Lost clues: "Eggtown" Ep. 4, Season 4

Episode summary:

On the island, Locke is at loose ends. He can't find Jacob's cabin or contact Jacob and is uncertain what to do next in terms of leading the survivors who are following him.

He goes to Ben, locked in a cell under the barracks, to learn more about the freighter crew, but Ben isn't revealing anything. He knows Locke is confused is seems to be planning how to best use this to his advantage.

Kate, meanwhile, is torn between Locke and Jack's groups. She wants to go home, but fears she'll end up in prison if she does. She goes to Miles, also a prisoner of Locke's, to find out if the freighter crew and, by extension, the rest of the world, knows she is a fugitive.

Miles says he'll tell Kate everything he knows about her, if she brings him to Ben. Kate manages to do this by enlisting Sawyer to distract Locke.

When Miles and Ben get face to face, Miles says "you know who I am, you know who I work for," and Ben says yes. Miles says he could help Ben by telling this mysterious person that Ben is dead but to do so, Ben must pay Miles $3.2 million.

Ben seems annoyed at Miles' crass maneuver and doesn't agree to anything. Kate is annoyed too, and yanks Miles out of Ben's cell, at which point Miles tells her that the outside world knows all about Kate's crimes and that, if he were her, he'd stay on the island.



In flash forward, we see Kate didn't follow that advice. She's in court, facing charges for murder, obstruction of justice and many more charges. But she's also a celebrity, one of the Oceanic 6. The jury is impressed when Jack testifies on her behalf. He tells a false story about the plane crashing into the sea and Kate helping to rescue him and other survivors.

Kate's mother also is moved by this, and the fact that she evidently has a grandson. She decides to to participate with the prosecution and the state, having lost their key witness, cops a deal. Kate stays free, but she must remain in California on probation for 10 years. Kate readily agrees with this.

After she's freed, Kate and Jack meet in the courthouse parking garage. He makes it clear that he wants to be with her, but when Kate invites him to her home, he defers. He doesn't want to see her son. Kate says she knows this is hard on Jack, but until he can make peace with it, they can't be together.

We then see Kate arriving home. She goes upstairs to see her son, who looks to be at least 2 or 3 years old. It's not really her son, although he calls her "mom." It's Claire's baby, now older, Aaron.

Back in island time: Jack forces Charlotte to call the freighter. Although the helicopter carrying Sayid, Desmond and Frank left the island hours ago, it hasn't turned up on the ship.What happened to it?

Also, Locke is angry about being fooled by Kate. He tells her she needs to leave the next morning, which she does, much to Sawyer's consternation. Locke also pays a visit to the capture Miles, sticking a live grenade in his mouth and telling him to keep his mouth shut.



Questions/clues/observations:

* What led to Kate's caring for Aaron? Is Claire dead? Why is Jack struggling with this? Does he know Claire is/was his half-sister? Is he somehow responsible for her death or absence?



* In court, Jack says only eight people made out of the plane. Two of them "died." This is the official cover story, anyhow. So the Oceanic 6 is: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid and who else? Presumably, we're not counting Aaron, as he wasn't born yet and not a passenger on the plane. So far as the rest of the world knows, Aaron is Kate's real son, born after the crash. Are we counting Michael and Walt? How about Desmond? He was on the chopper with Sayid.

* According to the cover story, who is Aaron's father?

* The book Locke brings Ben to read is "VALIS" by cult sci-fi author Philip K. Dick. I read this years ago, but don't remember a thing about it, only that it was a tad hard to get a grip on. Wikipedia says:

VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God.

VALIS is the first book in the VALIS trilogy of novels including The Divine Invasion (1981), and the unfinished The Owl in Daylight. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) is thematically related to the unfinished trilogy and was included in several omnibus editions of the trilogy as a stand-in for the unwritten final volume. Together with his thematically related final novel, VALIS represents Dick's last major work before he died. Radio Free Albemuth is considered an earlier version of VALIS, and is not included as a component of the VALIS trilogy.

* According to some fans, the book Sawyer is reading (I couldn't see the title, maybe other fans recognized the book's cover design) is "The Invention of Morel," a sci-fi novel that according to Wikipedia:

...shares some elements with the 1934 novel XYZ by Clemente Palma and with the better known The Island of Doctor Moreau, being the later the most influential of the two (see "Characters" below.) In the same way, other works of fiction share some elements with this novel rather than with the novels that influenced it. For example, fans of the video game Myst believe this novel is one of its sources of inspiration, while the plot of the episode "Dave" from the television program Lost mirrors one of fugitive's theories--that he is on a psychiatric hospital dreaming he is on an island.

* Hurley puts the 1980 Olivia Newton John movie "Xanadu" in the VCR. The theme song--an annoyingly catchy disco-ish effort by John and ELO--has lyrics that possibly could be used to comment on the island and/or Sayer and Kate's relationship:

A place where nobody dared to go
The love that we came to know
They call it Xanadu

And now
Open your eyes and see
What we have made is real
We are in Xanadu

A million lights are dancing
And there you are
A shooting star
An everlasting world
And you're here with me
Eternally


* Xanadu is also of course, as Wikipedia puts it "a metaphor for opulence," the inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's most famous poem and the name of Charles Foster Kane's estate in "Citizen Kane."

* Does the weird time anomaly account for the helicopter not turning up on the freighter yet?

* How does Ben have access to millions of dollars? And how does Miles know he does?

* Sawyer plays backgammon with Locke. In season one, Locke taught Walt how to play the game.

* What's up with Charlotte testing Daniel's memory with cards? Or is it really his memory that's being tested? Maybe she's trying to see if he can predict which cards she picked. Is she testing whether the island has affected/enhanced his mental abilities in some way?

* How long is Locke gonna leave that grenade in Miles' mouth?

Also see:

Lost Season 4 Episode Guide
The Best Lost Sites on the Web
Lost: What we STILL don't know

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