Lost Episode Review 4.04: "Eggtown"

Quote: "Hello, Aaron."

I'm back! This week's review should be up on Friday too. In case you missed it, I put up some initial thoughts on "Eggtown" in my previous post.

By the way, I've managed to somehow avoid reading it, but Doc Jensen at EW has the scoop on what's going to happen the rest of this season. I'm really digging at being surprised so I want no part of it, but I thought I'd point those interested in the right direction.

Onto the questions!

1. So what the heck happened to Claire?

Claire obviously wouldn't have willingly given up Aaron unless she was dying. So it seems to me that there are only a two possibilities here:

1) She's dead
2) Aaron was stolen from her and she was stranded on the island

Either way, I guess it kinda sucks to be Claire.

One also wonders why Jack didn't want to see Aaron? Did he know Claire was his half-sister? Does Aaron remind him of something ominously unpleasant? Does he feel uncomfortable about Kate raising Aaron in general?

But the bottom line here is that Claire is definitely NOT one of the Oceanic 6.

2. So was Desmond's vision wrong?

So how can we reconcile Desmond's vision with Kate having Aaron? Well, maybe Claire (and Aaron) do leave the island in the helicopter and maybe something really awful happens to them afterwards (or even during the flight - i.e. "Look Claire, it's a dolphin!" "Ahhhhhhhh!").

But there's also the possibility that Desmond lied to Charlie to get him to make the dive to the Looking Glass (and make his sacrifice). Hopefully we'll find a bit more about that out this week - in the preview, it looked like Desmond was back on the on island since he was angrily confronting Daniel. Maybe it is a lot harder to leave than they initially thought.

3. What was up with Daniel's memory game?

I guess Daniel's freaky behavior wasn't simply the result of being a scientist, eh? :)

Daniel seems to have memory problems which is probably at least partially his motivation to stay on the island since he (and Charlotte) seem to think it will cure him. So far, Charlotte and Daniel also seem to know a lot more about the island than Miles and Frank.

4. So what do we now know about the story the Oceanic 6 gave to the world?

Flight 815 crashed into the water near a small island in the South Pacific. Eight people survived the crash. Kate was hero, helping people out of the water. Six people made it off the island alive and Aaron is Kate's son.

So who were the other two people who survived the crash other than the Oceanic 6? And, perhaps more importantly, what happened to the other two? I guess my money now is on Sun (ominous foreboding this episode) and, maybe, Locke? Fumiko, my Lostphile labmate, has been pushing the Locke angle to me and I'm starting to think she might be right. Yeah, he'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming, but think about this possible scenario:

Let's say the rest of the Losties got mad at Locke, forced him to leave the island and accused him of causing the death of at least one of the other survivors. So now he's off the island, paralyzed again AND in prison, dying to get back.

So in the future, not only will the Oceanic 6 have to get around Kate's state arrest to return to the island, they'd also have to break Locke out of prison. Now that's would be fun.

5. So now what's the timeline of the Flashforwards so far?

In the credits, the young lad playing Aaron was credited as simply "Two-Year-Old Boy" to preserve the surprise. But if Aaron is two, that means Kate's flashback took place sometime after November 2006 (Aaron was born November 2004). Remember that Kate's mom got sick well before the plane crash, so when she said to Kate that the doctors had given her six months to live for the past four years, that likely started way back when Kate visited her mom in the hospital.

Now Jack's flashforward took place on or about April 5, 2007, the date of the infamous newspaper clipping. Thus Kate's trial (and Jack's meeting with Hurley) both took place sometime between November and then.

Sayid's flashforward, on the other hand, we have no reference for. But assuming the Oceanic 6 get off the island in the near future (say January 2005), it would make it certainly plausible that he could have comfortably slid into his assassin role over the course of two plus years, including completing his job in Berlin.

But here's a wrinkle: While it's still unclear, Kate and Jack's story (and Kate's mom's reaction) seems to suggest they've told people that Aaron really is Kate's biological son, not Kate's adopted son. But that really doesn't make much sense, does it? Kate wasn't pregnant on the plane (and I assume she had a least one medical exam after going into custody) and even if it takes the Oceanic 6 another month to get off the island that would still only have had them stranded for four months.

Since Aaron would be at least two months old at the time of rescue, I really don't see how Kate could have convinced people Aaron was her biological son unless they go off the island much, much later than January 2005. We'll see...

Other Tidbits:

* The book Locke chose for Ben was VALIS, by Philip K. Dick, the author of A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel that was the basis for Blade Runner.

VALIS stands for "Vast Active Living Intelligence System" - a kind of artificial "God" that's part of a satellite network. I've never read the book, nor the other two in Dick's trilogy. But I wonder if Sawyer will be picking it up anytime soon. :)

* Again, I thought Miles' extortion plot was pretty lame. But it is somewhat interesting because, given the deleted scene from 'The Economist," while it does seem that he has actual powers that would be useful on the island, the only real reason his character seems to be there is because he's a hired (mind) gun. This is in contrast to Daniel and Charlotte who both seem to really, really want to be on the island itself. Frank's motivation for joining the foursome, aside from perhaps guilt over the death of his pilot friend, is also kinda vague at this point.

* I did, however, think Evangeline Lilly looked really, really good this episode. And it was her strongest episode in a while.

* I was surprised Sun wanted to go back to Korea to raise her baby, given it would likely mean a return to life under her domineering Mafia father.

* Does anyone know what L.A. (or Hawaii) courtrooms really look like? Did anyone else think Kate's looked kinda odd - like a makeshift room set up in a library or something?

* "You just totally Scooby-Doo'd me, didn't you?" Heh. Hurley continues to be my favorite character this season.

* Sawyer called Hurley "Montezuma" and Miles "Bruce Lee"

* Interesting that, in his game with Sawyer, Locke was playing the black pieces. Foreboding, perhaps?

Summary: I have to admit that the ending salvaged a lot of this episode for me. I'll give the episode itself a 2 - but the last five seconds get a perfect 5.