5x08: LaFleur

The last couple of episodes have been cause for a lot of disagreement among fans. This episode will be no difference, as a certain set of fans (namely the “Skaters”) are bound to absolutely hate it. As someone who is not particularly interested in which characters go to bed together, I thought it was a good but not great episode.

Darn you, Locke, for having the gall, the AUDACITY, to turn the donkey wheel before we had a chance to see more of the statue. The moment of the episode, and I don’t mean that as a knock on what followed.

Love the Dharma hippies down in the Pearl or some other central control room with their “special” brownies.

Apparently it has now been three years on the island, which means that my theory on how the time discrepancies between the island timeline and the Oceanic Six timeline doesn’t work anymore. It’s too late right now to think in-depth about this; with an off-week coming up, they’ll be plenty of time later for that.

We meet pregnant Amy, wife/girlfriend of Horace. What happened to Olivia? And where’s Tony Almeida?

The disappearance of Charlotte’s body makes sense, as she is now dead and shouldn’t be moving. Plus she exists on the island in the time they end up in as a little girl (which was a nice moment, although sort of creepy in a Dateline way if you get my drift).

Dan mutters over and over again, “I won’t do it”. The ensuing question is so obvious I’m not even going to type it out.

Why were the Hostiles trying to kill Amy and Paul?

Sawyer mirrors Jack throughout this episode as he concocts their own lie…”let me do the talking”, but Amy outsmarts them with earplugs to combat the sonic fence.

Horace reveals that women always give birth on the mainland, so did the pregnancy problem always exist? Amy’s successful birth leads me to believe that it was not a 100% death sentence as it later would be, but still dangerous and to be avoided when possible. This does put a damper on the theory (not mine) that the pregnancy problem was some physical manifestation of Ben’s mom fixation, or a physical result of the Purge.

Speaking of which, where is Ben in this timeline? Sawyer tells Juliet it is 1974. According to Lostpedia, Ben did not arrive until 1976 or 1977. Can you imagine what Sawyer will do when he learns of a subload including Roger and Ben Linus? Or do our people somehow facilitate their arrival?

Sawyer tells Jin to keep searching the grid for their people, but then in his heart-to-heart with Horace says that he’s over Kate. I think he’s probably just telling himself that, but it is an interesting disconnect.

Sawyer’s lie to Horace about a salvage ship searching for the Black Rock is pretty good…Horace lies that he doesn’t know about the Black Rock.

Is Widmore still on the island at this point, and if he is, how does his claim to have been the leader square with Alpert being the one coming to have a chat with Goodspeed? Again Sawyer steps in, although he’s able to get through to Alpert by telling the truth. And he earns forever brownie points apparently with Horace.

We see that Sawyer aka LaFleur is head of security; Juliet is a mechanic; Jin is a driver; Faraday is a construction worker/scientist; so what’s Miles’ job, or did I just miss it?

Who would have thought after watching the “Glass Ballerina” that eventually Sawyer and Juliet would be best pals (let alone more in the future)? His speech on the dock about not leaving him stuck with a mad scientist, a guy who talks to dead people, Jin “a helluva nice guy but not much of a conversationalist” was pretty funny.

More interesting to me than all the Kate/Sawyer/Juliet intrigue is that Sawyer and Jack look genuinely happy to see each other. It has been fun to see their relationship develop from outright hostility to grudging respect to a modicum of friendship. Of course, there’s still the girl to fight over…

It is the mythology of LOST that really makes me a fan, but as Damon and Carlton remind us, the character stories are the real heart of the show, and I’m interested in those too. However, my interest in that area does not extend to the question of who shares beds. With that being said, I think Sawyer/Juliet and Jack/Kate are better pairings. Juliet is strong enough to be firm with Sawyer and keep him in line, while Kate is just crazy enough to be a good complement to straight-laced Jack. But I don’t really care what happens there.