6.8 Recon

Random thoughts….I suppose there was a conversation about 6 years ago in some ABC executive’s office. “So, tell us about your idea”. “It’s a show about nothing.” “Nothing?” “You see, it’s just like life. You know, you eat, you go shopping, you read, your plane crashes on an island. Then, 6 years later, everybody is still watching a show about absolutely nothing. Nothing happens, nothing is explained, nothing is nothing.” “Brilliant!! Here is a bag of cash, including the dollar sign on the outside of the bag.” Remember when the executive producers responded to criticism of the Kate episode a couple of weeks ago by tweeting “If you don’t like it, go watch NCIS: Los Angeles”? So, does anybody know what channel it’s on? Oh, come on. I am still a fan of the show. Why would I waste so much time on these recaps and random thoughts? I’m just doing what any loving MIB would do when his ‘ho gets out of line and you need to crack her across the face to teach her a thing or two about a thing or two. Pimpin’ ain’t easy. With only a handful of episodes left, why do the writers insist on making Season Six mostly uneventful and so boring? 10 minutes after the episode ended, I found myself out in my backyard digging a grave for myself and muttering about green beans and bananas. Do you think it’s a painful way to go if you beat yourself to death with a rock? If Jacob touching you makes you practically immortal, does this make the most indestructible thing on the island Jacob’s wiener? If Richard ‘watched them all die” in response to Sun’s query last season, shouldn’t he be at least a bit surprised to see Jack and Hurley in the last episode? New York City is about to ban salt. That’s not a question. But I just felt like taunting New York City. I suppose you can find a couple of diamonds in any LOST episode, but this one was a whole dam coal mine with a hell of a lot of coal. Did anybody have their window open Tuesday night and hear me yelling “I am very disappointed with you people!!!” to no one in particular, but with the LOST writers in mind. Half way through Recon, I almost felt like filling out my census form to help pass some time. Almost. I’m tired of wearing tin foil hats, and not just because it makes my head look like a baked potato, but it’s to keep the supermarkets with their satellites from spying on us. I wonder what it would be like to be infected and insane and have animal skulls lying around my house. And where would I find the room, with all the jars of urine taking up space. I’ve dug little computer chips out of my skull before. Maybe it was just bits of rock. Evil Incarnate has a mother? A kind correspondent informed me that Matthew Fox appeared on Sesame Street recently. How sad that an inanimate thing with a hand up it’s ass could be so terrible on camera. Yes, I’m talking about Jack. This was a really weak episode. I just wasted a lot of time typing just to get to that last sentence.

They skipped the “Previously on LOST” thing this week. I don’t know why I noticed that. Sawyer is not trapped in the cave of names. How did he get out with the ladder broken? Who cares, because little bits of detail like that aren’t important anymore. Whee!!! Just sit back and drool like you just had a lobotomy and Chief is perched over you with a pillow. Juicy Fruit is a disappointment in how quickly it loses flavor. Five seconds of pleasure, and then nothing. Sort of like sex. So Sawyer turned a frozen donkey wheel and was transported back to the top of the cliff or something like that. Sawyer is heating up something in a kettle that is brackish, brown and liquidy. He offers Jin a cup of mud.
6.6 Sundown
Jin is nursing his bad leg, most likely at Claire’s camp. Sawyer is either with Jin or stuck in a cave with no ladder to climb back up to the top.
Jin wants to leave camp. Why? Oh come on. Groan. “I need to find my wife.” I hope they are finally reunited. In the belly of a shark. “That is not Locke.” “I know.” Has anybody else noticed how many times the characters on the show have been saying this. “That’s not Locke.” It’s like the writers are trying to tell us something over and over and over again, something we knew back in Season 5. I’m getting annoyed. OK. More annoyed. Sawyer reassures Jin. You know, for a guy that just had his leg eaten by a bear trap about a day ago, Jin is hobbling around pretty well. That magical healing island is still alive and kicking. MIB arrives with his gaggle of silly geese, the Others. Sawyer makes a point to say Hi to Kate, as I vomit in my mouth. Which is preferable to vomiting out your ears. You wouldn’t think this was possible, but I’ve lost a few Q-tips too. Sawyer is in bed with a dame. Not a surprise, considering how many people Sawyer has slept with on the show. Vincent is still mad that Sawyer never called the next day. Sawyer is running the ‘ole pigeon drop con that we saw many seasons ago. But he is doing it very, very badly. This was some miserable acting for a con artist. Sure, this could very well have been intentional in a spoof of cop shows from the 70’s and 80’s and yes I’m talking to you CHIPS. I suppose if Sawyer isn’t a real con man anymore, but is probably very unpolished in his delivery. So, the woman pulls a gun on Sawyer and says “how stupid do you think I am?” This is a parroting of the Season 4 scene where Miles and Daniel have Jack and Kate at gunpoint in the jungle, and Jack tells Miles to drop his gun. Juliet and Sayid were in the bushes to ambush Miles, and of course Miles told Jack “how stupid do you think I am”? So, of course, after Sawyer gives the magic word “Abracadabra”..ah, I watched Half Baked on TV this weekend, sorry, when Sawyer says “LaFleur”, Miles this time gets the drop on somebody. The room fills with cops. OK, I’ve read plenty of books, I’ve studied police procedures. Where is it written that it is permissible to actually sleep with a suspect in a stakeout? Did these cops just watch and/or listen to Sawyer getting some? This was creepy porno shoot or something. Great horny toads. So, Sawyer is cop. Cue LOST music, and I am not impressed. Weak beginning to this episode. Very weak. But, you then have to wonder why the fock would Sawyer, a cop, allow a handcuffed Kate in the elevator of the airport escape. Why? They didn’t look like they recognized each other. Sawyer is not only a cop, he’s a frigging bad one on top of that. All he had to do was “Psst” to the security guys in the elevator and point at Kate.

Claire is packing a few things and then takes a moment to admire her skull baby. Kate peeks over Claire’s shoulder and you can see the wheels turning in her head as Kate is trying to come up with a plan to steal this baby as well. Considering Claire had 3 years to put this shelter together, it’s pretty horrible. There are holes everywhere, especially the ceiling part. It sort of rains a sh!!t load on the island. So, you’re telling me Claire just sat in mud every time it rained? Claire defends her ugly baby. Have you ever had a situation where a co-worker showed you a baby picture, and the kid was so ugly, you really had to stifle a crazy laugh. Take note people. Not every single child is adorable. Some of them look worse than skull baby. You think Aaron is a cute kid? He has a huge noggin. Aaron looks like something that should be tied down with ropes, moving lazily down the street, past a crowd of people on the sidewalk, during Thanksgiving. MIB gives a speech, promising to answer all their questions, something Jacob never had the decency to do. What happened to all the people at the Temple? The black smoke killed them. So, while MIB is willing to talk, he not willing to go the full distance and tell the whole truth. I guess Smoke Monster confession might not have gone over so well with the audience, like an announcement over the PA system in Walmart. Claire decides to hold hands with Kate. Um, that’s more of a public display of affection than I’ve ever done. In fact, I wouldn’t allow my parents hold my hands when I was crossing the street. And that was just last week. Locke reassures Zach. “I promise I will take care of you.” OK, by taking care of, do you mean kill? And how old is this kid? 10? And he is carrying around a teddy bear? This kid is a nightmare of a mess. Kate questions Sawyer. “You’re with Locke now?” Well, Sawyer was with Juliet for awhile, so I don’t think he is ready to rush into anything serious any time soon. Sawyer is not with anybody. Kate is so excited that she pees a little. James Ford is wheeling and dealing on the phones, looking for Anthony Cooper circa Alabama in 1976. This was the year before the bomb detonated on the island, the incident, and it seems that things that happened prior to the bomb still happened. Sawyer’s parents are still dead. Miles is Sawyer’s partner, reestablishing their working relationship as they were Dharma security on the island. But in this reality, they are not boss-worker, but partners. You’ve come a long way, baby. We learn that Miles’ father, Dr Chang, is alive and works in a museum that comes alive during the wee hours of the night. Sawyer is set up on a blind date, since Miles so tactfully put it, “Do you want to die alone?” I don’t particularly want to share a coffin. Who does? Which brings me to WHERE WAS JULIET? Come on, you have to be kidding me. You couldn’t bring her back for this episode. Holy smokes. We are blatantly being told that Sawyer and Juliet were not meant to be together. Miles starts to question Sawyer’s truthfulness. “Are you lying to me?” I understand that the bond between cop partners is very strong; these guys have to trust each other with their lives. But Miles was just so over the top inappropriate with questions into Sawyer’s activities. While MIB sets up camp for a couple of days, Sawyer expresses his impatient at not leaving the island right away. A private chat off in the jungle, and MIB confesses to Sawyer that he is the black smoke that killed the Others at the Temple. “I gave them the choice to leave.” Always a choice. MIB is annoyed that the Others are convinced that they are protecting the island from him, and all MIB wants to do is leave the island. Kill or be killed. MIB is just such a gosh darn teddy bear. Other than the purging and the smash people to death. MIB gives Sawyer a mission. The episode title Recon has a double meaning; to con again and also to gather intelligence. When Jack went to collect intelligence, he brought a thimble. Even when dumdum isn’t in the episode, he is not forgotten by me. I hadn’t forgotten about the Hydra island survivors, apparently neither has MIB. “They mean to do us harm.” Well, other than not having boats or guns or any knowledge of the very existence of people on LOST island, those people certainly pose a risk. MIB flatters Sawyer with a “you’re the best liar I ever met” and gives him hope of flying off the island. Sawyer never stops to think how much open land they would need to taxi a plane, get rolling, and actually take off. There is no way Frank is going to get the Ajira plane off the ground. No way. Plus, when they landed, a branch went through the windshield and shish kabobbed the co-pilot to death. I don’t think there is a Plane Windshield hatch on the island, so that plane is just a bigger waste of space than Zach. I bet Skull Baby could outwit that lunkhead Zach.

Sawyer goes on a blind date, and it turns out to be Charlotte, a person Sawyer had very little interaction with on the island. And I don’t think Miles and Charlotte were friends. They share the common bond of being children on the island, their parents were Dharma, and they time traveled. Still, odd that Charlotte was in Sawyer’s episode. But I guaran-dam-tee that in some plane of existence, Daniel Faraday is howling with rage. Charlotte is still an archeologist, which we know she chose to become to allow her to search for her birthplace. So in a sense, she is searching, much like Sawyer is. When Charlotte smiles, her nose crinkles on the side, like wadding up a brown paper bag before tossing it in the general direction of a garbage can. Recycling? Not a chance. I’m rooting for the end of the world. It looks so odd, like she is wearing a prosthetic nose. I swear, if Roddy Piper looked at her with some sunglasses, he might scream. Charlotte insists that Sawyer doesn’t treat her like all the other girls. What, you don’t want to have sex with Sawyer? Sawyer explains that he had a choice, there is that word again, of becoming a cop or a criminal. Boy, did he choose poorly. We was making some bucks and living the life. Now, not so much. Fast forward, and Sawyer is lying in bed, snuggling with something that was fished out of a lake about 2 months after being dumped. Or a naked Charlotte. Who can tell the difference? Somewhere, Daniel is screaming Noooooooooooooooo!!!!! Sawyer sleeps with yet another LOST female. Charlotte doesn’t want a glass of water, as she is still saturated from the lake. Sawyer says, go ahead and borrow a T shirt, top drawer right hand side. He leaves, and Charlotte immediately goes for the top LEFT hand drawer. She is working on some ulterior motive. Maybe Miles devised a genius plan to have Charlotte sleep with Sawyer and then snoop around. Or maybe Charlotte is a Nosy Nellie. It was just such a bizarre behavior. Did anyone think Sawyer left the room to look through Charlotte’s purse? Charlotte finds a scrap book full of articles and pictures of the death of Sawyer’s parents. Why this isn’t out on the coffee table is something I’ll never understand. It’s a conversation starter, for Pete’s sake. “Get the hell out”. Really, really, really bony Bones leaves. Sawyer arrives at Hydra island, and takes a stroll down memory lane near the polar cages. Ah, those were some truly horrible episodes. Good times, good times. He finds the sun dress that Kate wore 3 years ago. My memory must suck, but when exactly did she go from dress to jeans and shirt again. I’m sure she didn’t escape naked, and she was certainly breaking rocks in the dress. Anyway, Sawyer is staring at the dress, and you know that as soon as the camera pans away, he took a deep sniff. Didn’t Juliet die a day or two ago? Hey, retard, you just going to skip the grieving process and start flirting with the soon to be Skull Baby Snatcher? You just tossed a ring in the lagoon, and that’s it? How can Sun run around the island saying Jin with every other word, and here is Sawyer…ah, screw it. Kate asks Sayid if he is alright. Do you have eyes in your skull? Does he look alright? He looks more stoned than Frank. Claire attacks Kate. Instead of using something with a greater chance of success, like a couple of bullets to the back of the head, Claire decides to wrestle with Kate and try to stab her. Sure, American was rooting for Claire. If she actually killed Kate, Claire would have received enough votes to have won American Idol. Alas, it was not meant to be, and MIB grabs Claire and tosses her aside like a rag doll. MIB lectures to Claire that Kate did what she had to do and took care of Aaron. Just to make sure Claire is paying attention, MIB smacks the taste out of Claire’s mouth. Hilarious. What, no frying pan to the skull? Kate is upset. No, I’m not alright. Basically what Sayid just said. Repetition of dialogue and concepts are really popping up in the last few episodes. Sawyer finds the plane, and a rather large trail leading off into the jungle. I’d hate to see the size of the snail that made it. Sawyer follows it until it ends in a pile of corpses. The Ajiries are dead. What a waste of frequent flyer miles. I expected one to look like Charlotte. You know, lake, corpse…nothing? Tough crowd. Flies buzzing around, and the corpses are pretty ripe. I don’t think that Widmore’s group had time to do this damage this quickly. I didn’t see blood anywhere, leading me to believe that bullets were probably now used. The writers have established through sloppy writing and inconceivable concepts that defy physics that MIB can be in two places at once. So maybe Smokie did this. And we also have the possibility that Ilana and her thugs did this before leaving for the main island. My money is on MIB. A person flees from the scene, Sawyer tackles her. She is Zoe. “I’m the only one left.” Bullsh!!t. Did anybody believe her for a second? Her acting was a notch below Anna Nicole Smith’s.

Liam shows up at Sawyer’s police station, looking for his missing brother Charlie, who was arrested on a drug charge from the Oceanic 815 flight. Sawyer goes the extra mile with “not my department”. Miles confronts Sawyer about his trip to Australia. Miles has run Sawyer’s credit card. Incredibly inappropriate and unethical behavior. Miles is invading Sawyer’s privacy in a belligerent way. Of course Sawyer is hostile to this revelation. Miles talks about them needing to trust each other. I would think that an important step in trust is to NOT run your partner’s credit card, look at his receipts, dig through his trashcans at midnight, or taking a peek at Sawyer’s package while standing next to each other at the urinals. Although, Miles did observe Sawyer having sex with woman from the beginning of the episode. Are we sure Miles doesn’t have a crush on Sawyer? How do you not punch Miles, but then turn around and punch a mirror. Is Sawyer a parakeet? Again, another mirror in an LAX timeline episode, turning point, a self reflective moment. Miles doesn’t want to be Sawyer’s partner anymore. I’m curious if Miles still has the ability to read the minds of dead people. That would be very handy in a homicide division rather than wasting time setting up con artists in a sting. Zoe begins an interrogation of Sawyer. When Sawyer squeezes in a question “how did those people die?” there is a deflection and no answer. I was collecting wood and heard screaming. Yep, Smoke monster. Zoe took it upon herself to drag all the bodies into the jungle and stack them to get all the dead out of the sun. I have a feeling they don’t care all that much about shade, unlike Dr Arzt and his car. Maybe you try to hide in case whatever caused the screaming comes back. Her story just doesn’t make any sense. Are you alone? How many of you are there? Do they have guns? Can you give me their social security numbers so I can run their credit cards? Kate is crying by herself in the jungle. Nothing makes me happier. MIB approaches her. Unfortunately, no slap is forthcoming. No punch. No knocking out all of her teeth. No hitting her over the head with a steel chair when the ref is not looking. Sigh. MIB told Claire that the Others had Aaron because she needed somebody to hate, an enemy. Well, that makes Kate my enemy too. All that anger had to go somewhere. MIB promised to keep everybody safe, and it appears that includes Kate. Fock. Kate: Where’s Sawyer? Oh, for the love of God, don’t you start up too. Where’s Miles? Where’s Sun? Where’s Sawyer? Where’s Skull Baby? They ask fewer where are they now questions on VH1. MIB holds out his hand to Kate, who doesn’t take it. Why is this significant? Does MIB work through touch like Jacob to do something? As Zoe and Sawyer are playing the question game, very much with a feel of Mikhail and Sayid in the Flame hatch just before they brawled, Sawyer questions the plane’s destination. Zoe says Guam, where here boyfriend is. Sawyer is pissed that she has a boyfriend and may not be willing to sleep with him, so he pulls out his gun. Widmore’s goons pop out of the bushes. Yet another example of a Lostie getting captured by another group. Take me to your leader. Again.

MIB is sitting with Kate on the beach, showing her where Sawyer went and chatting about days gone by. MIB: I am not a dead man. My mother was crazy. I had a mother, a very disturbed woman. I had some growing pains, problems that I ended up working my way through, things that could have been avoided if things were different. OK, what a loaded speech. Could MIB be revealing more of the real truth? Hell, he and Jacob could be brothers, competing against each other, set up by their mother to fight on the island. Or is MIB relying on Locke’s memories to draw upon his mentally unstable mother who gave him up for adoption. Maybe MIB is simply lying to gain sympathy with Kate and her awkward situation. Or is MIB really Aaron, who through a glitch in time and space is now a grown up version of Turnip Head. I’m sure this is really important, but any scene with Kate is a nightmare, and I’m not a believer in important crap, so moving along to more trifles and minutia. A guy that looks a lot like Frank Caliendo is marching Sawyer to the Widmore sub at gunpoint. The Widmores are erecting pylons similar to what kept Smokie out of Dharmaville. Sawyer comes home to a dark apartment, a 12 pack, and a microwave dinner. I’m not saying Sawyer is a candidate for manic depression, but he is watching Little House on the Prairie. I mean, you might as well kill yourself. Michael Landon tells us a few things that may apply to LOST. “Nothing is going to happen to us. It’s the way we live in this life. People aren’t really gone when they die. Seems to me that those statements apply to dying on LOST island and then showing up in the LAX timeline. Getting flushed to another timeline. But then again, Juliet said ‘it worked”. So, then where was she in this episode? Frustrating. Since Sawyer is watching Michael Landon, who is very dead, he is reminded of the Corpse Bride that he kicked out of his house the other night. He brings a 6 pack of beer and a sunflower to Charlotte’s door and knocks. I usually show up at these kinds of social situations with a handful of crab grass and a hammer. If she doesn’t like the crabgrass, I hit her with the hammer. Charlotte berates Sawyer as being lonely, guilty, and completely mad. Dude, hammer. H-A-M-M-E-R. Trust me. “You blew it.” That’s what she said. Wokka. Wokka. Wokka. Meanwhile, Charlotte was the one excavating his drawers. That’s what she said. Oh, these are just too easy. Sawyer sees a padlocked room and asks what’s inside. None of your business. Since Widmore was able to return to the island, and was most likely aware of the Ajira disappearance and the gathering of the candidates to return, he may very well have abducted somebody to help the submarine gain access to the island. The island always gets you. Perhaps Desmond? The only other island possibilities would be Walt, Aaron, Eloise. Or maybe Widmore brought a hydrogen bomb and is going to blow up the island again. “He’s here”. As if Widmore was expecting Sawyer to show up. Weird. Sawyer doesn’t shake Widmore’s hand. Such bad manners. Or maybe Sawyer has watched Mallrats and knows all about the stinkpalm. You sent the freighter to kill everybody on the island. I got the distinct impression that Widmore wanted to say “Nobody’s perfect” and then a “Come here, you” and put Sawyer in a headlock and tussle Sawyer’s hair. Instead he goes with “it’s sad how little you really know”. Well, then that makes LOST viewers the saddest of all. Of course Widmore seems to know somewhat of the things happening on the island, but he is most likely just another pawn in the chess game between MIB and Jacob. “We didn’t murder those people.” I suspect that Widmore is telling the truth. He could have used a purge as a selling point to get Sawyer to do what he wants. CW:“Why are you here?” Shouldn’t this be the question that Sawyer should ask? Nobody on this show asks important, pertinent, and common sense questions. John Locke sent me, and we both know that he isn’t really John Locke. We know already. Over and over again. Same observation. Sawyer cuts a deal to bring MIB to Widmore in exchange for safe passage off the island for him and his friends. We really don’t know for sure which side Widmore is on. But I do know that he would love to regain control of the island. I have trouble seeing Widmore and Linus working for the same side. While Sawyer is trying to run a con, I’m thinking that it’s going to fail miserably.

Claire finds Kate and apologizes for trying to kill her. My heart sank. So, you won’t be killing Kate after all the trouble the plot went to in putting that thought into our heads? “I know you care about me and Aaron. I don’t know why I did that.” This is the first time in history a parent has apologized to the kidnapper. And then hugged them. Can you hear me grinding my teeth? MIB greets Sawyer returning from his boat cruise, but didn’t have a traditional lea and fruity drink to bestow on Mr. Ford. You didn’t send me to go find passengers, now did you? Ah, my con is bigger than your con. Widmore is there, setting up pylons, hiding something, armed crew, and Sawyer is to bring MIB to him. That hole in MIB’s shirt where Sayid poked him with the knife is extremely distracting. Can’t anybody sew? How about a new shirt? MIB thanks Sawyer for his loyalty, which is just ridiculous. If MIB put together an elaborate long con to kill Jacob, how does he not know what shenanigans Sawyer is up to? Of course Sawyer is playing both sides. That’s what conmen do. And MIB knows it. Miles hops into Sawyer’s car to hear the story of Sawyer’s parents death. Sawyer even brought the coffee table scrap book of death along, so to be turned into a George Romero movie. Sawyer was following a lead to Australia and when he finds Anthony Cooper, he is going to kill him. Miles is still acting pissy. Why didn’t you tell me? Yes, I’m going to try to stop you. This is like a bad romantic comedy, which is blatantly redundant. Before the scene gets any more mushy and somebody decides to hold Sawyer’s hand, a car for no reason at all drives up the cops, swerves and rams into their car. Very avoidable accident. Nobody was in pursuit of the car. Why did it crash? Makes no sense. Kate jumps out of the passenger side door and runs. At first, I though the dope was wearing a helmet inside the car, which makes even less sense. Sawyer runs down the perpetrator. Good. Give her a lethal injection. Just kill her in a timeline, any timeline. Kate is apparently cooking a rabbit over campfire, because there are plenty of rabbits to catch in a jungle without the benefit of them being in a cage in hatches that are nowhere near by. Sawyer spells out his brilliant plan of Widmore and MIB fighting it out, and how he and Kate will get off the island. We are not taking the plane, but the sub. OK, genius. You don’t think you can find a pilot for the plane, and I’ve already outlined the problems with the plane plan earlier. Who is going to pilot the sub? It doesn’t drive itself. I hope Locke manages to blow up this sub too. Stupid sub. Truly, an awful ending to a pretty lousy episode. Incredibly anticlimactic. We really need to pick up the pace of the show. But I’m feeling less optimistic about the direction we are heading. From what I understand, the next episode we get to see will be the story of a blithering idiot who knows absolutely nothing about what is going on. Richard Magoo, you’ve done it again.