Lost - Collision

***/****

At the end of Collision there was this lovely melodic score that punctuated and accentuated equal parts love found and love lost. Tired, sweaty, exhausted people who have dealt with the damned island and its violence. People living with the guilt and shame of past actions, just dealing with regret and fate. People who have lost those they love, some given the chance to be reacquainted with those they might never have thought they would see again. You can see faces that ache, faces that agonize, faces that suffer. But there is joy, euphoria, and relief. We see Jin-Soo and Sun-Hwa embrace, Bernard and Rose hug, Sayid wounded by his years as a torturer and now carrying the dead body of a woman he loved, and Jack looking across at an Ana “dead inside”. The score blankets all of this with just the right melody, touching the bliss and melancholy without giving either too much attention. Lost is a show that does that well…it knows how to talk to us about these people on this island during the worst times of their lives, while also not failing to offer those [sometimes often too] brief moments of exhilaration and happiness.

Ana was a LA cop recovering from a near fatal death while on the job, shot by some jerk burgling a building with hollow points, pretending to be a student. She had been reeling from this incident, going to therapy, stomaching the days off the job, waiting until the man that nearly killed her would be caught. But instead of identifying this turkey when held in an interrogation room, Ana says he isn’t the one that shot her. All going according to her revenge plan, Ana awaits some alley alone time with the guy before pumping a near mag into his body. This she lives with while on the island and perhaps the very reason she wasn’t on that list mentioned in The Other 48 Days.

Killing Shannon just added another notch on the belt of guilt Ana must carry at this point on Lost, with Sayid wanting to avenge her during that moment of rage. In that moment of confusion and disorientation (hearing this ominous voice seemingly all around them), Ana accidentally kills Shannon, believing her to be the others, to be a threat to them. I keep wondering if this is the island’s way of claiming another, as if Shannon’s stay was no longer necessary. Sayid might not feel that way, but just the same Shannon would continue to see Walt, seemingly a figment, following after *him* and walking right into a bullet. Like brother, like sister.

Ana spends the episode trying to figure out what to do about Sayid. Mr. Eko overpowers Sayid and Ana clunks him over the head to subdue him. Eko won’t bind Sayid to a tree so Ana, gun in hand, demands Libby do it. Eko, instead, will carry Sawyer to Michael and Jin-Soo’s camp to get help from Jack to tend to his infectious wound. Eko brings news of Shannon’s death with Locke trying to get more out of him as Jack demands directions to Ana’s location, soon remembering their conversation before the flight. Fate’s little games bring Jack and Ana face to face. It isn’t a pleasant encounter…accompanied with it is death.

A golf game between Locke and Kate, playful and competitive, is interrupted with Sawyer’s unconscious, dying body carried on Eko’s shoulders. Jack will need to medicate him and try and stop the infection from spreading all into his body, while also needing to clean that wound. Kate’s deeply concerned face says it all…she is in love with him. It is Kate that will convince a barely awake Sawyer to swallow the medicine. Water from the bunker shower will try and bring down his fever. If Sawyer escapes this, he’ll have some soul searching in store. Meanwhile Michael will try to rescue Sayid out of the clutches of a confused and anxious Ana. It will be a face to face with Sayid that does the trick, however. The two of them realizing that both are damaged souls who have committed violence they can never sponge away.

This is essentially somewhat a second Ana episode, with some back story involving Ana needling her mother to put her back on patrol, seeing her therapist, back on patrol and drawing a weapon on a domestic disturbance call, and returning to the job still harboring hostility. She wasn't rehabilitated, but the street was her means to get her receipt when the time was right. That receipt would carry with it a lot more than Ana first would realize.