Lost - ?

*** / ****

It took me two days to get up the stomach to watch the next Lost episode, ?, or is it the nerve? I knew I’d have emotions going into it I’m not exactly thrilled to feel. I knew when Michael shot himself in the shoulder it was to cover up his own crimes and blame a loosened Henry on them. The ridiculously manipulative plot device of the “not yet dead victim with the truth if she can just get out the words” as Libby spits up blood and can only get out, “Michael”…I didn’t fall for it. I knew Michael would get away with it. I knew Libby would die. There was no false hope in either conclusion. I knew both of these things as the episode started and during the entire running time I just, honestly, wanted it to be over. My solace—well, sort of—was in the secondary plot of Eko experiencing visions and trekking to the “question mark” in the neon map Locke was made aware when the Execute button wasn’t pushed by Henry. Another solace for me, personally, was no Henry in this episode. I simply did not want to see his face, and I hope this is the start of a stretch of episodes where he’s absent because right now I’m not in a good place. I can imagine some might read that and laugh. It’s just a show. I get it. I guess the whole point of being a fan and getting lost (pun intended) in a show is the characters. And there are just some characters that arrive in a show you immediately find comfort in. They are a light in all that darkness. To me Libby was such a light. With all the violence, despair, struggle, and drama, sometimes a brief respite in the form of a character who brings a warm spirit and humane decency to an otherwise all-too-often island of dark (despite its idyll, it is often quite hard to see the beauty when accompanying it is strife and ache) is worth his or her weight in jewels. In fact Libby could be considered a crystal emanating its glow and Michael destroyed her. So I had kind of delayed this viewing for a couple days so I could allow my nerves to settle and heart to beat at a quieter pace. Just the same, Libby took her final breath with a look of horror on her face after mentioning Michael’s name and Jack and Hurley were none the wiser. Just for extra salt in the wound, Hurley arrives in the bunker and looks over at Michael to tell him he’s glad he’s okay…I cringed but knew it was a screenplay gem the writer’s room couldn’t pass up. The final shot of Michael in the cell Henry occupied, I thought the symbolism was quite appropriate. I hope he’s in that cell and there is enough guilt and shame to torment this character many nights afterward. I told a friend at work that I can’t stand feeling what I did against Michael after Two for the Road was over. Nonetheless it was such a dark place for a fan to inhabit. Only two people now know what happened in the bunker when Ana and Libby were killed and the Others benefit from that select group’s silence.

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Eko gets some fresh back story in this episode, initiating a search for the question mark when experiencing visions of his brother, Yemi, urging him to rescue John from his “veering off course”. It seems, according to the visions, that John had “lost his way”. When imitating a priest in Australia, a monsignor in his church puts him on an investigation to determine if a drowning victim (a young woman, daughter of the psychic Claire met in Raised by Another) who reawakened on the autopsy table is a miracle. Eko will do his own “walkabout” with Locke, telling Jack they will hunt down Henry, instead pursuing the identity of the question mark the visions emphasize. The drowning victim does locate Eko with a message from Yemi, before he boards the Oceanic, but he’s disturbed that she would indicate she had met him prior to her “resurrection”. Adding a bit extra to this scene is Libby asking Eko if everything is okay due to his intense reaction to the drowning victim’s claims. It is another way for Lost Creative to emphasize the cosmic connection of all these characters. The psychic admitting to being a fraud to Eko and his ties to Claire, the psychic’s daughter seeing Yemi in that spiritual realm before returning to life, and Libby seeing if Eko is okay during an outburst in the airport…it is the cosmic workings Lost Creative continue to reveal to us.

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Finding another bunker (or station, The Pearl, if you prefer…) located under the drug plane from Nigeria that carried Yemi’s body, is indeed an extraordinary development which seems to identify the “exercise in futility” imputing the numerical code and pushing Execute truly is. Locke just reacts as any normal person would. He has every right to feel foolish. Yet Eko knows that these visions specifying Locke’s importance in all of this indicates that although the Orientation tape with Dr. Wickmund recognizes The Pearl as a monitoring station where the screens reveal what cameras capture in the island bunker scattered. That no one is there seems to indicate that with the Dharma Initiative’s purpose clearly identified in the Orienation video seemingly went awry. There is a copyright date on the video…1980. It does seem that the idea was for designated folks to watch the monitors and document on notebooks activities “of importance”, once completed, to be fed into a tube that would be carried to those head of the Dharma Initiative. What fascinates me about all of this is that these stations are empty, desolate, left to ruin. As if the Dharma Initiative put great time and effort into this entire project and yet something happened. What that is, however, the show, I guess, will gradually reveal as the seasons continue. Eko gathers up a lot of books and such in a backpack and takes Locke to task for his attitude after watching the Orientation video for The Pearl. If Locke decides to no longer “push the button”, Eko says he will.

Climbing the hill up to where the plane once was after Locke experiences a vision (or dream, if you wish) regarding Yemi calling out to Eko is probably my favorite scene in the episode. It is as if Eko is dreaming it. Yemi calling out to him from the woods, for some reason, was eerie to me. As if a ghost calling out to a mortal to follow. Eko is climbing the hill and gets to the top, visualizing Yemi in a wheelchair, falling…then *Locke* wakes up! And the visions telling Eko to bring the ax, later to reveal that he will use it to climb the hill and open the door of the hatch to The Pearl further offers the idea that there is this intelligence orchestrating things…again, as of now I can only consider it a type of cosmic power. I’m not there yet, I realize that. I have a ways to go.

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The infighting of Sawyer and Jack, securing some heroin and Kate sent to see where the guns are hidden in Sawyer’s tent, Hurley being told the bad news (and his sorrow for not getting the blankets), Michael looking worried that Libby might implicate him, and Jack with no control over Libby’s fading health serve as additional content, but Libby’s death and the search and discovery of The Pearl serve as the real meat and potatoes of the episode.