Lost ~ Lighthouse

Psycho survivor Claire? Check. Jears? Check. Daddy issues? Check. Jack going full retard once again? Check. If you haven’t watched this week’s episode yet, please go catch up. Everyone else feel free to hurry along to the rest of the post. Be sure to watch out for bear traps and broken glass.

Oh, did I say everyone? Sorry Kate. Maybe next time.

Sideways-verse: Double the Daddy issues

Jack arrives at his apartment and immediately checks himself out in the mirror (of course). He notices an appendectomy scar (note: in every sideways-verse storyline so far a character has had a revealing moment looking into a bathroom mirror).

His mother calls and he asks her when he had his appendix removed. She tells him it was when he was seven or eight and he collapsed at school. When she asks if he remembers, he responds with “I guess”, which clearly translates to “not at all”. If you recall, Juliet removed Jack’s appendix on the island right before the great freighter fiasco of Season 4. Anyway, Jack’s Mom asks him to come over and help her look for his father’s will.

First, Jack has to drive to Saint Mary’s Academy and pick up his son. Say what?!? Meet David Shepherd (more biblical names not possible). Courtney and I were personally very distracted by the memory of this child actor playing a kid on Grey’s Anatomy who went trick or treating for ears.

No matter how much I wanted him to have a lisp it didn’t happen. Jack brought him back to his apartment and tried to make awkward conversation with him about hooking up cable to his room and about the Annotated Alice in Wonderland he was reading for school. David says that they only see each other once a month and he just wants to get through it. Burn.

Jack heads over to help his mother look for Christian’s will. She offers him a drink, which he turns down. She says “good for you,” which implies that Sideways Jack is also known to have some drinking issues. She tells him that David was very upset at Christian’s funeral (which was sans body, as it is still missing), and Jack was completely clueless. When he says that communication isn’t David’s strong suit, his mother points out that Jack was just like that at David’s age and Christian was lucky to get two words out of him. Jack says that was only because he was terrified of his father. His mother suggests that maybe David is terrified of Jack too, and that they should talk about it. When the will is finally located, his mother flips through it and comes across something strange. She asks if Christian ever mentioned a Claire Littleton.

He heads back to the apartment with Pizza, but David is nowhere to be found. He tries his cell phone a bunch of times, and then decides to head over to David’s mother’s house. The mysterious mother is conveniently out of town, so we still don’t know who she is. He lets himself in with a key hidden under a Rabbit statue. David isn’t there, but Jack discovers sheet music and a photo both picture of them together in his room. He listens to David’s answering machine messages and learns that he has an audition at the William’s Conservatory that evening. He then hears a weepy message that he left of David’s machine when he was in Sydney and he just needed to hear David’s voice. Jears!

Jack goes to the Conservatory just in time to hear David play. A young Asian boy says that David is very good. The boy’s father turns out to be Dogen (!!!) who says the children are too young to have this kind of pressure on them. He says that David has a gift and asks how long he has been playing. Jack doesn’t know. When Jack intercepts David after the audition David tells him that he made his mother promise not to tell Jack that he was still playing. Apparently Jack got way too into it when David was younger, and he was afraid he would disappoint his father. He didn’t tell him about the audition because he didn’t want Jack to see him fail. Jack tells David that when he was young his father told him that he didn’t “have what it takes” and he carried that with him for the rest of his life. He doesn’t want David to ever feel that way. In his eyes David could never fail.


To The Lighthouse

Back in the original timeline, Dogen asks why Jack hasn’t tried to leave, to which Jack said he didn’t think leaving was an option. Everything is an option, according to Dogen, but leaving would be a pretty stupid one. Jack admits to Dogen that Kate, Jin, and Sawyer probably aren’t coming back. They appreciate each other’s honesty.

Over on the cool side of the temple, Hurley and Miles are playing a fancy game of tic-tac-toe. They keep tying each other, so Hurley takes a break in search of a snack. He comes across Jacob kneeling by the healing pool. He tells Hurley that he needs his help, but he should probably get a pen to write a few things down. Jacob tells him that someone is coming to the island, and he needs Hurley to help that someone find the island.

Outside the temple Jack is being boring with Sayid and they remind us that Dogen had tried to give Sayid a poison pill, in case we forgot. Jack says that whatever happened to Sayid has happened to someone else too. We never hear him tell Sayid that it was Claire.

Back to the awesomeness that is my BFF Hugo. He did indeed take a few notes down from his convo with Jacob.

He is sneaking around in a hallway, looking for a specific hieroglyphic on wall, when he is interrupted by Dogen who orders Hurley to return to the courtyard. Jacob appears to Hurley and wants him to say that he is a candidate and that he can do whatever he wants. Hurley does so, and then orders Dogen back to the temple. Dogen is pissed, but does as he is told. He says something in Japanese as he leaves which reportedly translates to:

“You’re lucky that I have to protect you. Otherwise I'd have cut your head off.”

Jacob reminds Hurley that he told him to bring Jack on the mission.

“Trying to get Jack to do something is...like impossible.”

Hurley goes to Jack with a message from Jacob. He tells him that Jacob has sent them on a secret mission, and when Jack refuses to go Hurley says that he “has what it takes.” Jacob said Jack would know what that means. Jack angrily demands to see Jacob, but Hurley tells him that he’s kind of dead, but he’ll be at their destination. Jack agrees and sets off with Hurley. Just outside of the temple the come across Kate, who almost shoots Jack.

She says that Jin was headed back to the temple and that Sawyer is on his own. Hurley tells her that there is another entrance to the temple a little while back, with a side note to Jack that Kate isn’t invited on their journey. She tells them that she’s on her way to the beach camp to look for Claire. Jack tells her that the people at the temple said something had happened to Claire. She heads off to keep looking for her, and that’s the last we see of her this episode.

Hurley and Jack continue through the jungle. Hurley thought Kate and Jack were supposed to get married and have a million babies, but Jack says he wasn’t cut out for marriage and kids. Jack steps on Shannon’s inhaler and they discover they have reached the caves. They revisit Adam and Eve, and Hurley wonders what if they were actually remains of time traveling 815 survivors (RIP Rose and Bernard *~speculation~*). Jack tells Hurley how had discovered the caves chasing his dead father through the jungle. He tells him that he smashed the coffin because Christian wasn’t inside. This should probably be a direct warning that Jack is going to smash some stuff at the end of this mission when he doesn't find what/who he is looking for.

Back on track after that trip down memory lane, Hurley reminisces about the good old time of them trekking through the jungle on their way to do something they don’t quite understand. He asks Jack why he came back the island. He tells Jack that he came because Jacob told him to come so he did (Hurley’s a pretty easy sell).

“I came back here because I was broken, and I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.” ~ Jack

They finally arrive at their destination – a giant lighthouse that they had somehow never stumbled upon despite its close proximity to the caves. At least Jack acknowledges this, and Hurley says he guesses it was because they weren’t looking for it. Jack kicks open the door to the lighthouse, and at the top they discover a series of mirrors set on a wheel with a fire bowl in the center. The last step provided by Jacob is to turn the wheel to 108 degrees. Hurley gets to work and Jack notices the names engraved along the wheel, each of which corresponds with a degree. He sees scenes reflected in the mirror as it turns, namely a church (where Jacob came to Sawyer at his father’s funeral), a temple (where Jin and Sun were married), and a Jack’s childhood home (which we had been shown in the Sideways-verse earlier).

He makes Hurley stop the wheel, and he brings it back to 23 where he shows Hurley his parent’s house. Jack says Jacob has been watching all of them. He wants to see Jacob now, and he wants to know why Jacob has been spying on him. Hurley says he can’t just make Jacob appear, that it’s not how it works, but Jack goes crazy and smashes the mirrors to bits. Way to go, Jack.

Afterwards, Jacob appears to Hurley outside the lighthouse. Jack is sitting on rocks in the distance, staring out at the ocean. Hurley apologizes for failing the mission and says that the person trying to get to the island is totally screwed now. Jacob says they will find some other way. Hurley realizes that Jacob wanted Jack to come to the lighthouse and to see what he did.

“Jack is here because he has to do something. He can't be told what that is. He's got to find it himself. Sometimes, you can just hop in the back of someone's cab and tell them what they're supposed to do. Other times, you have to let him look out at the ocean for a while.” ~ Jacob

Jacob explains that he had to get Jack and Hurley away from the temple because someone bad is about to arrive there. Hurley wants to go back to warn everyone, but Jacob says it is already too late.


Crazy Camp with Claire

Claire checks on Aldo and Justin to make sure they are dead before releasing Jin. He asks her how long she has been in the jungle by herself, and she asks how long it has been since they left the island. So, three years on both counts. Well, at least we know she remembers Jin. She springs the bear trap and helps him up. When he tries to walk on his own he passes out immediately.

Jin wakes up alone in Claire’s freaky little hut where he finds a creepy crib with a “baby” made from animal bones and fur.

He hears Claire returning and lies back down. She has brought Justin, who was pretending to be dead. She suggests she is going to torture him to find out where they are hiding her baby. She heads out to sterilize some tools to treat Jin’s wounds and to sharpen her axe. Things just got really awkward for Jin, who knows Kate had been raising Aaron off the island. Justin begs Jin to loosen his ropes so that he can snap her neck when she returns. Jin says not to worry, he knows her. Justin is not comforted.

When Claire returns she stitches up Jin’s wound and says she hasn’t been all alone in the jungle. She has a friend, who told her that the Others took Aaron, which her father also said. She asks if Jin is still her friend, which only a moron would say no to at this point (but I’m sure he believes it). Claire threatens Justin with an axe and wants to know where Aaron is. The Others didn’t help their case any when they took Claire, stuck her with needles, and branded her. Justin says they only captured her because she was killing their people. Jin tries to help matters, and tells Claire that Kate took Aaron off the island. Claire is confused, and she strikes Justin in the chest with the axe, killing him.

Whoops! Jin later tells Claire that he lied, Kate didn’t take Aaron. He was only trying to save Justin’s life. He says he saw Aaron at the temple with the Others, and that she’ll need him to get to Aaron. She says it’s a good thing he told her Kate didn’t take Aaron, because if she had she would have to kill Kate. MIB then wanders into Claire’s camp and asks if he’s interrupting. Jin is stunned. Claire tells him that he’s not John, he’s her friend.

Easter Eggs, Sidenotes, and Questions:

• This was the 108th hour of Lost.

• This was the fifth episode of the season, and it showed many correlations with the first season’s fifth episode, White Rabbit. In that episode, Jack chased Christian through the jungle and discovered his empty coffin and the caves. This was also the episode where Christian told a young Jack that he didn’t “have what it takes.”

• Who is the mother of David in the Sideways-verse? Jack didn’t meet Sarah until 2001 in the original timeline, so it is unlikely to be her. There's some speculation that it could be Juliet, but I'm leaning towards it being someone we don't know at all or someone completely random.

• Jack read Alice in Wonderland to Aaron in the fourth season episode Something Nice Back Home. This was also the episode when Jack’s appendix ruptured.

• The sign at David’s audition says “Welcome all Candidates.”

• When Ben took Alex from Rousseau he warned her that if she ever heard whispers she should run the other way. Would Claire have been saved by this advice?

• Even though we didn’t see Kate’s name on the cave, and she was not a candidate according to MIB, her name does appear on the wheel at 51, and it is not crossed off. Perhaps the wheel includes not only candidates, but also people Jacob needed to bring to the island for another purpose.

• Jacob told Hurley to turn the wheel to 108. But what name corresponds with that number. Screen captures reveal it to be “Wallace.” But who’s Wallace? David Wallace?

Oops. Wrong show.

• Here are the names and numbers identified on the wheel, with a few inconsistencies from what was shown in the cave:

Rousseau crossed out at number 20.
Austen at number 51. Austen is not crossed out and was not shown in the scene in the cave in "The Substitute."
Burke crossed out at number 58.
Faraday crossed out at number 101.
Lewis crossed out at number 104, which is different from The Substitute where she has number 140.
Rutherford crossed out at number 32, which is different from The Substitute where she has number 31.
Wallace crossed out at number 108.
Friendly crossed out at number 109.
Linus crossed out at number 117.
Dawson crossed out at number 124.
Littleton crossed out at number 313.
Horton crossed out at numbers 98 and 112.
Radzinsky crossed out at 106.
Thomson crossed out at 107.
Klein crossed out at 111.
Lambert crossed out at 116.
Bargas crossed out at 115.
Worden crossed out at 113

          Hey Mr. Friendly!

• And finally, I am excited for this macro I made last season to be mildly relevant again:

Desperate Housewives ~ Lovely

I'm lovely,

All I am is lovely.

Lovely is the one thing I can do.

Winsome,

What I am is winsome,

Radiant as in some

Dream come true.

Oh, Isn't it a shame?

I can neither sew

Nor cook nor read or write my name.

But I'm happy

Merely being lovely,

For it's one thing I can give to you.

I see what you guys did there. This week’s episode is titled “Lovely”, which of course is the above quoted song from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum, sung by Philia, a Courtesan with nothing to her name except her looks. While it’s true that Philia turns out to be fairly useless except for her beauty, this episode proves that there’s more to Robin (Julie Benz) than her ex-stripper exterior suggests. An honor usually reserved only for dead housewives, or particularly awesome handymen, Robin gets an entire episode devoted to her and interactions with the ladies of Wysteria Lane. We now know more about her than I think we ever did about the Applewhites, for example, and more than I even want to know about the Bolens (have I mentioned how over that mystery I am?). Perhaps we’re a little biased by Julie Benz love combined with our excitement over her storyline with Katherine, but we thought this a nice little episode. It may not have advanced on going plots by much, but it did kick start an exciting new beginning for Katherine and show that Julie Benz would make a delightful long term addition to the Desperate Housewives family.

We started off the episode with Katherine’s welcome back from being crazy party, where Susan brought Robin. The men are all instantly enthralled by her, and the ladies are instantly jealous. Both cases are made worse when Robin reveals to the men that she used to be a stripper. Everyone, except for Katherine (who doesn’t have a husband or teenage boy to keep tabs on), thinks this will only end badly, despite Susan’s reassurances. To be fair, when has anything Susan’s done worked out particularly well?

Lynette and the Stripper

When Lynette discovers Parker and a bunch of his hormonal young friends spying on a showering Robin, she immediately confronts Robin to tell her to close the curtains when she takes a shower, and that the neighborhood is full of decent people and innocent children, so she better watch out. Robin lets her know that she’s sorry about the shower, but she should know that Parker asked her to have sex with him, and when she declined he then offered to pay her for it. Seriously, Parker?

“We'd hoped that it'd be another year before we had the parent-son conversation where we tell you not to offer your neighbor money for sex, but...” ~ Lynette

Tom sets Parker straight and tells him that he doesn’t need to pay for it, and in a few years he’ll be doing just fine for himself, sex-wise (ew). As soon as Parker clears out Tom lets it slip that he thinks men are always paying for sex in one way or another (dinner, flowers, presents, etc.). Lynette is disgusted (fair enough). It turns out that Tom was under the impression that the first time they made love it was because he had taken her to a fancy restaurant. Lynette tells him he’s an idiot, because the reason he got lucky was because he had shown up to the date with a light bulb to replace one burnt out in her apartment hallway, because she didn’t live in the best neighborhood. She was ready to do him right there, because he was concerned for her safety.

The next day Lynette apologizes to Robin, who accepts the apology but tells her she should close her curtains the next time she “gives it” to Tom.


Bree and the Stripper

Robin asks for Bree’s help making a cake as a thank you to Susan and Mike for their hospitality. As she doesn’t know anything about cakes except that if you are hiding in one for more than an hour it needs to have really big air holes, Bree walks her through it. Robin is super excited and takes a picture of Bree for her new cell phone screen saver. This brought my favorite throw away moment of the night, when she said her current screen saver was of a cat eating noodles, which I can only hope to be spaghetti cat.

As if we needed another reason to love Robin. After Bree revealed that she’s been having some intimacy issues with Orson, Robin suggest that she try connecting with Orson by spicing things up a bit. When Bree gets home she finds Orson reading and listening to classical music. She then begins what is easily the most awkward lap dance in the history of the human race. There is a very long list of things Bree excels at, but erotic dancing is absolutely not among them. Her dance/walk is so bizarre it prompts Orson to ask if she’s walking so strangely to make him feel better about being paralyzed. He worries that she might be having a stroke. When she tries to strip off her shirt, it gets stuck on her earing and she stumbles about with her head covered. Orson runs over her toes with his wheel chair while trying to help. It was all so crammed full of second hand embarrassment and awkwardness that I still can’t decide if it was hilarious or tragic (the jury is leaning towards hilarious). After all that is said and done, she and Orson have a sincere conversation where they speak to each other about their issues and Bree says she wants to get their intimacy back, even if it’s just as much as holding his hand while he falls asleep. She sits in his lap and he holds her while they listen to classical musical. It’s so sweet that I almost forget that they are completely glossing over Karl, Orson's blackmailing, and his kleptomania. Still, it was nice to have Orson not be complaining about something, like he’s actually working to move forward in his life. Maybe these crazy kids can work it out after all.


Gabrielle and the Stripper

Gabrielle decides that she’s had enough of Anna hanging around Danny Bolen, especially since she and Carlos overheard Angie and Nick (or Dad Bolen as we like to call him) arguing about their secret life. Gabby pulls some strings and gets Anna accepted to modeling school, which apparently starts immediately. How convenient! Seriously though, this is pretty sweet for Anna because she does want to go to New York to be a model. The only hitch is that Anna and Danny had planned to move to New York together after graduation and she doesn’t want to go without him.

Gabby tells Susan about her troubles, and Robin helpfully chirps in with a story about how when she was in high school she wanted to be a ballerina, and she was quite good. She was offered a once in a lifetime opportunity but she turned it down for a boy, who dumped her a little while later. Then she was in a car accident which injured her knee and ended her chances of a career in ballet. Gabby says that’s great! She wants her to tell Anna that story so that Anna won’t ruin her life because of a boy and end up an ex-stripper like Robin. Gee thanks. Robin does tell Anna the story, and is apparently quite convincing because Anna decides to go to New York and breaks up with Danny. Yay, we’re finally rid of Anna (I hope, but doubt)! When Robin finds out that Gabby was only using her to break up Anna and Danny, she is pissed off. She tells Gabby that she felt used, but Gabby didn’t care. In return, Robin told Danny what went down and he disappeared off to New York after her. So Robin managed to get rid of two of my least favorite characters of the season. Not too shabby! I know they’ll be back, but let me dream!

Susan and the Stripper

Despite claiming that the neighborhood has nothing to worry about when it comes to Robin, and that she is totally cool with her being in her house with her husband, she eventually goes all Susan on us and flips out. It turns out that Robin has some awesome chiropractic skills, which is handy since Mike has been suffering from major back pains. She helps him out a few times, but eventually Susan goes a little psycho from seeing too much physical contact. Convinced that she can help Mike just as well and Robin, she tries cracking his back herself and puts him in the hospital. Of course. When Robin brings MJ to the hospital Susan tells Robin that she just wasn’t comfortable with her husband being touched by a stripper in that way. Robin has had it with people calling her a stripper! She says maybe it would be best if she moved out, in order to preserve her friendship with Susan.

Katherine and the Stripper

“No one judges the woman from the loony bin when there's a stripper next door.”

Katherine is lonely in her big empty house, and coincidentally Robin is now looking for a new place to stay so her friendship with Susan isn’t destroyed. Katherine agrees to rent her a room. While getting settled in, Robin asks Katherine what it was like in the loony bin. She’s just wondering because she had always fantasized about sending her mother there. To be fair, her mother was an abusive alcoholic who took out all of her rage at Robin’s father out on her. More Robin back story not possible! Katherine takes a break from the usual “it wasn’t so bad” spiel and says that the worst part wasn’t the screaming, it was the patients with cold dead stares. It’s an odd subject to bond over, but they crack a few jokes and head out for a drink together.

During their girls night out a man comes up to them and asks them to join him and his friend for a drink. Robin politely turns them down and says they are having a girls night, but she changes her mind (a little reluctantly) when unlucky in love Katherine expresses an interest in them. Of course, as expected, the men fawn over Robin and ignore Katherine. Robin tries her best to deflect attention back over to Katherine, who is apparently thinking about starting her own catering company, but the men keep coming back to Robin and want to know what she does. A frustrated Katherine tells them that Robin is a stripper. Robin corrects her by saying she is an ex-stripper, and she is ready to leave. The men try to convince her to stay, and she tries again to throw Katherine a bone, but the men flatly reject her. So if they aren’t interested in a strong, smart, beautiful woman like Katherine, Robin informs them she’ll have to keep Katherine for herself. And she kisses Katherine. The men are shocked (and horny), and Katherine is surprised, but definitely enjoyed it.

Back at home, Katherine says she is ready to give up on men, which Robin is all for. Robin reveals to Katherine that she used to date men, but it never quite clicked. Then, while she was working at the strip club she realized that she was really attracted to women. Katherine tells her that she doesn’t think she’s been barking up the wrong tree, she’s just sick of barking. Katherine assures Robin that she doesn’t have a problem with Robin being gay and living with her, although she looks a little uncomfortable on the fade out.

Robin

We round out the episode with Robin taking a jog through the neighborhood. She runs into McCluskey, who reveals to Robin that she was once an underwear model for Sears Roebuck. Don’t worry, McCluskey’s boobs are 100% real. I know you were concerned. She asks Robin how she is settling in and Robin says that it’s nice to be in a place where people actually see her. They don’t look at her and see stripper anymore, they see Robin the person. She jogs through the neighborhood and we get a voice over confirming that the people of Wysteria Lane are looking past her beautiful exterior. However, there is at least one person (KATHERINE) who is definitely still appreciating Robin’s beauty.

Grey's Anatomy ~ Time Warp

This week’s episode was a nice change of pace from the normal hustle and bustle of Seattle Grace / Mercy West. As part of the lecture series Derek has reinstated, we took a trip back through time to visit some of the ground breaking moments in the careers of Bailey, Callie, and Richard. We didn’t get a whole lot of new information, and none of the current plotlines were advanced beyond Richard celebrating 45 days sober and being told that the board has turned down his reinstatement for now. Derek offered him position in general surgery, but Richard turns him down (for now).

Bailey

We start off seeing Bailey get ready for her presentation, looking snazzy in pink, and getting checked out by the Gas Man (whom I think we still haven’t been formally introduced to, but the internet tells me his name is Ben Warren). It’s hard to tell exactly how much time has passed, but we know that this is at least 45 days after the Chief went to rehab, so I think it’s safe to bet that Bailey and the Gas Man have gone out on at least one day by now. Things seem to be going pretty good so far.

Not surprisingly, Bailey is an excellent public speaker. She entertains the masses by awarding them with candy. Cristina, having been pelted with a piece of candy for not paying attention at the beginning of Bailey’s talk, is super competitive. Even Arizona is seen munching on candy at one point during the lecture.

Bailey takes us back to 2003, when she was just three days into her internship (3 years before we met her). Back then she was timid and quiet, our first look at the band nerd, star wars geek, awkward bookworm, that we have been told about in the past. “Mandy” (as she was still calling herself) is sporting some pretty awesome pink glasses and long braids. She in constantly stuck at the back of the intern pack, hidden due to her height and meek voice. When she tries to speak up during rounds, catching Richard’s eye, her resident from hell, played by the always enjoyable Missi Pyle, gives her a hell of a smack down and reminds her that she is at the bottom of the surgical food chain. While their patient is in surgery Bailey quietly pipes in with some useful info about the patient being a vegan. Richard is impressed with the thorough medical history Bailey’s taken. Missi Pyle is not amused, and punishes Bailey with scut.

The patient comes and goes, and comes again. At one point Bailey thinks her appendix might be what was causing the issues, so she gets to remove it. Unfortunately, the appendix was perfectly fine. Oops! Oh well, at least she got some rocking advice from Richard during the surgery.

“Surgery's a shark tank,'' he told her. ''And sharks have teeth. Make sure you're a shark, too. And not a minnow . . . . God made you short. Who made you quiet?”

When the patient is sent away again without a diagnosis, and after some lame credit steeling by Missi Pyle, Bailey drowns her sorrows at Joe’s. This was mostly so we could see Joe with awesome long hair. Well worth it.

Finally, when the patient is admitted once again, Bailey goes from minnow to shark. She figures out that the woman suffers from prophyria, and cancels Missi Pyle’s surgery. She then gets to let loose with her very first Bailey speech, telling Missi Pyle off for being scalpel happy and not caring enough about the patients to take a good history put the pieces together. Richard is listening the whole time and eventually has to step in because Bailey is loosing it a little, and really shouldn’t be yelling at her resident like that. He pulls her into his office, pretends to scold at her, and tells her that she is going to be an excellent surgeon.

Callie

Public speaking and Callie are not friends. They might in fact be mortal enemies. It’s funny that someone as inherently hardcore and kick-ass as Callie would be so completely undone by the idea of giving a lecture. We first find her on her bathroom floor, with Arizona brushing her hair. She’s cursing Derek Shepherd, but Arizona tells her to calm down and to not vomit again, because she just finished getting all of the puke out of her hair. That is love, ladies and gentlemen.

She is a complete mess on stage. To start, she nervously fidgets with her laptop trying to pull up her presentation, doing what Cristina identifies as her pee dance. She accidentally pulled up a cute picture of her and Arizona before getting to the right picture of legs horribly contorted by Polio. She is a mess. She mumbles quietly, drops her note cards, and panics. Arizona yells out for her just to talk – to tell them what happened. She continues to be a complete mess until Alex helps move her along (he worked with her on the case). Finally, by the end of the episode she was sitting at the end of the stage, talking pretty much directly to Alex, and she made it through the whole thing, getting around of applause and everything. But seriously folks, don’t ever put Callie through that again.

The case took place during what would have been season 1 of the series. We didn’t meet Callie until later on, but of course she was around! Alex flirts his way onto Callie’s case, letting her believe that he was “the heart in the elevator guy” (RIP George). The case was a grad student who suffered from severe polio. His legs looked like an “S”. Callie, being the Ortho God that she is, promised the patient that she would be able get him to walk again. Richard is angry at Callie for making that promise, which was admittedly pretty cocky. He tells her that her career at Seattle Grace will hinge on this surgery.

The surgery starts off well, and Callie is able to fix the patient’s clubbed foot, but his lungs were too weak to the surgery. She tells the patient that she doesn’t think they can do another surgery, but he wiggles his toes for the first time since he was a child and says she can do it. They go back into surgery again, but this time something is up with his heart and she needs Alex to “do the heart thing” like in the elevator. Confession time. Alex admits that he wasn’t that guy, but Callie says he’s going to do it now anyway and talks him though it. In the end Callie was able to straighten out the patients legs (the X-rays get a big round of applause in the lecture), and he is able to walk with crutches. Callie gets a nice approving hand on the shoulder from Richard, and she and Alex celebrate. And by celebrate she means they totally had sex in her basement apartment. She invokes the cone of silence, and they never speak of it again. There’s a moment at the end of Callie’s lecture where Arizona realizes Callie and Alex slept together, and she isn’t too amused.

Richard

Richard delivered a compelling and heartfelt lecture. The man was born to talk. He takes us back to a case he worked on with Ellis Grey in 1982. He and Ellis were both treated horribly by racist/sexist men of Seattle Grace. They were both outcasts, which meant the worked twice as hard as everyone else for a tenth of the recognition. So this is the hard-core Ellis we have heard so much about (played by the always wonderful Sarah Paulson). Richard (played by J. August Richards – who will always be Gunn to us) and she worked together to diagnose a patient with AIDS, back when it was still being called GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). The patient pitched a fit, threatened to sue them for slander, and got them in trouble with their boss, who I’m sure had a name but I’m going to keep calling Mitchum Huntzberger (Gilmore Girls). A little while down the road the patient comes back back with complications from Kaposi’s Sarcoma, admits he is gay, and no one in the hospital will get within 20 feet of him besides Ellis and Richard.

This was the first case of AIDS in Washington, and no one understood its cause, how it was spread, or how to treat it. They were repeatedly told that he was going to die anyway, so they shouldn’t waste their time. When even the patient echoes this sentiment, Richard suggested that there could be a cure next week for all they know – why not right it with everything they have? They performed surgery on the patient, but he eventually died with complications from pneumonia. They held his hands while he died.

In other new news, Ellis and Richard were sleeping together this whole time (which we already knew), and they were pretty hot together. When we saw young Thatcher, who looked like a poor man’s Howie Mandel, we really couldn’t blame her. Little Meredith was adorable, however, with her Anatomy Jane doll. Ellis was just as cold to her as we’d expect, but to be fair it was wicked lame of Thatcher to bring her to the hospital like that. Ellis tries to convince Richard to leave Adelle. She says that their marriages were a lie, that what was between them was real. He says that he couldn’t do that, but she responded simply with “We’ll see.” We of course know that Richard doesn’t leave Adelle for Ellis, but Ellis does leave Thatcher and go all sorts of crazy. We also see Ellis encouraging Richard to man up and drink liquor. Well that sure turned out super for everyone. At the end of the lecture he has everyone stand and he recites the Physician’s Oath.

More than anything this episode made me miss the Richard from the beginning of the series. The one who wasn’t obsessed with hospital finances and appearances. The one who molded residents into great surgeons. The one who fought for what was right. All three lectures showed us the best in Richard. Let’s hope he’s on the way back to his former glory.

Lost ~ The Substitute

You wanted answers? Well you’ve got them! Well, um, kind of. We may not have had every secret of the Lost universe revealed to us, but we at least had some significant layers of the Lost onion peeled away. Of course, in true Lost fashion, we are left with even more questions. If you haven’t seen this week’s episode yet, go catch up! If you have, then light up a torch and come see what everyone is talking about this week (and I don’t mean the Olympics).

Now, as I mentioned in my last blog, I had an epic fail when I tried to publish this blog the first time around. I had a beautiful comprehensive and LONG blog all typed out in word, but something went horribly wrong and it disappeared forever. So now I’m attempting to rebuild. If I miss anything super important, I’m sorry. I’m also sorry that this is coming a day late. It should have been up at 2pm on Wednesday!!! Moving along now . . .

In the Sideways-verse:

At first glance it seems as though Sideways Locke is living just as sucky a life as original timeline Locke did. When he pulls into his driveway the mechanical lift in his van breaks down inches from the ground, forcing him to propel himself off the lift, falling flat on his face. Of course, the sprinklers have to turn on at just that moment. But instead of getting angry at the world, he laughs it off. Why so jolly, John? Could it be because Helen is rushing out of the house to help you up? Hey girl! While he soaks in a tub they discuss wedding plans, and she mentions that they could just do a shot gun wedding with her parents and his father (say what?!?!). So sideways Locke is buddies with his Dad. Interesting. Helen finds Jack’s business card in Locke’s pocket and says he should call him. Hey, you never know, it could be “destiny”!

Work, however, isn’t much better for Locke. He’s still working at the box factory for that twit Randy. Or at least he was before Randy fired him for skipping out on all of the conference events the company sent him to Sydney to attend. Out in the parking lot Locke lets his “I’ve just been fired” rage out on a yellow hummer parked too close for his lift to come down. Or at least he tries to, but the lift fails about an inch away from scraping the hummer’s paint. Chalk it up to Hurley’s awesome luck, since he is the car's owner. He apologizes for being a little to close, but he rightly points out that there is an available handicapped spot right next to where Locke parked. Locke gets all “You can’t tell me where I can’t park” for a second, but gets over it pretty quick. Hurley tells him that he owns the company and he could talk to that douche Randy if Locke wanted. Instead Locke took the number for the temp agency Hurley also owns. Hurley tells him not to worry, and that everything is going to work out.

At the temp agency an annoying woman (who was Hurley’s tarot card reader in the original timeline) asks Locke a bunch of questions like what animal does he identify himself as and if he’s “a people person.” Locke doesn’t stand for this (BECAUSE HE CAN’T BECAUSE HE’S IN A WHEEL CHAIR – GET IT? sorry) and demands to see her supervisor, who turns out to be none other than that fierce bitch, Rose. When she asks Locke what kind of job he would like, he obstinately asks to be a construction supervisor. He starts to get all uppity when she suggests it might not be a good fit, despite his experience, but then Rose whips out the cancer card. She tells Locke that she has terminal cancer and she had to move past the denial and continue living whatever life she has left. It would be wise for John to do the same.

A while later Locke begins to call Jack for a consult, but changes his mind when the receptionist answers. Helen wonders what that was all about, and he tells her it was nothing and that he got fired. When his lost luggage gets delivered he tells her to open the case, which of course was full of knives. He tells her that he ditched work for the walkabout, but that he was told he couldn’t do it. He was angry, but now he’s accepted his limitations. He tells her not to hold out for any miracles, because there isn’t such a thing. Helen says that there are miracles, and that the only thing she has ever waited for was him. She tears up Jack’s card. Oh Helen, we love you. We sure hope you don’t die of a brain aneurism in this timeline too.

Next we find Locke at his new job as a substitute teacher. He coaches gym class, teaches sex education, and most importantly hangs out in the teacher’s lounge with the hottest European History teacher of all time.

“Alright, I know I sound like a broken record, but how many times do I have to go over this? If you have the last cup of coffee, you REMOVE the filter and throw it AWAY. Fear not! I will make a fresh pot.”

What do you think the odds are that Arzt works at this school too?


Original Timeline: Putting the "Fun" in Funeral

Ilana is all tears over what happened in the cave because a) she totally was in love with Jacob if you ask us, and b) if she was some sort of guardian of Jacob she failed miserably. She asks Ben what happened and he said that Locke/MIB turned into a pillar of smoke and killed the men (true) and that he also killed Jacob (false) and kicked him into the fire (true). Call me crazy, but I think Ilana knows the “rules” well enough to know that MIB couldn’t have killed Jacob directly. She either lets it slide, or believes him, and fills up a pouch with Jacob’s ashes. Anyone else a little disturbed at how quickly Jacob’s body went up? No bones left over or anything. The fire was seriously not hot enough to have been able to do that on a normal human. Did he just turn to ash instantly or something? Perhaps. Anyways, she tells Ben that MIB took Richard because he is recruiting.

Ilana tells everyone to head to the temple, because it is the safest place on the island. Sun is reluctant to go with her, but Ilana is smart enough to play the Jin card. She says that if he is only the island, he would be there. Sun (of course) agrees to follow, but she insists that they bury Locke’s body first (which is now crawling with crabs, and I don’t mean the sexy kind).

Ilana, Sun, Ben, and Lapidus head off to bury the body. Along the way Ben asks why Ilana brought the corpse all the way to the statue, and she said that she needed to show the others what they were up against. She tells Ben that MIB is stuck with John’s body now (besides smoke form, obviously). This doesn’t explain how Smokey turned into Alex when it confronted Ben last season . . . or Christian. Maybe this rule just went into effect when Jacob died?

We are somehow supposed to believe that they marched the body all the way from the statue to the survivor’s grave yard (hey Eko’s church!). I’m sorry, but Jin, Sun, and Sayid had to sail halfway around the damn island before the discovered that foot statue. It seems like that should have been at least a full days walk. Maybe they took a boat? Lapidus and Ben dig the grave and they lay Locke to rest. When Ilana asks someone to say something, since they knew him, Ben steps up the plate with a touching eulogy.

Ben: John Locke was a... believer. He was a man of faith. He was a much better man than I will ever be, and I'm very sorry I murdered him.

Lapidus: This is the weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to.

Original Timeline: Into the Woods Jungle

We start things off with a nifty sequence from smokey’s perspective, moving through the jungle, to New Otherton, and back again to a machete. MIB takes (Locke’s) solid form and uses the machete to release Richard from a very Rousseau-ish trap. He gives Richard one last chance to join him. Richard wants to know why he chose Locke’s form, and MIB revealed that he needed to look like one of the candidates to get close to Jacob. The candidate business is apparently new to Richard.

“Jacob didn't tell you? He never said why? I never would have done that to you! I never would have kept you in the dark! I would have treated you with respect!”

MIB tries again to get Richard to join his side, but the offer is declined. MIB then spots a mysterious creepy boy with bloody arms. Richard cannot see the boy. MIB tells Richard that they’ll be seeing each other again soon, and he heads off the New Otherton.

Sawyer has been pretty busy listening to loud music and getting sloshed on Whiskey. When MIB appears, Sawyer isn’t as surprised as one might think.

Sawyer: I thought you were dead.

MIB: I am.

Sawyer pours him a drink and says he doesn’t care whether he is dead or alive or the ghost of Christmas past, he just wants to be left alone. He can, however, tell that he isn’t John Locke.

"Locke was scared even when he was pretending he wasn't. But you, you ain't scared."

MIB tells Sawyer that he can answer the most important question of all: Why are you on this island? Although reluctant at first, Sawyer agrees to put on some pants and go with MIB. Hey, he doesn’t have anything better to do.

Out in the jungle, MIB is asking Sawyer why he isn’t at the temple, but they are interrupted by the appearance of the mysterious boy (bloodless this time). This time Sawyer is able to see the boy, which surprises MIB. MIB takes off after the boy, who reminds him that he “knows the rules” and he “can’t kill him” (we assume him to be Sawyer in this equation).

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”

Why MIB is MIA, Richard pops out of the jungle and tells Sawyer that he has to come with him to the temple, for his own safety. He says that MIB wants everyone dead. Richard scurries back into the jungle when he hears MIB returning.

Sawyer, now a little suspicious, talks to about of Mice and Men and then threatens to put a bullet in MIB’s head. MIB could care less. When Sawyer asks what MIB is, he responds that he is trapped.

“I've been trapped for so long I don't even remember what it feels like to be free. Maybe you understand that. But before I was trapped I was a man just like you. I know what its like to feel joy to feel pain, anger, fear, to experience betrayal. I know what it's like to lose someone you love....”

He convinces Sawyer to keep following him, because they are very close. They soon arrive to a cliff with a cave part way down. Sawyer says there is no way he’s going down those sketchy ladders (JACOB’S LADDER) first, and MIB happily starts climbing down. He conveniently neglects to give Sawyer a heads up that he’ll need to switch ladders part down. Was this an attempt to kill Sawyer, or an excuse to look like a hero when he saves him? Methinks a little of both.

When they enter the cave the find a scale balancing a white and black rock. MIB picks up the white rock and throws it into the ocean.

“Inside joke.”

MIB lights a torch and leads the way deeper into the cave. We discover that the walls and ceiling are covered in names, most of which have been crossed off, many preceded by numbers.

“That's why you're here. That, James, is why you are all here.”

There are a lot of familiar names up there, but the only ones which remain uncrossed are:

4 Locke (MIB crosses this off himself in a few moments)
8 Reyes
15 Ford
16 Jarrah
23 Shepard
42 Kwon (MIB doesn’t know whether this is Jin or Sun)

MIB tells Sawyer that they had all been touched by Jacob at some point in their lives.

“At some point in your life he came to you when you were vulnerable or miserable, he came to you, manipulated you, pulled your strings like you were a puppet and as a result the choices you thought you made were never really choices, he was pushing you, pushing you to the Island.”

He tells Sawyer that the names were all candidates to replace Jacob as the protector of the island. According to MIB the island doesn’t needs protecting, it’s just a damn island (puh-lease). He tells Sawyer that he has three options. He can either do nothing and see how it all plays out, take over Jacob’s job, or get the hell off the island with MIB. So is Sawyer ready to go home?

“Hell yes.”

Do we think that Sawyer has a bit of a con running in his mind right now? Perhaps. I don’t know if the new Sawyer would completely abandon the rest of his people. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.


Easter Eggs, Sidenotes, and Questions:

• In the Sideways-verse, Locke had a picture of him with his father in his cubicle.

• The banner in the teacher’s lounge says “Live in the present, plan for the future.”

• The coffee mug that Locke is drinking from in the bathtub is the same mug used by Cassidy in "Whatever Happened, Happened".

• Locke’s alarm clock made the same sound as the Swan station’s alarm, and his wheelchair lift breaking down sounded a lot like the smoke monster.

• Since Ben is teaching in the Sideways-verse, that means little Ben made it off the island sometime before it sunk into the ocean. This means either that the island didn’t sink immediately after Juliet detonated the bomb, or that the Others were somehow able to get him safely off the island before the explosion.

• In the original timeline it was Locke’s father that pushed him out of the window and caused his paralysis. He then disappeared off the Mexico. Then, sometime after he heard about the crash of 815, he was rear ended, drugged, and woke up tied to a chair on the island. But since Sideways Locke and he are buddies, does that mean he was thrown out of the window by someone else? Was he paralyzed in some other way? Or did his Dad just say he was really really sorry?

• Are there still a bunch of Ajira survivors over on the small island wondering what the hell is going on?

• If Lapidus is a candidate, as Ilana said he might be, why isn’t his name up there ont the wall with everyone elses?

• Why isn’t Kate’s name in the cave? Damon Lindelof confirmed that it is not there. Was Kate special to Jacob for a non-candidate reason? Could she be a possible guardian to the candidate? Or did Jacob just realize that Kate was wicked lame and not bother writing her down?

• In the original timeline it was Abadon who suggested Locke go on the walkabout in the first place. He was acting as an agent of Charles Widmore. His job was to get people to where “they needed to be.” Since the island is under the ocean, Widmore would certainly not have bothered to have Abadon go to Locke. Did the walkabout idea come to Locke on his own?

• What is up with that creepy boy? Is he a manifestation of Jacob? Aaron? Sawyer? Someone completely new? Does he act as some sort of referee between Jacob and MIB? Here’s how the casting call describes him, if we can take that to mean anything:

Teenage boy, caucasian, 12-14. Dirty blond hair. Wise beyond his years. He's got intense, searching eyes. He's dealt with a horrible family accident. Even at a young age, he has been put in charge of something very important, and it weighs heavily on his shoulders.

• You can go HERE for a complete list of the names identified on the cave wall so far, but a few familiar names include: Burke (Juliet), Lewis (Charlotte), Faraday (Daniel), Littleton (Claire or Aaron), Goodspeed (Ethan, Horace, or Amy), Rutherford (Shannon), Rousseau (Danielle or Alex), Linus (Ben or Roger), Straume (Miles), Pace (Charlie), Fernandez (Nikki), Henderson (Rose’s maiden name), and Chang (Pierre).