This week’s assignment consisted of Season 1’s episodes 9-12: Solitary, Raised By Another, All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues, and Whatever The Case May. We are given our first introduction to Danielle Rousseau and Ethan Rom, and then given the notion that there are “others” on the island to further the mystery engulfed in the storyline. The flashback stories show a look into the past of Sayid, Claire, Jack, and Kate, and all deal with one or more themes of lost loves, regrets, and deaths of people close to them. Overall, these episodes were great to watch again and I thought they fit together great in their 4-episode block this week. And of course……there were things I managed to find when viewing through the magnifying glass….
In Solitary, Sayid has left the Oceanic survivors to explore the island. He finds a cable and follows it inland, eventually getting caught in one of Danielle’s traps. When I saw the trip wire to this trap, I instantly thought of the island, circa 1954, when our time-traveling Losties met the younger versions of Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore. The island was boobie-trapped with land mines that were set off using trip wires. There was also the fact that Danielle spoke so many languages when asking Sayid where Alex was. Besides the fact that she knew all of those languages, she also remembered them after 16 years of not speaking all of them. Granted, she was only asking a question of “where is Alex?”, but I found it peculiar that she was able to do it. The biggest puzzle to me, though, when it comes to Danielle, was the fact that she didn’t believe Sayid about the plane crashing to the island. In the Season 3 opener, we see how Juliet and her book club are sitting in her home, when all of a sudden an earthquake-type event begins, shaking her home and its contents violently. Everyone runs outside and witnesses the plane breaking into two pieces in the sky. The noise is unbelievable and would have woken Rip Van Winkle himself, had he also been on the island. Why is it that Danielle missed this event entirely?
There were some other things that jumped out at me during this episode. For one, John Locke is hunting with Ethan, when there was a time, when the Beechcraft crashed to the island, that John was THE hunted and Ethan was the hunter. John is pretty memorable in his looks, but does Ethan remember shooting him? John also had more moments where he seemed odd to me. For example, Jack complained about the hypochondriac in their group, and Hurley commented that they all needed something to do to get their minds off of their situation. Just as Hurley says, “There’s nothing to do!”, John enters with some things for Hurley to go through, one of which is a bag of golf clubs. It is then that Hurley gets the idea to make the golf course that everyone ends up enjoying.
I’m sure everyone who rewatched this episode has noticed the gun-to-gun scene with Danielle and Sayid, and how it mirrored that of her and Robert when we see her backstory in Season 5. Danielle even says as much when explaining to Sayid that Robert failed to notice the missing firing pin as he turned the gun on her, but to me it wasn’t just the scene. The dialog leading up to Danielle stating the imperfections of the gun was very similar to that of her and Robert on the beach before she shot him. Another “mirroring” was the writing on the back on Nadia’s photo. When Sayid set Nadia free from the Iraqi prison, she wrote on the back of her photo and gave it to him. The statement said, “You’ll find me in another life, if not in this one.” I could almost hear Desmond at this point, saying “See you in another life, brotha!”
Raised By Another was an episode I was truly looking forward to seeing. I think, besides John Locke, Claire is a key character to see in these past episodes due to the fact that she is missing now and the possibilities of Richard Malkin seeing something extremely bad or unusual in his readings of Claire. In the opening of the episode, we get our first look at the vivid dreams that occur on the island. Claire’s dream had her wandering through the jungle, following the sound of a baby crying, when she runs into a very strange John Locke that has a black eye and a white eye. His eyes actually resembled the stones that Jack found on Adam and Eve in the caves. This scene is also the first time I’ve noticed the necklace that Claire is wearing. On first glance, it appears to be a wooden amulet, of sorts, that looks like a wicked little man. Lostpedia states that this necklace is actually stone, and is the Chinese symbol for “love”. I don’t buy it. When looking at the Chinese symbol for love, it fits, but is opposite (or mirrored) of the symbol Claire wears.
Other Claire-related findings that I noticed had to do with the psychic, Richard Malkin. I was left wondering if there was any significance to the fact that he was reading her palms when it was the palms that were bleeding after her dream. It was also stated by Charlie later when Claire told him about Malkin, that maybe the psychic knew the plane was going to go down and that would make it impossible for Claire to give Aaron up for adoption–a fact that we later see isn’t true when Claire goes missing and Kate ends up with Aaron. Seeing Thomas when Claire was taking the pregnancy test (when he was questioning the results) made me thing of “Doubting Thomas”, and he also uses “daddy abandonment issues” when pleading his case to Claire about making their little family work, which was ironic to have in the same episode where Hurley tells Jack that they should know who all of the survivors are and who they’re related to when bringing up the topic of the census.
In the “mirror images” catagory, I thought it familiar that Claire was hanging drapes in Thomas’ loft, and when realizing she was making things permanent, he leaves her. This is a lot like Kate’s life. She told Jack that she had made her own drapes for an apartment, but we also know that she left when things became too permanent and tied down for her. Claire also looks very bad (i.e. dark circles under eyes, pale complexion), much like Charlie has recently with the drug withdrawls and like Kate will on the Ajira flight having given Aaron away to Claire’s mother. When Claire starts having contractions, Charlie counts to time them, “One sugar-plum fairy, Two sugar-plum fairy….”, which is in reference to John Lennon counting in the song, “A Day In The Life” by the Beatles.
During the taking of the census, Hurley gets a little creeped out by John. Hurley asks him why he was traveling and John said he was looking for something. Hurley then asks if he found it and John replies, “No, it found me.” John gave me a creepy feeling when I saw him observing Sayid’s return. Jack is tending to his injuries in the caves when Sayid says, “We’re not alone.” John had a very strange look on his face, and I’m finding it harder and harder to distinguish whether it is the character that I’m reading or my future knowledge of the character that I’m remembering. In either case, I’m noticing a lot more about John this time around.
All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues is a Jack-centric episode, which I found fitting to follow the Claire-centric episode that brought up the “daddy issues”. Jack has to do the right thing and turn his father in for operating under the influence when a woman dies from a mistake Christian has made. Although I didn’t pick up on anything major in the flashbacks that I didn’t already remember, there was one scene that stood out for me. Keeping in mind that Jacob has already given Jack “the touch”, we see Christian trying to persuade Jack into signing off of the report that states the events leading up to the woman’s death in the operating room. Christian is trying every angle, including guilt, to get Jack to give in and sign, and then places his hand on his shoulder. Jack breaks down and signs the papers after that. Does it mean anything? I don’t know, but it surely seemed significant in making Jack change his mind about standing his ground with Christian.
On the island, Sayid is back and the hunt is on to find Charlie and Claire. Boone and John branch off from Kate and Jack in the attempt to track Ethan. Before leaving camp, John tells Michael that he is heading north and Michael should go south. I found myself wondering if John knew Michael was close to “heading south” in the metaphorical way, and that’s why the remark was made. Walt plays informant to Sawyer, catching him up on the days’ events, and states that “it’s stupid to lie about your name” when talking about the census. He also tells Sawyer that Sayid is back and that he claims there are other people on the island. When Sawyer goes to see Sayid, he is told of Danielle’s story and how she came to be on the island–a story that James will later tell Horace of how he and his friends came to be on the island in 1974.
As John and Boone seem to be following a “gut” instinct to find something other than Ethan, Jack and Kate are chasing after a sort-of “vision” that Jack had about Charlie, Claire, and Ethan. Kate apparently doesn’t hear the screams and noises Jack does, but follows after him until they eventually come to find Charlie hanging in a tree. He is dead, but after pounding on his chest 23 times, Jack revives him. Charlie didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, and doesn’t remember anything. Was his revival similar to Ben’s in the Temple? Richard Alpert said the same to Kate about what Ben would remember upon waking.
At the end of this episode, John goes to throw a flashlight to Boone, which falls to the ground and clanks on something metal. This is the first glimpse of the finding of the Swan hatch. Since the crash onto the beach, John seems to be driven by another force on his own agenda.
Whatever The Case May Be is a Kate-centric episode about finding the toy plane that was the favorite toy of her childhood friend, Tom. Kate and Sawyer find a pond with a waterfall and go for a swim only to find dead bodies at the bottom. Under one of the submerged Oceanic seats, Kate notices the Haliburton case that the marshal had with him, and that begins an “ownership” feud with Sawyer over the case. In my opinion, this is the same pond and waterfall where Kate and Hurley land after the Ajira flight, and also where the entrance to the tunnels are that hold the H-bomb.
On the shore, the ocean seems to be attacking the beach. Sayid remarks how it is very unusual for the tide to be changing like that this early in the year. Everyone finds something to do, including Shannon who has been called “useless” by Boone, but Charlie is struggling with the disappearance of Claire. Rose talks to Charlie about praying and instills a little faith into Charlie about her returning.
The episode, although needed to progress the story, didn’t really give us more information this time around. Charlie does make a statement about that “thing” in the jungle getting hungry again (Jacob’s enemy??), but nothing else stood out for me.
Next week, we will be watching episodes 13-16: Hearts and Minds, Special, Homecoming, and Outlaws. Remember to join us for the podcast on Talkshoe, Lostaholics Rewatching Lost, which records on Sunday evenings, 9PM Eastern time.
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