Previously on Lost: Sawyer's girlfriend falls down a pit with an atomic bomb, but doesn't die. Then she hits the bomb with a rock. It explodes. She dies! (We think?) The world is split into two timelines. (We think? It could secretly be just one.) Sawyer is sad because his ladyfriend is dead. He buys her an engagement ring, then throws it in the ocean because he's still sad about her being dead. Sawyer listens to Iggy Pop records. A Smoke Monster who looks a lot like John Locke kills everybody at the Temple. Kate runs from people who are trying to arrest her. Charlie tries to kill himself in an airplane bathroom. Hurley says, "Dude," meaningfully. And then says it again, with an entirely different, and even more meaningful, inflection. An unnerving horn noise blares before a cut to black.
Climb into our submarine and get ready to surface on the beach of television's most baffling island, where we'll disembark, armed with machine guns loaded with Answers, ready to slaughter all the unlucky Questions we come upon in this week's episode.
At the beginning of this episode, when Sawyer enters the garbage hut to wake a slumbering Jin, did it seem like, even just for a fleeting second, that Sawyer was waking him in that tender, "Hey, sleepyhead, I got us some bagels!" way that two people who have fallen in bed together out of circumstance often share?
Not really. But as it turns out, perhaps in a bit of playful foreshadowing, that Jin is one of the precious few characters that Sawyer did not conquer sexually this week. Also, he doesn't seem the bagel-fetching type. You bring the bagels to him.
So in the flash-sideways, Sawyer's a cop. And Miles is his partner?
The flash-sideways (or the "flash-copways," if you will) is a funny place like that. Where Sawyer was once a conman, he is now a lawman. We would not be entirely surprised to later be treated to a scene in which Jacob is the person presenting young James with his police academy diploma. Or maybe Detective Ford became a cop precisely because Jacob was not there to touch him at his graduation.
We're not necessarily conversant on the rules of law-enforcement ethics and entrapment, but doesn't it seem questionable -- at best! -- to have sex with the suspect you're setting up for a police raid?
As we've seen so many times before, the "rules" are a tricky thing in the flash-sideways. Loan sharks continuing collecting long after debts are repaid. People engaging in blackmail aren't allowed to make too many demands, even if their extortion material is pretty damaging. And so maybe this kind of sexual entrapment is permissible in this alternate reality. It should certainly make for more interesting police work, at the very least.
Besides Miles and Sawyer, what other Losties would make fun buddy cop show pairings?
*Hurley and Jack (they're already working towards it on the island; one's super-mellow, the other's super-uptight!)
*Ben and Locke (there are rumblings about a spinoff)
*Aaron, Walt and the Skullbaby
*Kate and Juliet, in a kind of sexier Cagney and Lacey situation
*The Polar Bear and the Smoke Monster (more of a Syfy network kind of thing)
*Charlie and a Giant Bag of Heroin (delicious tension each week as Charlie struggles not to get entangled in a relationship with his partner)
Why is Miles so determined to set up Sawyer with his archaeologist friend, so much so that he asks him if he "wants to die alone," which is a weird thing to say to a dude?
This is what buddies/partners do for each other. And then they get together in the locker room the next day to talk about their conquests, with the one who's in a relationship (Miles, who's dating a ghost) pressing the insatiable stud (Sawyer) for details of the wild, no-strings-attached sex life he wishes he had. Have you never seen a cop show?
Also, they needed a way to get Charlotte back onto the show.
But what would they have in common?
They have sex in common. And it's a powerful interest, as they were doing it within seconds of meeting. More importantly, as an "archaeologist," Charlotte has a powerful intellectual need to go digging through the artifacts in Sawyer's underwear drawer in search of clues about his past.
Why does Sawyer freak out when he catches her in the middle of her "excavation"?
Because she unearthed his Murder-Suicide Trapper Keeper, which he uses to neatly organize all the stray pieces of paper relating to his father's killing of his mother, and then himself. Never mess with a guy's morbid clip collection, especially if it contains clues about his search for the conman who precipitated his parents' demise. Seems obvious.
When Sawyer comes across Kate's old dress in the polar bear cage on Hydra Island (we're back in the 2007 timeline, stay with us), what was he thinking about?
He was clearly thinking about the crazy polar-bear-cage sex they had a few seasons back. You never really get over your first cage-based sexual encounter, especially if it happened while you were waiting for some mysterious men to execute you. This episode was absolutely drenched in sweaty Sawyersex.
Hey, is Sayid alright? Now not only does he have a shifting accent, he's lost almost all affect from his speech.
No, he is not "alright." He is "claimed." We go over this every week.
Why doesn't Sayid help Kate when she's being attacked by batsh*t Claire? Aren't they all in the Smokey Army of Darkness together now?
Because even the "claimed" enjoy a nice catfight. All that dirty hair-pulling! He might be technically dead, but even a zombie can get behind that kind of action.
Where did all those dead bodies that Sawyer finds near the Ajira plane on Hydra Island come from? Wasn't that flight mostly empty, and aren't the few passengers who were aboard major characters who are still on the island?
Two theories: They were passengers from the Ajira cargo hold, whom Frank Lapidus sold "ultra economy" tickets en route to the ultra-exclusive "Dharma Island Club Med" to make some money on the side. 2) They were crew members from Charles Widmore's submarine, who covered themselves in bottled corpse-stink and merely pretended to be dead as part of the subterfuge to capture Sawyer.
So then we meet "Zoe." Are they really still introducing new characters at this incredibly late stage?
We know. (Sigh.) There are ONLY EIGHT EPISODES LEFT. Let's spend this precious time wrapping up stuff with the other 300 characters on the island, right?
The actress who played Zoe (Sheila Kelley) was also the unlucky-in-love Debbie from Singles. (Kids, ask your Generation X parents!) We know there are no accidents in this series, so what's the Lost connection?
Back in 1992, mysterious industrialist Charles Widmore was closely monitoring Campbell Scott's work on the SuperTrain, which he'd hoped could one day provide a pleasant commuting experience between the West Coast and the island. But even with the promise of great coffee and great music on the SuperTrain, the construction of an underwater tunnel to the island was cost-prohibitive, and Widmore had to abandon this pipe dream.
Additionally, Peter Horton was the original choice for Desmond, but his Scottish accent was just terrible, like a drunk Irishman doing an impression of the Queen.
Why would Smokey tell Claire that the Others had her baby, when he knew that Kate had taken it off the island so that it could lead a healthy, productive, smoke-monster-attack-free life?
Because she needed something to hate. But then Kate gave her something new to hate, the truth. Women hate the truth.
Does Smokey have any lingering mommy issues he'd like to unburden himself of?
Funny you should ask. Before he became a supernatural being that could change himself into a terrifying pillar of homicidal smog that can be stopped only by a well-placed ring of simple ash or a super-high-tech sonic fence, Smokey had a mom. A crazy mom. A crazy mom who caused some very unfortunate growing pains that he's working through by occasionally slaughtering everyone in his path, while his mother's cries of "You'll never amount to anything, you spoiled, insignificant puff of magical fart-dust!" ring in his ears. He'd hate for Crazy Claire to do this kind of thing to Aaron and turn him into a similarly haunted, Freudian nightmare of a Junior Smoke Monster. Or maybe that's exactly what he wants. We totally don't trust that guy.
What's Sawyer's favorite TV show?
Little House on the Prairie. Previously we saw him watch it as a child back in season three.(Thanks, Lostpedia!) And last night Pa Ingalls taught Half-Pint (and an adult James Ford) an important lesson about how our dead loved ones live on in our memories forever.
Is the way that Sawyer agreed to help both Smokey and Charles Widmore carry out their conflicting plans to annihilate one another a double-cross, a triple-cross, or a quadruple-cross?
We tried to work through the math and have only a splitting headache to show for the effort. First Sawyer agrees to find out what's up on Hydra Island to help Smokey. Then he's captured by Widmore's people and brought to the sub, where he tells Charles he'll happily lead Smokey into any kind of trap his little inscrutable billionaire industrialist heart desires, leading to this exchange:
WIDMORE: How do I know I can trust you?
SAWYER: Same way I know I can trust you.
FIRST OFFICER STALEMATE: This situation is a stalemate. You're going to have to pretend to trust one another to move the plot along.
WIDMORE: By God, he's right.
SAWYER: [silently tries to figure out an angle where he gets to sleep with Zoe]
WIDMORE: Hello?
SAWYER: Oh, sorry. Right. Looks like we're just gonna have to do it my way, Daddy Warbucks.
Then Sawyer went back to the main island, where he told Smokey all about the way he's going to lead Widmore and his goons right into the eye-watering, clothes-dirtying assault of a Smoke Monster attack.
So whose side is Sawyer on?
He's on his own side. He even tells Kate that so that our confused headaches will stop pounding.
What's behind that locked door on Widmore's sub?
Internet Lostologists are divided on this issue. Some popular theories:
*Desmond
*The cast of the The OC (except for Mischa Barton)
*Vincent the dog
*A delivery of magic chlorine for the still-filthy reincarnation jacuzzi at the temple
*The engagement ring Sawyer heaved into the ocean, which the sub picked up on its way to the dock
*hundreds of Driveshaft CDs
*Sayid's Fisher Price My First Torture Implements set from his time in Republican Guard preschool
*refills for Richard Alpert's guyliner pencil
*Jay Leno, eavesdropping in an attempt to steal Charles Widmore's job
*Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, giggling as they wait to jump out and yell, "The Island is Purgatory! The Island is Purgatory!"
In Sawyer's scheme to escape the island in the submarine while the forces of Smokey and Widmore battle it out, who's going to pilot it?
How hard can it be? It's not like he's gonna suggest something unrealistic, like trying to fly that Ajira Airways jet back to the mainland.
Now that we know Sawyer is a police in the flash-copways, why did he not try to stop Kate, whose handcuffs clearly indicated she was some kind of prisoner, in the elevator at LA X?
Because she's hot? And because he was secretly hoping that she would one day soon crash a car into him, giving him the opportunity to entrap her into interrogation-room sex with a promise he'd let her go again. (He, of course, would not let her go after the sex. We know how he operates now.)
Where are Jack, Hurley and the rest of the good guys?
They're playing a game of slow-motion volleyball on the beach, while a lovely, swelling Michael Giacchino score punctuates their every joyful spike.
Who is Richard Alpert?
Next episode, kids. Next episode.