Holy CRAP! This episode was totally worth the repeat of last week’s episode. I thought the first half was by turns dull, predictable and cheesey. But the second half? My, my, my. The second half of this episode is what is called TELEVISION. Buckle up buttercups because we are in for a hell of a ride.
Crash
Jack is standing over Locke’s bed in AltLA. Locke has just come out of surgery. “I think you’re a candidate for a new type of surgery,” Jack tells him after explaining to Locke what he saw of his previous injury during surgery. “I think I can fix you.”
“No thanks,” answers Locke.
Jack is baffled by Locke’s unwillingness to undergo a surgery that could let him walk again, even though there is virtually no risk to him. So Jack tracks down the doctor who did reconstructive dental surgery on Locke following his accident. It just so happens to be Bernard Nadler. Of Oceanic 815 Bernard puts it together first: “I sat across the aisle from you. You were flirting with my wife Rose.“ Doctor patient confidentiality and a plethora of HIPPA laws will not allow Bernard to disclose to Jack the details of Locke’s accident, but Bernard does agree to direct him to the other man who was in the accident with him: Anthony Cooper. “I hope you find what you are looking for.” Bernard tells Jack.
Jack shows up at a nursing home, looking for Anthony Cooper. At first he finds Helen. “What do you want with Anthony?” Helen wants to know. Jack explains about the surgery for Locke and how he wants to find out how Locke was originally injured. “Leave this alone,” Helen begs him with tears of pain in her eyes. “You saved John’s life; why can’t that be enough?”
“Because it’s not,” Jack explains. Helen walks over to a table and turns Anthony Cooper around. Cooper is a vegetable.
Jack returns to Locke’s hospital room. “Mr. Locke, can you hear me?” Locke is unconscious, talking in his sleep. “Push the button. I wish you believed me.”
Jack sees Claire pass by the room and runs out to catch up with her. She was at the hospital looking for Jack. “My father wanted me to have this,” She says, pulling out a music box. “But I’m not sure why. I thought maybe you could help?” Jack is puzzled by the gift of the box as well. Claire asks how he died. “He was found in an alley in a bar outside of Sydney. I flew down to bring him back. The Airline lost the body.” Jack and Claire realize they were on 815 together. Claire opens the music box and “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket” begins to play. I Jack asks Claire to come and stay with him. Claire protests and says they are strangers. “We’re not strangers,” Jack says. “We’re family.”
Jack catches up with Locke as he is leaving the hospital. He tells Locke that he went to see Anthony Cooper to find out how he was crippled. “I was in a plane crash,” Locke tells him. “I had just got my pilot’s license. And this man who I loved more than anything in the world, who was scared to death to fly, I looked him in the eye and I told him he could trust me. I don’t remember what I did wrong. It was my fault.”
“When we first met, you told me that my father was gone. Your father is gone, too, Mr. Locke. What happened, happened, and you can let it go.”
“Whoever said letting go was easy?”
“I never said it was easy. I can’t even do it myself. I was hoping you would go first.”
“Goodbye, Dr. Sheppard.”
“I can help you John. I wish you believed me.” This gives Locke pause, but he leaves anyway.
Sub Standard
Jack wakes up on Hydra Island where Sayid has paddled them over. Meanwhile, the other Lostaways are being frog-marched into the cages. Sawyer tries to take control, but Widmore pulls a gun on Kate (of course, because they ALWAYS pull the gun on Kate) and Sawyer thinks he’s bluffing at first, until Widmore explains that Kate is not on his list of names that includes Sawyer, Hurley and the Kwons. Sawyer recognizes that Widmore isn’t bluffing about this and submits. As Widmore closes the cage door on them, he tells Sawyer, “Believe me. I’m doing this for your own good.”
Jacks wonders where everyone else is, and Sayid tells him they have scattered into the jungle. “Its’ just the three of us now,” Meaning Jack, Locke and Sayid. Locke returns to camp with instructions. “Your friends got themselves captured and now we have to rescue them. Don’t worry, Jack. We’ll get your people back and get off this island.”
“They’re not my people and I’m not leaving the island.”
Locke grins. “I’m hoping you will change your mind about that. I need you to convince them to trust me.”
“Why should I trust you?” Jack wants to know, and Locke’s answer is as convoluted as anything we’ve ever heard on this show. “Because I can kill them and you, but I didn’t. I saved you.”
Back in the cages, Kate tells Sawyer he should not have fallen for the Widmore guy’s bluff, “He wouldn’t have killed me,” she insists. Sawyer breaks the painful truth to Kate: “That cave with all the names on it that I told you about? Your name was on there too, but it was crossed out. He doesn’t need you, Kate.”
We interrupt this drama for more Kwon cheesiness as Sun and Jin tell each other how much they love each other and admire their wedding rings. The music swells and….
Then the power goes off and we hear the trademark Smokey sounds of chaos and destruction. Smokey makes short work of the Widmorians and the one with the keys falls just outside Kate’s reach. Frank starts kicking his way out, Smokey is swirling all round and Jack shows up to let them out.
“What are you doing here?” Kate asks, shocked to see him.
“I’m with him.”
“Thanks for coming back for us, Doc,” Sawyer says, which come to think of it, is a pretty darn nice thing of Jack to do after Sawyer kicked him off the boat. Locke, meanwhile, has made it to the plane and walks through the hail of bullets from the two Widmorians waiting for him. He breaks one’s neck, takes his gun and shoots the other one. Before he boards the plane, he rips a watch off of one Widmorian’s wrist. Once on the plane, he finds a rather clumsily camouflaged bomb hidden in one of the overhead compartments. Meanwhile, the rest of Camp Locke shows up and Locke explains how they can’t go on the plane because he just found the bomb. “If Widmore really didn’t mean for us to board this plane, he would have had the pylons set up. Widmore wants to get us all in a confined space where we can’t get out and kill us all at once. We have to get to the sub. I need all of you to help.” Jack agrees to help, but he’s not leaving the island.
Sawyer hangs back and asks Jack to keep Locke off the sub. “Get him in the water. He can’t do anything from there.” There is no one guarding the sub, so they get on rather quickly. Locke gives Jack his pack and they take off. Locke asks if Jack won’t change his mind. “The man who told you that you needed to stay was wrong.”
“It was John Locke who told me I needed to stay.” Jack says, and knocks Locke into the water. Then Widmore’s people come up from behind and start firing on them. Claire, Jack and Locke return fire from up front; everyone else from the sub. Kate is shot, Jack grabs her and puts her on the sub. Sawyer sees Locke out of the water and heading for them but Claire has not yet gotten on the boat. Sawyer makes an executive decision and slams the hatch shut and tells the captain of the U-boat to dive. Claire runs after the sub, telling them to wait, but Locke holds her back. “You don’t want to be on that sub.”
Kate needs medical attention and Jack directs Hurley to find a first aid kit, which Hurley can’t locate. Jack tells Jin to hand him his pack because he is sure that he has something that will stop the bleeding in there. Jack opens the pack and finds the bomb wired to the watch Locke ripped off the Widmorian.
“We did exactly what he wanted us to do,” Jack says. There’s about three and a half minutes on the watch and they tell the sub captain to surface. It’s going to take five minutes to surface which is not enough time. Sayid looks at the bomb and starts to try to figure out how it is wired. Jack tells them all to stop.
“Leave it alone. Nothing is going to happen. It won’t go off. He can’t kill us,” Questioning looks all around lead Jack to elaborate. “He didn’t need us to leave the island, he can’t leave the island unless we’re all dead. He wanted to get us all together in an enclosed place where we couldn’t get out and kill us all at once.”
Sawyer isn’t buying it. He grabs the bomb from Sayid and starts to remove the wires. Jack stops him. “He can’t kill us, James. But he can get us to kill each other. You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Sorry, Doc, I can’t do that.” And Sawyer grabs the wires and pulls them out. The watch stops counting down…then restarts twice as fast. Sayid grabs the bomb and runs out, telling Jack to close the door behind him. The bomb goes off, blowing away Sayid and blowing a a hole in the sub. The sub starts to sink. Frank gets pummeled by the door blowing off, Sun is trapped behind equipment. Jack tells Hurley to get Kate out and the men work together to free Sun. Sawyer is bonked on the head by falling debris and soon Jin tells Jack to get Sawyer out. Jin struggles in vain to get Sun free, but she is trapped. Sun begs Jin to save himself, Jin refuses.
“I will never leave you again,” Jin tells her in Korean.
Jack and Sawyer, Hurley and Kate make it back to shore, but Sun and Jin never make it off the sub. The last we see of them is their hands linked even in death.
Back on the dock, Locke informs Claire that the sub has sunk. “Are they all dead?” asks Claire.
“Not all of them,” he says, suiting up.
“Where are you going?” Claire asks.
“To finish what I started.”
Thoughts on this episode
The fact that Sun and Jin die and that their death is so poignant makes me almost regret how harsh I was last episode about how cheesy their reunion was. Almost. It was still a cheesy scene, though, and totally unworthy of the writing this show is capable of, so no apologies. As evidence, the final scene between Sun and Jin is a true tear jerker. We almost forget that Sayid has died, too.
I think Sayid dies redeemed. When he was working on trying to diffuse the bomb, it was the first glimpse we had of the old Sayid since his soulless conversion to the Smokey side.
Since I did not see Frank on the island with Jack, Hurley, Kate and Sawyer, I assume that he died when the hatch door hit him.
When Hurley bursts into tears at the news of Sun and Jin’s deaths, I lose it with him.
I love the scene in the sub when Jack tells everyone that the bomb is not going to off and why it is not going to go off. Jack’s transformation to the man of faith is complete.
The AltLA backstory tonight shows us that John Locke’s alternate life is just as, if not more sad than his original storyline. The raw emotion on Terry O’Quinn’s face as he is explaining to Jack how he crippled the man he loved more than anything was heart wrenching. His self loathing and self imposed prison of the wheelchair is almost as horrible as his pathetic life before. I truly hope that the writers give John Locke a happy ending in some way.
Godspeed Sayid, Sun and Jin.
Next week:
There are two sides to every story; one dark, one light.
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