Rewatching LOST: 5.02 “The Lie”

Hurley struggles with keeping the Oceanic 6′s secret, while Ben’s attempts to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island hit a snag. On the island, the time-jumping survivors come under attack.

• On the island, Sawyer and Juliet arrive back at the beach, where they find the zodiac raft is still there, despite all the jumping through time they’ve been doing. Juliet notes that whatever they had with them when the time jumps started is “along for the ride.” Daniel soon turns up as well, and Juliet asks him if they could take the raft out to a shipping lane to try and escape the island and the time jumps. But Daniel says no, that there’s only ever one route off of the island — a single bearing by which the island can be found or sailed away from — and the time/space jumping has changed that bearing. To determine the new one, Daniel would need to figure out where in time they currently are.
• Later that night, Charlotte complains to Daniel about a headache as well as a few sudden blank spots in her memory. Daniel tells her not to worry, though he clearly knows why she’s experiencing these symptoms. Moments later, the entire group of survivors on the beach is attacked by dozens of flaming arrows that shoot through the night air. Several survivors are killed, but Sawyer instructs everyone to run for their lives and they’ll try to meet back up later. Juliet and Sawyer wind up on the run alone together, but it’s not long before they’re captured by a vicious group of young men in U.S. Army uniforms, who are led by a man with the name “Jones” on his shirt. Jones demands to know what Sawyer and Juliet are doing on “our” island. But Locke comes to their rescue at the last second.
• In Los Angeles, Hurley drives an unconscious Sayid through town, trying to figure out what to do. But soon they’re pulled over by a police car, which turns out to be driven by a still-dead Ana-Lucia, whom only Hurley can see. She instructs him to get Sayid to someplace safe, and avoid the police at all costs. Hurley heads home with Sayid, where he finds his father, who’s very surprised to see him. The police soon show up, but David Reyes lies to them and says that his son isn’t there, though the police stake out the house outside. David says they’re not going to be able to help Sayid without a doctor, so Hurley suggests they take Sayid to Jack.
• Kate, still on the run, finds out that Sun is in town and pays her a visit. Kate spills her guts about the lawyers who came to her house, but Sun infers that the lawyers’ mystery client has no interest in exposing the Oceanic 6 and their lie. All they really want is Aaron to be separated from Kate. Sun suggests that Kate take matters into her own hands.
• At their hotel, Ben hides a small box from Jack before revealing that he flushed Jack’s pills down the toilet to help him break his habit. He tells Jack to go home and pack a suitcase of anything he wants to take to the island, because he’s never leaving it again. Meanwhile, Ben’s going to move Locke’s body someplace safe.
• Ben visits a butcher named Jill, an ally of his, whom he leaves Locke’s body with for safe keeping. The two of them discuss other members of their team who are also “moving things along according to plan.”
• David Reyes goes alone to deliver Sayid to Jack, and Jack immediately takes Sayid to the hospital to treat him. It requires some work, but Jack eventually resuscitates his friend. Sayid panics and fears for Hurley’s safety, even though Jack assures him Hurley’s safe at home with his mother.
• While his father is gone, Hurley has a heart-to-heart with his mother Carmen, where he winds up spilling his guts to her about everything that happened on the island. She doesn’t understand it all, of course, but she tells Hurley that she does believe him. He shares his theory that so much bad stuff is happening to him right now because he agreed to tell a lie to the world about what happened on the island.
• After finding out from Jack that Hurley is at home, Ben goes straight there to see him. He offers to help Hurley fix everything that’s gone wrong in his life by getting him back to the island, which is what Ben wants for himself, as well. But Hurley heeds the advice recently given to him by Sayid, and does the opposite of what Ben asks of him: he runs out of the house and turns himself in to the police, just to keep himself away from Ben.
• Ben later visits a church where he reports to none other than Ms. Hawking, who has just been conducting some kind of scientific research down in the building’s basement, a large room outfitted as some kind of laboratory with a large swinging pendulum as its centerpiece. Ben tells her about his difficulty at reuniting the Oceanic 6. She tells him to work it out fast, because her research has located the island, and also told her that Ben has only seventy hours remaining to get all of them back there, or “God help us all.”

• Three years ago, while they were still on Penny’s boat the Searcher, the Oceanic 6 debated Jack’s plan to lie to the public. Hurley was not at all in favor of lying, but when Jack put it to a vote, Hurley was out-voted.

• What’s in the box Ben hid from Jack?
• Why is the safety of Locke’s body so important to Ben’s plan to get everyone back to the island?
• Who is Jill the butcher, and the other people on Ben’s “team”? Are they Others, living off the island?
• Who are the people in the Army uniforms that are trying to kill the survivors on the island?
• Who is the young man labeled “Jones”?
• How does Ben know Ms. Hawking?
• What is Ms. Hawking doing in a church in Los Angeles?
• What kind of facility was in the church’s basement?
• How does Ms. Hawking know that Ben has only seventy hours to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island?
• Why is there only a seventy hour window for getting the Oceanic 6 back to the island? What happens if they wait too long and don’t get back?

• “The Lie” is the sixth Hurley-centric episode of the series.
• I still wonder why Ana-Lucia warned Hurley not to get arrested, yet there seem to have been no long-term consequences to his getting himself arrested at the end of the episode. Was it really Ana-Lucia warning him, or was it Jacob’s nemesis in another dead person’s form? Was it Jacob’s desire that Hurley not be caught? Either way, my guess is that it’s because it might keep him from being able to get back to the island, which seems to be in the interests of both Jacob and his nemesis.
• I’m sorry to go there again, I know I’ve written about this before… but I’m just completely fascinated by how Sayid’s hair goes from straight when he’s in assassin mode to curly when he’s not. When he was shot by the tranquilizer darts in the last episode, his hair was straight. But by the time he woke up in the hospital with Jack, it was curly again. Sayid has naturally curly hair, so I guess whatever hair products he uses to straighten it wear off after a while. It’s just funny to me how he goes back and forth, and how the straight hair seems to be a part of his assassin persona. Maybe it’s just like Clark Kent’s glasses, meant to protect his secret identity.

Need more depth and detail? Read my full recap of “The Lie”.

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Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 4 cast promotional image: American Broadcasting Company.