Thursday, October 19, 2006

Episode 3.3 "Further Instructions"


YAHOO!! Locke is back! Oh, how I missed T O'Q. Missed. Him. But, um, kay, I’m Lost (pun intended). What the sam hell is going on? Locke is launched out of the hatch when it implodes (you should have pressed the GD button) and wakes up without a voice. He stumbles back to camp and begins building a sweat lodge. I am telling you, Charlie is not the only one confused here! I expected chanting and whispers of the dead and by gollie- I got it! Once inside the lodge (and after eating some mashed up yuckiness) Boone appears. YES! Dead Boone! Boone whisks him away in a wheel chair and shows him shadows of his many island friends. Locke has gotta find out who to save and how to clean up the mess he’s made. I loved the return of Boone! I loved the trippy dream at the airport, but what does it all mean?

Locke emerges from the sweat lodge on a mission to find Mr. Eko. He has to make things right, and right would mean saving the man who was right all along. Charlie decides to tag along. In and out, we flash back to Locke’s life before the ill-fated crash. We see him driving an old pick up truck and pulling over for a hitchhiker. The young hitch is looking to escape from an abusive father, so Locke takes him back to what I can only describe as a cult compound. There we meet John’s “family.”



Setting off to save Eko, Locke is positive that the polar bear has him. Why? How does he know this? Because of his meeting with Boone? Wandering through the jungle, Charlie and Locke stumble upon Hurley, who is returning from the Other’s camp with the message to stay away. John instructs Hurley to go back to camp and give everyone the message. On the way, Hurley runs into Desmond, whose clothes have been blown off by the hatch implosion. Hilarious! HA! Desmond is able to coax Hurley out of a tie-dye shirt and the two hightail it back to the beach. But not before Desmond can reveal a small clue. When Hurley asks about saving Jack, Sawyer and Kate, Desmond is sure Locke will be off to save them next- he’ll even mention it in a speech. HUH? WHAT?

Back to Locke’s past- So, it looks like the compound houses a bunch of fruit-picking, free-loving hippies and it does (complete with a greenhouse dedicated to a certain illegal bud). Locke’s little hitchhiker wants in on the pot production, but the compound “parents” discover that the hitch is actually a cop. Crapper! Locke has endangered the whole operation. To correct the problem, he lures the hitch-snitch out to the woods and plans to shoot him, but Locke can’t pull the trigger.

Charlie and Locke pass by a dark cave on the hunt for the preacher, and Locke is certain that Eko is inside. He rigs up a torch and heads in. Sure enough, Locke finds the bones of several
other sacrificial islanders, and there is Eko! Just has he is about to be snacked on, Locke burns the bear and gets away with a wounded Eko. Back at camp, we find two newcomers (Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro) who are oddly interested in Locke’s return and the realization that Jack, Sawyer and Kate are missing- not to mention Sayid, Jin and Sun. And then- THEN- Locke gives a little SPEECH about going after the love trifecta. This freaks Hurley out and calls into question Desmond’s position on the island. Is he an Other? Perhaps he defected?

This episode threw me for a loop! Where are they taking us? What is going on? How will the newcomers play into the plan to rescue Jack, Sawyer and Kate (who I have decided to call JSK)? In regards to Locke’s past- perhaps the compound is raided- perhaps there is gun fire and Locke is hit, hence the wheel chair? I can’t wait to see what happens next, I just hope it doesn’t give me a headache!

8 comments:

SRM said...

Wassup GS/Kiki! Good to see ya, great recap. If there's one word I'd use to describe this episode, it's definitely "trippy". Seeing Boone was pretty creepy but I loved it, and the dream sequence was so scattered and surreal, very well done. I was hoping John's flashbacks would finally tell us why he was paralyzed, alas, not yet. I was a bit confused about the purpose of his flashbacks...they seemed a bit anticlimatic since he didn't shoot the cop (but really, how could you shoot someone so cute?) :) Desmond being a bit psychic is very trippy, did the hatch implode give him some kind of psychic powers? Even stranger was that it looked like he wasn't even listening when John gave his speech, so when/where did he hear it? Very nice to see Charlie and Hurley again and a little bit of Claire. Next week's eppy also looks crazy, like they're going to torture Sawyer until Kate says she's in love with him, some other kind of psychological game. I don't know, this season's already creating a bundle of new questions in addition to the ones we had before...I'm hoping eventually we'll get some answers. The end of season 2 was satisfying for me finally knowing what caused the plane crash and that the hatch danger was real. But how the heck did the hatch folks survive when there's nothing left of the hatch but a huge crator?? You think we'll ever find out?

blah said...

Did anyone notice that boone's eyes where brighter than usual blue? And what was up with seeing "henry" in the airport? And another thing, was locke talking to the real Eko or himself when eko was talking to him.

SRM said...

yeah, I think anyone who went through the ending of Alias is probably now worried about Lost. There are so many mysteries and plots going on that it almost seems impossible for them to reveal answers to all of them. I'm really hoping we won't be left hanging after all of this. I'm enjoying this season so far but I always have that nagging fear in the back of my mind that getting myself wrapped up in the Lost mysteries is just going to end w/ the letdown I felt after Alias. But, fear not, I'm not here to bring everyone down, I am hopeful. :) Like I said before, the end of season 2 had some great satisfaction for me, I'm hoping right now we're just building up the questions to be answered on later in the season.

amy said...

locke waking up from the dream not able to speak is strangely parallel to the biblical story of elizabeth (cousin of mary) and her husband zechariah when he is told by an angel that his barren wife will have a baby (john the baptist) he emerges from the temple and is struck mute because he doubts the angels prophecy(kinda like locke struck mute because he doubted the island) and as soon as john the baptist was born zechariah had his speech back. as soon as locke went into the sweat tent and saw boone he had his speech back - lost has had a lot of other biblical parallels so i thought that was interesting.....

SRM said...

wow that's pretty cool amy, thanks for sharing that parallel!

Anonymous said...

A freaky ep indeed. I'm waiting for someone to interpret that whole sequence at the airport coz that looked like it was trying to tell us/locke something with all the different groups of people.

I'm finding it a little hard to accept the 2 newcomers as just other survivors, especially if they get into the thick of things, because there seems to be no real reason as to why they couldn't have been involved in the past 60 days on the island or however long it's been. Maybe, somehow, I hope they're part of The Others, but then they would have been found out by now wouldn't they?..

With the 'Lost' letdown thoughts, I agree, but it was JJ abandoning 'Alias' that screwed it in the end, so let's just hope he doesn't move on to many other projects while 'Lost' is still going, because let's face it, it is still HUGE, and with the interest/excitement it's created, he would really be asking for trouble if he screwed it up.

Anonymous said...

youre right, coup. Lost is still huge, even if ratings have gone down from last year, and millions of people are asking for the same thing: answers. Everyone working on Lost has to know that the fans wanna know whats going on, so they're bound to through a few answers at us soon. they'd be insane not to.

Anonymous said...

Locke knew that Eko had been dragged away by a polarbear simply because a polarbear scared him out of the tent. If you look closely, you will see that it really is a bear and that is why Locke is scared/shocked when he's thrown out.

However, this episode was really, really good and I also think that we should focus a little bit more on the airport scene with Boone. We might be given some clues if we look closely.