Rewatching LOST: 2.23 “Live Together, Die Alone, Part 1″

When Desmond Hume returns to the island, Jack and Sayid sense an opportunity to turn the table on the Others. Locke, meanwhile, enlists Desmond’s help in taking control of the Swan station back from Eko, so they can determine if the countdown “protocol” is real or not.

• Jack, Sawyer, and Sayid dive into the ocean to swim to the sailboat that’s just appeared off the shore. When they get there, they find the boat’s single occupant to be very drunk: it’s Desmond Hume, the man they met weeks ago inside the Hatch. As night falls, the survivors give Desmond shelter and Jack asks Desmond why he returned. Desmond replies that he sailed for two and a half weeks on a single bearing, but instead of moving away from the island, he inexplicably came right back. In his drunken anger, he suggests that the island is all that’s left of the world, and it’s a snow globe that they’re all stuck inside of.
• Privately, Sayid tells Jack of a plan he’s devised to give them the advantage when they attack the Others: he intends to use Desmond’s boat to reach the Others’ camp by sea while Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley are led by Michael to the same location on foot. He plans to scout the Others’ numbers and armaments, after which he’ll start a fire with leaves that burn a dark black smoke, as a signal to Jack, and the two groups will attack as one. Sayid insists that Jack not tell the other members of his team, to preserve the element of surprise.
• Locke travels to the Swan station and tells Eko that it’s time to not push the button when the countdown timer reaches zero, so they can see what happens. Locke is still disillusioned from all that he’s experienced in the last week or so, and he believes that nothing will happen at all. When Eko refuses, Locke attempts to force the issue by trying to destroy the computer, but Eko stops him before he’s able to do any damage. Eko forcibly throws Locke out of the station, and warns him not to return. Locke retreats to a private spot in the jungle, where his emotions get the better of him, but it isn’t long until Charlie stumbles across him there. Charlie takes the opportunity to rub it in, as well as inform Locke that Desmond is back.
• The next morning, as Jack and his team depart the beach, Sayid asks Desmond for use of the boat, to sail around to the north shore of the island. Desmond seems to think this means Sayid’s planning to visit “the Hostiles,” a term Sayid has never heard before, but Desmond agrees. Sayid then asks for Jin’s help in sailing, as he doesn’t know how to sail himself, but Jin and Sun only agree because Sun intends to come, too. After the three of them set sail and begin to venture around the island, at one point they come across a most peculiar sight: the ruins of what must have been an enormous statue. But all that’s left of it now is a single foot — a foot with only four toes.
• Desmond takes note of Claire about to give herself an injection of the Dharma medicine that Charlie gave her, but he tells her it’s a waste of time. He took it for three years and it never helped him in any way.
• At night, Locke visits Desmond at the beach and tells him what he learned at the Pearl station about the Swan being just a “psychological experiment.” He proposes that they join forces to take control of the Swan station away from Eko and find out, once and for all, what happens when the button doesn’t get pushed. The next morning, as planned, the two of them venture to the Swan and cut the power, distracting Eko enough to get him out of the dome room so they can barricade themselves inside it, thanks to Desmond’s knowledge of how to hotwire the blast doors. Desperate to get inside the dome room, Eko runs to the beach and enlists Charlie’s help in finding some explosives to blast open the door with.
• As Jack’s group makes its way through the jungle, Sawyer comes across a toy doll on the ground. Kate prevents him from picking it up, knowing it to be one of Danielle’s traps. As she explains, Sawyer finally realizes his misinterpretation of Jack’s words to him (in the last episode) about he and Kate being “caught in a net.” Suddenly, a sound is heard in the woods and the entire group ducks as a large green bird swoops down upon them and then disappears into the sky. Hurley thinks the bird’s call sounded strangely like his name, but Michael is more troubled by the fact that when he tried to shoot at the bird with the gun Jack gave him earlier, it didn’t fire. Jack mumbles that he must’ve forgotten to load that one, and offers Michael a full clip. But Michael’s suspicions are raised. While the trek continues the next day, Kate whispers to Sawyer that the five of them are being followed by two Others, and she impulsively decides to “turn the tables” by killing them. Sawyer agrees to help and he manages to kill one, but the other gets away. He and Kate want to go after that one so that he can’t warn the Others that they’re coming, but Jack reveals that it’s too late, the Others already know, because Michael arranged this entire thing. After some persuasion, Michael finally caves and explains his role in this plot to bring the four of them to the Others. It takes only a moment for Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer to realize that Michael was the one who let “Henry” go free. Hurley asks Michael if he killed Ana-Lucia and Libby, and Michael claims he couldn’t think of any other way to fulfill the Others’ demands. He also notes that Libby was a mistake. Hurley decides to go back to the beach, but Jack believes that they have to continue on with the plan, because if the Others find out that they know the truth, they’ll kill every one of the survivors. He assures them he has a plan, but they demand to know what it is.

• Desmond has read every book Charles Dickens ever wrote, with the sole exception of the novel Our Mutual Friend, which he’s saved so that it’ll be the last thing he ever reads.
• Several years ago, Desmond was sentenced to prison for an unspecified military crime, and upon his release, he was dishonorably discharged. As he exited the prison, he was approached by a man named Charles Widmore, who offered him a ride. There was a great deal of bad blood between them, but Desmond decided to hear what Widmore had to say. Inside the car was every letter Desmond ever wrote from inside prison to the woman he loved, Penelope Widmore — Charles’ daughter — which Charles had intercepted and kept “Penny” from receiving. He informed Desmond that Penny had moved on and was engaged to be married. He also offered Desmond a substantial sum of money if he would run away and never contact Penny again.
• Desmond turned Widmore’s offer down, and came up with a plan of his own: he would enter a race to sail around the world — a race in which the prize winnings were donated by Charles Widmore — in an attempt to regain his honor both in his own eyes and in Penny’s. Instead of accepting Widmore’s pay off, he would take Widmore’s money honestly, on his own terms. Arriving in the U.S., Desmond had a random encounter with none other than Libby. The two had never met before, but they wound up having coffee together. As he told her of his plan, she was so moved by his earnest desire to win back the woman he loved that she volunteered to help him do it. She gave him a boat to use in the race — the Elizabeth — which had belonged to her husband David. Libby told Desmond that her husband named the boat after her, but he’d gotten sick and died just one month ago.
• The night Desmond first met Jack at the stadium, he was training for his sailboat race around the world — but Jack wasn’t the first person he ran into that night. To Desmond’s great surprise, Penny found him there, and they had an emotionally-charged conversation about their past and future. Desmond asked her to wait for him for one year, when he would be back from his race, but she refrained from making any commitments, pointing out that she hadn’t yet set a date for her impending marriage.
• While on his race around the world, Desmond fell into a powerful storm in the Pacific that nearly capsized his boat. But instead he was knocked out after being flung against a bulkhead, and he woke up on the shores of the island. A man in a hazmat suit found him there and dragged him back to where he came from: the Swan station. Desmond’s rescuer finally removed his gas mask to reveal that he was Kelvin Inman, aka the American soldier we remember as the man who taught Sayid how to be a torturer. He asked Desmond the now-familiar questions “Are you him?” and “What did one snowman say to the other?” but Desmond didn’t know the answers. Desmond then witnessed Kelvin enter the Numbers into the computer for the first time, an action Kelvin described as “saving the world.” Desmond soon watched the Swan Orientation film, noting that there were pieces missing. Kelvin explained that Radzinsky, his former partner at the Swan, “made some edits.” He then told Desmond that there was an infectious agent on the island that the Hazmat suits and the Dharma medicine injections would keep him safe from.

• The sailboat belonged to Desmond Hume, who was on it trying to escape from the island.
  Question: Where did the sailboat come from, and who’s on it? 2.22
• Desmond returned to his sailboat — the same one that brought him to the island three years ago — to try and get off of the island once and for all. He was unsuccessful.
  Question: Where did Desmond go? 2.03
• The woman in Desmond’s photo is Penelope Widmore, the love of his life, and daughter of the very powerful Charles Widmore.
  Question: Who was the woman in Desmond’s photo? 2.03
• Though it’s never explained in detail just what the Dharma medicine is, Desmond’s claims that it did nothing seem to imply that the medicine was just an ineffectual placebo.
  Question: What sort of medicine was Desmond injecting himself with down in the Hatch? 2.01
• “Smell’s like carrots.”
  Question: What’s the answer to the question, “What did one snowman say to the other snowman?” 2.02
• Kelvin Inman was a former American soldier who joined up with the Dharma Initiative after a tour of duty during Gulf War.
  Question: Who was Desmond’s friend Kelvin? Was he a member of the Dharma Initiative? 2.03
• A Dharma Initiative member named Radzinksy, who was Kelvin Inman’s former partner at the Swan station, edited the Swan Orientation film.
  Question: Who cut the film? 2.09

• Why couldn’t Desmond sail away from the island?
• What crime was Desmond in prison for?
• Was Desmond’s chance encounter with Libby really so random? She was awfully trusting and willing to believe in a man she didn’t know. Was there more to this than it seems?
• What’s the deal with the big green bird? Was it really saying Hurley’s name?
• Who built the four-toed statue?
• When was the statue built?
• What did the four-toed statue originally depict?
• How was the statue destroyed?

• “Live Together, Die Alone” is the first Desmond-centric episode of the series.
• Though it was originally shown as a single 2-hour episode, for the purposes of the “Rewatch” I am splitting this ep into two parts.
• Many fans have speculated that Libby’s stint in the mental hospital was caused by the death of her husband. Yet she was not in the mental hospital as of just one month after he died. So if this really was the cause of her admission there, then she either had a very short stay right before she met Desmond, or (more likely) an extended one after their encounter. If that’s the case, it makes me wonder why it took so long for her to wind up there after her husband’s death. Man, so much of Libby’s story is unresolved! We need closure!
• The Dharma medicine that Desmond and later Claire injected themselves with is a mystery that’s never been properly explained on the show — and doesn’t seem very likely to be in the final season — yet if you add up the bits and pieces of what we know, I think an explanation can be reasoned out. When the Incident occurred and the “every 108 minutes” protocol was created to control the pent-up electromagnetic energies, the Dharma Initiative must have realized that extraordinary levels of persuasion would be required to get recruits to stay put and continue resetting the countdown clock 24/7. So the lie of the infection was concocted — some kind of supposed viral agent that would kill inhabitants of the island, most likely based on the real contagion housed at the Tempest station, for reasons still unknown (but which would later go on to be used by the Others to carry out the Purge) — unless one stayed inside the Swan station’s hermetically sealed protection. The word “quarantine” was even painted across the inside of the access hatch to reinforce this notion, and recruits venturing out into the jungle (as we will see in Part 2 of this episode) were required to wear Hazmat suits. A further reinforcement was the medicine injection every 9 days, which continually reminded recruits of the “dangers” of going out into the jungle. All of it was a ruse designed to keep the pair of recruits that were minding the Swan station indoors, pushing the button indefinitely.
• The confrontation between Desmond and Penny at the stadium is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. One brief but mesmerizing exchange told us everything we needed to know about these two people: they had a great deal of baggage but were deeply, deeply in love. Bravo to Henry Ian Cusick and Sonya Walger — whose chemistry together conveyed a powerful, undeniable attraction — for their intense performances, filled with a ton of subtext that their words alone couldn’t carry.
• There were several firsts in this episode… The first appearance of Charles Widmore, who would go on in later seasons to become a figure of far greater importance than any of us ever imagined. The first appearance of the four-toed statue, which would almost overnight ignite a wildfire of obsessive fan curiosity, the likes of which could be matched only by curiosity about the smoke monster and Jacob.
• I remember the first time I watched this episode, I was rooting for Locke and Desmond as they barricaded Eko out of the dome room. After a full season of teasing, it was doggone time to find out what happens when that button doesn’t get pushed. As much as I loved the Eko character, and even though the whole thing ended in a major disaster, I really wanted Eko to stop trying to prevent Locke from giving us resolution on this mystery. I think I even cheered out loud when Locke grabbed Eko’s “Jesus stick” out from under the blast door, right out of Eko’s hands!

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 2 cast promotional image and Dharma Initiative logo: American Broadcasting Company.