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'Lost': Michael's got work to do
When trying to conceive of theories about potential Lost storylines, it's easy to get caught up in overly complicated schemes that sound really cool in concept but would be downright impossible when practically applied. Theories ranged far and wide as to how Michael ended up on the freighter, but in the end, nothing based in quantum physics, time travel, or Room 23-esque mind control had anything to do with the Michael ending up on the freighter. Just some careful plotting, some vast networking, and a whole lotta guilt in this week's episode, "Meet Kevin Johnson."
In many ways, this was one of the single most direct narrative episodes in Lost history: a question was asked ("How did you get on this boat?") and was thusly answered (the roughly 75% of the episode dedicated to Michael's flashback). And it answered it with only leaving the WAAAAAAALTs to the "Previously on..." sequence. Bravo, Lost. I had seven WAAAAAALTs in my office pool, and have taking to saying WAAAAAAALT in lieu of saltier language as to make my life as well as my recaps more family-friendly.
As such, I'm going to try and avoid literally recounting what happened and rather suss out the important facts of Michael's off-Island adventures. Because in addition to setting up "The Redemption of Michael Dawson," this episode also seemed to set up "The Redemption of Benjamin Linus" as well, only to pull the rug out from under us at the end. While it had its ups, downs, and head-scratching moments, overall it was pretty WAAAAAALTing good, people.
I don't know about you, but when we first left the Kahana to get to Michael's backstory, I felt completely out of sorts. I now have an idea of how Desmond felt after going through the lightning storm. Where am I? When am I? Is this my beautiful wife? So forth and so on, letting the days go by, water flowing underground. Because there's Michael, and I heard the "whoosh" sound that generally accompanies a flashback, but after the past few episodes (stretching back to last season's finale), I'm taking nothing for granted at this point. It could be a flashback inside a flash forward coated in a delicious Dharma candy shell at this point. And when Michael seemingly bit the dust, I pegged it for a flash forward.
But no, Michael was still alive, and in the past, with his "last words" mirroring Jack's "last words" in "Through the Looking Glass" for a very specific reason: THE ISLAND WON'T LET THESE TWO DIE. That's right, folks, they are immortal, as long as the Island deems them so. (Holy WAAAAAALT!) We learned this thanks to the surprise visit of Mr. Friendly, who looks more like Mr. Rico Suave coming out the alley darkness with slicked back hair and slick looking full length coat. (And yes, for all of you who wondered at the beginning of last season, Kate wasn't Mr. Friendly's type because...well, let's just say Mr. Friendly watches a lot of Bravo programming when he makes it back to the real world.)
So, Jack, Michael, and possibly all of the Oceanic 6 are immortal, although they may not know it yet. It's not so much that Michael can survive a bullet to the brain so much that the gun won't fire, and Jack couldn't survive the fall from the bridge because the Island put a woman in a car nearby that would crash upon seeing Jack atop the ledge. It's all super heady stuff and the more I try to explain it the dumber it would sound, so I'll stop short of going into a full-blown metaphysical explanation, chalk it up to Island karma, and move on.
Well, maybe not so quickly. There's another way I can try and explain it.
The producers of the show have long expressed their love of Stephen King in ways both explicit (Carrie featured in Juliet's book club, the rabbit with the number 8 on it) and implicit (basic narrative forms, archetypes, influences, etc). And if one's to understand the core of Stephen King's body of work, one needs to read The Dark Tower, a seven-volume series spanning decades of King's life. But you don't have to go read those seven novels in order to understand the core life force at work in those novels, a force King named ka.
From the official Dark Tower website, ka is defined as "life-force, consciousness, duty and destiny...[i]n the vulgate, or low speech, it also means a place to which an individual must go." A group of people bound by ka in these novels are called a ka-tet. I would suggest the Oceanic 6 is Lost's version of a ka-tet, a group of individuals bound together by the common life-force that is the Island itself. It's ka that jams the gun, it's ka that places a woman near Jack as he's about to jump, and it's ka that calls for Hurley even as he pulls an O.J. and speeds down the L.A. freeway with a car purchased with potential blood money. (Make sure to check out Zap2It's Guide to Lost next week where I tease out even more references to The Dark Tower inferred both by this episode and this season as a whole.)
Now, did ka put Tom in the same alley as Michael before he ate some bullets from the gun pawned from Jin's old watch? I'd chalk that more up to "good surveillance" than ka, honestly. Chalking too many events to ka itself can remove human will from the equation, something I'm sure the show doesn't want to do. That being said, the Ka-Tet 6 are now involved with something bigger than themselves, something against which they can fight but never win. For, as King says, "ka is a wheel." What we'll see, post-Island, are individuals who think they are moving forward, but slowly realize they are merely hamsters inside a giant wheel.
(As for the identities of the six themselves: well, we have them. Heck, we had them last week, only most of us didn't know it or want to believe it. I call foul on Aaron as a member, but really, what good will it do? It's like trying to figure out why certain girls wear sweatpants with giant lettering across the back and them get mad when you try to figure out what it says. There's just no point.)
In Michael's case, ka manifests itself in recurring visions of Libby, both in his hospital bed and before he pressed "Execute" on The Mind Detonator, easily the creepiest non-bomb ever assembled. Libby's appearance ran parallel with Charlie's appearances in "The Beginning of the End," and can be explained through ka as much as the mental projections of tortured souls. I think both explanations work perfectly well, and I wouldn't even bring up ka if Tom hadn't straight up mentioned that the Island wouldn't let Michael die in the first place.
In fact, I absolutely loved the loved the simplicity of the show's explanation of Walt's absence. I'd come up with a theory earlier this week in which Walt was felled by a subdermal transplant courtesy of the Others akin to the one placed within Claire, which, let's admit it, is pretty WAAAAAALTing stupid. I also loved that we only saw 37% of Walt's body, to hide the fact that he's probably the starting center for his high school basketball team in real life right now. The only thing I can't rectify at this point is the Walt in the window and the Walt seen atop the mass grave. We'll either get to that transformation at a later date or chalk it up to more ka. But more on that when the time's appropriate.
As I predicted, we got a wreckage story that completely contradicted Gault's tale to Sayid and Desmond last week. I will confess to find this week's story more compelling, but then again, this IS Mr. Friendly we're talking about here. Guy kidnaps kids, holds Lostaways prisoners, and wears ill-fitting sweaters while in Manhattan. Memos can be forged, documents faked, photos doctored. And I think that's the whole point: at this stage of the game, the audience is supposed to have two equal and opposite stories that both seem equally plausible. I just hope that one story is actually correct and that this whole saga doesn't take a pro wrestling twist with both Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore taking the steel chair to the Oceanic 6 at season's end.
Before leaving Michael's story for this week's recap, let's acknowledge the delicious irony of Sayid getting all high and mighty about Michael working for Ben. Given what we see in "The Economist," it was certainly interesting to watch Sayid turn over a man ostensibly trying to save his friends' lives over to Captain Punchy, who never met a face he didn't want to punch. After all, in the near future, he'll be in the same shoes as Michael, whose death more than likely will be the single act that turns Sayid into Ben's assassin-at-large.
And Ben. Beautiful, glorious Ben. The man who even had me going with his fake bomb and insistence that he wouldn't allow innocent people to die in his wars, and his "consider yourself one of the good guys," only to turn around and take out those closest to the daughter that even isn't his. God blesses you as he blesses Jacob. Once Karl left the World's Most Awkward Condo Association Meeting Ever to head to the Temple, I pretty much knew he was mincemeat. But Danielle? What? I'm pretty sure I hear a few hundred people shouting obscenities at their television around 9:59 pm EST. That was a doozy. (I guess Ben's insistence last week that his people abandoned him was a teeny bit of a whopper of a lie, no?)
And yet, there's still a glimmer of hope on my part that she's not dead. A glimmer, and it exists in the loaded subtext of the meeting between Ben, Alex, Karl, and Danielle in which Ben gives them the map and instructions. There's an enormous, unexplored backstory for Danielle, one that's probably necessary to understand the story of Lost itself, and I hate to think that we'll never get to see that story told. If she is dead, then the only time we could ever see her again is if they ever choose to show just how Ben ended up in her trap in Season 2. But why should I try to come up with elaborate theories? We just saw an episode chock full of logical sound explanation, with just a dash of the supernatural to keep us on our guard.
In other words, classic Lost.
What did you think of this final, pre-hiatus edition of Lost? Did you find Michael's story surprising? Satisfying? Full of WAAAAAAAALT? Is Danielle truly dead? Is Michael close behind? Leave your thoughts, theories, and comments below! And be sure to check out more news, theories, and insight over at Zap2It's Guide to Lost.
Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude.
Michael's stroy was more of an assurance of what we already knew ... so nothing new there ... that final scene where Alex says "I am Ben's daughter" that was an cliffhanger ... did Ben set them up? or is it a whole different set of people against Ben? or is his own people trying to get to him? lots of questions not many answers ...
If Rousseau is truly dead, we can assume we won't have a flash-back episode on her ... too bad, since it would have been awesome ...
OH and Mr. Friendly ... I was totally waiting for Michael to ask to him "You are gay?" ... would have been funny
Erwin | Mar 20, 2008 8:48:54 PM | #Anyone want to gander a guess as to the identity of the gray haired man lying in the hospital bed next to Michael?
It would be awesome if it were Alvar Hanso.
Also looks a bit like Kelvin
Marino | Mar 20, 2008 8:51:18 PM | #Erwin-
i'd put some serious money on Ben setting up that whole thing to isolate Alex from the 2 people who could take her away from Ben.
mri | Mar 20, 2008 8:52:39 PM | #Gah! The first to post! This is WAAAAALTing awesome.
Overall--good episode. We got A LOT of answers, more than I'm used to in one episode. I don't even know what to think--I'm so used to getting more questions that I'm almost regretting the answers.....just kidding.
The deaths advertised in the previews were kind of disappointing--I had my money on Claire or some other main character. I was definitely shocked when Danielle got shot! She didn't look as dead as Karl did, though, if you know what I mean. (And it was right after he went on all "Star Wars" on us with the "I have a bad feeling about this!" quote) She just kind of fell over. I can see the Temple-ers taking Danielle (assuming those are the shooters) and then Danielle waking up later. Her story is too valuable--I'm dying to know about the sickness she talked about way in season 1 (assuming that story is true). It could definitely give a lot of answers.
I think this episode also hold the record for the longest flashback. I wonder how long it took for Michael to tell the story...
Lauren B | Mar 20, 2008 8:58:35 PM | #Aww...never mind. 3 people definitely posted while I was writing. WAAAAALTing awful.
Lauren B | Mar 20, 2008 8:59:34 PM | #and there's no WAY Danielle is dead. and if there is a way, i want her backstory anyway. i mean come ON Darlton!!! i'm hoping she John Locke's her way past the bullet wound.
mri | Mar 20, 2008 9:00:34 PM | #mri ... but then why tell Alex that her mother is gonna take care of her if he is going to get rid of her anyways????? I know its Ben Freaking Linus ... he is just evil
Erwin | Mar 20, 2008 9:05:49 PM | #Also, one needs to remember that getting shot on the island in no way guarantees death. Just look at John and Patchy. Danielle has survived for long enough that she could have a little o'that immortality in her veins.
Mike | Mar 20, 2008 9:11:51 PM | #That covers bullets, but what about bamboo blow darts? Heh.
Ryan | Mar 20, 2008 9:13:36 PM | #Well at least Mr. Friendly got some lovin' off the island before he went back and got himself shot. More proof of Ben's resources that he was staying in a Manhattan penthouse.
Ok, so if Michael is the man in the coffin, that would mean that the FF in TTLG takes place 6 years in the future as Walt is now 10 and the newspaper clipping said he had a 16 yr old son. And what does it mean that he was finally able to kill himself in the future - that things on the island are deteriorating?
I have a bad feeling that the captain may already know who Michael is. I think Sayid might have made a big mistake. We get yet another request for a list from Ben, this time on the freighter crew. Frank thinks he's looking for the "real" crash site so I put him on the good guys side. Miles seems to not only speak to the dead, but also has the ability to read people.
The previews look awesome. Too bad we have to wait 5 weeks. But it looks like we got a clue of how Aaron gets seperated from Claire.
Ryan ... the whole point is we don't want Danielle dead ... big mistake ... if they kill her off like that and we don't get a back-story on her ...
and yeah, the previews look awesome ... 5 weeks will go by easy ...
Erwin | Mar 20, 2008 9:25:37 PM | #I was making a joke, Erwin, I don't want her dead either! Read the recap again, I want that backstory, same as you.
Ryan | Mar 20, 2008 9:28:01 PM | #Mike: Well if that's the case then I can't wait for Ana-Lucia, Libby, and Shannon to make that trek from Boone Hill...
As for the show itself, Ryan, you said it best in "classic Lost". I was in pure shock when Michael couldn't off himself, but it makes so much sense now. I would admit that I was wrong (to an extent) about Michael not being Ben's spy, but I am glad we didn't have a Michael/Walt body merge, which would have been pretty stupid. My favorite dialogues tonight were from Michael's mother, Miles to Locke and Sawyer, and Ben's creepy message to Michael in the end.
But nobody has answered my question post-Flame about Frank. THAT to me was the biggest mystery tonight besides who was shooting at Alex, Danielle, and Karl... If Charles Widmore himself asked Frank to be on the expedition, then why?!??! To shut him up or to off him with the rest of the Flight 815 survivors? It seems clear now that Abaddon/Oceanic Airlines and Widmore are all in this together. Any other thoughts on this?
Mark O. Estes | Mar 20, 2008 9:28:21 PM | #It was nice to see Naomi again. As Miles expressed so eloquently, "She was hot and I dug her accent." Wish she was still around.
Al | Mar 20, 2008 9:29:27 PM | #I know Ryan ... I was just emphasizing what we all want man ... it's like killing Irina on Alias :(
Erwin | Mar 20, 2008 9:38:01 PM | #Did anyone catch the subliminal plugs for the new season of THE MOLE? They happened at the end of several commercial breaks during tonight's episode of LOST and only flashed for a second. We slowed them down and there were scrambled clues. ABC is really jump-starting the marketing for this, considering they're only filming the new Mole right now!
Ben | Mar 20, 2008 9:57:19 PM | #I actually read at spoilerfix.com that the producers said that though someone would die in this episode, it won't be the last we see of them. I'm assuming they were referring to Danielle, especially since a long time ago I read that they are, at some point, going to explore her backstory more. So, I feel pretty good that that was not the last we'll see of Danielle.
Natalie | Mar 20, 2008 9:57:59 PM | #Plus, the more I think about it: she picked that particular place to stop, while consulting the map...Curiouser and curiouser..
very true ... why exactly there? things are really getting curiouser there ...
Erwin | Mar 20, 2008 10:08:18 PM | #Okay I would like to know somthing how did Mr Friendly get off the Island I thought when the Island turned purple they couldnt get off?? So how does he and if you noticed when Mike went to go meet his mom, it looked like Christmas are at least close to is so what year 2004? or another?
Tyson | Mar 20, 2008 10:15:32 PM | #Also remember how Lapidus (Helicoptor poliot left, he could of left with the people coming to kill them)
Tyson | Mar 20, 2008 10:19:03 PM | #Tyson: Friendly got off the same way as Michael did, and Richard Alpert. But yes, the exact mechanism is yet unknown.
As far as the timeline, Michael left the Island with Walt right after Thanksgiving, so it makes sense that it's Christmas time when he visits his mother. The show's insanely compressed, but they generally do a very good job making it all fit.
Ryan | Mar 20, 2008 10:22:30 PM | #I guess the only thing not explained was how Mr Friendly got off the island - in terms of getting Michael to the freighter that is.
I was a bit surprised to not see Charlotte and Daniel or Regina in the flashback - I'm not saying that they were missed, but they showed everybody else associated with the freighter in the episode -> well everybody who we know is physically aboard the freighter that is.
Rishi | Mar 20, 2008 10:27:00 PM | #I guess I type slow :)
Rishi | Mar 20, 2008 10:29:01 PM | #
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