Season
3, Episodes 7 and 8- “Not in Portland” and “Flashes Before Your Eyes”
Summary:
Juliet
takes care of her cancer-stricken sister Rachel by stealing fertility drugs
from the hospital of her ex-husband Edmund. Juliet meets Richard Alpert who
tries to recruit her to Mittelos Bioscience, and she ultimately agrees when she
learns Rachel is pregnant but then Edmund is hit by a bus. Richard Alpert and
Ethan Rom convince her to join them. Kate and Sawyer escape from the cages but
are pursued by Pickett and receive help from Alex. She promises to give them a
boat if they help free Karl, who is being brainwashed in Room 23. Ben starts to
wake up and orders them to be let go but Pickett disobeys. Juliet kills him,
and lets Kate, Sawyer, and Karl ride away in a canoe but Alex is forced to
stay. After Kate confirms their safety, Jack fixes up Ben. Juliet tells Jack
she wanted Ben saved so she could finally be free to go home.
Charlie
and Hurley learn Eko is dead. Desmond rushes off into the ocean to save a
drowning Claire, prompting Hurley to claim he can see the future. While getting
drunk, Charlie asks how Desmond could see the future, and we see what happened
to him after he turned the failsafe: appearing in his London apartment with
Penny from years earlier. Various sounds and phrases from the island trigger
déjà vu with him. He goes to Charles Widmore to ask to marry Penny, but is
refused, and encounters a younger Charlie on the street. Desmond asks his
friend about time travel and goes to pick out an engagement ring from Ms.
Hawking. After asking to buy a ring, Hawking tells him he’s not supposed to,
and proceeds to narrate his future actions that take him to the island and the
failsafe switch. He soon decides to leave Penny, and at a bar is knocked
unconscious, and wakes up naked after the hatch implosion. Desmond tells
Charlie he has been seeing flashes of Charlie dying and has been trying to save
him. “No matter what I try to do…you’re gonna die, Charlie.”
Review:
It’s nice that we get this Juliet
episode so early, to see her as vulnerable and almost as much a victim by the
Others as Jack’s group. Richard debuts here, though we don’t realize his
significance until later. This is also the first time I have seen Robin Weigert
since watching her amazing turn as Calamity Jane on “Deadwood”, so it’s a
little weird seeing her as a normal, well-adjusted, modern human. And I will
never turn down a guest spot by the great Zeljko Ivanek, here playing the dastardly
Edmund Burke. Getting randomly hit by a car/bus is a common trope, but here it
happens quick enough that you don’t see it coming, which is nice. As far as I
can recall, this is the first time we learn that the Others are not solely
native inhabitants, but have actually recruited people from the mainland.
In addition to a character whose
backstory has not been exhausted to the point of annoyance, the pace of “Not in
Portland” is quicker than the initial pod of episodes. People are running and
shooting, and Jack’s commitment to “do no harm” is tested. With the killing of
Pickett, and her expressed desire to go home, it opens up Juliet to being
easily accepted as a misfit and a turncoat in the middle of the season. There’s
not much more to analyze, as it’s mostly an action piece, but it’s just enough
to not make the lack of Beach survivors a drag.
When “Flashes Before Your Eyes” first
debuted, I was a little lukewarm on it, since an episode that is 85% off-island
did not seem exciting to me. Over time, I came to appreciate what it is, and
now find it a beautiful Desmond episode. To start, the campfire drinking with
Des, Hurley, and Charlie is a fun prelude to their camp-out in “Catch-22”. It’s
a little too convenient that the universe starts trying to kill Charlie only
RIGHT after Desmond gets his powers. But it’s a ballsy move to forecast the
death of a major character about fourteen episodes before it happens. They had
rehabilitated Charlie just enough from his “Fire + Water” low point to make
this news devastating, and the dynamic that builds between the two men is an
interesting relationship that unfortunately could not go further.
Desmond indeed travels back in time to
1996, having just vague memories of his time on the island. I like the usage of
MacCutcheon Whiskey as a proxy object for Desmond’s social standing, and having
him drink it on the island is yet another contribution to the theme of “nothing
in our past matters anymore; we get to start over”. All of the time-correction
stuff with Ms. Hawking can be a little confusing (especially looking back,
having learned what we know about her) but they do a decent job of keeping it
grounded and understandable for the average person. Her example of the
Red-Shoes Man helps illustrate what will happen to Charlie if Des keeps saving
him. And she provides him a path to doing something “great”, which Widmore
believes cannot and will not happen. When it comes down to it, any time-travel
loopiness can be shrugged off because he is such a compelling character with a
great story.
Connecting the Dots:
“Mittelos” is an anagram for “lost
time”. A hint of the island’s weird time bubble that is explored more in season
four.
The Room 23 video includes the phrase,
“We are the cause of our own suffering”, which is a major theme of the show.
Many of the castaways can trace their current misfortune back to something they
did in the past, and thus need to untangle on the island.
Another phrase in the video: “Only fools
are enslaved by time and space” can be rearranged to say, “Bones of lost Nadlers
may lay deep in cave”. Bernard and Rose’s last name is Nadler. This seems like
a heavy hint that they could have/would have been revealed as Adam and Eve at
some point, possibly by being stuck in the past while time-skipping? It just
seems like such a specific anagram to be a coincidence. And that would have
been much more satisfying than what we actually got.
“Room 23” was the room that DHARMA put
the hostile in after interrogating them, to brainwash and apparently forget the
event. Walt was put in here by Ben, as seen in the webisodes.
Tom says they haven’t been able to leave
the island since the sky turned purple. Yet we see in “Meet Kevin Johnson” that
he visited Michael on the mainland. Grrr…
I am not sure it is possible to figure
out how Eloise Hawking knew about Desmond’s journey, or even the fate of Red
Shoes Man. The only way it could work is if Desmond told that information to
Faraday and his journal was then picked up and read by young Eloise. This might
just be one of the muddied things about the show that we have to let go of.
Ranking:
1.
The Cost of
Living (8.5/10)
2.
Flashes Before
Your Eyes (8.5/10) (The first truly experimental episode that expands the
mythology of the universe while keeping the heart of Desmond’s character
alive.)
3.
Not in Portland
(7/10) (Although it’s solely Hydra Island again, the quicker pace keeps it alive,
and Juliet’s backstory is intriguing.)
4.
Further
Instructions (7/10)
5.
The Glass
Ballerina (7/10)
6.
Every Man for
Himself (6.5/10)
7.
A Tale of Two
Cities (6.5/10)
8.
I Do (4/10)
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