Whatever Happened, Happened to Vincent?

LOSTaways-

Remember that dog? That beautiful golden lab. The animal who was basically the first thing we saw in the very first scene of LOST back in season one's pilot episode? What's his deal? Where is he? What's he thinking about right now? I believe the last time we saw Vincent was the night of the flaming arrow attack in "The Lie" earlier this year. But I promise you that dog is special and we've yet to see the last of his furry face.

Random start to that blog, I know, but as I was starting to type another title to this entry tonight I for some reason thought of Vincent and figured now was as good a time as any to show him a little Locke's Pants love. Read that link on his name above. Some interesting info about VTD (Vincent the Dog).

More importantly, we have an episode, entitled Whatever Happened, Happened, to re-hash. "Whatever happened, happened" comes from what Faraday said regarding the ability of our time-travelers to affect anything in the past. You kind of feel like the writers of LOST are sending us a signal to clear up the confusion about whether or not things can in fact be changed. So between what we already know from examples like Desmond being unable to prevent Charlie's ultimate demise, and now this episode, it seems to me that we are stuck with the history we've been given thus far. There are still many components of that history that we have yet to see. Hence, one more season to come.

I know the conversations between Hurley and Miles offer more complicated insight to the time-traveling story-line and we'll discuss that a little more in the Thoughts/Theories section at the end.

But for the episode at hand, I have to point out that I have been saying that Sawyer told Kate to go find his daughter Clementine since last season's finale when jumped out of the helicopter pre-island disappearing. Check the blog, suckers.

Of course Cassidy has some understandable resentment towards James Ford/Sawyer for the way in which he both ditched her when they were conning together, and never tried to see his daughter after finding out she had been born. But was it just me or were the discussions between Cassidy and Kate a little aggressive and awkward? There seemed to be a lot of girlish hostility going on there. Even later when they had become friends and Kate came to her in tears Cassidy was a cold customer. Although, she did almost sound like a guy with her spot-on analysis of Kate's attempt to fill the void in her life by taking Aaron as her own.

Frankly, I'm getting a little bored with Kate, and the equally boring Cassidy didn't spice things up enough for my liking. Maybe had there been some Dharma or Widmore connection there I'd have taken the narrative's bait and cared at all what was going on in the Kate flashes this week. As a token to Kate lovers out there, I will say that there was distinct hint or whiff of LOST-style mystery when Kate misplaced Aaron in the grocery store and that creepy Claire look-alike was at the check-out counter with the blonde little boy.

Eventually Kate checks in to the same hotel as Claire's mom, otherwise known as the worst actress of this or any generation, and fills her in on what happened to her daughter. Kate also gives what seems a genuine reason for going back: to find Claire! Last week, in 1977 time, Kate had told Sawyer that she came back for one reason, and one reason only...and then Baby Ben's flaming VW bus-o-death came careening by. It was set up to appear as if Kate was going to say that she had come back to "make time" with Sawyer, but now it seems that she was going to say that she had come back to find the blonde babe who is likely in Jacob's cabin calling for her "baaaaaaby" right now. Or Claire might be necking in LOST heaven with Charlie if she is dead.

Back in 1977....Jin wakes up for Sayid's scissor-kick to find the Iraqi long gone and an adolescent Ben with a flesh wound. He takes the kid back and Juliet starts to work on him. Eventually it becomes clear that only Jack, our beloved island operation guru, can save the child. But that child is Ben. Jack, for more than one reason, says no to helping save Ben's life. Juliet is pissed and Kate is annoyed. Kate and Sawyer take Ben to The Others at Juliet's suggestion and Richard agrees to take and save the boy, but warns that Ben will never be the same...that he will lost his innocence...and that he will always be "one of us." Sawyer and Kate agree, knowing full well that they've just participated in making Ben the monster he will someday be. The same monster who locks the two of them in cages at one point. Richard walks off and ominously enters what appears to be The Temple.

That was a quick re-cap, so let me unpack a few things. Jack is the New Locke, or at least is talking like the Old one. He tells Juliet in the literally steamy bathroom scene that he has returned from the island, "beause I was supposed to." Wow. Very un-Jack of you. Not very Man of Science-like if you ask me. Something has changed in Jack. I know it seemed that he was being cold and callous to not save Ben, but this existential dilemma the castaways find themselves in, in regards to saving their enemy's life, is not an easy one. Jack it seems has now accepted his fate, but like Locke, is now searching for what that destiny might be.

Juliet told him that they didn't need to be saved, but how was poor Jack to know? He had been hounded by the likes of Locke and Ben to come back to the island, being told that it was HIS fault that everything had gone wrong. And so now he has humbled himself, given in to what seems to be the island's unavoidable calls to come back, and his reward is that he has to hear from Sawyer's new gal-pal about how little they needed his help. Rough. I like the new Jack. He was right when he reminded Kate that she, and many others, didn't like the Old Jack. Maybe he has finally let go of so much of the emotional baggage that had held him back from being a great leader and man in previous seasons. Or...maybe he's just a knob-job now and I'm dead wrong about all of this.

Another interesting thing was when Richard agreed to take Ben and gave Kate and Sawyer his spiel about Ben "forever changing" should he be healed by them, and one of the nameless Others says to Richard that "Ellie and Charles" won't like the decision to heal Ben. First of all, that is cool that we're getting some allusions to Ellie (who I still think is Eloise Hawking) and Charles (of Widmore fame) and can't wait till we see them both again. The last time we saw them was in the episode Jughead and it was 1954. The question I have is this: Was Charles always really the leader or was this Ellie character at one point in charge? Were they an item? If Ellie is Eloise, is Faraday's father Charles Widmore? And if he is his father, does Faraday know that? And for that matter, where the heck is Faraday?

Second point about what was said in the encounter with The Others was Richard's under-the-breath comment that he did not answer to either Ellie or Charles. Jacob, anyone? Remember that shadow that has looked like Christian Shepard every time we've seen him? Or maybe Richard answers to Smokey the Monster. But it is I believe a key piece to the puzzle to know that although Alpert is with the Others, appeared to be leading them back in 1954, speaks on their behalf to Horace a few episodes ago regarding "the truce", he also appears to be his own man, beholden to no one. Maybe he's been there MUCH longer than we may even now suppose?

Richard walking in to the Temple with Baby Ben in his arms was a chilling end to the scene.

And then we were left hanging for next week's episode, which will be called "Dead is Dead" by the way, with a classic Ben-Locke staredown in the Hydra Station 30+ years in the future. Locke sees the utter shock on Ben's face and simply says: "Welcome back to the land of the living." Wow. Lot going on there. Ben looked legitimately shocked which means he really thought he had killed Locke back in L.A. I had speculated that perhaps Ben killed Locke on purpose because Ben had known that that was the way things were supposed to play out, but Ben doesn't have a "Hey big guy...sorry about the murder thing, but you know how Jacob can be" look on his face, he has a "Rat-farts, I really put myself in a jam this time...this guy isn't supposed to be breathing" mug on his bug-eyed face. The commercials for next week look fairly intense and seem to offer the promise of tying up some loose ends with what all Ben has been doing since leaving the island.


Thoughts/Theories:

-There is some huge tie-in's between the time travel theories presented in this week's episode and the story of the comic book that Richard presented, among other items, to a young John Locke in last season's Cabin Fever episode. That comic book was called Mystery Tales and one of the stories in it was called "March has 32 Days" and is about a man who tries to go back and re-live a day to change a fatal mistake he made. Read more at the links I have here. Very interesting why Richard (and the writers of LOST) would pick such an item.

-Hurley brings up the Back to the Future reference we've all used about 100 times by now in our LOST viewing and exegesis. Kind of predictable, but here's more on that from LOSTpedia: "Hurley looks at his hand, waiting to see if he disappears, like in Back to the Future. In the movie, Marty McFly's hand starts to disappear as he was being erased from existence because he had interfered with his parents' past, preventing his mother from falling in love with his father. Seconds after this reference is made, Sawyer comes in in a rush calling Jack "Doc", the same thing McFly used to do in the movies when looking for Doc Brown."

-This episode contained the theme of what is known as the "Cassandra Complex" in Greek mythology. It is the curse of knowing the future (or past) and being unable to change it.

-I'm not afraid to admit that I am a huge Patsy Cline fan. Most of you likely don't even know who she is. The legendary country singer tragically died in, what do you know it, a plane crash in 1963. Her songs are played in every single Kate-centric episode. This week featured the tune, "She's Got You", in which Patsy laments the fact that all she has left from her previous boyfriend is the memories left behind from a broken relationship, while the new girl has the real thing to share her life with. There's more than a couple analogies in those lyrics to the Sawyer-Kate-Cassidy-Juliet love quadrilateral.

-We've seen Ben later in life when The Purge happens and he kills his own father. But will that now happen in a different way? We know things can't be changed in the grand scheme, but like Charlie avoiding some of fate's earlier attempts on his life, will Ben's being given to the Others now lead to an alternative Purge happening?

-Locke and Ben together in a scene, even a brief one like in this week's episode, is what gets me out of bed in the morning.


That's all for this week people. I'm telling you that "Dead is Dead" will knock your socks off and I'm saving some thoughts on that movie I've been promising to tell you more about for my re-cap next week. Enjoy the episode Wednesday and stay out of the deep end.



Love,

Locke's Trousers