Recap and ramble on the Island happenings from this week's episode...(For the off-Island square dance, click here.)
INSIDE THE SNOWGLOBE.
Esau sends Claire into the Temple to deliver a message. Claire asks why not Sawyer or Jin, cluing us in that they're both still with them, somehow. Perhaps back at her homey nest of a hovelpile, playing Risk or Backgammon while Jin heals up and Sawyer looks for angles. These guys have worked security together for three years, maybe they're a kickass dynamic duo?
Before Claire steps over the ash and into the Temple, she makes Esau promise to do what he said...
CLAIRE: If I go in there, I need to know you'll do what you said. I want my son back.
ESAU: I always do what I say.
So far, I can't think of anything I've seen that contradicts that, eh? Sure, he's lied and misled Locke, Claire, Ben, and maybe Michael, while wearing dead people's skins, but I haven't heard him make a promise he hasn't kept.
CLAIRE: Are you gonna hurt them?
ESAU: Only the ones who won't listen.
I wonder who Claire's thinking of when she asks that. And whether she's thinking of people who should be spared or punished.
Meanwhile, banished by Dogen, Sayid is packing up and getting ready to leave when Claire enters the Temple. Her message, that Esau wants to meet with Dogen. Dogen refuses, convinced that Esau would kill him. Claire suggests that he send someone in his place then, someone he won't kill.
Dogen's first thoughts are of Jack and Hurley, but they're missing. Jacob's got them out of the Temple to protect them from the Monster's assault. Jacob seems to be fine letting his Others at the Temple defend themselves, but c'mon, really? Knowing what the Monster and his likely minions are capable of, he must know he's left them to die, fodder, a delaying tactic at best. That's some pretty heartless calculus, Jacob. The latest in a long history, I suppose.
So, Dogen recruits Sayid for the job, arms him with what appears to be a very special dagger, and sends him to plunge it into Esau's chest. If Sayid gives him a chance to speak, it's already too late. Dogen plays Sayid the way he tried to play Jack, telling him that this is a chance to prove that he still has Good in him. When Esau appears to Sayid as Locke, Sayid proves his Goodness allright.
ESAU: Hello, Sayid.
SAYID: *KNIFE PLUNGE*
ESAU: Now, why'd you go and do that...?
Terry O'Quinn is showing his creepy STEPFATHER awesomeness now that he gets to be Dark Locke. Totally digging it. =)
Esau is unharmed. Removes the knife. No blood. AND, he didn't revert to Monster form, something I wasn't sure he could resist when his human form is wounded (Bram's bullets in the Foot, and Richard's orders to the Others not to shoot him).
Esau then works his devil-tongued magic. Granted, infected as he is, Sayid is probably more malleable a subject than usual, but Esau seems to spell things out pretty clearly. Dogen tricked Sayid into getting himself killed by sending him to shiv the Monster (and after he couldn't bring himself to do it with his own hands back in his Temple study). He tells Sayid that he should feel foolish for listening to a man who's now twice tried to have him killed. Of course, Sayid is well aware that Esau is looking to play him as well. Esau admits that he wants Sayid to deliver a message to the Others and that he's willing and able to give him his heart's desire in return, reuniting him with his lost Nadia.
JACOB'S CHOREOGRPHY. ESAU'S REWARDS.
Was Nadia killed because of Jacob's appearance in Sayid's life that day in L.A.? Or, was Sayid SAVED by his timely intervention?
I'm assuming that as much as any single will can be credited with it, Jacob's is the manipulating master-mind behind the Incident, and the resulting rewriting of reality. In this reality outside the snowglobe, we've seen that Claire lands in Los Angeles planning to give up her baby for adoption, but when the plan falls apart seems ready to keep the child, naming him Aaron even before he arrives. We also see, in this episode, how Sayid's frustrating existence can quickly change. With his brother effectively out of the picture, he is poised to fall into the life that he's always wanted but never felt he deserved, husband to his one true love, and even father to two doting children (who knows, maybe one or both are actually his in the first place?).
These are the beginnings of exactly the prizes that Esau promises his two claimed recruits. Esau is trading on Jacob's machinations as rewards. Evilly ingenious.
INSIDE THE SNOWGLOBE, cont'd.
Kate returns to the Temple. Miles does an excellent Abed-ian job of summarizing what happend to her when she went after Sawyer, then reveals that the Australian chick returned, crazy, but still hot. Maybe Miles's gift isn't just reading the dead, maybe it's reading people. =)
Of course, Kate has to see Claire. She finds her in "the hole," singing "Catch A Falling Star" to herself. Who asked whom to sing this to their baby? Was it Claire to Kate way back when? Or was it a song that someone other Lostie's mother sang to him or her as a child...? Frack. Can't remember clearly...
Anyhow, Kate explains to Claire what happened. The Others don't have Aaron.
KATE: I took him off the island. You were gone and we couldn't find you so... I raised him. And he is the most beautiful, amazing little boy. But I came back here to rescue you so that you could be with him. So that you guys could be together again.
CLAIRE: I'm not the one that needs to be rescued, Kate.
Wow. Miles is right. Claire is crazy and hot. But... How does this jive with everything else she's heard? "Christian" and Esau maintain that the Others took Aaron. Jin originally told her the truth, then backtracked to appease her feral stubbornness. Has she had a chance to talk with Sawyer? Given her infection and Esau's hold on her... well, I guess I could see it going both ways.
1. She will continue to believe Esau and ignore, humor, or play along with Kate. She might think of Kate as "poor deluded Kate," tricked by the Others into trying to convince her not to kill them all. When she says "I'm not the one that needs to be rescued," she's talking about the Others.
2. In a moment of clarity, she believes Kate. When she says "I'm not the one that needs to be rescued," she's thinking of keeping Kate close so that she can get her son back and then kill her. Or...
2a. Maybe she's still in the sway of Esau, but hearing the truth, first from Jin and then from Kate, has planted a seed of doubt when it comes to Esau's word, a seed that will take root and sprout in time and lead her to resist him in the near future. I believe you can be infected and not have to follow the Monster.
Sayid returns to the Temple and delivers Esau's message...
SAYID: The man that I met is leaving the island forever. And those of you who want to go with him, should leave the temple and join him. You have until sundown to decide.
CINDY: What happens at sundown if we stay?
SAYID: You die.
Good times. Good times. This ultimatum sets the Others into quite the tizzy. Saul is certain that the Monster can never enter, that the Temple is safe. In the face of the news of Jacob's death, many of the Others have doubts. Pretty lame followers, eh? Maybe they need to spend more time in Room 23 with the washing of their brains?
In the hubbub, Sayid seeks out Dogen, intent on returning his dagger. He finds him in the spring chamber. Sayid asks him point blank why he couldn't kill him when he had the chance. By way of an answer, Dogen explains how he came to be on the Island...
DOGEN: I was a businessman once. In Osaka. I worked at a bank. I was good at my job. Very successful. And one Friday, I was promoted. My associates took me out to celebrate. I had too much to drink. Every Friday I picked my son up from baseball. He was twelve. The accident was very bad. I survived. But my son...
DOGEN: And then, in the hospital, a man came to me. A man I had never met. And he told me that he could save my son's life, but I would have to come here... to this island... where I would have a new job. And I could never see my boy again.
SAYID: Who was this man?
DOGEN: His name was Jacob.
SAYID: Jacob drives a hard bargain.
DOGEN: The man outside... I take it he offered you a similar bargain?
SAYID: Yes.
MORE OF JACOB'S CHOREOGRAPHY.
Even though Shaman Dogen doesn't know it, Jacob delivered on his end of the deal. Setting in motion events that led to the creation of a reality in which his son is born, lives with his salaryman father, and never dies in a car accident, his drunken father at the wheel. By taking the position of Shaman for the Others, keeper of the Temple, Dogen ensures that a version of himself gets to live the life he wants, with the son that he loves.
I believe that this is Jacob's *intended* point of the rewritten reality outside the snowglobe. It is not just a better world for most if not all the Losties, but a better world which can only be kept that way by the Losties remaining on the Island, in the snowglobe, and probably in positions of Island responsibility, like Dogen, like Jacob and Esau, like Richard, like Widmore, Hawking, and Ben, and maybe some of the Other figures we've met whose titles or duties we don't know.
Of course, there are COUNTLESS possible UNINTENDED consequences and opportunities for exploiting a new and different reality.
INSIDE THE SNOWGLOBE, cont'd.
Sayid drowns Dogen in the Spring. Saul finds Sayid and the body...
SAUL: Do you realize what you just did? He was the only thing keeping it out! Idiot! You just let it in!
SAYID: *THROAT SLASH*
SAYID: I know.
And somehow, Dogen's death puts the kibosh on the protective power of the ash. His life force, channeled thru the ash, could keep the Monster at bay. Damn impressive trick. A gift from the Island? The power of a specific spell? Was Bram's ash also Dogen-powered? Seems unlikely, unless he took the time out to take some from the circle around Jacob's old cabin when we weren't looking? Alanna took some of Jacob's actual ashes from the Foot before leaving...
The Monster busts into the Temple and plays Maze Craze throughout. Kate and Miles look for a way out and split up. Miles is found by Lapidus, Sun, Ben, and Alanna. Ben leaves them to find Sayid in the "pool room"...
BEN: Sayid? Come on. I know a way out of here. There's still time.
SAYID: Not for me.
Sayid smiles and Ben backs away, thoroughly, wonderfully creeped out. I gotta say, I LOVED that moment. =)
And Alanna leads the rest to the hidden passage that Jacob revealed to Hurley, and they make their escape. I don't think that Ben caught up to them, did he? He's still somewhere in the Temple, perhaps hidden under a couple of Other corpses...?
Kate finds Claire, still trapped in the hole. Claire tells her she should join her cuz she'll be safer down there, and hey, ho, whaddyaknow? She's right. Once the Smoke clears, we see Sayid, Claire, and Kate make their way out of the temple, thru the body-littered courtyard, and into the jungle to join Esau's new flock of ex-Others. Sayid and Claire each get a knowing nod from the Monster. Esau gives just the slightest pause, tho, at the sight of Kate, sizing her up with his Monster vision, and then lets her be, allowing her to join his people, at least for the time being.
What does it say about Kate that the Monster deems her living breathing self worthy of a place beside his faithless followers and his two infection-reanimated lieutenants? Chaotic evil, anyone?
Just sayin'
Was happy to finally see Jin and Sun reconnected, even if only thru Miles's words. He has presence enough to ask Sun if she's seen Jin yet. I wonder who helped Jin write his wedding vows, don't you?
I'm looking forward to seeing the wacky hijinks that Lapidus, Sun, Ben, and Alanna got into on the road to the Temple from the Foot. I wonder if they encountered Richard-Golem or Ghost Boy along the way. Maybe they took an outrigger or two to make better time to the Losties' old beach camp...?
Heh, from the Foot to the Temple... Like a FANTASTIC JOURNEY from toe to head... or something. =)
I'd love it if Lapidus spotted Ghost Boy, demonstrating his sleeper Candidate status. If anyone besides Desmond is truly a man of destiny, I'd like it to be Frank.
Will put together a ramble on this week's events outside the snowglobe in a next post.
Keep on keepin on~
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