Let me apologise for the length in advance. It’s a long read :)
Episode 49 (Season 2, Episode 24)
Live together, die alone Part ii
Ok, it’s official. I have now jumped on the “I hate Michael” bandwagon. Somebody shoot that guy! Oh, and ohmyGod, my friend’s been telling me for weeks now that he thinks that Henry Gale is the man in charge! He’ll be trilled to know he’s right.
What I really want to know is that if the Others are the good guys (like Fake Henry claims they are) then who the hell are the bad guys? Where are these people? Are they even on an island? Personally, I think that the finale was worth it, but there’s now one drawback…..we have to wait who knows how long for season 3… I’m guessing 6 months at the very least.
Des’s flashback picks up exactly where it left off last week. Des on the island. Des brings down the metal doors, but blocks it from shutting down completely with a metal cart. Calvin uses some mixture to work on the map. Desmond wants to go outside, saying it’s been two years, but Calvin refuses.
Some time later (who knows how much later), Des awakes with the sound of the alarm going off. He finds a very drunk Calvin under the floor of the hatch, with a key and fail-safe lock marked "Caution: System Termination".
Calvin explains that the electromagnetic source is “geographically unique” and that the “incident” was a “leak”. “So now the charge builds up, and every time we push the button it discharges it before it gets too big” says Calvin. He questions whether Desmond will have the courage to “take his finger out of the dam and blow the whole thing up”
So, one day Des follows Calvin out the hatch, and sees Calvin remove the Hazard suit as soon as he’s out the hatch. He follows Calvin to a cove, where Des’s boat is moored. Calvin tells him that he’s been fixing it. Des and Calvin get into a fight and Des accidentally kills Calvin.
He races back to the hatch. But the alarms now going off. The hieroglyphs have locked in on the timer. The words “System Failure” are appearing over and over on the monitor. He tries again and again to get the numbers in, and hits the execute button on the computer after somehow getting the numbers in. And after a long moment, things start settling down, and the timer resets to 108 minutes. A very sweaty Desmond looks very relieved.
We see Des opening his Dickens book, only to have a letter from his beloved Penny drop out. She tells him that she loves him unconditionally and she will wait for him. Desmond starts crying, he’s so despondent and he starts destroying things… when he suddenly hears someone pounding and screaming.
He runs down to the bottom of the shaft, and sees movement through the tiny window up top, and we hear Locke yelling, "I've done everything you wanted me to do? Why did you do this? Why?" So it's the night Boone died. And Desmond turns the light on, while we get to watch Locke's reaction to it again.
So that’s Des’s flashback. Interesting, ain’t it. Answered many questions about the hatch, but also presented us with a few new questions too. Why couldn’t there be some kind of computer program that runs every 108 minutes, why was a person needed to push the button?
So, back in present time, Charlie leads Eko into the jungle to locate some of the remaining dynamite from the season 1 finale. Charlie and Eko enter the hatch, with Charlie reminding Eko to be careful. Charlie tries to get Eko to reconsider, but Eko is unyielding. Charlie warns Locke that Eko is going to attempt to blow the blast door open. Desmond is sure the door will hold, saying "It would take an atom bomb, brother. Tell him not to bother."
Charlie continues to plead with both Locke and Eko, but both are stubborn and refuse to listen to any reason. Finally, Eko stands up, shoves Charlie against the wall, pulls out his belt and flings it against the wall, where it sticks. “Is this a joke” he yells.
Charlie makes his way out of the hatch, but Eko ignites the dynamite. Eko braces himself against a wall, but Charlie is caught and attempts to outrun the flames. Meanwhile, Des starts questioning the sanity of Locke’s plan. He asks Locke what if his friends were hurt, dead. Locke replies that they aren’t his friends. Ooh, I’ve just joined the “I hate Locke” club too. That's just cold! Cold..
Desmond asks if the reason Locke is letting the timer run down is because he needs to look down the barrel of a gun to find out what he really believes. Locke says he already looked down the barrel of a gun, and he believed, and he thought it was his destiny to get in here, and Boone died blah blah blah and the light came on, and he thought it was a sign, but it was probably just Desmond going to the bathroom.
Des questions Locke about the Pearl hatch. He says what if Locke got it all wrong etc etc. Locke is an unmovable as 4-toes (the huge statue) and refuses to believe he could be wrong. Finally, he points out the printout he brought back from Pearl station. Des frantically studies it, and asks Locke the date that the plane crashed.
Des studies the printout and sure enough, finds the date the plane crashed with the words “System Failure” repeated over and over again. “I think I crashed your plane” he tells a stunned Locke. Finally, an unconscious Charlie slowly wakes up among the rubble and the sparking wires. The sound is muffled with a little bit of ringing; I guess we're hearing through Charlie's ears.
Shew!!! Charlie’s alive!!! He finds Eko still out cold, and tries waking him up. Inside the hatch, Des says that they need to push the button. Des is clearly frantic now and tells Locke that if he won’t push the button, then he will. Locke responds by grabbing the monitor and smashing it on the floor. Way to go Locke.
Des is horrified! He opens the blast doors and finds his Charles Dickens’s book, in which he’s kept the fail-safe key. He runs to the room, and opens the door and fills Locke in about the night he heard him pounding on the hatch. The timer now reaches zero and the red hieroglyphics appear. “I’ll see you in another life, brother” he tells him as he disappears down the hatch.
Charlie manages to get Eko on his feet, but Eko brushes him aside as he goes into the control room, leaving Charlie to try to escape on his own. A despondent Locke acknowledges his mistake to Eko, stating simply, "I was wrong".
“I was wrong”!!!! “I was wrong”!!!!!!!
Des inserts the key into the Failsafe. After pausing to think of Penny and her letter he speaks under his breath, "I love you, Penny". He turns the key and the screen fades to white. Sometime later, Charlie returns to camp, still partially deaf. Bernard asks where Locke and Eko are. Charlie seems surprised that they're not back yet.
Claire seems to be happy that he’s back though, and later that night she kisses him. Humph. I guess he’s now back in her good books. So much has happened. I wonder if Locke, Eko and Des are alright. What’s left of the hatch?? Locke, truthfully speaking, can be buried under a ton of rubble and I couldn’t care less. This is what happens when you think that your opinion is far superior to anyone else’s, and you refuse to listen to reason!
I like Eko, but his dismissiveness towards Charlie was really starting to piss me off… and that’s not because I like Charlie either. “You can go now, Charlie”, “I have something else to do now, Charlie”. Tsk tsk. Des has grown me, I hope he’s alright. I would really like to see him become a regular on the show.
So, while all that was happening, Sayid makes his way to the deserted hillbilly camp, to find it deserted. Sayid sees the rectangle-hatch doors, and slowly approaches. He throws open the door and points his rifle in -- but there's nothing there, just the rock face that this hatch entrance facade has been built into. This is not quite what Sayid expected, clearly, and he looks around all concerned.
Meanwhile, Michael the Moron and the fab four are walking through the jungle. They discover a huge mound of plastic containers in the jungle – containing the detailed reports from Pearl Station. Sawyer find’s Locke’s map and hands it to Jack.
Jack sees black smoke of Sayid's signal, but miles away. He realizes that Michael has been leading them in the wrong direction. He confronts Michael about it and he admits that he was told to bring them here instead. I can’t believe that they did not consider this possibility. This was probably the
most flawed plan ever.
They start to hear whispers from all around, and the name "Elizabeth” is uttered quite audibly, and suddenly Sawyer is shot in the neck with a dart and hits the ground in a convulsive state. Hurley freezes, Michael stares around and Kate and Jack run for it. Kate is shot in the arm and then Jack. The Others appear and take the party captive with their mouths gagged and their heads covered with hoods.
The Others are leading Kate, Jack, Hurley and Sawyer down a long pier. Interestingly, Michael is neither bound nor gagged. At the end of the pier, the Losties are forced to kneel, and their hoods are taken off. Kate tells Zeke that she knows his beard is a fake, and he removes it, glibly remarking that it itched something awful.
So, a boat pulls up to the pier, and Mr Fake Henry Gale makes his appearance, walks barefooted along the Pier, greets Jack and asks Zeke where his beard is. It’s pretty apparent to me that Fake Henry is the man in charge. He says to Michael “
Let’s take of business, shall we”. At this point I really hoped that “taking care of business” would involve painful death, but alas, wasn’t to be.
So, everybody's just standing around still, and there's a loud vibrating noise, and the ground seems to be shaking. Fake Henry looks pissed, almost like he has some idea what's happening, and everyone covers his ears and the screen gets bright and very white. On the boat, Sun and Jin and Sayid do the same thing – cover their ears.
When it stops, Fake Henry tells Michael he was not pleased with the arrangement made. Fake Henry explains that Michael can leave on the boat, that Walt is aboard, and that Michael will find rescue if he holds a bearing of 325 degrees. Michael asks Fake Henry how he doesn't know he might tell people about where he was. FAke Henry says "
Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But it won't matter. Once you leave, you'll never be able to get back here. And my hunch is you won't say a word to anybody because if you do, people will find out what you did to get your son back."
"
Who are you people?" asks Michael. Fake Henry stares at him, before breaking out in a creepy smile. "
We're the good guys, Michael,” So, Michael gets on the boat with Walt and drives away into the sunset. Fake Henry tells a now unbound Hurley, that he can go back to camp… so that he can warn the other Losties not to go there.
Hurley looks around at Kate, Sawyer and Jack, Jack encourages him to go by nodding his head, and Hurley despondently walks away. Jack and Kate look at each other, Jack nods at her and Kate blinks her eyes at him, before they are hooded again.
At this point, I was thinking… is this it… when…
We see a camp out in the snowy regions of Finland or wherever, where two guys are busy playing chess. Sounds to me like they are speaking Spanish? Portuguese? Italian?… well, they aren’t speaking English. I initially thought it was Russian, but I’m sure I heard an “Amigo” there.
Well, in any case, they notice (finally) that their computer’s beeping with the message “Electromagnetic Anomaly Detected." They seem to know what it is because one says “We missed it again”. The other chap yells at him to shut up and call.
Chap number 2 picks up a yellow telephone and dials a number. We then see a bedroom table on which is a picture of Desmond and Penny. A woman awakes and picks up the phone and the researcher says "Miss Widmore. It's us...I think we found it."
I’m going to leave this here. I’m not going to say goodbye yet, because I still have so much more to say, so I hope that you all will put up with me for another week, while I have time to ponder…and yes… I can finally Google things.