Do we really know what has happened with Claire? It seems like Smokey has only ever inhabited dead people. It seems like thats why they were worried about the water they healed Sayid in. Now that MiB is back and kicking ass the water is dark and doesn't heal the way they would like it to. I wouldn't call tonight a dogshit episode, it was certainly better than anything Rose and Bernard-centric, but clearly a framework episode. I thought the Kate and Sawyer stuff was pretty weak. Is Kate really still in love with both men after everything that has happened? A few questions: 1. Was the adoptive mother Claire met the same woman from Season 1? 2. Do we know how the ash circle around "Jacob's" house was broken?
The whole "infected" idea was started by Danielle when talking about Robert and the rest of her team. And we SAW Montand get pulled in by Smokey and get followed in by everyone BUT Danielle. So it's not a leap to suggest that Smokey is the cause of their "infection." Seeing Claire in the cabin with Christian makes me believe that Christian was the smoke monster, yes. However, we saw the traps set all over the Island by Claire, making her the modern day equivalent of Danielle. Also, I would think the name was spelled Dogan, and it's a Dark Tower reference, a way to make anyone who gets it FREAK out over the potential ending to the story.
My money is on Hurley when he stumbled onto the Cabin and freaked out at someone appearing at the window, but that's nothing but a guess.
I'm pretty interested in knowing how exactly Claire became "infected", and if it's anything we've seen in previous episodes. Dr. Ethan also seemed to be pretty eager to administer those drugs. Does this tell us that perhaps in the alternate 815 timeline Ethan never goes to the island, considering he was there when original 815 crashed and obviously not dead at the bottom of the ocean in the alternate timeline? It's another example of some things prior to 815's safe passage that changed, while other things such as Locke's paralysis have not. It wasn't a throwaway episode by any means, but I do wonder if the casual viewer is as sick of Kate as the rest of us.
We never saw the potential LA parents did we? I thought it was the psychic who had found the parents for Claire in the United States. Didn't she also think that there never was a couple? I believe she came to this revelation while talking with Charlie about some people "having the gift."
The Ethan timeline! How fun. Ethan Rom, born Ethan Goodspeed to Horace Goodspeed and some pregnant woman in 1974 on the island as part of the DHARMA initiative. He was removed from the Island, most likely on the sub in 1977 if not before, and went to Medical School. In the original timeline he came back to the island to serve as the Others surgeon. In this timeline there was no Island for him to go back to. Hence, LA doctor. Did anyone else expect to see Jack in the Hospital? I guess he's on vacation with the whole dead father's missing body thing.
Just a guess, but if it's something we've seen in another episode, I'm leaning towards her actually dying in the RPG attack on Dharmaville. Her being "infected" at that point could explain why she went crazy that night and ran off into the woods and why Locke found her hanging out in Jacob's cabin with Christian/Smokey.
If Rousseau's been dead for years, who was the crazy woman that kidnapped Sayid, stole Aaron, saved Claire, etc etc? The "Claire is the new Danielle" thing seems pretty clear, but it's not like it was possible for Claire to have been "Danielle" the entire time as the two were seen together on a number of occassions. Upon reading Rousseau's lost wiki entry, they mention how her French is often times quite poor and that the voice on the recording isn't the same. Hmmm. Perhaps the infection growing in Sayid and Claire is also the same in "Danielle." She was the one who was infected, not the rest of her team. Or perhaps the real Rousseau also became infected, "Danielle" then killed her and assumed her identity. Or maybe she's another one of Smokey's figments. But if so, and if she's been dead this whole time, wouldn't Ben know that in season 4? I feel like this episode is going to be a lot more entertaining when we get further along in the season.
No, when they're going through the jungle with Aldo and that other dude, Danielle has been dead for three years. I'm at work and forgot my notes at home, so I'll write my deal up in the morning.
If the ash around the cabin was to keep MiB inside and away from everyone, could that mean he has a mole/spy who broke it on purpose so he could get out?
I did sort of expect Jack to be there, but then I remembered that this was, what, 3 hours after the plane landed? And Jack was supposed to be at a funeral. I absolutely loved how they brought Mac back. With all of this semi-repeating history, is anyone else looking forward to Arzt exploding again?
I just kept waiting for this episode to turn into It's Always Sunny once Mac appeared. He just sounded like Mac, a total asshole. It was great.
As usual, my thoughts as I thought them. Dogen has got a nifty little typewriter. Why? Is he sending love letters to someone? Clearly, we knew the Others were in all sorts of contact with the outside world, it just struck me as odd. When Lennon tells Dogen Sayid is alive again, he looks up like it's something very significant. Which, I guess someone coming back from the dead would be. But like it's something that he knows the meaning of. Arzt leaving the airport. What an annoying prick he is. "I'm walkin here, I'm walkin." Dude, you are not Dustin Hoffman, get over yourself. Kate seemed to have one of those "Hey, don't I know you" moments when she saw Jack out the side of the cab. Claire is most definitely pregnant again. I was wondering what the purpose of them meeting with Sayid alone was. If it was to see if he was Jacob, as so many people thought, if he was MiB... But then I thought, if he was possessed by Jacob, they wouldn't need to drag him off alone. He would have no need to put on a show. I like the fact that Rob McElhenny got to call back to the fact that Kate knocked him out with a rifle but in Season 3. When Jack is talking to Kate before she runs off to follow Sawyer, I noticed that the Others seem to leave clay pots and shit laying around in corners like their temple is from Legend of Zelda. So Sayid didn't pass the torture test. I don't understand what he should have done if he wasn't infected. Everything he did seemed pretty natural to me in that circumstance. Makes me wonder if Dogen and Lennon have taken this infection question on like Inquisitors, or Witch hunters. If they suspect someone, they're already guilty. I hope this is true, because I don't want Claire to have been hollowed out by some evil flu. Or if there even really is an infection. The Dharma hatches were sealed with a Quarantine stamp on them, but that was likely to keep the remnants in once the Others took over, and plainly people don't just randomly get sick. Everyone that seems to have been changed in some way has something to do with the Temple, or Smokey (assuming Ghost-Dad is smoky doing a Christian act for Claire). But Ben didn't seem to be "infected" in the eyes of the Others, though certainly changed. Speaking of Claire, man, I'd forgotten how hot Emilie de Ravin is when she's not whining about her baybee. Has anyone else noticed that the "whoosh" sound between island scenes and flash-sideways scenes is different than it was in past seasons? It's... chunkier. So it seems the psychic did actually set up a couple for Claire to give her baby to (assuming the same events transpired to put her on the plane in world_x). Maybe all he ever meant was for her to be forced to keep the kid, and he knew that couple would implode. It's very frustrating trying to elicit answers from world_x for things that happened in normal world. We don't have enough background, and we know that some things are different. So a chick that just escaped from a Marshal, carjacked a cab, and held a gun on various people decides it would be a great idea to march a pregnant girl into the hospital? Yeah, I'm sure none of the uniformed personnel routinely in a hospital would be able to recognize her. Kate is still an idiot, that's good to know. Ok, so Ethan was only a week or two old when the incident occurred. I guess we can assume that there was enough time to get some of the Dharma folk off the island between when the bomb went off and when it sank? Damn, Josh Holloway has really expanded his acting chops since season one. But after the ring/dock scene, I was already kind of annoyed by mopey Sawyer back at Otherville. Jack swallows the pill Dogen meant for Sayid, and Dogen flips the fuck out. Why? Yesterday he casually ordered all those Losties shot, and now he's desperate to save Jack from poison? Just what the fuck did Jacob's note say? So Claire has taken up Rousseau's "Island Crazy Woman" slot. That's fuckin cool. Unless the Others are... you know. Lying again. Dogen didn't say anything about Smokey. He said infection, or "claimed", maybe as one of Smokey's own. I think you're thinking of the first couple she tried to sign on with for adoption, when three pens in a row failed, and she changed her mind, only to change it again at the last minute and get the couple in LA's info from the psychic. It was implied that someone from outside had broken it, but we never actually saw it. He was born on the island, but I would say that in world_x it's a safe bet he wasn't raised there. Not as Dharma, not as an Other. It could, but Smokey has been out and about fucking with people since at least 1988 when Danielle's team got there, and (if he's impersonating Christian) appearing as dead people since the very moment of the plane crash or before (remember how Christian was the one who told Vincent to go wake up his son in the bamboo forest).
Overall I definetely don't think it was one of the greatest episodes, more a filler to set things up for later, which I am fine with. Obviously next episode is likely to focus more on Flocke (hopefully), so I think there's larger potential for more island-related answers. However, something interesting picked up from Lostpedia: "Before Claire covers for Kate saying that she was just a cab driver who helped her into the hospital she is looking at the ultrasound of unborn Aaron. The ultrasound is labeled with the date and time October 22, 2004 at 9:29am, one month after the crash of flight 815 in the original timeline."
This would probably suggest that the ash was used to keep MiB/Smokey out of the cabin rather than trapped in.
Perhaps in all of our fervor towards trying to link the ending and other points with Stephen King's The Dark Tower that we are completely missing a parallel to another of King's works, that being Insomnia, which also links to the Dark Tower, but I digress. In Insomnia there are two forces in opposition, each with representatives. Those forces are that of Purpose and that of Random. Each force is in direct opposition with the other yet can at the same time work towards the others purpose without knowing it. If we look at Jacob as the representative of the Purpose, and the Others as his agents. Conversely Smokey would be the representative of the Random, and he has power to "Claim" certain people as he sees fit. Yet without knowing it his agents are contributing to the Purpose. The perfect example is Danielle, since she's dead we'll never know if she was claimed or not but for this example we'll say she is, since Claire seems to have followed in her footsteps. Danielle running around in the jungle, setting traps and killing Others on her whims seems random enough, yet due to it Benjamin Linus is trapped and introduced to the Losties, which sets in motion the series of events that leads to the eventual loophole and death of Jacob, who by touching the Losties at sometime in their past, has marked them as agents of the Purpose and part of his plan to counteract Smokey's loophole. In Insomnia, certain people are so important to the Purpose that every effort must be made to protect them, in Insomnia it's Patrick Danville. Perhaps in the world of Lost, it isn't a person, it's an event. The event that is crucial to the world of Lost is the crashing of Oceanic 815 onto the island, perhaps the flash-sideways are what would happen to the world if that crucial event doesn't exist.
One thing in regards to Christian I don't yet understand... Remember when Michael was orchestrating all of that stuff and he kept trying to kill himself but he couldn't? I can't remember, but was it Jacob or Christian that said "You can go now" or whatever right when the ship explodes and Michael dies? How come Michael could see them? Edit: Just saw that it was Christian. Does that mean it was Smokey? Michael had never seen Christian before, I don't have an explanation for this.
Pilot episode. Jack wakes up in the jungle, almost everyone else wakes up on the beach. Right? What if Jack fell from the plane, died, and came back to live possessed by Smokey as well? I don't THINK that happened. But in case it did I want proof that I said it first, bitches.
But what about before that, when Christian says to Vincent something along the lines of "go wake Jack. He has work to do". Unless there's another character we haven't met similar to MiB who can also take human form? Maybe there's a third person stuck in the Jacob Vs MiB battle
This whole multiple timeline is confusing me, regarding Ethan. I'm thinking back to the DHARMA Initiative, and then how Sawyer/Jin/Miles joined the group, then everyone else joined. So did all of that actually happen, or did that bomb sink the island? Or did everyone get off the island before all of that happened? It's getting really confusing, since the first thing I thought when I saw Ethan was "Wait, how is he in LA, since on that day the plane crashed he was on the island?"