Lost - "Something Nice Back Home"

I’m back.

I guess I’m a grown-up now, since I now own a car, a house, and a wife – but rest assured, the Blog will continue to be a representative of young, immature, full-of-life Brian, chock-full of “that’s what she said” jokes and pictures of any female cast mates who appear scantily clad in episodes.

Of course, the one episode I wasn’t here to Blog about featured the return of Smokey, the death of Alex, confirmation of Funky Space (and perhaps Funky Time), hints at a long history between Widmore and Ben, and the introduction of Ben’s intentions to murder Penny (no!). Without having to Blog about it, I haven’t fully wrapped my head around everything – but I developed a few theories that will eventually spill into the Blog over the upcoming weeks.

The good news was that I was actually able to watch the episode live, as my honeymoon resort (Excellence Riviera Maya – I highly recommend it) carried ABC Miami. Here is the one picture of my honeymoon I’ll post on the Blog, featuring me watching Lost from my bedroom! How romantic!



But enough about last week, it’s time to focus on this week. Here’s hoping my fingers still remember how to type after my one-month hiatus…



Episode Title: “Something Nice Back Home”

Brian’s Deeper Meaning Guess: If this episode title is a reference to something else, I can’t find it on the Google thanks to the sheer number of Lost-related pages that contain these words, forcing anything else out of the top 2,580,000 search results. Looks like we’re on our own this week.

This week is a Jack-centric outing (can you believe it’s the FIRST Jack-centric episode this season? What a refreshing change of pace!), and smart money has to be on this being a flash-forward since we’ve pretty much exhausted every aspect of Jack’s past during his first eight flashbacks over the first three seasons of Lost (::shudder::Stranger in a Strange Land::shudder::).

So one has to assume that the “back home” being referenced is “back in the real world”, off the Island. However, since we’ve seen that off-Island life is less than sunshine and lollipops, I’m guessing this is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek episode title, where there isn’t really “something nice” waiting for Jack back home – but rather the same sort of hellish post-Island life that Sun, Hurley, Sayid, (and to some degree) Kate are experiencing. Who wants to bet that this is the episode that shows Jack being “haunted” by images of his father (similar to Hurley’s visions of Charlie), explaining some of his comments from last season’s finale?

This could be the episode to bridge the gap between “life is great, stick to our story” Jack (featured in “The Beginning of the End”) and the “life sucks, I wish I could kill myself” Jack (featured in “Through the Looking Glass”). Since the storyline seems to be building towards bringing us to the point of Jack and Kate’s airport meeting that closed last season – which will allow us to move forward with what happens AFTER that point, the attempts to get back to the Island, etc. – this is really one of the last opportunities to tell the story of Jack’s fall from grace where it will still have a strong emotional impact on the audience.

Aside from that, that’s as deep as we can go this week (that’s what she said!).


Episode Description: When Jack's health is seriously compromised, Kate and Juliet must learn to work together in order to save him; and something goes wrong as Sawyer, Claire, Aaron and Miles continue their trek away from Locke's camp and back to the beach. Guest starring are Ken Leung as Miles, Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, Rebecca Mader as Charlotte, Jeff Fahey as Frank Lapidus, Sam Anderson as Bernard, L. Scott Caldwell as Rose and Kevin Durand as Keamy.


Episode Breakdown: For those who didn’t see the episode preview that immediately followed last week’s episode, this might be semi-spoilerish, but since I’ve always considered those to be fair game, I’ll include the information garnered from it…



The serious compromise of Jack’s health? After months of living on an Island full of dangerous cliffs, Smoke Monsters, Others, Freightors, and threat of nasty sunburn, what is it that finally brings down our fearless hero? Appendicitis.



I know it’s a potentially fatal condition, but you have to admit, it’s pretty damn funny given all the “mysterious illnesses” and “sicknesses” we’ve had on the Island thus far. Ironically, after all the potential risks to Jack’s life over the past three seasons, it’s something quite mundane and commonplace that brings him down.

However, since we all know that Jack makes it off the Island alive and well, one of a few things must occur:

1. Juliet (who has some degree of medical training) is able to perform surgery to save Jack. It actually sounds relatively simple, if she has the right tools:

During an appendectomy, an incision two to three inches in length is made through the skin and the layers of the abdominal wall over the area of the appendix. The surgeon enters the abdomen and looks for the appendix which usually is in the right lower abdomen. After examining the area around the appendix to be certain that no additional problem is present, the appendix is removed. This is done by freeing the appendix from its mesenteric attachment to the abdomen and colon, cutting the appendix from the colon, and sewing over the hole in the colon. If an abscess is present, the pus can be drained with drains that pass from the abscess and out through the skin. The abdominal incision then is closed.

This would add another layer to the Juliet-Kate-Jack love triangle, as Jack would now owe his life to Juliet, further strengthening their bond. It’s probably the most likely scenario.


2. Miles / Charlotte (who are both fairly science-y) could step in and save the day, helping out in the surgery and proving that although they are sketchy, they’re not trying to kill our Survivors. This would further muddy the waters in determining the true intentions of the Freightors, making it another intriguing scenario.


3. It is deemed that Jack needs more advanced medical attention than he can receive on the Island, and Frank (who appears in the preview!) decides to give him a flight back to the Freighter. Of course the problem here is that the Freighter’s doctor just washed up onshore dead last week, so the Freighter probably wouldn’t be able to provide any immediate medical attention to Jack anyways… unless Frank was willing to fly Jack all the way back to the real world, which seems unlikely with four episodes left in the season. However the Oceanic Six make it off the Island, it’s clear that they all make it off together – and with Hurley stuck with Locke and Ben for at least a little while longer in the hunt for Jacob’s Cabin, unless Jack is going to writhe in pain for a few days, the appendicitis isn’t going to be the reason that he’s a part of the Oceanic Six.




In other news (also hinted at within the episode preview), the defecting members of Team Island (Sawyer, Claire, Aaron, and Miles) run into some trouble on the way to the Beach… namely Kearny and his Freighter Commandos, who somehow seem to be alive and well after their Smokey encounter… which is fairly strange.



As we’ve seen before quite definitively, Smokey is a pretty badass cloud that isn’t above vicious killing of the innocent or the perceived “guilty”. With Keamy being responsible for putting a bullet in Alex, he seems like a likely candidate for some swift Smokey justice – which is what we thought we saw last week.

So what gives?

Perhaps this all ties into Ben’s claims that he is a “good guy” and that he doesn’t kill innocent people (see: his message to Michael on the Freighter). Although he seemingly “called” Smokey, maybe he only requested that Smokey simply lift the Freighter Commandos away to provide Ben and Co. with an opportunity to escape. It gives him an out, but allows him to keep his whacked out conscience clear.

…or maybe Smokey did actually kill all them, and what we see in the preview are simply Island images / manifestations of Smokey, and they really were all killed last week. Less likely, but always a possibility.


Other than that, there isn’t much to preview about this episode. The guest stars are exactly as expected (all four Freightors – Frank, Miles, Charlotte, and Faraday), Rose and Bernard (who have gotten a surprising amount of screen time this season, don’t you think? Put them on death watch), and the possibly dead Keamy. But that’s okay with me – at this point, with so many awesome storylines moving forward with breakneck speed, the fewer filler side-characters the better. We probably won’t even return to the Sayid / Desmond on the Freighter storyline this week, leaving us with simply Jack dying / the true intentions of the Freightors / the search for Jacob’s Cabin / Keamy’s gun-filled encounter with our Survivors in the jungle this week.



I’m exhausted just thinking about it. It’s good to be back!

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Happy Losting!