LOST Lunch 6.13 The Last Recruit

Sorry for the delay, I have been a bit under the weather this weekend.

Small group for this one.  Started off with Phyllis' rating:  she loved this episode; she felt it moved smoothly, answered questions, and of course, Jin and Sun (she was so excited she called them "Sin and Jon") finally got together!  She also loved the scene's with Jack and his son David in Sideways World.  Feeling that David is such a "mini-me" of Jack.  All agreed that was great - good development of their relationship. 

Melissa said her first thought when she saw Sun and Jin approaching each other on Hydra was...don't get electrocuted from the fence!  She, along with me and many others, hadn't heard Zoe (Widmore's 2nd in Command) ask for the fences to be turned off.  And I watched it twice!  Just shows you where my head and heart were....

Loved Claire's horrified reaction when she asked if Desmond was a lawyer - and his emphatic "NO!"

NO ONE believes Sayid killed Desmond.  Feel that Desmond is triggering redeeming factors in all the characters; helping them to come back from the dark side, as Hurley so rightly put it.  Interesting thought...Ben's journey back began with Ilana's "I'll have you."  That was before Desmond's return.  So are there  other agents at work, as well?  Phyllis did wonder if it was meeting Desmond that started one on  the road to redemption...and Ben's may have started when he stopped his attack on Penny when he saw little Charlie. Melissa felt that perhaps Hurley's line about redemption and Anakin Skywalker was put in purposely to get people thinking that redemption IS a real possibility. 

Side note:  Carol noted that she had started to look into making plans for a vacation in Edinburgh, Scotland, and on one site was instructed to "Contact Ms. Hume"   !!!!!  We were almost surprised she was still here.  ;-)

Melissa also had a problem trusting Claire, doesn't feel the same about her change.  Felt that she made a choice to leave Aaron, to leave the rest of the group.  But, then we don't know yet what transpired between Christian/MIB/Smocke/Whoever back then.  She also reminded us that when Claire left Australia to come to the U.S. her Mom was in a coma from a car accident.  Boy, we had forgotten that.  So...  we thought it would be nice for Jack or Kate to bring up that her Mom is alright. 

Melissa brought up a good point:  doesn't understand why MIB needed Locke's body to be on the plane if he wasn't going to use it.  After all, Ilana's group had Locke's body in that silver metal box and made everyone look at it.  They buried it at that wonderful funeral where Ben spoke so movingly (yes, I'm teasing - remember Lapidus' comment!) So...  MIB hasn't really "taken over" the body....  what's up with that? And if MIB was Christian Shephard (or vice versa) what became of Christian's body? 

The scene with Kate and Sawyer at the police station came up, along with the possible implication of the apples (are they Adam and Eve) but it didn't get any discussion.

I brought up my theory of the Candidates and why Smocke needs them off the Island.  [He wants them off before the chosen  one can take over Jacob's role...and recapture Smocke - put him back in the bottle, so to speak.] As usual the brilliant minds came up with other ideas.  Phyllis thinks he really wants them all DEAD; that he will destroy the plane when they are on it.  I asked how he could pull that off if he's on it and Carol said:  "he'll get off because its a non-smoking flight".  Really.  Phyllis turned our attention to Doc Jensen's recap which was surprisingly lucid this week.  See page under "The Island World: Smokey and the Bandits" his laying out of Smockey trying to get someone else to kill the Candidates - like Widmore.

Phyllis  thinks all the candidates have to die for him to get off the Island, but someone else has to do it.  Thinking of the Candidates as the Cork...Carol felt that the Cork doesn't have to be destroyed for the Evil to escape, just out of the Bottle - but better and more final if destroyed.

Melissa stated that if Desmond dies she will destroy her LOST DVD's.  She warned that TVGuide.com said that there is an episode coming that will "break your heart over and over again..."  oh swell.  We agreed that there is something about the Desmond/Penny Dynamic that we just love, so well done.  As an example Carol pointed to the little moment in Sideways World when they met at the stadium... after he agreed to meet her later for coffee...as she walked away she looked back and gave a little "yes!" motion.  So real.

I wondered yet again about  Charles Widmore... good or evil?  Melissa harkened back to his comment to Locke after meeting in the hospital in Tunisia.  Widmore told him that a war was coming.  Since then she has thought he was on the good side.  I said that often people working for the "greater good" can still do some pretty awful things.  At the same moment, Carol and I mentioned the Vulcan philosophy of  "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the one"...  Yikes!!! Talk about Great Minds... Or, as a poster I used to have said: Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Star Trek.

Some really nice reflections on Sayid in the Doc Jensen piece.  "what he wants to be is the man Nadia fell in love with  - he made the choice to be that man again."  Nice. 

Some blogs make a big deal about Sun and Jin talking English in their big reunion scene but Carol and Melissa didn't think it mattered.  Carol did ask: Is Jack dead?  Not a bad observation - I mean, he did get quite a walloping from Widmore's artillery and Smocke carried him away, saying "don't worry, you're with me now..."   It does harken back to when Claire was blown up in the house.  Has Jack been "reanimated" by Smocke?  And questions about Ghost Jacob?    As Doc Jensen brought up many (all?) of his instructions haven't turned out so good. Oh no, could he be...? 

Jack's statement to Sawyer "..the Island isn't done with us yet..." harkens back to the first season when Locke, man of Faith,   told Jack, the Man of Science,  "The Island brought us here for a reason".  Have they changed places?  Is Jack really Smocke's "Last Recruit" ?

Yet Carol noted something very deep:  Sawyer is non-corruptable.  He is the one pure soul - he is only interested in himself so he can't be manipulated.  For Sawyer being unable to trust anyone is a strength on the Island.  Neither Smocke nor Widmore can get to him.

It was noted that a lot of bodies have piled up over the course of the show, so when you see the title of the upcoming episode "What They Died For" who knows who they are talking about?  One thing we all agreed on was that we liked that this show becasue it is so unpredictable.  It doesn't follow the usual rules or patterns of TV or movies.  "They whip you all around!"

Someone noted that, according to a piece on a DVD,  they were going to originally cast Michael Keaton as Jack...when the character was going to be killed off in the series premiere. But something happened and when they decided not to kill off Jack the actor couldn't commit to the series.  So....the rest, as they say, is history. 

Somewhere I think we talked about whether it was Smocke bringing people back to life , that whole "reanimation" thing - so Sayid could think that he was revived by him and so he could bring back Nadia.  But I don't think it's Smocke/MIB.  I think he might want Sayid to believe that.  But remember... Kate and Sawyer gave young Ben to Richard Alpert to heal.  I can't remember how they knew (someone want to fill that in?) but I am thinking that he could be helped by the pool at the Temple because he was still innocent.  We know that the pool was different when Sayid was in it and that he was considered infected.  What Smocke is doing is different.  John Locke is not "alive" again...  I think we are seeing a fake, cheap copy.  Oh, well, its late and been a crazy weekend so probably not a good time to ponder all of this.  We have an extra week to work this all out, right!?!

Namaste, Yinz!