5.3 "Jughead"
A lot of bombs were dropped during the course of this episode. Let’s enumerate them, shall we?
Bomb #1: Penny is pregnant! Or rather… was pregnant. She and Desmond are now the proud parents of Charlie (...presumably named after Charlie), who by my count is approximately 3 years minus 9 months old and cute as a button. They’re living on a yacht and hiding from Penny’s father, which is going to be a real cup of tea while Desmond is lurking around Britain in a baseball cap and sunglasses searching for Faraday’s mother.
Bomb #2: Oxford has no record of a Faraday having ever worked there. But after snooping around the physics department, which involves breaking down a door inconspicuously labeled with warnings like ‘danger,’ ‘fumigation’ and ‘do not enter’ (which, you know, is basically the same as saying ‘Faraday used to conduct his time-traveling rat experiments here, please explore!’), Desmond learns why, and it has something to do with Theresa Spencer.
Bomb #3: Theresa Spencer. All we know is that she’s bedridden, frequently comatose, and that Faraday is probably at least partially responsible for her condition, the nature of which is still unclear at this point—although my bet’s on an experiment gone awry, maybe with a pinch of thwarted love thrown in as well. Sounds like girly girl could stand a trip to a certain island with mysterious healing powers.
Bomb #4: Faraday’s benefactor, the man who funded his research and is now paying for all of Theresa Spencer’s medical expenses, is none other than Charles Widmore (who, by the way, knows where Faraday’s mother is). So what connection, then, does Penny’s nefarious pop have with Faraday’s boat pals Charlotte and Miles?
Bomb #5: An actual bomb, otherwise known as ‘Jughead.’ Back in the 1950s, the United States military used the island to test the H-bomb—or at least attempted to, before they got entangled with the Others and then ended up six feet under. (We would have known better than to mess with those people.) Also, apparently they can speak Latin. I guess the island revives dead languages as well.
Bomb #6: Charles Widmore has been on the island before, either posing as an Other among Richard Alpert’s people or… he actually was one of them at some point in time. That would certainly help to explain (except not really) why he is so desperate to find the island—again. I’m pretty sure I can’t wait for Island Widmore to meet Dharma Ben. Now that’s what I call destiny.
Bomb #7: Right before the inconveniently timed flash of white light, Locke is trying to convince Alpert that he’s from the future, first by showing him the compass Alpert gave him in last week’s premiere, and then by telling the Other to visit him after he is born in two years. Remember back in Season 4, Episode 11, when some mystifying ageless guy visited a young Locke and got pissed when the boy picked a pocketknife out of an assortment of small objects and claimed that it belonged to him? (Oh for goodness sake, refresh your memory.) Yeah. Wowza.
*Ponder ponder*
As if us Losties didn’t already have enough to juggle in our noggins, we are now dealing with two separate worlds, both in time and in space: that of the island, progressing in real-time (albeit in a nonlinear fashion) immediately following the Orchid incident, and that of the United States/wherever Desmond and Penny’s yacht is sailing three years into the future. My question is, are these two worlds actually existing concurrently? Why else would Faraday’s hatch-banging antics to deliver a message to Desmond (present time) result in a memory suddenly un-repressing itself in Desmond’s dream three years later? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that it’s just an overlooked element of convenient storytelling. But I do know better, thus… I really don’t know anything at all.
Considering Charles Widmore’s power and clout, as he has so insidiously demonstrated in the past (such as my personal favorite from last week’s two-hour bonanza, when he exercised some airport security muscle to arrange a clandestine meeting with Sun—which accomplished absolutely nothing, by the way), I’m surprised he hasn’t tried harder to locate his daughter. I mean, how inconspicuous can a yacht large enough for a family of three be? Even if he thinks that not finding her is the best way to keep her safe (Ben can be pretty scary when he wants to be), it’s a very un-Widmorean method of operating. I’m almost disappointed.
So, about Miles’ sixth sense. Having palled around the island long enough, it’s pretty safe to say that our favorite hunk of rock is capable of some pretty strange mojo. Apart from re-innervating spinal cords, curing cancer, and bringing the dead back to psychologically harass the living, I think it might have turned Miles into some kind of ghost whisperer, but without the Jennifer Love Hewitt. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he, like Faraday in his hard hat, has been on the island before.
Does anyone else except Faraday remain largely apathetic about the as-yet-undisclosed condition that made Charlotte’s nose erupt like a bloody geyser and caused her to collapse? Or am I just heartless?
Sound bites
- Faraday, after Miles recounts what happened to the bodies belonging to the fresh graves they’re walking on: “Did they happen to mention what year it is?”
- Jones (aka Widmore), scoffing at Alpert’s concern that Locke may have followed him to their camp: “Follow me? Their leader is some sodding old man. What, you think he can track me? You think he knows this island better than I do?”
- Alpert in response to Locke’s demanding to know how to get off the island: “That’s very privileged information. Why would I share that with you?”
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