Lost Episode 2.15: Maternity Leave
Pretty good episode. Definitely suspenseful. Here are my random notes of the plotline for discussion. I'll add more later as we comb the boards...
Here are is a nice collection of screen shots
MSNBC has posted their recap.
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Aaron is one sick baby. Fever, rash, etc. Locke covering up the kidnapping of Henry when Claire wants to go get Jack.
Libby on the beach with Hurley. Hehe. Libby hypnotizing Claire.
The return of Ethan in the flashbacks. Injecting a spaced out Claire with the Dharma drugs. Wow. First episode with all-island flashbacks, too. Lying about where Charlie went.
The Book given by Locke to Gale is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Kate taking charge. Sawyer's nickname of the day: Thelma
Nursery in that hatch. Airplane mobile. Including Oceanic jet. Aimed down. Playing the melody of "Catch a Falling Star".
Zeke, without the beard. Zeke mad at Ethan, talking about "the list" and what are you going to tell "him"?
The girl in the flashbacks saying "you've got to get out of here"... Rousseau's daughter Alex?
Eko blackmailing Jack into allowing him to talk to Henry.
Kate pulling the gun on Danielle.
Ethan saying he'll miss Claire, and asking her if she's sure she wants to give them the baby.
What's in the water jug Ethan gives Claire? "eww, it's sour"... she drinks it, he just smells it. Is that how they've drugged her?
Ethan: "We're Good People Claire. We're a Good Family...."
Claire finding the entrance to the medical hatch (Dharma symbol on this one was Medical twisting serpent and staff).
Finding flashlights. Kate looking in locker and finding grungy clothes and theatrical glue and fake beard??? Hello, Zeke costume!
Nursery room now empty but has faded in imprints on the walls of the prior decorations? Must have been there a while.
Claire finds booty she'd knitted.
Spooky scene with "Alex" saving Claire where we see all the doctors in the OR.
Totally empty hatch, medicine gone, etc.
Claire remembering Danielle actually saved her from the Others.
Claire telling Danielle about "Alex". Danielle leaving, telling Claire she hopes the baby is ok, but also that if she isn't she knows what she needs to do.
Eko's seriously spooky conversation with Henry, repenting, etc. And did the rest of you jump up and scream "NO!" when Eko held the knife to his own throat? INTENSE! I'm guessing the two beard strands represent the guys he killed?
Henry manipulating Locke into getting him mad about Jack. Divide and conquer?
Nice preview for the next episode. Sun pregnant (or infected?) The return of Ana Lucia as Locke undermines Jack and goes to hunt for the balloon. Sayid expecting the worst... Too bad there is yet another repeat next week in between...
Here are is a nice collection of screen shots
MSNBC has posted their recap.
----
Aaron is one sick baby. Fever, rash, etc. Locke covering up the kidnapping of Henry when Claire wants to go get Jack.
Libby on the beach with Hurley. Hehe. Libby hypnotizing Claire.
The return of Ethan in the flashbacks. Injecting a spaced out Claire with the Dharma drugs. Wow. First episode with all-island flashbacks, too. Lying about where Charlie went.
The Book given by Locke to Gale is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Kate taking charge. Sawyer's nickname of the day: Thelma
Nursery in that hatch. Airplane mobile. Including Oceanic jet. Aimed down. Playing the melody of "Catch a Falling Star".
Zeke, without the beard. Zeke mad at Ethan, talking about "the list" and what are you going to tell "him"?
The girl in the flashbacks saying "you've got to get out of here"... Rousseau's daughter Alex?
Eko blackmailing Jack into allowing him to talk to Henry.
Kate pulling the gun on Danielle.
Ethan saying he'll miss Claire, and asking her if she's sure she wants to give them the baby.
What's in the water jug Ethan gives Claire? "eww, it's sour"... she drinks it, he just smells it. Is that how they've drugged her?
Ethan: "We're Good People Claire. We're a Good Family...."
Claire finding the entrance to the medical hatch (Dharma symbol on this one was Medical twisting serpent and staff).
Finding flashlights. Kate looking in locker and finding grungy clothes and theatrical glue and fake beard??? Hello, Zeke costume!
Nursery room now empty but has faded in imprints on the walls of the prior decorations? Must have been there a while.
Claire finds booty she'd knitted.
Spooky scene with "Alex" saving Claire where we see all the doctors in the OR.
Totally empty hatch, medicine gone, etc.
Claire remembering Danielle actually saved her from the Others.
Claire telling Danielle about "Alex". Danielle leaving, telling Claire she hopes the baby is ok, but also that if she isn't she knows what she needs to do.
Eko's seriously spooky conversation with Henry, repenting, etc. And did the rest of you jump up and scream "NO!" when Eko held the knife to his own throat? INTENSE! I'm guessing the two beard strands represent the guys he killed?
Henry manipulating Locke into getting him mad about Jack. Divide and conquer?
Nice preview for the next episode. Sun pregnant (or infected?) The return of Ana Lucia as Locke undermines Jack and goes to hunt for the balloon. Sayid expecting the worst... Too bad there is yet another repeat next week in between...
posted by Slacker at 3:35 AM
7 Comments:
LOST – S2-E15 – “Maternity Leave” – Claire-centric
Quotes:
1. “He’s infected, isn’t he?” – Danielle to Claire
2. “You don’t want him to get sick, do you?” – Danielle to Claire
3. “I saw Ethan.” – Claire to Libby
4. “Are you a mother?” – Claire to Sun
5. “Are you sure you want to do this?” – Sun to Claire
6. “No boys allowed?” – Sawyer to Kate
7. “You were supposed to make the list and then bring her here.” – Zeke to Ethan
8. “Who is he?” – Eko to Jack
9. “You want to keep him a secret, don’t you?” – Eko to Jack
10. “Go ahead. Do it. Please.” – Danielle to Kate
11. “You tried to save me.” – Claire to Danielle
12. "You're not the only one who didn't get what they came for.” – Danielle to Claire
13. ”If your baby is infected, I hope you will do what you know will need to be done.” – Danielle to Claire
14. “If he asks, do not tell him what the alarm is for.” – Jack to Eko. “What IS it for?” – Eko to Jack
15. “Why are you telling me this?” – Henry to Eko. “Because I had to tell someone.” – Eko to Henry.
16. "You're mine and I love you. I love you so much" – Claire to Aaron
17. “No cheeseburgers?” – Henry to Locke
18. “Are you the one in charge or are you the one in the shadows?” – Henry to Locke
Random Thoughts:
1. Looks like this was the last new episode until March 22 (groan). Here are the names and mini synopsis of the next 3 episodes:
(2.16) ”The Whole Truth” is Jin/Sun-centric and delves into a Korean love triangle.
(2.17) “Lockdown” is Locke-centric and will feature a kindly priest.
(2.18) is Hurley-centric and will look more closely at Hugo’s stint in the mental institution. And we may learn why Libby seems so familiar to young Mr. Reyes.
2. Remember Claire's psychic's warning: "Do not let another raise the baby"? This episode = "Do not let an other raise the baby". I completely believe in that psychic's ability now.
3. So who is the "He" that Zeke and Ethan were referring to? Was it Alvar Hanso? Henry Gale? Desmond? Someone else?
4. The bruising on Henry’s head and face was very disturbing – but if he was really beaten that bad, wouldn’t there be more swelling? He did say that he had been in the hatch for two days, so maybe most of the swelling had gone down.
5. Lots of talk about Locke throwing a fit at the end of the episode. Was it real or was it staged for Henry’s benefit. I hope that it was staged. And I would worry about turning my back on Henry. Every time I see him alone with Jack or Locke, I keep expecting him to attack them to try to escape.
6. Eko: act of cutting hair in this manner is called "tonsure"; most people recognize it on monks. Some people believe that Tonsure is cutting off the hair from the head, and not the beard (but maybe it just means the act of cutting off hair). We also know Eko stopped talking after killing those two people for 40 days, to atone. He began growing the facial hair as well, and rolled it into two separate dreads, as it were. So, I do think they were a physical manifestation of his guilt, and by confessing it, and then cutting them off, he was getting some sort of release from that feeling. Why Gale? I think he thinks Gale is an Other and he wants him to know how he views the whole affair. And maybe also to warn him that the Others are not immortal.
Books:
1. “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky which Locke gave to Henry:
"The book is written on two levels: on the surface it is the story of a patricide in which all of the murdered man's sons share varying degrees of complicity but, on a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of the moral struggles between faith, doubt, reason, and free will."
In 1880 Dostoevsky completed The Brothers Karamazov, the literary effort for which he had been preparing all his life. Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, the sensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; and twisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searches for the truth--about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time.
2. “Lancelot” by Walker Percy which Sawyer was reading on the beach. Here is the text from the back cover of the book:
"Lancelot Andrewes Lamar, a disenchanted lawyer, finds himself confined in a mental asylum with memories that don’t seem worth remembering, until a visit from an old friend and classmate gives him the opportunity to recount his journey of dark violence. It began the day he accidentally discovered he was not the father of his youngest daughter. That discovery touched off his obsession to reverse the degeneration of modern America and begin a new age of chivalry and romance. Wit ever-increasing fury, Lancelot became a shining knight – not of romance, but of revenge."
On the surface, this book has very little resemblance to the traditional Arthurian tales and the protagonist does not much seem like our typical Lancelot. The story is set in the New Orleans of the 1970s. What becomes clear is that this novel partly asks the question of what would Lancelot be like in our day and age?
In a land chivalry is meaningless, what happens to the epitome of chivalry? What happens to a crusader for goodness, when the idea of goodness is becomes horribly muddled? Percy’s answer is that he would probably become a drunk. This Lancelot does not stay drunk forever, though. When he wakes, since he cannot discover what good is anymore, he decides to find the essence of evil. If he can prove that evil, that sin, exists in a definite form, then good must likewise exist. And so begins his little crusade. While Percy shows how out-of-place a Lancelot is today, he also reveals that, in his own time, Lancelot might have been just as scary. All around this is a great book, and one worthy reading for any reason.
3. Henry references Stephen King who wrote “The Stand”.
Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.
"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."
There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book.
4. Locke mentions Ernest Hemingway. Here is a list of his publications:
1923 Three Stories and Ten Poems (Short Stories)
1925 In Our Time (Short Stories)
1926 The Torrents of Spring (Novel)
1926 The Sun Also Rises (Novel)
1927 Men Without Women (Short Stories)
1929 A Farewell to Arms (Novel)
1930 The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (Short Stories)
1932 Death in the Afternoon (Novel)
1933 Winner take Nothing (Short Stories)
1935 Green Hills of Africa (Novel)
1937 To Have and Have Not (Novel)
1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Novel)
1942 Men at War (Edited Anthology)
1950 Across the River and into the Trees (Novel)
1952 The Old Man and the Sea (Novel)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The books listed below were published posthumously (After his death)
1962 The Wild Years (Compilation)
1964 A Moveable Feast (Novel)
1967 By-Lines (Journalism for the Toronto Star)
1970 Islands in the Stream (Novel)
1972 The Nick Adams Stories
1979 88 Poems
1981 Selected Letters
The medicine bottles used by Ethan have the DHARMA logo on them and the letters RX and Hurley’s numbers. It is the same kind of bottles used by Desmond. By the way, if these injections are so important then why didn’t Desmond tell the LOSTaways about them? Also, the swan hatch should have an ample supply of the bottles that Claire was looking for. Apparently she is not aware of them or less likely, Desmond took the whole supply with him when he left.
Then teenage girl who helped Claire escape could have been Alex. Claire said that she was not like the other and that she was good. Interesting since she was stolen as a week old baby and therefore would have no memory of her mother and THE OTHERS could have raised her to believe whatever they believed. How then would she have such radically different beliefs than those who raised her? Also recall it was Alex who brought out Kate as a prisoner in the jungle.
The song the baby mobile was playing in the medical hatch was the same song that was in the show "Raised by Another" and it was the song Claire hoped the adoptive parents would know. How did the Others know this?
Stephen King's take on Lost
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1100673_3_0_,00.html
And speaking of Stephen King, it appears there are many, many similarities between the Lost plot and a series of Stephen King books called the Dark Tower? I haven't personally read the books, according to the boards the series contains lots of references to OZ, psychic children being abducted, a woman in a wheelchair who could walk again, a heroin addict, a security system with an electromagnetic field to keep the universities apart - and more. Has anyone else read the books? Are there more similarities?
Good stuff. I liked this episode, and it was plenty suspenseful, but there weren't a ton of "ah ha" or "whoa!" moments. The biggest three for me were seeing Ethan as a Dr. injecting Claire, Kate finding the "Zeke" costume (remember that no one else knows that yet), and then Eko with the knife to his throat.
Kim: I seem to recall Desmond clearing the shelf of those vials before he left the Swan station. I also recall (or maybe I read it somewhere), that Alex was around 4 years old when she was taken, not a baby. Interesting discussion points, though. And, no, I haven't read the Dark Tower series, but I did read The Stand (as referenced in JimC's post). It's a good one.
FYI, the Entertainment Weekly recap is online now.
Kevin - You're right about the vaccine & Desmond, I'd forgotten that. But I'm pretty sure Rousseau's daughter was just a baby. Possibly only a week old in fact. The paragraph below is from the episode recap on ABC's site...
Back on the beach, our entire camp surrounds Rousseau as she tells her tale. She was part of a scientific mission to this part of the South Pacific when their boat ran aground on the island. Her team became stranded here sixteen years ago. She says there were six of them when they wrecked and she was already pregnant at that time. But something happened because she tells them she had to deliver the baby alone. As Claire's baby lets out a small cry Rousseau continues. She says her team was only together for a week when they saw the black smoke. It was far inland and it didn't spread. She gets even more intense here. "And that night, they came." They came and took her baby. And now they're coming again. For all of them. And they can't be stopped. She makes it crystal clear for them -- "You have only three choices: Run. Hide. Or die."
I thought it was a great episode. The Zeke costume part was my favorite. I definitely know Henry is an "other" now. That is going to be interesting. I think he will send them into a trap or to where the others are. I thought Danielle was great and we learned more about her. The shots in Claire's belly totally creeped me out. I wonder what that was all about.
Also why aren't we hearning more about Michael and Walt and why are the islanders worried about them?
Great Episode! I am already hungry for the next ... Why do we have to wait a week? Watching the 1st Season on DVD in a weekend was much better! Anyone agree?
Daily Planet -- I certainly agree that continuity is a great thing to have when watching Lost. Now, an entire season in one weekend? Wow.
I think I'm becoming increasingly prone to adult ADD, because as this season progresses I'm finding it isn't holding my attention as rigidly as it has in the past. I think these weeks with repeats aren't helping! Hopefully they draw me back in as we head down the stretch!
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