"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."
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