Season
4, Episodes 11 and 12- “Cabin Fever” and “There’s No Place Like Home, part 1”
Summary:
Through
flashbacks, we see Locke’s birth, which is witnessed by Richard Alpert. Alpert
periodically returns to his life to recruit him and determine if he is “special,”
but Locke fails or refuses to go. While Locke is recovering from his paralysis,
Matthew Abaddon suggests he go on a walkabout. The chopper returns to the freighter
and Keamy confronts Michael about giving his name to Ben. Keamy retrieves the
secondary protocol to “torch the island.” Captain Gault gives Sayid a zodiac
raft to start ferrying people to the boat. When Frank refuses to fly the
mercenaries back, Keamy kills Doctor Ray and Gault until he agrees. As they fly
over the beach, Frank tosses the SAT phone to the group below, so they can
track him. While searching for Jacob’s cabin, Locke has a dream of Horace Goodspeed
who points him in the right direction. He enters the cabin alone, and instead
of Jacob, finds Christian Shephard and Claire, who tell him the mercenaries are
on their way back. Locke asks, “How do I save the island?” He then exits and
tells Ben and Hurley, “He wants us to move the island.”
Using
the SAT phone, the beach crew hears Keamy order the chopper land near the
Orchid station. Sayid returns to the beach to start ferrying passengers, which
he entrusts to Faraday. Sun and Jin get on the raft with Aaron. Jack and Sawyer
head out to find the chopper, which Frank is handcuffed to, and Kate and Sayid
go after them. Ben uses a reflecting mirror to communicate with Richard, who
runs into Kate and Sayid. Ben tells Locke how to navigate the Orchid, as Ben
gives himself up to Keamy. Sun and Jin reunite with Michael. The engine is
fixed but the signal from a bomb set up by Keamy is interfering with the feed. We
flash-forward to the Oceanic Six arrival back home to their families. Sun uses
her settlement money to buy a share of her father’s company. Hurley continues
to be tormented by the numbers. Jack has a wake for his father and meets Carole
Littleton, who reveals Claire is his sister.
Review:
After CBS cancelled “Cane,” it freed up
Nestor Carbonell to return to “Lost”, and they brought Richard back in grand
style. He is back to being mysterious as he watches Locke from childhood and
tests to see if he is the chosen one. Seeing as it’s a hopscotch of a flashback
story, we don’t get bogged down on inane subplots, and instead see Locke’s life
as a whole. For the first time since probably season two, we start to feel that
maybe he was destined for something, and that forces beyond his knowledge lured
him to this island. Combined with the creepy Horace dream, we are now oriented
to trust Locke and what he is about to do – which, as we find out, is to move
the island. Locke, Ben, and Hurley are a good team-up, and the short candy
scene is delightful. Of the flashbacks, the one with Richard giving the tests
is the most intriguing, as I outline in the below section. But pretty much
everything is relevant.
Gault could have done more, and they
seemed to set it up as such, with the “don’t trust the captain” note earlier.
Too bad they never brought him back in some form. The “cabin fever” phenomenon exposes
itself in Keamy’s double homicide, which just knocks a couple pieces off the
board and closes (or rather opens) the Doctor Ray loop. Smart maneuvering by
Frank to drop the phone to the beach but did seriously none of the commandos
see him do it?
In a way, the beginning of “There’s No
Place like Home, part 1” is what we’ve been waiting for this entire time: the
castaways arriving home and reuniting with family. Despite happening early, it
still hits the right spot, including Kate having no one, and Sayid being roped
into the Reyes celebration. Jack’s mom could have appeared in a couple more
episodes to make that meeting a little more impactful. Hell, they should have
thrown Sarah in there too. In fact, maybe they could have done that instead of
having Carole Littleton reveal the Claire secret to Jack – or perhaps try to
have both. One is a push, one is a pull, but they both move him to want to go
back. Meanwhile, Sun’s move to buy stock in Paik Industries is the result of
months of breaking out of her submissive shell (the cocoon, as Locke might put
it), showing the “tabula rasa” power of the island.
On-island, meanwhile, we maneuver our
players into position for the final confrontation. With our Oceanic Six
scattered, and with them currently hanging out with people who we know did not
escape, we are left to wonder how the whole operation goes down. The bomb adds
a fun wrinkle to the plan, as we realize our destination is now more dangerous
than the island, and yet passengers are being ferried there. There’s not much
more to say; it’s a piece-mover and gives us a fun puzzle to solve in the
finale.
Connecting the Dots:
So Horace built the cabin, presumably
for Amy and Ethan. That doesn’t bring us any closer to finding out why it moves
around, however.
Ben says the purge was not his decision,
and that it was their “leader’s” decision – which, at that time, I guess would
be Widmore.
If Matthew Abaddon was working for
Widmore at the point of Locke’s recovery, then perhaps he was acting on orders
from Widmore to send him to Australia, as Widmore remembered Locke from 1954?
Using the plane survivors as a beacon, it would allow him to find the island
once again.
The Man in Black, acting as Christian,
tells Locke the island needs to be moved. His goal here is unclear. If it’s to
move the island so Widmore can’t find it, then that may not jive with MIB’s
plans because the Widmore conflict is certain to cause more candidate deaths.
Plus more vehicles arriving means more opportunities for him to leave. You
could argue that he wanted the donkey wheel turned off its axis so that the
survivors time-jumped and began to die off from the effects (and that very
nearly happened), but that doesn’t explain why he helped Locke set it straight
in “This Place is Death.” Unless, of course, he couldn’t leave unless all of
the Oceanic 6 were killed; thus requiring the Fake Locke plan. Hm…
The test given to young Locke by
Richard Alpert resembled the Tibetan Buddhist ritual used to confirm a
reincarnated tulku (the Dalai Lama being the most widely known). In the season
three DVD commentary for “The Man Behind the Curtain,” Richard Alpert was
described as someone who was not interested in leading the Others but was very
influential in finding and selecting a leader; similar to a Panchen Lama
choosing the next Dalai Lama. He and Ben kept each other “in check” by having
the power to pick/veto each other's replacement on the Island. Ben's role would
be to pick the next Panchen, should the need arise. This kept the two in a sort
of balanced power relationship. They were allies, yet they had some measure of
control over the other should one get out of hand. When Locke appeared to Richard in 1954 during “Jughead,”
he told Richard that in three years he would be born, and gave him the place
and time. Richard is there to witness his birth.
So if we want to run with the idea
that Richard is like the Panchen Lama, whose job is to confirm that a boy is
indeed the reincarnated Dalai Lama, then perhaps he viewed Locke not as a
time-traveler but as a Dalai Lama-esque figure that gets reincarnated. So when
the young Locke was old enough, Richard went to his house to perform the test
to see if it's true. We don't really know what the “right” object is, but
presumably it’s the compass since that’s what Locke gave him during “Jughead.”
But the boy settles on the knife which disappoints Richard because it's not the
“right” answer. But in fact, it IS a right answer since we know Locke's
propensity for knives. Richard didn't realize this though, and thought he’d
been duped. That's how I’ll view it anyway.
Ranking:
1.
The Constant
(10/10)
2.
Cabin Fever
(9/10) (Very little filler here, as we expand the mythos of Locke, Richard, and
the cabin, and the war games on the freighter reach a fever pitch.)
3.
Confirmed Dead
(9/10)
4.
The Shape of
Things to Come (8.5/10)
5.
The Beginning of the
End (8.5/10)
6.
There’s No Place Like
Home, part 1 (8/10) (Mostly a maneuvering of the pieces for the final showdown,
but the emotional reunions are long-earned, and the tension-building is
superb.)
7.
Meet Kevin
Johnson (7.5/10)
8.
The Economist
(7.5/10)
9.
Something Nice
Back Home (6.5/10)
10. Ji Yeon (6.5/10)
11. The Other Woman (5.5/10)
12. Eggtown (5/10)
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