As long-term fans might expect, the third season of “Lost” doesn’t offer a ton of answers to last year’s big ending. The episode focuses only on Jack, Sawyer, and Kate, who are prisoners of the mysterious Others. The home camp, Sayid and others on the boat, and those in the hatch when it exploded are nowhere to be seen this week, with only a hint of Sayid joining the action next week from the trailer. As usual, I really want to see the characters the episode doesn’t focus on this week. If last year’s season is any indicator, it may be a while before we see the fate of Locke, Eko, and Desmond – my real area of interest.
The episode returns to the good old “close up on an eye” opening that was used through most of the first season but disappeared for most of the second. In this case the eye is a sharp green, belonging to the man we know as Henry Gale.
We open to the image of a housewife doing household chores while listening to “Downtown.” She burns her hands trying to rescue her muffins from the oven, and welcomes neighbors in for a book club discussion (sadly, I missed what the book was that was being discussed). The woman appears bored by the book discussion, but ramps up to defend her book selection when one of the other book club members states its one of the worst books he’s ever read and that it’s no big surprise Ben isn’t there. Suddenly there’s an earthquake and the club members go scurrying into doorways for protection.
Some of them leave the safety of the house and we see the man known as Henry Gale coming from another building. Everyone looks up and we see Oceanic Flight 815 split in half. In the season’s first “oh shit” moment, we realize this picturesque image of suburban life isn’t a flashback to the “real world.” It’s located on the island and is only forty-some days ago. Gale immediately leaps into take-charge mode and orders Goodwin to check out the tail section and Ethan to check out the fuselage. They are both given orders to blend in and report back with lists of names in three days.
Cue the logo flyby shot.
This is a Jack episode, so we come back to a flashback of Jack sitting in a car, watching his wife Sarah from a distance. It’s immediately apparent that this is after Sarah has left him, as he looks wistfully at her and furiously at the guy she’s with.
Jack comes to in present time lying on a table. His arms are chained to the ceiling with enough give for him to move around, and he has a bandage on his arm, probably from an IV. Jack begins to kick the door in an effort to get free; something we observe from both inside his cell and through the glass of the observing room, notable by the sound of Jack’s voice being muffled when we aren’t in the cell with him.
Jack attempts to free himself by pulling on the chain, pulling himself up onto a table where he has greater leverage to pull harder on the chain. As he’s doing this the woman from the teaser enters the observation room and kindly tells Jack to “Stop that,” referring to Jack by name. She introduces herself as Juliet. Jack asks her if she thinks he’s stupid and her response makes it obvious she knows a little something about him: he’s stupid, not stubborn.
FLASHBACK: Jack meets with Sarah. We find out he’s fired his lawyer and is contesting the divorce. He keeps asking Sarah, “What’s his name?” but she won’t tell him. He tells Sarah he’ll give up everything: the house, money, all he wants is the guy’s name. She leaves. Later we see Jack calling phone numbers from Sarah’s phone as his dad comes into his office. Christian tries to tell Jack that it’s over and that he needs to let it go but Jack can’t… or won’t. He dials the next number on the list and Christian’s cell phone rings. When Jack asks why Sarah is calling his cell phone Christian tells Jack she was worried about him, and that he knows about obsessive behavior. Jack points out that Christian’s behavior is alcoholism, not obsession. A hurt Christian tells his son yet again, “Let it go Jack” and walks off.
Back in his cell Jack is catching a few drops of water from the ceiling for sustenance. An intercom box on the wall starts to squawk and Jack tries to answer it. Through the static Jack’s dad can be heard saying “Let it go Jack.”
Juliet enters the observation room with food. She gives him instructions to sit down along the back wall with his back against the wall and she’ll put the food into his cell through the door. He refuses it and asks who’s been messing with him on the intercom. She states the intercom hasn’t worked in years. Juliet offers the food again but still Jack refuses, asking about a button on the wall behind her in the observation room. She tells him that’s for emergencies. At this point Juliet is the most forthcoming member of the Others we’ve seen, which means everything she says is probably a lie, carefully planned out.
Since Jack won’t take the food Juliet tries to get him talking about himself. He lies about being a repo man, which he says works well for him since he’s a “people person.” He claims he was never married, that he never saw the point in it. When she asks him about being on the plane, however, Jack tells the truth about coming from Sydney and being there to get his father’s body. Gaining a bit of confidence from Jack, Juliet tells him that he can trust her; that she isn’t going to hurt him. But when Jack asks what the hell is going on, she just leaves silently, eating the sandwich she was initially offering to him. She may not be there to hurt him, but he’d be a fool to trust her completely.
A little later Juliet brings food in again. She tells Jack one of the side effects from the drugs they were given is dehydration, and that if he doesn’t eat or drink something soon he’s liable to start hallucinating. “So you’re a doctor?” Jack asks.
“No, I’m a repo-woman,” comes the response. Two can play at this game. Obviously suffering, Jack caves in and sits down along the back wall so she can bring in the food.
FLASHBACK: Jack is consulting on a patient and sees his father take a call in the hallway, smiling and laughing. Jack obviously thinks his dad is the man Sarah left him for. Christian goes to the Lynford Hotel, with Jack tailing him still in his scrubs. Jack follows Christian into a support group meeting and confronts him, confident that he knows what’s going on. The head of the support group informs Jack his dad has been sober for fifty days and that they are all proud of his accomplishment. Jack questions what lady friend provided the motivation for his dad’s new found sobriety. “Jack, please, just let it go,” is the response. Jack charges and physically attacks his father.
Juliet opens the cell door and Jack charges her like he did his father in the flashback. He disarms her and drags her out into the hallway. The wind up near a hatch which he orders her to open. “If I open that we will die,” is Juliet’s response. Jack demands again.
From behind him comes a familiar voice. “She’s telling the truth, Jack.” Henry Gale is at the far side of the hallway, watching seriously, and looking a bit concerned. Jack threatens to kill Juliet if she doesn’t open the door. Gale states that she’s dead anyway if she opens the hatch, they all are.
Never one to think things through, Jack pushes Juliet towards Gale and opens the hatch. Water comes pouring in as Juliet races towards Gale. Ever the gentleman, Gale closes his door, locking Juliet and Jack in the flooding hallway. Juliet directs Jack into the observation room where he manages to get the door closed. They press the yellow button (which I guess drains the room or the hall) and Juliet cold-cocks Jack.
When Jack comes to he is back in his cell. Juliet is in the observation room looking through a file. Jack realizes they are in another Dharma station, an underwater one. Juliet confirms it is “the Hydra” which was used for sharks and dolphins (we saw one of the sharks early last season). She also confirms the Others are the remnants of the Dharma initiative, although she says that was a long time ago. “It doesn’t matter who we were, it only matters who we are,” she adds. She then confirms they know everything about Jack and the file is his life, including all the details of his friends, his father, and his ex-wife. Jack knows that file holds the name of the man who his wife left him for.
FLASHBACK: Jack is in jail for assaulting his father. Sarah bails him out, tells him she called him a cab, and leaves crying. Jack pursues her, asking again who the man is. Sarah tells Jack it doesn’t matter who the man is, it only matters who Jack is not now. She lets Jack know that his father called her to tell her about Jack being in jail and was so drunk she couldn’t understand him. At least now Jack will have something to fix… but we now know it was Jack that drew his father back to alcoholism. How much distance is between this day’s events and the day Christian performed on Jack’s patient intoxicated?
Jack doesn’t ask Juliet for the name of the man. He only asks her if Sarah his happy. Juliet says that Sarah is very happy. Jack doesn’t ask any more, and he moves to the corner to receive his food, indicating this time he will behave.
We follow Juliet as she leaves the control room to give Jack food. Gale is in the hallway, watching. “Good work, Juliet,” he tells her.
“Thank you, Ben,” she replies. The man formerly known as Gale now has a real name.
Kate wakes up in a slightly better situation. She’s in a bathroom of sorts, or at least a dormitory style shower. She too has a bandage, presumably from an IV. Mr. Friendly encourages her to take advantage of the facilities and take a shower. She states she won’t be showering in front of him. He tells her she isn’t his type (pointless speculation: if she isn’t his type, Friendly must be gay). Friendly leaves and Kate bathes. When her shower is over with her clothes are missing from the locker she stowed them in. Another locker has a note on it indicating she should “Wear this.” Inside is a rather sexy summer dress which Kate puts on.
Mr. Friendly reappears with the message, “He’s waiting.” He then escorts Kate down to the beach where Henry Gale is sitting at a covered table with a nice breakfast waiting for Kate. When Kate sits down he asks her to put handcuffs on. She asks what happens if she refuses. He politely tells her she won’t get any coffee. This is why Gale is such a difficult character to hate. He’s so slick and well polished one has the feeling he’s constantly in charge of every scenario. Kate puts on the handcuffs, but Gale is still incredibly observant and asks her to tighten them a little bit more. She’s not going anywhere.
She asks about Sawyer and Jack. Instead of answering her question, Gale observes which name she stated first and asks why it’s “Sawyer and Jack” not “Jack and Sawyer.” She continues her questioning, asking about her clothes (which they burned) and the breakfast. Gale tells her he invited her by the ocean so she could be comforted by the fact that it’s the same ocean her friends are looking at. He gave her the dress so she could feel more ladylike, and he’s providing the breakfast so she’ll have something nice to hold onto, “because the next few weeks are going to be very unpleasant.”
Sawyer, on the other hand, has the worst of the awakenings. He comes to in a cage, outside. If he had an IV bandage as well I missed it. Instead he looks around to see another Dharma symbol on a wall and another cage with someone in it as well. Sawyer tries to talk to the man in the other cage, but he doesn’t respond. He then begins to check out his own cage, which has some sort of feeding system installed in it with several levers and a button with a knife and fork on it. Sawyer presses the button twice with no real response. When he moves to press it a third time the man in the other cage suggests he shouldn’t do that. Sawyer being Sawyer does it anyway and gets a shock that sends him flying across the cage.
My first thought is that the man in the other cage is probably an Other sent to get information from Sawyer like Ethan and Goodwin. This makes more sense as the other man asks Sawyer questions like how far away his camp is or what his people are like. Sawyer converses lightly while attempting to figure out the food delivery system, pointing out his people tortured the first one of the Others they found, and then tortured him as well. “But hell, we don’t know any better.”
Sawyer gets one of the levers to pull and hears a mechanical sound. He turns around and the other man’s cage door is open. The other man opens Sawyer’s cage and the two flee, although the man knows enough to direct Sawyer not to go in one direction. The two split up and Sawyer looks like he’s making a break for it until Juliet finds him. I don’t know if the look on Sawyer’s face was surprise or recognition, but there might be a link between the two. Regardless, she uses a tazer on Sawyer and he’s dragged back to his cage. Mr. Friendly and others drag the other prisoner, bloodied up, to Sawyer’s cage, introduce him as Carl, and make him apologize to Sawyer for including him in his break out attempt. Carl is then dragged off. I still say we’ll see him in the Others’ ranks soon.
Sawyer continues messing with the food delivery system until he figures out the right combination to get… a fish shaped biscuit. That’s not all though, he also gets some feed of some sort and some water. As he’s enjoying his feast, Kate is brought to the other cage by Mr. Friendly. He offers to bring Kate some antiseptic, so Sawyer says he could use an ottoman and a blow-dryer. Typical Sawyer wit, to which Friendly replies that the bears only took two hours to figure out the food delivery.
Kate and Sawyer share a nice moment with Sawyer complementing Kate’s new dress and sharing his fish biscuit with her. They may be imprisoned, but Sawyer has the upper hand right now in the love triangle.
