LOST- All Hands On Deck

Jack Shephard- "Maybe he's afraid of what happens if we stay."

I usually do all my writing before I read anyone else's ideas on an episode, but after seeing Larry tweet "Lots of walking around the island tonight on LOST...when's chuck back?" I figured I'd look around the blogoshpere to see if I was in the minority in thinking that last night's LOST was fantastic television. I made sure not to check out those with LOST biases (Doc Jensen at EW and Ryan McGee at Zap2It) and still everyone seemed to be on the same page as me. Alan Sepinwall from the Star Ledger, Kristin Dos Santos at E! and everyone in between had nothing but good things to say about last night's The Last Recruit.

And why not? We got one of those LOST episodes that didn't focus on just one character, but gave us a little bit of everyone. On both the Island, and the sideways world, all of our favorite characters were reuniting in one way or another. All the relationships that we hadn't seen for a while (Hurley and Claire, Jack and Sawyer to name a couple) were brought back to us and gave us a chance think about everything these people have been through together.

Sure there was a lot of walking around the island, but there was also swimming and sailing. And does that mean that nothing really happened? No. We start up where we left off. With the reunion of Jack and unLocke. "Hello Jack, I was hoping you'd come back...I think we have some catching up to do" the Man In Black says. Jack goes with him to have a chat and the good doctor continues his journey to being an enjoyable character. He starts asking the MIB questions.

Jack- "My third day here I chased my father through the jungle...my dead father...was that you?
MIB- "Yes that was me."

UnLocke claims that he did all of those things to help him and the people on the Island. In this case it was because Jack needed to find water in the jungle. Do we believe the Man In Black or is he just trying to get Dr. Shephard on his side? But at least we know that the MIB has been taking on the shapes of many of the figments we've seen over the years.

Meanwhile over in sideways universe all of our favorites are meeting up. Sun, Locke, Ben and Jack all end up in the hospital together. What did Sun recognize when she saw Locke in the stretcher next to her? Did she have her memory moment? Did she remember him as the Man In Black? When Jack was about to start his surgery he recognized Locke as well, but this was probably because of the convo they had at the airport right? Not all of their Island history.

Sideways Jack also found out that Claire is his sister when Desmond pushes her to see his attorney Ilana. We also get Sawyer and Kate with a whole mess of chemistry at the police station and then Sawyer and Miles taking down Sayid to bring him downtown. Aren't all of these interchanges just awesome to watch?

Back in Island world the Man In Black comes up with a plan to bring every one over to Hydra Island to battle Widmore. My man James Ford has other ideas. He has decided to get the heck out of this place with Jack, Kate, Hugo, Sun and "that pilot that looks like he stepped off the set of some Burt Reynolds movie" (Sawyer's words not mine). Why no Sayid or Claire? Because they've always been terrible characters? True but not the reason. They've gone over to the dark side Sawyer explains to Hurley. Hugo, the pop-culture fan that he is, explains that you can come back, like Anakin.

Of course Claire has to follow the group of studs and ruin everything. Kate convinces her to come with them, against Sawyer's wishes. Oh well. But who comes up big as a huge stud once again this ep? Jacko. He is just chilling on the end of the boat pondering to himself about the big picture of life ya know? Sawyer confronts him and Jack realizes that this whole plan is wrong. And I agree with him totally.

Like I said before, why would Sawyer's mighty plan be to leave the Island. They've already left the Island. That's not gonna change anything. Jack's right in that "The Island's not done with us yet." The Man In Black is trying to get everyone to leave, so why would you leave? You all know that he is a bad dude. As Jack said, "Maybe he's afraid of what happens if we stay." Exactly. The old man of science has become the man of faith and it shows once again that he may be the man to take Jacob's place.