Lost, Season 4, Episode 2 "Confirmed Dead" (2/7/2008)

Whew…this is getting confusing, even for me! Sorry for the length of this…gotta learn to condense.

This episode focuses on the four people (note: 4 is one of the numbers) who land on the island from the freighter and their impact on the Losties. I liked how the episode went, introducing each of the four as they were arriving on the island. Did you notice that in each of their flashbacks contained news of Oceanic 815’s crash?

--Daniel Faraday, physicist. Parachutes onto the island from the rescue helicopter. Claims to be part of the rescue team from the freighter. He notices and mentions how the light doesn’t work right on the island. Also tells Jack and Kate that rescuing them is not the primary objective. He does refer to Kate and Jack as “good people”, continuing the theme of the good vs. bad. (Name note: Michael Faraday was a physicist from the early/mid 1800s who became famous for his work on electromagnetism. He’d’a loved the island, eh?)

--Miles Straume, Ghost Buster (Miles Straume…maelstrom??). Seems to have some kind of mild psychic ability. Not the first psychic character we’ve seen on Lost. How about his weird machine? Shows the picture to Jack and tells them that they are there to get Benjamin Linus. How stupid do you think he is??

--Charlotte Staples Lewis, anthropologist. Investigates the polar bear skeleton found in Tunisia and it had a Dharma collar. That she was wearing a bulletproof vest when she landed on the island indicates that they did not come there for a rescue mission and probably expected some kind of hostile resistance.

--Frank Lapidus, pilot. Says he’s the one who was originally supposed to pilot flight 815. He pilots the helicopter to the island on the mission, but of all the people in the group, he seems out of place. Why would they bring him to the island? And why did he not pilot the flight to begin with? (I’ll tell you why: because the flight was set-up with the Losties and the plane had to be flown by someone on the inside. But why was the flight set-up to begin with?) He knew that Juliet was not a passenger on Flight 815.

It seems that the freighter people, or Freighties, are there as part of the follow-up to the overthrow of Dharma by Ben and the Others so many years earlier. They arrived at the island, I think, because of when Locke was playing the computer chess game in Mikhail’s place, and entered “77” when the Marvin Candle message said “Has there been an incursion on this station by the Hostiles? If so, enter 7-7". This would’ve alerted whomever was at the other end of the message to react accordingly. Looks like they’ve arrived. But I don’t know why Frank would be with them, unless, as part of the cover-up of the plane crash, including the plane being found in the Sunda Trench off Indonesia full of bodies, they need to get rid him. With Frank still alive in the real world, he becomes a mouthpiece who would refute the plane crash story, which would not be good for whoever it is that went through all of the trouble to make all of this happen to being with. By having him on the island, maybe this is the way they get rid of him.

--Penny Widmore’s rescuers will come later, I believe. Two rescue parties with different purposes.

--Ben. How many beatings can this guy take and not be hurt? I guess the island really does heal people. This guy sure has a way of getting to people, but, it seems, he sure knows a lot. That he has someone on the freighter and knew why the chopper had come to this island is frightening.

--Matthew Abaddon. Based on the flashback with Naomi, he believed at that time that there were no survivors of 815 and that they were going to the island to rescue whomever they’re aligned with. But, based on last week’s episode, he kept asking Hurley how many were still alive. So, with the Oceanic 6 in the flash-forward headlines, we’ll soon learn what the connection will be as to why they have to go back and why Abaddon is trying to get them. And it’s possible that we’ll learn that the reason they, the Oceanic 6, are not mentioning any other survivors is because they learn of whatever conspiracy it is that took them to the island. Yeah, I know….my brain is doing loop-to-loops too!

--Naomi. She was on the inside with Abaddon and knew the reason for the trip to the island. Now, she’s just “meat” according to Miles the psychic. But, let’s be real here….she could always come back.

Funny lines:
Frank Lipidus: “I saw a cow.” (Don’t know why this is so funny to me…he did see a cow. But the way he said it….I’m still laughing)

After he calls him “Mr Linus”, Ben says: “Karl. Now if you’re gonna sleep with my daughter I insist you call me Ben.”

Sawyer: after Locke says that Ben is harmless except for his mouth, “That mouth put that hole in your gut?”

Miles: “How stupid do you think I am?” he says to Jack. “I don’t know Miles, how stupid are you?” Hahahahaha!

Locke: "Walt told me….only he was taller."
Sawyer: "Taller, like a giant?"
then later, when Locke says where they’re going, Sawyer says, “Who are we to argue with taller-Walt”.

Ben: I have information that you need. I have answers.
Locke: What is the ‘monster’?

Names from the past:
--Seth Norris – we finally learn the name of the pilot of 815 who got taken by the SMonster right after the plane crashed. Obviously he was in on the reason they brought the Losties to the island to begin with.

Interesting:
--Locke would probably be dead, he says, if he still had a kidney where the bullet passed through him when Ben shot him. Seems a coincidence that it was that kidney that he donated to his father…or is it?
--This is probably nothing: in Ms Gardner’s house, where Miles found the money in the vent, the camera paused over some pictures on the wall in the stairway. One of the pictures looked like Eko when he was younger.
--Phone number on news to call Oceanic in reference to the plane crash: 888-548-0034. Go ahead and call it…I did. ;-)
--When Hurley mentions the cabin, Locke and Ben both take notice and didn’t look happy. However, the direction in which Hurley pointed that he saw it was different from where Locke had seen it. The cabin must be in some kind of time shift…..?

Final questions:
1. Who is funding the freighter’s rescue?
2. Who is Ben’s “man on the freighter”?
3. When Naomi parachuted onto the island, she had a picture of Desmond and Penny. But, she’s not part of that rescue team, so how did she get that picture?

4. Why did the rescue chopper have gas masks on the flight in the metal box? Were they expecting another Others gassing?

Check out this website for some really good and clear screen shots: http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/

Tune in next week for “The Economist”.

Until then, Razzle Dazzle!