LOST 5.08 "LaFleur" recap

They went and done it again. It’s a whole new ball game, kiddies. So saddle up, and let’s find out just exactly why Lost’s showrunners have been calling Season 5 “the year of Sawyer.”

It was a wild hour full of everything Lost does best, with one incredible moment of drama or revelation after another. But I’m fighting a wicked head cold, so if I miss anything or come up with any kooky theories, I will shamelessly blame it on the pharmaceuticals.

Favorite line: “Thank you for believing in me.” – Juliet

The episode begins at the end of “This Place Is Death,” where our band of left behind castaways on the island were watching John Locke descend into the well. Sawyer, as you’ll recall, was left holding the well’s rope, which now went into the ground where there was no well. Juliet says that this time flash took them back to a time before the well was dug. Miles sees something on the horizon and says they’re back “way before” the well was dug. The others follow his gaze to see the back of the four-toed statue, its entire body intact, and standing incredibly high in the sky.

Down in the well, Locke turns the wheel, and there’s one last flash. Another time jump occurs, and everyone notices that it felt different than the other flashes. Sawyer sees that the well has been built out of stones, but the hole itself still hasn’t been dug. The headaches and nosebleeds are all gone; Locke was successful in stabilizing the island. Sawyer sums up the plan from here: “Now we wait for him to come back.”

Three years later, it’s nighttime on the island when two members of the Dharma Initiative — a man named Jerry and a woman named Rosie — put on some music and dance, inside a Dharma security station. They’re interrupted by another security worker named Phil, who warns them that “if LaFleur finds out” what they’re up to, it would mean trouble. On one of the monitors, they spot Horace Goodspeed at the sonic fence. He’s heavily drunk, and carrying a backpack full of dynamite. He lights a stick and throws it into a tree, which explodes. Jerry and Phil send Rosie away, and reluctantly agree that they have to go and wake LaFleur.

They venture out to LaFleur’s house at the Barracks, and the man’s identity is revealed as none other than James “Sawyer” Ford. And his Dharma jumpsuit labels him as Head of Security.

Minutes later, Miles exits a Dharma house of his own, wearing his own Dharma jumpsuit that designates him as part of the security team. Sawyer waits for him in a van, and Miles readily defers to Sawyer’s authority. Sawyer says they’re headed out to the Flame station, where Horace is blowing up trees. It’s revealed that Horace is the leader of the Dharma Initiative, and that he’s never before been seen drinking. They find him passed out on the ground, and when Miles questions one of Sawyer’s orders, Sawyer asks if he’d prefer to be the one to tell Amy where they found Horace.

Back at Horace’s house, the Amy in question answers the door, and she’s nine months pregnant. Sawyer carries Horace in and deposits him on the couch, and explains what happened. Sawyer presses Amy to find out what drove Horace to this, and she finally reveals that the two of them had a fight, about someone named Paul. Sawyer recognizes this name. Amy suddenly experiences labor pains, and Sawyer rushes her off to deliver the baby.

Three years ago, we pick up with the group of survivors after the final time flash. They find Daniel back where they left him with Charlotte, only he’s sitting alone, totally distraught. He mumbles, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to tell her,” when Juliet asks him what happened. He finally explains that she died, and then when the last time flash happened, she disappeared. “She moved on, we stayed,” he says. Sawyer asks if that means that all the time jumping is over, and Daniel says yes. Wherever and whenever they are now, they’re there for good.

Sawyer declares that they’re going back to the beach, and Miles gripes about this, wondering who put him in charge. Juliet agrees with Sawyer, though later she quietly tells him it was a stupid idea, but it was better than arguing or doing nothing. Their tones of voice indicate that they’re both doing a little open flirting.

Gun shots in the distance stop everyone in their tracks, and they hear a woman crying. Tracking the sound to its source, they spot two Others, who’ve shot and killed a man on the ground, and are preparing to kill the woman who was accompanying him. The pair were having a picnic from the looks of things. The woman is Amy, but the dead man on the ground is someone we’ve never seen before. Sawyer wants to intervene, but Miles doesn’t. He asks Daniel to back him up, but Dan says it ultimately doesn’t matter what they do. “Whatever happened, happened,” he says.

Sawyer and Juliet rush in and save Amy, shooting the two Others dead. After Sawyer has calmed her down, Amy asks, “Who are you?”

A few minutes later, Amy is crying over her companion’s body. Sawyer and Juliet confer in private, looking over the two men they killed. Juliet notes that Amy’s companion is wearing a Dharma jumpsuit, which places them somewhere in the 70s. Sawyer asks if she recognizes the two Others they killed, and she says no, they’re from before her time.

Sawyer lies to Amy about who they are, saying they were shipwrecked on a ship headed for Tahiti. Juliet says that more Others will be on the way soon to look for their men, and they should get out of there. But Amy begs them to bury the Others for the sake of “the truce,” and to carry her dead companion — her husband, Paul — back to camp. Jin volunteers to carry Paul.

As they travel to the Dharma Barracks, Sawyer tells his friends that there are going to be a lot of questions asked of them, and that they should let him do the talking. He has a cover story already worked out, and he used to lie for a living as a con man, so he can handle it. Juliet calls out to Daniel, who’s walking near the front of the group, to stop, because they’ve come upon the sonic fence that surrounds the Barracks. Juliet covers by saying it looks “like some kind of sonic barrier,” and asks Amy to turn it off. At first Amy plays dumb, but eventually she agrees, moving to the control panel. When she announces it’s off, Sawyer tells her to go first. She successfully passes through the fence’s pylons without incident, so everyone else follows her. But they are immediately taken down by the sonic fence, which is still operational. After they’re unconscious, Amy pulls a pair of earplugs out of her ears, revealing how she passed through the fence unharmed.

Three years later, Amy is in labor, but the Dharma internist doctor tells Sawyer that she’s breech, and needs a Caesarean to get the baby out. The doctor says that Amy was about to leave the island on the submarine for her delivery, since all Dharma deliveries are carried out on the mainland. But she’s two weeks early. And this doctor isn’t qualified to conduct a Caesarean birth.

Sawyer takes off, looking for Juliet. He finds her working on one of the blue Dharma vans, where she is now a member of the Dharma motor pool. He whispers to her that Amy needs her help, that she’s the only person on the island who can deliver the baby. Juliet is reluctant to help; they’ve lied about who they all are to the Dharma people, and she’s watched so many pregnant women die on this island… But he convinces her to go.

Back at the medical building, Juliet quickly takes charge, issuing orders to the internist doctor. The doctor balks at her sudden authority, but Amy says she wants Juliet to handle the delivery. Sawyer shares a brief moment with Juliet, telling her he believes in her, that she can do this.

Outside, Sawyer waits anxiously. Jin approaches — speaking much better English after three years as part of the Dharma Initiative — and reports to Sawyer that his ongoing, regular searches for “our people” are still coming up empty. He asks Sawyer how long he is to go on searching. Sawyer replies, “As long as it takes.”

A very emotional Juliet suddenly emerges, proclaiming, “It’s a boy!” and that both mother and baby are perfectly fine.

Three years ago, Sawyer wakes up after being knocked out by the sonic fence. Horace is watching him, waiting for him to awaken, and immediately begins questioning him. Sawyer weaves his intricate lie, explaining that he and his friends were on a salvage vessel headed for Tahiti, looking for a famous old slave ship called the Black Rock. Horace says he’s never heard of the ship. Sawyer continues, saying that their ship wrecked, they washed ashore, and they were looking for the rest of their crewmembers when they came upon Amy and Paul, under attack in the jungle.

When he complains about the welcome they received after saving Amy’s life, Horace says that the Dharma Initiative has strict security protocols that have to be observed. And as such, Dharma’s submarine is scheduled to depart tomorrow, and that he intends for Sawyer and his people to all be on it. They’ll drop them in Tahiti, he says.

Outside, everyone else sits around a table, conversing at night and speculating on what Sawyer is saying to Horace. Juliet is particularly bemused to be back here, seeing nearby the house she lived in for three years. Daniel agrees that all of this is very odd, saying that “the record is spinning again, we’re just not on the song we want to be on.” Just then, a woman walks by with a little red-headed girl, and Daniel is taken aback. It’s Charlotte as a child.

Sawyer comes outside and tells them they’re being forced to leave the island. Miles asks why that’s a bad thing, but they’re all interrupted by a loud alarm blaring. A Dharma member ushers them quickly inside a house, as all of the other Dharma members retreat to their homes for safety.

Richard Alpert strides into the compound and places a burning torch into the ground. Horace walks outside to speak with him, and addresses him as “Mr. Alpert.” Richard is there looking for his two missing men, and he reminds Horace that there is a truce between his people and Dharma, which killing his men has violated.

Horace quickly goes to the house where Sawyer and his people are hiding, and asks him just how well they buried the bodies of the men they shot. Sawyer says he’s going to handle this, and doesn’t give Horace the option of declining. He goes out into the courtyard and addresses Richard by name. After confessing to killing Richard’s men, explaining that it was self-defense after he came to the aid of a helpless woman, he says that the truce hasn’t been broken, because he’s not Dharma. When Richard asks who he is then, Sawyer replies, “Did you bury the bomb?” The hydrogen bomb named Jughead, he explains. He also says that he knows that a man named John Locke entered his camp back twenty years ago and said he was the leader of Richard’s people, right before he vanished. When Richard demands to know how Sawyer knows all this, Sawyer replies that he’s waiting for Locke to get back.

Richard believes Sawyer that he’s not Dharma and the truce was not broken. But, he says, his people need “some kind of justice” for the two men who were killed.

In the medical building, Amy stands over her husband’s body, and Horace approaches. She asks if Richard is still out there, and he says yes, that Richard needs to take Paul’s body back with him, in order to uphold the truce. He gives Amy the ultimate choice, saying he’s willing to accept the consequences if she can’t go through with it. But she agrees, saying that Paul would want them to maintain the peace. She removes a pendant necklace from beneath Paul’s shirt, and leaves. Horace tells Sawyer that when the submarine leaves tomorrow, it will be back in two weeks. He’ll allow Sawyer and his friends to stay until it returns in two weeks, and they can look for their missing people until then.

Later, Sawyer meets Juliet down at the dock, where the submarine stands waiting. He tells her that he bought them another two weeks to wait for Locke to get back. She asks what they’re supposed to do if and when that happens. Her question is rhetorical, because she just wants to leave. She’s been trying to get off of this island for years, and the fact that it’s 1974 now isn’t going to stop her. She just wants to leave. He says that if she leaves, who’s going to have his back, the way she did when they shot the two Others? He asks her to stay just for two more weeks, until the sub gets back, to wait and see if Locke returns. She reluctantly agrees.

Three years later, Sawyer picks a flower and takes it home — to Juliet, who’s cooked dinner for the two of them. The two of them are clearly living together. He tells her she was amazing today, at the delivery. She thanks him for believing in her. They embrace, and Juliet says, “I love you.” Sawyer replies, “I love you, too.”

Later, Sawyer is reading a book while waiting on a snoring Horace Goodspeed to wake up. When Horace rouses, Sawyer tells him that he has a son, but he missed the kid’s birth. The two are clearly friends now, despite their rocky first meeting. Sawyer asks why he got drunk and started blowing up trees. Horace confesses that he found Paul’s necklace — the one Amy took from Paul’s body three years ago — in the back of one of her dresser drawers while looking for a pair of socks, and the two of them got into a fight over it. Sawyer says that that was pretty silly, and Horace agrees, but he can’t help wondering… Is three years really long enough to get over a lost love? Sawyer tells him that he loved a girl about three years ago, but he never really took a run at her. Does he regret it? He says that now, after all this time, he finds that he can barely even remember what she looked like. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because she’s gone and she’s never coming back. Yes, he says, three years is plenty long enough to get over someone.

The next morning, Sawyer and Juliet are still in bed when he gets a phone call from Jin. It’s the day Jin found Jack, Kate, and Hurley in the lagoon, as seen at the end of “316,” and he’s calling to tell Sawyer the news. Sawyer tells him to meet him in the north valley, far from the Barracks. Juliet wakes up and asks where he’s going, but he just says everything’s okay but he has to go, though he’s visibly shaken.

Driving a blue Dharma jeep, he meets up with Jin’s van, and out comes Jack, Hurley, and Kate. His eyes and Kate’s meet, and the look on his face shows that three years wasn’t long enough to get over her, after all.

Whew! The stories just keep coming fast and furious this season, don’t they? Now that the Oceanic 6 and island-time-jumping storylines have come to a conclusion, Lost wasted no time launching into a major new story arc.

Holy crap, we actually got to see the four-toed statue in full! Alas, we only got to see it from behind. But still… One would have to guess that, like Miles said, that last time flash took them waaaaay back in time. There was a civilization living on the island sometime, long ago. Who were they? Were they the Others/Hostiles? Or some civilization that predated even them? I’m guessing the front of that statue would offer a mighty big clue, or they would have shown it to us by now. Do you suppose a face we know is depicted on it? Richard? Jacob? Someone else? I’ll come back to the statue with lots more thoughts in a minute.

“LaFleur” presented us with another time jump. All of the main characters on the show are now three years ahead of the days when we followed them day-by-day — whether thanks to off the island activities, or on. This conveniently gives all of them plenty of new fodder for future flashback stories. Will the rest of this season and all of Season 6 play out with a return of flashbacks only?

Interesting, is it not, that the island survivors have now spent as much time apart from the Oceanic 6, as the O6 have spent apart from them — three years. Is it coincidence that the same amount of time passed for both groups, or is it something more? I would imagine it mostly was a decision on the writers’ part to have both groups separated for the same amount of time, to make it easier to follow the character developments from this point forward.

Equally interesting is the fact that both groups felt the need to lie, to conceal the truth in order to survive. The Oceanic 6 lied about their time on the island, and the survivors left behind lied to the Dharma Initiative about where they came from.

I couldn’t quite figure out which Dharma station the security station was, where the workers watched Horace Goodspeed wander around drunk, tossing dynamite into trees. My first thought was that it looked like the Pearl, with all of the video monitors. But it seems more likely it would be the Arrow, since it was one we’ve never really seen before. We only caught a glimpse of one part of the Arrow station back in Season 2, when the Tailies were taking up refuge there.

Did you notice that Rosie — the girl dancing with Jerry in the security station — was wearing a Geronimo Jackson t-shirt? Charlotte referenced Geronimo Jackson during her time-trip delusions that occurred just before she died.

Jerry’s crack to Paul, “What’s going to happen? The polar bears are going to figure a way out of their cages?” is a nice little wink to continuity, going all the way back to the pilot episode. We didn’t know then, but we know now, that the polar bears belonged to Dharma. And the cages in question are over on Hydra island, where Kate and Sawyer were held captive by the Others in Season 3.

Where did Horace get dynamite? Did Dharma bring some with them as part of their armory, or did he requisition it from the Black Rock? If so, then either he was lying to Sawyer about having ever heard of the old slave ship, or three years later, Dharma came across it at some point.

Horace and Amy obviously married after Amy lost her first husband Paul to an attack by the Hostiles. But Horace Goodspeed also had a different wife when he first came to the island, back when he recruited Roger Linus. Her name was Olivia Goodspeed, and she taught school for the Dharma kids. What happened to her? Did she die as well? Or did they divorce? And was she still around in the “Three Years Ago” segments, when Sawyer and the others first encountered Horace?

Last season, Locke had a vision of Horace Goodspeed building a cabin in the woods — very likely the cabin where Jacob now lives. Was he building the cabin for Amy, or for Olivia?

The fact that Horace is the leader of the Dharma Initiative is a major revelation. We knew from his appearance in “The Man Behind the Curtain” that he held a position of some authority within Dharma, but I didn’t see it coming at all that he was their “fearless leader.” I always assumed the person in charge was Pierre Chang or Alvar Hanso, or maybe someone else we haven’t met yet.

I never got a terribly good look at it, but I believe Horace’s jumpsuit identifies him as “Mathematician.”

Poor Daniel. His mutterings of “I’m not going to tell her” are a clear reference to Charlotte’s story about him coming to her as a little girl and telling her never to come back to the island or she’d die.

“Whenever we are now, it’s for good,” according to Daniel. Is this true? Will the present day castaways never be able to return to what they know as the present, on the island? What about the Purge? Now that all of the left behind survivors are part of the Dharma Initiative, and I’d be willing to bet most if not all of the Oceanic 6 will soon be joining up as well, what will become of them when the Others enact the Purge, and kill every member of Dharma? I’d be willing to bet a future storyline will be about them trying to either stop or escape from the Purge. Sounds perfectly epic enough for something like this year’s season finale, wouldn’t you say? Or maybe even the series finale next season, for all we know.

Why were the Others/Hostiles executing Amy and Paul, if they have a truce with the Dharma Initiative? Did Amy and Paul trespass into Hostile territory, or violate the truce in some other way?

How did Amy survive her pregnancy, since we know the island kills pregnant women? The Dharma doctor told Sawyer that they send all pregnant women to the mainland to deliver, but that could have merely been because of the meager medical facilities they had available on the island. Is it, as Sawyer suggests to Juliet, a time before the island started having fatal effects on pregnant women? If so, then what caused this phenomenon to begin? One possible answer could be lingering aftereffects of the Purge. We know that the Purge was carried out by releasing chemical toxins into the atmosphere via the Tempest station, and that this took place in no small part due to the scheming of Benjamin Linus to take over leadership of the Others. How ironic would it be that the problem that vexed him so greatly later in life — the Others’ inability to have children on the island — a problem he recruited Juliet specifically to address, was originally caused by his own actions during the Purge?

Why did Amy want Juliet to conduct her delivery? Did she already know that Juliet was qualified, despite the lies Sawyer & Co. told the Dharma people about who they really are? Does she know that Sawyer and his friends are lying? Or does Amy trust Sawyer and Juliet simply because she’s known them for three years now?

How great is it that Jin can speak normal English now, finally? Actor Daniel Dae Kim can finally interact with all the other characters without translations, gestures, or broken English. I loved that little side-effect of the three-year island time jump.

A big question you should be pondering right now: Who is Amy and Horace’s baby boy? The chances of him being someone we’ve already met are pretty good. Given that he was born in 1974, he would be right at 30 years old if we’ve seen him on the island prior to now (since all of the island action up to this season took place in 2004). Could it be a major character with a heretofore unknown history of being born on the island? Maybe Jack or Sawyer? Desmond would be a provocative choice, since we don’t know anything about his childhood. Can’t be Daniel, because his mother is Eloise Hawking. And Miles is more likely to be the child of Pierre Chang. Sayid is an Iraqi national. Hurley is Hispanic. That leaves secondary players like Ethan Rom, Goodwin, or Ajira 315 newcomer Caesar. That last one becomes more likely when you consider that Juliet delivered the baby by Caesarean. Could his parents have decided to name the little guy after his delivery method? If he is Caesar, then the grown-up Caesar knows a lot more about the island than he’s letting on to the other Ajira survivors, and it was probably no accident that he wound up on that flight.

Actress Elizabeth Mitchell was given a big moment to carry as an actress, in the scene where she emerges from the delivery room. Since the writers chose not to show us the delivery or even the baby afterwards, Mitchell was solely responsible for conveying the weight of Amy’s successful delivery. And carry it she did, splendidly. That was a great scene.

Are we meant to assume that Horace’s opinion of Sawyer as “not Dharma material” changed largely due to how smartly Sawyer handled the situation with Richard? Or is there more to Horace accepting Sawyer and his friends into the Dharma Initiative, that’s yet to be revealed?

Why would Richard be the one coming to the Dharma Barracks to speak to Horace, when this episode falls into the timeframe when we know that Charles Widmore was leader of the Others? Why didn’t Widmore come talk to Horace? And this clearly wasn’t the first time Richard had been around them — both Horace and Amy knew him by name.

Richard claimed that the sonic fence can’t keep him out, or any of his people. And he proved it by marching into the Barracks. So how do they get around it? Do they also utilize earplugs, just like Amy did? Or is there more to this?

How and when did the Dharma Initiative and the Others come to their truce? Inquiring minds want to know.

What exactly did Richard’s people do with Paul’s body once he brought it to them? Did he just need it as proof that the truce was maintained? Or did they have a specific purpose in mind for it? Maybe they intended to reanimated it somehow, as Christian Shephard and John Locke have both been brought back to life. Then again, maybe they’re cannibals and just wanted supper.

Would it really be 1974 off the island, if anyone on the island left it now? The Oceanic 6 returned to the island and traveled back to 1974, even though they originated in 2008. Is the island in its own pocket bubble of time? I don’t understand why it would be, since up until this season, it’s always seemed to run concurrent with time off the island. Did Locke or Ben change things somehow, when they turned the wheel? I’m hoping Dan will explain how all of this works at some point.

So Sawyer managed to convince Juliet — who desperately wants to leave the island — to stay for two extra weeks. Yet three years later, we see them happily in love and living together. Did they really fall in love in just two weeks’ time, and that’s how he was able to get her to stay permanently? Or was there another reason she stayed?

Watching Sawyer three years in the future, a happy member of the Dharma Initiative, with Juliet blissfully at his side, is a really rewarding thing to see. He’s come a long way from the angry, social malcontent we first met back in Season 1. He’s settled comfortably into a position of leadership, he’s found lasting love, and he’s allowed the better angels of his nature to surface. Juliet and her calm, cool demeanor have been good for him.

It goes without saying that Sawyer and Juliet’s romance is about to get very complicated, with the arrival of Jack and Kate. But I am hereby announcing that henceforth I’m fully rooting for Sawyer and Juliet staying together. They’re such an unlikely pairing that I was surprised at what a sweet, genuine couple they made, and the actors really made me believe in their feelings for each other. I probably like seeing them together so much because those feelings for one another are based on a mutual belief in each another, that the other person can be better, or more than they once were. And Kate and Jack have always been better suited to each other, anyway, if they can ever get over their respective baggage.

But wait, there’s a fifth player in this growing love triangle, quadrangle, or whatever shape it is now: Ben. He believes that Juliet is his, as we saw in last season’s “The Other Woman.” Which is probably going to place Sawyer squarely in his crosshairs at some point. But Sawyer is in a position of power on the island now as head of Dharma security, where Ben will be completely unknown by the Others, and therefore entirely on his own.

I still don’t get why Richard told Locke back in “Because You Left,” the Season 5 premiere, that “the only way to save the island” was to get back the people who left. The island seems to have been saved; there are no more time flashes, and haven’t been for three years now. So what difference does it make to the safety of the island that the Oceanic 6 returned? The island seemed pretty darn safe to me three years before they got there.

The one castaway we never caught up with after the three-year time jump was Daniel Faraday. Yet we know from the season premier that he also winds up as part of the Dharma Initiative. So where was he? And what department did he wind up in? All of the others are basically “working grunts,” which we can understand Horace accepting them as, since they have no science backgrounds. But Daniel is a scientist, and could easily fit in among any of the scientific research studies Dharma is conducting on the island. Is that why we didn’t see him? Is he stuck conducting experiments off in the Swan or the Orchid or someplace?

Paul’s necklace bore an Ankh amulet, which was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for life and fertility. It’s also known as “the key of life,” “the key of the Nile,” or “cross with a handle.” It was popular among the Hippie subculture of the 60s, which could explain Paul’s affinity for it, since Dharma was big with the “peace, love, and world unity” vibe. Then again, this is Lost, so it probably has a much deeper significance and meaning than that…

Which brings me back to the four-toed statue. Granted, we only saw the back of it, but it has a decidedly Egyptian appearance about it. The statue even holds something in its right hand that looked an awful lot like an Ankh symbol. The statue’s right hand can clearly be seen clasping something hoop-shaped, which could easily be the top loop of an Ankh. It also holds something in its left hand, which isn’t quite as easy to see (stupid trees!). Its head looks strikingly like the back of a traditional Egyptian pharaoh’s headdress, but there’s a small crown (or maybe a flat-top) on the very top. The statue also wears what looks like a textured loincloth, but then again, for all we know, it could just be a miniskirt. The gender of the statue is impossible to determine, and I would imagine this was intentional on the part of the show’s producers.

I have a million questions about this thing! Who built the statue? When? What’s with all the Egyptian influences, if the island is way over in the Pacific Ocean? (That’s pretty much the opposite side of the world from Egypt.) Did it deteriorate naturally over time (which would make it crazy old), or was it intentionally destroyed during some kind of conflict, leaving only the sandaled foot that exists today?

Theories, anyone?

Image: CTV.ca.