“So it’s 1977, and you guys are all members of the DHARMA Initiative?”-Hugo “Hurley” Reyes
Two weeks and thirty years later, we have ourselves a mind-blower of an episode, one in which Lost has recounted many old episodes and given us a few juicy answers. Hell yeah! The Lost Boys are pumped up. “Namaste” is the ninth episode of this season, Season 5, and on the surface, we find Sawyer, aka LeFleur, aka James Ford, trying to keep his huge lie under wraps.
Some of the O6 are back but not all of them. We wonder why? Sawyer is greeted with a hug from Hugo, a truthful gesture from the Doc and nothing but a hello from Kate. That is when Sawyer has to fill them in on the past three years. Get it? The “Past” Three Years?
Zoinks, yo. It’s like Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine.
Imagine being Jack, coming down from alcohol and pill abuse and a load of regret, and now on top of taking orders from Sawyer, he has to wrap his head around somehow going back in time thirty years. Jack looks skinny and vulnerable, doesn’t he?
So Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid are timeflashed to 1977, whereas LAPIDUS and Sun and John Locke and the Newbies are in 2007. This is where past episodes come highly into play. If you remember from Season 3, when Sawyer and Kate were captors of the Others, they were put to work digging some path, which Sawyer mentions as some sort of runway. This runway is the one the Ajira flight landed upon. On top of that, Jack is shown tapping his watch, which implies that it is broken. This reverts back to Season 1 when Michael and Jin were fighting over the watch, the one that Michael found and was wearing, the very one that Jin was supposed to deliver to LA under strict orders from Sun’s obtuse father.
These minor details are what get our socks glued together. Holy Shhhhh! Cheers! This is such a great television program!
So…Sun didn’t go back with the rest of the O6, probably because the Island won’t let her. Sun has changed. She is like Ben, manipulative and desperate; like Widdmore, secretive and violent if need be.
Speaking of Ben, how does Ben know that there are outrigger canoes waiting for them at the beach? Just as well, at the end of last season, how did he know where to find that hidden treasure box in the jungle containing a piece of glass, which he used to communicate to his people, and the saltine crackers that Hurley ate?
Ben knows the pieces of the puzzle and where they are hidden.
But is he working for good or for evil?
Sawyer drives Jack, Kate, and Hurley to the Barracks. Along the way, Sawyer mentions that Daniel Faraday has told him certain theories on what actions are possible (or impossible) after having traveled through time; but also notes that Faraday is not there anymore. What the hell happened to Faraday? Did he go crazy? Did he run off into the jungle and join the Hostiles?
Jack is “sworn in” by the creepy doctor from the Orientation films, and, low and behold, Jack is a Workman. What a funny scene that was. It was like when we were kids and we questioned anything a pediatrician said to us, the look he or she gave us was priceless. Jack’s look was priceless. Because based on his aptitude test, he is just a Workman. And then, he is later figuratively slapped across the jowls by Jim LeFleur; which we will get to in a sec.
Then Kate is questioned by Phil, the creepy dude, whose face we have seen in a million other tv shows and movies. That is when Juliet pops up with the new manifest. The Lost Boys think this dude, Phil, is going to have some sort of impact in the show. This theory is based on the notion of the ominous music they kept playing during his scenes, and also because recognizable actors are not cast on this show for no reason. Which brings us to Cesar and the dude we are calling Owen for now.
You are asking who the hell is Owen. Owen was the dude they showed for a brief, yet important second, during LAPIDUS’ beach speech. Right before Sun follows Ben and LAPIDUS follows Sun, they show a quick frame of a big-faced dude, whom most of you might recognize from the great show, October Road, or the horrible movie, Sherry Baby. They only showed this dude for one frame of a second, but trust us, he will play some sort of particular role in Lost’s vast character hierarchy.
Meanwhile, Sayid is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time! Radzinsky thinks he is a Hostile sent to spy on the Swan schematic. Jin has to pretend he doesn’t know who he is. The looks between Jin and Sayid, and Sayid and Sawyer are amazing acting at its best. These actors convey so much with a few simple glances. We trust Sawyer, er, LeFleur so much in this eppy. He knows his stuff. Hell, he has been there three years.
At the Flame, Radzinsky is building a model of The Swan’s geodesic dome. We find out that Horace and Amy’s baby is, none other than the Jack-Ass-Kicking and Charlie-choking and Baby-Aaron-stealing, Ethan. Ethan from season one. Creepy Ethan. Not from the manifest. Why wasn’t he killed in the Purge along with the rest of the DI? The Lost Boys have a theory about the folks born on the Island being special somehow. In Ethan’s case, his super strength, probably from him being born on the Island. This could later explain why Ben took Alex from Rousseau…because Alex was born on the Island.
Juliet and Kate had beef before over Jack. And now they are going to have bitter beef quarrels over Sawyer. Oh, how the tables have turned. And like we said two weeks ago, you have to remember that the 815 castaways only knew each other for 108 days before the freighter people came and imploded everything. Sawyer and Juliet and Miles and Jin have been living in this time, DHARMA time, with these people, for three years, thus building stronger ties than with that of their fellow former 815 castaways.
Love is convoluted and polluted. We wonder how in the hell this Love Quadrangle of Sawyer and Kate and Jack and Juliet will play itself out.
Towards the end of the episode, Sun and LAPIDUS are back on the main Island, along with the Smoke Monster. “Probably just an animal,” Sun says. Then they find themselves in DHARMAville, adjacent to the Processing Center, where thirty years ago, Sun’s husband, along with K and J and Hugo are being secretly initiated into the DI. Then the Whispers. Then Christian Shepard, cloaked in shadows. “I’m sorry, but you have a bit of a journey ahead of you,” Christian says when he shows LAPIDUS and Sun the photograph of the DI’s 1977 recruits.
What is Christian’s role in the pantheon of Lost? Is he good? Is he bad? Is he like Gandolf the White? Is he like George Carlin’s character from Bill and Ted’s Excelling Adventure? He is like Sylvester Stallone in First Blood. Just kidding.
And the eppy ends with two huge scene…scenes that make the world worth living in. One is Sawyer’s verbal biiiiatch slap of Jack, where he drops the Churchill quote, and says he saved their asses, and that he will “think” about everything to do. Brilliant. The other scene involves a little kid delivering Sayid a sandwich.
Side note: Ryan predicted last week that in this eppy we would see a young Benjamin Linus. And he was right.
The little kid who brought Sayid’s no mustard sandwich, was the mastermind manipulator himself, previously known as Henry Gale, Bennnnn Linusssss! Whoa. Talk about a mindblower. Ryan’s mind exploded and he didn’t let it down that he predicted this event.
Well, now Ryan is filled with questions. Does Lil Ben know who Sayid is? Does he somehow find out that he will meet this man again in the futute? What does Lil Ben know? What does Big Ben know for that matter? The man is a goshdarn mystery wrapped in riddle.
One last thing before we end this week’s long blog…Farday keeps mentioning the fact that they can’t change anything…that despite them going back in time, they cannot alter future events. This make us Lost Boys wonder what kind of repercussions their being in 1977 is having on the future. What we are trying to say here is that maybe they are not having any repercussions on the future because this is how it all played out the last time. Like Daniel says and like Eloise Hawking said to Desmond in Season 3, they can not change the future no matter what. In which case, this has all happened before, all of it: them going to the Island, them going back in time. Maybe they were always meant to go back in time. Maybe this happened the last time, the last life go-around.
Wrap your skulls around that crap.
By they way, the Lost Boys have just learned that the title of the last two episodes of this season will be “The Incident”, parts one and two.
Holy Shhhhh!
End?
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