Episode 14 - The Candidate

Okay now we're getting somewhere!! Lost was insanity last night - major character deaths, Jack in a t-shirt AND a suit, and we're down to the final four! Read on friends!

SUMMARY

Island

Whidmore is rounding up the losties and stuffing them back into the Dharma cages. He assures them that he's only trying to protect them. While in the cages, Smokey appears and takes out Whidmore's cronies and Jack shows up to help the losties escape. They head off towards the Ajira plane to leave the island. Once they get there Smokey kills the two guards and boards the plane. He finds it rigged with wires and C4. He brings it out to show his followers and he decides the only way off the plane is via submarine. While making their way to the sub they come under heavy fire from Whidmore's gang and Kate is shot in the shoulder. Smokey secretly switched Jack's pack for his. Jack, who said he wasn't coming along, pushes Smokey into the water, grabs Kate, and heads for the sub. Once inside they commandeer the sub and unfortunately Sawyer can't get Claire in time and they begin to dive down. Jack begins tending to Kate's shoulder when he opens his pack to find the C4 rigged up with 4 minutes to go. He insists they return to the surface and Sayid concludes it can be offset by pulling out the wires simultaneously. Jack realizes that this was Smokey's plan all along and that nothing will happen if they let the time run out. Sawyer doesn't want to take the chance and pulls the wires out. The countdown is momentarily stopped and then begins to rapidly increase. With only a minute left Sayid grabs the explosives and tells Jack he believes in him and runs to the other side of the sub where it explodes. Sun gets stuck under a large obstruction and at the last minute Jin urges everyone else to escape and stays with Sun while they plummet to the bottom of the ocean, tearfully. Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, and Jack make it to the surface.

Flash Sideways

Locke wakes up in the hospital to find that Jack has saved him. Jack tries to convince Locke that he is a candidate for a test surgery and he thinks that he could fix Locke's back. When he urges Locke to tell him how he was injured Locke refuses to tell him and declines the surgery. Since Jack needs his answers he decides to investigate and obscurely goes to Locke's dentist of 3 years ago. Bernard can't give him any answers but gives him the name Anthony Cooper, a man who was in the same accident. Jack returns to the hospital and runs into Claire who has come to see him about something Christian left her, a small wooden music box. Jack doesn't know what it is and then invites Claire to stay with him since they're family. Jack then tracks down Anthony Cooper at a nursing facility and he runs into Helen. Helen urges him to leave but then gives in and shows Jack to Anthony who is completely unresponsive since the accident. Jack returns to Locke at the hospital and tells him he had seen Anthony Cooper. Locke become agitated and tells Jack that he crashed his plane on his first official ride as a newly licenced pilot and his father, who was afraid of flying, did not recover from the crash. Locke feels eternally guilty and will not accept Jack's offer to fix his injury. Jack says he lost his father too and that it is time for them to move on, like Locke told Jack on flight 815, the man in the coffin wasn't Jack's father and Jack tries to tell Locke that the man in the nursing home is no longer Anthony Cooper and it was time to let go.

Phew! I always think its going to be so much shorter and then I decide to include every little detail!

1. I knew Jack would come back as the hero! He's going to save Kate, he knew the right answer for the bomb, he saved Sawyer and he will save the island! He figured out that Smokey can't kill them and he's trying to get around Jacob's rules by having them kill each other. Perhaps they should have listened to Whidmore and stayed in the cage!

2. Something interesting to think about is Smokey's thought process with this. He had switched his and Jack's backpacks before Jack "betrayed" him and threw him into the water (which is kind of a lame move considering he can turn into smoke and kill them all, or so he thought at the time). So does this mean that Smokey knew Jack would betray him and leave him off the sub so they would all blow themselves up? What would have happened if he had boarded the sub with the losties and tried to leave? He seemed pretty upset at the end when he realized that a few of them survived so it seems that his plan all along was to kill them. Looks like we have our answer if he's good or bad.

3. Well I've been complaining that the body count this season has been lower than I expected, and then they go ahead and kill off 3 major major characters. Some may argue that Sayid already died, but he seems to have made this sacrifice as the old Sayid before the darkness took over him so I guess we can call this his official death. Sun and Jin died, as expected, together. It was a very touching scene for sure but I have to say, Sun is a pretty skinny woman, are you telling me she couldn't slip out from those bars?

4. I almost died when Kate got shot! I won't lie, if she dies I'm actually okay with it. However, if she dies before she can profess her love to Jack there will be wrath brought down upon the shows creators like you've never seen!! No not really, I'll probably just curse the show out loud and admit defeat. I'm already predicting tons of emails about how wrong I am.

5. The sideways flash was a little boring for me this time around, besides the fact that Jack in a suit is pretty much always a win, but it was interesting to see how opposite Locke's life actually is. Yes he's still in a wheel chair but because of his own doing. He even managed to have a relationship with his father however he was his father's downfall - by urging him to join his first flight only to crash the plane and essentially end his cognitive life. So my question is, if Anthony Cooper was a good man in this life then was he Sawyer? Because our Sawyer still has that name ...

6. The end scene on the beach was what really got me with Sun and Jin's death. When Hurley started crying you realize how many of their friends have died because of the island. It's weird we're down to our final four players - Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, and Kate. Although Kate isn't on the list anymore so I'm sure she's a goner.

7. So the losties were on that sub for say oh 6 minutes before they discovered the bomb in Jack's bag. So when the submarine began to sink, and sink, and sink, did anyone wonder how far they had actually gone for the ocean to be that deep? And how they could possible have swam up there, each with a limp body in tow, and make it to the beach is beyond me. I'm gonna go with magic.

8. It's sad that they left Claire behind but they really had no choice since she refused to come when Sawyer was calling her. She's obviously going to feel deserted and try to kill someone - probably Kate since she's been trying to all season. Maybe something will happen where she goes to kill Kate and Jack steps in and ends up killing Claire! Probably not but who knows.

9. I thought once maybe we could escape a Jack-centric episode without him crying but I was wrong. Although I'll give him a break since 3 of his friends did just die. Notice how I said 3 - we still don't know if Lupidus is dead. I think they left it open ended on purpose because if they do take the Ajira plane off the island they will need a pilot and I think it would be a fitting end if they used a plane for their final escape, leaving Kate and Jack behind to populate Lost island with their babies. :)

10. The scenes from the next were uber lame. Lost is totally trying to not give us anything to look forward to next week all while mixing it with super old season 1 footage so they can pretend they've known what they've been doing all along. I don't buy it - show me some steamy Jack and Kate previews!

Bahh ok so not much more to go! Post your theories and make me feel special!

xo

B