Season
3, Episodes 5 and 6- “The Cost of Living” and “I Do”
Summary:
In
flashback, Eko returns to his village after the smugglers’ plane leaves without
him and tells Amina and Daniel he will take Yemi’s place. Some warlords arrive,
demanding vaccines to sell. Cornered by them in the church, Eko slaughters
them, but is chided by Amina for desecrating a church. On the island, Yemi
appears in Eko’s tent asking him to confess, prompting him to stumble into the
jungle towards the plane above the Pearl station. Along the way he is taunted
by the smoke monster and its apparitions of his past. Hoping to use the Pearl’s
monitoring system to find their captive friends, Locke, Sayid, Desmond, Nikki,
and Paulo head towards the Pearl as well, and link up with Eko. Before
witnessing Colleen’s funeral, Jack confronts Ben with the knowledge about his
spinal tumor he saw on X-Rays. Juliet urges Jack to do the surgery and save Ben
but secretly asks him to kill Ben as an “accident”. Locke’s group enters the
Pearl and finds a video connection to another station with a man wearing an
eyepatch. Yemi (soon confirmed to be the smoke monster) demands Eko confess his
sins but he claims he has not sinned and has acted in the protection of others.
Eko is then thrashed by the monster. The others arrive in time to hear his
dying words: “You’re next.”
Kate
(under the guise of “Monica”) gets married to police officer Kevin. She calls
the marshal asking to be off the hook, but eventually decides she can’t live a
normal life, and leaves him. Eko is
buried, and Locke looks to his prayer stick for guidance. Jack is opposed to
saving Ben, but Kate informs him they’ll kill Sawyer if he doesn’t. She climbs into Sawyer’s cage and they have
sex. Jack sneaks over to the security console and sees them on TV, then informs
Ben he will do the surgery if he is allowed to leave the island. Jack and
Juliet begin to operate on Ben, but Jack makes an incision in the kidney and
demands to speak to Kate or else Ben dies. Pickett heads out to execute Sawyer
but is forced to hand his walkie to Kate, and Jack tells her to run.
Review:
At long last, we get some semblance of a
plot on Hydra Island, as Ben’s malady comes to light and Jack is the only one
who can help. It probably took a little too long to get here. But already
another twist is thrown in as Juliet subverts her boss and asks Jack to kill
him. Finally we are seeing some variance in the Others’ machine, which suggests
a deeper story than we were led to believe. I do think it’s a little too cutesy
for Juliet to give her secret orders under the cover of a movie. If I were Ben,
I’d be suspicious immediately. That could have been worked out better. Also
it’s total bullshit what Ben said about Juliet looking like Sarah as a means to
control Jack. They’re both blonde, but that’s it. Plus we never actually
witness anything that suggests Jack is reminded of Sarah when interacting with
her. I’ll brush it under the rug if it means we can finally move forward with
this story. Our brief return to the Pearl station gives us a hint of “Patchy”,
and a new goalpost to aim for.
I’m not sure why Eko accepted his role
as priest so easily and so soon after the Beechcraft took off; they didn’t give
that enough explanation. But his masquerade as a man of the cloth is simply
that – a mask. He slaughters the warlords in the church and even if it’s
because they were horrible people, he still desecrates a place of worship and
loses the trust of Amina and Daniel. The monster-assisted apparitions of Daniel
and the warlords haunt him in the jungle, reminding Eko that it’s all a façade
and that he’s a violent person at heart. When he refuses to repent, Smokey
receives confirmation that his theory on men (“they come, they fight, they
destroy, they corrupt”) is true, and he takes out a man who is happy to have
been a destroyer.
This is the first full Smokey appearance
since “The 23rd Psalm” and the first time we see him actually attack
openly. It’s a violent sequence that is frustrating in that we lose an amazing
character, but illuminating because it now shows the monster as a
multi-dimensional creature that appears to have motives beyond absolute
destruction. The revelation of being able to transform into deceased characters
is huge. And while Boone’s and Shannon’s deaths were complete accidents, this
one is anchored by a character choice (to not pray for forgiveness) and is thus
weightier by comparison. I desperately wish Eko was around for the rest of the
show, but this is at least a worthy and consequential exit.
Oh boy, do I dislike “I Do”. Beyond
being one of my least favorite titles, and an utterly pointless flashback, it
once again appears to be an episode whose main purpose is to force actions that
heat up a love triangle that I have no interest in. Alex runs into the quarry,
demanding to see Karl, and refers to Sawyer as Kate’s “boyfriend” based on
pretty much nothing. Jack is tricked into watching Sawyer and Kate have sex on
the security camera, with Ben rubbing it in his face, then the whole Mexican
standoff thing at the end is all predicated on who loves whom by how much. It’s
more than a little shaky that the Others’ plan for Jack to go through with the
surgery is to tempt him out of his cell (I assume that was Juliet’s voice
telling him to try the door) and have him witness the lovemaking in the cage so
he’s antsy to leave.
And again, that flashback was just a big
ol’ casserole of nothing. Nothing new occurs, and Kate shows her terrible judgment
in marrying someone while on the run from the law. She calls Mars on the phone,
thereby risking her own safety, and then decides she can’t handle this, and
thinks it’s best to drug her husband (with death or injury not at all out of
the realm of possibility) to prevent him from being complicit. Her likability
factor here just plummeted. It’s as if they threw this story together because
they already had Kate reveal back in season one that she was married, and had
to get that out of the way so people would stop asking. Bleh. Our only foray to
the main island is to bury Eko and to gaze at his prayer stick. Not enough.
We’re nearing the end of Hydra Island but we’re not quite there yet. If you’re
watching on DVD/Netflix, you can speed on through. If you were watching it
live, like I did, you now had a several-week break. Not a great note to go out
on.
Connecting the Dots:
“Patchy” will be revealed as Mikhail in
a few episodes.
Yemi’s body is gone when Eko looks for
it. It’s made to set up the possibility that Yemi really is alive. This is also
what happened with Christian Shephard, leading me to believe Ol’ Smokey hides
the bodies in order to play up the ruse. I mean, unless he burned up in the
fire from “The 23rd Psalm” but Eko seems to be looking for the body.
The monster appears as Daniel and the
warlords, having scanned those memories from Eko’s memory. We know the warlords
are dead…but if the monster appears as him, does that mean Daniel is dead as
well? Perhaps another memory that we never got to see?
A question remains, why did Ben get his
tumor if the island supposedly cures people (even of cancer, like Rose)? The
healing aspect of the island is too erratic to really draw a certain conclusion
one way or the other.
Eko’s name appears as a candidate in the
lighthouse. This should theoretically make him immune to Smokey’s attack. So
what happened? Other than the obvious answer of writer’s error, it may have to
do with him refusing to ask for forgiveness. That seems unsatisfying because
there does not appear to be any other instances of the monster trying that with
people, and it would seem like it should be his first option. It does seem to
fit with Man in Black’s original belief that men are corrupt; Eko’s refusal to
repent for his murders just confirm to him that mankind is evil.
Eko’s “You’re next” is left open to
interpretation. Does “you” mean all of the people gathered there? Implying that
they’re all targets to die from the monster (Nikki and Paulo do indeed die
next, and Locke and Sayid much later)? Or does “you” mean Locke specifically?
And that the monster is going to try and use him for his scheme?
Kevin Callis mentions he is working on a
fugitive case in Tampa. This is also where Sawyer did a con job at some point.
Although there is never a flashback to “The Tampa Job”, I suspect they might
have worked Kevin into it had they gone that route.
Pickett: “Shephard wasn’t even on Jacob’s
list”. This is the very first mention of Jacob. The list he is referring to is
the list of people they were to abduct from camp, the “good people” and, as we
later learn, apparently the people not considered candidates for Jacob’s
position. Being dismissive of Jack, that infers that Pickett has no idea about
the candidate list, and that the Others (at least the lower-level ones) were
never really brought into the fold for Jacob’s ultimate plans.
Ranking:
1.
The Cost of
Living (8.5/10) (If a great character had to go out this early, and in this
fashion, it was as good a send-off as any.)
2.
Further
Instructions (7/10)
3.
The Glass
Ballerina (7/10)
4.
Every Man for
Himself (6.5/10)
5.
A Tale of Two
Cities (6.5/10)
6.
I Do (4/10)
(Pointless flashback, a bunch of love triangle nonsense, and very little Beach
Group to make it salvageable.)
Next time: Juliet summons a bus to do her dirty work, and Desmond wallows in his whiskey-less sorrow.
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