LOST Askew: “Some Like it Hoth” in Review

Before you read this recap, I highly recommend that you watch this video, which was released last summer before Season 5: Comic-Con 08 Barracks Video

Flashback, off island. Lara Chang (wife of Pierre, aka Dr. Marvin Candle) is checking out an apartment to rent in Los Angeles. She tells the landlord that her husband isn’t in the picture, that it’s just her and her son…Miles.

Mini Miles experiences a premonition while waiting outside for his mom at the apartment complex. His intuition draws him to one of the apartments, and he knows that the key is under a small white rabbit statue [easter egg alert!]. When Miles opens the door, he finds a man dead on the floor. He calls for his mom, and tells her the man’s story, and that the man is still talking to him.

Flash back to the island, 1977 Dharmaville. Sheriff Sawyer calls Mature Miles to erase the videotape of him and Kate taking Little Linus through the sonic fence. Kate heads back to Dharmaville and Sawyer goes looking for Sayid.

Just as Miles is about to remove the videotape, Horace barges in and Miles is unable to grab the tape. Horace is seeking the Sheriff, but brings Miles into the ‘circle of trust’ by asking him to take a bundle out to Radzinsky, who is working in Hostile territory. Miles is to bring back something in return, with no questions asked. Radzinsky stops Miles on the road at gunpoint, whistles and opens up the bundle (which is a body bag). Two Dharma workers in black jumpsuits and hard hats bring out a dead Dharma dude, and Radzinsky tells Miles that it was an accident. They put the body bag in the back of Miles’ van, and then disappear back into the jungle. Miles climbs into the back and asks the corpse what really happened, as the little ghost whisperer is apt to do.

Flashback, off island. Twentysomething punk rock pierced Miles goes to his old apartment, where Mrs. Chang is quite ill and under the care of a nurse. He wants to know why he has those abilities, and why she never told him about his father. Mrs. Chang said that Pierre never cared about them, and Miles demands to know where he is. She tells him that he’s been dead for a long time, that he kicked them out when Miles was just a baby. When Miles asks where his father’s body is, she tells him that it is somewhere he can never go.

Flash back to the island, 1977 Dharmaville. Horace instructs Miles to bring the body to Dr. Chang at the Orchid. Given that Chang is his father, Miles does not want to go but Horace insists. At the motor pool, Hurley is loading up Miles’ van with lunch coolers to bring to the Orchid crew; he is unaware that there is a body beneath the tarp in the trunk. Hurley wants to carpool, and Miles relents.

Meanwhile, Kate goes to the infirmary to update Juliet about delivering Little Linus to Alpert. Roger Linus comes in, looking for his son, and freaks out when Juliet admits to/lies about Ben disappearing without her knowledge. He storms out and says he’s going to Security.

En route to the Orchid, Hurley is writing in a journal as Miles drives. Hurley starts to smell the body in the bag, and they pull over. He discovers the body bag and Miles tells him the man’s story; that he was digging a hole when he felt a tooth filling being pulled out of the socket, and it blew through his brain. Hurley wants to know how Miles knows this information, and tells him that he can talk to dead people too.

Flashback, off island, prior to joining the Freighter Four. Adult Miles is on the job, meeting with a grieving father who wants Miles to ask his deceased son if he knew that he loved him. Miles charges extra because the son was cremated, and proceeds to channel and then communicate with the son for his father. As Miles is leaving, he is approached by Naomi, who wants to recruit him on behalf of her employer. He follows her to a restaurant.

Flash back to the island, 1977 Dharmaville. Roger Linus is drinking Dharma beer and getting drunk on the swing set in broad daylight. Kate approaches and assures him that everything will work out, which makes Roger suspicious. He knows that she is somehow involved with Ben’s disappearance, but tells her to mind her own business.

Hurley tells Miles that he has conversations with and sees dead people. Miles explains that what he does is based on a feeling, a sixth sense of sorts. They arrive at the Orchid, which is under construction. Dr. Chang wants to know why Hurley accompanied the body, and Miles explains that he is delivering lunch to the crew. Chang threatens Hurley to keep quiet about it, or he’ll wind up as a polar bear pooper scooper over on Hydra Island. Two Dharma workers take the body bag into the Orchid, and Hurley calls Dr. Chang a douche. Miles tells him that the douche is his dad.

Flashback again, off island with Naomi. She brings Miles to the back of a deserted restaurant where a dead body serves as Miles’ audition. Naomi throws a wad of cash at Miles and asks him to speak with the corpse. Miles gleans that the man was on his way to deliver empty grave photos and a purchase order for an old airplane to Widmore. {Side note: we saw Other Tom show Michael these documents last season when convincing him to work on the freighter for Ben}. She tells him that she’s leading an expedition to an island full of deceased people, to find a man that is responsible for their deaths. Miles turns down the job, but changes his mind when Naomi informs him that her employer will pay him $1.6 million dollars for his work.

Flash back to the island, 1977 at the Orchid. Hurley wants Miles to talk about being there with his father, and whether or not Miles will save him from the eventual Dharma purge. Miles says he can’t save him because they get killed no matter what he does. Chang demands that they take him to Radzinsky at the work site. When Miles asks about the body they brought there, Chang says “what body?”

Back in Dharmaville, Jack is cleaning the chalkboard in a Dharma classroom. From what it written on the chalkboard, it appears as if the children were being taught about ancient Egypt. Roger enters and wants to know why Jack is doing his job. (Probably feeling guilty for not helping save the kid’s life) Jack says that he wants to help him out because of what is going on with Little Linus. Roger tells Jack that Kate has a strange interest in young Ben, and that he suspects she has something to do with his kidnapping. Jack lectures him about drinking (irony alert!) and defends Kate.

In uncomfortable silence, Miles is driving his father and Hurley. Much to Miles’ disdain, Hurley plays investigator and instigator, asking Chang some probing questions about his work and family life. Dr. Chang appears to be all business, and does not seem to have many social relationships on the island.

They stop in the middle of the road and Chang opens a gate hidden among the foliage. Miles takes them inside, where there is a huge construction site. They drop off Chang and as Hurley spots the workers (one of whom is sporting an unsightly tight curl perm) with a quarantine door, he realizes that they’re building the original Swan hatch. They imprint ‘the numbers’ on the hatch door, and Hurley tells Miles that they’re building the hatch that crashed their plane.

Flashback, off island in Los Angeles. Miles is walking and eating when a black van approaches. Bram greets him by name, and some men in masks jump out and grab him. {Side note: he is the man from Ajira 316 that we’ve seen working with Ilana on Hydra Island after the future crash}. Bram informs him that his goal is to talk him out of working for Charles Widmore, and warns him not to get on the freighter. He asks “do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?” and when Miles says no, Bram tells him that he’s not ready to go to the island. Bram tells Miles that he’ll find out who he is, why he’s gifted and who his father is if he stays rather than goes to the island. Miles says he’ll stay for $3.2 million dollars, which is double what Widmore is offering. {Side note: that is the exact amount that Miles attempting to blackmail Ben for when he first arrived on the island last season}. But Bram is not interested in paying Miles, so they throw him out of the van and take off. But not before Bram tells him that he’s playing for the wrong team; that Bram is on the one that is going to win.

Flash back to the island, in Miles’ van. Hurley thinks it’s great that Miles has the chance to hang out with his father during this era, but Miles is adamant about not getting to know him. He angrily grabs Hurley’s private journal and reads it aloud. Hurley decided to write Empire Strikes Back (with a few improvements of course) and send it to George Lucas because Star Wars had just come out and he would want a sequel. Miles mocks him but Hurley counters with, “at least I’m not scared to talk to my own dad.”

In Dharmaville, Sawyer goes home and finds Jack visiting Juliet. Jack warns him that Roger suspects Kate helped kidnap Little Linus. Sawyer appreciates the heads up. Security dude Phil approaches Sawyer and tells him that there is a problem. Phil has the videotape that Sawyer wanted Miles to destroy, so he invites Phil into the house and knocks him out. He tells Juliet to get some rope.

Flashback, off island in Los Angeles. Miles returns to the grieving father to return the money, admitting that he lied about communicating with the man’s deceased son. He admonishes him, “if you needed your son to know that you loved him, you should have told him when he was still alive” and then leaves.

Flash back to the island, 1977 Dharmaville. Miles and Hurley return, and Hurley apologizes for pressuring Miles about his dad. He tells Miles that giving his own dad a second chance was the best thing he ever did. Miles still doesn’t want to get to know his father, but Hurley recalls Luke’s saga with his father Darth Vader, and reminds him that they just needed to communicate.

Miles walks away and stands in front of Dr. Chang’s house, watching his father read a polar bear story (easter egg alert!) to the baby version of himself. Miles gets teary and sees Chang take a phone call. Chang comes outside and asks Miles to accompany him to the dock because scientists from headquarters (Ann Arbor, MI) are arriving.

None other than Daniel Faraday emerges from the sub, with a grin of recognition and relief, and a “long time no see” for Miles.

And that is the migration and memoir of Miles Straume Chang.

(This is purely an episode recap; for Jo’s detailed theories and analysis about “Some Like it Hoth” please click here.)