4.3

(Back to 4.2 or back to index page or forward to 4.4.) 

The episode starts on Sayid’s closed eyes… then Sayid goes and closes Naomi’s eyes.

“N, I’ll always be with you, RC” (or RG)

Once again, Sayid knows folks are lying.  Sayid admits to Miles he’s ambivalent in whether or not he should align with Jack or with John.  Sayid promises to bring Charlotte back, and to do it without bloodshed.  Later he claims that he was able to accomplish this with a trade, but it makes no sense for Locke to agree to such a trade when Sayid wasn’t really in the position to bargain for one.  After all, Locke already had BOTH Charlotte AND Miles.  (Neither Jack nor Frank knew this, by the way.)  Obviously, Sayid has shifted his allegiance from Jack to John and John really believes that he’ll gain a lot by letting Charlotte go.

The man Sayid killed early in the episode was obviously connected to events related to the island, as evidenced by his reaction to Sayid mentioning flight 815 and by… well, by the fact that Sayid killed him.  Later we learn that the list he’s killing by was provided by Ben (or… was the list provided by Jacob?).

Sayid’s flash-forwards were, for me, frankly, rather awkward in some places.  But what a payoff in the end!  Not just in terms of Ben’s involvement, but in terms of discovering that the woman he was seducing was an “agent” herself.

Kate still doesn’t trust Juliet.  In fact she’s been giving a lot of “hurt looks” where Juliet is concerned ever since the season started.  It isn’t terribly surprising that she decided to stay with Sawyer.  That is… if she actually decided to stay.

Where… THE hell… is Jacob’s frickin’ cabin?  Aaron didn’t like it there, for sure.  And didn’t the line of gray powder look… thinner this time or something? Many speculated that the line existed to trap Jacob, but do those notions hold now?

Now… Dan’s experiment… very interesting.

First of all, we have to take the time delay in the arrival of the payload within a specific context.  The only way to make sense of it, really, is to presume that Dan’s radio transmission from the phone arrived at the freighter 31 minutes into Dan’s future.  But note that the rocket didn’t travel into the past relative to the folks on the freighter.  The rocked arrived at precisely the time Regina said it did… it didn’t time travel into her past (Dan’s present) and hit the ground in coordination with Regina’s description (over the phone) of its trajectory.  So, the time dilation effect seems only to impact signals or objects leaving the island and not signals or objects arriving on the island.  This is surely a consequence of the electromagnetism at work there.  A clue was given to us by Dan when he talked about light not scattering as it should.  Time bends with space, so apparently the island’s properties distort space to such a degree that, if anything leaves, it will be as if that thing is traveling 31 minutes into the future.  Dan seems to know just what this means and it’s “not good”.  He recommends that Frank follow the same bearing getting back to the boat that he took in.  I presume this is because the only way out of an “electromagnetic bubble” that strong is to climb out from the “magnetic well” that exists at the pole (the place where all the magnetic fields converge and become weaker).  Since finding the magnetic well that leads to the pole was also, likely, the way they managed to get to the island in the first place, it makes sense that this should also be the route taken out.

In any case… this information seems to “debunk” elaborate time-travel theories or more esoteric conjectures regarding “time flowing differently” on the island.

[EDIT:  If the signal from Dan's phone is traveling 31 minutes into the future, but the rocket isn't actually seen until 31 minutes pass for Dan (that is, the rocket doesn't travel into the past relative to the folks who sent it), then technically the same principle should hold true for the signal from the boat to Dan's phone... it should have taken 31 minutes for Dan to get a response from Regina.  I can't think of any way to make sense of this problem except that the writers are making an exception here, perhaps because the call originated from the island.  But either way, it doesn't make sense to conclude that time moves slower on the island in general.  Dan's experiment doesn't prove that time moves slower on the island relative to the rest of the world.  It only proves that a signal leaving the island arrives in the real world 31 minutes into the future.  Another piece of information that debunks the notion that the island world and the outside world are years apart is the conversation Jack had with Frank about the World Series.  Jack asked if the Red Sox actually won the series and it was quite obvious he was talking about the most recent one to Jack's experience (in 2004).  Frank certainly responded as if that were the case.  And as if to make sure there was no doubt about the issue, Jack said he couldn't believe that it had been 100 days since he'd seen a game and Frank didn't correct him on that figure.  I think this conversation was meant to clue us in that 31 minutes is as far apart as island time ever is from off-island time.  Furthermore, the time difference seems to only matter in terms of communicating with the outside world (you're talking to 31 minutes in the future relative to you) and getting away from the island (the electromagnetic forces at work in causing the bend in time would make it such that only a very narrow heading would provide a path to escape).]

(I’m not sure why Frank wants Dan to hang up if George ends up on the phone.  It seems as though the team thinks that George has been given the impression that all is well with the team and there isn’t any reason for George to talk to them constantly… and Frank doesn’t want George to know that all is actually NOT well and the survivors of 815 are actually in control of the situation.  But I don’t recall any call to the boat that said, “Hey, all is well here… we’ll contact you as needed and talk to George when the package is collected.”  Just, suddenly, when Miles called in last episode, Regina acted completely uninterested in his call and George couldn’t be bothered to talk to him.)

Hurley’s ruse was EXTREMELY effective.  The thing is, since Hurley told Jack that he shouldn’t have gone with Locke, we’re all on the lookout for the falling out Hurley had with John.  And just when we think we’re seeing it (and it appears to be quick and a tad lame) BOOM… nope… Hurley’s pulling a fast one.  Very well executed.

Miles says, “Not yet,” to Hurley’s question about whether or not the freighter-folk are going to kill them, but it seems as though he’s telling the truth in an ironic manner so as to get Hurley to believe it ISN’T true.

Apparently Ben did more traveling away from the island than anyone realized.  I’d be tempted to think that Ben is actually sending doppelgangers out except that all of the passports are, you know… still in his house.

Kate sees Sawyer’s boots under the bed in the same way that young James saw his Dad’s boots before the man shot himself.

Finally someone brings up Kate’s fate if she goes home.  So… Sawyer, who not long ago was telling Kate she’d better hope she’s not pregnant, is now offering what amounts to a proposal?  Is this in response to Ben’s goading?

Sayid thinks Ben’s lying about having someone on the boat.  Sayid can usually be trusted about such things, but… how else could Ben have known all of what he did about the team?

Ben’s cover in the real world is as a vet… interesting.

In my opinion, this final scene is proof that everyone who thought Ben was still calling the shots on the island even when it looked like he wasn’t were absolutely right.  (If Sawyer's comment in the previous episode that Ben probably already knows how he's going to "get" everyone isn't foreshadowing, then I don't know what is.)  In fact, it kind of looks as though everything that happened was part of Ben’s plan to stop waiting for the island to be invaded and take the battle to the invaders.   Of course, it remains to be seen if that’s actually what happened, but it makes a great deal of sense.  Well, to me anyway.