Lost, Season 3, Episode 12, “Par Avion” (3/14/07)

This week we got a Clarie-flashback episode, and I have to say how happy I was that we got a Claire episode where she wasn’t yelling “MY BAYYYY-BEEEEE!!” every 5 minutes.

Par Avion is French for “By Air”.

Claire: We see Claire and her mother the victims of a two-car collision. Claire escapes with minor injuries, but her mom is left comatose being kept alive by machines. Goth Claire is a troubled child, and now she faces the future of a comatose mother and huge hospital bills. But wait, the hospital bills are being picked up by a man who claims to be Claire’s father, a man we all know to be Christian Sheppard, Jack’s dad. Claire is not interested in him coming back into her life. (And again we get a Lostie with father issues, following in the footsteps of Jin, Sun, Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Locke.) The flashback takes a few years later in Claire’s life, and we see her pregnant and visiting her mom, still comatose, in an assisted living facility. Claire talks to her telling her she’s pregnant and giving up the baby. As Claire leaves, she says “see you soon”. This was probably right before Claire boarded Oceanic Flight 815. Back on the island, Claire comes up with an idea to catch a seagull which has been tagged, and attach a note to it so when it flies back to an area where it might be caught and tracked for its tag, someone would get the note and send help. The problem was that Desmond kept scaring the birds saying he was trying to catch a boar. Charlie mopes about her idea, making her wonder why the recently happy Charlie was now back to mopey Charlie. She follows Desmond to a gulls nest, where he catches the gull, gives it to Claire, and then tells her about his visions of Charlie’s impending death, and he purposely was scaring the birds earlier knowing he could get this one instead of Charlie finding it, cuz he would’ve died trying to reach it. Claire tells Charlie what she knows, and says she will not give up on him. Nice moment.

Locke: While leading the prisoner, Mikhail Bakunin (Eye Patch Guy), towards the “Barracks”, a series of pylons are found on the plateau. Described as a security system, John tries to get info from Mikhail who comments that this John Locke is not the Locke he knew. “The Locke I knew was para…..” and then Rousseau cuts him off. Para? Para what? Para-dise? Para-keet? Para-fanalia? Para-shoes? Or perhaps he was going to say para-LYZED? Could it be that the Others know/knew of Locke’s condition? Seems likely. Locke, tired of keeping the prisoner alive to begin with, decides to test Mikhail’s statement of the security system not working, and pushes him past the plane of the pylons. This doesn’t bode well for Mikhail who is immediately blasted with sonic waves that kill him. Again, Locke apologizes to Sayid et al. saying he had no way to know that this was what would happen. However, Locke’s word begins to come into question when Sayid finds a block of the C4 explosives that were in the Flame hatch. Locke, in the last episode, told Sayid he had no way to know the Flame was rigged to blow. Now, however, it seems that Sayid is rigged to blow…..up at John if he does one more stupid thing.

Sayid: The tensions between Sayid and Locke continue to grow. There’s gonna be a throw-down soon, I think between these two.

Mikhail Bakunin: At the rate the Losties are killing the Others, you’d think they’d be able to take over the island soon. He did say something interesting when he said that he had been brought to the island by a “magnificient man” (last week he said he answered an ad for Dharma, so could the magnificient man be Alvar Hanso?). Mikhail noted that Ben is not the one he’s referring to. Mikhail becomes another casualty, this time the victim of the sonic wave-blast created when he was pushed by Locke through the plane of two of the pylons. We got blood coming out of ears, blood being spit, frothy mouth, and convulsions. This is guy is dead. Side note: a Google search of this name reveals a Mikhail Bakunin who lived from 1814-1876 in Russia and Switzerland, and was one of the founding fathers of Anarchism. Considered to be a historical rival of Karl Marx, Bakunin argued that to obtain total freedom one would have to abolish the State. I’m just sayin’……

Danielle Rousseau: Anybody besides me think this woman is hiding a whole of something from the Losties?

Kate: Okay, for the guys out there, how many of you wished you were that tree she was shimmying up? Anyway, the look on Kate’s face when she saw Jack playing football, seemingly enjoying his stay at Otherville. She tried to call out to him, but Sayid stopped her.

Christian Sheppard: **in his best Darth Vader voice**: Claire, (heavy breath) I’m your father. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anybody on the island that this guy hasn’t fathered. This is a revelation that is not a surprise as this connection appeared in the Ana Lucia flashback ep last year when she accompanied Christian to Australia as his “protection”, and they went by a house where Christian was at the door telling a blond woman (whom we know now was Aunt Lindsay) saying he wanted to see “her”. That must’ve happened right after the accident, I’m guessing, and Christian was trying to reach out again to Claire. It’s still interesting that in island-time, Christian is dead (having died in Australia…Jack’s reason for being in Australia was to claim his body), but he’s been in so many flashbacks I’m wondering if he’s playing a bigger, as yet undefined, role in this whole Lost mystery.

Jack: That’s Uncle Jack if you’re Aaron. So, Claire and Jack are half-siblings. Jack doesn’t know it. Claire doesn’t know it. But I bet the Others know it and will be the ones to reveal it to them. Until then, Jack looks nice and relaxed at the Barracks, playing football with his old pal Tom. But, has he been brainwashed? Has he conceded that he’s going to be on the island for a long time? Or, is he biding his time and waiting for the right time to make his move.

Sawyer: This guy could become a librarian when he gets off the island with the amount of books he’s read since crashing. This time we see him reading Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”, a book about a man who refuses to compromise for anyone. That could be said about any number of people on the island: Sawyer, Jack, Locke. Of course, with Sawyer on nickname-lockdown because of his ping pong game loss, he didn’t shoot out any good ones this episode, though he almost called Claire “Barbie” before Hurley “ah-ah-ah’d” to stop him at “Bar….” Ha ha! You could just tell how much Sawyer wanted to say Barbie, but settled for a sarcastic “Claire”.

The Barracks: Nice little village, with bicycles, pets, footballs, paved sidewalks. How big is this island?

Misc:
1. This was yet another episode that opened up with a close up shot of someone’s eye. This time it was Claire’s.
2. Anybody remember those characters named Walt and Michael? Where could they be? Did they really get off the island, or are they back on it somewhere else? Or are they also at the Barracks?
3. I hope Clarie used waterproof paper to write their note cuz if that gull ever lands on the water to catch a fish, that note is gonna be destroyed.

Next week looks good and appears to be a Locke-centric episode. I’m thinking we get the story of his paralysis and put him in the wheelchair. I’m wheel-y looking forward to it! **groan**

Let me know what I missed.

Until next week,

Namaste.

*joe

Great LOST sites:http://lost.cubit.net/forum/index.php

http://darkufo.blogspot.com/