Lost - "Jughead"

Oceanic who? Wednesday's Lost was the first one in forever not to focus on the misadventures of Jack and the team and instead shined a welcome light on some of the more interesting storylines set up this season.

On the island, the time is 1955 and Sawyer, Juliet, and Locke discover that the people they have taken captive are indeed Others (or Locke's people if you're a bald man with a desperate need for meaning in his life). One of their captives was someone we knew, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Meanwhile, the Freighties got themselves taken hostage where they met the Others' leader: Richard Alpert! Looking exactly the same age. Richard and Co. assume that the Freighties are from the US government, there to deal with their leftovers.

That leftover was the titular figure: an H-bomb named Jughead. Faraday managed to convince Alpert that he wanted to disarm the bomb...by confessing his love for the sickness-bound Charlotte. That scene didn't quite connect for me, maybe because Alpert seemed a little too willing to go along with this. But in the end, Faraday and an Other named Ellie went to check out Jughead, where they met up with the Juliet-and-Sawyer cavalry who had come to rescue the Freighties. At the camp, Locke met Richard and told him when he was born (thus setting up Alpert's visit to John Locke's birth) and also encountered an Other who goes by the name of CHARLES FUCKING WIDMORE! Yes, Widmore's history with the island seems to go back much further than we knew. But then there was another time jump, leaving the Charlotte collapsed with a major nosebleed, Locke no closer to getting off the island, and the Others with a still-armed H-bomb and Faraday's advice to cover it in concrete and bury it. After all, the bomb hadn't gone off as of 2008, so this shouldn't be a problem. Right?

Well, tonight's other storyline threw that into doubt. It was Desmond's stuff that worked a lot better from an emotional standpoint, starting with the reveal that Penny and Desmond had a child together. A child named Charlie, as we found out in the episode's most touching moment. However, Desmond has to risk all that to go back to that island he left so long ago: Great Britain. There he encountered Faraday's old lab (after being told there was no record of a Professor Faraday) and learned about a woman named Theresa Spencer. Theresa was Faraday's lover/test subject when something went very wrong and she was left in coma. So we now know that Faraday's time travel theories have been wrong before, with tragic results.

Equally shocking was the news that his research was underwritten by none Other than Charles Widmore. Desmond's decision to visit Widmore wasn't as ill-advised as it seemed; it turns out that all Charles cares about is that Desmond is keeping Penny safely off the radar. Much more ill-advised was Widmore's decision to tell Desmond what he wanted to know. Now the whole family is on the road (water?) to Los Angeles, the current whereabouts of a certain bug-eyed, revenge-hungry Other.

All in all, I'd say this was a good, but not great episode. The Desmond stuff was interesting and touching and I liked what happened on the island a lot. But the two elements didn't quite feel united, and the leaving the Jughead stuff literally dangling was unsatisfying (although I'm sure that it'll come back soon). It seems a little like Lost is still trying to find their way around this new structure and it lacked the visceral pop of "Because You Left" (which I think has been kind of underrated). However, given the number of shocking developments and nice twists contained in the episode, I won't let a little nit-picking get in the way of enjoying a great episode.

A-

Top 5 Lost Theories of the Week (In this space I'll partake in a little theorizing):

5. Okay, so I was watching Deus Ex Machina (the one where Locke and Boone go to the plane and Boone dies) and I was reminded of what Boone says in his dream: ""Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs" What if that Theresa, Boone's childhood nanny, is THE SAME THERESA!!! It doesn't really make sense to me, either. The best I can come up with is that she fell down the stairs because she happened to be climbing them when her consciousness got displaced from time.

4. So, if you watched the repeat of The Lie, you no doubt noticed what a waste of space those pop-up pieces of info are (for example, when Locke appeared for the first time, the pop-up said "this is John Locke." I am not kidding.) However, the very end did reveal something useful and previously unknown. It turns out that Mrs. Hawking's first name is Eloise. Is she the Ellie we met on the island tonight? And is she Faraday's mother and namesake of Eloise the Doomed Lab Rat (new band name!)? Its looking Michael's-on-the-freighter obvious, so let's hope they don't drag this out.

3. So can the future be changed? After all, we saw Desmond acting on what Faraday told him to do in the past. But, more than that, the weird ending to all the Jughead stuff seems to me to be setting up a switch. What if you can change the future? And what if Faraday just changed it in a very negative way?

2. Desmond and Penny named their child Charlie, which is sweet. But what if Charlie gets to the island, travels through time and grows up to be CHARLES WIDMORE?!?!? Yeah, I'm not buying it either, simply because it would be very very silly for Penny to be the mother of her father.

1. What became of Jughead? I imagine that will be a topic that returns later, but I found a very intriguing idea on the AV Club's comments thread. What if the Others take Faraday's advice, encase Jughead in concrete and bury it underground. And what if they buried it in the site that would come to be known as the Swan? Perhaps the bomb was interfering or somehow affecting the island's weird properties, thus causing what happened down at the Swan. I think this is a really solid theory.