I Do (S3, ep. 6)

Ben: “Well, Jack. I’m very disappointed in your decision.”
Jack: “Well, Ben. At least you won’t have to be disappointed for very long.”

First things first: I lied. I won’t be bundling episodes until we pass “Not In Portland,” the next juicily-hefty chunk of mythology and mayhem. Once we’ve cleared that hurdle we’ll start moving faster.

Thoughts:

• While Kate’s basic flashback arc is, yet again, the same damn story (Kate has a connection to someone, Kate runs, Kate damages that person) there are two factors in “I Do” that help to make it more than the sum of its recycled parts (from my perspective at any rate). Fillion’s laidback performance is reason 1. And, surprisingly to me, Evangeline Lily’s performance is reason 2. She’s good in this – really good – and she freshly, convincingly sells what’s essentially the same emotional journey we’ve seen her take several times over by this point.

Kate: “Seriously. It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”
Kevin: “It’s bad luck to see the bride in her dress before the wedding. You, my friend, are naked.”

• How much do I love Nathan Fillion’s line readings? So very much (but not enough to watch “Castle” – the presence of Fillion doesn’t make the show any more appealing to me). My wife, who I adore, has identified Nathan Fillion as being one of my apparent ‘man-crushes’ – men who, despite my staunch and unblemished record of heterosexuality, I tend to love fairly unabashedly. Fillion’s performance as Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly charmed the socks off of me, as did his work in Slither and Waitress. Here, he’s a welcome supporting player but I can’t help regretting that Lost’s casting people didn’t find a larger, recurring role for him on the show.

Locke: I believe that Eko died for a reason. I just don’t know what it is yet.

• Sayid and Locke discuss The Monster as they prepare to bury Eko’s body. Remember, it’s my ongoing theory that only dead bodies which are physically present on the Island (or were physically present, pre-decomposition) can be imitated by the MiB/Monster. We haven’t seen Eko return as a ‘ghost’ in physical form yet due to the actor’s unhappiness with the show/his character, but we’ve seen Hurley in Season 4 apparently playing chess with an invisible Mr. Eko – yet another potential confirmation of this theory.


JACKFACE!

• The inscription on Eko’s God-stick reads “Lift up your eyes and look North,” which comes from the book of Ezekiel, chapter 8, verse 5. The full text of that section reads as follows:

“Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, look toward the north.’ So I looked, and in the entrance north of the gate of the altar I saw this idol of jealousy.”

That’s an interesting reference, and one that has any number of potential meanings from the obvious (North is where the Others live) to the subtle (North is also where the GIANT STATUE once resided – an idol if ever I’ve seen one) to the questionable (jealousy? Whose jealousy?)

We also see that the stick has John 3:5 carved into it, which reads:

“Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.’

This passage underlines the importance of baptism in the Christian faith. As we saw in Season 2, Eko has baptized baby Aaron with the waters of the Island, and I theorized that this moment in the show is potentially important, since one of my wackier theories involves Aaron (or one of Aaron’s descendents) becoming Jacob.

And there’s a ‘4.8.15’ carving on there too…

• Hot bear cage sex in the house!

• The airplane tickets that Kevin bought for them are for Costa Rica, on Oceanic Air. Incidentally, I honeymooned in Costa Rica, and it’s AMAZING. Highly recommended.

• I hadn’t remembered Kate and Sawyer admitting that they love each other. This makes the love triangle less egregious to me, though I do wish that Kate would make up her damned mind.

Female Voice: “Try… the door.”

• The non-working intercom (the one that ‘hasn’t worked in years,’ according to Juliet) seems to be working now. Whereas before Jack seemed to be hearing voices from the past (His father), or the future (Sawyer’s dialogue, which Jack heard before Sawyer actually spoke it on the show), here he’s outright helped in the present. But this moment raises more questions than I think it answers. Was the woman’s voice Juliet? Did they let Jack out on purpose, just to witness Kate and Sawyer’s jungle boogaloo? If so, then that speaker does work, and it brings into question whether the other voices Jack has heard were also courtesy of the Others.

Juliet: You may find this very hard to believe, but I’ve always been very good at just following orders.

• I find that very easy to believe, since, as we’ll see in the upcoming seasons, Juliet either doesn’t know much of anything about the Island, the Others, and Dharma, or chooses against all common sense to withhold what she knows from the audience and the castaways. This drives me crazy, as you’ll soon discover.

Ben: “Did Alex ask about me?”

• This is the first indication we’ve gotten that Alex and Ben have some form of connection, and it’s the first indication we’ve had that Ben truly cares for Alex. It’s also some indication of how seriously Ben is taking this operation – those aren’t the words of someone who’s convinced this operation will work.

Pickett: “Ben just put his life in the hands of one of them! Shephard wasn’t on Jacob’s list.”

Look at that – Jacob’s first mention on the show, dropped into the waning moments of this episode so casually that it’s easy to miss. It’s still not clear whether Jacob was actually creating lists, or whether they were Ben’s lists all along. It’s especially confusing, given that we know Jacob has interacted with Jack in the past.


JACKFACE, PART DEUX!

Jack’s deviousness in this episode is good to see. We haven’t seen much of scheming-Jack before, and the way in which he games the system to ensure that his friends can escape is the sort of thing we’re used to seeing Sawyer do.

Jack: “You remember what I told you on the beach? The day of the crash. You remember what story I told you when you were stitching me up? DO YOU REMEMBER IT?!”

How could we forget? Some version of this story has been told two or three times already.

Jack: “Kate, damn it, RUN!”

And with that, we’re through the first six episodes of Season 3. It was frustrating, back when they first aired, having to wait as long as we did for the Season to start back up again. I suspect that a good number of the folks who were disappointed in these installments were disappointed not by the lack of solid story, characterization and Prisoner-esque creepiness, but by the lack of answers the show offered regarding the Swan, Desmond’s new Mutant Powers, and the overall questions about the Island, as well as by the seeming-sameness of the off-Island flashbacks.

There’s truth to the charge that the flashbacks are repetitious in terms of their general emotional beats, and with a medium as intimate as television there’s a danger of love fading into impatience fading into boredom if you’re a certain type of viewer. At the same time, these are solidly-constructed, intelligent installments that, for me, got richer and better on rewatch. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of these episodes, with the good far outweighing the bad. Now you know far too much about what I think – what do you think?

*****

If you enjoyed this column, please Digg it using the button provided below!

To view the complete, pre-Chud Rewatch archive, please visit Back To The Island

To talk about/join the rewatch, jump onto the Message Boards

Season 3

• The Cost of Living (S3 ep. 05)
• Every Man for himself (S3 ep. 04)
• Further Instructions (S3 ep. 03)
• The Glass Ballerina (S3 ep. 02)
• Season 3 Premiere

Season 2

• Season 2 finale
• Three Minutes (S2 ep. 22)
• ? (S2 ep. 21)
• Two for The Road (S2 ep. 20)
• S.O.S. (S2 ep. 19)
• Dave (S2 ep. 18)
• Lockdown (S2 ep. 17)
• The Whole Truth (S2 ep. 16)
• Maternity Leave (S2 ep. 15)
• One of Them (S2 ep. 14)
• The Long Con (S2 ep. 13)
• Fire + Water (S2 ep. 12)
• The Hunting Party (S2 ep 11)
• The 23rd Psalm (S2, ep. 10)
• What Kate Did (S2, ep. 9)
• Collision (S2, ep. 8)
• The Other 48 Days (S2, ep. 7)