The lights are much brighter there, You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares.

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times? No, that doesn't really fit, does it? Is it the story of 2 men during a time of social upheaval, who look remarkably alike but are quite different in character and who are both in love with the same woman? Sort of, but no, not really. Was the episode literally about 2 cities? No.

Maybe it'll come to me.

So, what a way to start the season!! It's similar to last season's opener with Desmond getting ready in the morning in the hatch. This time it's a woman in a nice, sunny little interior and she's listening to Petula Clark's "Downtown" and is clearly upset. But the song makes her smile. Later, she's preparing for her bookclub meeting and burns her muffins. It seems to be an all around bad day as the book club meeting deteriorates into a sniping match between her and a guest. Just then, the earth starts shaking. When the "quake" passes - was it the EM pulse that Desmond set off that caused the quake? - everyone runs outside to the street in this idyllic suburban neighborhood and who do we see gathering around? Why it's Ethan! Goodwin! Henry Gale! Except his name is not Henry Gale, it's Ben, and I think he and Juliet are in a relationship (or are breaking up, actually) and they all look up in the sky and what do they see? Oceanic Flight 815 breaking apart! Benry tells Goodwin and Ethan to head to the different crash sites for the tail and fuselage, to pretend they're crash survivors and to get the lists of passenger names. The camera pans back and we see that this little slice of small-town America is actually in the middle of the jungle on the LOST island and the Others are actually not all that different from you and me.

From this I'd guess that the Others did not anticipate the crash and the Lostaways were not chosen by DHARMA or the Others and brought to the island. All of the information that Benry Gale knew about the survivors was compiled once they got their names from Ethan and Goodwin. And I think that means that the Others have reliable contact with the outside world.

So what does that mean for all of the connections we saw between the characters in flashbacks? Are they just coincidences? Or do they fit into some mathematical theory? Or is there someone else pulling the strings?

OK, back to the present and where we left off at the end of last season...It looks like the writers have divided the story into 3 groups:

Jack, Kate and Sawyer, held captive in OtherTown
Sayid, Sun and Jin on the sailboat
The rest of the group back at the camp/beach, including Locke, Eko and Desmond (and what the heck happened to them in the EM explosion)

This episode centered around Jack, Kate and Sawyer and the flashback was all about Jack. Ho-hum. I am so bored with his backstory - how many different ways can we revisit his divorce and troubled relationship with his father? I'm not going to bother recapping the flashbacks. I think the important things to mention from them are 1) Jack never knew the name of the man Sarah left him for, but it wasn't his father; 2) Jack's father was actually on the road to sobriety when Jack, driven by his childish obsession, pushed him right back into the bottle.

Back on the island...our heroes are each being held in different locations: Jack wakes up in "cell" in what turns out to be the Hydra Station, an underwater aquarium; Sawyer wakes up in an outdoor zoo cage that once held bears (polar?); and Kate wakes up in a sort of locker room, where she is instructed to take a shower and put on a pretty dress. Ick. They all have bandaids in the crooks of their elbows and puncture marks from some kind of injection. Was it just something to knock them out? Or was it a truth serum of some kind and they used it to get
information from them?

Jack's cell and the room next to it are divided by a clear plexiglass wall and I have to say I laughed right out loud when he ran into it. I've done that a few times myself. Anyway, Juliet comes to see Jack, from the other side of the plexiglass. She offers him food but he must first agree to sit at the far wall so she can come in through the door on his side and place the food on the floor. After a few flashbacks, he agrees, but he was only foolin': As soon as Juliet opens the door, Jack lunges at her and forces her out into the hallway. There are two doors leading away from the cell. Benry walks in through one and tells Jack that if he opens the other one, they will all die. Jack says he'll kill Juliet. Benry says go ahead. Oo, that's cold, dude. Jack decides to try the door and Benry was right - the entire ocean comes rushing in. Instead of helping Jack and Juliet, Benry runs through the door he came through earlier and locks it behind him. That's really cold. Juliet and Jack make it back inside his cell and close the door and she promptly knocks him out cold.

When Jack wakes up later, Juliet is back on the other side of the plexiglass and has a file in front of her. She tells Jack that she knows everything about him, his marriage, his job, his education...she even has a copy of his father's autopsy report. After being asked repeatedly if there is anything he would like to know from the report, Jack finally lets go of his obsession about Sarah's lover and simply asks if she's happy now. Juliet says yes, she is, and Jack has clearly been broken. Juliet offers to try to give him food again and this time he agrees to her conditions. As she goes out into the hall to deliver the food to Jack, she runs into Benry, who tells her, "Good work, Juliet." She replies, barely civil, "Thank you, Ben."

Elsewhere at the Hydra Station, Sawyer is on display in the zoo. There's a kid in the cage across from him named Carl, and I think he must be an Other plant. Why? Who knows. Carl breaks out and they try to escape but Juliet catches them. It was sll very "Planet of the Apes" for me, even the music. I loved it. Damn dirty apes!

After Kate has her shower and puts on her girly dress, she's brought out to the beach to have aborderline romantic breakfast with Benry, who makes her put on a pair of handcuffs first. Ick. She asks him why the nice breakfast, pretty dress, beachside table? He tells her it's because the next 2 weeks are going to be pretty terrible for her and he wants her to have something to old on to when things get bad.

Later, after Carl is taken away, Kate is tossed into the cage across from Sawyer, and they take her handcuffs off. Her wrists are cut and rubbed raw, but we don't know what happened to make them that way. Did she refuse to eat with Benry and was punished for it? Sawyer shares his fish biscuit (did I mention the fish biscuit? no? well it's too late now) with her and they exchange meaningful glances.

And that's it. It looks like next week we'll be concentrating on Sun, Jin and Sayid. In the meantime, check out these links:

Utopiaville

Hydra Station