TDTVS

(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.

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.

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.

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.