Lost 5.03: “Jughead” Recap

Flashback: Desmond is running through a village in the Philippines, calling for Efren Salonga, the doctor. When he finds him, they run to someplace with “a lot of blood.” He brings him to Penny, who is in labor below deck on the boat they were seen on at the end of “Because You Left.” Now that the doctor is there, Penny gives birth to a beautiful baby boy.

SS Desmelope, present day: Desmond and his son are cuddled up together under the stars. Desmond points to the lights in the distance and tells the boy that there is an island there, a special island, that he left a long time ago and thought he’d never see again. Just as we start to wonder, “could he be back…” he goes on to say it’s Great Britain. We all say, “Oh yeah, I totally knew that’s what he meant.” Not-bitter-much Penny joins them and adds to Daddy’s magical story with some details about heartbreak and attempted murder. Wow, she sucks at story time. She also thinks this trip is a bad idea, especially if her father knows they are there. Desmond insists, “This has nothing to do with your father.” Spoiler alert: HA HA HA!

Jungle trek: As the three freighties and two redshirts are walking, Charlotte tells Dan her headache is getting worse. Daniel reassures her in a very touchy-feely, almost intimate way. You’d think if she didn’t know how he felt about her she’d be a little weirded out by that. Meanwhile they’ve arrived at the creek, but there is no sign of the others. Miles spots a tripwire in the underbrush, but his warning comes too late, and the redshirts go boom. Men with guns AND arrows suddenly surround them. So there goes my theory that they landed in the middle of a battle. They were attacked specifically by one group. “You just couldn’t stay away,” says a pretty young girl with a British accent and a big rifle. Does she mean the general “you” or does she mean “you” as in Daniel? We’re supposed to think it’s the latter but we find out later that it’s the former.

SS Passive Aggressive: Penny keeps trying to get Des to forget about this errand. He says he has to do this and makes her two promises: he’ll be back by dark, then he’ll be done forever. The only promise she wants is the one that says he’ll never go back to the island. He says, “Why would I go back there?” A couple points here: a) He didn’t say “I promise”, but he implies it, which leads to b) Anytime someone says something will or won’t happen on this show the opposite always ends up happening, so that pretty much tells me that he is so going back.

Little Miss SnootyBrit asks Team Faraday where the rest of their group is. She mentions that there were twenty of them at the beach. So there was Frogurt, Blown Up Guy 1, Blown Up Guy 2, Sawyer, Juliet, Dan, Miles, Charlotte, Rose, and Bernard. Does this mean we’ve been purged of all the Redshirts? Unless there are some with Rose, Bernard and Vincent. Because the Nadlers and that dog had better be ok. Hurting them would be like stomping on a nest full of baby ducks.

At the same time, Locke, Juliet and Sawyer are looking over the two soldiers they have left. Locke is marveling over the rifle, a .30 M1 Garand rifle. This particular rifle Locke is holding looks brand new. Sawyer asks what difference that makes, and where has Locke been? Locke uses the increasingly annoying cliché “When have I been.” One of the soldiers turns to the other and speaks Latin. Juliet speaks it right back to them, and informs her friends that this means the soldiers are Others.

The other Others are marching the freighties back to their camp when Miles gets one of his wooshy feelings. He tells Daniel that they just walked over a fresh grave; four bodies, all US soldiers. Three were shot, one died of radiation poisoning. Dan: “Did any of them mention what year it is?” They approach yet another barracks area the Others acquired from someone else. They call out for a Richard. Our very own Richard Alpert emerges, looking exactly the same as always. He tells Daniel, “I assume you’ve come back for your bomb.” About a gazillion jaws drop around the world, plus three more on the TV screen.

Oxford: Desmond can’t get a record of a Daniel Faraday ever being at the school. Des takes matters into his own hands and goes to where he remembers visiting the office. It’s there, and is sealed off for “fumigation.” He breaks down the door and looks around. There is a picture of Dan and a girl amongst the rubbish. The Eloise maze and purple lamp are there. So he did exist, but the university is covering it up. Suddenly he realizes he’s been caught by a surly worker. An Other? Nope, just a gossipy janitor. Wait, I think they prefer to be called Exposition and Backstory Maintenance Engineers. He mentions such interesting tidbits as: Des is not the first one to poke around there asking about Faraday, there were rumors that he was trying to send rat’s brains back in time, and that he hurt a girl with his experiments.

The freighties are shoved into a tent. They need to keep it together until there’s another flash so they play along with the idea that they are with the US Military. Daniel has figured out that the Others are at war with the Army because they were trying to use The Island for H-bomb testing. They have apparently left one behind and it must have become compromised, based on the radiation burns Dan sees on an Other. He offers to render it inert, and in order to make them believe he isn’t going to set it off as a suicide mission, he looks Richard right in the eye and says, “I’m in love with the woman sitting next to me. And I would never do anything to hurt her.” I melt. The look on her face is total shock and surprise. Although, she did hear Jin say he could tell Dan loved her. So the idea that she looks like this never occurred to her, and later acts like Dan must have made that up, seems a little strange to me. But, hey. When it comes to finding out someone loves you, hearing it from the horse’s mouth for the first time can be pretty breathtaking. Oh, and Richard says Dan can go play with the bomb.

Juliet fills in Sawyer on how she knows the language of the enlightened. (Others 101. Hee!) Cunningham reveals to Locke that because Sawyer yelled to meet at the creek, the Others all knew where to ambush his people. Juliet speaks to him in Latin and tries to reason with him about taking them to his camp, that they aren’t their enemy. He has his doubts until she asks if Richard Alpert is there. Cunningham seems convinced and starts to tell where their camp is, until Jones kills him and takes off. Locke hesitates to shoot him, possibly with flashbacks of Eddie the cop running through his head. He doesn’t shoot. Not because he’s not a hunter, but because Jones is “one of [his] people.”

Desmond is at the house of Theresa Spencer. Abigail, her sister, answers the door, and upon hearing he was sent there by Daniel Faraday, positively drips with sarcasm as she invites him in. Theresa is hooked up to a lot of machines. She didn’t fall up or down any stairs, she is jumping. Des is like, “I know the feeling.” He doesn’t tip her off to a constant, but he does find out that Faraday abandoned her after he did “this” to her and that, because Charles Widmore had been funding Faraday’s research for ten years, Widmore stepped up and has been taking care of Theresa ever since.

Camp Other: Dan and Charlotte have that awkward, “You didn’t have to say you loved me,” “But it’s the truth” conversation. Miles has to sit there third-wheelishly. They are interrupted and Dan gets taken out to talk to Richard who just wants Daniel to know he was forced to kill the 18 soldiers that previously lived here. He implies it was on the orders of the person who is in charge. So we know Richard has never been the leader, but has always been a higher up. He’s like the VP of Others Human Resources. Suddenly Jones runs out of the woods with the update about being captured. He is unconcerned that he was followed by Locke because he figures the old sod couldn’t possible track him or know the island better than him. Man, I’ll bet this guy grows even more arrogant as he grows older. On a hill overlooking the campsite, Locke and Juliet are chatting. He asks her a couple of questions on the behalf of all of us viewers. She gives the typical non-answer answer. How did she know Richard would be here? Richard’s always been here. How old is he? Old. Gee, thanks. Sawyer appears, and spots Dan being “death-marched” into the woods and goes off to save him.

Heading to the H-Bomb, Dan can’t stop staring at his young captor. He says she reminds him of someone, who we are probably supposed to assume is Theresa, but here’s the thing: Just as the enhanced version of “The Lie” was ending before this episode started, they told us that Ms. Hawking’s first name was Eloise. This girl is called “Ellie” by the Others, she wears her hair up in a braid/bun, and she speaks with a British accent. This gal has to be the young Ms. Hawking. Add that to the fact that Daniel named his rat Eloise, and some information that we learn later in the episode, and it’s very clear that she is Daniel’s mother. Back to Dan and his mom on the way to the bomb, we see she’s always been a smart cookie. Even if Richard hasn’t noticed, she knows that a geek, a british woman and a chinese man aren’t exactly US Army material. (Even the Others weren’t very enlightened racially back then.) And this is where we get to meet Jughead. Everyone say hi to the giant thermonuclear weapon dangling on a rope from questionable wooden scaffolding! Dan climbs up to look at it and notices a crack in it’s housing. He jumps down and gets away from it because he’s smart like that. He then tells her to bury it and cover it in concrete and all will be okay. And really, I’m happy about this because they could have made this a long protracted will-he-disarm-it-or-won’t-he thing but I didn’t want to sit through all that time wasting since we’re pretty sure the island will be around later on. Coincidentally, he also points out that the island will still be there in 50 years. She has an odd reaction to this. She’s either thinking she’s got herself a bigger nutjob on her hands then she thought, or he said something really, really significant. He clarifies to her that they are time traveling. Before he can elaborate Sawyer jumps out of the jungle and Ellie drops her weapon, which is picked up by Juliet. Sawyer is a bit taken aback by the bomb.

Desmond marches into Widmores office. He tells him he knows he was funding Faraday, that he sent him to the island, and that he wants the address of faraday’s mother. He won’t tell his father-in-law anything about Penny. Widmore gives him the address. She’s in… (wait for it) …Los Angeles. And that there is the final proof that Ms. Hawking is also Mama Faraday. Before Des leaves, Widmore implies there are other dangers besides just himself, which is kind of scary when you think about it.

Back in Crazytown: Locke bursts into camp calling for Richard. He tells him, “Jacob sent me.” Jones isn’t In The Know on Jacob, I guess, because he’s still hassling Locke. Richard walks up to him and says, “Put the gun down, Widmore.” And there’s the second big answer of the night. Widmore was an Other. Now we get to ask questions about why he left. Is it because he had to move the island to hide it from the Army men who keep coming back? Or, based on something Ben once said to Locke about him being too angry, was he sent away? Because if anyone personifies “angry issues” it’s this young Chuck Widmore.

Desmond is back on the boat with his family. He tries to say the mother was dead but he’s almost at bad at lying as Daniel is. He swears he’s not going to keep doing this. He says he has to do what’s best for her and OMG they named the baby CHARLIE! And I doubt it is after his mean old grandfather! But Penny knows Des. He has to do this and they’re going to LA with him.

Locke is sitting with Richard and has filled him in on all recent developments, particularly in re: the compass. He also explains how he is their leader, no really. We finally get an actual year they are in: 1954. Locke tells Richard to come visit him when he’s born in two years. And then he leaps, failing to get the one thing he went there for: information on how to get off the island. There is a nice little reunion of the main characters, who have luckily picked up a couple of weapons. But Charlotte’s a wee bit dizzy, and nosebleedy. And then unconscious and kinda dead looking. And so endeth one of the best episodes we’ve seen on this show. When your head stops spinning, come and join in the conversation in our Lost forum. I predict we’ll be talking about this one for a good long while.