LOST: LaFleur – LOST Leaves Me LaFleur’d Once Again

The following contains spoilers for tonight’s LOST. Read at your own risk.

Talk about a show keeping you on your toes. LOST was a complete mind frak tonight and I loved every single minute of it. For me this was the most confusing episode to date what with all the time jumps three later and then three years back then three years back to the future which was really the past. Zoinks! But for me the confusion was well worth it because the episode opened up yet another chapter to the LOST story.  And perhaps one of its final chapters.

I don’t want to play you.  You know I can’t properly recap an episode of LOST.  But let me take a stab at throwing out what I think happened and let’s see how far off I am, ok?

Locke’s escape down the rabbit hole led him to the donkey wheel.  With one turn of the wheel, Locke stops the island from spinning for good. Whenever in time Miles, Daniel, Jin, Sawyer and Juliet are is where they’re staying.  Sawyer is determined to wait around until Locke returns to them – whenever that may be.

Sawyer decides that they should return to the beach to try to find their friends while they wait for Locke to return. On their way they come across a woman whose husband has just been shot dead by two thugs. She’s about to be murdered herself when Sawyer interrupts. Upon provocation, Juliet and Sawyer kill the thugs.  The woman, Amy, and her (dead) husband, Paul, are part of the Dharma Initiative.  The thugs were part of the Hostiles (which we know as the earlier version of The Others).   Seems there is a shaky truce between the Initiative and the Hostiles.  The killing of the thugs meant the truce had been broken.  Well I guess it was really broken when the thugs killed Paul, but that’s not here nor there.

Sawyer et al are following Amy back to her camp when they come across the sonic fence.  Juliet has the presence of mind to tell Amy to turn it off. Amy walks through unscathed but when the others follow they are affected and knocked unconscious.

Sawyer wakes up and is confronted by Horace, a member of the Dharma Initiative, who wants to know who Sawyer is and how and his friends got to the island.  Sawyer feeds him some bull about being shipwrecked on their way to Tahiti on a mission to find the Black Rose (well played James).  Horace orders Sawyer and the crew off the island via the submarine (remember the one Locke blew up?). Sawyer insists he has to stay and find the rest of his people but Horace isn’t having it.

Gun shots erupt and we discover that The Hostiles are looking to confront The Initiative over the break in the treaty. And guess who is there representing The Hostiles? Well it’s none other than Richard Alpert.

Sawyer takes matters into his own hands and confronts Richard.  Since it was Sawyer & Juliet that killed the two Hostile thugs, then technically Dharma didn’t break the truce.  Richard is hesitant to believe that Sawyer isn’t part of the Initiative, but when Sawyer mentions that he knew Locke twenty years ago Richard realizes that there’s something more going on here and decides there is something to Sawyer’s story. But they still need justice. Sawyer offers up the body of Paul, Amy’s dead husband. Peaceful times are here again.

As a thank you for helping him out, Horace gives Sawyer and his friends two more weeks to stay on the island to find their friends.  Three years later and they are still there.

Seems that when the island took it’s final spin it landed them in 1974. The Dharma initiative was in full force on the island as Ben had yet to execute them all.

Fast forward three years and as I said Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Miles (and I think Daniel) are still there living and working with the Dharma Initiative.  Sawyer, who now goes my Jim LaFleur, is the right hand man to Horace who seems to be the head of Dharma. Sawyer is well respected, trusted and happy.  Yes, happy.

Amy, who is now married to Horace, goes into labor, but when things go wrong Sawyer has no choice but to fetch the “retired” Dr. Juliet.  Juliet is nervous to assist with the birth given her past history of women on the island dying while giving birth under her care.  But she helps and the baby lives.  A baby boy.  Who will this baby grow up to be?  That we don’t know, yet.

It’s 1977. Three years have past since Sawyer and his pals came to live with The Initiative and everyone for the most part seems happy.  Sawyer and Jin are still on a mission to find the other Oceanic survivors; searching the islandi in grids.  Sawyer and Juliet are now in love and living together.  But when Sawyer gets a call from Jin (presumably) telling him about the discovery of Hurley, Jack and KATE, Sawyer leaves Juliet behind and rushes off to see his long lost friends (love).

Long glances but no words are exchanged when Sawyer is finally reunited with those lucky enough to get off the island. In scenes from next week’s episode there are some bear hugs and warnings. Oh LOST!

I think that about covers what went down.  Feel free to fill in the blanks below.

As I said before, I thought this was an invigorating episode.  One that had me on the edge of my seat – perhaps out of confusion, but more so out of fascinated curiosity.

Many (many, many) interesting events took place tonight and of course many more questions were presented. Here are a few others thoughts:

• Casting YAY! Two of my favorite actors from two of the best dramas on TV – Patrick Fischler (Jimmie Barrett on MAD MEN) and Kevin Rankin (Herc on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) – appeared as the two Dharma workers who discovered the drunk Horace in the episode opener.

• If Horace is now with Amy, then what happened to his wife Olivia?  It was Horace and Oliva that first brought Ben and his father to the island.

• Where is Daniel in 1977?  Is he still working with them at Dharma?

• In a previous episode we saw Daniel in the Orchid wearing a Dharma uniform.  Do you think that was around this time (this time being 1977)?

• Why can the women on the island give birth in 1977 but not later? I wonder if it has something to do with the chemicals that Ben used to kill The Dharma Initiative.

• Where is Ben in 1977?  He came to the island as a child, so I would imagine he would be in his mid to late teens in 1977, right?

• Why can’t Jin find Rose, Bernard and the other 815ers?

• What was the significance of the necklace that Amy took off of Paul?

• We saw a young Charlotte back in 1974. What was she doing there? Did her parents play a significant role in The Initiative?

• What’s up with the four-toed statue? (Clearly not a new question, but now we know that it once existed in a full form I’m curious as to what destroyed everything but the four toes.)

I’ve Got A Theory (no witches, midgets, bunnies, allows)
Based on what we saw tonight, I have a new LOST theory to throw out there.  It’s filled with holes but humor me.  Ok, so after Locke turned the wheel and they stopped skipping through time, Daniel made mention  that “when” they landed is where they are going to stay.  Since we know they stopped time traveling in 1974, and we know that Flight 316 landed in 1977 then we can maybe assume (I know, too risky with this show) that the show will continue forward from present time (1977) on.  If so, maybe when the Oceanic survivors finally get off the island and return to the states, they will return to a point in time before all their mistakes were made. Kate will not have yet killed her father.  James will not have killed Sawyer.  Jack will have repaired his relationship with his father.  Hurley will not have played the lottery. You get where I’m going with this, right?

There’s been a consistent theme of rebirth since the show began.  The minute they crashed on that island the things that happened in their lives before no longer mattered. Who they were before didn’t matter.  Maybe these people were handpicked by Widmore because of the mistakes they made in their lives. If and when they get off the island they can choose to live their lives however they want.  Will Sawyer still be a con man knowing what he knows now?  Will other people make the same choices they did in life before Oceanic 815 crashed?  That will be there chance to do it all over again – will they take it?

Lame. I know.

So…how are we feeling about tonight’s LOST? Love it? Hate it? Disappointed we didn’t get more answers?  Anyone else like me and prefer Sawyer all scruffy rather than with combed hair & bad glasses? And more importantly, will Jim still be in love with Juliet know that Kate is back?  He did say three years was enough time to get over someone you loved.  Liar.