LOST 4.11 – "Cabin Fever"

Writers: Kyle Pennington & Elizabeth Sarnoff
Director: Paul Edwards

Cast: Terry O'Quinn (Locke), Matthew Fox (Jack), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Naveen Andrews (Sayid), Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond), Harold Perrineau Jr. (Michael), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin), Michael Emerson (Ben), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), Emilie de Ravin (Claire), Yunjin Kim (Sun), Kevin Durand (Keamy), Lance Reddick (Matthew Abaddon), Jeff Fahey (Frank), Anthony Azizi (Omar), Grant Bowler (Captain Gault), Marc Vann (Doc Ray), Doug Hutchison (Horace Goodspeed), Nestor Carbonell (Richard Alpert), John Terry (Christian Shephard), Amanda Carlin (ER Nurse), Charlie Wyson (John Locke, age 5), Rebecca Tilney (Emily's Mother), Holland Roden (Emily), Mandy June Turpin (Florence), Sarah Duval (Melissa), Matthew Pedersen (Physical Therapist), Patrick Torres (ER Doctor), Phil Abrams (Gellert) & Caleb Steinmeyer (John Locke, age 16)

Locke leads Hurley and Ben to Jacob's Cabin, as Keamy prepares to return to the island...

"I used to have dreams."

-- Ben (Michael Emerson)

The last episode before the three-part season finale, Cabin Fever is another intense mythology episode, overflowing with incidents and connections to send fans into a spin of delirious excitement...

We begin in flashback to Emily (Holland Roden), a 16-year-old preparing to go on a date with a man twice her age. She argues with her mother (Rebecca Tilney) before rushing out into the street and straight into a passing car. In hospital, she gives birth to a premature baby – naming him John.

Jump forward fifty-odd years and baby John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) is leading Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Ben (Michael Emerson) through the dark island jungle by torchlight. He intends to find the mysterious Jacob and learn how to prevent the freighter mercenaries from killing everyone on the island.

On said freighter, Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) and Sayid (Naveen Andrews) witness Keamy (Kevin Durand) and his beaten men return, angry that Ben apparently knew they were coming. Keamy blames Captain Gault (Grant Bowler) for colluding with the enemy, but Gault is quick to show him the real culprit: Michael (Harold Perrineau), locked up in small room He admits to Keamy that he's been feeding Ben information and Keamy tries to shoot Michael in the head for his treachery – but finds his gun keeps jamming. A beating follows instead.

In the jungle, Locke wakes up to the sounds of a rhythmic thwacking noise. Investigating alone, Locke finds Horace Goodspeed (Doug Hutchison), wearing white DHARMA overalls, chopping down some trees. Horace says he's been dead 12 years, but Locke has to find him, because Jacob's been waiting a very long time. Confusingly, Horace begins to repeat his conversation and Locke notices some of the chopped-down trees have returned to normal. Locke wakes up from the time-loop, realizing the whole experience was a dream. Ben doesn't seem surprised by Locke's fresh impetus, as he leads them to the DHARMA mass grave. After searching through the skeletal remains, he finds the corpse of the real Horace Goodspeed, who has a map and schematic of Jacob's Cabin in his pocket.

In the flashback, baby Locke (the youngest "preemie" to have every survived in the hospital) is being cared for, but Emily is so overwhelmed by emotions she leaves the room. A nurse wants to speak to Emily's mother about adoption, just as Mrs Locke notices Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) watching them from the hallway.

Five years later, Alpert visits John Locke at her foster home, claiming to run a school for kids who are extremely special. After noticing one of young John's drawings (showing a spinning black cloud attacking a man), Alpert begins his test: he places a worn baseball mitt, an old book, a glass vile of sand, an old comic book, an ancient looking compass, and an old knife on the table. Then he asks John to point to the object that belongs to him already. After a few seconds of thought, John chooses the knife. This disappoints Alpert, who hurriedly puts away his items, makes his excuses and leaves.

On the freighter, Keamy takes a key from Gault and opens a safe to retrieve a document he refers to as the "secondary protocol". It apparently tells them what to do if they have to torch the entire island, and where Ben will run to. On the deck, Gault offers Sayid and Desmond a hiding place from Keamy, but Sayid instead wants to start ferrying the islanders back to the freighter. Gault agrees, but Desmond decides to stay, vowing never to set foot on the island again. Sayid takes the dinghy and sets off to the beach alone.

Another flashback takes us to John's high school years, where we find him stuffed into his locker – clearly the victim of bullies. His science teacher Mr Gellert (Phil Abrams) frees him, and then gives him good news back in his office: a Dr Alpert from Mitteloss Laboratories has offered John a place on their summer camp. John is dismissive of embracing this opportunity, viewing an aptitude for science as the reason for his social failings. Mr Gellert tells John he has to be the person he is, which angers John, who screams: "don't tell me what I can't do!"

Back on the freighter, Frank uncuffs Michael – who pleads with him not to fly Keamy back to the island. As they leave together, they spot Keamy having a small device attached to his upper arm.

The last flashback brings us to adult John, shortly after his eight-story fall and now trying to cope with hospital rehabilitation. An orderly arrives to push him away in his wheelchair, who we quickly realize is Matthew Abaddon (Lance Reddick). Abaddon tries to inspire Locke with talk of going on a walkabout in Australia. Locke treats the idea of a cripple man like himself walking around Australia as preposterous, but Abaddon says that once he's ready to listen he'll take the advice – and Locke will owe him one.

Keamy and his team are preparing to fly back to the island, but Frank refuses to pilot the chopper. Keamy slashes the throat of the Doctor (Marc Vann) and pushes him overboard to force Frank into complying. Gault fires a warning shot from his own weapon, but Keamy's too quick and disarms him before shooting him in the chest. With two men dead, Frank agrees to pilot them back to the island – but he smuggles a sat-phone onto the chopper with him.

On the island, the beach-dwellers hear the helicopter approaching and assume it must be rescue. Unfortunately, the chopper passes by overhead, although Jack (Matthew Fox) sees something drop onto a beach hut – a sat-phone. It looks like someone wants them to follow the chopper.

Locke has followed Horace's map and finds the cabin. Ben tells Locke he has to go inside alone. As Hurley and Ben wait outside, Locke enters Jacob's Cabin and sees a man sitting at a wooden table: Christian Shephard (John Terry). Locke doesn't know it's Jack's father, and Christian confirms he can speak on behalf of Jacob. He then notices someone else in the cabin: it's Claire (Emilie de Ravin), looking remarkably at ease about the whole situation! Locke asks how he can save the island.

Outside, Ben and Hurley watch as Locke steps out of the cabin and Ben asks him what Jacob wants them to do. Locke replies: "he wants us to move the island."

So, it now seems that Locke's whole life has been preparing him to assume "control" of the island from Ben, assumedly as the right-hand man to Jacob. His birth was even indicative of John the Baptist's (with his mother's cry of "his name is John!" after he'd entered the world.)

Another religious parallel occurred when Michael Alpert (is he not aging or just time-travelling?) arrived to speak with the 5-year-old Locke. His arrangement of various items on a table, asking John to pick the one that already belongs to him, is the same method Buddhists use to ascertain if someone is the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. So who did Alpert hope John was the reincarnation of? Jacob? Are we to assume Ben succeeded in the same test shortly after Alpert met him as a young boy with the DHARMA interlopers?

A later flashback also saw a welcome return for Matthew Abaddon, helping an adult Locke convalesce after his spinal injuries. It turns out that Abaddon was the one who planted the idea in Locke's mind to go on a walkabout in the Australian bush, which was a neat link back to early-season 1. It also helped put a fresh perspective on Abaddon, who seems to be part of Alpert's clique (Mitteloss Laboratories) – although that has me puzzled about him putting Naomi, Charlotte, Faraday, Frank and Miles onto the freighter. Contrary to Alpert, does he believe Locke is special?

Ben appears to be slowly accepting he's out of favour with the island, but seeing as the flashforwards about a year still have Ben acting like the man in charge (as hitman Sayid's handler) maybe it's not as simple as that. Or maybe Locke will choose not to become the new Ben, despite an offer from the island/Jacob, allowing Ben to reclaim control?

It was also very interesting to see some proper interaction with an island ghost, in the shape of tree-cutting DHARMA scientist Horace Goodspeed, although the reveal that the scene was a dream left some aspects of it open for debate. I like to think its imagery and the comments from Horace can be trusted, though – but I was confused to learn Horace was the one who built Jacob's cabin. If that's true, then the cabin has only been around for about 15 years and wasn't built for Jacob's use. So did Jacob just "move in" following the DHARMA purge? I still like to think Jacob's a centuries-old entity (maybe part of the Black Rock crew?); although there's now an argument for saying he's the ghost of someone more modern – like Ben's own predecessor and island "mentor"?

Away from the brain-warping flashbacks, the situation on the freighter also got more interesting. Keamy has quickly become an intensely hissable villain, nicely played by a sneering Kevin Durand. He might lack subtleties, but I think the show benefits from having someone who isn't into mind-games and just brings some thick-headed brawn to situations. And I think we're all waiting to see him get his just desserts after killing Alex – courtesy of Ben, hopefully.

Desmond's decision to stay on the freighter made sense (as you sometimes forget he's spent 3 years on the island, most of it locked underground pressing a button every 108-minutes!), so I can understand him not wanting to go back in Sayid's dinghy. But as Desmond isn't one of the Oceanic Six, he can't be going anywhere, so he'll surely have to go back to the island soon – probably with Michael.

And I think we can definitely count pilot Frank as a good guy now, as he made a point to drop a sat-phone to the islanders as he flew Keamy and his team overhead to find Ben. I never really thought he was villain, but people sometimes have their own agendas that can be viewed as negative for the majority. I'm still not sure why Frank wanted to come to the island, though – beyond a zealous urge to prove to himself that the discovered Flight 815 was staged.

The climactic moments found Locke entering Jacob's cabin alone, only to find Christian and Claire inside. The former of which seems to have a curiously strong connection to the island (for an L.A doc who died in Sydney), while Claire was oddly laid-back consider she's been led to a creepy cabin by her spooky dad and had to leave baby Aaron behind. It looks like we'll have to wait to find out why Christian has taken her. But the main thrill of Locke's encounter came from the advice bestowed on him about how to evade the freighter crew: move the island.

Burning Questions

-- How did Alpert know about Locke as a child and where to find him? Why did he want to recruit Locke for Mittelos Bioscience Camp as a youngster? Is his interest in "special" children tied to the Others' interest in Walt?

-- Was there a meaning behind the six items Locke was presented with by Alpert?

-- Who did Alpert hope Locke was the reincarnation of? Was it significant that one of the items was a comic-book Walt perhaps would have read?

-- What happened during Abaddon's walkabout in Australia? Why is he so interested in getting Locke better?

-- How is Locke going to move the island? Has this ever been done before? If Locke succeeds, it must mean that Widmore (seen in the future at the end of The Shape Of Things to Come) has no idea where the island is again? Will Locke move the island and consequently leave the freighter (with Desmond and Michael) behind?

-- Why wasn't Jacob in the cabin, but Christian and Claire were? Also, why was Claire so nonchalant about everything?

-- Why did the freighter's doctor's body wash ashore a day before the helicopter flew overhead? That doesn't seem logical if there's a time dilation in effect between the island and the freighter.

-- What is Keamy's "secondary protocol"? Where does he know Ben will try to hide? And how is attaching a metronome to his arm going to help him?


18 May 2008
Sky One, 10.00 pm