TDTVS

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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”.

(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.

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.