The Substitute SE6 EP4

“Well, I guess I better put some pants on.”

Oh, now let’s don’t be hasty, Sawyer my love. Let’s dive right in, because there is a lot to discuss at the end of the recap.

LA Locke
Locke gets himself home from the airport, but can’t get the wheelchair elevator all the way down, so he launches himself off, only to end up sprawled on the lawn. When the sprinklers come on and you are just about to feel sorry for him, here comes Helen (!) to help him into the house.
Helen is all a flutter with wedding plans, and she tells John she would rather just get her parents and his Dad (Seriously, Locke’s Dad? WTF? How did he get in the wheelchair then?) He shows Helen Jack’s card, explaining that he met Jack at the lost luggage area. “You should call,” Helen urges him. “He wasn’t serious.” Locke scoffs. “What are the odds that you meet a spinal surgeon in lost luggage?” Helen wants to know. “You should call. It’s destiny.”

Our old friend Randy shows up, welcoming back “the Colonel.” But, as expected, Randy is still pretty much a douche. After Randy fires Locke for not showing up for the meeting in Australia, Locke packs up his desk and makes to leave the office, only to be blocked in by a huge yellow Hummer owned by …..Hurley. Locke is angry that Hurley parked him in and is over the line so he can’t get to the wheelchair ramp. “Dude, there’s a handicapped spot right there.” Hurley points out. “Yes, but I don’t have to park there,” Locke says. Hurley is apologetic. “They are supposed to reserve a spot for me.” “Do you work here?” Locke wants to know. “I own the company.” Locke smiles and tells Hurley that his boss Randy just fired him. “Randy Nations? That guy is a huge douche.” I agree, Hurley. “I have a temp agency too. Tell them that Hugo said to hook you up with a new job, pronto.” As Locke turns to go, all dejected, Hurley calls after him, “Chin up, things are gonna work out.”

Locke soon finds himself at some kind of a Barbara Walters job interview. “If you could be any animal, what kind of an animal would you be?” Just like every American watching an Oscar night special, Locke finds these questions intolerably insipid. “Can I speak to your supervisor?” he asks. And out comes….Rose Nadler. Locke wants a job at a construction site, but Rose says if she sends him there, he’ll just be back tomorrow. “I have cancer. Terminal cancer. When they first told me, I had a hard time accepting it. But once I accepted it, I got back to living. How ‘bout we find you a job you can do?”

Later, when Locke goes home, he pulls out Jack’s card and calls him, but hangs up saying they can’t help him. Helen hears him on the phone and wants to know who he’s talking to. “I was calling Dr. Sheppard,” he says. “Good for you!” Helen says. “When are you going to see him?” “I’m not. I got fired, Helen.” Before Helen can respond to this non-sequitor, the doorbell rings. “Delivering lost luggage.” After the case is situated, Helen tells John to talk to her. “I lied to Randy. I didn’t go to the conference in Sidney. Open the case Helen.” She sees all of the knives. “What are these for?” she wants to know. “My walkabout—an adventure in the outback. But they wouldn’t let me go. I sat int hat office and I shouted at them, telling me that they couldn’t tell me what I can’t do.” Locke shakes his head. “I’m sick of imagining what my life could be out of this chair. If you need me to get out of this chair, then I don’t want you to wait for a miracle because there is no such thing.” Helen comes down and embraces John. “There are miracles John and the only thing I was ever waiting for was you.” With that she rips up Jack’s card.


We next see Locke in a high school, coaching and teaching high school. He rolls into the teachers lounge and a familiar voice is in the midst of a deliciously fussy tirade about how to change the coffee filter. “All I was looking for was a cup of Earl Grey.” “Tea? Now there’s a gentleman’s drink.” Extending a hand, he introduces himself. “Benjamin Linus.”

The funeral of John Locke
Ben comes across a weeping Alanna in Jacob’s old foot house. “Am I interrupting?” he asks. As if he cares. “Tell me what happened,” Alanna says. “All right. There’s a fairly reasonable chance that you won’t believe me. He turned into a pillar of smoke and killed all these guys.” “Did he kill Jacob as well?” Alanna wants to know. And of course, Ben lies and says yes. Alanna wants to know where Jacob’s body is. “John Locke kicked him into the fire. His body burned up. Do you know why he carried Richard into the jungle?” Ben asks. “He’s recruiting,” Alanna answers.

Alanna and Ben come out of the Foot and Alanna starts issuing orders. “We should go to the Temple.” Sun starts to protest, but Alanna knows what Sun wants. “You want to find Jin. I know that’s where he is.” Sun insists that they bury John. “Why did you need to bring him to the statue anyway?” Ben asks Alanna. “ So that people can face what they’re up against.” When Ben points out that he’s wearing John Locke’s face, Alanna says that is the face he is stuck with now.

They carry Locke’s body back to the little cemetery and dig Locke’s grave. “Does anyone want to say anything?” Alanna asks. “Didn’t any of you know him?” Ben steps forward, and for the first time in the entire series, it feels like he is telling the truth. John Locke was a believer, a man of faith. A much better man than I will ever be. And I’m very sorry I murdered him.” “This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to,” Frank grumbles.

George and Lenny
Smokey’s eye view takes us through the jungle, for a quick look into Sawyer’s house, and then to a machete, where we see Richard has been captured and suspended from a tree. Not Locke cuts Richard down from the tree. “Now it is time to talk,” He tells Richard, who is clearly terrified, and apologizes for hitting him. “Why do you look like John Locke?” Richard wants to know. “John’s a candidate,” Not Locke informs him. Richard is all “???” and Not Locke responds with questions of his own. “You’ve been following his orders for years and he never said why?” Not Locke shakes his head in disgust. “I would never have kept you in the dark.” Not Locke asks Richard to join him, but Richard declines. “People seldom get a second chance,” Not Locke offers. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Richard insists, when over his shoulders, an image of a young blond boy in the jungle unnerves Not Locke. He is gone the next minute. Not Locke shakes it off. “I’ll be seeing you, Richard. Sooner than you think.”

So Smokey returns to his first stop in Otherville where he finds Sawyer rocking out and drinking whiskey. “Hello James.” Sawyer looks up, unsurprised. “I thought you were dead.” Not Locke smiles. “I am.”
Sawyer pours big jelly jars of whiskey for Not Locke and himself. “Here’s to bein’ dead.” When Not Locke questions Sawyer’s nonchalance at his undeadness, Sawyer explains, “I don’t give a damn if you’re dead, time travellin’ or the ghost of Christmas past. I only care about this whiskey.” Fair enough. Not Locke starts waxing all philosophical, “This isn’t your house,” he tells Sawyer. “You only lived here for a while.” “Who are you?” Sawyer asks. “You sure as hell ain’t John Locke. Locke was scared even when he was pretending not to be scared. But you ain’t scared.” Not Locke owns up to his Not Lockeness and tells Sawyer that he can answer the important question: “Why are you on this island?” Sawyer thinks he already knows the answer to that question. “Because my plane crashed, my raft blew up, and the helicopter I was on was one too heavy.” Not quite. “Come with me,” Not Locke says.

As they are trekking through the jungle, Not Locke asks Sawyer where his friends are and why he is not with them, but before Sawyer can really answer, the little blond kid shows up again. Is it Little Sawyer? Little Locke? Little Jacob? “Who the hell is that?” Sawyer asks. Not Locke seems surprised by this. “You can see him?” The kid takes off and Not Locke follows him. When he finally catches up to him, the kid has a message: “You know the rules,” the kid tells him. “You can’t kill him.” This ticks off Not Locke. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”

Meanwhile, a frantic Richard emerges from the jungle and tries to tell Sawyer to come back to the Temple, and that Not Locke is going to kill him and everyone else he cares about. But Sawyer blows him off because he wants the answers.

Sawyer asks Not Locke if he’s ever read Of Mice and Men (which, you may remember, was the book Sawyer and Ben were quoting at each other when Ben had Sawyer captive on the Hydra and was conning him with the heart monitor and the rabbit). When Not Locke tells him that it’s a little after his time, Sawyer relates the story about how George takes the slower Lenny into the woods. “What would happen if we put a bullet in your head?” Sawyer wonders, drawing his gun. “Why don’t you go ahead and find out?” Not Locke dares him. “What are you?” Sawyer asks. “What I am is trapped,” answers Not Locke, which is really a non answer. “And I’ve been trapped for so long I have a hard time remembering what it’s like to be free. You are so close, James. It would be such a shame to turn back now.”

They finally reach the cliff and they both admire the view. When Not Locke insists they descend the vertical cliff on nothing but rickety ladders, Sawyer responds with some common sense: “No offense, but you already died.” So Not Locke offers to go first. And of course the ladder breaks but Not Lockes saves him. They go into a cave where the first thing we see are a set of scales with a black stone and white stone. Not Locke Throws the white stone in the ocean. When Sawyer questions that move, Not Locke responds by telling him it was an “Inside joke.” “Is this what you wanted me to see? A hole in the wall with a couple of rocks on a scale?” Sawyer wonders. Clearly there must be more. And there is. “No. That’s not what I wanted you to see. This is,” Not Locke says, lighting a torch as they go deeper into the cave. Sawyer holds the torch up to the ceiling where he sees everyone’s name is written on the ceiling: 16-Jarrah, 8-Reyes 42--Kwon. 23-Sheppard. “Jack Sheppard?” Sawyer wonders. “He’s not the only one.” Not Locke answers. Not the only name Sawyer recognizes or the only Sheppard? 4-Locke, 15-Ford “Why does he have my name on this wall. I’ve never even met this guy.” “I’m sure you did meet Jacob.” Begin flashback to Sawyer’s parent’s funeral. “At some point in your life when you were young and vulnerable, Jacob manipulated you he pushed you to the island. You thought that the choices you made were your choices. He thought he was the protector of this place. And you have been nominated. And possibly your name will get crossed out.” Not Locke explains that Sawyer has three choices: “You can accept the job and protect the island.” “Protect the island from what?” Sawyer wants to know. “Nothing. That’s the damn joke.” “Or you can walk away and you can just become another one whose lives he wasted.” “What’s the third choice?” “That we just go and get the hell off this island and never look back.” “How do we do that?” Sawyer wants to know. “Together. What do you say James? Are you ready to go home?”

“Hell yes.”

Do I have any thoughts on this episode?
Well, let me echo Sawyer and say

Hell YES!

It seems that in the original timeline, Locke was the only one who actually wanted to be on the island, who felt that the island would save him from his miserable life. Yet, in his alternate life, Locke actually has a pretty great life other than the wheelchair. But he is obviously loved by Helen and that was always the worst part of Locke’s story; that he seemed so utterly unloved. Will the ones who wanted to get off the island the most have the worst alternate lives and vice versa? The other timeline is most likely the one that happens when Jacob doesn’t interfere with or manipulate their lives, which explains the differences in our Losties lives that seem to predate the moment of the plane crash. Also, if there is no Jacob, there is no one to “protect” the island—which is why it ends up at the bottom of the sea in the alternate timeline. Another feature of alternate timelines is that we see the parallel lives run a mixture of fate and coincidence—some things are unavoidable, like Locke’s paralysis—though the cause of that paralysis seems to be different in the alternate timeline. I find it interesting that Randy called Locke “The Colonel” without a hint of irony, which leads me to speculate thusly: perhaps Locke really was military and that’s why he’s in the wheelchair---after all, it appears that he has a good relationship with his father, because he obviously would not want to invite someone who pushed him out of a window to his wedding. It is worth noting, however, that no matter how much happier Locke’s alternate life seems to be (in comparison to the one that brought him to the island) this episode really focused on showing us the pain and humiliation Locke feels due to his paralysis.

I did not see Kate’s name on the wall. I may have just missed it when I was taking notes. I’m going to have to watch this again.

One thing the writers mentioned before the beginning of this season was if you were to watch one scene, you should watch the Locke and Walt backgammon scene, wherein Locke explains how old the game is and that there are two sides engaged in a battle: white and black. We see that theme revisited with the rocks on the scale. We also see the numbers revisited in conjunction with the names on the cave wall.

How refreshing is a Jack-less episode? Seriously, his constant questioning of every little thing is exhausting.

Will Sawyer and Jack end up being the next Jacob and Smokey?

I love the alternate timeline scenes where our Losties meet each other in their alternate lives. The Rose and Hurley scenes were great, but far and away the best scene is when Ben and Locke meet under normal circumstances. You can see how they would be fast friends if this timeline continues.

I remain unconvinced that Smokey is BAD and Jacob is GOOD, especially after this episode. When Smokey is on the loose, we always hear the ticka ticka ticka, but we also hear the unraveling chains—is this an indication of Smokey’s being “trapped” as he told Sawyer? Could be. Also, he says he was once just a man, with feelings, etc., as evidenced by his “If you prick me, do I not bleed?” speech to Sawyer at the beginning of their trek to the cave.

What is the significance of the title of this episode? Who is the substitute?

I feel like there is a ton of stuff I’m missing, but it’s getting late and my fingers are failing.

Next week:
Claire.