Messages in a Bottle: LOST Thoughts #3

This week's episode ("Maternity Leave") brings us closer to solving some of the mysteries that have laid dormant the past year: namely, what happened to Claire during the two weeks between her abduction at the hands of Ethan and her mysterious reappearance; how Rousseau got those nasty scratches on her arm; and what happened to Rousseau's daughter Alex. Plus, we inch closer to clearing up who and what The Others truly are.

Aided by clinical psychologist Libby, Claire begins to remember fragments of what happened during her abduction and experiences flashes of memory--a teenage girl, blue knitted baby booties, a syringe, a nursery--which culminate in a complete memory of Ethan injecting her with some sort of vaccine--a vaccine which has those cursed numbers on the label, much like the bottles that Desmond took from the hatch before he skeddadled (speaking of which, where is Desmond?) The memory compels Claire to seek out Rousseau's help in locating the facility where she was kept and she and Kate and Rousseau soon embark on the island's version of a girls' slumber party.

One of the creepiest moments in this week's episode (and, believe me, there were quite a few) was when Ethan turns on the mobile in Aaron's would-be nursery as Claire looks on lovingly. The mobile--made up of airplanes (cough, cough) begins to play "Catch A Falling Star," the very same song which Claire had wanted the potential adoptive parents to sing to Aaron and which her mother had sung to her. Coincidence? Hardly.

Did anyone else notice the seriously creepy door marked "Escape Hatch" in the Dhama station? Claire kept walking by it nonchalantly, but it scared the hell out of me to see those words marked out in what appeared to be black tape. Where on earth would that door lead to? And why was it marked in that fashion? (If you didn't catch it, check out the screencap, above, courtesy of my bro, whom I forced to rewatch the ep about six times so he could see it.)

While Claire and Rousseau investigate the nursery, Kate unearths some clues in the facility's lockerroom. Opening one of the lockers, Kate discovers familiar-looking rags belonging to the Others and even more promising, in a case secreted at the bottom of the locker, a bottle of theatrical glue and a fake beard (!). Yes, those Others may not be all that they seem... Speaking of which, we get our first glimpse of the Sea Captain (a.k.a. Zeke) without his fake dirty beard and hobo costume in one of Claire's flashbacks, where he chastises Ethan for not finishing the list before bringing Claire in. "What am I supposed to tell him? You know what he's gonna do when he finds out?" Oooooh, a new mystery... I guess Sea Captain isn't the highest on the Others totem pole after all.

Poor Rousseau. She's still desperate after sixteen years to find her daughter Alex and the audience learns that it was Alex Rousseau who helped Claire escape Ethan and the Others. So Alex is alive after all, she's apparently "good" and "not like the Others," and she wasn't the girl who blew up Michael's raft at the end of Season One. Think we'll see her again? I think we can count on that.

The Other. He's definitely not a good guy, despite what he might say. He's got exceptionally good hearing (even with the thin walls in the hatch) and is processing everything that our castaways say to use it against them. This week he begins a divide-and-conquer approach, trying to create doubt in Locke's mind that he has any say over what goes on in the camp, since Jack seems to be deciding everyone's fate. Come on, Locke, you're not that dumb! Don't fall for his Other mind tricks! Meanwhile, Eko takes a break from chopping down trees to speak to "Henry Gale." Eko apologizes to him for killing the two men who tried to drag him off into the jungle overnight and says that he is back on a path of righteousness. Taking his HUGE knife, he slices off his little beard decoration as an act of penance. (Did anyone else think for a split second that, when he held up the knife, Eko was going to slit his own throat? Whew.)

Lost Literary Allusion of the Week: "The Brothers Karamazov." According to Wikipedia, the book, like most things on Lost, has more than one meaning: "On the surface it is the story of a patricide in which all of the murdered man's sons share varying degrees of complicity but, on a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of the moral struggles between faith, doubt, reason, and free will." Gee, there's that pesty free will motif that keeps popping up time and time again on the show.

Next episode: Sayid and Ana-Lucia go looking for Henry Gale's missing balloon, Bernard and Rose finally surface for some air, and Sun asks Sawyer for a pregnancy test.