I overlook all the Jack bashing. I overlook all the bashing. I read alot of recaps to see what I missed.
My personal opinion is the best recappers out there are vozzek69, Erika, and Luhks among others. They all bring something different to their posts. But, something the three share is they give a balanced opinion. No bashing. Which is what a great writer can do.
Great article, but you missed a big mystery: How could Kate have given Aaron to Claire’s mom, if Claire’s mom was left brain-dead after her car accident, with no chance of recovery? I don’t believe for a moment that she’s really Claire’s mom. Her being there at exactly the right time, and her having the same lawyer as Ben, and her being…well…not brain dead without a chance of recovery, has me CONVINCED that she’s someone else entirely, and that this has been one big scam to get Aaron.
Well it is a different actress. That would seem to help your point, but then again that’s a bit murky when you change actors and bill them as the same character. Clearly we notice it’s not the same person but suspend our disbelief for the narrative. If you theory was right it would force a weird meta-level thing onto the show
Great Job!!! very good stuff… One thing, I think that Miles could have known about the Donkey Wheel. There is a lot we do not know about him, (He knew Charolette was on the island before), There is a good past to this character, and I bet he knows more than we think.
I agree that Miles could have known about the wheel especially if he was the baby shown in that early episode with our orientation guide Pierre Chang. If papa Pierre knows about the wheel from the sonar picture while they were doing the construction in the tunnel, then it’s a good bet than Miles does too.
As always, best review out there. And yay for the great Skate in this episode. About time. I don’t know what some of those recappers out there are talking about sometimes with thinking Sawyer and Juliet were ever a realistic option. I can’t wait to see Juliet disappear and take her smirk with her.
Can’t wait for the rest of the season now that Skate is back. These revies are getting better and better Fish.
It is strange, especially considering that after LaFleur we have not gotten any real Suliet interaction. Their ‘relationship’ has pretty much happened off screen. And that is not how a romantic pairing is written. If the writers wanted me to fall in love with Suliet, they would be showing me the conversation Juliet/Sawyer had about saving Ben. Not having Sawyer call Kate ‘Freckles’ again and have him just mention ‘I’m doing it for [Juliet]‘ and have them set off into the jungle together.
This is the most intelligent take on the complex moral issues of the episode that I’ve read. Thank you Fish!
But Suliet > Skate. Though Kuliet would be even more awesome…
There were a lot of things to enjoy about this episode, many, quite unexpected. One being James and Kate taking young Ben to Richard. The other was the heartfelt conversation between Kate and Roger Linus about parenting. But I believe the most touching was Kate saying goodbye to Aaron, and her honesty with Ms. Littleton and deciding to go back to the island to find Claire so she can be reunited with Aaron. It was good to see Kate and James on screen together again, and finally talking to one another like adults. Dolphin language…Hee! Juliet still totally dismantles Jack (loved that scene) who in his quest to find his destiny has become a power tool, indeed. I didn’t think it was possible for the guy to be more of a deeb, but this episode proved me wrong. Naturally, the scene, imo, that pawned all was the final one between Ben and Locke…it made me giddy. Anyways, great re-cap, Fish.
Fishbiscut are you from mn as well?
Great article again Fishbiscuit!! Yours are always my favorites!!
Props for the thoughtful article about this topic.
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