Writing recaps about LOST is a challenge since there are so many aspects of it – themes, characters, philosophy, etc. – that can fill up page after page on their own.  Given the limitations of this format I will concentrate on the significant events of each episode and bold any lines, quotes, or themes that relate back to the show's overarching mythology.  I will leave it up to you, dear LOST fan, to take it from there.  You know what to do.  *wink*

abc's LOST - The Substitute

Part II:  NotLocke…Not Bloody Likely

We start the island events with a smokey-cam point of view as the Man in Black, aka smokey, aka NotLocke zooms through the jungle pausing only briefly in front of a Dharmaville house that has music blaring.  Someone is an Iggy Pop fan.  Smokey continues on to a trap that is suspended high in the air.  Smokey resumes the form of NotLocke and we discover that it is Richard that he has caught in his trap – "All right Richard, time to talk."  It seems that NotLocke wants Richard to join up with him while all Richard wants to know is why NotLocke looks like original Locke.  NotLocke answers that he knew that original Locke could get him access to Jacob, being that he's a candidate and all.  Well, he WAS a candidate – being dead apparently takes him out of the running.  Richard doesn't know what any of this "candidate" business means (join the club) and NotLocke taunts him over the fact that Jacob kept this sort of stuff on the down low (no, not THAT down low).  NotLocke promises to have a better open door policy if only Richard will join him – "I would have never kept you in the dark" – making another reference to the show's ongoing theme of light versus dark that has peppered the story throughout its five year run.  Richard is not quite that easy of a date though because he takes a pass on the offer.

People seldom get second chances.

It's an interesting response by NotLocke to Richard's refusal, especially given that OtherLost may be a clue as to what exactly CAN happen when people are given second chances.  But back to the jungle where suddenly a creepy version of Peter Pan seems to appear out of nowhere.  This seems to unnerve NotLocke, which makes it all the more ominous.  The boy conveniently disappears however before Richard can see him.  Which all begs the question, who WAS that kid?  It can't be the Man in Black since he's already in NotLocke form.  Could it be some manifestation of Jacob?  Can dead island deities still manifest themselves in other forms?

Back at the four-toed statue's foot, Ben joins a tearful Ilana and tells her that NotLocke turned into a pillar of smoke and killed everyone, conveniently omitting the part about him being the one who actually killed Jacob.  Compulsive liars are funny that way.  Ilana wants to know what happened to Jacob's body and Ben informs her that NotLocke shoved it into the fire pit where it burned away completely, leaving nothing but ash.  Ilana carefully scoops some Jacob ash into a small pouch.  Mmmmkay.  Now it's Ben's turn to ask questions and he wants to know why NotLocke dragged Richard into the jungle – "He's recruiting." Does NotLocke have his own potential candidates?  Is this some sort or supernatural or cosmic face-off where each side tries to gather as many pieces as possible?  Does the side with the most pieces win?  Or is it a question of the value of each individual piece, hence why Mikhail told Kate back in S3 that she was "flawed?"  Questions, questions.

Back at the abandoned Dharmaville, we find that NotLocke is again at the same house he had stopped at earlier and the same Iggy Pop tune is still playing.  Any good LOST fan knows that things like songs and books don't appear on this show haphazardly.  That'd be too easy.  Nah, on LOST that sort of stuff always means something.  This song, as it turns out, is called Search and Destroy by Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A bomb                                                                                                     
I am a world's forgotten boy                                                                                                                           
The one who searches and destroys                                                                                                      
Honey gotta help me please                                                                                                               
Somebody gotta save my soul

This is the same house that Sawyer lived in during those three years in the '70s and NotLocke finds him inside, sitting on the floor wearing a wife-beater and dirty drawers.  And he's drunk, very drunk…drowning his many sorrows in good ol' whiskey.  The last Sawyer knew, Locke was dead…a fact that NotLocke does not dispute –" I am".   Dead or not, Sawyer doesn't discriminate when it comes to his hosting duties so he pours the two of them a shot of whiskey…then proceeds to tell NotLocke to get the hell out of his house (okay, forget those host duties).

Not one to get his feathers easily ruffled, NotLocke plays it cool and informs Sawyer that it's not his house, that it's never been his house – "You only lived here for awhile.  This was never your house." It's quite interesting that NotLocke says this as it seems to further highlight the fact that Sawyer's interlude in 1970's Dharma was exactly what Juliet said it was:  "playing house", life in a bubble if you will.  Now playtime is over Mr. LaFleur.

Who ARE you?

It's a valid question that Sawyer asks.  Sawyer may not know who NotLocke is, but he sure as hell knows who he is not.  He knows the man standing before him is not John Locke and he knows this because the real John Locke was always afraid, even when he was pretending otherwise.  "But you ain't scared," he shrewdly comments.   Even drunk, Sawyer knows what's what.  You can't con a con, right?  Score one for Sawyer.  Although, in light of the fact that NotLocke was a bit taken aback by the sight of creepy Peter Pan earlier, this assessment may not be entirely true.

NotLocke tries to sell himself as the man with all the answers, specifically the answer to the most important question of all:  "why are you on this island?" Sawyer is not too impressed though seeing as how his plane crashed, his raft blew up and the chopper he had been on had been carrying one too many.  See?  Easy peasy.  Close but no cigar says NotLocke but if Sawyer just joins him on a nice constitutional through the jungle, all will be revealed.  "Well I guess I better put some pants on."

Back again at the four toed statue, we can see that DeadLocke is still prone on the sand from when he was unceremoniously dumped out of the box in last season's finale.  Lapidus comments that DeadLocke is getting a might ripe.  Well duh…dead body, tropical heat…do the math.  Ilana emerges from the statue's foot and asks where the rest of the group went.  Sun tells her that they all headed out for the temple.  Good move says Ilana since, apparently, the temple is the safest place to be when there's a homicidal island deity on the loose.  Ilana tells them all to get ready to follow suit to the temple but Sun isn’t so sure.  I guess homicidal island deities don't scare her much.  But Ilana knows that Sun wants to find Jin and informs her that if he's still alive, he'd be at the temple.  That's good enough for Sun but first she thinks they need to bury DeadLocke.  Okay seriously, what part of homicidal island deities doesn't she get?

abc's LOST

Once at the cemetery site, Ben gives the eulogy as only he can.  "John Locke was a believer.  He was a man of faith.  He was a much better man than I will ever be…and I'm very sorry I murdered him."  Oh Ben, you crazy sociopath, you.  And I know that the moment is supposed to be sad but I had to chuckle when Lapidus uttered one of the best lines of the night – "Weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to."  Hey, that's just how they roll on the island.  R.I.P. John Locke…at least now, in some way, you're home.

Back in the jungle, NotLocke and Sawyer continue bonding during their island stroll.  NotLocke is all up in Sawyer's business but he's just a little too on the chatty Cathy side for Sawyer's taste.   Suddenly, it's creepy Peter Pan again except that this time Sawyer can see him too, which seems to surprise NotLocke.   This scene somewhat echoes the scene in S2 when Sawyer sees the black horse with Kate.  Were both things really there or does Sawyer have some special, island-connected ability we don't know about yet?

NotLocke gives chase to the boy but trips up on the jungle floor.  Peter Pan admonishes NotLocke.

You know the rules.  You can't kill him.

Now just who is the "him" in this case?  We've heard about these rules before, in S4 when Ben claimed that Widmore had broken the rules by having Alex killed.  Do the rules prohibit the killing of family members of the island leaders?  We know that the Man in Black couldn't kill Jacob himself.  He needed a loophole to do it.  Do the rules sort of function like the Secret Service, protecting the President and his immediate family?  Is Peter Pan somehow related to…someone important?  But is it to someone we've already met (yeah Jacob, I'm looking at you) or to someone we have yet to meet?  Or is Peter Pan simply referring to Sawyer, who seems to be the obvious choice.  Then again, that's exactly the reason why that option is suspect in my opinion.  In any case NotLocke, doing his very best original Locke impersonation, tells Peter Pan , "don't tell me what I can’t do" - the invocation of free will being all too clear.  Apparently homicidal island deities are not above throwing tantrums.  Who knew?  Peter Pan just shakes his head with all the weary disapproval of a parent who has long dealt with the same mischievous child and simply walks away.

Meanwhile, Sawyer is none too pleased at being dumped for a much younger guy.  He gives NotLocke 20 seconds to show or else he's putting on his walking boots.  Just then a very freaked out Richard emerges from the brush and urges Sawyer to come with him to the temple.  Sawyer has had it up to HERE with temple talk – been there, done that, and it wasn't all that.  No thanks Richard, Sawyer wants answers and NotLocke claims to have them ('cuz I'm sure that homicidal island deities wouldn't, like, LIE or anything).  Richard warns Sawyer that he shouldn't be so quick to trust a homicidal island deity who is impersonating a dead guy, which should be obvious but whatever.  Richard warns that NotLocke will kill Sawyer and everyone he cares about – all in a very beware the Ides of March kind of way – before he scurries back into the jungle just as NotLocke approaches.  And may I just say that seeing the normally unflappable Richard all scared and wide eyed is quite unsettling in and of itself.   Now it's initially unclear how much of what Richard said Sawyer took to heart, but I think that once NotLocke denied they ever even saw Peter Pan, the die was cast.  Sawyer's keeping both eyes and ears open and well he should.

Farther on in their walk to wherever the answers are, Sawyer recounts that his favorite book is Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck.  He tells the story of two men out on a walk, one of whom is apparently more trouble than he's worth to the other guy.  At some point during the walk the second guy pulls a gun on the trouble-guy and shoots him in the back of the head and hey!  What do you know?  Sawyer pulls a gun on NotLocke.  Sawyer is not as scary as Peter Pan it seems because NotLocke doesn't even blink.  Instead, he reminds Sawyer that he wants answers, answers that only he can give, and that dead men don't tell tales.  Except on this island…where the dead do talk…they talk all the time in fact.  Shoot.  Sawyer could just haul out Miles for his island version of John Edwards' Crossing Over and be done with it.  But that wouldn't be as dramatic and then we'd have two dead Lockes.  We already have OtherLocke, NotLocke and one DeadLocke in this one episode so best not to confuse the issue.

I'm trapped.

NotLocke tells Sawyer that he's been trapped for so long that he doesn't remember what it feels like to be free anymore.  This seems to play on Sawyer's current emotional state given that he's had to watch his girlfriend die like five times now.  Oh wait, was that just us?  Moving on…which is just what Sawyer and NotLocke do, the standoff being over for now.  NotLocke leads Sawyer to the edge of a seaside cliff where some very rickety ladders lead the way down.  Sawyer balks at the idea of going over the edge because, like, who wouldn't?  Yet the show must go on and so down they go, NotLocke leading the way.  One of the rope ladders breaks, sending Sawyer plummeting down the cliffside in the season's obligatory Sawyer-nearly-dies moment.  I'm pretty sure it's a requirement.  NotLocke pulls Sawyer to safety (recall the rules).  This moment, though I poke loving fun at it, does have a function.  It makes it clear that while Sawyer is in a funk of self-induced guilt at the moment, he still wants to live.

NotLocke leads Sawyer into a cave that's outfitted with a small desk with a carefully balanced scale on it…a black rock on one side perfectly counterbalanced by a white stone on the other side.  Light versus dark, black versus white, good versus evil.   Jacob versus Man in Black?  NotLocke takes the white stone and pitches it into the sea in a gesture of cosmic one-upmanship.   Homicidal island deities can be so petty.  NotLocke leads Sawyer deeper into the cave to a larger cavern where countless names are written all over the ceiling and walls.  Apparently good decorators are hard to find on craphole island.  Most of the names have been scratched out though a few remain unmarked.  We learn from NotLocke (assuming he is to be believed) that this was Jacob's cave and that he wrote all those names…names of people who have been and who currently are candidates for his job as island protector.  The names of Jarrah, Ford, and Reyes are visible right away.

Jacob had a thing for numbers.

As it turns out, the names of all the losties that Jacob visited and touched in the S5 finale are on the wall (save one):

4 Locke

8 Reyes

15 Ford

16 Jarrah

23 Shephard

42 Kwon (NotLocke claims not to know WHICH Kwon)

…and they have numbers assigned to them…and not just any old numbers, but THE numbers.  The numbers on the transmission, the numbers from Hurley's lottery, the numbers engraved on the hatch door, the numbers that have been sprinkled as easter eggs throughout the show's run.  Kate's name is conspicuously absent.  There are many other names on the wall and I must confess to not being able to make out the majority of them but there are already extensive lists available at various LOST sites.

Sawyer is naturally upset that his digits are scrawled on a wall by some guy he never even met.  We know differently.  NotLocke tells Sawyer that he most certainly met Jacob at some past point in his life, most likely as a child, at some moment of heightened vulnerability and that he finagled things so that he'd eventually end up on the island – "and as a result, choices that you thought you made were never really choices at all." Free will?  Pfft.

Three things leap out at me about this scene.  The first is that NotLocke commented that Jacob probably visited Sawyer as a child.  Now that is true from what we've seen but it seems odd that NotLocke seemed to know that the moment happened during little Sawyer's childhood.   Of the eight losties that Jacob visited only two, Sawyer and Kate, were visited as children.  The rest were all visited as adults, some even AFTER the original crash of 815.  So I'm wondering…is it possible that that was never really Jacob at all?  That it was the Man in Black appearing as Jacob instead?  Think about it.  The losties are a group of screwed up people.  Would it make sense that Jacob, a force that seemingly is counting on mankind to follow its better angels, to select THIS particular group of people?  Or does it make more sense for the Man in Black, a force that wants to prove that mankind can only ever corrupt and destroy, to pick this group?  The second thing that stands out to me is this may not be Jacob's cave at all.  Jacob seemed to take his residence in the foot statue.  So perhaps this is the Man in Black's cave and the names on the walls are his doing.  The third thing that stands out is that NotLocke is doing exactly what he claims Jacob did during his visit with Sawyer…preying on him during a vulnerable time in order to manipulate him into taking a certain course of action.  This only reinforces my growing suspicion that Jacob never "chose" the losties at all.  Jacob is only now having to play the hand he was dealt…with the deck stacked against him it seems.

According to NotLocke, Jacob wants candidates but it's all pointless because the big joke on everyone is that there is nothing special about the island and it doesn't need protection from anyone or anything.  The people whose names are all over the wall?  They were wasted for nothing.  This seems to hit home for Sawyer since he feels all the collateral damage from Jack's reset plan was all for nothing too.  NotLocke tells him he has three options: 1) do nothing and see how it plays out or 2) accept the job of island protector.  What’s curious here is that Sawyer asks what the third option is.  He was already isolating himself in a drunken stupor so why didn't he jump at the "do nothing" option?  He was well on his way to doing just that already.  Did the sight of his friends' names awaken something in him?  Once you belong to a community, can you ever really just let it go?  The third option is to leave the island…with NotLocke (or more likely, NotLocke needs someone – a willing candidate of his own- to help him leave).

Are you ready to go home?

Hell yes.

Sawyer elects the third option but right now I'm putting my money on Sawyer having a plan in the works.  I'm betting he's doing what a con man does best.  It's going to be the long con all over again.

Because there are such things as second chances.

By Veronica Villarreal

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