Lost, Season 6, Episode 10 -- The Package

Finally it seems as if Season 6 has hit its stride. The Jin and Sun Search Show was secondary to this tale of circling adversaries and the unwrapping of the "package" in the title. It featured one of the best scenes in the the show's history, as two enemy leaders meet face to face.

In Team Smokey-Locke camp, Jin either adjusts or has redressed the wound on his leg from Claire's bear trap. Smokey-Locke approaches him and suggests it would be better to leave the wound open to the air in order to heal faster. Smokey-Locke: team leader, mass murderer, and now first aid expert!

Jin asks about the names in the cave, and if Jack had said anything. S-L says he said nothing, and all the names were crossed off. All the names go together, and all of those listed on the cave wall must leave the Island together.

In Sideways L.A., Jin and Sun are in the LAX security office. An officer says under federal law they will have to confiscate the $25,000, since it was undeclared. The watch is returned to the couple. Jin tells Sun he planned to still to deliver the watch and money, as Mr. Paik asked.

"I don't ask your father questions," Jin tells her. "I do what he tells me."

When they check into their hotel, they have separate rooms for Ms. Paik and Mr. Kwon. They aren't married in Sideways World, and this appears to be their secret California rendezvous.

Back in Smokey-Locke Camp, Sayid tells the Gray One that he can't feel anything, can't feel any pain. S-L, still in a caregiver mode from counseling Jin, tells Sayid just to get some rest to get ready for what's coming.

After Fearless Leader departs, Jin starts furtively packing his things, which Sawyer notices, and naturally he wants to know what he's doing. Jin says he is leaving to go find Sun, whom he is convinced is somewhere on the Island. He'll check the temple first, and if not there, it's off to their original beach. Sawyer tries to convince him to stay and not take the risk.

WHAM! A rainfall of tranquilizer darts into everyone in Team Smokey-Locke, and down they all go. As the opening scenes were through night vision goggles, this does not seem surprising.

Zoe (Sheila Kelley), the Jungle Liz Lemon that Sawyer met over dead bodies at Camp Team Widmore two episodes back, along with Seamus the Former Child Star, enter the camp. They positively identify Jin and take him away, away to Hydra Island...

In Camp Team Jacob, Ben asks Ilana what they are to do next, and she says to wait for Richard's return. Ben has serious doubts about that, recalling Richard's comments about how they were all dead and in hell. Ilana emphatically repeats: they will remain in camp and wait for Richard's return.

It is mentioned that Hurley went out after Richard, and Miles quips that unless Richard was covered in bacon grease, there is no way Hurley could track him.

Sun is at the garden that she started in Season 1. Jack approaches her and tells her about the lighthouse and its glimpses into other people's lives. Jack has become a Man of Faith now, it is obvious, and he knows they have a reason to be on the Island. Sun says she doesn't care about purpose and destiny and tells Jack to go away and leave her alone. She wants to find Jin and go home.

In Sideways L.A., Sun and Jin are at the hotel. He repeats he will try to go deliver the watch as he was ordered. Sun mentions she is there with him not just to go shopping. She begins to unbutton the blouse that Jin originally told her close on the Oceanic jet, and soon she's doing a tease, undoing more buttons until she's just in her bra. A passionate love scene begins, and since this is network TV, there is a quick cutaway.

At Camp Jacob, Sun is still looking over her garden, when suddenly, like some monster out of the cornfield in a cheap horror flick, Smokey-Locke appears.

He says he found her husband and had promised Jin that he'd reunite them. He offers his hand to take Sun to his camp. Sun of course does not believe him and reminds S-L how he whacked everyone in the temple.

His excuse -- the people were lied to and were confused. He didn't want to hurt them, and they had been given a chance to go with him, but, well, they didn't take it.

"Please, Jin's waiting," he pleads again.

Sun breaks into a run, with the Smoke Man hot on her trail. Commercial break, and then back to the chase. Sun crashes into a tree very, very hard and is out cold. Ooowww!

In Sideways L.A., Sun and Jin are in bed together, content and peaceful. Sun says she has an idea. Why not run away? She has an account there in L.A. where she has been putting funds aside. Jin wonders if that were her plan all along. Sun asks if he is angry, and he's not, he loves her too much.

A knock on the door sends Jin to the bathroom and Sun to don her bathrobe. She pauses at some length in front of a mirror, an action we have seen every major Sideways character do this season. Her reflection is of a happy woman with a slightly optimistic outlook.

The man at the door is Martin Keamy, who tells her he's a friend of her father's. Ominous Lost music plays on the soundtrack.

On the Island at Camp Jacob, Ben tells Ilana that he found Sun passed out, and he didn't do anything. Ilana still does not believe him, and he says why. "Because you're speaking," she says.

Interestingly Ben really has been telling the truth, as far as I can see, during this season. It's the first time we have seen him consistently being truthful!

Sun wakes up, and she is talking Korean; like Sideways Sun -- no English! (But can Sideways Sun speak English? It's not been revealed.) Ben can't understand her. Some head bump!

At Camp Smokey-Locke, he comes back to find his people all tranqed. He revives Sayid and asks what happened. All he can say is they were attacked, and he doesn't know who did it. He also does not know where Jin went...

...And cut to Jin, who comes to in a chair in a big room in the Hydra Station. It's that infamous Room 23, where Alex's boyfriend was being brainwashed in Season 3, much like a similar mind reprogramming done on Malcolm McDowell's juvenile delinquent (also named Alex!) in A Clockwork Orange.

Jin tries the door, which is locked, and accidentally turns on the subliminal, hypnotic images on the screen. Realizing how mesmerizing that stuff is, Jin quickly shuts it off.

Zoe now enters with, "Now that was weird, wasn't it?" She says Jin should know all about it, since he had served with DHARMA. He tries to push past her, and without hesitation she tazes him.

Zoe continues ... she is interested in electromagnetic forces on the Island. She has an Island map from DHARMA, and the handwriting is a bit hard to decipher, but she thinks Jin can help her read it, as it was made by a Jin Soo Kwon, and that is him, isn't it?

Jin demands to talk to Widmore.

At Camp Smokey-Locke, he gives Sayid a gun wrapped in plastic and asks if he can swim. Claire wonders if her name is on the cave wall, and Smokey says no, but he still needs her at the moment but later there will be a seat for her on the Ajira jet.

She would rather stay on the Island. A bit of the old Claire emerges here, as she gets melancholy and says if she did go home, Aaron would not even know his own mother. Smokey-Locke offers surprisingly tender comfort. Claire asks if Kate is on the cave wall, and no, she is not either, but S-L needs her too because he is "three people shy" of those he needs to get on the plane to leave.

Once that is accomplished, "whatever happens, happens," says Smokey, rephrasing Daniel Faraday.

The man in John Locke's form is now more pragmatic, determine to leave the Island as much as Jack once did. More like Jack used to be. Smokey: mass murderer, team leader, first aid expert and potential Man of Science? Certainly the Man in Black is cynical, as he is one who believes any person can be corrupted.

Sawyer asks Smokey why he and Sayid are armed, and he says they're taking a boat to Hydra Island to get get Jin back.

In the best line of the night, he asks, "Can't you just turn into smoke and fly your ass over the water?"

Smokey said he if could do that, he would, but he can't, so the boat is the way to go.

In Sideways L.A., Keamy and his henchman -- it's Omar (Anthony Azizi), another mercenary from the freighter in the Island Time Track -- search Jin and Sun's room. Keamy asks about the money, and Sun does her "no English" routine. Keamy sees champagne on the bedside table, and eventually they find Jin in the bathroom in just his underwear. Keamy takes the watch, but there still is the issue of te money. Language barrier? Well, get "Danny's friend," the "Russian guy who speaks like nine different languages." Who is Danny?

Mikhail Bakunin (Andrew Divoff), the hardass guard from the Flame communications station in Season 3, is now the hardass translator/thug at Keamy's and Mr. Paik's service. He translates for Keamy. A plan is formed -- Keamy takes "Casanova" (Jin) to the restaruant, and Bakunin and Sun to the bank to get the money owed. Jin begs Keamy not to tell Mr. Paik that he and Sun were together. Keamy grins and says, "Your secret's safe with me." Yeah, right.

At Camp Jacob, Jack examines Sun, and the good doctor's diagnosis given to Ilana is a concussion, with secondary condition of aphasia, in which trauma affects the brain's speech center. Dr. Jack says that hopefully it will wear off over time. Is it a simple case of aphasia, or is Sun somehow connecting to her Korean speaking self in the the Sideways world?

Richard returns to camp and tells everyone to pack their bags and get ready to leave.

In the show's best scene, Smokey-Locke arrives at Hydra Island and approaches the security pylons Widmore's crew has erected. Seamus the Former Child Star (Fred Koehler) fires his rifle and tells him not to move. "Easy, friend," S-L says. "I come in peace."

Charles Widmore cooly steps up to the dividing line. It's like a confrontation of two seasoned gunfighters in the dusty main drag of an Old West Town, or two old lions cautiously circling and evaluating each other.

Widmore and asks S-L, "Do you know who I am?"'

"Charles Widmore."

"I know you're not John Locke. Everything else I know is a combination of myth, ghost stories and jungle noises in the night."

"I think you know more than that, judging from these pylons."

Widmore denies he is holding Jin.

Smokey-Locke quotes Charles back at him: "A wise man once said that war is coming to this Island. I think you just got one."

At Camp Jacob, Richard says they must go to Hydra Island and destroy the jet so that Smokey can't get off the Island. Sun may not be able to speak English anymore, but as everyone finds out, she still understands it. She calls Richard "insane" for wanting to blow up the jet. Her condition is much like some kinds of strokes, where the patient loses the ability to speak but still understands everything perfectly.

In Sideways L.A., Bakunin takes Sun to the bank to get the money, but they find out that Mr. Paik has emptied and closed out the account! Dad knows about daughter's secret love affair. Keamy and Omar tie Jin up in the restaurant cooler with lots and lots of duct tape. Keamy tells Omar since he's an Arab, why not get that other "Arab guy" -- Sayid. Keamy tells Jin that the $25,000 was supposed to be his fee "for popping you." Jin had he violated the cardinal rule of "keep your hands off the boss' daughter," so he had to die.

At Camp Widmore, Zoe and the chief are arguing. He is upset that Jin is there too soon, and that they had a "timeline" for things. Zoe says things like that can happen when a geophysicist is in charge -- herself -- and not a mercenary, yet another reference to Keamy. Widmore tells there it is time to get the "package" out of the sub and deliver it to the camp.

After Zoe leaves, Charles gives Sun's digital camera to Jin. It's loaded with pictures of Ji-Yeon, whom Jin has never seen. Jin gets misty eyed as he cycles through the pictures. A scene that equals the confrontation between Smokey and Widmore in its effectiveness.

"I have a daughter, too," Widmore says. "I know what it's like to be kept apart." He adds that if Smokey gets off the Island, everyone they know and love will "simply cease to be."

Jin wonders how this could be, and Charles says for him to come see the package.

"What package?"

"It's not a what, it's a who." Can you guess who? It's not hard, brother!

In Sideways L.A., Jin is in the restaurant cooler. He hears the conversation between Sayid and Keamy, and many gunshots. He starts making noise, which brings Sayid to the big fridge. Jin begs him not to kill him and says "no English" when Sayid asks who he is. He can say only "free" as he gestures toward a box cutter on a shelf. Sayid puts the cutter in Jin's hands, wishes him good luck and leaves.

Bakunin returns with Sun and finds everyone quite dead. Jin pops up with a gun and tells him to drop his weapon or he'll kill him. "If you had wanted to kill me, you would have shot me already," Badass Bakunin says.

A big fight erupts between the two, and Jin's gun goes off. Bakunin grabs a chef knife, giving me flashbacks to Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction, and Jin shoots Bakunin -- in the eye. The Russian is Mr. Patchy again?

Jin hears Sun whimpering, turns and sees her on the floor, holding an apparent gut wound. Oh, no.

"I'm pregnant," she gasps. Double oh, no!

Back on the beach in Camp Jacob, Jack tells sun that he remembers back during his residency there was a man who woke up after an accident and couldn't talk, and just because he could not, did not mean he was unable to write. Jack gives her a pencil and pad and asks her to give it a try. She agrees to do it.

Jack says he checked the garden to see if Smokey-Locke was there, but he wasn't. However, he found a tomato, which he passes to her. "That's one stubborn tomato. I guess no one told it it was supposed to die." She takes it. "You're not the first person who told me to leave them alone."

He asks if Sun trusts him. She says yes. He promises that if she goes with everyone from Team Jacob to Hydra Island, he will make sure she and Jin get on the plane and go as far away from the Island as possible. He reaches out to her, and Sun takes his hand.

At Camp Smokey-Locke, Sawyer says to Kate that at this point they're screwed "six ways to Sunday." Smokey returns and says Camp Widmore denied having Jin. Sawyer wants to know where Sayid is. Smokey says Sayid is at Hydra to find out about the something that Camp Widmore didn't want him to see.

"I don't like secrets," smokey-Locke pouts and smolders.

At the sub dock at Camp Widmore, Sayid rises from the water like some mysterious monster. Zoe and Seamus are wrestling with the "package" and pulling it up out of the sub, and it is a he -- Desmond Hume is back! And he is very, very dazed, as if he's been under heavy sedation for days. As the two Widmore stooges set Desmond down on the dock, he wakes up and see Sayid. Desmond blinks his eyes in disbelief. A hallucination of Sayid? What is going on here? Sayid watches as Desmond is taken away, and ... fade to black.

Previews with bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace," and titles mentioning "a path is found." It is traditional to play that hymn at funerals for police and fire personnel, as well as those of Scottish or Irish heritage. Is someone major going to die next week, despite the cheery title "Happily Ever After" for Episode 11? Or we get pipes for the return of that awesome Scot, the constant, the man who can see the future, Mr. Desmond David Hume? Spoiler pages indicate that the episode will be built around him!

Lost, Season 6, Episode 9 - Ab Aeterno

This was a filler episode, in the sense that the current plots of the two Season 6 time tracks were not advanced, but it was still very important in detailing Island mythology and the backstory of immortal Others advisor Richard Alpert, who by the timeline suggested here, might be 180 years old (about age 40 in 1867, then add the time up to 2007 on the Island). Important questions of mythology also are given, including the mysterious Island statue.

Though a Richard episode, the very first scene shows Jacob coming to a hospital in Russia, where he visits a severely injured and heavily bandaged Ilana. He tells her in Russian that she is needed again to guard the Island and the six he has selected as candidates to replace him. She must go to the Island and contact "Ricardus."

In the camp of Team Jacob, the castaways are sitting around a fire on the beach, a familiar scene from earlier seasons. Richard is despairing and comparing the Island to hell. Jack hears Hurley speaking Spanish to an unseen person, and asks if he's talking to Jacob. He says no, and that he hasn't spoken to the Man from the Foot lately.

Richard leaves the campsite, his faith broken and his mind bitter. And with this, the start of the first pure flashback episode since Season 3.

In his previous life, in 1867, he was Ricardo, a resident of Tenerife, a Spanish territory in the Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, near Morocco. He most likely a small farmer or a hand at a local plantation, as he mentions at one point that he "worked the fields."

Ricardo comes riding rapidly to his humble home on a horse, where he goes to his wife, Isabella. She is very ill, with high fever, and is coughing up blood. He tells her he will get a doctor, and she give him the cross from around her neck, in case he needs another item of value for payment.

Ricardo rides half the night in a downpour to the house of a prosperous, arrogant doctor, whom he pleads to treat his wife. The physician is busy having dinner and is upset that Ricardo is dripping all over his carpet -- he sends his butler to go get some towels to clean the floor. The doctor says he doesn't want to go out in the rain for half a day to Ricardo's house, but he might sell him some medicine instead.

Ricardo gives the doc all of his money, which elicits "Is that all you got?" from him. Ricardo adds in his wife's cross and chain. The doctor looks at it and says, "This is worthless!" and casts it to the floor. Enraged, Ricardo scuffles with the physician and knocks him into his dining room table, which fatally cracks his skull. Ricardo takes the bottle of medicine and flees to his home.

When he gets there, Isabella is dead, and the authorities are right behind him. Ricardo is imprisoned. A priest, Father Suarez, has come to give him absolution notices he is reading an English Bible, and Ricardo says he has been teaching himself the language. Ricardo makes his confession to the priest, admitting that he killed the doctor. Amazingly, Father Suarez tells him there is no absolution for murder, despite Ricardo's protests that it was an accident. The only solution is penance, but since he will be hanged the next day, there is no time, and next stop, Hades.

Ricardo is on his way to the gallows, when a British sea captain, Jonas Whitfield, stops the guards. He asks Ricardo if he'd like to go to the New World. He inspects Ricardo much like one would a horse, looking at his hands and body and prying open his mouth to see his teeth. Whitfield asks if Ricardo speaks English, he hesitates in answering, and he almost gets dragged to his execution before bluring out that he can speak the language. He is informed that now he will be a guest of Magnus Hanso, owner of a ship known as the Black Rock, bearing a home port marking of Portsmouth, one of England's busiest ports. (1)

Ricardo ends up in chains a number of his countrymen on the Black Rock. (2)

During a massive storm, the chained men look out the ship's portholes. With a flash of lightning, the man next to Ricardo says he sees "el diablo," which is actually the statue of Tawaret -- Egyptian goddess of birth and fertility -- on the coast of the Island. The Black Rock somehow has been drawn all the way over to the South Pacific (?!). This is the first view of the full statue from the front for viewers. Through the electromagnetic forces in the Island and Jacob's will, the ship goes zipping toward the statue, shears Tawaret right off at her ankles and heads inland. Somehow, wood beats stone, as a sailing ship took out a solid rock statue and lands in the center of the Island, mostly intact!

Ricardo wakes up the next morning to voices topside, as the crew members assess the damage. A British voice says, "We're in the middle of a bloody island!"

Captain Whitfield comes below, where the convicts cry out to be released. Instead of undoing their chains, he begins to run them through with his sword. The prisoners, including Ricardo, beg louder and more desperately, but the captain just keeps slaying. When he gets to Ricardo, he asks Whitfield why he is doing it. He says there is no food, fresh water or anything, and more than likely the convicts would kill the crew if they were freed. Ricardo emphatically says no, he would not kill anyone, he just wants to be be freed.

Just as Whitfield is about to to skewer Ricardo, a familiar howl and clanking rings through the air. Smokey makes quick work of the crew up on the deck, and their blood drips down on the captain, who wonders what the hell is happening. As he looks at the blood on his hand, Smokey grabs him up and out of the hold. After dispatching the captain, the creature comes down again and stops to inspect Ricardo, much as he did Mr. Eko in Season 2. He zips away, leaving Ricardo alone among corpses.

Over the next few days, Ricardo is shown trying to loosen his chains with a nail he has laboriously pried out of the ship's floor.

Ricardo looks up at a glimpse of white and is shocked to see his wife Isabella in the hold. After a tearful, intense reunion, She tells him that they are both dead, and they are together again, but in hell. She warns him that the Devil is afoot. There is a roar, and now Isabella is grabbed and spirited away by Smokey.

A wild boar gets into the hold, and in a grossly implied moment, seems to be chewing on one of the bodies (pigs are omnivores and at times scavengers). Ricardo yells at the board and scares it away, and his precious nail is thrown out of reach.

The Man in Black, the version played by Titus Welliver in the Season 5 finale, shows up with the keys to the ship shackles, which he said he found in one of the officer's pockets. He offers Ricardo a drink of water and unlocks him after Ricardo promises to do anything that he asks. "It's nice to see you out of those chains," he says, much as Smokey-Locke did a few episodes back.

Up on the beach, Ricardo hungrily munches meat from a roast boar, possibly the same one from the Black Rock. He says he thinks he is in hell. MIB agrees, and he says that the Devil lives across the Island and needs to be killed. in order for both of them to escape. He gives Ricardo a dagger and tells him to stub the Devil the very first moment he sees him and not to have any conversation. Another parallel of when Dogen sent Sayid with the knife to go kill Smokey-Locke.

Ricardo heads to the beach, where pieces of Tawaret are scattered on the beach and in the ocean. As he approaches Jacob's house, someone ambushes him and beats the crap out of him. Not surprisingly, it is Jacob, who lividly demands to know who sent him. Ricardo mentions MIB and asks if Jacob is the Devil, which he denies. Ricardo says he is dead and in hell. Jacob drags him to the ocean and starts to drown him. Drawing the sputtering man out of water, Jacob says, "Do you still think you're dead?" Ricardo no longer thinks so.

Jacob says that they really need to have a talk.

Jacob shows Ricardo a corked bottle of wine, saying it represents the Island, and the wine is MIB and the "darkness" he represents. His job, and anyone who succeeds him, is to keep Jacob from leaving and taking his evil with him. (3) He has also been bringing people to the Island to prove that man's basic nature is still good, despite MIB's assertions that people are fundamentally evil.

Jacob says he also brings people to the Island as he searches for a substitute for himself. He does not help them, as they must "help themselves," and they have free will. There is the old saying, "God helps those who help themselves," and many Christian denominations teach that God has given people free will.

Ricardo does not want to be the substitute, so Jacob says he instead can be his representative to any people who come to the Island, so that Jacob does not have to speak to them directly. A kind of oracle or prophet? Ricardo agrees to the job, if Jacob could bring Isabella back. "I can't do that," Jacob says. "Then, I want to live forever," Ricardo says.

"Now, that I can do," Jacob says, and lays his hand on Ricardo's shoulder for a very long time. He also gives Jacob gives Ricardo a gift to take to MIB, a white rock.

Ricardo returns to MIB, who says, "You talked to him, didn't you?" He acknowledges that he did and gives the rock to MIB. He tells Ricardo that if he ever wants to come back to his side, the "offer still stands." He gives Ricardo his wife's cross, saying he dropped it on the beach. After MIB leaves, Ricardo buries his wife's cross in the sand and mourns for his loss.

In 2007, Ricardo, now Richard, digs up the cross and looks at it. He shouts out to Smokey that he is ready to come back. "You said the offer still stands, right?" he cries out. The offer still stands!" He says this repeatedly, his voice echoing into the air, but Smokey does not appear.

Hurley approaches Richard, who is upset that he was followed. Hurley asks him why he buried his wife's cross. "How did you know that?" Richard demands.

Hurley reveals he has been talking to Isabella -- this was the spirit to whom he was speaking at the beginning of the show. Isabella appears next to Richard, visible only to Hurley and the viewers at home. Hurley relays her message, which is not to blame himself for her death, and that she still loves him. She says she was taken by MIB, and he must not be allowed to leave the Island at any cost.

Richard's eyes mist up, and he puts his wife's cross around his neck. He seems to have become again a man of faith, no longer willing to serve the darkness on the other side of the Island.

Back in 1867, Jacob approaches the Man in Black as he sits on a ridge and looks over a valley. MIB promises to kill Jacob and anyone who succeeds him. Jacob gives MIB the bottle of wine as a gift and rubs it in a bit that he failed again to stop him. After Jacob leaves, MIB smashes the bottle on the rocks, a symbol of his strong desire to shatter the bonds of the Island and leave the place.

Some thoughts and questions:

--How was Ilana injured?

--What other incidents occurred to bring other people to the Island, and how did the communities of the Others grow?

--When the castaways were time jumping in Season 5 and landed into a time period where they saw the intact statue, how close to 1867 was this?

--How exactly did a wooden sailing ship shatter a rock statue with almost no damage?

--A couple recappers I read suggested that Isabella was really another form of Smokey, such as when he took the form of Mr. Eko's brother, Yemi, or as Alex to Ben Linus. However, I think Isabella was herself, a ghost that had followed the Black Rock to the Island, as Hurley was able to talk to her at the end of the episode and reunite her briefly with her Ricardo.

--What are Jacob and MIB exactly? Jacob says MIB is dangerous and carries with him a "darkness" that must not leave the Island, and yet there already are darkness and evil out in the world, prime examples being the merciless enslavement of Ricardo and the others, and the priest's refusal to absolve Ricardo. Jacob and MIB are not so much God and Satan, but more like the Greek gods, who all messed with people's lives, even to the point of causing death or injury.

(1) This ties in with the Island's early mythology. Magnus Hanso is more than likely the grandfather or great-grandfather of DHARMA Initiative founder Alvar Hanso. In Season episode "The Constant," Charles Widmore also bid to win the log from the Black Rock, and the Hanso connection was mentioned there.

(2) There were close ties in trade between South America and Tenerife. Slavery was still legal as of 1867 in a handful of the South American nations, including Brazil and Cuba, and so it was possible Ricardo and the others might have been bound for one of those countries. The African slave trade had been banned in the earlier part of the 19th century, including importation of new slaves. More than likely the Black Rock was a smuggling vessel, bringing in both goods and people, and Ricardo and the others would have been secretly sold in a country where one could still have slaves.

(3) The trapping of Smokey on the Island is reminiscent of the original Twilight Zone episode, "The Howling Man," which aired in the show's second season. An American is telling an unseen person a story. He was traveling through the Alps just after World War I. During a storm, he begs to take shelter in a castle, and at first the monks living there will not let him stay, but then relent. There the man discovers another in rags and imprisoned in a room whose door is blocked off by a "staff of truth." The head monk tells the American that the man in the room is none other than the Devil himself, and all pleas to release him are to be ignored. The American does not listen, he release the man, who turns out to really be Satan. It is implied that this mistake caused World War II, Korea and the arrival of nuclear bombs.

Lost, Season 6, Epsode 8 -- Recon

For me, this so far has been one of the best episodes this season, mainly because Sawyer is the character who has changed and improved the most during his travails on the Island. From selfish con man to caring, protective guardian in a secure, tender relationship, James Ford has been on a journey of truly discovering his mettle and moving toward redemption.

"Recon" is about midpoint of this final season, with all parties present final war for the Island. Three main factions are squaring off -- Team Smokey includes Kate, Jin, Claire, Sawyer and the zombified Sayid. Team Jacob, led by Ilana, includes Sun, Frank and Ben. Team Widmore just rolled in on Charles' sub. Not to mention the wild cards who survived the temple massacre -- Jack and Hurley, who have yet to reappear in our story since the carnage.

In Sideways L.A., it almost appears James is his old self. He's in bed with a pretty lady, whom he informs he must go off to an appointment. It's 8:42 a.m. (oh, those Numbers), and he has to go meet a "business partner" at 9. After getting up, he deliberately lets a briefcase of money open so his lady friend can see it. Suddenly she has a handgun on him, accusing him of running a con, and even calls him "Dimples" in a casual, twangy voice, which almost suggests she is a female Sawyer.

James tells her that their motel is surrounded by cops, and he just has to say the word to have them swoop down on the room. She thinks it is a bluff, until he says "LaFleur" -- the alias he used as Dharmaville head of security in Season 5 -- and police do charge into the room. They arrest the girl and take her out. One of the plainclothesmen is Miles, who tells him, "Put your shirt on, partner."

In Sideways World, he is Detective James Sawyer of the Los Angeles Police Department. He and Miles seem to have been partners for quite a long time, for the latter expects him to share all his secrets and concerns, with full trust and confidentiality. They serve together, much as they did in 1974-77 in Dharmaville in Season 5.

(For the heck of it, I looked up the requirements to become a police detective in California. The applicant has to receive basic training and serve as a patrol officer for at least three and sometimes up to five years. He or she additionally must have at least 60 college credits, or a four-year college degree in some agencies, before applying for transfer to the detective bureau. The officer also must undergo psychological, physical and academic testing, along with a career evaluation. This suggests that this James Ford is a very dogged and hard worker who passed all these hurdles and is a man in good standing in the LAPD ... far from his other life as a grifter.)

After the motel bust, James tries to contact Anthony Cooper, letting him know he might know of some "unclaimed property" from 1976. That was the year James' dad shot his mother and then killed himself, after Cooper conned his parents out of their fortune.

Miles wants to know where James went on his vacation, and he says he went down to Palm Springs to get some sun and party. When Miles asks about the phone call with Cooper, James mentions it's a friend who can get him Lakers tickets. Miles offers matchmaking services to his entrenched bachelor partner if he can get him one ticket to a game.

James reluctantly agrees to this, after Miles makes him feel guilty about spending the rest of his life alone and having no one with whom to share it. He goes to a nice nightspot to meet Miles' friend, who is -- Charlotte Staples Lewis, one of Widmore's freighter folk from Season 4. In the Island time track, she was an anthropologist, in the Sideways world she is an archaeologist who works at a museum with Miles' father, none other than Dr. Pierre Chang.

They hit it off very well and quickly are back at James' pad and making love. Charlotte asks James to borrow a T-shirt, and he says sure to that. While he's out of the bedroom, Charlotte starts to snoop around.

Book moment -- Richard Adams' Watership Down, a novel about a group of rabbits who must migrate to the title location after one gets a vision that their habitat is about to be destroyed. Part of their journey there includes a stay in a luxurious fake warren actually built by humans who use the rabbits for food. (Of course, rabbits have played a heavy role in Lost. They have been test subjects for DHARMA time travel and part of Ben Linus' psychological games with the castaways, particularly Sawyer himself, back in Season 3. Keys to locked doors also have been hidden under stone statues of rabbits in more than one episode.)

Charlotte gets into James' dresser and finds a binder simply marked SAWYER. The first couple pages have newspaper clippings that show this James did lose his parents to murder-suicide in the Sideways world. He catches Charlotte with the dossier, scolds her for sticking her nose into his business and furiously ejects her from the apartment. Incidentally, James' apartment number is 245. I'm not sure if that has any significance, as numbers often do in the show.

In the precinct lobby the next morning, Charlie Pace's brother, Liam, turns up, trying to find out where the rock star was taken after his arrest on the Oceanic jet. Liam can't get anyone to pay attention, not a sergeant, and certainly not James.

Later Miles finds out what happened and storms at James for his treatment of Charlotte and demands to know where he really went on vacation. In the station locker room, Miles says he ran James' credit card, and he knows he went to Australia, not Palm Springs, but why? James will not say. Frustrated, Miles says they're through as partners. James looks into a mirror -- another repeated image in Lost -- and punches it hard, shattering it. Perhaps symbolism? His broken reflection means a shattered, lonely man?

That night after work, James is alone at his apartment, where he prepares a microwave dinner much like the ones Roger and Ben Linus had on last week's episode. He watches an episode on Little House on the Prairie, where Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls tells daughter Laura (Melissa Gilbert) that he and her mother will always be there for her, no matter what. All of it is a reminder of James' solitary state, along with the fact he never had parents to be there for him after the age of 9.

It prompts him to go to Charlotte's place with a single sunflower and a six pack, where he tries to turn on the ol' Sawyer charm. But she says he blew it. They're through before they got started. He leaves the flower on her doorstep and quietly goes back home.

The next day, James pulls up in front of the precinct station and asks Miles to get into his car. He confesses everything -- he went to Australia as part of his hunt for the man who caused his family's ruin. He gives Miles the SAWYER file. When he finds Sawyer, James says he will kill him. He says he didn't tell Miles the truth, because he knew his partner would stop him. Miles agrees yes, he would definitely do that.

With a sudden crash, a large sedan strikes James' car, and the driver gets out and flees patrol cars and officers on foot. James, being a good cop, joins the chase. The fugitive has a gray hoodie and a slight build, which suggests a female. He manages to capture her, takes a look at her face and shouts out his characteristic line of shocked discovery, "Son of a bitch!" The suspect is Kate Austen, with whom he flirted in an elevator at LAX a couple days earlier.

In the Island time track, the action is among those castaways who are now part of Team Smokey. Claire is packing up in her shack, while Kate looks on. The latter spots a bizarre effigy of an infant in a cradle, made of a boar's skull and assorted hardware and metal scraps. Claire tells Kate that this cobbled-together creature was the closest she could create to look like a baby, and it was the only thing that got her through her years alone on the Island.

As Jin, Claire and Miles meet up with the rest of Team Smokey, that certain monster tells them about the killing at the temple. The kids under the care of Cindy the Flight Attendant are freaked out and start to cry, and she comforts them.

They head out into the jungle and later make camp in a grove. Sayid, Claire and Kate are sitting around, and the two women are conversing. Claire suddenly attacks Kate and puts a knife to her throat. Her calls for help to Sayid result in him sitting there in a passive daze. Smokey-Locke grabs Kate and throws her aside. He lectures her that what Kate did, in taking Aaron off the Island, was the best she could do to ensure the boy's welfare, and the best she could do at the time.

Kate is off by herself in the jungle, crying. Smokey-Locke finds her and tells her that once, when he was human, he had to grow up with a mentally disturbed mother. He has spent many years, even up to the present, working beyond that. He adds that the mother of Aaron is also disturbed.

Smokey-Locke asks Sawyer to go to Hydra Island and take a look around -- the "Recon" of the title.

He takes an outrigger there and stops first at the old DHARMA research cages on Hydra Island, where he and Kate seemingly spent endless weeks in captivity in Season 3. He finds her old dress -- the one, I believe, she wore with her fancy beach dinner with Ben -- puts the fabric to his cheek, and confesses that he still does love her.

In his continued search, Sawyer finds the grounded Ajira jet, a pile of stinky corpses and a bespectacled, nerdy young woman named Zoe, who claims to be the only survivor. Sawyer offers to take her back to the main Island, until she pulls a gun and him and calls her friends from Team Widmore and their firepower. Oops, seems our con man got conned.

But no...

They take Sawyer back to Widmore's sub, where he notices the crew constructing pylons much like Dharmaville's Smokey stopping security system. He also sees a locked room in a corridor in the submarine as Zoe takes him down to Charles' quarters. When he asks what's in there, naturally she says, "It's none of your business!"

After some edgy conversation, Sawyer promises Widmore that he will tell Smokey-Locke that only the jet is on Hydra Island, and he will bring him right to Charles. That is, if Widmore does not harm Sawyer and his friends and gets them off the Island. They shake on the deal, and Sawyer is on his way back to the main Island, where he tells Smokey-Locke about the con he has set up with Widmore, and how they will be caught by surprise as they launch an assault on Team Widmore.

Claire and Kate later kiss and make up, so to speak. Claire comes to Kate, sobbing and apologetic, and gives her a hug. I half expected Claire pull out yet another dagger and plunge it into Kate's back, but apparently this was a true moment of remorse by the "New Danielle."

At night, Kate is tending a fire, and Sawyer asks her what's the dinner. "Rabbit, I think," Kate says, again bringing up those little animals. They talk about Claire's assault, the Widmore arrival and leaving the Island. Sawyer says his rationale is let Teams Smokey and Widmore fight for the Island, and they'll all slip away on Charles' submarine.

Next week promises to be even more compelling, as we get the first episode centered around Richard Alpert. The previews showing him in old-timey clothes suggest that he probably did come to the Island on the Black Rock, perhaps in chains himself. The episode name is "Ab Aeterno," Latin for "since eternity," or "since a very long time ago."