Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Will Be Your Father Issues
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 13 | Aired on 04.15.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.When you're that Korean-woman-who-is-not-Sun and you go to rent an apartment for you and your little boy who is Miles, and the microwave clock reads 3:16, you take the place, even though it is apartment number 7, which seems to mean nothing. What gets me is that you do so, even though your little boy sees dead people (okay, hears a dead person) in apartment 4. You don't let that stop you from signing on the dotted -- because the microwave is included, and hey, your husband is "out of the picture." So, on top of the daddy issues the poor kid already has, you totally scar him for life by moving into that creepy-ass complex, but whatever, right? The rent is only $200 a month, so maybe you'll have some money to leave him for therapy. In your will.
Your little boy grows up to have three piercings in his chin, in addition to all the ones in his brow and ears (including cartilage) and wherever else. I did not inspect his nekkid form or anything, okay? He supports himself by taking money from the grieving, in exchange for telling them their loved ones are at rest and know they were loved, even if they aren't and/or didn't. Although to be fair to the kid, and your mothering, I've seen him give the money back when he's felt convicted that taking it was wrong. It won't matter to you for too long either way, because now you're the one who's dying. Your hair is falling out and some angry-looking white lady is caring for you. Your son, with the piercings and the spiky hair (and is that a white skunk streak in back?), takes forever to visit, but once he finally does, he holds your hand -- at least until you refuse to tell him the truth about his dad, even after all these years, which just sucks, Ma.
One day in 2004, this hot woman, Naomi, meets your son, tests his super powers and offers him $1.6 million to come on a freighter with her, a bunch of bloodthirsty commandos, a pretty redheaded anthropologist, and a mad scientist named Daniel. They're going to an uncharted island, where they're looking for a murderous madman with a soft spot for babies and mommas. They're doing so on behalf of a possibly-murderous industrialist who is someone else's daddy issues, but that's a story for another time.
Once your son and his questionable friends arrive on the island, the madman pushes this frozen donkey wheel in order to escape the commandos, and then a bunch of the people who were left on this island, including your son (who, thank goodness, has removed those piercings because there's this whole problem with magnets) starts jumping through time and oh, his nose bleeds, because he was there before so he's gonna die, mothah, at least until this bald guy (with big-ass daddy issues of his own) puts the wheel back on track.
This causes your boy to be stuck living as an adult in 1977, which is when he was a baby, living with you and his old man, on that same island. He ends up working with a con man who also has -- say it with me -- daddy issues, as part of the security force on this weird-ass island, for this outfit called the Dharma Initiative, and guess who's one of their higher-ups? Your (ex) husband, but you knew that already, because you were there.
So, on this island, back in 1977, that murderous madman? He's only a kid. Twelve or thirteen. Maybe you knew him back in the day. He's that kid he got shot, by an Iraqi dude who had also traveled through time and recognized him in his pre-Hitleresque form, remember? The problem is, the murderous madman was just a nice, little, abused, motherless boy with horrible daddy issues of his own at the time of the shooting. And yet he was going to die from the gunshot wound. So your son's con-man boss works in concert with his current old lady and his former old lady to get the little boy to these weird woods-dwelling Others who have some mystic ability to tap into the island's powers or whatever in their temple, and they heal the kid by doing something that will take away his innocence (which, let's not think about that, because ick) and some of his memory.
The only problem is -- the kid's abusive dad is not completely useless and notices his son is missing. And Dharma has cameras set up all over the island, so there's evidence that con-man boss (and his ex) secreted the kid out to this cult or whatever. Your boy promises to destroy that evidence for con-man boss, but is interrupted (and nearly caught in the act) when he is tapped by his con-man boss's hippie-boss to join some "Circle of Trust" which is so not going to end up being the "Circle of Life," because he ends up delivering a dead body... To your ex. And he leaves the tape in the player, which could be bad news for his con-man boss, because their co-worker Phil finds it. Fortunately for con-man boss, Phil is stupid and lets con-man boss know that nobody else knows about the tape yet, and so con-man boss knocks him out, while his current old lady goes to get some rope to tie up Phil.
Meanwhile, your son is accompanied on his corpse-delivery run by this big guy with curly hair who landed on the island in 2004, left it, and returned in 2007, but also ended up stuck in 1977. He, too, had major daddy issues, once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away. His own father left him when he was 10 and only returned once curly-haired-dude was an adult who won the lottery, but curly-haired-dude is a good man, and a forgiving man, and worked through his daddy issues with his actual daddy, which is the best way.
By the way, curly-haired-dude actually does see dead people, and in addition to talking to them, he even gets in a game of chess with them from time to time. He says his superpower is cooler than your son's, and he spends a lot of time writing Stars Wars fan-fic that he thinks he's going to submit to George Lucas as a script, so he ought to know. Of course, he's spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, so who knows? Regardless, he sees the daddy-issues you failed to respond to in your boy -- and he encourages your son to try to get to know his father.
Your adult son finally meets the father you wouldn't tell him anything about. And yeah, maybe he's a country-music loving douche who gets corpse deliveries, but he's nice enough to this young man he can't possibly recognize as his son, even though they share the same name, because to him, his son is just a baby, waiting back in his cabin, probably with you, ma. And your man seems to have a particularly tender love for your baby. He gets him up in the morning and lets you sleep in. He reads to him at night after a hard day's work. Not too shabby for a '70s dad with a big job. Your big boy sees this, and cries, but what do you care, ma? You had your big secrets you had to take to your grave, which is dumb, because one day your big boy will probably visit it and find them out, anyhow, but I digress.
Ma, if you'd just told your kid whatever the truth is about his dad, well, maybe it wouldn't have changed anything, because to hear your boy tell it, whatever happened, happened. So maybe he still would have gone looking for him anyhow. But maybe he would have gone with the new set of players who claim they're going to win, and who weren't going to pay him to go to the island; they just want him to choose to do the supposed right thing. But in 2004, your kid lies to himself that he just wants money, so he won't go with these new players, who are totally going to end up on the island, anyhow. Maybe that's your fault, or maybe he's just miffed that they made him drop his fish taco. It's too soon to tell.
Back in 1977, your kid's on the island, probably thanks to the wrong people, and he's fallen in with all kinds of weirdoes who don't appreciate his sharp sense of humor, and can't digest the concept of a fixed time loop if their lives depended on it. He must feel like he doesn't have a friend in the world, until your ex tells him he "needs" him. Of course, he only "needs" him to go with him to the dock and greet the mad scientist your boy rode over on the freighter with in 2004. My point, Ma, and I do have one, is: you lose, anyhow. If you'd just told your kid the truth, at least he'd have been prepared for some of this crazy-ass shit.
Want more? The full recap starts right below! We spend the next hour caught up in the maelstrom that is Miles Straume's daddy issues, which are all caught up in everyone else's daddy issues, so put on your life jackets, hold on tight, and prepare to get dizzy. Currently on Lost there is no Previously, on Lost, but there's always a Previously, on Lost on TWoP. Now take a deep breath, because we're diving in.We open on a close shot of an older model microwave oven; its clock reads 3:16. As a woman's hand opens and closes the oven door, a man's voice says that "it comes fully equipped." If it didn't, you'd have to install your own cavity magnetron, Ma'am, and you know what a bitch that can be. The camera zooms out and we see the man is talking to Lara (played by Leslie Ishii). You know who I mean, the Asian woman who never looked anything like Sun, except for being female, of Asian extraction and brunette. The one who was sharing Dr. Pierre Chang's bed in the season premiere and slept in while he got up with their baby at 8:15 AM -- the baby who was never, ever supposed to be the redheaded, blue-eyed Charlotte Staples Lewis, no matter what the crackheads in the forums thought, because that baby was always supposed to be our very own Miles Straume. Like the rest of the internet, I was all set to crow that I had "called it" (don't you hate that) during the season premiere, except that it seems I didn't call it in writing until episode 5-4 (even though I totally called it in my living room that first night; you should have been here; it was so wicked pissa, like calling things often is).
The woman runs the water in the sink as the man tells her the place is "a steal at $400." Instead of responding, she looks out into the hallway and back at the landlord (per IMDB.com, the character's name is Trevor, and he's played by Tim De Zarn), so he asks if she has to check with her husband. She says, "It's just me," and then a little boy's voice calls out, "Mommy," so Mommy makes her oh-shit face. It's wee Miles (Lance Ho) and he is precious. He asks for a quarter for the vending machine, because his love of money has been a lifelong affair. Lara reminds him she told him to wait by the pool. What mother tells their little kid to wait by a pool? Alone. I mean what is he -- seven or eight years old, tops? The landlord gets shirty with her. "I thought you said it was 'just me'?" She meant her husband is "out of the picture." It's just her and her son. The landlord doesn't know about renting to them. Most of the other tenants don't like noise (so some do?). Is that even legal -- to refuse to rent to a family? Anyhow, Lara promises that her boy is very quiet, so the landlord caves, provided she'll pay two months rent up front. She gives Miles his quarter, and he runs off. When the landlord raises his eyebrows, his mother reminds him to walk, instead.