As the season begins to pick up momentum, we finally begin to resolve some of the questions. This week we break away from Jack, Sawyer, and Kate and return to the beach where we find out what happened after the hatch was destroyed when Desmond turned the key at the conclusion of season 2 with a Locke-centered episode. Generally this one is more on the strange side dealing with mystical premonitions and hokey magic. I felt this one took an extra viewing of the episode to really get a sense of what the symbolism meant (also because I was switching back and forth between Lost and the Mets vs. Cardinals game :D)
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We finally return to the beach to find Locke, Desmond, and Mr. Eko spread somewhere around the destroyed hatch. Locke wakes up unable to speak, Desmond is walking around naked after his clothes got blown off by the explosion, and Mr. Eko is nowhere to be found (although we get to see him later in the episode). As Locke returns to camp, he bumps into Charlie who subsequently begins helping Locke build a “sweat lodge” to do some meditation and to “speak” to the Island. Strangely, he has to take off his shirt to do this. Being a Locke-centric episode, we get to see a little more into his past especially where this “sweat lodge” business originates.
Locke has apparantly been living at a commune with a small group of people and picks up a hitchhiker while driving. It turns out that the place he’s been living at is really a marijuana farm and the hitchhiker is there to bust the operation. In fact it’s all Locke’s fault that the agent was able to infiltrate since he was vulnerable to manipulation.
As we return to Locke’s homemade “sweat lodge”, he goes into deep meditation where Boone makes a surprise appearance to share some information with him. It’s another one of those strange and bizarre moments where Boone tries to send Locke a message. They’re back at the airport where Locke still doesn’t have a shirt on, but someone “is in serious danger”. Hurley is at the computer printing out tickets (and inputting the “numbers”, Desmond is a pilot, and Ben is one of those guys checking people for weapons at the gate. At the end of his dream, he gets tossed out by a polar bear and goes to save Mr. Eko.
It turns out that Mr. Eko was dragged into a cave by a polar bear (one of the first since early in season 1). He know’s he’s near the cave because he sees “an active kill”. As he enters the cave he spots a toy truck, a t-shirt for “the pearl” station, and some corpses, but eventually reaches Mr. Eko by creating a makeshift flamethrower a la The A-Team. They head back to camp to meet up with the rest of the camp and Desmond. Strangely there are these two members of the beach that we’ve never seen before.
This episode was probably the best of the season. Mostly because Locke, Hurley, and Mr. Eko are some of my favorite characters on the show and we see too much of Jack, Kate, and Sawyer. Considering Locke is the only “leader” left on the beach, I like the new dynamic of the camp and it’ll be interesting how Desmond fits into the plan for rescuing Jack and company. Next week’s episode (although I’m writing this recap a little bit late so the next one is for the curent week’s episode) goes back to mainly focusing on Sawyer, but the development of Desmond at the beach. The season to this point hasn’t been all that strong, but hopefully in the weeks to come before they go on hiatus in mid-November it’ll pick up.
Locke needs to tone those abs.