Sam  0:07  
Welcome to Tesla watches lost the podcast within a podcast that is now a spin off podcast where I asked Tesla questions about the episodes of lost that we watched this week. I'm your host Sam. And with me is Tessa, the Brothers Karamazov to my Are you there god it's me, Margaret.

Tessa  0:26  
You mean the brothers Cara mots off shore.

Sam  0:30  
This week we are talking about the fourth set of four episodes from season two. That's right, we're into the second half of the second season. The long con, one of them maternity leave and the whole truth son is attacked Russo hands over a stranger to the swan station squad Claire remember stuff and there's gonna be another island baby. But first, let's start with the dark side squad on a lucea side and Charlie, how is this whole situation making you feel?

Tessa  1:08  
Yeah, and you and you mean Sawyer to right. In the very first episode we get Sawyer pulling a con on everybody basically stealing the guns and medical supplies. So he was hoarding stuff in the very beginning of season one. We saw him sort of slowly come out of that persona and relinquish a little bit more control to other people. Here he doubles back down, he calls everybody Kate jack lock, he plays everybody against each other and gains control of the guns. And he says it's because jack took his medication at the beginning of the episode which seems like really big turd energy for Sawyer. But I think Kate gets it right when she tells him at the end you just want everyone to hate you. I don't think so you're actually knows how to deal with people liking him. I think that he has a big deal with self punishment. And so that seems like a really good explanation for his actions side might also have a self hatred issue. We'll talk about that a little bit later, but we get to see his darker sides. Charlie, Charlie just goes full like anytime anyone needs him to do something bad he does it. It's revealed that he was the one who actually attacked sun, although nobody knows about it yet, but he does it to humiliate Locke, who seems to be getting closer to Claire. I don't know if we see really auto see his dark side. And these episodes I mean, we do know that she has one because of other stuff that's happened. Sawyer makes it seem like she's the villain in the first episode. But it's really just part of the con. Until really the end of the last episode that we watched. We don't really get to see her do very much. It's just kind of her interacting with jack and the others. They clearly don't trust her. She's still kind of living apart from her from them. But it's hard to know whether she actually has ulterior motives at this point or not.

Sam  2:55  
You know, the way you talk about Charlie really makes me think that the episode back where he and Locke had their altercation It was really a anniken Obi one high ground moment, and pretty much Charlie seems resigned to doing whatever at this point in the way that Darth Vader was right.

Tessa  3:12  
Yeah, the only thing other thing I'll say about Charlie is that Yeah, he does seem to be like, as much as I talked about how horribly the rest of them treated him last time, he seems resigned to be in that role, like I'm evil because everyone thinks I'm evil. So I'm just going to do the evil things that people expect me to do, which really aligns him a lot with Sawyer.

Sam  3:33  
Meanwhile, we have a new character Henry Gale, who shares a name with Dorothy's uncle, and supposedly crashed on the island Wizard of Oz style in a hot air balloon. Is this guy who he says that he is?

Tessa  3:50  
Oh, absolutely not. Even before we kind of get the ink the more of the inkling at the end of the last episode, we watch that he's not that he set up a trap first aid and alyssia in Charlie. Yeah, Charlie. I agreed with Russo. I agreed with Psy IID. I get that like, the fact that he may or may not be one of the others is the main like moral tension, especially inside storyline. But I he's too manipulative and, frankly, Michael Emerson who plays Henry Gale, he does he does a better job of playing an arrow villain than he did actually play an arrow villain. He pretends he's clearly doing a very good job of creating this persona of someone who has been who has crashed landed on the island who has been suffering. Who doesn't know why these people are like beating him up and keeping him in prison. But at the same time, you can see him start to manipulate the tension between jack and lock. You can see him start to play on sides and securities on on a loop. See his insecurities. This guy is definitely bad news.

Sam  4:58  
Yeah, Emerson's A great actor as an antagonist, the king's grabbed him for the main antagonist in the show evil. So that's fun. You already pretty much answered this. But where we left off, Henry Gale has indicated that the map that he drew for Ana lucea could if he were that kind of person, be a trap so that, you know the others could take them hostage and then trade. All the folks who went on the map track for him and that's how he would get free. You know, hypothetically. So Tessa is the map. A trap?

Tessa  5:42  
Yes, it is definitely a trap. Also, can we talk about how menacingly he ate those Rice Krispies? Those I'm sorry, those Dharma initiative branded Rice Krispies.

Sam  5:55  
It's definitely one of the top three cereal jokes in a television show. It's right up there with mad dogs. I can't I'm eating cereal. That's a really deep dive. If you know that joke. I don't know what the third one is. In the episode maternity leave, we once again along with the other 48 days break format. This time we get Island based flashbacks from the time that Claire was kidnapped. Now what does this episode tell us about the others?

Tessa  6:25  
It's all BF Skinner. Like I know I'm gonna keep saying that, like every single episode, but the others we what we have seen so far, and what I had thought about the others was completely incorrect because we've seen the others either. The first other we saw was Ethan Wright, who was masquerading as one of the the plane, one of the losties. We get to see him again. In some of these flashbacks where he's giving medical care to clear, we had no idea what he did to her. Previously, she had amnesia, but as she remembers, she remembers him giving her injections and giving her medical care. Now, he's living there in a Dharma bunker, like they're not out in the middle of the woods, camping. All of the people that she sees when she doesn't see that many people but she does see some they're all wearing modern clothes. They're not wearing these like gross dirty clothes with beards and so on that we saw Zeke and the other, others the other others wearing before I really thought that this was going to be a loss boys situation or a Lord of the Flies situation where the others were like, had created their own really like savage society on the other side of the island, but they're not cat. They don't seem to be castaways at all. Because Kate finds the boxes and boxes full of these costuming things like Zeke's beard is clearly glued on. And I don't know this threw me for a loop. I was really not expecting that. Also all of Claire's flashbacks. Why are all of her flashbacks more like horror movies than the rest of the last flashbacks? Like, I'm definitely getting some rosemary baby vibes from both of the episodes with her.

Sam  7:59  
Speaking of maternity, we find out that son is pregnant, which gives us the second medical miracle on the island. In case you've forgotten. Lock was the first. So two part question. First, what does this episode tell us about the island?

Tessa  8:20  
Well, the island clearly has some I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in the island. But if we're going to isolate it to this, it clearly has some kind of miraculous healing property because we do get to see Locke, who was paralyzed before he crashed on the island. We he now walks right, although I don't think any of them know that yet. Right? Besides lock. Yeah. And then we also get to see in this instance, that Jin, who what we is revealed in this episode, so to have been diagnosed, diagnosed with sterility, he's able to father a child with son, who she insists that he is the only person that she has ever slept with. We're supposed to believe her for taking that at face value. And so he has also been miraculously healed, and they are now having a baby. So one part of the island seems to be that they hear it can heal disability or some kind of illness. Now, we're also told by Rousseau and by Ethan in the flashbacks that there is also apparently an illness that is on the island like some kind of plague or quarantine double virus because they're inoculating Claire against this virus, and they say that they'll inoculate the baby and Rousseau has also repeatedly claimed that she had to kill her fellow castaways because they got sick. So I don't know like this. This island seems like it's miraculous in some ways, but also perhaps the sight of a deadly contagion.

Sam  9:52  
I think this is probably before we get to the second part of the question. This is a good place to kind of stop and put things together and see what you think. Tessa, these people have crashed on an island. That was the location of a social experiment, biological experiment, zoological experiment, whatever from the 80s. The early 80s. There is also the element of the the numbers. There is the weird electromagnetic significance of the island. There's the smoke monster, there is the the medical miracle issue there is the possible virus quarantine things that keeps popping up. There is the fact that the other legitimate plane crash on the island involved a plane that took off from a place that could not possibly be anywhere near the location of this island. I think I about covered everything just there. Oh, yeah. And there's still the others. Do you have any inkling of what's actually happening with this island? Have you started to form any kind of hypothesis? Because, again, you know how the show ends? And that's really about it. So what are your thoughts?

Tessa  11:23  
So the closest thing that I have because I really don't know, we haven't even talked about the fact that in threatening lock to get him to open the door, that Henry Gale is being beaten behind jack allows the timer to run almost all the way out in like, almost doesn't enter the numbers in time. And I have to say, I was terrified when that when that timer suddenly went all what read with the symbols on it. I didn't know what was going to happen when it counted all the way down. But that was terrifying to me. Like I did not like that I did not want that to happen. Anyway. I don't know like i i think that this show has done a really good job of creating these mysteries and asking these questions. The best I have is that this island is some kind of experiment or it's a place where people can be experimented on, or animals can be experimented on both BF Skinner style but also like, I'm feeling a real Dr. Moreau by right now with the revelation that the others are actually scientists or doctors and that their their Castaway garb is really just an act. That that's kind of where I am right now that seems to be the only way that I think this all could tie together. But again, it could really go anyplace right now.

Sam  12:44  
Yes, it could go any place. Going back to the maternity thing. What does the episode in which we find out that son is pregnant? What does it tell us about their relationship? This is the last of the four episodes and we spent a good bit of time talking about this during and after the episode. So what you got Ah,

Tessa  13:06  
so at the beginning of this episode felt like a real regression for me for Jen, because we got to the point in their relationship where he seemed like he was a good person. The last time we saw flashbacks with them. It told us he was a good person before he met her father. And we even get like the end of the episode where he's like, I don't like being told what to do. And she said, Well, I was told what to do for years. It doesn't feel very nice, does it? And he says, I guess you're right. And that seemed like a real moment of growth for Jin. But at the beginning of this episode we get we see her, we see him fly into a rage because she won't come back to the beach with him. And he tears up her garden. Now he does fix it later in the episode. So it does seem like he's actually realizing that he can't treat her this way, even when it comes from a place of fear. But to me, it really undid a lot of the work that they had been trying to do in the show to rehab Jin's character, but we also find out that perhaps she hasn't been completely honest with him either. And, to me though, to me, though, this episode really again made all of the other people on the island seem worse, just like it did in the episode with Charlie's drug addiction. Because jack and the others really treat Jaden son's relationship like it's their problem, even though there are clear elements of domestic abuse, emotional domestic abuse in their relationship. And so like when son is when jack is examining son and says like, yeah, you're definitely pregnant. He makes it seem like she really should tell him and kind of fault her for not wanting to tell him even though he knows nothing about their relationship. I just don't think jack is a very good doctor in this way. Like he doesn't like no you stay out of a woman's like relationship with her husband when she's pregnant. Like you just tell her she's pregnant dude. So like I, it made me feel like nobody was trying to protect son enough not in her life back, not not in her life before the island and not in her life after the island

Sam  15:14  
this season. The creators of the show seem to be really all about putting their cards out on the table about the different things that they want to explore the different ideas and of course, as Sawyer says, in his episode, candidate, Tiger changes stripes. And and he claims that you can't during his flashback, which features a character named Cassidy, who's played by Kim Dickens, who has just done great things on Deadwood Friday Night Lights, trim a, and was also in fear of The Walking Dead. What is the show trying to tell us about this, this idea of change, whether you can change or whether you can't, and how important that might be

Tessa  16:01  
this season. So the first season of the show really was invested in the idea that the island was a new start for a lot of these people, especially Kate, very interested in the idea of this island gives all of these people who've done some really shady things to maybe break out of that maybe try to be better people. Maybe it Charlie as well, Sawyer, everyone really gets like sort of the second chance this season is really causing a lot of these characters to relapse into their old patterns of behavior, whether it's Charlie who may or may not be doing drugs, or who at least is like, you know, being very shifty. Whether it's Sawyer, who goes back to conning people side, which we'll talk about here in a minute, Kate, who starts to become a little bit less honest, especially with jack Locke, who starts to sort of become a lot more selfish in his behavior. gin, again, who starts to retreat into old patterns of behavior. I mean, even Hurley, who we I really hated the storyline because it seems a little fat phobic, but he starts hiding food, which we at the beginning of in his episode, in season one, we saw that he eats a lot of food, like to kind of eat his feelings, and we get to see that a little bit more this season as well. So I think the point so far is that can people change? I think the show is telling us that they can't, that that when confronted with stuff that scares or angers them, they will retreat back into old patterns of behavior.

Sam  17:31  
Psy EADS episode goes toward that conclusion as well, it turns out that his first foray into torture was encouraged by none other than Kate's dad. And that's a whole nother thing, right? The synchronicity between characters the way we start seeing some of these people who play major roles in one character's life interacting with another character pre Island, it's it's a thing that has occurred earlier in the season. So side's ability to torture, another person was always there, it was innate from the day he was born. Do you buy that?

Tessa  18:18  
Absolutely not. I think that's just a way of relieving your guilt about doing something to say that it's just part of you. Anyway, I there's a lot you could say here about the US government and the ways that they have really like messed up life in the Middle East, and the ways in which they have like caused more problems than they have solved this. This show is not really that's not the scope of this show, but we do get to see quite a bit of that in side's interactions with the US military. But yeah, this since the death of Shannon, he become he relapses he, he does not trust Henry and Henry Gale, and he beats the crap out of him, to try to get him to admit that he is one of the others, which of course, now we believe he is. And when he talks to Charlie about why he says that it's in revenge, he doesn't blame Ana lucea. For Shannon's death, he blames the others. And he also tells Charlie that he has been forgotten that they tried to kill Charlie in the first season and took Claire. So in his mind, I feel like a lot of this comes from a place of grief and it comes from a place of revenge. back to what you were saying earlier.

Sam  19:23  
All right. Last question for today. Back to that whole synchronicity thing. Do you have thoughts?

Tessa  19:30  
Sawyer eats at the diner where Kate's mom works. Ah, yeah, like there's a ton of synchronicity in this season so far, and we could see more of that in the last couple of episodes. So it's a lot It is a lot. Oh, we get to see Russell's daughter too.

Sam  19:49  
But do we know?

Tessa  19:51  
I mean, it isn't officially confirmed but I love Rousseau as a character Can I just say this is a little off topic, but I was telling Sam every couple episodes, which See what is your CIO doing out there in the woods. We just see her kind of bopping along like setting traps for people shooting at people, you know, like, but what is she doing? She's just running around the woods all the time, which I guess fits her name pretty well. But we do get to see her in the Claire episode helping Claire track down this place because she's hoping to find her daughter. Claire says that she was helped by a teenage girl who had blue eyes. I'm pretty sure that she's Russo's daughter because they picked an actress who looks uncannily like her, like, like could be a younger version of Rousseau. I mean, I guess she could still not be it could be a miss direction, but it feels right. It feels like this is Alex. We're so I'm excited. I really want to know what happens with this character,

Sam  20:46  
Rousseau chores. So that's it for today. Join us next week for more Tessa watches lost. You can find me on Twitter at Sam underscore Morris nine and you can find Tessa at suela Tessa until next time, you put the lime in the coconut drink and both up

Transcribed by https://otter.ai