…Had Things Been Different

It’s your lucky day, as i’m here to provide what you’ve long awaited: a Lost running diary in lieu of a full-length recap! Hooraaaaaay, amirite?! Okay, here’s the truth. I’m in Orlando, had a full day of HDI conference mania, and just got out of the hot tub. Unless I plan on sleeping ’til noon tomorrow (not a good idea), you’ll have to make due with a running diary. I’ll make it up to you next week. Capiche?

9:00pm – No “Previously…on Lost” tonight — that must mean we’re in for an extended length wizbang-o-rama of an episode.

9:01pm – Sawyer’s back after a 2-week absence and has found his way to Claire’s Crazy Hut o’ Stickz. What’s he been up to in the meantime?

9:02pm – Argh, Sawyer and Kate give each other one of their trademark “looks.” Stab me.

9:03pm – Sexy timez with “Jimmy” Ford, nee Sawyer as he appears to be running a con, or is he? His rather accomodating behavior onboard 815 in the X timeline still strikes me as honest. I’m not buying he’s a conman yet.

9:04pm – Knew it. Sawyer’s a cop with the LAPD, and Miles Straume is his partner. Two call-backs to their time with the Dharma Initiative in the late 70’s: they were partners on the security force with Dharma, and Sawyer’s “signal” for the swat team to storm into the room is uttering the word, “LaFleur.” LaFleur, as you’ll recall, was the alias Sawyer used while security chief for Dharma.

9:07pm – Aww, precious Squirrel-Wolverine Psycho Baby, you’re all Claire has. Claire, while skirting the edges of sanity, does seem to realize she’s been watching over an inanimate squirrel baby and not Aaron, to her credit. Perhaps she’s not quite as crazy as we thought.

9:08pm – Locke/Smokey keeps promising answers to Sawyer and the rest of his merry band of Exiles (my new name for his crew), but “all in due time.” A refrain we’ve heard before — this feels like he’s stringing them along until he can “answer” their questions with some giant, black, smokey death from above.

9:09pm – Why did Claire grab Kate’s hand while Locke was giving his speech prior to the Exiles’ departure? Is that contact some method of communicating whatever “infection” she has?

Jacob obviously has some ability to transmute some “stuff” via touch — is something similar at work with the infected?

9:08pm – Locke/Esau certainly seems convincing while talking to the two kids, reassuring them everything will be alright and they’ll get off the Island. Our assumption at this stage is that Locke/Esau is bad, despite all the hints we’ve been thrown this season to start flipping that perception. I’m still having a hard time believing Esau is anything but the dark/evil force on the Island, but the writers and Terry O’Quinn are doing a good job of giving us something to chew on in the opposite direction.

9:09pm – Sawyer tells Kate he “ain’t with anybody.” I’ll buy Sawyer hasn’t been completely deluded by Smokey quite yet. I’d like to think, even with the overwhelming grief of Juliet’s passing, he wouldn’t give Smokey full buy-in based on a bunch of names scrawled on cave walls.

9:10pm – In the X timeline, Officer Ford is doing just what his original timeline self did (assuming they’re different people, of course, which I wouldn’t if I were you — but let’s just go with it for this sentence), searching for the man responsible for the ruin and deaths of his parents in 1966: Anthony Cooper (Locke’s dad). We learn from Miles that Sawyer took a trip to Palm Springs last week on an apparent vacation. Doubtful he was sitting by the pool sipping mai-tai’s, methinks.

9:10pm – Miles, while trying to convince Ford to go on a blind date, asks him if he wants “to die alone.” You’ll recall “live together, die alone” was Jack’s mantra while trying to hold the 815 survivors together in the aftermath of the crash in season 1; this is a concept that’s long been an underlying theme throughout the series.

9:12pm – Locke/Esau tells Sawyer he forgives him. Sounds like something a benevolent Jacob might say to one of his followers. Not buying it yet, Esau, though I thoroughly enjoyed, “I’m the smoke thing.” Kudos.

9:13pm – Some Esau quotes from that same conversation:

• “All I wanna do is leave [the Island].” I’ll buy that, but what happens when you leave, Esau? Do you hop a flight to Hades while the human race winks out of existence?
• “I don’t wanna be killed.” And what, I ask, can actually kill you, Esau? The only successful countermeasures we’ve seen employed against you are the sonic fences and the ash barrier. Though, it looks like the ash barrier’s effectiveness was directly related to the status of Dogen. It became nothing more than an inconsequential pile of ash once the ninja herbalist met his end in the Spring at Sayid’s hands.
• “You’re the best liar I ever met.” Justification for sending Sawyer on a trip to Hydra Island to do some recon. (I assume you all figured out the episode’s title, “Recon,” can be adjusted to easily fit Sawyer, yes? Just add a hyphen.)

9:14pm – So Locke/Esau wants to fly Ajira 316 off Hydra Island to make their escape. I seem to remember 316, while it did land, took quite a bit of damage during the unscheduled stop — hard to believe it’s still skyworthy.

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