As Long As It Takes

Quick Hits

• For the record, Juliet indicates the year is 1974 when Miles, Juliet, Jin and Sawyer meet up with Amy and Dharma. That puts the episode’s end at 1977 (“Three Years Later”).

  

  Why’d they end up in the past, while the Ajira crash survivors and Locke end up in “present day?” Are events in the past and future somehow occurring concurrently? I’d say no, which could result in some good stuff like battles across time. Sawyer plants a land mine in the past and Ben walks over it in the future, blowing his ass off! Yeah!

• Let’s run down some of our new Dharma members, shall we? First up, of course, should be Amy. Originally married to Paul Lewis, who died at the hands of two Hostiles while on a picnic.

  
  That’s quite a sitting style she has there

  Paul worked security for Dharma. Amy later marries her friend Horace Goodspeed, and together they have a boy. Who could that boy be, by the way?

  

  A more burning question: where’s Olivia Goodspeed? Ben came to the Island in the early 70’s, which would put his arrival right in the same timeframe as tonight’s episode. Olivia was his elementary school teacher on the Island.

  

  Horace and Olivia first found Ben and his parents in the woods outside Portland, Oregon. Ben’s mother died in childbirth at that time. So, Olivia was definitely on the Island the same time as Amy. Is polygamy a fact of life in the progressive Dharma Initiative? Horace was married to Olivia before tonight’s events, and I presume he was married to her right up until The Purge in 1992. Maybe I’m missing something, but there’s a conflict in there somewhere, unless maybe Horace and Olivia divorced at some point. I’m sure we’ll find out.

• The internist watching over Amy in The Staff tells Sawyer that Dharma’s “women always deliver on the mainland.” That would make sense in light of pregnant women dying left and right later in the future. Though, those women all died in their second trimester, if I’m remembering Juliet’s discussion from season 3 correctly.

  

  Amy is clearly just about at full term, so 1: why is she still alive that far along in the pregnancy and 2: why do all the Dharma women head back to the mainland to give birth? Does Dharma need to judge the child first to make sure they’re “Dharma material?” They wouldn’t want to run the risk of having a bad seed grow up within their ranks and betray them (think Ben). And what changed on the Island that resulted in pregnant women dying in their 2nd trimester? Punishment for The Purge?

• Next up are the Keystone Kops of the Initiative, Bill and Jerry.

  

  We meet them at a pot brownie party at a new Dharma station, which I’ll just call The Star for now. I’m guessing Dharma may have some more military-type personnel working out of The Arrow and on alert for Hostile attacks; Bill and Jerry seem more apt for day-to-day policing of the rules and regs of Dharmaville.

  

  They watch a drunken Horace throwing dynamite at trees out near the “Pylons,” as they call the sonic security fence. Back when Sawyer first meets Horace three years earlier, he tells him his salvage vessel ran aground on a reef and shipwrecked. They were in search of the Black Rock, which Horace claimed to know nothing about. Well, either he was lying or Sawyer told him where to find it, as he also seems to have snagged some dynamite from its hold. I suppose Dharma could have some of the sticks in their armory, but I prefer to make baseless connections.

• “The Truce” is mentioned several times in the episode, referring to an uneasy cease-fire between the Hostiles and Dharma. We all know just how tenuous it is, The Purge coming years later. Richard, looking just the same as we last saw him in “Jughead,” emerges out of the jungle into Dharmaville to confront Horace. Two of his Hostiles are dead, and he considers the truce broken.

  

  Sawyer talks him out of it, but Alpert demands the body of Amy’s deceased husband Paul as “justice” for the two men he lost. Why the heck would he want a dead body? Food for Smokey? Perhaps Claire and Christian Shepherd and Yemi aren’t ghosts but actually part of the Hostiles re-animated zombie army.

• Not sure if it’s enough to call a “station,” but I’m sure as hell calling that oceanside alcove in the rocks of the Other camp in season 2 a station (“The Broom Closet”), so let’s call The Motor Pool the second of two new stations featured in tonight’s episode.

  

  And maybe Juliet can’t save the pregnant women because she’s actually a mechanic, not a doctor. Honest mistake. Pregnant woman. Bus. What’s the difference?

  

• Oh God, please no. It looks like we’re headed for an episode or four focused on the interminable love parallelogram between Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Juliet. I’d rather see an entire episode devoted to a love triangle involving Hurley trying to choose between Cool Ranch or Nacho-flavored Doritos.

  

  Remember what I said earlier about not judging each episode on its own? Nevermind, I will judge all episodes featuring this tired story harshly.

  

• The dynamic between Jack and Sawyer might be good, however. Sawyer’s essentially become what Jack once was, the no-nonsense leader. Miles: “Who put him in charge?” I seem to remember the exact same line said in reference to Jack in season 1. Now that Jack’s become the Man of Faith Locke once was, what does that make Locke? The new Sawyer? I’d guess he’s bent on avenging his temporary death at the hands of Mr. Linus, so that fits, right?
• I couldn’t forget to mention the statue. Just before the four musketeers make the final time-jump to 1974, they catch a glimpse of the giant, intact statue of which we’ve only seen the four-toed foot in season 2.

  

  We can only see the back, but it strikes me as distinctly Egyptian. The first thing that popped into my head was Anubis, the god of the afterlife.

  

  “Anubis was the god to protect the dead and bring them to the afterlife.” While the show’s creators have repeatedly stated the Island is not some form of purgatory, there are certainly enough dead folks floating around to make the reference to Anubis relevant.

• Alas, no way to make a new entry in the Lost Book Club this week, as Sawyer has misplaced the dust jacket of his latest read.

  

• All it takes to get past the sonic fence is a pair of earplugs? I guess Amy put it on a lower setting.

  

• Dharma’s got more than just badass buses.

  

  I look forward to seeing the Dharma moped, dirtbike, and go-kart as well.

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