Episode 51 of 82 finds Sawyer in the past, con­ning a con­vict to get his sen­tence shorted, that he is serv­ing for a failed con on a woman, who vis­its him in the slam­mer to say they have a child together (is this her try­ing to con him?) Sawyer in the present is still a con­vict of sorts (he and Kate are still locked in sep­a­rate cages) and his attempted con to aid an escape fails, lead­ing to him being on the receiv­ing end of con.

Num­ber 54 of 82 con­cerns how Juliet ended up on the island, she was recruited by a com­pany called Mit­te­los Bio­science that wants her for her fer­til­ity research, but as with all things Lost, that doesn’t end up exactly what she does. My favorite bit is where she tells the folks recruit­ing her that her hus­band would never agree to let her go, the only way that’ll hap­pen is if he gets hit by a bus. Guess what happens…

(55/82) This was con­sid­ered a odd depar­ture because we get a flash­back that hap­pens dur­ing a flash­back, but is it really? When Desmond turned the fail safe key and destroyed the hatch he was sent back 5 years ear­lier when he was dat­ing Penny. He can remem­ber some of the things that hap­pened, a sort of deja vu, and he stum­bles on Char­lie as a street musi­cian and remem­bers him from the island, but Char­lie doesn’t know him.

On island in the present Desmond can see the future, not all of it and not at will, but he gets ran­dom bits at ran­dom times. Right now he can see how Char­lie dies. He can pre­vent it, but the uni­verse will course cor­rect, and even­tu­ally it will happen.

Episode 9 of Sea­son 3 is num­ber 56 of 82 and is a Jack episode. In the off-island flash back we see him vaca­tion­ing in Thai­land where he meets a mys­te­ri­ous (is there any other kind on this show?) local woman who helps him fly a kite, has sex with him, looks into his soul and she tells him he is a leader and a great man, but this makes him lonely, fright­ened, and angry and he makes her tat­too Chi­nese char­ac­ters on his arm to that effect.

On island he strikes a bar­gain with Ben that he will help doc­tor his now infected back to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age he is pre­vents Juliet from being exe­cuted for killing some­one while help­ing Sawyer and Kate escape. One of he oth­ers who speaks Chi­nese tells Jack his tat­too means, “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.”

Episode 58 of 82 is jammed full of excite­ment on-island. Hur­ley whoops up on Sawyer in a game of ping pong and because he lost he can’t use his trade­mark nick­names when talk­ing to or about the rest of the sur­vivors. Else­where a cow­bell leads Sayid, Kate and Locke to a new Dharma sta­tion, the Flame. The Flame is run by the man with an eye patch, Mikhail and we get Sayid shot in the arm, fist fights between Mikhail and Sayid, Kate and an Other, Ms. Klugh, in the base­ment, Locke play­ing chess aganst a coupter and finally a giant ass explosion.

The off island Sayid flash­back seemed almost an after­thought to add drama and plot to the on island shenani­gans at the Flame Sta­tion with some help from a creepy cat.

(59/82) Claire-centric. In the off island flash­backs we learn that her mother was left in a veg­e­ta­tive state from a car acci­dent she caused. Her mother gets an Amer­i­can doc­tor as a vis­i­tor who shocks Claire by telling her he is her father (of whom her mother has told her is dead.) The audi­ence gets shocked to real­ize that the Amer­i­can doc­tor is none other than Chris­t­ian Shep­pard, mak­ing Claire and Jack half brother and sister.

On island Claire con­cocts a hare­brained plan to the catch a migra­tory bird and attach a mes­sage to it to facil­i­tate their res­cue. Desmond ini­tially tries to pre­vent this because he needs to pre­vent Charlie’s death, but even­tu­ally Desmond cap­tures a bird, alone, for her to use. The bird looks sus­pi­ciously like a plain ol’ seagull.

I found Claire in her Aus­tralian Goth Period with the dark hair much more attrac­tive than her on island blonde hair.

Num­ber 60 of the 82 episodes of TDTVS so far’s main pro­tag­o­nist is John Locke.

Off island we see him reluc­tantly reunited from his con man father who “stole” his kid­ney a while back. John’s father is con­ning a woman and her son finds John to get him to help spoil the plan. As usual John is pow­er­less to stop dear old dad and as a con­se­quence of his actions gets tossed out an eight story build­ing, break­ing his back which is how he ended up in the wheelchair.

When he started out with Sayid and Kate their goal was to res­cue Jack from the Oth­ers, but some time after their visit to the Flame Sta­tion it changed dras­ti­cally. A lib­er­ated pack­age of C4 is put to “good” use in blow­ing up the Oth­ers link to the out­side world, a small submarine.

One of the best bits of dia­log on the show ever comes from this episode. Locke is in Ben’s cabin hold­ing Ben’s daugh­ter Alex hostage, when unex­pect­edly, a group of Ben’s friends show up. Locke takes Alex into a closet. Richard Alpert comes into view and Ben says, “I want you to bring me the man from Tal­la­has­see.” After Tom leaves and Locke and Alex emerge from the closet, Locke asks about the man from Tal­la­has­see and asks if that is a code­word. Ben replies that they have no secret codes, although per­haps they should have one for “a man with a gun is hold­ing my daugh­ter hostage in the closet”.

Episode 61 of 82 was kind of a depar­ture as we have a show cen­tered around char­ac­ters that first appeared as back­ground char­ac­ters in Sea­son 3. And I have to spec­u­late that from the very begin­ning of the sea­son the writ­ers knew they were going to do this show. To make us believe that Nikki and Paulo have been around for the whole show their on island flash­backs include them in sev­eral re shot scenes from each of the pre­vi­ous sea­sons. In the end they get buried alive because the sur­vivors think they are dead when they are really just par­al­ized by a bite from the Latrodec­tus Regina, a fic­ti­tious Medusa Spider.

This was episode fif­teen of sea­son three mean­ing we are about 3/4 of the way through its 22 episodes. It was also episode 62 of 82 mean­ing we are about three quar­ters of the way through all 4 seasons.

On island Kate wakes up in the woods hand­cuffed to Juliet and in their lit­tle adven­ture they are drenched in a down­pour, have a wrestling match and fall into a mud pud­dle while avoid­ing the smoke mon­ster not once, but twice. Loce has dis­ap­peared with the Oth­ers and in the end Jack, Kate ans Sayid are reunited and head back to the beach camp. Much to the cha­grin of kate and Sayid, Jack insists the they take Juliet along.

The off island flash­back shows Kate try­ing to con­tact her mother to find out why she turned her into the Feds. She gets unex­pected help from another woman, who unbe­known to her was conned by Sawyer and is car­ry­ing his child. Unfor­tu­nately for Kate, mom loved her abu­sive hus­band, so when Kate thought she was pro­tect­ing her from him by torch­ing the house he lay passed out in, she was really hurt­ing her.

Sixty-three of eighty-two was a Juliet episode where we find out how she gets to the island (via the now blown up sub­ma­rine) and her fail­ure to accom­plish what she was recruited for (fix the fact that the island women die dur­ing preg­nancy.) She arrives back at the Losties beach and faces an inqui­si­tion about her “oth­er­ness” which she won’t answer. New mother Claire falls ill and Juliet con­ve­niently knows how to help her. In the final scenes we she that it is too con­ve­nient as it is all a set up orches­trated by Ben to help her be accepted, not an “Other”, but as Jack tells her, “You’re one of us.”

Will you still need Desmond, will you still feed Desmond, when it’s episode sixty-four?

Off island, Desmond is in a monastery, but just as he is get­ting the hang of it, he gets punched by the brother of the woman he left at the alter to become a monk, he get drunk on the monks wine and gets fired. As he is leav­ing the monastery he bumps into a beau­ti­ful woman who needs a litle help, sparks fly. Her name? Penny.

On island he has this elab­o­rate future vision that involves some­one para­chut­ing on the island and Char­lie get­ting an arrow in the throat. He is sure that the per­son who lands on the island is Penny, his long lost love and to have his vision come true he thinks that all the flashes he sees must be allowed to hap­pen, includ­ing the arrow in the throat. In the end he saves Char­lie and the para­chutist isn’t Penny. Related?

The title of episode 65 (of 82) is an abbre­vi­a­tion for Date Of Con­cep­tion and it cen­ters around the preg­nant Sun. Did she con­ceive the baby off island with her extra­mar­i­tal lover or did she con­ceive on island with the pre­vi­ously ster­ile hus­band Jin. Juliet on the spot sees another chance to help out and vol­un­teers to do an ultra­sound to find out just when Sun’s baby was conceived.

The off island flash­back con­cerns Sun being black­mailed by a woman or she will reveal some­thing that will cause Jin great shame. He has told Sun that his par­ents are dead, but she man­ages to track down his father, a poor fish­er­man from a remote vil­lage (pic­tured above, who looks like he has a hell of a den­tal plan) and will that might seem shame­ful, what the father reveals is even worse, his mother “had been with many men.” She of course pays off he black­mailer who it turns out is Jin’s mother.

Num­ber 66 of 82 is Locke-centric that involve short range flash­backs that don’t involve leav­ing the island. Ben tells Locke that to be really free he needs to kill his father, but he can’t. For­tu­nately, the Oth­ers have files on every 815 sur­vivor and it just so hap­pens that there is some­one who has a motive to do the job for Locke. Turns out Lockes’s father is the very same man who conned Sawyer’s par­ents when he was a kid lead­ing to their mur­der suicide.

(67/82) Except for the first cou­ple of min­utes where we wit­ness a mother dying in child­birth, this episode takes place entirely on island. In flash­backs we meet a young Ben in his early days as a mem­ber of the Dharma Ini­tia­tive. As with nearly all our main char­ac­ters, Ben has daddy issues, so much so that he arranges to be the one to actu­ally kill him when the orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants of the island rise up and purge Dharma from their home. In cur­rent island time Ben takes Locke to an old cabin in the woods that is home to the only per­son that Ben answers to, the mys­te­ri­ous Jacob. At first Locke can’t see any­one, but he hears him and then gets a flash of a per­son in the pre­vi­ously silent and empty chair.

The Shape Of Things To Come

Some­thing Nice Back Home

Cabin Fever

There’s No Place Like Home (Part 1)

There’s No Place Like Home (Part 2)

What the heck, just fin­ished watch­ing the last 5 episodes of Sea­son 4, gonna have to twid­dle our thumbs for the next three weeks until Sea­son 5 starts. I just love the photo from Cabin Fever, looks like TDTVS and TDTVS2 had a crossover episode…

For your marathon plea­sure I have once again cre­ated a Best of the Year page which includes my favorite post for each month. Some months the pick­ings were slim and oth­ers were chock full of picks, but I stuck with one per — Best of 2008.