Lost: In the Ciiiiirrrrrrcle of Trust

First, let’s have a moment of respect for the episode title, “Some Like It Hoth.” Most of the time, Lost episodes have fairly dull titles (not like I’m criticizing, I’m bad at titles myself) but every now and then we get a “Some Like It Hoth.” Remember in season 1 when we had an episode titled “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues“?

Speaking of which, this episode spends much of its time exploring Miles’ issues with his own absent father. Ugh. I love Miles, and I liked this episode, but has there ever been a single character on Lost, especially a male character, who didn’t have major daddy issues? There are other ways to create conflicted characters, you know. They can be misanthropic medical geniuses.  Or emotionally stunted boy-men. Or gypsy-cursed vampires.  It doesn’t always have to come back to Oedipus, is all I’m saying.

The basics:

It’s our very first History of Miles show, and it’s kind of old-school Lost the way it integrates flashbacks from the POV character’s early childhood along with more recent flashbacks and a loosely constructed contemporary plot in which said POV character is marginally involved.

The flashback story shows us that Miles has been communicating with the dead for his entire life, and that his father kicked him and his mother out when Miles was just a baby. Then, it shows us Miles’ recruitment by Naomi to join Widmore’s freighter crew as their official medium in exchange for $1.6 million. We also learn some details about Miles’ ability: It only works when there’s a body nearby, and all he can find out is what the dead person was recently doing and/or thinking about.

In our “present” story (Dharma-brand 1977), Kate, Sawyer and Juliet are dealing with the fallout of their evacuation of Lil’ Ben. For lack of any other ideas, they tell Roger that Ben simply disappeared from the infirmary. Roger gets it into his head for no apparent reason that Kate kidnapped him, and he gets ready to go after her, or something. Meanwhile, Miles is tangentially involved in all sorts of Dharma intrigue, transporting corpses from Dharma station to Dharma station and engaging in witty repartee with Hurley and with his newly revealed father Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle, who, as we’ve seen hinted at before, is kind of a douche.

The good:

• Daniel is back!!!! Yayyyy!!!! Best end-of-episode hook in a lonnnng time.
• It’s been pretty obvious, from the season opener and from the fact that there just aren’t that many Asian people on this show, that Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle is Miles’ dad. Fortunately, the official reveal comes in the episode midpoint, and then we get to have some fun. My favorite moment was Miles’ look of disgust upon learning that his father liked country music. Heh.
• There are currently two versions of Miles running around: The time-traveling adult version and the three-month-old genuine-1977 version. We even see them share a scene, wherein adult Miles watches Pierre playing with Lil’ Miles through a window. I’m putting this in the Good column because it boosts my faith that the writers know what they’re doing on the time travel logic front. Still doesn’t make up for the cop out on Lil’ Ben’s non-death, though.
• Miles is hysterical throughout the episode, just like he always has been. He’s cynical and deadpan and sarcastic and his voice gets hilariously shrill when he’s angry. I’m totally going to go around saying “I’m in the circle of trust” all the time now.
• The “Some Like It Hoth” title refers to Hurley’s new pet project – he’s writing the screenplay for The Return of the Jedi (with a few improvements of his own), which he figures will be a big help to George Lucas, seeing as how it’s 1977. I’d like to think that if I randomly wound up in that era I’d be doing my very best to sabotage Ronald Reagan’s political career, so I’m glad to see that someone else is thinking constructively about taking advantage of their situation.

The bad:

• The episode was light on the plot advancement and heavy on the background / foreshadowing. Both of those were well-done, so this isn’t unforgivable, but the first half of this season was so action-packed that I don’t love having leisurely episodes like this pop up, especially now when we’re approaching the season finale.
• The Kate/Roger conflict feels forced and uninteresting. If it drags out past next week I’m filing an official complaint.

The stuff that will matter next week:

• We get more hints about Ilana’s people when we see them capture Miles in flashback L.A. and try to convince him not to get on the freighter. We know they’re part of Ilana’s crew because they ask Miles the same code question about the shadow of the statue.
• We also find out why Miles was brought in on the freighter: The Widmore folks wanted him to talk to the dead bodies of the Dharmas to help them locate Ben. (Since when is Ben that hard to find? He always seems to be around.) So either Miles’ parentage is one of those apparent coincidences that run so rampant on this show, or Widmore knows about his connection to Chang and it’s simply yet another part of his grand plan.
• A secret crew of Dharmas is in the process of building the Swan station (aka the season 2 hatch), and they’re experiencing electromagnetism issues that caused the death of a Hostile via his filling being sucked into his brain, or something. I assume this will matter at some point because, as Hurley reminded us, there was an “accident” sometime early in the Swan’s history, which resulted in the need to enter those numbers on the computer every 108 minutes. And here I thought we’d never have to deal with that boring storyline ever again. Sigh.
• Oh no! Sawyer’s perfect Dharma life is in jeopardy. Phil found a security tape that shows Sawyer and Kate taking Ben to the Hostiles. Sawyer’s response to this is to knock Phil out and order Juliet to “get some rope,” with which she happily complies. Hmm.

Next week, we get “the story of the Oceanic Six from a whole new perspective.” I suspect that means a clip show. Then, in two weeks, it’s back to the action, as the long-promised war finally begins. My prediction: This war already happened once, and Widmore lost, but then he arranged for a bunch of key people to go back in time, and he’s planning on using them to win the war this time. Too bad half his army is stuck in 2007.

Season 5, Episode 13: Some Like It Hoth (originally aired April 15, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Miles and Hurley’s Excellent Adventure by J.B. Perlow.

For more on Lost, click here.

Wednesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC