Episode 3.5 “The Cost of Living”

Well better late than never. :) Last week’s eppy opens on a flashback with Eko as a boy breaking into someone’s shed to get food for his hungry brother, Yemi. He’s caught by a nun who forces him to confess the sin of stealing, though he feels no guilt for trying to help his brother. We now see Eko in the present is dreaming about this, in addition to some memories we’ve already seen of him using his brother as a priest to help him smuggle out drugs, Yemi getting shot and Eko getting off scot free in his priest disguise. Charlie and Hurley are trying to care for Eko in a tent, when they leave Eko’s called awake by a creepy Yemi holding a lighter, telling him it’s time to confess and that “you know where to find me”. Next thing we know the tent is on fire, which Eko is saved from, but then disappears.

Open scene to Jack doing pull-ups (all the ladies say thank you :) ). Ben enters in his typical annoyingly suave style to take Jack to the shot-lady’s funeral, only to be thrown off by Jack quizzing him about his neck and how he’s feeling. Jack explains that he saw Ben’s x-rays and he has a fatal tumor that needs operating, which Ben denies.

Back at the camp, John says he thinks he can find Sawyer, Jack and Kate because Desmond revealed the hatch computer wasn’t just used for pushing a button, but also for communicating among hatches. He puts 2-and-2 together after Charlie says Eko was murmuring “my brother” that he’s returning to the small plane crash site which just so happens to be over The Pearl hatch. He decides to “kill two birds with one stone” by going after Eko and investigating The Pearl’s assets and is accompanied on his hunt by Sayid, Desmond and two new losties.

We next flashback to after Yemi is shot and Eko returns to his brother’s church, pretending to be a replacement priest. He meets a lady who works at the clinic and her son, the alter boy. Moving to the present, Eko stumbles through the forest and suddenly hallucinates hostile, bloody men, who he moves to kill and suddenly sees the alter boy. Eerily reminding us of Walt, the boy holds his finger up to his mouth to shush Eko, then says something (does anyone know what he said??) before disappearing. Another flashback shows a group of possible drug lords making their every-6-month scheduled stop to blackmail the town for 80% of their Red Cross vaccines. They ask Eko about Yemi, when he claims to not be afraid and turns his back on them, the leader shoots an innocent woman to prove his point. As present Eko stops for water, we see a reflection of black smoke, quickly fading away right before John & Co. show up.

Juliet pays Jack another visit with a homemade cheeseburger, revealing an ease and sense of humor developing between the two of them. They are interrupted by Ben requesting a private convo w/ Jack, in which he reveals their plan to “break him”, get him to trust them using Juliet, who just happens to be a Sarah look-alike, wanting him to feel invested in their group and in the end, wanting to save Ben’s life. He says all of that went to waste as soon as Jack saw his x-rays and figured out Ben is dying. Before walking out Ben reveals that two days after his spinal tumor was discovered, a spinal surgeon “fell out of the sky”, which to him is proof of God.

We return to The Pearl, where John stays with Eko by the plane. John tells Eko he saw a bright light, expecting Eko saw the same, which wasn’t the case. (Anyone else catch a Heaven/Hell reference with that?) Eko enters the wreck only to find Yemi’s body is gone, which John naturally blames on forest animals. In more flashbacks it’s revealed that Eko tried to get in on the vaccine scam by contacting a black market buyer. The drug lords find out and confront him in the church, where he defends himself by brutally killing them all and stumbles out of the church covered in their blood. Down in The Pearl the new lostie-gal discovers from the orientation video their might be other projects going on besides Dharma, and Sayid searches for another TV signal. He finds one looking into a computer room, then suddenly we see a man with an eye-patch on the screen who turns off the camera.

Again we see Jack in his prison room, Juliet enters claiming to be giving him a movie to watch, To Kill a Mockingbird. Jack protests, she compromises by turning down the volume and proceeds to explain how sorry she is and that Ben is “a great man” who deserves to live. The movie starts playing and we see her appear onscreen with a poster saying “Ignore everything I’m saying”. Through the silent posters she reveals that Ben is a liar, a very dangerous man and some of them want a change. She basically tells Jack to go through the surgery, make it look like they tried to save Ben’s life, but to have an “accident”, no one would ever know.

Our last flashback shows Eko leaving the church and it immediately being boarded up. The clinic woman tells him it’s no longer sacred and he owes Yemi a church (now we know why he was building one on the beach). In the forest he sees Yemi again, who leads him away from the plane. Eko confesses that he wants no forgiveness as he has not sinned, that he only did what was necessary to survive. Creepy Yemi then says “you speak to me as if I were your brother” and disappears. Eko runs after him, only to be confronted by the big bad smoke that throws him around like a rag doll, eventually killing him, but not before he can whisper to John that “you’re next”.

It appears Eko was killed in some sense by his demons, that the island made him pay for his past. Jack has a pretty big decision to make…I think his first instinct is to trust Juliet, but how can he after knowing she was part of the plan to manipulate him? And who the hell was eye-patch man?!? Discuss away friends, discuss away…