Michael Emerson Doesn't Win the Golden Globes

Lost is usually ignored by the Golden Globes, so that Michael Emerson actually got nominated is pretty impressive. No surprise, though, that he lost to John Lithgow for his performance in Dexter. From what I've heard (I don't have Showtime), Lithgow's performance was extraordinary. But too bad for Emerson!

Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, Season Five

Of all the characters on Lost, Hurley is the one who most represents the audience. And not just any old audience, but an obsessed fan of genre media, such as Star Wars or Lost. It is Hurley who asks the questions that we're asking. And it's Hurley who is the soul of the show. If Hurley thinks that a particular action is wrong, he's usually right.

The season started with Hurley's rescue from the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute by Sayid. Unfortunately for both of them, Sayid's safe house was compromised, and Sayid shot with several tranquilizing darts. Sayid lived, but because he was unconscious, Hurley was essentially on his own. With some (misleading - at least to me!) advice from Ana Lucia, Hurley was able to pull his act together, ending up at his parents' home.

In the same episode, The Lie, we learned that Hurley was against lying about the Island. So angry was he that he threatened to never help Sayid again - a promise he did not fulfill. But it was clear that the lie weighed on Hurley, and that he honestly believed those left behind on the Island were harmed by their actions. Finally, he told his mother:

Okay. See, we did crash, but it was on this crazy island. And we waited for rescue, and there wasn't any rescue. And there was a smoke monster, and then there were other people on the island. We called them the Others, and they started attacking us. And we found some hatches, and there was a button you had to push every 108 minutes or... well, I was never really clear on that. But... the Others didn't have anything to do with the hatches. That was the DHARMA Initiative. The Others killed them, and now they're trying to kill us. And then we teamed up with the Others because some worse people were coming on a freighter. Desmond's girlfriend's father sent them to kill us. So we stole their helicopter and we flew it to their freighter, but it blew up. And we couldn't go back to the island because it disappeared, so then we crashed into the ocean, and we floated there for a while until a boat came and picked us up. And by then, there were six of us. That part was true. But the re... But the rest of the people... who were on the plane? They're still on that island.

Have you ever tried to explain why you love Lost to people who've never watched? I would argue that you would sound a lot like Hurley did trying to tell his mother what the show was about. You might find that there was a lot that happened that you could argue you were "never really clear on".

The end of the episode ended with Hurley rejecting Ben's offer to return to the Island and surrendering to the police. We didn't see him for a while. Unbeknownst to him, Ben had his attorney working to get Hurley released. Despite his numerous misgivings, Hurley was released from jail, all charges dropped. And it was then that I think one of the most momentous events in Hurley's life and possibly in the show itself occurred. Hurley met Jacob.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the fact that Jacob had a far longer conversation with Hurley than he did with any other Oceanic 815 survivor. Perhaps I'm reading too much into the fact that Jacob gave Hurley more than Sayid, Jack, Kate, and Sun were given - a choice to return to the Island. Sayid, as you recall, was in handcuffs, while Jack, Kate, and Sun all returned due to the manipulations of Ben. Hurley was given a choice.

Hurley was also given something else almost as important to Hurley. Hurley had viewed his visitations by the ghosts (for lack of a better term) as a curse, part of the same curse that had struck him after using the numbers to win the lottery. In his mind, it was the curse that caused Oceanic 815 to crash and his friends to die. But Jacob thought otherwise:

JACOB: Well, what if you weren't cursed? What if you were blessed?

HURLEY: How do you mean "blessed?"

JACOB: Well, you get to talk to people you've lost... seems like a pretty wonderful thing to me.

HURLEY: Oh, I'm sure it's wonderful, except for the part where I'm crazy.

JACOB: I've got some news for you, Hugo, and you're just gonna have to take my word on this. You are not crazy.

Clearly, Hurley listened, because back on the Island, he willingly shared with Miles that he spoke to dead people too, even going so far as to brag,"You're just jealous my powers are better than yours."

One of the best pairings of the season was Hurley and Miles. The hostile, angry Miles matched wits with someone whose intelligence he severely underestimated. Hurley worked hard to figure out how the "whatever happened, happened" theory applied to them, since they were in the past, a past that had already happened, but not to him. It was hard to wrap the mind around the fact that what Sayid, Hurley, Jack, Kate, Jin, Sawyer, Juliet, and Miles did already happened, but not to them. Because for them, the past (the 1970s) was their present. And Hurley finally stumped Miles: If Sayid shot the young Ben in the 1970s, why didn't Ben recognize Sayid nearly 30 years later? Sadly, we know the answer, which I found to be quite dissatisfying. But that is another topic.

Is Hurley The Little Prince?

When I wrote a study of who might be the Litte Prince, I declared that Hurley's chances of being so low to medium. This essay was written in the middle of the season, before Hurley's conversation with Jacob. I didn't even think of it, until I read a post on Ryan McGee's Lost blog on Zap2It on Jacob's heir unapparent. He argues that perhaps Hurley, in all his goodness of soul, generosity of spirit, and devotion to honesty, is the true heir to Jacob. It quite got me thinking.

The Actor

As you may know, I'm pretty sure that Jorge Garcia left a comment on my blog, correcting an error of mine - an error I found again today on another site. Garcia did indeed read the lines for Sawyer in auditioning for Lost, but he denied auditioning for the role of Sawyer. Now I know.

The actor has his own blog, which is an amusing slice of life about his life on Hawaii and as a celebrity. The actor also appeared at Comic Con this year, and did an excellent job of being Hurley, asking the questions we all want to ask. I'll quote from a blogger who was there:

[Garcia] asked Darlton if the commercials indicate that Jack's actions in the S5 finale worked and flight 815 didn't crash. Darlton's response? "Trust us." Jorge's comeback? "The last time you told me to trust you guys, you said that Nikki and Paolo were going to be awesome."

He makes an excellent point.

Season Six Starts February 2!

This is just to let you know - a date has been set!

Sayid Jarrah, Season Five

Ah, the futility of it all. When I think of Sayid during Season Five, that’s all I can think of. How futile it all was for him. A man of action, he took the opportunity to kill a future evil, to put it to rest, and to change his own life and those of so many others. Sadly, what he couldn’t know is that his act actually set into motion the very events that turned Ben into Ben.

I’ve been told that my post on Ben Linus was a very emotional one, and looking back, I realize that is so. This post, I believe, will be no less so, because the evolution of this character, one of my very favorites, has truly saddened me. Sayid is a good man, with a good heart, who made a decision that to me, was so horrific and wrong-minded, that I fear he can never achieve atonement. That his decision, his act, was futile makes it all that harder for me

Sayid had one episode this season. For many episodes, Sayid was either unconscious or hiding in the jungle. He was a minor character, even at the end, throughout the season, with the exception of one episode, He’s Our You.

As I posted following the episode, I found He’s Our You to be somewhat off. The episode seemed designed to show us that from the very beginning of his life, Sayid was nothing more than a heartless killer. I’ve never seen him that way. For one thing, I don’t know that we ever saw Sayid kill anyone until he broke the neck of an Other (Jason) with his feet in Through the Looking Glass. Until The Economist, Sayid only killed to protect his own life or those of others. After The Shape of Things to Come, we understood how Ben manipulated Sayid’s grief over Nadia’s death to use Sayid’s military skills to kill Ben’s enemies. Not a great moment for Sayid – hello, where’s your infamous intuition? But we saw in He’s Our You that Sayid seemed to relish his role with Ben, and was devastated when it ended so abruptly.

How could Ben’s words in the Dominican Republic turn Sayid into a killer of twelve-year-old boys? What made Sayid decide that Ben was so evil that he needed to be killed as a child? These are questions that I feel were not answered this season. They certainly weren’t answered in He’s Our You.

I won’t go into great detail about the events of He’s Our You, because I know that my thinking hasn’t altered that much since I posted on the episode. Sayid’s shooting of the twelve-year-old was foreshadowed in previous episodes, but his decision still shocked and appalled me. That his was the first step that turned Ben into Ben wasn’t known until later, and makes the act not just futile but also senseless.

I have read other commentators who believe that this is the end of Sayid – that nothing he can do will ever make up for that one act. Even if everything is erased by Juliet’s explosion of Jughead, the act remains engraved on Sayid’s heart one way or another. And that saddens me, because, up until The Economist, Sayid was one of the most redeemable of our characters.

Sayid spent the remainder of the season first, hiding in the jungle. He rescued Kate and Jack from an overly hostile Hostile, and learned that Kate saved Ben. He helped Jack figure out Jughead, and was shot trying to carry it out of the Barracks. He suffered a fatal wound, I suspect, but Jack did his best to save Sayid. Sayid remained in the van while Jack, Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, and Miles worked to set Jughead off (where was Hurley? Taking care of Sayid?). Obviously, we have no idea what happens after Jughead detonated.

The Actor

Naveen Andrews has had a long-term relationship with actress Barbara Hershey. However, during a “break”, he had an affair with actress Elena Eustache, and sired a son, Naveen Joshua Andrews. Andrews the actor reunited with Hershey, and shared joint custody with Eustache. However, on January 7, 2009, Andrews won sole custody after Eustache took the boy out of LA County in defiance of a court order and accused Hershey of practicing witchcraft and poisoning Naveen Jr. Eustache was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and a full hearing was scheduled for February. Sadly, I’ve seen nothing on the internet about that hearing, but I’ve seen pictures of Andrews with his son as late as September.

I didn't even bother with pictures today. Sorry.

Benjamin Linus, Season Five

I’ve been delaying this post, and I’m not sure why. I think that part of it is that in the writing, I know I will have to face a fact I’m not sure I’m willing to face: Ben killed Locke for his own purposes, not for what was best for the Island. Any doubt about that was removed when he looked at Sun and said, “Dead is dead.” He had no idea that John Locke could be resurrected, or, as the case turned out to be, the Man in Black was reincarnated into John Locke.

Like John, we saw Ben at his lowest point this season (both in the 1970s and in “current time”). Unlike John, we never saw Ben at the height of his powers. Indeed, we saw Ben take an often passive, reactive role this season, something we haven’t seen from him. No matter how bad the situation, Ben has always been able to turn it to his advantage. But not this season.

Let’s start with Ben in the 1970s…

The Transformation of Ben into an Other

When a young boy brought Sayid a meal, it was no surprise that it was Ben. Three years had passed since the events of The Man Behind the Curtain, and Ben had been waiting patiently as instructed by Richard. He was clearly excited to see Sayid, thinking that perhaps the time for patience was over. Not content to any longer wait patiently, Ben characteristically took matters into his own hands, arranging for a distraction so he could rescue Sayid.

Unfortunately, Ben’s eyes were blinded as to Sayid’s true purpose, as he learned later to his regret. And why shouldn’t he have been naïve? We saw the abuse that Ben suffered at his father’s hands – emotional and physical. And Ben was only twelve, with little experience of the world outside of the DHARMA Initiative. Sayid’s presence gave Ben hope that his time of misery and suffering were over.

But Sayid was not a Hostile, and knowing what a monster Ben would become in the future, after escaping the Initiative, Sayid turned his gun on Ben, shot the boy, and left him for dead.

Other than apologizing for taking his father’s keys, Ben was a passive participant in the remaining events in the 1970s. Juliet tried desperately to save Ben, to no avail, and the only surgeon around refuse to help. Juliet, knowing the character and abilities of the Others, made a decision with Kate – the boy had to be taken to the Others. Richard agreed to take the boy, but warned his would-be rescuers that the process would forever change Ben, who would lose his innocence and become one of the Others. Further, his memory of the events that transpired would be lost.

I’ve stated elsewhere my disappointment that Ben had no memory of the events that transpired in his getting shot. He mentioned it briefly in Dead is Dead, but otherwise we have no real idea as to how much his memory was impaired by the process of saving his life. When Sun showed him a picture of the 1977 recruits into the DHARMA Initiative, Ben was genuinely surprised to see Jack, Hurley, and Kate among them. Maybe he wouldn’t have remembered them anyway, since he seemed to have little contact with them as a boy (at least while conscious), but it appears he also had no memory of Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Sun, or Daniel. The fact that Ben lost his memory of the events resulting in his being shot meant that when he was caught in Danielle’s net, he didn’t recognize Sayid. When Ben called Sayid a stone cold killer, he didn’t know that it would result in his transformation 30-something years earlier from a boy to an Other. I still feel this was a missed opportunity.

Ben Gathers the Oceanic 6

Between the time that Ben turned the wheel and brought Sun and Jack to Eloise Hawking, Ben worked as he always did, through manipulation, behind the scenes. He manipulated Sayid into killing his enemies, most likely Widmore’s men. He manipulated Jack into gathering the remaining Oceanic 6 for the trip back to the Island. He coldly dropped Sayid as soon as he no longer needed him, then convinced Sayid to kill Hurley’s “guards” as a means to “protect” Hurley. He managed to convince Sun to follow him, hiding Jin’s wedding ring until they were at the church where Hawking was.

Ben’s powers of manipulation failed him only twice. Hurley refused to follow him back to the Island, even though he had once believed it was the thing to do. Only Jacob’s intervention brought Hurley back. And Ben couldn’t manipulate himself to kill Penny Widmore in retaliation.

Ben’s “shining” moment was his one interaction with John Locke, in Locke’s hotel room. I’m not convinced that Ben himself knew he was entering Locke’s room to kill him. If Ben had planned to kill John, no matter what, then he truly was a master actor, a manipulator of the highest skill.

But I wonder if Ben killed John Locke not because Locke had given Ben the final piece to the puzzle needed to return to the Island (Eloise Hawking’s name), or because he believed that Jacob communicated with John again. As we saw in Ben’s final scene of the episode, Ben has felt the pain of being ignored by Jacob while John Locke has been special. This reminder of Ben’s seemingly unimportance to Jacob, and John’s place on the Island, may have been the final straw. And John Locke’s life was ended in a brutal fashion.

I’ll miss you John. I really will.

Back Home on the Island

Ben showed up on Ajira 316 beaten and bloodied from his encounter with the Hume family. Like Frank and Sun, Ben did not flash into the 1970s. Instead, he stayed mostly to himself, but seemed pleased that Sun was following him. He seemingly talked her into going with him to the main Island, but his confidence in his skill and his mark was misplaced. Sun didn’t trust him, and as soon as she had the knowledge from him that she needed, she knocked him unconscious. And thus, thousands if not millions of Lost fans sighed, “Finally.”

But then Ben woke up to his worst nightmare. John Locke greeted Ben as he awakened, “Welcome to the land of the living.” Did Ben give up just a little at this point, knowing the Island favored John so greatly? Maybe not. Ben skillfully manipulated Caesar to mistrust John, with the ostensible reason of getting the shotgun away from Caesar.

In my opinion, Ben’s manipulation of Caesar was Ben’s last. For him, it was essentially downhill from there on out. At one point, Sun asked Ben what happened to the rest of the infamous statute. He told her it had been that way for as long as he had been on the Island. She looked at him and asked if he expected her to believe him. The master manipulator sighs, “Not really.”

We know, of course, that John Locke remained dead. Instead, Ben was accompanied by not-Locke who insisted on following Ben back to the Island. Ben alleged that he planned to be judged by the Island for breaking the rules – returning to the Island after turning the wheel – but not-Locke forced Ben to admit he sought judgment for Alex’s death. Now accompanied by Sun, Ben and not-Locke sought the Temple. Once there, Ben was surprised that not-Locke knew a different way inside it.

In the Temple, Ben’s life continued to turn upside down. For the Smoke Monster showed up, giving Ben a visual of Alex’s death, and then it turned into Alex. At first Alex pretended to listen to Ben, but then, she pinned him against a pillar:

Listen to me, you bastard! I know that you’re planning to kill John again, and I want you to know that if you so much as touch him, I will hunt you down and destroy you. You will listen to every word that John Locke says, and you will follow his every order. Do you understand?

When the Smoke Monster left, Ben looked devastated, not least by the fact that it left him alive.

From there on out, Ben was not-Locke’s lackey. Not-Locke was the lying , deadly manipulator, and Ben was the easy mark. Not-Locke slowly but surely let Ben in on his plan, that they must find Jacob, that Jacob must die, and that Ben must kill Jacob. And why wouldn’t Ben want to kill Jacob? After all, despite years of loyal service to the Island and to Jacob, following every order, Ben never saw Jacob. Instead, he contracted cancer, watched his daughter die, and was banished from the Island. Oh, how skillfully not-Locke found Ben’s every weakness.

At the final confrontation between not-Locke and Jacob, Ben was the actor, but not the focus. Although Ben observed that not-Locke and Jacob appeared to know each other, he didn’t explore it. For he finally was face to face with Jacob, the entity he had heard about for 3 decades, the entity who never met him, who never found him special. When Jacob reminded Ben that he had a choice, Ben exploded.

Oh... so now, after all this time, you've decided to stop ignoring me. Thirty-five years I lived on this island, and all I ever heard was your name over and over. Richard would bring me your instructions--all those slips of paper, all those lists--and I never questioned anything. I did as I was told. But when I dared to ask to see you myself, I was told, "You have to wait. You have to be patient." But when he asked to see you? He gets marched straight up here as if was Moses. So... why him? Hmm? What was it that was so wrong with me? What about me?!

Then Jacob responds, “What about you?” And then Ben stabs Jacob over and over.

In that final episode, we learned that John Locke was never resurrected, and that it was someone else who acted as John. From what Jacob said to not-Locke, we have assumed that not-Locke was actually the Man in Black, or Esau. What will happen to Ben when he realizes that he was the pawn in a game that may be centuries old?

The Actor

After the season ended, Michael Emerson made the media rounds doing interviews. I’m sure it had nothing to do with a plan to encourage Emmy voters to select him as Outstanding Supporting Actor, but either way, he did win! Yeah! A well-deserved win.

Emerson also appeared at Comic-Con this summer, and took an active part in the humor of the Lost panel, showing his “audition” for the role of Hurley, and making fun of Josh Holloway for not being able to read. It appears that everyone had a great time.

Editor's Note

I had fabulous pictures for this post, but I had problems with Blogger this time. I honestly don't know if the problem is with the pictures or some other problem. It was annoying.

John Locke, Season 5

My next three posts will focus on the characters that changed the most, in my opinion, in Season Five: John Locke, Benjamin Linus, and Sayid Jarrah. Of the three, John changed the most, simply because he went from being alive to being dead, which is quite a big change. It turns out that the man we thought was John Locke in half of the season was not, in fact, John Locke at all. In fact, John died, and remained dead. We know who was pretending to be John Locke, but we know little about him. All of us, myself included, forgot that there is a difference between reincarnation and resurrection. The clue was there, but we thought the producers were sloppy. It turns out, we were.

This season showed us John at his strongest and his weakest (ignoring the dead part for the moment). The season opened with John, the new leader of the Others, separated from them by the time flashes. Because of his location – the Beechcraft airplane in which Yemi died – John quickly ascertained that he was traveling through time. Unfortunately, Ethan didn’t get the memo about the new leader, and he shot John in the leg. John would have probably died had Not-Locke not sent Richard to bandage John up. I won’t go over that conversation right now, especially since we learned that it was actually Not-Locke who told Richard that John would have to die to get his friends back to the Island. That will be covered in my “Not-Locke” post.

John later finds Sawyer and Juliet, saving them from some murderous Others. John didn’t know he killed Others, though, until Juliet identified them as such after hearing “Jones” and his cohort speak Latin. When “Jones” takes off, John refuses to shoot him because, “he’s one of my people.”

For the remainder of the time that John is on the Island, he is clearly the leader. Unlike last season, though, he’s not a dictator, but seems to care about Sawyer, Charlotte, and the remaining Left Behinders. Perhaps buoyed by his conversation with Richard, he has a plan to save them and acts on it. And the rest follow, even Miles. Sawyer questions John a couple of times, but it is a respectful questioning (for Sawyer), and he helps John enact his plan.

Thanks to a time skip, the Orchid disappears, but the well, predicted by Charlotte, remains. John goes down the well on a rope, but the rope was cut in two by yet another time skip, and John plummeted to the bottom, severely injuring his leg. At this point, John changes from the confident and powerful leader to a disabled and disheartened man.

Off the Island, John can convince no one to return to the Island. Kate and Jack treat him with contempt and disbelief, Hurley thinks he’s a ghost, and Sayid outright refuses. John doesn’t even both asking Walt. John seems out of touch during his return, as we saw when Walt told John about his dream, a dream that John summarily dismisses.

At last, John gives up, and starts the process of committing suicide. And that is how Benjamin Linus finds him.

I’ll discuss Ben and this scene in a later post, but I know I’m not the only one who was tremendously surprised, first, at how kind he was to John, and then how cruelly he killed him. Ben told John that he was special, and that they would work together to bring the Jack, Kate, and the others back to the Island. Just what John wanted to hear. But John mentioned the name Eloise Hawking, and that was his death warrant.

The Meaning of John

I’ve made several assumptions through the years about John Locke. I’ve always assumed that he is special. He was healed of his paralysis on the Island. He met the smoke monster and survived. He knew and understood the hearts of his fellow Lostaways. I wanted to believe that he did have that destiny that he desperately sought.

John’s seeming resurrection only buttressed me believe in his destiny. How confident and strong he was, how truly connected to the Island he was. Except, it wasn’t him, it was Not-Locke. John was still in his casket, dead.

Richard even asked Jack about John, in the 1970s-era DHARMA days. Richard saw nothing special in John in the two times he had met him (up-to-then). Even though Richard was not impressed by John, he still tried to recruit him when he was in high school. But John rejected the offer.

So, was John a dupe, a sap? Was he truly just a loser with dreams bigger than his potential? Was he so desperate to be special that the Man-in-Black was able to manipulate John into being the vessel he needed to kill Jacob? But why would Jacob touch John if he weren't important?

Is John Gone?

Watching the final half of last season, I felt that John was truly coming into his own. He died, but he had to die to save the Island and his friends. Only in the last minutes of The Incident did we learn that John was still dead – he had not been resurrected but lay in his coffin. I was shocked, horrified, sad. And worried. Is John permanently dead? Will he never have a chance to have a destiny? Other bloggers, primarily Ryan McGee on Zap2It, believe that John is dead, and is never returning. I hope that he’s wrong. But I’m also afraid that Ryan might be right.

The Actor

As far as I can tell, Terry O’Quinn hasn’t done much this year other than Lost. He didn’t seem to do a media blitz as Michael Emerson and Evangeline Lilly did. No commercials, no guest roles. I did find a video of O’Quinn on The View, but it was from 2008. It seems that he has decided to not submit his name for Emmy consideration, because once you’ve won for a role, you shouldn’t try for another Emmy until you have a new role. I believe that he did attend the Kentucky Derby, which is where this picture is from. Maybe he's just enjoying Hawaiian life.

The Dreaded Quad, Season 5

This post has been a long time coming, partially because my initial efforts have meant that the post will be the longest post ever. This show has played with the relationships between and among these characters since Jack first opened his eye in the first episode. Kate has vacillated between Jack and Sawyer as she deals with her daddy issues. In Season 2, Ana Lucia Cortez was brought in to be the first to create a quad from a triangle, but she was so disliked by fans that her character was soon permanently retired by Michael. Our current quad started in Season 3 with the introduction of Juliet.

It is my firm belief that the quad is now dead. If nothing else, the final scene of Juliet trying to set off Jughead leads me to this conclusion. I think it also notable that Jacob never touched Juliet. And let's not forget that Elizabeth Mitchell has a starring role in V.

I must admit that the original triangle could be quite tiresome, perhaps because of Kate’s own inability to understand what she wants. I know someone who calls Kate a strong woman, but she is not when it comes to Sawyer and Jack. In the first four seasons she couldn't choose between the recalcitrant Sawyer or the noble Jack. Her feelings for Sawyer are the first to be consummated, but she clearly feels guilty later and devastated when she realizes that Jack knows of it. She later returns to Sawyer’s bed (sleeping bag? Tent?) after watching Jack and Juliet together. Sawyer is no fool, but he agrees to the arrangement – any Kate is better than no Kate. Kate’s choice appears to be made for her when Sawyer whispers his request of her and jumps out of the helicopter into the ocean.

She agrees to marry Jack when they are off the Island. But her need to protect Sawyer’s secrets and Jack’s substance abuse led to the destruction of that engagement. Even when she briefly reunited with him before the “trip to Guam”, she made it clear to Jack that just because they were in the same place doesn’t mean that they were together.

Although Sawyer slept with Ana Lucia, both he and Jack clearly are attracted to Kate. Yes, Jack appeared to have feelings for Juliet, but Juliet was aware that he prefered Kate. Sawyer’s feelings for Kate were clear this past season as he dealt with his belief that Kate was dead and that he would never see her again. The cruelties of time travel led to Sawyer staring hungrily at Kate as she helped Claire give birth. Somehow, three years later, he honestly believed that he was over Kate. Just as he made this realization, of course, Kate returns to the Island, and Sawyer’s face makes it clear that he was wrong.

I was never convinced that Jack and Juliet were a real couple. She was clearly attracted to him, and he to her, but they both knew that his heart wasn’t in it. Why did Juliet accept this? What attracted her to him, anyway, besides the obvious? His skill, his desire to escape the Island, his leadership skills? Was her attraction for him part of the emotional turmoil as she escaped from Ben’s clutches amongst a group of people who clearly didn’t trust her? Or was it because he seemed to be the opposite of Ben? I don’t know.

But, in watching Namaste and Whatever Happened, Happened, I am certain that whatever feelings existed between the two of them are now gone. When Jack knocked on Sawyer’s door to be let in by Juliet, he appeared pleased to see her, but nothing more. The “shock” he felt after realizing the state of affairs between Juliet and Sawyer seemed nothing more than the narcissistic injury of realizing that a former flame is with a rival. The confrontation in the shower further buttresses my belief. Juliet was horrified that Jack refused to operate on a 12-year-old, even if that 12-year-old was the future Ben, and his explanation didn’t assuage her. She lost respect for him, and he betrayed everything that she believed in. When she stormed out of there, I felt that this relationship, in that form, was dead.

I had heard that Juliet would become a romantic interest for Sawyer, but I rather forgot it as the season started. Sawyer and Juliet started out as equals, respecting each other and looking out for each other. She was able to calm him down without denigrating him, and he was able to talk her into helping Amy give birth. For the first time in this quad, we saw a couple that were friends and lovers, and it was clear that they were good for each other. How many of us women swooned as Sawyer picked a flower for Juliet and kissed her in the kitchen? How many of us felt our hearts ripped out as Sawyer grasped Juliet’s hand, refusing to let her go down the well to her death? And who doubts that he was devastated?

Kate was surprised by the relationship, and observed it warily upon her return to the Island. Although she and Juliet were wary around each other initially, as time passed they became allies in their shared determination to save Ben’s life. But Kate still flinched whenever Sawyer referred to his feelings for Juliet, especially when he told Kate he was helping her with Ben because Juliet wanted him to. Some commentators I’ve read have expressed their belief that this conversation was the end of the affair. I’m not so convinced. Here is the conversation:

KATE: Hey. Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?

SAWYER: When I found out Ben was gone, and Juliet told me what you were up to, I asked that exact damn question. Why are you helping Ben? And she said...no matter what he's gonna grow up to be, it's wrong to let a kid die. So...that's why I'm doing this. I'm doing it for her.

***

KATE: Is that why you asked me to take care of your daughter?

SAWYER: Did you?

KATE: Of course I did.

SAWYER: What's she like?

KATE: Clementine?

SAWYER: Yeah, Clementine.

KATE: Oh, she's beautiful. Looks just like you when she smiles. She's growing up fast. Already has a little attitude.

SAWYER: I bet you and Cassidy had a lot to talk about.

KATE: She had an interesting theory on why you jumped off the chopper.

SAWYER: Yeah, what's that?

KATE: She thought you were worried about what would happen if you didn't.

SAWYER: You and me would've never worked out, Kate. I wasn't any more fit to be your boyfriend than I am to be that little girl's father.

KATE: You seem to be doing all right with Juliet.

SAWYER: Yeah. I've done a lot of growing up the past three years.

Cassidy provided an interesting mirror to Kate, challenging Kate’s view of Sawyer as a selfless hero who sacrificed himself for her. Kate clearly can’t tell how she feels, as her attraction to Sawyer remains as strong as ever. Sawyer is apparently equally attracted, staring at Kate, and calling her “Freckles” at inopportune times. Indeed, his obvious attraction perhaps fractured his relationship with Juliet, leading her to do whatever she could to prevent their relationship from starting in the first place.

I was also struck by the fact that Jack and Kate did not continue their affair on the Island. Jack would have been justified for thinking that they were back together after their night together. But perhaps it was just mutual pity-party sex, because neither party made an effort to stay together on the Island.

So what is next? Well, I’m fairly certain that Juliet is out of the picture, at least initially. We have no idea what will happen with our Losties in the new season. Will they land at LAX in 2004, all strangers to each other? Will they end up in Locke’s time, ready to battle Esau? What memories will they have of the past five years? Will there be no memories but impressions and feelings? Of course, I don’t know. The producers can do just about whatever they want to at this point. Whatever it is, I know I’ll be watching.