"You're With Me, Now" - 6x13: The Last Recruit

***Quick note #1: 

Check your email and/or this blog in the next few days : )))  ***

***Quick note #2: 

I know many of you are dog/pet lovers, so if you could please send some positive thoughts/vibes/prayers to UConn, my and my family's beautiful doggie. She's been having a really tough time with some painful back problems. She could use all the help she can get, so with all of my heart, thank you!***

Okay, on with the show!

The last recruit indeed - and the last person we ever thought would be that recruit!

I'll admit right off the bat that since I'm off from school this week (no, it hasn't closed yet - that will be in June!), I was psyched to sit down and watch tonight's episode, "The Last Recruit," live, in person, with no distractions and no bedtime. And then it started...and I felt completely lost (heh heh). Wait, Jack has to double back and then meet you at a dock and...what? What boat? The Lockeness Monster (good one, Ivan!) stole something from Zoe? Oh, right - Desmond. How do they have a bearing on his position to bomb him? Was it her walkie-talkie? Wouldn't he just throw it away so they can't track him? And really, a bomb is going to scare a being made of smoke? Is Claire for real?

So I felt kind of dumb watching tonight, as if I couldn't follow everything, so keep that in mind when you're reading and constantly finding yourself saying, "Duh, it's obvious," or "Stupid, that's because..." at me through your monitor. I owe this one a rewatch.

Well, let me get into what I did get from this one:

Although we saw so many major characters - just about everyone except Charlie Pace and Charlie Widmore, really - and they were all meeting up which is something we've been waiting for all season, beyond that, nothing much happened tonight. Am I wrong? I'd like to hear your take on this.

Toniann and I discussed this during the episode: there were some great lines in this one. Many past episode titles and phrases were repeated by interesting characters. Jack saying "the Island isn't through with us yet" to Sawyer on the boat, Kate saying "we have to go back," and others. Sawyer calling Frank "that guy that looks like he stepped out of a Burt Reynolds movie."

A GREAT scene was when Sayid was getting ready to kill Desmond, who looked quite forlorn in that well (which didn't look as deep as it was shown last week...strange...). At first I thought his leg was twisted, in a mirror of Locke's fall down the well in Season 5, but he wasn't acting like it was. Anyways, it seems that Desmond found a way to get Sayid to snap out of the Monster's mojo: "What will you tell her when she asks what you did to be with her again?" He had a very small, subtle reaction when that registered with him, I thought. And when he tells the Monster that he killed Desmond, we know he's lying. Is this, finally, Sayid's redemption?

Jack and Claire are reunited in both timelines. And both reunions are kind of contentious.

Ilana is now a lawyer. +

Ilana lost her accent. -

Speaking of reunited, and it feels so good: finally, after what feels like 108 years, Sun and Jin are back together. And love fixed Sun's weird English block! (I still don't get what that was all about...)

In Alt. 2004, Sun recognized Locke, shouting, "It's him! It's him!" in a panic. Did she remember the other timeline in that moment? She doesn't bring it up when she comes to in the hospital and Jin is there with her.

Christian was the Monster? I still don't believe it. He hesitated when he said it, and it seemed very calculated. "You needed to find water?" C'mon! Christian's appearances always seemed different somehow. And the clincher for me is that Christian appeared off-Island to Jack in the hospital in Season 4. If he can get off the Island to appear to Jack, then what is the problem now? I'm not buying it, just like I'm not buying that he's taking them on a plane off the Island. He's going to kill all of you, you dummies! You are candidates to be the new Jacob, the guy who is keeping him trapped - you are all in his way!

Jack comes to the realization that the Monster wants them to leave because he's afraid of what would happen if they stay. While I'm convinced that he's going to kill all of them because they are each potentially the next person to keep him trapped on the Island, I didn't think of it in the way that Jack put it. Jack is getting the big picture: it's not about keeping him from getting off the Island, it's about the Losties role of keeping him on the Island. It's the same thing, but just put a different way, and in a way that gives much more importance to the Losties and the job they have, no matter who the new Jacob turns out to be. To quote another phrase that actually wasn't used tonight, but would've been very fitting, "Live together, die alone."

Another one I don't trust is Claire. One: she's batshit crazy. Two: she was indoctrinated and brainwashed by the Monster for three years, and now Kate takes three minutes to apologize for taking Aaron and she joins the good guys? What?!

When Locke is brought in for surgery, we know who is going to operate on him. And when Jack shows up for the pre-op procedures and he's looking at the x-rays, the nurse tells him that Locke's dural sac is ripped open. Of course it is! Now this gives us two connections: one, the mention of a ripped dural sac is from Jack's "counting to five" story that he tells Kate in the "Pilot" episode about accidentally cutting a patient's dural sac open, and which we see played out in the Season 5 finale as the point in time that Jacob touches Jack. The second connection is that he says "I got this." If I'm not mistaken, this is what he says to Sarah, his soon-to-be-wife (and ex-wife), at some point before operating on her and miraculously "fixing" her. I have a very strong feeling that we're going to see Locke wiggling his toes again before May 23.

Widmore double-crosses them. That jerk! Or is the deal off because they didn't have Desmond with them? Or, is it because they didn't have Jack with them?

And finally, another shout-out to Toniann, because she asked a question that never crossed my mind (see my opening paragraphs...): is Jack dead? After Jack is thrown from the explosion, he wakes up after being blacked out, experiences that hearing loss we've seen people have after explosions, and then the Monster picks him up and takes him to relative safety at the edge of the jungle. He tells him not to worry: "You're with me now." Nooooooooo!!! Did the Monster bring him back to life, a la Sayid and Claire, which means he'll be filled with darkness soon? Jack, filled with darkness? Say it ain't so! I hope this isn't the case, but I could see it happening.

My theory, and it's not that groundbreaking, is that the Monster is keeping Jack as bait. He knows the other candidates have been taken by Sawyer to Widmore's protected camp, and since he needs them all together (for whatever reason you subscribe to), Jack will need to convince them to leave Widmore and join him. This will give them all back to the Monster. But first, the Monster is going to have to convince Jack...

What did you think about "The Last Recruit"? Keep the comments coming! If I catch anything I missed tonight, I will post it.

Remember, there is no LOST next week (Tuesday, April 27). There might be some sort of recap show or replay of "The Last Recruit," but I haven't checked. Usually I would've heard by now if there was, but I'll keep a lookout and keep you posted.

Until next time,

Namaste & Good Luck,

~ Matt