Episode Report Card LTG: B- | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Meet Kevin Johnson
By LTG | Season 4 | Episode 8 | Aired on March 20, 2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's old home week on Lost. Sayid confronts Michael and forces him to tell the story of how he came to be on the boat. It seems that after he left the island, he destroyed his relationship with his son by telling him that he killed Libby and Ana Lucia. Despondent, he tries to kill himself, "tries" being the operative word. He survives, only to be haunted by visions of Libby and visited by a not-yet-dead Tom (who claims that Widmore is actually behind the faked wreckage of Oceanic 815). Tom tells him that the only way he'll redeem himself for his murderous ways is to destroy the freighter, preventing the Boaties from killing everyone on the island. Michael signs on to the boat's crew, and his resolve is strengthened when he sees Keamy and the other tough guys gleefully planning mayhem. Michael sets a bomb he was given by Tom, but it fails to go off. Why? Because, as Ben tells him in a phone call, there are some innocent people on the boat who don't deserve to die -- Michael's mission is to allow those innocent people to get away before killing everyone else.
After hearing this story, Sayid smacks Michael around, drags him to the captain's office, and turns him in as a traitor.
Meanwhile, on the island, Ben convinces Rousseau to take Alex and Carl to the Temple to keep them safe from the Boaties' impending attack. But along the way, they are attacked by snipers. Who kill Carl. And then Rousseau. Noooooooo!!! Alex, who clearly learned a thing or two about survival from Ben, seems to save herself from being killed by shouting out that she's Ben's daughter (and therefore a nice hostage). Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Michael is writing something on a steno pad -- maybe it's a to-do list for all the cleaning he needs to take care of. He nearly tears up when he spots a picture of himself with baby Waaaaaaalt. He tears a piece of paper off the pad, exits the apartment, and gets into a car. He turns on the radio. Hey, it's the return of Mama Cass! Instead of "Make Your Own Kind of Music," the song is "It's Getting Better." Michael pins the piece of paper to his jacket. And then he starts the car and drives really fast down the empty streets, until he comes to some kind of dock or warehouse area. He speeds up and deliberately crashes the car into a cargo container. The screen goes black for a second, and then we see the remains of the wreckage. Mama Cass keeps on singing about how things are getting better every day. I'm not sure she would appreciate this ironic use of her music. But then again, she might be too busy choking on ham sandwiches to care. Commercials.Michael wakes up in a hospital. He's got all the tubes and braces one would expect after a major accident. There's a sleeping (or comatose) man in the next bed. A nurse enters and apologizes for waking him. We can't see her, but her voice is hauntingly familiar. "Hauntingly" is the operate word here -- when Michael focuses on her, he sees that it's Libby, bringing him an extra blanket to help him make it through the cold night. Michael screams and blinks -- when he opens his eyes, she's gone. Another nurse enters, but this time it's a real nurse and not a figment of his imagination. (Although they try to fake us out by making the nurse look something like Ana-Lucia). The real nurse lets him know that they get that he was trying to kill himself; she tells us that he didn't have any ID on him when they found him. And then she asks if he'd like her to call Walt. I'm sure he'd prefer her to call Waaaaaaalt. He asks how she knows that name -- it was who the note pinned to his chest was written to. Michael tells her not to call Walt, and she leaves him alone.
It's night time. Michael approaches a house -- there are Christmas decorations in the windows. An older black woman answers. It's Michael's mother. (Most of the damage from the accident seems to have healed, so some time must have passed.) Michael asks if he can come in, and she tells him he already knows he can't. He tells her he wants to see Walt, who is living with Mama. She tells him that whatever it was that he said to Walt, Walt doesn't want to see him.