LOST Revisited- Season 2, Episodes 17 and 18

Season 2, Episodes 17 and 18- “Lockdown” and “Dave”

Summary:

Locke hears that his father is dead and he and Helen attend his funeral, but Cooper shows up some days later. He pays Locke for the kidney con but two gangsters question him about Cooper and a con he pulled on them. As Cooper leaves, Helen angrily confronts them but rejects Locke’s marriage proposal for lying to her. Sayid’s group finds Henry’s balloon. Jack and Sawyer engage in a card game on the beach. A lockdown occurs in the hatch and Locke is trapped from the button with thick steel doors. He lets Henry out to help him lift the doors enough to stick a toolbox under but when Locke tries to wiggle under it, the door falls a little and imbeds into his legs. He tells Henry to input the code but when it hits 0, the lights go off and a glow-in-the-dark map is visible on the door. Then everything returns to normal and Henry is still present. Jack and Kate find a parachute and pallet of food in the woods, just as Sayid’s group returns. They corner Henry and tell him they dug up the grave and found a man inside, with the I.D. showing him as Henry Gale.

Flashbacks show Hurley in the mental institution hanging out with his friend Dave, who wants to sneak out with him and eat. Dr. Brooks reveals Dave is imaginary. Hurley ashamedly reveals his food stash to Libby and they destroy it. They then learn of the pallet drop which contained piles of new food. Jack tends to Locke’s injured legs, and Sayid confronts “Henry” with his story. Charlie helps Eko build a structure. Henry tells Locke he never entered the code. Hurley keeps seeing visions of Dave on the island, who implies this is all a hallucination from the hospital. He urges Hurley to jump off a cliff in order to wake up but Libby talks him out of it. There is a quick flashback that shows her as a patient in Hurley’s hospital.

Review:

You know, I’m slightly disappointed with “Lockdown”. I remember thinking it was a 9 out of 10 originally, but once the excitement of the blast door map wears off, it’s kind of just average. To be sure, the map is fun, but only because of how much we dissected it afterwards. It’s incomprehensible in the episode, and as such its treasure trove of info cannot be factored into the episode’s overall standing. Locke’s faith in the hatch has led him this far, but now he must put faith in “Henry Gale”, which is an important development for him. Unfortunately, after a great debut season, Locke’s flashbacks continue to fizzle, as the only significant development is that Helen leaves him, which we knew about already. Papa Cooper screws him over, which, again, we already knew. Not terribly captivating.

The card game on the beach had the potential to be Tree Frog 2.0, but it’s saved for having the purpose of getting the medicine back from Sawyer. It’s amusing at least, and furthers the rivalry. The pallet drop was necessary to resupply the food before the hatch implodes but it also raised important questions. Who knows about the island? Do they know we’re here? Was this supply drop for us or was it a coincidence? Before we can ponder this much further, Sayid’s group returns and gives us the real Henry Gale’s ID, just as we are possibly warming up to the guy. That’s an all-time great cliffhanger. Definitely makes up for the fact that Locke spends half the episode lying immobile on the ground.

Hurley’s food stash has been a subtle story over season 2, and it comes to a boil in “Dave” when a pallet of food literally drops in from the sky. Dave, as a hallucination, represents Hugo’s depression and food desires, having appeared to him at his lowest point in life (the institution) and now again on the island when his over-eating rears itself again. This may not have been immediately clear back in 2006, but now that we have a lock on this phenomenon, it works for me. Dave’s urging of Hurley to jump off the cliff in order to “wake up” at the hospital plays more as Hurley trying to convince himself to commit suicide. That might have went under the radar the first time you watched it because you were too busy wondering if “It’s all in Hurley’s head” was the real answer to the show – which it’s not.

Looking at Hurley’s overall character arc, this might be the big turning point. His weight paranoia and his self-loathing bubble to the surface, only to simmer back down once Libby consoles and kisses him. This is now his tabula rasa. That cliff-edge scene also works for us, the audience, because we now know Libby had her own similar issues; and her insistence that he isn’t crazy means so much more because we know that she (presumably) had a similar battle with herself at some point prior and is as much confirming sanity for herself as she is for Hurley. The sub-plots don’t have a whole lot of substance to them other than Ben trying once again to manipulate Locke. I’ll give extra points for the amusing Hurley/Sawyer fight, where Sawyer keeps being dragged under the tarp.

Connecting the Dots:

Henry Gale’s balloon has the Widmore logo on it, suggesting he may have been another attempt by Widmore to locate the island.

Locke inspects the new house for Nadia Jazeem. It serves no narrative purpose but it lets us know where Nadia is and what she’s doing since it’s a while before she’s brought back in with Sayid.

Jacks reveals he visited Phuket, Thailand. This is one instance of the show eventually following up on something it had no need to follow up on.

The pallet drops are seen to be on an automated schedule by two DHARMA workers who know nothing of what happens on the island.

On Gale’s $20 bill, he mentions building a signal fire. As I mentioned several posts back, there was a weird theory going around that he was responsible for the black smoke in “Exodus”. I doubt he would have been alive on the island all that time concurrently with the 815ers, plus it makes more sense for the smoke to be the result of either Danielle or the Others.

In the institution, Leonard’s number-repeating puts a harder emphasis on EIGHT, which is also Hurley’s candidate number.

In the official encyclopedia, someone wrote that Dave was an apparition of the Man in Black, while Lindelof has gone on record saying he was just in Hurley’s head. I’ll defer to the producer on this one, although it would make sense for MIB to want to urge Hurley to kill himself. But then…why would he jump into the water first, especially since he is weakened by water? Yeah, it’s a better episode if it’s Hurley’s own neuroses coming out.

Libby’s history in the institution never made itself known in the show, but we did get confirmation somewhere that she was institutionalized when her husband David died.

The blast door map contains numerous annotations, some of which worked their way into the show, others which did not. Here is a brief rundown on the notable bits:

The Flame, The Hydra, The Pearl, The Tempest, The Orchid, The Looking Glass, and Magnus Hanso (and his relation to the Black Rock) are all described or referenced before they appear in the show. Further, it mentions studying polar bears for their reactions to severe climate change, which fits with Valenzetti’s doomsday scenario.

A location for flora/fauna studies is mentioned but dismissed as having low-relevance to Valenzetti Equation. This likely refers to the Orchid, which contained a greenhouse, but was in fact a ruse to cover for potential time travel properties.

There are references to underground, interconnected tunnels between stations. While we don’t see these tunnels used for the actual stations, there are a couple instances in the future where tunnels are used, mainly in connection with the Temple.

References to “Cerberus vents” have been interpreted as being monster-related.

A station for Meteorology was apparently proposed. It’s status is unknown.

Ranking:

1.      The 23^rd Psalm (10/10)

2.      One of Them (8.5/10)

3.      The Other 48 Days (8.5/10)

4.      The Whole Truth (7.5/10)

5.      The Long Con (7.5/10)

6.      Maternity Leave (7.5/10)

7.      Orientation (7.5/10)

8.      Dave (7.5/10) (This one gets better once you realize what they are actually doing. Not as evident on the first go-around.)

9.      Man of Science, Man of Faith (7.5/10)

10.  Lockdown (7/10) (The map was a source for great theorizing, but otherwise this was pretty standard.)

11.  The Hunting Party (7/10)

12.  …And Found (6.5/10)

13.  Abandoned (6.5/10)

14.  What Kate Did (6.5/10)

15.  Collision (6.5/10)

16.  Everybody Hates Hugo (6.5/10)

17.  Adrift (5/10)

18.  Fire + Water (4/10)

Next time: Bernard gets bossy, and my jaw collapses to the floor.