Season two's first episode, "Man of Science, Man of Faith", begins with a unique teaser that is a Lost trademark. The episode opens with a series of audible beeps. A man's eye opens, he springs out of bed and goes quickly to an antiquated computer where he types something and presses an execute button. He then starts his day by listening to music, exercising and making some form of protein shake; all seems normal (save for some strange injection the man gives himself). Then something happens. You hear an explosion and the man runs to a closet to grab a rifle. He checks a periscope and sees Jack and Locke peering down the shaft of the hatch.
The season two premiere picks up right where the season one finale left off. Undeterred by the broken ladder that would have taken them down the shaft, Locke wants to be lowered down into the hatch. Despite Jack's objections, and Hurley's pleas (in case you forgot a certain sequence of numbers was on the hatch door), Kate and Locke decide to descend into the hatch. Locke begins to lower Kate down using a cable tethered to a tree. Part of the way down Kate yells "Stop! I think there's something down here." Suddenly the same bright beam of light Locke saw when he pounded on the hatch door during season one is turned on. Locke calls out for Kate, but she's gone.
Jack's flashback in this episode is centered on a patient he's trying to "fix." The patient, Sarah, was involved in a head on collision (with the father of Jack's fellow Oceanic survivor Shannon). Seeing Jack's usual realist approach to things when he tells Sarah about her prognosis, Jack's father suggests to his son that it might not be a bad idea to offer hope once in a while. Jack is reluctant towards taking that approach, but when Sarah is about to undergo surgery, she tells Jack "I know I'm not going to be dancing anymore. I can still roll around at my wedding." This strikes a nerve in our hero doc, and he declares to Sarah that he will fix her.
Jack is not happy with how the surgery went, and is releasing some stress by running steps in a stadium. He notices another man in the stadium also running. Jack twists his ankle and stops. The man approaches Jack, and they talk for a few minutes. Jack tells the man about what he thinks of as his failure to fix Sarah, and the man tells Jack about how he is training for a race around the world. As they part ways, the man tells Jack, "I'll see you in another life." This line would be repeated often in Lost, both literally and in theme. Jack returns to the hospital to break the news to Sarah that she will be paralyzed from the waist down from the rest of her life. Upon hearing this, Sarah asks him, "Then how come I can wiggle my toes?"
Meanwhile, back on the island, Jack decides to go back to the hatch. When he arrives, Locke is nowhere to be found. Jack lowers himself into the hatch and gives us our first glimpse of what's inside. There's a strange mural that included Hurley's numbers and the number 108 (the sum total of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42). He gets near a wall and notices that the key around his neck is being drawn to the wall as if there's some sort of magnetic pull. Jack notices a surveillance camera mounted in the corridor and suddenly the Mama Cass song that opened this episode once again blares. Jack ducks into the control room where he notices computer and electronic equipment that looks as if it were made circa 1980. He walks to the computer and looks as if he's about to type something when Locke appears behind him and says, "I wouldn't do that." Jack whirls around and says "Where's Kate? What the hell did you-," before he notices there's someone behind Locke, pointing a gun at him. Jack draws his own gun, but the man orders he put it down. As the man comes into view, Jack looks stunned. It is the man he met at the stadium. Thus began our introduction to someone who would become one of the most beloved characters Lost ever produced, the much adored Scotsman Desmond Hume.
You might be wondering why, if this is supposed to be a recap of the entire second season, am I spending so much time on the premiere? The answer is an easy one. Not only was this the highest rated episode in Lost's history, but it was also by far my favorite of the six season premieres. Man of Science, Man of Faith also was a great set up episode for many of the show's prevailing themes.
Season two pushed us farther down the road of Science Vs. Faith as was beautifully displayed in one of my favorite Locke Vs. Jack scenes during season two's third episode, Orientation.
Locke: Why do you find it so hard to believe?
Jack: Why do you find it so easy?
Locke: It's never been easy!Season two started Lost on a path of divided factions as well. It's sometimes overlooked but important to point out that once the raft crew set sail, it would become rare that the survivor camp would ever be one cohesive unit. This frequently resulted in faction-centric episodes like we saw in the beginning of season two. While the first episode gave us the "what happened next" for the hatch group, it gave us no insight on the fate of the rafties. We would have to wait until the second episode, Adrift, to see Michael, Sawyer and Jin.
Jin, having dove off the raft when the Others came for Walt, is nowhere to be found. Sawyer and Michael, after bickering over who's to blame for their predicament and having a run in with a shark (who, in case you hadn't noticed, had a Dharma Logo on its body), drift back onto the island. Upon washing ashore they are confronted by Jin who, after running out of the jungle with his hands tied behind his back, speaks one of the few English words he knows: Others. The episode closes with what appears to be natives coming out of the jungle towards our raft guys.
Now that we've gone over where season one left off, let's talk about where season two took us. We found out early on in season two that the tail section of the plane had crashed on a different part of the island, and we met some new survivors that would be referred to in Lost Fandom as the tailies. One of the most universally loathed characters to appear on the show, Ana Lucia, was the leader of this group. Played by the always scowling Michelle Rodriguez, Ana Lucia was a "me against the world" type of leader. A former cop turned murderer in her pre-island story, Ana did little to make herself likable after the crash. One neat "lives intersecting" tidbit we got from Ana's flashback was how she came to be on Oceanic 815. A bit lost after having quit the police force, she had a random encounter in an airport with none other than Christian Shephard. Them both being lost souls, Christian convinced Ana to accompany him to Sydney. We also learn during this flashback that Christian drunkenly knocked on someone's door demanding to his daughter. Hmm, who could that be? Ultimately though, Anna Lucia's run on the show was short, and I'm thankful for that. She and another survivor, Libby, were killed by Michael in one of the best twists the show ever gave us. More on that in a bit.
The aforementioned Libby provided us with one of the saddest but wonderfully acted moments on Lost. Hurley had taken a liking to Libby, and they were preparing for their first date when she was murdered by Michael. Hurley's pain was beautifully portrayed by Jorge Garcia. The scene where Ana and Libby were buried reaffirmed Hurley's place as the heart of the show.
Mr. Eko was an interesting taily. A giant of a man, Eko was extremely spiritual. We learned that violence was no stranger to this man, and he was fearless. This was no more apparent than when he stared down the smoke monster, giving us our best glimpse to date of this mystery. It stared back at Eko and appeared to flash glimpses of his life. We also learned that Eko had ties to the island, his brother having been on the ill fated Nigerian drug running plane that Locke and Boone discovered. However, as with most things on Lost, that would not be what it seemed. Indeed it was Eko that was the drug runner, but in a cruel twist of fate, his brother Yemi, a priest, ended up on the plane.
Fans got a happy ending with one tail survivor being Rose's husband Bernard. Her resolve paid off as they reunited. We were even treated to a Rose and Bernard-centric flashback this season, where we see their first encounter, their courtship, and the sad news that Rose has terminal cancer. Well, I suppose I should say had terminal cancer, as the island seems to have cured her.
We said goodbye to another original survivor this season as well, with Shannon being accidentally shot by Ana Lucia. This happened early in the season while Shannon kept seeing a water logged Walt pop up randomly on the island. This probably seems like a key piece of information I'm glossing over, but I have my reasons that I will talk about in my overall show recap. I don't want to spoil anyone that hasn't gone beyond season two yet.
The flashbacks this season gave us more insight on our heroes' pre-island lives. As mentioned before we learned how Jack met his wife and saw the deterioration of their marriage. We learned what Kate's original crime was, murdering the man she believed was her step father, only to learn later that he was her real father. Locke, sadly, continued to be the easily conned man, ruining his relationship with (Peg Bundy?!) Helen because he was unable to let go of his need for his father's acceptance. In a rare bit of political statement from the show, we discover that it was the American forces in Iraq that helped shape Sayid into the torturer he became. For those of you interested in the Jin/Sun love story, you were undoubtedly satisfied with the story of how they met, and later troubled by Sun's infidelity. Charlie remained one of my personal favorites, but he and Claire took a bit of a back seat at times this season. They had strife between each other when Claire found out about Charlie's heroin statue, but overall their characters didn't serve much to the season's central story.
The on island story this season focused largely on the hatch and the history behind it. Through an orientation video we learn that the hatch is one of a series of stations on the island built by a group called the Dharma Initiative. The station our survivors first found, The Swan Station, has a series of numbers (yep, those numbers) that must be entered into a computer every 108 minutes. Desmond explains to them that they're "saving the world." We find out in the season two finale that this was how it was explained to him. Locke immediately takes to the task of pushing the button, but Jack of course is hesitant.
The hatch presented a different sort of life for our survivors, and created yet another splinter in the group. Some of them decided to remain on the beach while other stayed in the hatch. After having made the trek from one side of the island to the other, the tailies unite with the middle section, and Jin, Sawyer and Michael are reunited with their friends. Michael's stay would be short lived, however, when he steals a gun from the hatch and takes off looking for Walt. Jack, Sawyer and Locke go to find him, only to run into the bearded grungy man that took Walt in last season's finale. He tells them that they can turn around and go back to their camp, and as long as they don't cross a proverbial line drawn in the sand, the Others will leave them alone. When Jack challenges him, claiming his group outnumbers grungy man's, the bearded one yells for his people to light their torches, revealing a much larger group than Jack had anticipated. Jack is then shown just how much of an upper hand they have when they bring a bound and gagged Kate out of the jungle. Against Jack's wishes, she'd followed them to look for Michael and had been captured by the Others. They agree to release her in exchange for the weapons Jack, Locke and Sawyer had.
The feeling of dejection after being bested by the Others was short lived however when, in the episode titled "One Of Them," we meet Henry Gale. Rousseau tells Sayid she had trapped one of the Others in one of her nets. The man claims to be a man named Henry Gale, from Minnesota who, while flying in a hot air balloon, had crashed with his wife on the island. They bring him back to the hatch and he is locked in the armory. Sayid interrogates him and the man, seemingly terrified, tells him that he and his wife crashed on the island, she got sick and he buried her. Sayid doesn't believe him, and Henry stays locked in the armory while they decide what to do next. Eventually Ana Lucia makes Henry draw a map to where he buried his wife's body. Ana, Sayid and Charlie follow the map and do in fact find a grave site and a crashed balloon.
While Ana and company are off finding the grave, Locke is alone in the hatch with Henry. Strange static starts to emit from the speakers in the hatch and a large blast door comes down, confining Locke and Henry to just a part of the hatch. Locke lets Henry out to help him with the door, but Locke's leg gets pinned under it. The timer starts beeping and Locke tells Henry that he has to climb through the air ducts and input the numbers. Henry does this, the door comes up and Henry tends to Locke. Just as this happens, however, the group that went to the grave site returns. Sayid informs Henry that yes, he found his balloon, and he dug up the grave and found two people in the ground. One was the real Henry Gale.
Michael Emerson was so brilliant in this role. He played the mind games of Henry Gale (or whatever his real name is) perfectly. Emerson single handedly transformed the view of our survivors' nemesis from backwoods hillbillies to cunning manipulators. Henry would later inform Locke that he never input the numbers, he simply let it countdown to zero and it reset by itself. Was this true? Perhaps not, but it planted a seed of doubt in Locke's head that would lead to the events of season two's finale. Oh, John Locke. You poor, gullible bastard.
Following the confirmation that Henry Gale is in fact an Other, Jack and Kate go once more to the spot where they'd met beardy in hopes of trading Henry for Michael and Walt. The Others don't come, but Michael, dazed and dehydrated, appears out of the jungle. They bring him back to camp, and he informs them that he found the Others' camp, that they're not well armed and can be taken. This all ends up being a ruse when, at the end of "Two For The Road," Michael kills Ana Lucia and Libby, unlocks Henry from the armory, and shoots himself in the arm. He does this all based on a promise by the Others that if he frees Henry and brings them certain survivors they requested, they will let him and Walt leave the island.
Sayid becomes suspicious of Michael after he insists that it must only be himself, Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley (the people the Others demanded he bring with him) that goes after the Others. He tells Jack and together they devise a plan that would allow for Michael to continue thinking he has the upper hand. This plan got an even bigger advantage when a boat washed up near our survivors' beach.
This brought us to the season two finale, "Live Together, Die Alone." Desmond, who disappeared into the jungle earlier in the season, washed ashore in the sail boat. He said he'd been sailing for weeks and still ended up right back where he started. In the finale we find out about Desmond's pre-island life. We see him dishonorably discharged from the British Army, and confronted by his estranged girlfriend Penny's father who tells Desmond that he intercepted all of his letters to Penny. He offers Desmond a large sum of money to stay away from Penny. In flashbacks we see Desmond some time later in the U.S., where he meets Libby in a chance encounter at a coffee shop. He tells her that he wants to enter an around the world sailing race sponsored by Charles Widmore (Penny's father). Libby offers her late husband's sail boat to Desmond to run the race in. In a recall back to Jack and Desmond's meeting in the stadium, we find out that Penny found him there and confronted him, asking why he was running away. He told her he was going to win the race to regain his honor.
The sailing race ended for Desmond when he was marooned on the island. He's brought into the hatch by a man named Kelvin, whom you might remember as one of the American soldiers in Sayid's flashback. Kelvin convinces Desmond that he must stay in the hatch to avoid getting infected by some mysterious disease he claims is on the island. We also learn that, according to Kelvin, the purpose for pushing the button is an electromagnetic anomaly on the island that builds up, and the pressure has to be released every 108 minutes. There's a failsafe key that can be turned, but he claims this would be like blowing up the dam.
One day Desmond sees a tear in Kelvin's HAZMAT suit as he goes outside. Desmond follows him out to find that Kelvin has fixed Desmond's sailboat. Infuriated, Desmond tackles Kelvin and during their struggle, accidentally kills him. Desmond races back to the hatch to discover he's neglected the button for too long and the speakers are blaring "System Failure." Everything starts to shake but he is able to input the numbers eventually and stop the chaos.
The final flashback shows a drunk, depressed Desmond in the hatch with a gun. He is holding the Charles Dickens book Our Mutual Friend, a novel he earlier claimed he was saving to be the last book he ever read. He opens it and a letter from Penny falls out. In it she explains that she hid the letter there knowing he would find it in a moment of great desperation. The letter ends with Penny saying, "All we really need to survive is one person who truly loves us. And you have her. I will wait for you. Always."That letter broke every fan girl's little heart, I'm sure. It sent Desmond into a rage knowing he was stuck in the hatch seemingly forever. That is the moment that Locke began to beat on the hatch door in season one. In a spectacular twist of fate only Lost could provide, Locke's persistent banging provided Desmond the same sort of hope that Desmond's turning the light on for Locke provided him.
The on island portion of the finale deals with another division of two camps. We have Locke who, at his spiritual weakest, is convinced that the button means nothing. Eko, on the other hand, now believes the button is of the utmost importance and refuses to let Locke destroy it. Locke tells Desmond that the button is all a mind game and that they're going to find out for sure. Together they stage another lock down and Eko is forced out of the control room. Despite his attempts to get back in, which included using some of the left over Black Rock dynamite, Eko could not penetrate the blast door.
Desmond, meanwhile, began to have second thoughts. When Locke told him about the computer printout he and Eko had found at the other Dharma station, Desmond began feverishly reading it. He asked Locke what day his flight had crashed and when Locke told him it was September 22, 2004, Desmond told him, "I think I crashed your plane." Indeed he had, as that was the same date that he'd killed Kelvin and returned to the hatch with the time having run out to push the button. This convinced Desmond that the button was necessary, but Locke was still stubbornly refusing to accept it. When Desmond tried to enter the numbers, Locke smashed the computer.
As the time ticked to zero, Desmond once again said "I'll see you in another life, brother," and raced to turn the failsafe key. At that time Eko, who'd found a way back into the room, saw John. Every metal object began flying towards the wall and John told Eko, "I was wrong." Desmond inserts the key, says "I love you Penny," and turns it. The sky turns a brilliant shade of purple and there is a loud humming. In regards to the fate of the people inside the hatch? Well, you'll have to wait until season three to find that out.
The other group, which consisted of Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer and Michael, headed to where Michael claimed the Others camp was. Sayid, Jin and Sun left in Desmond's boat to find the camp faster and warn Jack. One of the more creepy images from the show was first seen in the finale. The boat crew sailed by a strange statue that Sayid accurately said "I don't know what is more disquieting, the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes."They eventually found the camp Michael had described, but it was deserted. Sayid knew that Jack was being lead into a trap.
Sayid's discovery was too late, as the island trekking crew were lead into a large clearing by Michael where they began to be hit with tranquilizer darts. They are brought to a dock where they once again see the man previously known as Henry Gale. He tells Michael that they got more than they bargained for with Walt, and that the two of them were free to go. They then told Hurley that he was to return to his side of the island and inform his camp that they were never to come back there. The Others said that Jack, Kate and Sawyer were coming with them, and hoods were placed over their heads. Their fate would also remain unknown until season three.
The last scene of season two was a strange one for many reasons, some yet unknown to those of you who have not gone beyond season two. Our last Lost images were of two men, seemingly in the arctic, playing chess. One of the men notices a computer's red light blinking and saying that an electromagnetic anomaly was detected. They scramble to make a phone call. Penelope Widmore answers and the men tell her, "We found it."
All in all I thought season two was a successful one. More mysteries were created, and the show clicked mostly on all cylinders. I thought the introduction of the tailies was a somewhat unnecessary one. I enjoyed the Rose and Bernard reunification and I thought Eko was an interesting character to play off of Locke, but some of it seemed to distract from some of the survivors we had already come to know and love. Charlie became too much of a sidekick for my taste, and Claire was mostly an afterthought. Sawyer, as always, had his moments, but I don't think he shined as much in season two. Michael Emerson was a wonderful piece of casting that would come to pay dividends for the future of the show. I don't think it quite lived up to the standard set in season one, but it was close and still provided a great bit of entertainment to a wide spectrum of viewers.
For those of you groaning at the length of this post, with a smile on my face I say deal with it. The remaining season posts will undoubtedly be shorter (I'm contemplating posting about the series finale in a separate post entirely). Season two put Lost on a path that I felt required more detail. Science against religion, good against evil, man against nature, all of these things were displayed in season two. The writers gave us more themes of manipulation, redemption and betrayal that would become critical in the future telling of the story. Season three's post will be an interesting one to write, as the show was a very conflicted show for me in that season. But that's for another day. For now, I thank you if you made it to the end of this post. Your time and your attention are much appreciated. Until then, I hope all of you Desmonds find your Pennies, and all of you Pennies find your Desmonds.
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