So this guy says to his doctor, “Doc, it hurts when I go like this.” / ABC
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, get a prescription for sleeping pills, crack open a beer and watch last night’s Lost.
So after the first commercial break, I called it: Jack dies during surgery! It would solve a dramatic question (why spend an episode jeopardizing the health of a character who we know survives?). It would call into question what is really going on with all the Oceanic Six—if they’re all dead on the island and alive elsewhere, split off in time and space somehow like the freighter Doc who was dead on the beach and still alive on the ship. Most important, it would blow our freaking minds.
Alas, Jack made it through. As far as we know. (I’m guessing Bernard’s comment that Jack should take the anaesthetic and “dream about something nice back home” was meant as misdirection to give people the same idea I had, as was Crazy Hurley’s “We’re all dead” conversation with Jack.) Which leaves me with not a lot else to say about this episode, which I’m going to have to chalk up to somehow setting up the chess pieces for the finale.
So I guess we can talk about the ghosts, who apparently are going to be showing up in such numbers that I expect a guest appearance from Jennifer Love Hewitt. There was the ghost(?) of Christian, appearing both to Jack (does this explain the reference to Jack’s father in the season 3 finale?) and Claire, luring heer into the jungle. (Same ghost, or Smokey?) The ghost of Charlie, who Hurley has still been chatting with. The guy, twelve years dead, who speaks to Locke in the preview of next week’s episode. And the metaphorical ghost of Sawyer, who, though not dead, manages to bust up the future engaged bliss of Jack and Kate.
About that flash-forward, I have little to say. I know I’m going to sound like one of those he-man love-haters’-club members who doesn’t like the relationship stories, but I swear it’s not that. It’s just that this was the first of the flash-forwards that resembled one of the bad old flashbacks, in that it just reconfirmed character traits we already knew and showed Jack and Kate falling into patterns we knew from the past. (Her, lying; him, drinking and mistrusting.) Other than the hints that all may not be as it seems with the Six, I didn’t get much from it—was I missing something? Did I die in the middle of the episode?
On to the hail of bullets:
* Did the “series sweep” Jack read about in the paper place the episode in time? I defer to the baseball fans on this one.
* I love any scene with Juliet dealing with Jack as doctor to doctor: she’s the one person on the island who’s as big a control freak as he is, and it made perfect sense that she’s dope him against his wishes. It’s the sort of thing Jack would have done. If that doesn’t mean she’s better for him than Kate, what does?
* So Rousseau is dead, really dead, dead-dead. The moment of silence before the next bullet is for her.
* I didn’t catch the book Jack was reading to Aaron, but was it Through the Looking Glass?
* Speaking of flash-forward Aaron, I’m sure I’ve brought this up before, but that is one huge toddler. Is this just standard Rapidly Aging TV Infant Syndrome, some time anomaly, or has more time elapsed than I’m guessing?
* I’m starting to wonder what the deal is with Charlotte, the member of the four freighties whom we know the least about, and the most secretive and sinister-seeming of the bunch.
* This question comes from Mrs. Tuned In: When Jack told Kate, about Aaron, “You’re not even related to him?” was his saying it in such a way as to imply that Jack knew he was related to Aaron? Has he discovered Claire is his sister? If not, that would be a strange way to phrase the statement (as opposed to “You’re not his mother”).
* “Watch your tone, Red.” How much do I love Rose? This much!