Season
2, Episode 23- “Live Together, Die Alone”
Summary:
Desmond
is discovered on the sailboat, claiming he was unable to sail outside of the
island’s sphere. Sayid tells Jack he plans to sail around to where the Others’
village is to scout the area in case Michael is lying to them, and he is joined
by Sun and Jin. Along the way, they discover the four-toed foot of a large
statue along the shore. Sayid sneaks into the Others’ hut village but finds it
abandoned. Michaels’ group heads into the jungle and he grows suspicious about
what Jack knows about the plan. After a brief shootout with the Others, Jack
forces Michael to admit the truth. They come across the dumping ground for the
Pearl’s journals, and Sayid’s smoke signal indicates they are being led in the
wrong direction. They are then captured by the Others. Locke tries to convince
Eko to stop inserting the numbers, and persuades Desmond to trigger a lockdown,
trapping Eko out of the computer room. Eko enlists Charlie to grab some
dynamite to blow open the blast doors.
In
flashback, Desmond is released from military prison and greeted by Charles
Widmore, his girlfriend’s father, who demands he not see his daughter Penny
anymore. Desmond enters a Widmore-sponsored sailing race around the world in
order to win her back, and encounters Libby at a coffee shop who gives him a
boat. A storm wrecks the boat on the island and he is rescued by Kelvin Inman
who explains the hatch to him. He explains that the station is building up
magnetic energy and the button releases it, and there is a failsafe below the
room that can blast the whole thing up in a suicide mission. One day he follows
Kelvin outside to find him working on the boat, and without the Hazmat suit. The
two get into a fight and Kelvin is killed. Desmond rushes back to the hatch as
the timer runs out and everything metal in the hatch goes crazy. Several days
later, he discovers a note from Penny in his book and breaks down, only to hear
Locke pounding on the hatch above him.
Back
in the present, the Others take Michael’s group to the dock and Henry sails up
in the boat from “Exodus”. Eko sets off the dynamite but fails to break the
door. Desmond looks at the printouts from the Pearl and realizes his System
Failure crashed Flight 815, and Locke stops him from inserting the numbers by
destroying the computer. The station begins going haywire again and Desmond
grabs the failsafe key. Eko approaches Locke, who tells him, “I was wrong.”
Desmond turns the key, with the three of them still in the Swan and a massive
light and sonic sound engulfs the island, affecting every character. Henry
tells Michael the bearing to leave the island, and gives him Walt and the boat
and they sail away. Hurley is freed and told to inform the camp not to go
looking for the Others. Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are heading “home” with Henry. Back
at camp, Charlie and Claire kiss. In the outside world, two men in an arctic
station find that an electromagnetic phenomenon was detected and they call to break
the news to Penny Widmore.
Review:
Let’s start with the flashback. This
does a great job of giving Desmond an emotional hook, maybe the best job of any
debut flashback. The quiet ambition to win back Penny’s love is not tainted by
present-day Crazy Drunk Desmond, and indeed they even seem like completely
different people. But that’s not a criticism. The hatch can mess with people’s
minds, as it did to Locke, who at the moment is quite a far cry from the Locke
of season one. Desmond’s need to prove his worth to Widmore is
explored more in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” but it gets started here. We
receive yet another tease of Libby’s past life, and although this show is built
on intersections of fate and cosmic coincidences, Desmond just happening to
receive his boat from Libby is one of the few that just seems a little empty to
me. I’d like it more if he had, for example, responded to a request looking to
sell the boat or in some way took a more active role in meeting her as opposed
to just bumping into her in a coffee shop.
I really enjoy the scenes with Kelvin.
He’s an interesting character who deserved more appearances, and the two work
well together. They use these sequences to clean up a few loose ends of the
hatch but there’s a current of tension running through it, so it doesn’t feel
like it is just checking boxes. When Desmond contemplates suicide and trashes
the station before Locke pounds on the door, it’s the bridge between the two
Desmonds. One of Henry Ian Cusick’s high-water moments can be found here. The
Penny story was only just displayed for us, but it’s already got emotional heft
thanks to Cusick’s performance. He is trapped in an inescapable situation –
both in this DHARMA station and within the “snow globe” of the island.
If I am to nitpick the A-Story just a
little bit, I would say that it doesn’t live up to its full potential because
the gang is just captured and then held, and there’s not much of a conflict.
I’d like to see more of a fight put up. The blowback from Michael’s revelation
was also a bit more tepid than you would think, considering he murdered
Hurley’s girlfriend. This is the first we see of Ben as the cool, capable
leader – a stark contrast to the sniveling prisoner we’d gotten up to this
point. Sun/Jin/Sayid’s little adventure doesn’t amount to much other than to
glimpse the statue and to set up the fight for the boat next season. But it
works.
The three-way battle of philosophies in
the Swan is where the meat of the episode really is, and seeing Locke, Desmond,
and Eko battle it out with their varying degrees of loopiness is fun. Once we
realize that Desmond crashed the plane, and that the button does indeed do
something, it’s a wild ride to the climax where Des turns the key. The
discharge scene is one of those classic moments that blows your mind when you
first see it, and the darting around to various points on the island was cool,
and is a tactic they would employ again when the donkey wheel is turned. Glad
that Locke said “I was wrong”, so we could get over his nihilist phase before
the summer break. The Penny stuff is, of course, a good note to go out on but
is still on the lesser end of season-ending cliffhangers.
Connecting the Dots:
Widmore sponsors the boat race, which we
can now presume may have been a way to help locate the island again.
Libby mentions her husband died, and
it’s later confirmed externally that this is why she went crazy and was put in
the psych ward. No other details about this, unfortunately. It’s also not made
explicitly clear if this coffee scene occurs before or after her stint in the
hospital. I’m inclined to say after, as she seems more put-together.
The statue is the remains of Tawaret, an
Egyptian goddess of fertility. More on that later when we see it for real.
The “S.R.” named in the Pearl journal is
Stuart Radzinsky.
The Hurley Bird was a genetically
modified animal from DHARMA. Why anyone thought this is a real mystery is
beyond me, but there we have it.
The empty hatch door that Sayid finds is
never given a real backstory. Either it’s a decoy created by the Others to make
them appear to have more resources than they actually do, or it was an
abandoned station that DHARMA never got to (Meteorology was mentioned), or it
could just be a random storage shed. Option two is the most interesting.
Ranking:
1.
Live Together,
Die Alone (10/10) (While more plot-focused than “Exodus”, it is buoyed by Henry
Ian Cusick’s terrific Desmond story. Lots of revelations and new twists to
explore.)
2.
The 23rd
Psalm (10/10)
3.
One of Them
(8.5/10)
4.
? (8.5/10)
5.
The Other 48 Days
(8.5/10)
6.
The Whole Truth
(7.5/10)
7.
The Long Con
(7.5/10)
8.
Three Minutes
(7.5/10)
9.
Two for the Road
(7.5/10)
10. Maternity Leave (7.5/10)
11. Orientation (7.5/10)
12. Dave (7.5/10)
13. S.O.S. (7.5/10)
14. Man of Science, Man of Faith (7.5/10)
15. Lockdown (7/10)
16. The Hunting Party (7/10)
17. …And Found (6.5/10)
18. Abandoned (6.5/10)
19. What Kate Did (6.5/10)
20. Collision (6.5/10)
21. Everybody Hates Hugo (6.5/10)
22. Adrift (5/10)
23. Fire + Water (4/10)
Season 2 Average: 7.326
Full Ranking of Seasons 1 and 2:
1.
Live Together,
Die Alone (10/10)
2.
Exodus, part 2
(10/10)
3.
The 23rd
Psalm (10/10)
4.
Deus Ex Machina
(9.5/10)
5.
Pilot, part 1
(9/10)
6.
Numbers (8.5/10)
7.
Exodus, part 1
(8.5/10)
8.
One of Them
(8.5/10)
9.
? (8.5/10)
10. The Other 48 Days (8.5/10)
11. Solitary (8.5/10)
12. Outlaws (8/10)
13. Walkabout (8/10)
14. Pilot, part 2 (8/10)
15. White Rabbit (8/10)
16. The Whole Truth (7.5/10)
17. …In Translation (7.5/10)
18. The Long Con (7.5/10)
19. Three Minutes (7.5/10)
20. Two for the Road (7.5/10)
21. Do No Harm (7.5/10)
22. Maternity Leave (7.5/10)
23. Homecoming (7.5/10)
24. Orientation (7.5/10)
25. Raised by Another (7.5/10)
26. Dave (7.5/10)
27. S.O.S. (7.5/10)
28. Man of Science, Man of Faith (7.5/10)
29. Lockdown (7/10)
30. Tabula Rasa (7/10)
31. The Moth (7/10)
32. The Hunting Party (7/10)
33. Special (7/10)
34. Hearts and Minds (7/10)
35. All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues (6.5/10)
36. …And Found (6.5/10)
37. Abandoned (6.5/10)
38. What Kate Did (6.5/10)
39. The Greater Good (6.5/10)
40. Confidence Man (6.5/10)
41. Collision (6.5/10)
42. Everybody Hates Hugo (6.5/10)
43. House of the Rising Sun (6/10)
44. Born to Run (5.5/10)
45. Adrift (5/10)
46. Whatever the Case May Be (4.5/10)
47. Fire + Water (4/10)
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