LOST Revisited: Season 5, Episode 8: “LaFleur” (Mar 5)
The episode begins with Locke turning the wheel and leaving the Island. We get a chance to see that they are very back-in-time indeed, as the four-toed statue is intact. We only see the back of the statue, which makes me wonder if the face of the statue will be familiar to us. How many toes does Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert have, anyway? It also looks like the statue is holding an ankh in either and. That will come up later. But there’s one big time skip, one that “felt different”. Sure enough, the headaches and nosebleeds are gone. Am I a sap for being really happy that Locke saved them and Sawyer and Co. recognized that fact? That’s a win for Locke!And now we’re headed to “Three Years Later”. Although, “Later” is a relative term, since the haircuts and soundtrack (Tony Orlando and Dawn) put us in the 1970’s. We’ve got a couple of special guest stars in Dharma jumpsuits, with Kevin Rankin of Friday Night Lights as Jerry, and Patrick Fischler (Jimmy Barrett from Mad Men) as Phil. (He ruined Don Draper’s marriage! Well, with the help of the people in Don Draper’s marriage, at least.) They’re below ground, and notice Horace Goodspeed on the monitor, drinking and tossing dynamite. Horace has popped up before, in Benry’s flashback episode, and at the end of last season. Of course, last season, his ghost managed to give Locke advice despite being stuck in a time loop. They decide they have to deal with Horace, or else LaFleur will be upset.
They reach Camp Dharma, which we haven’t seen in quite a while, to get LaFleur. And LaFleur turns out to be Sawyer. He and Miles head off to deal with the problem, and some things are getting clearer now. They pack up the now unconscious mathematician and return him to his wife, Amy. And Amy is played by Reiko Aylesworth of 24! I love her! (While I was taking notes, Sam told me to make a note of how pretty she is. Duly noted.) Unfortunately, she’s pregnant, which is not a good thing around these parts. She gets a chance to explain that she and Horace (who is way out of his league) had a fight about “Paul”. Boy, we’re getting a lot of new characters all at once, aren’t we? And then Amy goes into labor. Oh, poopie. (Sidenote: “LaFleur” is French for “Flower”. Not for “Floor”, which is what I originally wrote down.)
Back to “Three Years Earlier”. (If nobody objects, I’m going to save space by referring to the time periods as 1974 and 1977. If you do object, well, this is already finished by the time you’re reading it.) Sawyer and the rest find Daniel, who’s seriously out of it. He’s mumbling about how he’s not going to do it, he’s not going to kill her. Clearly, he’s going to try to not warn young Charlotte away from the Island. Daniel knows better than anybody, though, that what happened, happened. He says they’re not traveling through time anymore, and whenever they are, that’s when they’re stuck. With the last jump, they left Charlotte’s body behind, which is really depressing.
Sawyer decides they should go to the beach and set up camp. Miles, who is hilarious, really doesn’t care for that idea, but Juliet overrules him, even though she thinks Sawyer is wrong. Their group is down to five people now, and it still takes two to lead them. On their trek, they come across what looks like an execution. There’s a dead guy in a Dharma jumpsuit and two skeevy guys putting a bag over a woman’s head. The Lostaways step in, with Juliet shooting the first one and Sawyer killing the second. (I’ve mentioned this before, but Juliet’s a darn good shot. You need someone dead, give her a call.) The woman with the bag over her head is 1974 Amy, and she freaks out about the dead bodies. She mentions a “truce”, and refers to the man in the Dharma jumpsuit as “Paul”. She leads the Lostaways, who haul all three bodies with them, and they get to the Sonic Death Fence. Juliet does not do such a good job of pretending she’s never seen the Death Fence before, by the way. Amy keys in the code to shut it down, but grabs something from behind the keypad when nobody is looking. She passes through the fence safely, but it knocks down everybody else. Ah, Dharma hides earplugs behind the keypad! Those guys are clever, I’ll give them that.
In 1977, the Dharma doctor is having a hard time with Amy. The baby’s upside down, which means a breach birth. Amy’s going into labor early, so there’s no time to get her to the mainland. Huh. If only Sawyer knew somebody who spent years trying to solve the Island’s baby problem. Oh, wait! He heads out to find Juliet, who now works in the Dharma garage. (Why are all of their vehicles light blue?) She takes some comvincing, but Sawyer talks her into it.
While he frets outside the infirmary, Jin stops by. He’s been looking for Locke and the Oceanic 6, but he’s been unsuccessful so far. (Hey, shouldn’t he come across Rose, Bernard, and Vincent? I’ve been very worried about them.) Finally, Juliet comes out with the news – it’s a boy! Wow! How did she deliver a baby on the Island? Is it possible that she conceived off-Island? We can worry about that later, because Mother and Baby are doing fine. Yay, Amy!
Back to 1974! The Lostaways are at Camp Dharma, and Sawyer wakes up to see Horace waiting for him. (The casting directors for this show must have so much fun. “OK, you only have three lines in this episode, but we’ll need you for a four-episode arc in two years.”) Sawyer, who is a very good con man, instantly launches into a story about being “James La Fleur”, captain of a sailing vessel. And man, he paid attention this whole time, because he brings a surprisingly detailed reference to the Black Rock into his act. Horace wants to get rid of these new people as quickly as possible. Sawyer’s “Not Dharma material”, so Horace wants to put them all on a submarine in the morning.
Afterwards, Sawyer goes out to meet the rest of his friends. Miles is not up on his Island history, as he’s a little fuzzy on the whole Dharma thing. Juliet’s kind of melancholy seeing her old house before it was her house. Miles is probably less conflicted to see the barn where he had to hand from the ceiling with a live grenade in his mouth. Good times… Daniel’s got that Thousand-Yard Stare going, and he lays eyes on Baby Charlotte. Awww. He explains that they’re stuck in this time now, and from here on out, whatever they do is what happened. I think it’s finally sinking in to Daniel that there’s nothing he can do that would stop Charlotte from dying. He has to warn her family away from the Island, because that’s what happened. Also, this does not necessarily shoot down the “Daniel is Charlotte’s father” theory. Remember, last season implied that Daniel had time-traveled previously, and he may not be done with time travel just yet. I’m holding on to this one!
Then, the sirens go off. The Lostaways are quickly hustled into one of the houses. As everybody seeks cover, Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert strides right into the middle of town. Sonic Death Fences mean nothing to him! Horace goes to talk to him, and Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert explains that he’s there because the “truce has been broken”. That’s what Amy mentioned, too. There must be a non-violence pact between Dharma and the Hostiles. Obviously, the Others broke the truce when they killed Paul, but we don’t know what led up to that. It seems to me that Dharma is afraid of the Others, where the Others are pretty much just tolerating them, to a point. After all, they end up breaking the truce in a big way when they plot with Benry to kill every last one of them. Kind of looks like the Others just don’t take this truce quite as seriously, except when it gives them the opportunity to seek righteous vengeance.
Sawyer, who delighted everybody in my viewing group when he called Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert “The guy with the eyeliner”, goes out for a sitdown. 1974 Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert has never met Sawyer before, but Sawyer references both the “Jughead” atomic bomb, and John Locke. It’s unclear at this point what Richard “Batmanuel” really understands about time travel. It seemed to be a foreign concept to him in 1954, but during some of Locke’s jumps, he really had a great understanding of everybody’s chronology. Of course, the fact that he keeps meeting time travelers probably inspired him to hit the books. Anyway, he’s impressed and convinced by Sawyer, but makes one demand.
They have to give Paul’s body to the Others. Amy isn’t happy about this but understands. She take’s Paul’s ankh necklace. The ankh usually symbolized eternal life in Egyptian mythology, and on a show where at least one person has definitively, no two ways about it, come back from the dead, that’s appropriate. Why Paul has one, we don’t know. And is it connected to the ankhs held by the statue? I mean, it almost definitely is, but how and why?
With the crisis averted, Horace offers to let them stay for another two weeks. Juliet, of course, wants none of that. She’s been on the Island longer than any of the current Lostaways (unless Miles was there as a baby, which still seems likely), and she wants out, whether she has to sit through the Watergate hearings or not. Sawyer manages to talk her into waiting another two weeks to keep him company, because Sawyer’s good like that.
Two weeks turn into three years, as we see Sawyer again in 1977. Now, he’s really happy here. He’s a productive, respected member of society, and his demons are finally at rest. I mean, he stops to pick a flower! Can you picture Sawyer doing that at any other time? And as he walks through town, note the prominent placement of the chessboard in the foreground. Chess pops up as a theme now and again, often along the same lines as Backgammon.
Sawyer brings the flower to Juliet, who he seems to be living with. He actually declares his love for her, so this is clearly not him just holing up with whoever’s left. Next, it’s off to check on Horace, who’s finally sobering up. Sawyer tells him about his son, and wonders why he got drunk and started tossing dynamite. Seems Horace found out that Amy kept Paul’s ankh, and he worried that she wasn’t over him. In a great speech, Sawyer tells him that he lost somebody important, but he got over her. So yes, three years is enough time to get over somebody. He is totally selling this speech, so he might really mean it.
The next morning, Jin calls. Sawyer can’t even tell Juliet what it is, but we all know. He meets up with Jin who’s got Hurley, Jack, and Kate in the van. And that, before Kate or Sawyer gets a chance to speak, is where it ends.
A couple of things worth looking at here. First off, Locke saved the Island by turning the wheel himself. At this point, we don’t know why it was important to bring everybody back, or even if it really was important at all. Locke tends to be right about what the Island wants, so I’m going to continue to believe that bringing everybody back was the right call. Of course, with Locke and Benry separated from the rest of the cast by 31 years, that may not be such an easy answer.
And let’s take a minute to think about Horace. His screen time has been really limited up to this point, but he’s surprisingly important to a lot of events. He and his wife (Olivia, not Amy) found Roger Linus and newborn Benry after Emily died. We didn’t see much of Horace on the Island during Benry’s flashback, but after the Purge, Benry actually showed Horace’s corpse a moment of respect by closing his eyes for him. Also, Olivia was Benry’s teacher in his flashback.
Now, what’s up with Olivia? Based on the make of the cars in the flashback to Benry’s birth, it would appear that he was born in 1964 or 1965. We saw him as a 10-year old in Olivia’s class, so that gets us to, say, 1975. So something happened between 1975 and 1977 that left Horace with Amy instead. Maybe Olivia died, although it’s possible that they split up. After all, if you had a chance with Reiko Aylesworth, you’d take it. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t. Point is, the continuity is still intact.
Horace’s other big contribution is that he built Jacob’s cabin. In fact, that’s what his ghost is seen doing, over and over again. Horace’s ghost is interesting in and of itself, because not only is it caught in a time loop, but he’s very conscious of being a ghost. He told Locke that he’s been dead for 12 years. Also, Horace’s ghost had a bloody nose. At the end of Season Three, that was just kind of creepy. Now, however, it might indicate that Horace was unstuck in time when he died. Maybe that’s why he’s stuck in a loop after his death. Horace is surprisingly important, so keep an eye on him in future episodes.
Two last quick things – Daniel is the only one we don’t see in 1977 in this episode. But we did see him in Dr. Marvin Candle’s scene that opened the season. He didn’t have any lines in that scene, so we don’t know what his mental state is or his relationship with Sawyer and the rest. And finally, just to end on a down note, remember that there were a lot of Dharma uniforms in that mass grave. In 1992, Benry and the Others completely wipe out the Dharma Initiative. Hopefully, there is not a jumpsuit labeled “LaFleur” on one of those corpses….
