LOST: Episode 5.13

Some Like It Hoth

Miles: What happened to him?
Radzinsky: He had an accident....He fell in a ditch.
Miles: Is that a bullet in his head? That ditch had a gun.

I LOL'd.

Another very good, workman-like setup episode. For this recap, I'm putting all of the flashbacks in one section, all 1977 DI stuff in another.

Flashbacks

1985.  Miles and his mother Lara are looking at an apartment.  Lara tells the landlord that she has no husband and it will just be her and Miles, who looks to be about 8 years old.  Miles gets a quarter for the vending machine, but as he's about to get a snack, something beckons him to the door of apartment #4.  Shortly thereafter his mother and the landlord hear his screams and come running.  Miles has entered the apartment and found its resident dead on the floor.  He tells his mom that he can hear the man talking to him.  Both mom and landlord are freaked.

It's probably 8-10 years later and a heavily pierced, goth-y Miles comes to see his mother, who is bed-ridden and clearly dying.  He hasn't seen her in a long time, and she is happy to see him.  Miles wants to know about his father, but she sort of angrily tells him that his father didn't care about him and kicked them out when he was just a baby.  She tells Miles that his father is dead and is buried where he cannot find him.

Year unknown - sometime near the end of 2004, I presume.  An adult Miles, now a professional Communicator with the Dead, meets with a man whose son died in a car accident.  The man wants to know if the son knew that he loved him, since he never said it himself.  When he finds out that the son was cremated, Miles asks for more money.  He closes his eyes for a second, is clearly unsuccessful (no body), but tells the father that yes, the boy knew his father loved him.  As he's walking to his car, Naomi approaches and says the people she works for would like to offer him a job, but he has to "audition" at a nearby restaurant.  Miles agrees.  Mostly because Naomi his hot.

A dead man is laid out on a table in the restaurant kitchen.  Miles 'reads' him and tells Naomi that his name was Felix and he was killed while trying to deliver photos of empty graves and a receipt for the purchase of an airplane to someone named Charles Widmore.  Naomi is impressed.  Miles is kind of freaked when she describes the job, though, and tries to leave.  Naomi offers him $1.6 million and he quickly accepts.

Some time later - hours? days? weeks? I don't know, but it's before Miles boards the freighter as a Widmore employee - Miles is walking down a street at night when a van pulls alongside him.  A couple of guys jump out, grab him and toss him in the van.  Seated inside is Bram, a future survivor of Ajira Flight 316 and Ilana's beach buddy.  He asks Miles if he knows "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" When Miles can't answer, Bram tells him he is not ready for what he will find on the Island.  Bram tells Miles that he can give him answers about his ability and his father if he comes with him.  Miles says he will if Bram can double Widmore's offer and pay him $3.2 million.  Bram refuses to pay and Miles chooses Widmore and his money instead.  Bram tells him he's choosing the wrong team.  When Miles asks him what team he's on, Bram replies, "The team that's going to win."  He then kicks Miles to the curb and speeds off.

Next day, maybe?  Hard to tell.  Miles has returned to the father of the car accident victim, whom he had duped earlier.  Miles gives him his money back and tells him that he couldn't communicate with his son.  When the father asks him why Miles didn't just allow him to think the son knew he loved him, Miles says it's because it would be unfair to the son.  Miles tells the father he should have told his son that he loved him while he was alive.

1977 - Dharma Initiative

Kate and Sawyer are back at the sonic fence after dropping young Ben off with the Others.  Sawyer radios Miles back at the security station (the Pearl?) and tells him to destroy the security camera footage of them at the fence.  Was I the only one who wanted to yell at Sawyer that other people could be listening in on their own walkie?

Before Miles can erase the tape, however, Horace shows up.  Since LaFleur is nowhere to be found, he asks Miles to deliver a package to, and pick a package up from Radzinsky, who's out at grid 334.  Miles is concerned because 334 is in Hostile territory, but Horace tells him to just do what has been asked of him and to be happy that he has been included in the "circle of trust".

Miles drives a van out to 334, where Radzinsky meets him with a dead body.  Miles gives him the package from Horace, which turns out to be a body bag.  Miles asks what happened (see quote above), but Radzinsky tells him to just bring the body back to Horace.  After Radzinsky leaves, Miles communicates with the body and finds out that after falling into a ditch, an  electromagnetc force ripped a filling out of a tooth and up through the dead guy's brain and out his forehead, acting like a gunshot.  Miles brings the body to Horace, who a short time later tells him that he has to take the body out to the Orchid station.  Hurley has made lunch for the workers at the Orchid - which is being built - and bums a ride, much to the dismay of Miles.  Hurley smells something bad in the van, discovers the body and when Miles tells him about his ability, Hurley says he can talk to dead people, too.  Sometimes, he even plays chess with them.  Aw.

Roger shows up at the hospital only to find that his son Ben is missing.  Juliet's all, "I know!  I turn my back for a few seconds and *poof*! He was gone!"  Roger's pissed - not drunk, yet, just pissed - and storms out.  Juliet looks at Kate and says, "Here we go."

Roger is sitting on the swingset, and now he's actually pissed in a drunk way.  Kate tries to comfort him but only makes matters worse by making him suspicious of why she's so interested in his son.  Good job, Kate!  Later, Roger goes to clean a classroom only to find Jack there doing it for him.  He tells Jack of his suspicions about Kate.  Jack decides to dispel those suspicions by getting all up in Roger's grill and only makes matters worse.  Good job, Jack!

Miles and Hurley spend a lot of time riding around the Island in the van, talking about father issues while Hurley simultaneously writes in a notebook he is carrying.  When Miles tells Hurley that Pierre Chang is his father, Hurley tells him he should sit down and talk with him.  Miles won't.  He says his father didn't care about him and sent him away and besides, he's going to die soon and he can't change that - according to Daniel - so why even bother.  After they deliver the body to Dr. Chang, he tells Miles he needs a ride back to grid 334.  So Miles and Hurley take him there.  On the way, Hurley rather annoyingly tries to push Miles into telling Chang who he really is.  When they get to grid 334 they find that it is the site of the Swan station, which is just beginning to be built.  Hurley watches as a worker stamps the serial number - 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 - into the hatch cover.

After dropping Dr. Chang off at the Swan, Hurley and Miles drive back to the DI barracks.  Hurley keeps pushing Miles on the father issue until they get into a fight. Miles grabs the notebook from Hurley and reads.  Turns out, Hurley is doing George Lucas a "favor" and writing The Empire Strikes Back for him, with a few changes of course.  Hurley is again with the father stuff, telling Miles that he should learn from Luke Skywalker's mistake.

That night, Jack goes to Sawyer and tells him that Roger is getting suspicious about Ben.  After Jack leaves, squirrely little Phil shows up with a surprise for LaFleur: the security tape that Miles never got around to erasing.  Sawyer invites him into the house and promptly knocks him out.  Nice "thinking" there, Sawyer.

Elsewhere in Dharmaville, Miles is standing outside of Dr. Chang's home, watching his loving father and his 3-month-old self having an adorable bonding moment.  All choked up, Miles turns away when Chang gets a phone call.  Before he can get far, however, Chang walks out the door and calls to him, "Miles, I need you!"  An emotional Miles shakily replies, "You do?"  Aw.  Unfortunately for Miles, what he needs is for Miles to take a van down to the dock to pick up a bunch of scientists from Ann Arbor who have just arrived on the submarine.

As Miles watches the scientists disembark, he is stunned to see Daniel Faraday emerge from the sub's hatch.  Welcome back, Daniel!

OK, a few, quick thoughts:

• Lots of number-y stuff: "3:16" on the microwave and the VCR machine (like Ajira 316); apartment "4", camera "4", the Swan serial number
• About Felix - Tom showed those items - the photos of the empty graves and the receipt for the plane - to Michael as evidence that Widmore staged a fake crash site.  Tom worked for Ben.  Which would imply that Tom killed Felix and took the evidence.  However, why would Felix be delivering that stuff to Widmore is Widmore was behind the fake crash site?  Could Ben have somehow staged it?
• OK, the scene with Bram in the can totally blew out of the water my theory about "What lies behind the statue" being code for Widmore people who were sent back to the Island.  My only thought is that they are a third "faction".  Are they working for Eloise Hawking?  Are they some kind of "reconstituted" Dharma?
• I miss Desmond. :(
• Of all the Star Wars chapters, the one that needs revising the least is The Empire Strikes Back.  Am I right?  And Hurley's argument that Luke would never have lost his hand if he had just talked to his father is flawed: Luke didn't know Darth Vader was his father until after he cut his hand off.  God.  I am such a geek.
• Finally, these are screen shots from the classroom. Click on them to view a larger version and see what's written on the black board.