Uncharted Island

So now is as good a time as any to apologize for using “Keamy” and “the captain” interchangeably. I didn’t realize that the guy Keamy shot was the captain. Oh, and the internet ate my first draft of this post up to the first commercial break, so I may have left some things out that I thought I said when I tried to retype it all… Rawr.

The return of the Oceanic 6 is a flash forward. Hmm. Aaron is an awfully good baby, sitting there quietly in the cargo hold of that rickety old plane.

I’m all teary-eyed. Watching them walk off the plane to their families… And no one there to greet Kate or Sayid.

So Keamy’s headed to the Orchid. I wish I’d paid more attention to that TLE orientation video for the Orchid. Daniel knows about Keamy’s secondary protocol, but Charlotte does not. And Daniel knows that they need to get off the island, or they will be torched along with everyone else. How can he torch the island from the Orchid? I have no idea, but I’m sure some of the diehard TLE people already know. But FINALLY some REAL tie-in with TLE!

Sawyer just called the barracks New Otherton. Yes!

“Hold up! You don’t get to die alone.”

Press conference. Membata, in the lesser Sunta islands. Day 108 brought them a life raft which allowed them to get to the island of Sumba. Kate’s baby, which she gave birth to on the island. Eight people left after floating on the cushions. Jin never made it off the plane. Aaron is a little over five weeks, which would’ve made her six months present at the time of the crash.

And Nadia was outside waiting for Sayid! I want the screen cap of them standing together by the police car.

Ben says that the Orchid is a greenhouse. And it’s possible to move the island from there. Moving the island is dangerous and unpredictable, a last resort.

Hurley’s happily noshing on 15 year old DHARMA Saltines. Ben’s communicating with some of the Others with a mirror.

Daniel is taking Sun, Jin, Aaron, and some Redshirts on the raft. I’m confused. I guess that’s the point. They can’t make it back to the freighter like that. But the raft can’t capsize or anything, because Sun and Aaron have to survive.

That’s an awful lot of stairs for a pregnant woman to climb at Paik Industries. Mr. Paik was berating his businessmen about a corporate takeover… and Sun was the one who bought controlling interest! Booyah! Take that, Daddy! That was awfully smart of her, using five banks to buy the shares.

Hurley’s driving his old clunker, with a bag of chicken from Mr. Cluck’s. There’s a coconut on the floor. And whispers in the mansion. It’s a surprise birthday party. Although why they thought an island theme would be appropriate, I’ll never know.

Sayid and Nadia look awfully happy together. “Interesting choice of theme.” Great minds think alike, Sayid.

Hurley’s dad fixed the car after Oceanic 815 crashed. 48151.6 on the odometer, with 234.2 on the trip odomoter. Doh.

Keamy’s team is already at the Orchid. Oh snap.

Oh this can’t be good. The raft DOES get to the freighter… which means that Jin and the Redshirts are probably going to die, along with whoever else comes back on the second raft.

Michael got the engine working. And found himself face to face with Sun and Jin. Yikes.

Frank dropped the phone so Jack could find him, but they cuffed him to the copter so he couldn’t run off the the jungle.

Jack’s finally delivering his father’s eulogy. It’s a bittersweet memorial service for his mom; her husband is still dead, but her son is not. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I believe I’m the reason he was in Australia when he died.” OH MY GOD! Claire’s mom woke up out of her coma! And this is how Jack found out the truth about Claire being his half-sister. Talk about getting blindsided.

And we got a quick summary of how Michael got back to New York with Walt.

…And that’s a whole lot of C4.

Richard Alpert and his merry band of Others seem to have Kate and Sayid surrounded.

“How many times do I have to tell you, John? I always have a plan.” Plans don’t work so well when you get knocked unconscious… although I suppose Ben has a plan for that, too.

That is an evil, evil place to leave the end of the episode.

Jack’s not looking so hot. Hey doc, you got a bit of sweat… all over there.

Those were some pretty little red panties. And… a Millennium Falcon? “Yankees bludgeon Red Sox in Series Sweep.” My baseball history is a bit off, but I’m sure someone else already knows the exact date by now.

Is that… Juliet’s voice from the shower? They always try to do that “husky voice” thing to mask an identity until we see the person’s face. Whoa wait… Kate? And they’re… smooching?

Oh my. This is not a happy day for Skaters.

Jack’s reading to Aaron. Aww! Nice moon and stars mobile above that big boy toddler bed. (My son is almost three and still in his crib.) I’ll need a closer look at the screencaps later because I was typing; did Aaron look

Jack’s referring to his dad in the past tense. He was a good storyteller. So hopefully that will put those “Christian is still alive” theories to rest that cropped up when Jack went all crazy back in the first flash-forward where he went off on the Chief of Surgery about seeing if his father was drunker than he was.

What did Jack change his mind about? Kate is so glad he changed his mind. She’s so glad he’s here. And… a nice little panty shot for the hot-blooded males out there.

Miles heard some ghosts. Danielle and Karl’s ghosts. He found their bodies. Dammit. Danielle really is dead. No flashback. Poor Claire… she looked like she was going to be sick.
I give her credit for not throwing up all over the place. A few months on this weird island still wouldn’t prepare me for the sight of an unexpected shallow grave containing the decomposing bodies of people I’d talked to a few days ago.

Juliet has a great solution for not being able to trust Dan and Charlotte. Give Jin a gun and tell him to shoot them in the leg if they try to run. Because he will.

Sawyer’s funny, warning Miles off of Claire. Restraining order! LOL! “What are you, her big brother?” He was all protective about Hurley last week, and now it’s Claire.

It would really suck needing to have surgery on the beach. And Jack wants to be conscious to watch the surgery and talk Juliet through it? And he wants Kate to be there with them, holding the mirror. Yikes.

Whoa. Jack just saw his dad walking through the lobby. And Dr. Stillman from Santa Rosa called him about Hurley’s refusal to take his meds. Oh dear.

Hurley’s convinced they’re all dead and never got off the island. The voice of some fans with a theory! Ah, that’s what he changed his mind about… Kate. Or not Kate, but Aaron. Because that’s why he didn’t want to go see Kate for more than just coffee. After the trial. So this flash forward takes place sometime between “Eggtown” but before “Through the Looking Glass.”

Hurley was happy until he saw Charlie. And apparently Charlie keeps visiting him and sitting with him on the bench. Charlie knew that Jack would be stopping by, and gave him a message. “You’re not supposed to raise him, Jack.” Oh dear. “You think he means Aaron?” I hope he doesn’t mean it as a warning against necromancy and his father… who will apparently be paying him a visit soon. Because Charlie said he would.

Dan wants to go in first, to “make sure it’s safe.” Was that code? Or was he all nervous like that because, like Sun and Jin said, he likes her?

Frank Lapidus! “Keamy’s coming back, and if he sees you, he’s going to kill ya.”

The birds were very helpful, deciding to start chirping just when Aaron started to fuss. The Island at work! And Frank really does have the best interest of the castaways at heart.

“So it looks like I’m going to be your nurse.” “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

That was a weird angle for that shot into Jack’s car window. Waiting for Charlie? And he’s worried about if he’s “good at this,” being a dad. And… he just proposed. He’s got a ring. It’s pretty! I’m guessing that’s platinum, not white gold, since the Oceanic 6 are loaded. And Kate said yes.

Will we find out what goes wrong before the end of this episode? I mean, something has to go wrong for Jack to hit the bottle and call Kate to meet him in a secluded place instead of just talking to her at home.

I knew she understood them. I knew she did. She’s an anthropologist. I didn’t need to see her smile when Sun and Jin were talking about her to know.

That was a tense surgery scene.

What’s that beeping? “St. Sebastian Neurosurgery Group.” It’s the smoke detector. I hate when that happens. It’s always in the middle of the night!

And… Christian’s kicking back on a black leather couch in the lobby. Who is that woman, Erica? Thanks to my husband! Jericho. She was Hawkins’ wife. And she just wrote him a scrip for clonazepam. That Klonopin is good stuff for anxiety, and sleep.

Kate was on the phone with Maureen, one of the moms from the park. Huh. This from the woman who said she doesn’t do taco night.

Hey, uh, Jack… chasing two of those pills with a beer can really mess you up. I guess this is the beginning of the end for his happiness.

WHOA! Was NOT expecting Claire to wake up and see Christian holding Aaron! “Dad?” Yeah, now Claire sees dead people. She just doesn’t know he’s dead… just that he’s not supposed to be there.

Bernard’s pretty handy to have in a makeshift operating room, even if he’d only ever performed dental surgery.

Uncomfortable girl talk. Juliet’s telling Kate about how Jack kissed her… and that she doesn’t think he meant it for her, but to prove that he doesn’t love Kate. Sigh.

And Jack was awake to hear it.

Jack is trashed on the couch. He’s paranoid and suspcious about why Kate stayed out late. “I’m going to ask you to trust me.” Sorry, Kate, but what kind of an answer is that? What are you hiding?

“I was doing something for him. For Sawyer.”

Sawyer chose to stay. Sawyer chose to stay on the island, and Jack chose to come back with Kate to save her. Sawyer doesn’t die. (Phew!) At least not before the Oceanic 6 leave.

“Your son? You’re not even related to him!” Does Jack know, then, that Christian was Claire’s father, too? Oh… Aaron heard him. And was clutching a stuffed Shamu toy.

Miles told Sawyer that Claire walked off with someone she called Dad.

That is just a weird picture… dirty, scruffy Sawyer with a gun on his back, in the middle of the jungle, holding Aaron in a blanket.

The preview for next week… Was that Ben’s dad talking to Locke? Or someone else who was gassed in the Purge?

Pardon the all caps title. But the post-episode promo clearly showed that Aaron is counted among the Oceanic Six. Period. End of story. I was right. Nanny nanny boo boo. Can we stop that silly little debate now?

There will be no squee-ing in this post.

It was slowly revealed throughout “Eggland” that Kate had a son. That was the “he” she was referring to when talking to Jack in the first flash forward we saw in “Through the Looking Glass.”

At first, I thought that Kate was just bluffing Sawyer about not being pregnant. I thought it was some kind of a test, where she wanted to see how he really felt about a baby before she told him about it. I mean, we already knew she had a son. It would make sense; she would have to get on the helicopter to leave the island if she was pregnant. So she wouldn’t die.

But it wasn’t a bluff.

When she left the court room, a satisfying scene that explained how she was free to meet Jack in a creepy lot behind the airport instead of locked up in the state prison.

I kept waiting for her to pull up in her little house in suburbia, and run into the welcoming arms of Sawyer, who would congratulate her on her freedom.

Even when we saw the nanny instead of Sawyer, I still held out hope. I sat through the last three minutes with my fingers crossed, waiting for a flash of that Sawyer smile. They’re meant to be together! The “baby” was a little blond boy. A little Sawyer baby, I thought. And he’d pop his head into the nursery at any time…

And then she called him Aaron.

Five out of six now. I think that rules out any hope of Sawyer getting off the island. KATE, HOW COULD YOU LEAVE HIM?

One big baby

Take a look at this screencap from Lost-Media. My first thought was, “Oh my God. Does Kate’s son have Down’s Syndrome?” Maybe it’s just some bad angles and weird facial expressions, but the kid looks like he’s working with some developmental issues. I have a cousin who is severely autistic, and I spent a lot of time volunteering to work with mentally retarded people at the ARC when I was a teenager. I know that there are facial indicators when there is a serious developmental problem. Am I the only one who thought this?

And if it’s true, would Aaron have been born that way if Claire had never crashed on the island? Maybe it was some unfortunate DNA. Or was it a factor of the island’s strangeness? Did all of that funky electromagnetism mess him up? Or was it Ethan’s DHARMA vaccines that he was injecting into Claire? Poor kid.

Developmental issues aside, that is one gigantic “baby.” I don’t think that anyone should be calling him a baby. Sure, he’s in a toddler bed. But I would never think he was young enough to be a baby. A kid, definitely. A toddler, might be pushing it. But he’s supposed to be two years old? No way.

Where do I get two years old? From the credits. The young blond actor is credited as “two year old boy,” most likely so as not to spoil the reveal for anyone looking at the casting credits ahead of time. I have a two year old. Two and a half, to be more specific. And he’s got nothing on this giganta-baby.

Compare the two pictures, of two year old Aaron, and my two year old son. Aaron’s head, arms, and ears look enormous in comparison! And you can see a bit of “baby face” still left in my son, but not in Aaron. That’s a big kid’s face.

Other implications of Aaron

Why is Aaron counted as one of the Oceanic Six? He wasn’t on the passenger manifest. The implication of Kate having a two-year-old son is that she had him on the island. And she wasn’t pregnant on the flight, or at least not pregnant enough to be showing - maybe second or third trimester. That leaves at least seven months of gestation, plus the two months old he’s supposed to be (island time) when Naomi and crew arrived.

This is more support for island time running differently than the rest of the world. If it ran the same, Kate would have to be pregnant, and showing, at the time of her escape from the island. But she obviously has a very alive Aaron with her, since he is one of the Oceanic Six, and no one questions the fact that she’s had a baby in her time on the island.

My guess is that the “official” story is that the baby is hers and Jack’s. It would explain the prosecutor’s question to Jack about whether or not he loves Kate, as well as his answer, “Not anymore.”

Another reason this upsets me so much is that Kate is acting as Aaron’s mother. “My son.” Kate’s mom thinks that Aaron is her grandson. Claire doesn’t make it off the island. If Claire did make it off the island, and died afterwards, Kate would not be able to pass Aaron off as her own child. So Claire doesn’t make it. And what mother would allow herself to be separated from her baby? Claire is going to die. She would never give Aaron to Kate and just say, “See you on the freighter!”

Unfortunately, I forsee a scene where Claire tearfully makes Kate promise to look after Aaron as if he were her own son… and then promptly dies. That would also explain why Jack doesn’t want to see Aaron; maybe it was a decision he made that ends up getting Claire killed.

I wanted Claire to be one of the Oceanic Six, and Aaron to be with her but not counted, since he wasn’t technically on the manifest.

This is not cool.