This review will be short and sweet for three reasons: (1) I want to finish watching Justified, which kicks more ass than a psychotically abusive donkey trainer; (2) This episode contained more actual action than “grist for the mill,” as it were; (3) I HAVE FIGURED OUT THE WHOLE “SIDEWAYS” THING AND WILL EXPLAIN IT BELOW.
Let me start by saying that I have never entirely fallen under the spell of Sawyer, Sexy Wounded Recluse With a Heart of Gold. I think he’s been a fine character, and I love his nicknames for people, but as a brooding loner he does nothing for me, and I think we’re all in agreement that the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle was a triangle that worked best when it was blown up and and then expanded into a parallelogram with the addition of Juliet. (Just hearing “Freckles” makes me want to eat my own shirt.) And while his back story has always been dramatic enough, it’s somehow not as grabby as most of the others. At least, to me.
So the Island Sawyer we see this week, playing both sides against the middle, is no surprise. The Anti-Locke and Charles Widmore both have him pegged as the key to their own win in whatever freaky battle they’ve all been playing over the years; if the truth be told, he wouldn’t give two craps if they were to eliminate each other, but I think they both know that. Not much honor left for ol’ James Ford. Not on the island, anyway.
But in the time-slip, plenty is cooking, and it’s pretty damned tasty. The series of reveals in the first scene come fast and furious: Ford has sex with babe (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, you still have my number–call me, boo!), Ford pulls out the inevitable suitcase full of money, babe pulls gun, Ford says he’s a cop, turns out he IS a cop in this reality…and Miles is his partner! BLA-ZANG! Now THAT is a great TV sequence, if you’ve been following the series all along. Still can’t understand you guys out there who are hating on the show this year, all “these other stories are so distracting and unnecessary” and stuff–they gotta go SOMEWHERE with it all, right? And isn’t it enough when the stories are entertaining and illuminating, like they usually are? But hey, everyone has the right to an opinion, even if I disagree.
Trainspotting moments in this scene are two in number. One: the time on the clock, repeated once verbally and once visually, 8:42, corresponding to Hurley and “Kwon” according to their numerology. (NO idea what that means AT ALL.) The other: Sawyer somehow using the word “LaFleur” for his safety word–this, of course, is his name on the island, but how does he know that, if the island reality is in some kind of alternate dimension? I WILL EXPLAIN THIS.
Might as well go into some other trainspotting moments while we’re at it. Miles sets Ford up on a blind date with his friend, who turns out to be Charlotte. They get along great, have hot sex, whatever, until she finds his Sawyer folder, and he freaks and kicks her out at 3 a.m., and all that jazz. Did you notice what book is on his nightstand? Watership Down, by Richard Adams, a book in which a runty little rabbit soothsayer leads a bunch of other rabbits to safety from a coming conflagration; the others don’t entirely trust this rabbit, Fiver, at first, but they come around. Gee, parallelism much?
Other amusing stuff: Sheila Kelley completely fooling Sawyer on the Hydra island; Widmore in his sub, a controlled but still-mad version of Captain Bligh, or maybe Colonel Kurtz; Anti-Locke’s AMAZINGLY CREEPY EFFING TALK with Kate on the beach; Sayid refusing to help Kate. Not so amusing: the actual anticlimactic “showdown” between Kate and Claire, which they’ve been building up to for weeks and then just kind of extinguish; Anti-Locke smacking hysteriClaire; Miles the Cop acting like a jealous girlfriend, what was that about?
OKAY SO HERE IS MY THEORY THEN. We have all been assuming that the Flash-Sideways plot lines are the result of the bomb going off, thereby causing a rift in the space-time continuum. Right? So if Oceanic 815 never crashes, everyone’s life is the way it is here, simple cause and effect.
But what if that’s not true? What if the cart comes before the horse this time, and it’s the Sideways scenes that actually came “first”? Check it out–they all seem connected in some way in this reality, and all of them are magically in Los Angeles now, rather than being dispersed all over the globe. So it makes more sense that they were all connected BEFORE some kind of big event. I’m willing to bet a plugged nickel that these so-called Sideways scenes actually precede anything that we have already seen, and that somehow their massive connectivity to each other is more of a cause that set the wheels in motion, rather than a mystical byproduct of the war between Jacob and Smokey the Monster. Hey, they’ve messed with us before–remember how much the Flash-Forward scenes freaked us out at first?–and this would be the perfect opportunity to pull another fast one.
Still don’t know how the whole thing would work, exactly. Maybe there is some kind of incident that involves all our interconnected characters in the Sideways, and the rest flows from there? Maybe it’s a judgment scenario; I think we all know how fond Jacob and his Cosmic Buddy are of judging people. Or maybe the flight TO Sydney is more important than the flight FROM there, only it just so happens that we’ve seen the second, y’know, first? I will work on this and let you know more soon. Just saying, though–if it turns out I’m right, you’re all buying me coffee.
Oh, and Sayid might just be faking his level of evilness BECAUSE HE IS ACTUALLY FILLED WITH JACOB NOW. Yep, I’m bringing this theory back.
Check out promo images of next week’s episode, “Ab Aeterno”!
How can your theory be right if you don’t really have much of a theory? Everyone already knows that the alternate timeline is one in which Jacob has not affected the characters.
Do we Jimmy? DO WE??!!? (suspenseful music…BOOMLOST)
My theory is that the Flash sideways is actually telling us the outcome of the sides people end up chosing. I feel like the common theme has been Good vs. Evil throughout all seasons… the white and black stones found in season 1, the white and black stones on the scale this season, its truly been a chess game for Jacob and M.I.B. Both of them are always recruiting for their side. People like Sayid, and Sawyer have troubled pasts and yet have good in them and have the possibility of going good. My opinion is that this season has been trying to show us you don’t really know what side each person is truly on, and by showing us the flash sideways (all of which is showing they can go in the wrong direction or the right, high road vs. low road) it is showing us their actions on the island where they are at a high vs. low crossroads. Notice everytime they wrap up an alternate reality where someone we thought would go bad, ends up changing, their character does so on the island (Ben, Jack, etc.) Essentially if they choose the bad team on the island it appears to me their future once the island is sunk and the war is over will be grim…. and vice versa. People like Kate haven’t yet made up their minds which side they should be on. Currently she is heading for disaster (which is why she is still running in the flash, and is why she is with Un-Locke-d on the island. She still has a chance to get on the right team and possibly turn herself in and tell her side of the story in flashy world. I believe each character has a Deja Vu’ like reaction to things relating to the island, which leads me to believe the flash sideways is actually a flash forward in a matter of speaking. Again, just my opinion. I also believe this show can make sense in many different ways, a lot of it is up to interpretation.
I tend to disagree. 1. My theory is that the both dimensions do exist and they exist at the same time even though they are different years. We have seen time and time again how events on the island affect events in the un-crash world. Why is this happening? Because both worlds exist at the same time. The un-crash world cannot affect the crash world because it was created by the crash world. 2 Sayid is not Jacob, no matter how much anyone wants him to be. How could he inhabit Sayid’s body and still appear to Hurley? Even Lockeinstein can’t do that. 3. This is a con inside a con inside a con. Lockeinstein sends James as a test of his loyalty because he knows what is over there. He wants to know if James will tell him the truth of what he saw or try to betray him. Other thoughts-1. Kate has a very important role at the end of “Lost”, one that can’t be handled by anyone but her. 2. And why did Kate show up right at the end? Just look to the island reality for your answer. 3. Rousseau and Clair are both a little crazy. So is every mother who has had a child on the island, including Michael Faraday’s. 4. I am predicting that Richards story next week will be the most fascinating episode so far this year. PS: I have a feeling after the last episode a lot of us are going to still be wondering what in the heck was going on. A lot of us are going to stand up out of our Barca-loungers and say, “WHAT!!! Are you frakin’ kidding me?”,a lot of us are going to say,”Ah, I knew it all along.” and a lot of us will say, “Well, that was a waste of four years.”. No matter which camp I land in I will still say it has been a good ride.
Not sure the flash sideways thing has to directly do with the bomb, Sure, the bomb was the catalyst. But I think the otherverse with the Losties is in fact what would have happened to them if Jacob had never chosen them as candidates.
The bomb made him rethink that whole notion about them, but we still have “what happened, happened” keeping the realverse in line.
Make sense?