>: 53 I DO

Great opening, sounds like Patsy Cline, so it’s probably not Juliet walking down the hall but Kate. Huh, guess we’ll see them when it’s time but I really could have used an Others flashback in this block. But at least Mal from Serenity shows up! They always cast such great guest stars. Looks like this is the marriage she confessed to Sawyer during that round of I Never back in Season 1.

And Jack breaks it all down but won’t do the surgery. Hardcore, he’s playing a mean hand with very few cards.

That Pickett does not like Sawyer, you can see them setting it up, guess they really have been all along.

This reversal on Locke is hard to stomach. They can’t just go back to him being a cryptic hunter of faith, that doesn’t work when we’ve seen him crying over his button. At this point, he seems to me like one of the most wasted characters ever, he was so cool in Season 1, everytime he opened his mouth it was like a parable came out almost. Time will tell, but I’m not feeling the Locke.

And Alex attacks with a slingshot! Not sure what she thought she was going to accomplish. How did she get over to Other Alcatraz? What does she want to talk about with Ben?

What you see with Monica is what you get. Yup, that sentence about sums up the marriage ceremony.

The Jack/Kate scene was played with enough heaviness. This is the first time it’s occurred to me to wonder what they've got her and Sawyer building, if it’s anything of significance. My favorite visual of the episode arrives in this scene, the way they overlaid their faces off reflections from the glass barrier. Real pretty. Of course, Jack’s not having it, won’t be played by anybody.

And the Marshall has to show up. At first, the way she talks to him, sounds more like he was a first husband than the dude chasing her, but that doesn’t really fit with what we know (would’ve been a real cool flip on the first three episodes, though).

And Eko’s funeral. I care about this as little as I possibly could with Locke officiating. A shame. As he’s banging the Jesusstick into the ground, Locke notices the LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK NORTH bit. What that means is something I guess we’re going to have to wait to find out. They walked north last week.

And the verdict is in! Sawyer! Ford 2 Shephard 0, looks like. So was the point of this flashback to illustrate that it’s very easy for Kate to become attached to/fall in love with men? Because she’s always seemed like Jack’s girl up until now. Anyway, bully for Sawyer. But it’s not looking good for Kate. She’s committed the terminal on-island foul of copulating during her flashback episode, curtains for Shannon and Ana-Lucia.

Kevin buys his wife tickets on an Oceanic flight. Couldn’t make out the numbers, but don’t guess I really have to at this point. They’re there.

And someone unlocked the door for Jack (after telling him to check it on the intercom, was that Juliet’s voice? I swear we heard Christian on that thing repeating a line from Jack’s flashback in the season premiere). We suspect that this is just more conditioning/a test even before we see the screens. Jack was meant to see Kate and Sawyer. Loved Ben’s line about being a betting man and picking Jack over Sawyer, he had to be the favorite.

Final flashback, Kate taking a pregnancy test. It’s the only overlap this episode into the overall mythology, the brand is Widmore Labs, owned by Penny’s father. Same brand but different version of the test Sun took last season. And Kate runs.

Got to love Jack entering the OR with ‘sterilized’ hands held high for some on-island surgery. And the last thing Ben wants to know is whether Alex asked about him. Juliet lies in response. What’s going on here? Can we assume that he raised her since she was abducted as an infant?

‘Ben just put his life in the hands of one of them. Shephard wasn’t even on Jacob’s list.’

This is the hugest line of the episode. Who the hell is Jacob? Which list? Meaning Jack isn’t a good person and Ben’s just changing the program to suit his own needs. The name Jacob kind of resonates for me in the same way as HAL, like JACOB’s the computer telling them all what to do or something. Just a hunch.

Time to execute Sawyer. Really looks like they’re going to do it. That would be so wrong. But he did finally get Freckles.

Jack is ruthless. Can’t believe he just took control like that, confounded Ben and/or Juliet’s plans. No way to play any complications with Ben off as accidental as per her plan.

One wonders why Pickett was making such a big deal about Sawyer letting go. Why didn’t he just shoot him in the face? You’d think this dude would want to track down Sun, the person WHO ACTUALLY SHOT HIS WIFE instead of taking revenge on a surrogate.

So that’s Jack’s plan? Run? Too bad their level of communication is just as bad as it’s always been and he doesn’t realize they’re on another island. Love any trick that can reverberate back to other crucial episodes; Jack telling Kate to radio him and tell him the story he told her on the day of the crash when she stitched him up is a nice touch. In that story, 16 hours into a surgery, he made an incision in the patient’s dural (or kidney?) sac and the nerves ‘spilled out like angel-hair pasta’. That image has always stuck with me and it’s a nice parallel to his recent play with Ben.

But, that’s it. ‘Kate, dammit, run!’ They certainly upped the ante in the last few minutes there. But it is a long wait until February.

I enjoyed this run but it seemed incomplete. Maybe it’s just because it never felt more awesome than the first four minutes. The Jack, Locke, and Kate flashbacks again felt superfluous and like they didn’t add anything, though they might very well bear fruit when we revisit these characters toward the end of the season. We finally got to hang out with the Others, but that was about it. I’m really surprised they didn’t throw the audience more of a bone in terms of answers, we got little ones like What happened to Sun’s English teacher? and Did they have relations? and Who was Kate married to? but got nothing in terms of what the Others are up to. What is the point of their endeavor? What is the reason for which everything keeps happening? I understand that last is probably a long time coming, but little hints, little hints would go a long way. I mean if I’M feeling this frustrated, I can’t imagine where less forgiving souls are at. Probably out in the backyard Wednesdays at 8 Central.

I still think this is one of the finest shows in the history of television but I hope they plan to get it in gear when we get back and the new episodes make the majority of these look like they were just spinning their wheels, setting all this up before letting the madness fly. I have faith.