Lost, Ep 11: Enter 77
This week’s episode of Lost rocked: best of the season so far. Kate, Sayid, Locke, and Rousseau all headed deep into the jungle and discovered Patchy from “The Cost of Living” and his house (and cows… and cat… and horse… and iced tea) while on the beach, Hurley and Co. challenged Sawyer to a game of table tennis. No word on the Others or Jack, but it was still a great episode to see how the other half are living on their side of the island. I will admit I yelled, “Nooooooo” out loud when Sun told Sawyer he couldn’t use nicknames anymore (those are always highlights for me) so thank goodness it’s only for a week.

In the flashback, we see how Sayid was captured by a man whose wife Sayid had tortured, even though Sayid insists that he is innocent. After days of torture, she tells him a story that finally makes him confess. What does the flashback have to do with the present-day story? Is it the fact that Mikhail is lying about who he is at first?

Highlights:
-Sawyer calling Paulo “Zorro”
-Sawyer looking at Nikki and saying, “Who the hell are you?” HAHAHAHA
-Sawyer calling Jin and Sun “Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon”
-Hurley’s first point against Sawyer, hahaha!
-the fact that Locke is playing computer chess in the next room, while Sayid is playing a mental chess game with Mikhail in the main room
-the wife’s story about the cat trapped in the box with the firecrackers; it was upsetting and haunting

Lowlights:

-Paulo and Nikki
-Paulo calling Sawyer “Heelbeely”
-the thought of all those Dharma Initiative secrets at their fingertips… gone.

Did You Notice?:
-this is the second time Paulo has been associated with a toilet. Seems a fitting association to me. -the gang must have been going north following the west coast of the island. On the blast door map that Inman was drawing, the Flame station is located just northwest of the Swan station.
-Mikhail refers to the Others as “the hostiles,” which is how Rousseau refers to them.
-during the table tennis tournament, Sceve appears to be standing behind Hurley
-Sayid and Locke both think Mikhail was sent out there when they lost communications, which might have been when the sky turned purple. A few episodes ago, Tom actually says to Ben that they’d lost communications when the sky turned purple, and he was about to say something else when he was cut off… maybe it was about Mikhail.
-we know early on that Sayid is lying when he tells the woman’s husband he would never torture a woman: we’d seen him torture Nadia
-if there has been an incursion by the hostiles, Locke has to enter 77. Aside from 9, 7 is the only other number not to appear anywhere in Hurley’s numbers.
-it doesn’t appear that the cat the woman is holding is the same as Mikhail’s cat. Her cat has a black smudge on his nose that the other one doesn’t. Also, hers is much bigger, almost the size of a Maine Coon, while his is smaller. This could be explained by lack of nutrition, age, and fur that wasn’t as full, but the mark on the nose makes them pretty distinct from one another.

Nitpicks:
-the writers making Locke seem mentally challenged throughout the episode. What was with that?? He goes into the other room to sit in front of a computer when the guy with possible answers is in the other room; he says he checked every nook and cranny of the place but missed the obvious “under the rug” hatch; he leaves Mikhail on the floor to go and play chess again (come ON), and then he goes and blows up the joint. Did he incur some serious, serious brain damage in the implosion? No wonder Terry O’Quinn has expressed disappointment in the treatment of his character lately. Now not only is he responsible for blowing up the hatch and possibly killing Eko, but now they’ve lost all chance to finally understand all the ins and outs of the Dharma Initiative AND of finally communicating with the outside world.
-there’s NO WAY Sayid would have ever taken a drink of the iced tea before letting Mikhail take a sip first

Questions:
-who takes Guns & Ammo to the bathroom with them? Does Paulo have a more serious gastric problem than we might think??
-where the heck did Sawyer get the ping-pong ball?
-why did Rousseau leave? Do we honestly believe she’s never seen this station before? Her actions were a little too suspicious: Is she an Other? Is she Dharma? She DID say she was a scientist who crashed onto the island: maybe she didn’t crash? Maybe she was a legit scientist with Dharma, and now that the Others have taken over, she’s on the run because she’s the last Dharma person standing? Notice how when she reappears, Mikhail seems to recognize her voice.
-when Mikhail first shoots Sayid, he’s all jittery and freaking out, yelling, “We had a truce! You said I could live here!” Was he just acting, or is he really a loner who’s broken ties with everyone?
-what sort of manuscript was Mikhail writing on the typewriter?
-Mikhail says he came because he was interested in computers. Didn’t he question why the computers were from 1980, when he would have arrived in 1993? For a rich philanthropic organization, it seems strange they didn’t update their equipment.
-what was Bea doing with Mikhail?

**If anyone reading this can translate Korean or Russian (or if you know someone who can), please email me or leave a comment letting me know how I can reach you. I’m looking for someone who can translate the languages other than English to use in my upcoming book on Lost. Thank you!

Next week: “Par Avion,” which appears to be a Claire flashback.