David R Storms.com

“The Variable”

This is the 100th “hour” of lost television. I haven’t done the math, so I don’t know if that means 100 episodes and they are not counting 2 parters or not. Either way, this is almost the companion episode to last seasons “The Constant” and features the return of Daniel Farraday to the island back in 1977.

Daniel and Ms. Hawking

As we knew previously, she is Daniel’s mother. We see a flash back of him playing the piano as a child and a young Ms. Hawking a little upset tell him that he does not have time for music, that science is the important work he needs to do now. Despite the fact that young Daniel says that he can make time, his mother tells him that it is her job to steer him in the right direction.

I am curious of the year of this conversation is 1977, and a older Daniel Farraday who left the island happened to visit his mother and tell her something and lead her to a certain conclusion.

Skipping ahead we see Daniel are Theresa after Daniel just finished become the youngest doctor to graduate out of Oxford. Hawking doesn’t really approve of the girlfriend and while having lunch alone with Daniel she tells him he has too much work and has no time for women. Daniel says that Charles Widmore is giving him a research grant, to which Hawking pauses but seems to approve. She again tells him about his path and gives him his present, the leather book that we see him carry with him.

Later we meet Daniel from season 4 where he was crying over the news that Oceanic 815 was found. Charles Widmore visits him and tries to convince Daniel to go the island, that it will heal his broken mind. He says that the people are not dead, that he put the wreckage there as af ake. Daniel had used the machine on himself that he created at Oxford and on Theresa himself. His mind is fractured and he is unable to remember things.

Daniel only agrees after his mother visists him and insists that he goes, that it will heal him so that he can continue his work.  Daniel agrees to go if it will heal him and more imortantly make his mother proud of him.

Finally we see the aftermath of Desmond being shot. While he didn’t die, he was actually shot and Penny took him to the hospital. Ms. Hawking visists her and explains she is Daniel’s mother and that she is sorry about Desmond. She acts as if he is dead but for the first time in her life she has no clue what is going to happen.

Hawking sees Widmore outside but he won’t go in, that he and his daughter dont’ speak, he does ask if Desmond is alright. He begins to talk about Penny as his sacrifice when Hawking slaps him saying that she is the one who had to sacrifice her son. Widmore also reveals that Daniel is his son too.

Daniel’s Destiny

Farraday arrives on the island after receiving news in Ann Arbour about new recruits to the island. He has a paper with the photograph of Kate, Jack and Hurley. He goes to meet Jack and ask him how he got back to the island. Jack could only say that his mother (Ms. Hawking) told him it was his destiny to which Daniel said no, they were not supposed to be there.

Daniel has miles drive him to the Orchid station where they wait for Dr. Chang. When he arrives Daniel tries to talk to him. We see the scene from the first episode this season with Daniel bumping into Chang. He rushes to talk with him urgently that he has to evacuate the island, that in a few hours there will be an accident at the Swan site that will be a distaster.

Farraday also tells him he knows this because he is from the future. He tries to use Miles to convince him telling Chang right in front of Miles that Miles is his son from the future. Miles denies this and Chang leaves telling Farraday to never talk to him again.

Things start to get out of control at this point. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Jin, Juliet and Sawyer are meeting trying to figure out what to do about Phil being tied up and their ruse in Dharma in danger of being exposed when Miles and Farraday show up.

He tells them they have to find his mother, who is with the hostiles. She is the only one that can help them. Jack is all for this but Sawyer doesn’t want them to, he opts to head for the beach so that they can start over. When Sawyer asks Kate if she is with them, Juliet offers up the code to the sonic fence so that Kate would agree to go with Jack and Farraday.

The rest begin to pack up their things for the beach when Jack and Kate with Farraday head to the motopool to get guns. Farraday sees young Charlotte again, and fulfilling his future, warns her that she has to leave the island because what if he succeeds they would all die. While there Radzinsky and a couple armed men appear asking why Daniel wasn’t at the Swan site, when he sees they have guns a shootout begins in which Daniel is slightly hurt. They manage to escape into the jungle on a jeep after exploding a fuel tank to cover their escape.

Radzinsky visits LaFluer telling him they have spies among them, when he hears something and finds Phil tied up in the cloest he puts the gun on Sawyer and Juliet.

After passing the sonic fence, they continue on foot. While resting Daniel explains what he plans to do. He tells them that an accident at the Swan site forces Dharma to contruct a way to regulate the energy they unleashed which would be the hatch and having to push a button. He said that Desmond ends up down there, and that leads to him not pushing the button and the Oceanic plane crashing and the freighter coming to the island. He plans on changing of all this by finding Jughead, the hydrogen bomb from earlier in the season and detonating it.

When Jack wonders why whaterver happened has happened no longer makes sense, Daniel said he forgot that they were variables, that this is their present and they can change things. He points out that Daniel didn’t have a scar when they met him from when he was just recently injured in the gun fight.

When they find the hostiles camp, Jack and Kate wait in the jungle while Farraday goes down into the camp. He has a gun and uses it to keep the hostiles at bay. Richard Alpert is there and may recognize him. Farraday asks where they buried the bomb and where Eloise Hawking is. While Richard is trying to calm him down Daniel is shot. When he collapses he sees that it was his mother that had shot him. Before he dies, he tells her that she knew what was going to happen, and he tells her that he is her son.

What We Learned

• Ms Hawking, Daniel’s mother, has been grooming him toward science his entire life
• She was very protective and disapproved of any other then his career, including women
• She gave him the leather journal
• Widmore visisted Daniel trying to convince him to go the island on the freighter
• Daniel’s mind is fractured from his Oxford experiment and his memories are scattered, which may explain him being upset at seeing the Oceanic 815 crash
• Sawyer decides that they should go to the beach, Jin, Hurley, Juliet and Miles are with them.
• Radzinsky finds Phil tied up, exposing Sawyer and Juliet
• Daniel was at Ann Arbor on the Swan team in 1977 and came back to the island because he saw Jack, Kate and Hurley were there
• Daniel wants to change the future, saying that they are the variables
• He plans to do this by detonating the hydrogen bomb which will stop the incident from happening, thus the hatch being built and the need to push the button every 108 minutes
• A young Ms Hawking fatally shoots Daniel when he tries to find her and the bomb
• He tells a young Hawking that she knew in the future she was sending him to his death, and the he is her son

Found this link. Check it out. Wonder if this guy has ever stole any material from my site? Hmm, not sure if that would be a compliment or if I should be mad if he did. Probably mad, but it would be cool to know people were enjoying my recaps! I do feel bad for the people he ripped off. There is a video here you have to see to believe.

http://www.docarzt.com/lost/lost-news/lost-video-recaps-exposed/

Lost took a 1 week break and thought it would be best to go over events related to the Oceanic Six. I was actually excited for this one because for some reason I thought they would be telling us something important, something that happened to the Six at some point over the last 2 seasons that should be fresh in our memory for the final 2 episodes.

I could still be right, but I really didn’t find anything like that. They really hyped it as being a whole new perspective on the story, but really they just put the pieces in order from season 4 and 5. In fact for a lot of it I was wondering when were going to see scenes from season 5, rest assured there was some, but not a ton of insights.

I found out from Lostpedia that the actor Nestor Carbonell (who plays Richard Alpert) narrated the special, funny for some reason I didn’t clue in on that. They also point out (which I caught myself) that this show came out and said Charles Widmore put the plane wreckage at the bottom of the ocean to fool people away from looking for the island.

This little tidbit was probably tossed in to save the writers actualy spelling it out in plot for the real episodes. It seems that the next episode will have Daniel spill the beans on the island and we just might learn a lot about it, so dropping things like the Widmore wreck  isn’t really necessary and I think it was actually cool of the show to drop that in there.

I just wish there was a lot more of them. These specials would be an excellent way to resolve some of the fan questions that the writers probably will not get to in a season and resolve mysteries no matter how small they are outside of the plot. I would even be OK if they explained the Egyptian statue in one of these rather than use time travel in some way or flash backs. However you would have to do it in a way that the plot doesn’t rely totally on it so that people are not lost themselves.

All in all it was a bit boring and there was nothing in there for me. If I missed something I hope someone will point it out or I hope that something in there was useful for the upcoming shows.

Speaking of which, Lost hits 100 episodes on April 29th with the return of Daniel Farraday in the episode “The Variable”.

We get to find out what happened over the last 3 years with Daniel and he is supposed to explain a lot of the properties of the island. From the ABC press release it looks as though we will see Theresa whom Desmond found earlier this season bed ridden and locked in her own mind after an experiement gone wrong by Farraday. Also the actress that played the young Eloise Hawking was listed so perhaps we learn a bit about her and how she came to leave the island (although I believe she is still there in 1977).

At any rate, I’m excited even for exposition episodes and can’t wait.

Plus the week after we have episode 15, which just so happens to air on my birthday!

“Some Like It Hoth”

In season 4 we had a brief episode with flash backs for Daniel, Charlotte and Miles, however this one is all about Miles. We get some good answers about him and his role in the story.

We know Miles can talk to the dead, well he has had that ability since he was a young child. He was with his mother only back then with no father to be found. She seems to know a bit about his ability.

Years later an older Miles comes to visit his dying mother to get answers about his ability and his father. She tells them that he “kicked them out” and she wanted to avoid putting that kind of burden on him. Miles wants to know where he is buried, so he could use his ability to extract the information, but she said he is somewhere that Miles could never go, hinting very strongly toward the island.

Miles learns to exploit his ability for profit, as we have seen earlier. He still does have a conscience though, not always ripping people off. He is approached by Naomi and she tells him that she has a job proposal for him. She takes him to a body in which Miles reads that the man worked for Widmore and had documents about graves and an empty plane.

We seem to get confirmation that Widmore was behind the wreck, and that the dead man was probably killed by one of Ben’s team to get those documents (remember Tom had them to show to Michael).

Naomi wants Miles to join them to go to the island, because there is a lot of dead people there and they could help them find Ben. Miles refuses until she offers him $1.6 million dollars to which he readily agrees.

Later, Miles is abducted on the street by a group in a van. One of them is Bram, whom we seen as one of the crash survivors of Ajira 316. He even asks Miles “what lies in the foot of the statue?” to test if he is ready, to which Miles has no reply. Bram tries to convince him that he is on the wrong team, that he shouldn’t get on the boat, that Bram’s team is the one that is going to win, and if Miles comes with him he can tell him about his ability and about his father. 

Miles doesn’t care about those things and Bram is disappointed and they dump on the street and drive off.

Trouble Brewing in 1977

Sawyer and Kate return from taking Ben to the Others. Sawyer calls Miles and tells him to erase the surveillance tape that has him and Kate clearly on it with Ben. Before Miles can though, Horace gives him a job to deliver a package to Radzinsky. He says that Radzinsky will give him something in return that Miles must bring back. He agrees, but leaves the tape behind.

That tape comes to the hands of Phil, who brings it to Sawyer and tries to give him a chance to explain. Rather than doing that, Sawyer punches Phil and knocks him out, asking Juliet to get some rope to tie it up.

Roger, Ben’s dad returns to the compound with medical supplies but is informed by Juliet that Ben was abducted. He grows furious and when Kate tries to console him, tell him that things will be alright, Roger gets suspicious that she knows something about his son.

Jack tries to calm Roger down to remove suspicion around Kate, but the damage could already be done.

Meanwhile Miles meets with Radzinsky and gives him the package which is a body bag. Radzinsky has a man put in it and tells Miles to shut up about it and do his job and take the body back, which he does, but not before using his ability on the man.

Back at the compound Miles finds Horace who tells him to take the body back to the Orchid and find Pierre Chang. Before leaving Miles bumps into Hurley who is loading sandwiches to go to the Orchid, so he manages to get Miles to give him a ride.

Along the way Hurley smells the decaying body and finds it. Miles ends up telling him that he heard the mans thoughts and that it was a filling he had in his tooth that broke free and flew through his head. Hurley also admits that he can talk with dead people, but that his seems to work a bit different in that he actually sees them, whereas Miles does not.

They arrive at the Orchid and a angry Chang is upset because Hurley now knows about the body, he gets him to swear not to tell. Miles admits what we all suspected, that Chang is his father.

Chang has the body moved and tells Miles to give him a ride to meet Radzinsky. Along the way Hurley tries in subtle ways to get them to realize that they are related, however impossible that may be. Chang admits he has a 3 month old son named Miles.

They end up dropping Chang off at a construction site, which is where the Swan station is being developed. Hurley even witnesses them punching into the hatch lid the numbers he comes to know so well.

On the way back to the compound Hurley again presses that Miles should make up for never meeting his father and give up the resentment he had. Miles grows angry and steals a notebook Hurley was carrying with him. Hurley was trying to write the sequel to Star Wars (The Empire Strikes Back) to which Miles scoffs. Hurley uses a parallel that Luke and Darth Vader got over their problems, and even Hurley and his own father did so Miles should be able to as well.

Miles ponders this and even walks to the outside of Chang’s house. He sees him with the 3 month old Miles reading a book. Miles is touched that his father is so attentive and seems to love his son very much and this moves him, since he had never really thought of him like that.

Chang gets a call however and has to leave the house, but before Miles can get away he spots him and tells him to take him to the sub, some scientists are arriving.

Down on the dock Miles is helping the scientists and who other than Daniel Farraday is there greeting him and saying “long time no see.”

What We Learned

• Miles has had his ability since early child hood
• He was with his mother and did not know his father as she did not tell them and said he had “kicked them out”
• Naomi recruited Miles and offered to pay him $1.6 million to work for Widmore
• The mysterious group that is now on the island in 2007 approached Miles to not work for Widmore, he told them pay him $3.6 million instead which they refuse
• Roger Linus is suspicious about Kate, and probably Jack
• Phil discovered that Sawyer and Kate took Ben and has the tape to prove it, Sawyer knocks him out and ties him up
• Miles reveals that his mother is on the island, and Pierre Chang is his father
• Hurley is trying to write the sequel to Star Wars to send to George Lucas
• Daniel Farraday is one of the sceientists from Ann Arbour