Lost: Season 4, Episode 11~ “Cabin Fever” *SPOILERS*

Is Claire Dead? Or just really, really happy?

Some Clarity Or, Sometimes A Bracelet Is Just A Bracelet:~

Previously on LOST~ There's been buzz on Episode 10, "Something Nice Back Home" due to the timing of the baseball game, in particular. I know nothing about the timing of baseball games unless the Cubs are in the World Series so this is what is being said by others (not Others): Some are insisting it was the August, 2006 series but a screen cap shows that there’s a reference to that game as being a year earlier, so this would put the date of the baseball series at August, 2007. Which takes us back to the days in which the showrunners hadn't quite grasped the tenacity/insanity of (some) LOST viewers who meticulously take screen caps and work on them until they find something, dammit! So the date on the newspaper, April 5, 2007, in the episode, “Through the Looking Glass” was just a date used by the props people. <sad face>

LOST~ " Cabin Fever"

Meet John Locke's mom, "Emily" who is about to go our on a date with a "man twice her age."

Instead, she gets hit by a car and goes into premature labour:

Though she seems concerned about young John, later she wants nothing to do with him.

But someone does:

The ever-youthful Richard Alpert appears at prematurely born Locke's hospital nursery, then seems to monitor him as his goes from an infant to a little boy.

"Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch.” (Ben)

What was the point of yet another John Locke flashback?

Lessee.

Richard! Alpert pays young John a visit in his foster home.

Richard appears at John's foster home (why are foster parents on teevee always so mean?) claiming to be a recruiting agent for a special school.

He's got some items for the perhaps age 5 or 6 y.o. John that he tells the boy some of which "belong to (him)." Richard lays out the items which include a baseball glove, a book titled Book of Laws, a vial of sand (?), a compass, a comic book called Mystery Tales, and an old knife. He asks little-boy John to choose the items which belong to him. John chooses the sand and the compass, obvious references for viewers, to the Island. Apparently, John chooses wrong because Richard gets all huffy and leaves abruptly.

Screen caps of the items are shown below:

(cont after jump)

Be sure to click for more detail

A John-as-a-teenager scene is shown in which he is given a Mittelos Bioscience pamphlet and urged to consider it's summer school program. Young John is headstrong even then and snaps at his teacher, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” (referencing the teacher's urging that John can't turn down this great opportunity).

John got beaten up and stuffed in his locker.

John's locker. When John steps out of the locker he’s been locked in, there’s a Geronimo Jackson poster on the inside of the door. The guy in the black and white photo is "Sir Richard Burton."

The last visit in the flashbacks comes from Abaddon, who we last saw stalking Hurley in the mental institution. This time, Abaddon is acting as an orderly during much-older-John's rehab stint after being tossed out a 8-story window by his con man dad. Abaddon tells John of his own spiritual struggle and says that he learned much from a Walkabout. He finishes by saying that the next time he sees him, Locke will owe him one.

Weird stuff:
-John’s childhood drawing of a guy being eaten by the smoke monster.(photo)

-The doctor who'd previously washed up on shore dead with his throat slit was alive on the Freighter though all but the dullest of the dull could not figure out that the time-warping that's going on accounts for this and that he was doomed. Desmond and others including Frank Lapidis witnessed Keamy slit the unfortunate Dr's throat

Weird and creepy stuff:
-Claire and Christian just chillin' in Jacob's cabin.



Things that make you go "hmm"~

Emily was hit by a car running from her mother, just as Locke was bumped by a car running after Emily many years later.

Yet another jammed gun that Michael was about to be offed with.

Too bad it doesn't stop pain as well as he's gotten a few really good beat downs, in this case by Keamy.

The "one eye-close-up" thing is done for me. The deeper meaning it held is LOST. Time to put it away for awhile, maybe save it for another season. I realize it keys something big is about to happen and this time it was Locke's convo with dead-for-12-years-Horace, builder of Jacob's cabin.

John wakes to the sound of trees being chopped down. He finds the guy above chopping. Guy with axe and bloody nose explains that he probably isn't making much sense as he's been dead for 12 years.

However, If John wants to find the cabin, he must first find 12-years-dead guy. John knows just where to look.

In Ben's mass gravesite! (I missed this one but alert fans of the show caught that as dead Horace Goodspeed finishes talking to Locke he bids him, “Godspeed.")

More talk of Destiny when Ben tells Locke, “You’ll understand soon enough that there are consequences to being chosen” going on to say that losing Alex was his destiny.

It's kind of like Where's Waldo?--only with a bunch of corpses!

John finds the amazingly well-labeled map to Jacob's cabin!

When Abaddon puts Locke at the top of the stairs, it evokes we get a scene from the Season 3 Ep., “Further Instructions”--only flip-flopped. It's been suggested that the scene looked like not-our Jacob’s ladder with Locke lying at the bottom of a set of stairs. In this case, Locke is at the top of the stairs, not the bottom. If you put any stock in this idea, then John is in the "God" position in the wheelchair.

When Frank’s package dropped on the island, it crushed Claire’s tent with Aaron’s crib visible beside it. Is this further symbolic fuel for the "Claire-is-dead fire?

Does she look dead or stoned? I vote for the latter. So that's what goes on in Jacob's cabin!

Hi John!

Christian, in Jacob's cabin with Claire tells John that he (John) must "move the Island."

What is the Book of Laws? There was a Book of Laws in the Plymouth Colony in 1636. Was Richard Alpert was holding the actual Plymouth Colony book?

How is Abaddon connected to the Others? Despite the fact that they appear in the same episode I'm not convinced that the is actually working with Alpert.

The helicopter pilot, Frank Lapidis’s reason for dropping the package with the sat phone?

Lapidis seems convincingly like a "good guy."

Jack is usually wrong and I think he is here, too when he assumes that they just need to follow the signal. I was mouthing " Do not follow that signal, dumbass!" As usual, Jack did not listen (to me).

Helicopter w/ Keamy & Co.  aboard heads for the Island.

The Lost following on the Internet is abuzz with the possibility that Richard Alpert is actually Locke’s father. I dunno--there's absolutely no resemblance. All we know of John's father is that he is " twice as old" as his teenage mother.

There's also been speculation that this episode didn't involve a flashback but instead portrayed Richard slipping through time, altering the course of events.

Caps from the freighter that didn't fit anywhere else~

Keamy is shown wearing a metronome(?!)

It has something to do with his now following the Secondary Protocol:

The captain provides Desmond and Sajid a method for escape. Desmond, ever the fool for love, opts to stay and "wait for Penny."

Sajid is no such fool. He escapes.

Comments

[Dan]

Ah, that's right. Shannon. She was cute. Thanks for the clarification.

[Cyn]

Nope. They killed off the brother-sister duo of Shannon and Boone. They were related by marriage but not blood and had an affair prior to the plane crash which began before the series.
Claire was pregnant for the first couple seasons and she crushed on Charlie.
Claire had the baby and they later killed Charlie. Claire is now "missing," according to the showrunners.

[Dan]

Claire was hot. If my memory serves me well, wasn't she bopping her brother? I thought I remember the plot linke leading toward this.