LA X

It is finally here!

This episode started out the way the very first episode of the series did: Jack was on the plane sitting next to Rose while her husband was in the bathroom. Instead of her being nervous, though, Jack was freaking out. Rose had to calm him down as he clutched the arm rests of the airline seat. A small difference in dynamic, but nothing on LOST isn't worth noting. So I noted it. Another thing worth noting is the several changes on the plane. One would assume that this plane ride is what would happen if Juliet made the hydrogen bomb go off, and Jack and Faraday's plan actually worked. One would assume that this chain of events we are seeing here are actually playing out as if there were no electromagnetism pulling them down to crash on The Island. One would be right, seeing as how they showed Juliet hitting the bomb right before the long, uneventful plane ride of our protagonists.

Only Shannon isn't there. Neither are Michael and Walt. And like I said, Jack is scared, and Rose is not. Oh yeah, and one more thing.... Desmond is there? As clear as day, Desmond Hume, prim and proper with a shave and a haircut, sits next to Jack on the plane. They go through their usual "Do I know you?" thing, and introduce themselves after they don't recall their meeting at the stadium. Perhaps this is because they never met at the stadium that day. Perhaps the prevention of the accident prevented Desmond from training for the race that landed him on the island in the first place? Perhaps then he wouldn't have even been on the stadium stairs that day to meet Jack in another life? Perhaps....

Perhaps that is true, because as crazy as the idea of Desmond being on the plane is, an even crazier idea is revealed to the audience. The camera pans out of the airplane window, down into the ocean, through a school of fish, and into.... The Island.

What? The Island in completely submerged under water, and the plane goes right over it without any complications. The imagery is completely creepy. The camera goes through the neighborhood of Dharma houses, through the benign swing set Ben and Annie used to play on, and then closes in on the Four-Toed Statue covered in algae. Then of course it goes to commercial, and leaves my family staring at each other in pure shock and amazement.

After the commercial, we see a different storyline, as if the bomb going off didn't work at all. The director's chose to show both of these storylines simultaneously to keep us all confused as hell, but I will describe the "alternate reality' storyline first, so I can keep myself more sane while explaining everything.

So, back on the plane, Jack is called to assist someone in the bathroom who hasn't come out in a long time. He tells Cindy that he is a doctor, and Sayid comes and busts the door open with his foot. Jack finds Charlie unconscious in the bathroom, his airway blocked. He lays him down and pulls out a dimebag(?) of heroine out of his throat. He is handcuffed on the plane, and doesn't show any gratitiude as he finds his way back to his seet. "I was supposed to die." He tells Jack. Interesting......

Cindy is comforting and sweet to Jack on top of giving him an extra bottle of Vodka earlier in the episode. What I didn't notice until Carlton Cuse told Jimmy Kimmel later last night, was that she gave him one less bottle than she did in the original pilot, which will somehow be very significant. This could be true, but this could also be the producers just pulling the viewers' chains. Time will only tell with the Vodka, I guess.

"Some people just don't know how to say 'Thanks'", Cindy tells Jack before he sits back down in his seat. He looks around and can't find Desmond anywhere. He looks at Rose and asks her where he is. She says that her and Bernard were sleeping, and she apologizes. Jack looks around and thinks that he might be crazy. I can't say that I think anything different. Earlier he went into the bathroom and found a random cut on his lower neck that seemed to come out of nowhere. Now his seat-mate has disappeared into thin air... on a plane. Is Desmond a figment of Jack's imagination? Is he evidence of the other dimension going on simultaneously with this part of the episode? Is he a glitch in the Matrix? Who knows.

We see our other friends on the plane as if nothing had ever changed from their original plot arcs. Kate runs into Jack with her U.S. Marshall on her way back from the bathroom, Sawyer runs into Hurley on accident, although he claims to be the "luckiest guy on the planet". Hmmm, that's different.

Sun and Jin are on the plane together as normal, and Jin is just as domineering as he used to be in Season 1. It was so long ago, and both characters have come so far from their originally boxed-in stereotypes, that I almost forgot who they used to be. Jin tells Sun to button the top button on her sweater.

We also get to see our beloved Boone, may he rest in peace. John Locke and him begin talking after the crash would have normally happened, and hit it off. Boone asks why John was there in Sydney and John tells him about his walkabout. He says he slept under the stars and killed his own food for a few days. Has the Incident changed Locke's past into him not getting tossed out a window by his own father? Is he lying to this young man to give him a good story and live in a fantasy for a few hours? I think he's lying, but Boone seems very impressed with Mr. Locke. Boone tells John that he was in Sydney to get his sister out of a relationship she didn't want to get out of. So I guess that explains why she isn't on the plane, and I don't really care if she ever returns to the show.
Bonds are made on this plane that were previously interrupted by fate. Relationships that were hostile because of the actions after the crash were now friendly and amiable friendships the audience could never really imagine happening. One thing I knew in my heart that would never change.... is that John still ended up being paralyzed. His tale to Boone was indeed a tall one, and the scene where he has to be helped into his airplane-safe wheelchair is heartbreaking. He wanted so bad to believe he went on that walkabout, but it was all in his head.

Poor John Locke, I love you.

Anyways, everyone gets off the plane as normal. Sayid holds a picture of Nadia in his passport, Charlie is escorted off the plane by the cops, and Kate is with her U.S. Marshall man. She asks to use the bathroom and manages to escape by using a spring loaded pen to attempt to undo her handcuffs. She knocks her captor out in the ladies room, covers her cuffed hands with his coat, and runs into an elevator. Sawyer is in the elevator and he sees her cuffs which she is terrible at hiding, and lets her get a head start. Clearly their bond would have come to fruition no matter what. Kate finds her way to the outside and hijacks a cab with who else but Claire already inside.

Besides Kate's incredibly incompetant U.S. Marshall, we have the story of Jack Shepherd. He gets paged to the Oceanic flight desk, and they tell him they 'lost' his father's coffin. They say that it was never even put on the plane, and that it is in transit. Jack is not having a good day. He saves someone's life who isn't grateful, his father's body is missing, and now he has to call his mom and give her the bad news. Sounds a lot like his run as a leader on the island; even though he just wanted to help, people still hated him for it.

The one difference? John Locke. He is sitting at the baggage service center as well and is waiting for a 'bag full of knives'. Jack is pacing nervously and is doing the classic 'shake my head and teeth nervously' Jack Shepherd move. John asks him what he lost, and he tells him that they lost his father. This is when John Locke says one of those amazing lines that reminds me why John was such an amazing character. Especially since he hasn't been himself for 2 years.


"They didn't lose your father. Wherever he is... they just lost his body." He smiles sincerely at Jack, and Jack smiles back.

Beautiful.

John begins to leave and Jack stops him, asking him what happened to him. He says that he doesn't mean any offense, that he is a spinal surgeon. John looks at him and says that he can't save him because what happened to him is irreversible. Then Jack says one of those lines that shows he has changed from the Season 1 Jack he used to be.

"Nothing is irreversible."

Jack gives him his card and tells him that if he ever needs a consult he will be there for him, on the house. John reads his name out loud as if he knows the name well. He looks up at him and tells him his name, and the two of them shake hands. This scene would be unbelievable if you would have shown it to a Season 1 audience, and yet it is so real and believable to me now. Perhaps it shows that circumstances often change how people view others, and even themselves. Who knew it would bring these two together?

Alright, enough with the "shoulda coulda woulda"'s. It's time to tell you what really happened, or what is happening right now. Everyone is disoriented and finds themselves at the Swan station in 2007. It is built and blown up just as they left it, and they all fight with each other about Jack being wrong. Sawyer screams a lot and then hears Juliet crying out to him from underneath the rubble. They manage to pull a major beam off of her with the Dharma van.

Clearly it is night time now, and nothing really makes sense to anyone. Especially Ben. Ben is still standing in the statue, dumbfounded, as Smokey looks at him. He walks towards him and tells him to get Richard. Benjamin is reluctant to feed his adviser to Smokey, and very slowly exits the statue to get Richard. He goes out to the beach, and Richard asks him what happened in there, and where Jacob and John Locke are. Ben doesn't toss his manipulating ways to the wind just yet, and says that John and Jacob are both inside, and that everything is fine. He tells Richard that John wants to talk to him.

Richard, for the first time in 30 years, pulls a Daddy move on Ben and grabs his arm. The fear in Ben's face and the anger in Richard's illustrate a dynamic we have never seen between these two before. Richard always does whatever Ben tells him to because he thought those orderd were coming from Jacob. Richard was a blind servant of the Island.... until now. Richard drags Ben across the island and throws him on the ground in front of John Locke's dead body. He says that if he wants him to talk to him, then maybe he should do it first.

Ben is shocked when he sees this, but for some reason, still wants to do what Smokey wants. Is he that afraid of Smokey? Does he not think that Richard and Ilana can protect him anymore? Or does he have some other Ben Linus agenda up his sleeve like he always does? He regains his composure and tells Richard to go in there and talk to him anyways. Richard is a little smarter than that, and Bram and his goonies rush into the Statue after Ben with guns held at him.

Smokey asks where Richard is, and the men come at him with guns. Smokey turns into his true form of the Smoke Monster we all know and love, and annihilates Bram's men. Bram surrounds himself with a circle of ash, but Smokey knocks something over that knocks Bram off balance and finishes him off that way. Damn. He was annoying anyways. Smokey returns into his John Locke visage and finds Benjamin cowering in the corner like a scared little child. He walks up to him and says "Sorry you had to see me like that." Wow.

We cut back to Kate and friends who are trying to pull off the wreckage of the hatch, and Hurley is keeping Sayid company by the van. Sayid looks pretty much dead tome, but technically he is still breathing. Whatever. Hurley hears some rustling in the bushes and meets up with our wonderful Jacob. Jacob calmly tells Hurley that he needs to save his friend by taking him to the temple. He says that it is paramount that Sayid survives, and that Jin will know where to take him. Hurley tells him his friends will come soon and that he can tell them, but Jacob tells him that they won't be able to see him. He tells him that the guitar case he gave him is very important, and that he needs to take it with him to The Temple. He needs to enter from the hole in the ground where the French team went before. He tells Hurley that he is Jacob, and that he was killed 2 hours ago. Hurley replies with a classic Hurley line.

"That sucks, dude."

Jacob leaves and Jin comes back to help remove more of the metal from the Swan. Our friends manage to get enough rubble off of the main shaft where Juliet fell, and Sawyer makes his way down to her. He is a mess, as is expected, and finds her soaked in blood. She is still underneath a lot of stuff but is still talking. He holds her and tells her he loves her. He tells her to kiss him, and she begins talking about going out for coffee and going dutch and all this other deliriousness. She begins to say that she has something very important to tell him, but dies before she can get it out. Of course. Every movie does that, and it is so annoying. You want to know what is even more annoying, though? The fact that I have to watch Juliet die.... AGAIN. What the hell were they thinking? I know Sawyer is tore up about all of this, but I already invested in the fact that she was long gone, and died a noble death. Before she died, she had to realize that she died for nothing. She lost the love of her life because some of his friends wanted that experience to never happen. She.... ugh. Darlton, please never do this again to me. Don't kill a character and then say Just Kidding, and then kill her for real the second time. I mean, I spent a year thinking she was dead. I spent a year... Whatever. She's gone.

She's gone. Sawyer asks Miles to stay behind and help bury her while Hurley and friends go to find The Temple. Jack agrees to go along with Hurley's idea only because he can't medically save his friend. Hurley exerts some authority for once in his life and tells Jack that he can save him, and that they are going to have to do what he says. Good job, Hurley. Great jjeeeooorrrbbbb.

Anyways, everyone goes into the temple through the hole in the ground. Hurley finds Montand's skeleton and picks up a book he was reading. I don't remember what it was, but I know it is important. I'll read about it when Nikki Stafford comes out with her book on Season 6. Anyways, Our friends get Sayid safely down the hole and through some very Goonie-remeniscent hallways and barriers. Jack walks a little too far and loses his friends. There are shadows running around and whispers in our ears. The others? I thought they were at the beach with Richard? jack hears Hurley's voice and is captured by very middle-eastern looking Others.

He meets up with Jin, Kate, and Hurley, and sees that they are held captive too. They bring them outside, and a large, very Aztecan temple stands before them. "I guess we found the temple." Kate says jokingly. Duuhhhhrrrr. God, I hate Kate. But seriously. I do, I wish she would die. She does nothing but cause trouble. She follows Jack when he tells her not to, she comes back for him when he tells her not to, she had sex with Sawyer (eww), and now she thinks she can be funny Kate with one-liners. No.

The leader of these other Others walks out with his lackey behind him, and he is Asian! Awesome!

The Asian Leader, I will call him Avatar for now, (the cartoon, not the James Cameron flick) walks up to our friends and tells his people (in what I am guessing is Chinese) to kill them. One of those people is Cindy, the stewardess from Flight 815. She is also one of the Others that welcomes Locke to their camp before he makes Sawyer kill his father. She is also the one who stares at Jack when he is put in a cage in Season 3 to 'watch' him. Creepy. I had no idea her ties ran this deep.

Hurley steps up and tells him that Jacob has sent them, and that Jacob gave him his guitar case. He says that he needs them to save Sayid, and that Jacob told him it was very important. It is nice to see Hurley stick to his guns and do all of the talking in this scene. Jack sits back and watches as Hurley fulfills Jacob's will.

Avatar agrees not to kill our friends, and opens Hurley's guitar case. What is inside is not Charlie's soul like so many of us thought, but a giant Ankh symbol made entirely out of wood. Avatar breaks it open over his knee and finds a piece of paper inside it. He looks at Hurley and friends and looks back at his lackey. He asks Hurley his name, and the names of all of his friends. They tell him their full names and a grave look crosses Avatar's face.

"Hey, I've carried that guitar case over the ocean... and through time... I deserve to know what is on that piece of paper!" Hurley demands answers from the Others, acting as a proxy for the audience who is just as curious.

"It says that if we do not save your friend, we are in a lot of trouble." Yeesh.

So these new Others take Sayid into the Temple, and turn an hour glass over. They take his outfit off and put him into this bubbling brook of a pool, but notice out loud that "The water isn't clear anymore!" It seems to be a big deal. So much of a big deal that Avatar cuts his hand a-la Pirates of the Caribbean and puts his hand in the water. Once this is done, it is apparently safe for Sayid to enter the water, and continue on with his day.

Two henchman take Sayid down the steps in a two-man carry. The image of Christ on the cross was noted by several of my family members, and is duley noted by myself. The fact that he has to be put into a giant pool of water to be "saved" was also noted. The hourglass on the side of the pool is being watched carefully by Avatar as the two men hold Sayid under until he eventually drowns, or appears to drown. Once they pull him up out of the water, their trick seemed to fail, and the hippie guy tells Kate that her friend is dead. What a waste of energy, huh?

We go back to the beach where Smokey has just murdered all of Bram's men in the Statue. Ben is still hiding, and Smokey tells him that he is sorry. He sits down and has a 'normal' conversation with Ben.

"He was so conused when you killed him, Ben." Smokey starts the conversation off nice and ripe.

Benjamin says that he doubts someone like Jacob would ever be confused about anything. He looks slightly remorseful when he says this and looks at the ground.

"I'm not talking about Jacob, I'm talking about John Locke.... do you know what he was thinking when you killed him? Do you know what the last thought that came into his brain was as you strangled him to death?

I don't understand...."

My heart shattered. Poor John Locke. And Ben doesn't care. Smokey continued on to tell him about John.He said that he was a sad and pathetic little man. He was a follower, but something was admirable about him enough for the Island to heal him. Something about him was special. He was the only person on that entire plane that realized how pathetic the life he left behind really was. And that is why the island chose to heal him. That's why it wanted him as their leader.

Smokey pauses after this somber speech and tells Ben that, unlike John Locke, he just wants to go home. Home? Home? Where the fuck is home? Egypt? Spain? Delaware? Ugh....another burning question raised in my brain, thank you Darlton, thank you very much.

Ben and Smokey leave the Statue after their little chat and Ilana puts her gun on him. Richard yells at her not to shoot him, and looks frightened. Smokey approaches Richard with a smile and says "Nice to see you out of those chains, Richard."

This line tells us everything and nothing. It tells us that Richard was once indeed a slave. We know that The Black Rock was a slave ship, so he could be from the Black Rock. We also know that Egypt was widely known for their enslavement of the Hebrew population back in the day. So the words "chains" really don't confirm or deny either theory.

In the five years I have been watching this show, I have never seen Richard scared. I have never seen him flinch, even though he has been held at gunpoint by several people, but this man, for some reason, has put the fear of God.. or well I guess the fear of Smokey... in him.

"You!" Richard exclaims before he even knows what hit him.

Noooo! Richard is beaten up by the Locke version of Smokey and taken away. Everyone else is too afraid to do anything to him, and I can't say I really blame them. When Bram's men shot at the Locke form of Smokey in the statue, the bullets literally bounced off of him like he were Superman. This... could be a problem.

So if Richard said "You!" with such fear, does this mean that Richard is old enough to be from Egypt? If he were from there, is that why his fear is so great? Has he seen Smokey do other terrible things we haven't even imagined? Or is he indeed from the Black Rock, and when Jacob brought his ship there, Smokey did some awful things to the crew? It is so hard to tell at this point, but Darlton promised us a Richard backtory if not a flashback in this season, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. Plus I am sure Smokey and Richard are going to have a very detailed conversation and/or fight. If Smokey was going to kill him, he would have done it already... Right?

We cut back to the Temple where Miles and Sawyer are thrown into the pool room with Kate and friends. Hurley is taken into Avatar's secret garden to talk to him directly, and he figures out that he knows English but won't speak it to him. He says that he doesn't like English on his tongue, and continues speaking Chinese. He asks him where Jacob is, and Hurley tells him that Jacob died.

Avatar and his friends go nuts and start pouring ash all around the Temple. They tell our friends that it is to keep "him" out. They set off a signal flair that Richard sees just before he gets owned by Smokey. It seems like they have been trained to do this, but haven't had to do it until now. Everyone is freaking out, and Hurley is confused and....

Sayid wakes up.

"What happened?"

Well then, this certainly raises a lot of questions, now doesn't it? This being the end of the episode (actually Richard getting beat up was the end, but you get the idea), it is the last image the audience is left with. Was he actually dead before he woke up? Is he truly alive? Is he himself? Did he 'lose his innocence' like Ben did when Richard took him to the Temple in the 1970's? Why is his memory gone?

One theory my fiance Tony told me is that the spirit of Jacob inhabited his body. When the Others take Sayid into the pool, they say that the pool isn't clear. It is the color of blood, is it Jacob's blood? Is it because he died and this has never happened before? Is this why Sayid might in fact be inhabited by Jacob's spirit? Is this why Jacob wanted Sayid to be brought to the Temple so badly? Possibly. I can see it. If I told you one year ago that John Locke was really the Smoke Monster, would you believe me?

Just to be clear though, I don't believe that anyone else uses the Temple to inhabit anyone else's body. I don't think that anyone inhabited Ben's body when he was "saved". I think that Jacob could have inhabited Sayid's body, and it is somehow a part of the major plan. He is on the list, and Jacob touched him after he returned from the island. The only other person he touched after their return from the island was Hurley, and they are very connected right now. Just something to mull over, everyone.

I re-watched the conversation between Jimmy Kimmel and Carlton Cuse on the accusation of how obvious it was that Sayid was possessed by Jacob, and Carlton said that "Something" was inhabiting Sayid's body, but he should watch a few more episodes to further his theory. Alright, so I wasn't completely off.

Sayid may be a lot more important than we all thought he could be. Or, it is merely just something to throw us off the scent of the true idea. Richard could be Hebrew, he could be Egyptian, the flight could be real, it could be a dream. All I know is that I am glad LOST is back and has given me brainteasers that make me yell as soon as the commercial hits. Welcome back, my love.