LOST - Jughead

Well George promised us an exciting episode and he was right. All the Desmond lovers out must have really enjoyed the fact that the off island activities centered solely around our favorite Scot. And Des and Pen had themselves a baby boy--named Charlie.

Awwww!

Although Penny's not thrilled, Desmond goes to Oxford to find Faraday's mother. Not only is he not able to locate Daniel's mum, but no-one at Oxford seems to know who Daniel is--or was. But Desmond finds the infamous laboratory where Daniel conducted his time travel experiments. A maintenance worker interrupts his search but confirms that Faraday was at Oxford but that it's not surprising Oxford officials won't acknowledge the fact "After what he done to that poor girl."

The "poor girl" in question was Theresa Spencer (I think!). According to her sister Abigail's explanation, "poor Theresa" seems to be suffering from hallucinations or dementia. Or perhaps she was a volunteer for one of Daniel's time travel experiments as her "visions" have her returning to when she was five and talking with her dead father.

Des finds out that Faraday's research was funded by none other than Charles Widmore. So he goes to Widmore's office to confront him and find out where Faraday's mother is. Widmore tells him that she's in Los Angeles (Aha! So I guess she probably IS Mrs. Hawking! But why doesn't Daniel have a British accent?), but after he delivers his message, he and Penny need to go back into hiding.

Back on the boat., Des tells Pen that Faraday's mother is dead--but Penny immediately knows he is lying. She knows he will never forget, so she agrees that the three of them will go to Los Angeles to find Daniel's mother.

On the island, Charlotte, Daniel, Miles and a couple more "redshirts" reach the creek--but Sawyer, Juliet and the rest of the survivors (Hopefully Bernard, Rose and Vincent survived the flaming arrows okay...) are not there. The redshirt almost immediately trip a landmine and get blown to smithereens and Mile, Charlotte and Daniel are surrounded by uniformed Brits pointing guns. The blonde one named Ellie asks "Who's in charge here?" and Miles points to Daniel.

Nice way to CYA, Miles!

Turning to Daniel Ellie says, "You just couldn't stay away, could you?"

At first I thought maybe their paths had crossed when Daniel time-travelled back to the DHARMA era, but it appears that Ellie and her group think that Daniel and company are part of the US Military.

The men captured by Sawyer, Juliet and Locke aren't very cooperative and it pisses Sawyer off. Sniping at Locke he asks, "Where the hell have you been?" Locke replies that the more accurate question should be "WHEN the hell have I been?" The two captives start speaking to each other in a foreign language. Juliet immediately recognizes it and begins speaking to them in it. She tells Sawyer they're speaking Latin and he wants to know how the hell they know Latin. "Same reason I do. Because they're Others."

Apparently Latin is "Others 101" according to Juliet. Hmm--wouldn't it have been funny if it were PIG Latin?

One of the captives tells them that the rest of their people are either captured or dead because when Sawyer yelled for everyone to head to the creek, they sent a party out in advance to waylay them. "Well maybe I should have said it in my secret language!" says Sawyer sarcastically.

Juliet speaks to the men in Latin to get them to reveal the location of the Others camp. One captive kills the other and breaks away and escapes. Sawyer angrily asks Locke why he didn't shoot him. "Because he's one of my people," Locke replies.

Meanwhile, the freighter trio is marched towards the Others camp. As they are walking, Miles tells Daniel that they just walked over a fresh grave containing four U.S. soliders dead less than a month. One died of radiation poisoning. The three are taken to the ageless Richard Alpert who tells them, "I assume you came back for your bomb."

Daniel offers to defuse the bomb, but Alpert is dubious of his motives. Daniel tells him he's not going to detonate the bomb "because I'm in love with the woman sitting next to me and I would never do anything to hurt her."

The Other who escaped from Locke and company arrives back at the camp. Alpert chastises him because he's led them to their location. The Other scoffs that their leader is a "sodding old man." "You think he can track me? You think he knows the island better than I do?"

Yes, grasshopper. John Locke, knife-thrower extraordinaire can track you. And he knows the island better than anyone--except maybe Alpert. In fact, Sawyer, Juliet and Locke are on their way to the Others camp. Locke asks Juliet how old Richard Alpert is. "Old." Juliet replies. Interesting...Juliet knows about Richard's agelessness.

Ellie takes Daniel at gunpoint to the bomb--a huge hydrogen bomb named "Jughead" hanging from a scaffold. It's leaking something--which causes Daniel to dismount the scaffolding and move away from it with Ellie. He tells her it needs to be patched with lead or concrete and then carefully taken down and buried. Ellie is dubious that this is an appropriate solution, but Daniel assures her it works because in fifty years the island is still there.

Sawyer and Juliet show up and disarm Ellie who asks Daniel if they are from the future too. "You told her?" says Sawyer incredulously.

Meanwhile, Locke approaches the Others camp yelling for Richard Alpert. With a rifle pointed at Locke's head, Richard appears. Locke tells him "Jacob sent me," and Richard orders the gunman to lower the rifle. When he argues with him, Richard tells him "I said put the gun down, Widmore!" Locke asks if he is Charles Widmore and when that fact is confirmed, he grins knowingly and says "Nice to meet ya."

So Widmore was on the island before. Well, we pretty much figure that out. He was also an Other--but did he ever become the Others leader? How/why did he get off the island?

I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Locke shows Alpert the compass and asks him how to get off the island, but before he gets an answer another flash occurs and the Others are gone, leaving just Locke, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Daniel and Charlotte--who starts having a massive nosebleed as the episode ends.

If that's not enough LOST for you, check out the recap on Lostpedia, the screencaps at Dark UFO and Liz Kelly and Jen Chaney's Dueling Analyses at washingtonpost.com.