Lost, Season 3, Episode 15, “Left Behind” (4/4/07)

I love SMonster episodes!!!

Kate: A Kate-flashback reveals that Kate has a hard time moving on from people. We see her on the mission to go back and find out why her mother had turned her in to the Feds after Kate killed her drunken and abusive step-father as a way to free her Mom from his clutches. Kate, going by the name Lucy, gets help from another con woman, this time in the form of Cassidy, the woman Sawyer had set-up a con with, and then conned her himself. Cassidy helps Kate see her Mom (by distracting the Feds, including the guy who accompanied Kate on the Oceanic flight) who are set up all around Kate’s Mom in the hope of catching Kate should she come back). Kate, of course, has no idea that the man who conned Cassidy was Sawyer. Meeting with her Mom, she learns that her Mom turned Kate in because of Kate killing the stepfather. When Kate tells her she did it for her mom, to free her from his evil, Mom said “you can’t change who you love, Kate.” (Right Kate? Can’t help loving Sawyer…or Jack…) Back on the island, before Locke left with the Others, Kate found out that he stuck up for her, but then Locke said “they told me who you are and what you’d done. Forgiveness is not one of their strong points. Good luck.” Interesting. Later, waking up in the forest handcuffed to Juliet, Kate and Juliet begin heading back to Losties Beach when Juliet tells Kate how much she knows about Jack, and that Jack didn’t want Kate going back for him because she broke his heart when he saw her and Sawyer in the cages bumping uglies. Interesting parallel: Kate killed her step-dad to save her Mom, but her Mom didn’t want to be saved. Kate also went back to save Jack, but Jack didn’t want to be saved.

Cassidy: The woman Sawyer took part in a con with, and was later conned by Sawyer. She helps Kate see her Mom in the flashback, and later tells Kate that the man who conned her also got her pregnant. She never tells Kate the name of the guy (Sawyer), so Kate has no way to make the connection on the island.

Juliet: Hmmm….she is such the wild card. I kind of want to believe that she was left behind (after all, they marked her after she killed Pickett), but I’m not sure I do. I think Juliet is still part of the Others, and was not gassed, but intentionally left in the woods handcuffed to Kate. This allowed Juliet to gauge more of what Kate’s about. The whole SMonster encounter was cool, and at first it seemed that Juliet was honest about not knowing what it was, but later we learn that the pylon/perimeter fence keeps the SMonster out (or is it “in”?) when Juliet is able to disable the pylons by entering a code into the keypad control, and once her and Kate crossed the boundary, turned the fence back on, and it stopped the SMonster from getting through. “We don’t know what it is, but we know it doesn’t like our fences.” So, the fence either: a) keeps the SMonster IN, or b) it keeps the SMonster out. What was interesting, however, was the scene where Kate and Juliet were hiding in the thickets, and the SMonster started flashing light at them, as though it was taking a mental image or something. (Maybe it was taking Polaroids to show the other SMonster?? Ha ha!) After going back to Otherville, now abandoned, to rescue Jack, they begin the journey back to the Losties’ beach, but not after Sayid airs his disagreements about bringing Juliet back with them. Watch this woman, especially since she had the key to the handcuffs all along.

Sawyer: Fearing an outster from the Losties camp, Sawyer starts playing nice at the urging of Hurley. Well, actually, Sawyer got conned by Hurley into acting nice (Sawyer to Hurley: “You tricked me into being nice? That’s one of the lamest cons in the history of cons!” haha!). Funniest was when Sawyer went to Claire and started small-talking about Aaron. “He’s less wrinkley than he was two weeks ago”. Ha ha! Then giving Claire the blanket. But, this is the kind of training Sawyer needs in case he ever meets the kid that he’s having, unbeknownst to him, with Cassidy. Sawyer? A daddy?? While fearing that he would be voted out of the camp, Sawyer was fishing and saw Sun and Jin down the beach and muttered to himself, “I ain’t gonna get the Korean vote”! ha ha! Also, this episode’s time-line revealed that Sawyer only has 3 hours and 10 minutes left in his “no nicknames for a week” bet. Hurley tells Sawyer that he needs to be their leader. Sawyer says “What if I don’t want to be the leader”. Hurley: “Jack didn’t either. Sucks for you, dude.” Ha ha!

Hurley: Hurley continues to show his ongoing growth as a burley man. Conning Sawyer into thinking that the Losties were going to hold a vote to boot him from their community was very clever, and it made Sawyer start playing nicer. Actually got Sawyer to apologize for calling him “rotund”. “I’m really sorry I called you rotund.” Hurley: “Really?” Sawyer: “You’re worse than a girl”. Ha ha! Hurley is becoming quite the leader. He always seems to know what is the right course of action, but he doesn’t have the confidence to put the action into motion. He seems to be getting a stronger will, so maybe that will change soon.

Locke: Left with the Others. But, where did they go? Why did they take Locke and leave Jack? (I guess technically, Ben told Jack he’d let him leave the island, but the “island” at the time was the other one. Now that Jack has left that island, I guess Ben considers his word to be honored, even though Jack is back on his original island.) Ben has something in mind for John...either to learn about him, or maybe to use John to get something from the island that seems to have turned its back on Ben and now embraces John...and brings him with them Now that Ben has used Jack to do the surgery on his tumor, Jack has no immediate use to him. Locke, on the other hand, may be able to be conned into helping Ben and the others.

SMonster: The SMonster makes a nice comeback in this episode. It chases Juliet and Kate through the jungle, eventually finding them hiding in some thickets. Instead of attacking them, it “flashed” them, pulsing them (mostly Juliet it looked like) with flashes of bright light. After 5 or 6 flashes, it retreated and left them alone for that moment. Did you notice that when the SMonster came out of the woods and started heading towards Kate and Juliet, now on the other side of the pylons, it was in three pieces, and the rejoined before hitting the fence. When it realized it couldn’t get through the fence (this may have come as a surprise to it….?), it again split into 3 parts as it flowed back into the woods. For a brief moment it looked to have 3 heads, like Cerberus, the 3-headed dog from Greek mytholody that guarded the entrance to Hades. Okay, now for the BIG SMONSTER THEORY: there are not ONE, but TWO SMonsters. One good one, one bad one (like Backgammon….see below). The GOOD SMONSTER is the one that could’ve helped the crash survivors (maybe it healed Locke and Rose?), and appeared to Jack as his dad (and led Jack to the caves and water); appeared to Kate as the black horse (helped her cope with her past); appeared as the cat Nadia a couple of eps ago (helped him cope with his past); appeared to everyone as Vincent (helped Walt cope; helped Shannon cope; gave Hurley the keys to the van which helped Hurley AND Charlie cope with their situations); and we know that a SMonster appeared in front of Locke and “it was beautiful”. The BAD SMONSTER is the one that: killed the pilot of Oceanic 815; killed Eko and probably was the vision of Yemi (Eko’s brother); manifested as the spiders that bit Nikki in last week’s episode; grabbed Locke and dragged him in an episode last year (or season 1…?), and could’ve appeared to Shannon as Walt (which later ended up getting Shannon killed). Most likely, the BAD SMonster, if this theory is true, was the one chasing Kate and Juliet.

Misc:
1. Sawyer was reading “Watership Down”, which may imply that he’s run out of books because this was the first book we ever saw Sawyer with back in Season 1. Too bad John keeps blowing up all the hatches with the other books.
2. “Walking After Midnight” by Patsy Cline was playing in Kate’s flashback. And wouldn’t you know it, Kate and Juliette were probably walking around that time through the jungle before SMonster came along.
3. When Dr Marvin Candle/Wickman talked about ‘the incident’ in the Dharma Iniative training films, my theory is this: there has been a culture/civilization on the island for hundreds of years (remember the big 4-toed statue that Jin, Sun and Sayid saw?). The Dharma Initiative came to the island for some reason probably associated with the island’s strange magnetic issues, and tried to co-exist with the native culture. However, the Dharmas would’ve all resistant to disease due to having been inoculated their whole lives, whereas the island folks would not have been getting injections against disease and viruses. So, like the Native Americans who took ill to the smallpox virus that the Pilgrims brought to America, the islanders, or Others, began falling to the virus. This would’ve led to mistrust and soon the Others began resisting Dharma, leading to “The Incident”. Since that time, there has been the hostilities. There’s still lots to fill in on this theory, but it’s my start…..
4. Games:
a. Mousetrap: we see a Mousetrap game in a room of Otherville. We also saw Mousetrap in a first season Locke-flashback where he was explaining how the game was played to a small kid in the toy store Locke was working in at the time.
b. Backgammon: backgammon has been seen in Lost before, most notably Locke playing with Walt. Backgammon is a fun and interesting game, and easy to see why it would be used so often in Lost: Two sides. Two players. One light (good). One dark. (bad) Hmmmm…no metaphor there.
5. There’s nothing like roasted boar with A1 and paprika!
6. Kate wearing a “Cowboy Up” hat. Sawyer used the term “Cowboy Up” when he was dealing with Carl and trying to get Carl to toughen up (something like “you need to cowboy up. I thought you Others were tough?”)

Comments? Ideas? I’m waiting to hear from you…….

Until next week,

Razzle Dazzle!

*joe

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http://darkufo.blogspot.com/