Lost, Ep. 12: Par Avion
I hope that someone gets my… I hope that someone gets my… Message on a Seagull.

This week’s episode was a Claire flashback, where the question of her paternity was finally answered (guessed by most fans from last season’s episode, “Two for the Road”). Her mother is in a coma, Christian Shephard comes wandering into her life, and the last thing Claire said to her mother was that she hated her and wanted her dead. But the biggest revelation? That Claire was a total Goth chick who worked in a tattoo parlour!

On the island, Claire comes up with an idea involving birds. (When she first saw them fly over and said she figured out how to get them off the island, I was thinking, what, you’re going to trap 1600 of them and get airlifted out or something?? Yeah… I wouldn’t be the “idea person” on an island.) It was a pretty good episode, with a surprising ending, but I had a lot of questions and nitpicks about it. Perhaps someone out there can explain away some of them.

Did You Notice?:
-Sawyer’s reading The Fountainhead. Great. Always wanted to read that capitalist manifesto. Not. Sigh… (I'm sure seeing that on the screen gave you a big laugh, Jer...)
-Mikhail begins saying that Locke is someone he has a fleeting memory of, but the John Locke he knew would have… and then is cut off. It seems to be a reference to the fact that John has changed drastically – and not for the better – as the show has gone on. He used to be my favourite character, and now I just don’t get anything he does.
-the woman we saw in Two for the Road must have been Aunt Lindsay, not Claire’s mother. Christian went to Australia to find Claire, and he went along with Ana Lucia. He drunkenly screamed at a woman (fans presumed it was Claire's mom, but it must have been her aunt). He separated from Ana Lucia, Sawyer met CS in a bar, they drank themselves silly, Christian died, Jack went down to retrieve him, Ana Lucia clearly stayed on for a few more days, and somehow all of them ended up on a plane headed for LA. But as we saw, Claire’s mother was in a coma, so CS couldn’t have been banging on her door insisting that he was going to see his daughter.

Any Questions?:
-is Sun feeding Aaron some melon? Or is she spooning something out of a bowl to him, maybe milk? Either way, an 8-week-old child wouldn't be on solid foods or eating with a spoon yet; they just don't have the digestive system or motor skills.
-I don’t buy Rousseau’s answer to Kate’s question about why she hasn’t asked about Alex. She’s bracing herself for upset, but what about asking if she looked healthy? Was she being treated OK? Was she happy? She’s right; Alex won’t remember her, and might not want to, but as a mom, aren’t these things just basic things that a mother would need to know?
-the list that Mikhail mentions is Jacob’s, a “magnificent man.” But who is he? Will we ever see him? He says Kate's not on the list because she is flawed, nor is Sayid or Locke. Was Jack on the list? Was Claire?
-why did Desmond fire the shots to scare away Claire’s birds? If she had caught one, then presumably Charlie would never have been on the rocks catching a second one. But by scaring them off, then Charlie would have to help Claire catch another one. Something seemed to be missing there.
-why would Mikhail thank Locke for throwing him into the security system? Maybe the guy has a death wish, but would ANYONE, regardless of how suicidal, want to go out that way? More importantly, why does John smile at him when Mikhail says that, like they’re in cahoots together?
-a repeat of one of last week’s questions: WHAT THE FRAK IS UP WITH JOHN LOCKE???? First he kills Mikhail, then smiles, then becomes belligerent with the others but stays creepy calm, then says he didn’t know the house had been rigged with C-4, but happens to have some in his pack… I’m getting the feeling he’s not on side with the Losties anymore, that he’s acting on his own, or acting with the Others, or SOMETHING, but I’m very confused. I started to think that Locke, going over the fence, would somehow break the log so no one else could follow or something.
-what made Claire dye her hair blonde again? She was pretty rockin’ as a brunette.
-why wasn’t Claire more broken up in the beginning when the plane first landed on the island? You’d think if her mother had been in a coma, she’d be extremely upset to be stuck on an island where she can no longer check up on her and take care of her.
-Jack’s playing football??

Nitpicks:
-bitchy Aunt Lindsay freaks out on Claire, clearly blaming her for the accident, but the mother was on the pavement and had gone through the windshield. Um… maybe the fact that Mommy didn’t bother to put on a bloody seatbelt could be the real culprit here??
-I’m tired of Claire switching sides on Charlie whenever the situation suits her. In season 2 she was all lovey-dovey with him, then he did something she didn’t like and she’s all, “Get out of my tent now, ya wanker, and go somewhere else.” Then when he makes it through the blast she kisses him and is all, “Oh hey, there’s an extra spot in my tent,” and then Desmond shoots his gun to scare away birds, and Charlie is actually taking care of her child, and she goes running back and is all, “I don’t know what you have to do with Desmond but you have something to do with him and he shot his gun in the air and I don’t know how this is connected with you AT ALL and I know you’ve been babysitting my baby whenever I’m not around but I need you out of my tent RIGHT NOW. Ya wanker.” And then she finds out that Charlie wasn’t trying to hurt her, and she grabs a seagull – a.k.a. the cleanest birds in the world – and carries it back to the tent and is all, “Hey, sorry about all that, and I know I told you to bugger off and get out of my tent but, um, here you are, and I don’t know what that’s all about because you were supposed to be gone, but anyway I brought this dirty seagull back to show it to Aaron, and I’m hoping he kisses the bird for good luck, but anyway, I’m sorry, and let’s be friends again.” Talk about head games.
-how do they think the piece of paper they attached to the seagull’s leg is going to survive? The moment that bird decides to take a break and lands in the water to float for a while, the piece of paper will wither and fall off. DUH.

Oops: Back in “Raised by Another,” Claire takes a pregnancy test, and tells Thomas she’s pregnant, and Thomas asks if she’s going to keep it and Claire says, “My mom would disown me,” and he says, “She pretty much has already.” The writers could try explaining this one away by saying he’s referring to the argument they had before her mother went into the coma, but I think back then the writers didn’t know she was in one, and knowing now how broken up Claire was over her mom’s condition, she would have slapped him for making a joke about her mother like that. So I take it as an inconsistency.

Next week: “The Man from Tallahassee,” a Locke episode. I’m seriously excited for it – first of all, Locke flashback (with the exception of the most recent one, they’ve all been amazing, and maybe the writers will finally… please?? PLEASE???... tell us why he was in that wheelchair), secondly, we’re seeing the Others again, and unlike a lot of fans, I loved seeing those people and how they work. EDIT: Just before posting this I checked the preview at the end of the ABC feed (I watch the 8pm CTV feed earlier to write this post) and it looks like we WILL find out why he was in the wheelchair!! Maybe we'll finally figure out why he's been acting so weird, too.

Advance warning for Lost fans: The episode in two weeks will be a Nikki and Paulo flashback. Either make plans to do something else that night, or get your barf buckets ready. And damn those writers if they make me like them… nope. No, it just WON’T happen. I’ll start writing fan fiction of Paulo dying in spectacular ways in protest.