Despite what the most recent episode's title would have you believe, there is neither a (direct, at least) reference to the Who, nor an appearance by Tom Berenger. Kind of a letdown.
Though this post covers the past two episodes, "What Kate Does" and "The Substitute," there was a lot more going on in the latter than in the former, so that's what most of this post is going to be about. However, "What Kate Does" did offer some relevant bits of information. First off, it added my "alterna-Claire might not be pregnant" theory to the extensive collection of Owen's Disproven Lost Theories. Not only is she pregnant, but she's traveling to the States for the very same reason in the new timeline as in the old, to give her unborn son up for adoption. Mythology-wise, the new-timeline parts of the episode were significant in two ways. One is the appearance of Ethan (going by "Goodspeed" instead of "Rom"); more on this below. The other is Claire's decision to name her son Aaron, for reasons she can't explain. This seems to be an example of the two timelines subtly, subconsciously interacting: Juliet, before dying, realized that "it worked"; alterna-Jack has an unexplained cut on his neck right where Sawyer kicked Jack in the original timeline; more generally, people in the new timeline with no greater connection than sharing a flight keep running into one another, often in very meaningful ways. Somehow, the fact that the original timeline's Claire named her son Aaron has subconsciously "informed" alterna-Claire's choice of name. I expect the interactions between the two timelines to become more numerous and pronounced over the course of the season.
The other significant aspect of "What Kate Did"—other than the revelation that Jacob must have stopped by Paddy's Pub at some point and touched Mac to recruit everyone's favorite sleeveless Philadelphian for the Hostiles (a name that really seems to fit his character), probably for his renowned martial-arts skills—was the Temple Others' treatment of the resurrected Sayid, i.e., torturing and then trying to poison him. The first round of their "tests," blowing ash over him, makes sense if they're afraid that he's been "claimed" (to use their word) by the ash-adverse Loophole, but the electricity and the hot poker don't. If he has been claimed, then does that mean that all the other dead people who've appreared on the Island—Christian Shephard, first and foremost—are also resurrected agents of Loophole? Sayid doesn't seem to be acting like they did, but rather is understandably confused and upset about the whole situation. We'll see where this leads.
The real meat from the last two weeks of Lost, however, was from "The Substitute." In it, we follow Loophole—indeed, a "substitute for another guy"—as he travels the Island trying to recruit his version of the Others (or something). First off, it was cool to see him traveling via Raimi-cam; I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd found Ash at Dharmaville instead of Sawyer. I'm at at loss, though, at how easily he gave up on recruiting Richard, seeing as how he'd knocked him out, carried him into the jungle, and kept him in a sack hanging from a tree; moreover, recruiting Richard would've been quite a coup, seeing as he seems to have been acting leader of the Others since the real Locke's time-traveling-related disappearance in 2004. However, he does succeed in putting the fear of God into the otherwise unflappable Richard, resulting in what some commenters have already started calling the sixth-season equivalent of Jackface: "Dickface."
Moving on to the next candidate (a word that's become very significant in this show in the past few episodes), Loophole finds Sawyer at a low, vulnerable point in his life (the very thing that Loophole later accuses Jacob of doing), but Sawyer, unlike the seemingly all-knowing Ben and Richard, isn't fooled for a second that this "substitute" is the real John Locke. He goes with him anyway, running into scaredy Richard and mystery lad (younger Jacob? older Aaron? someone else altogether?) along the way, until they reach the Numbers Cave. A lot of ground is covered in there in a few minutes, and a lot of it still doesn't entirely make sense, but here are a few of the things that struck me. First, the scale with the light and dark stones on the plates. Before Loophole throws away the light stone ("Inside joke."), the scale is evenly balanced, but honestly, that didn't really reflect Jacob and Loophole's situation prior to the former's death: After all, Loophole was imprisoned, while Jacob had an army of followers and could travel off-Island as he pleased. Far from their being "balanced," Jacob seems to have had a big advantage over Loophole for a long time.
As for the numbers and names written in the cave, Loophole implies that the numbers don't really mean anything, simply that "Jacob had a thing for numbers." I think this is just a case of Loophole's continuing the fine Lost tradition of dissimulating and opaque explanations, since I find it hard to believe that the show has abandoned the Valenzetti Equation as an explanation (i.e., the numbers represent the values that, according to the equation, determine the date of mankind's self-annihilation; the DHARMA Initiative was established to study and, if possible, change those numbers). If the numbers are in fact meaningful, then it ties back to what Faraday said last season, that "people are the variables" that can affect the otherwise inalterable flow of time; maybe he didn't mean just any people, but only certain people, namely our familiar band of castaways, whom Jacob clearly has thought important for some time.
Since all the "answers" we get in cave come from Loophole, we must ask ourselves how much we should trust or distrust what he says. The show more or less tells us that we're supposed to think he's the bad guy: He wears dark colors, in Monster form he's been killing people since the pilot in the pilot, last season he deceived everyone into thinking he was really Locke, and he manipulated Ben into fulfilling his long-harbored wish of killing Jacob. The problem is, why should we think that Jacob was (is?) any better, other than his milder demeanor? His followers, the Others, are pretty cold-blooded and ruthless (though we don't know to what extent they're really carrying out his wishes). Even in the best light he seems pretty manipulative, bringing all these people to his Island and "testing" them for his own purposes, many of them being killed along the way. And honestly, Loophole's side of things—that Jacob's really a puppet master whose supposedly willing followers are really just brainwashed and manipulated slaves in need of liberation—sounds at least plausible. But of course, Loophole has an agenda of his own, which undoubtedly is furthered by his telling Sawyer this, so we'll just need to wait and see who, if anyone, is right.
As for the "flash-sideways" to the new timeline, Locke's alternate life was a real hoot to see. I mean, we got Hurley as a savvy CEO, Rose as a wise, no-nonsense temp-agency supervisor, Ben as a prickly high-school history teacher, the return of Peggy—I mean, Leela—I mean, Helen, a lot of great, tender, funny character moments, and the human reproductive system as taught by John Locke. Could you ask for anything more? Not only that, but my theory that alterna-Locke didn't go on the walkabout was validated (balancing out my disproven one about Claire; you win some, you lose some). One question very subtly raised, however, concerns Locke's father, Anthony Cooper; not only does Helen suggest to Locke that they invite "your dad" to their Vegas elopement, but there's a picture in Locke's cubicle of him (standing, with hair) with Cooper, confirming that he's indeed the "dad" Helen mentioned and that they have a good relationship. How, then, did Locke become paralyzed, if his father didn't push him out of that window?
The appearance of alterna-Ben in "The Substitute," following that of alterna-Ethan in "What Kate Does," raises the question of what exactly happened to the Island in the Incident. We see it sunk beneath the Pacific in the alternate 2004, and I'd assumed that that was an immediate result of the Incident, i.e., that from the new timeline's creation in 1977 the alterna-Island was sunk, so Desmond never reached it, he never failed to push the button in 2004, etc. And yet we have two Others—or, more precisely, two DHARMA members who would've later defected to the Others—leading normal, mundane lives in the alternate 2004. Ethan could be explained by his being evacuated as an infant prior to the Incident, but young Ben, wounded by Sayid and taken to the Temple by Richard, was almost certainly still on the Island when the Incident occurred. If alterna-Ben wasn't sent to Davy Jones's locker with the rest of the Island in 1977 when the new timeline began, then when—and more importantly, how—was the alterna-Island sunk if the Incident didn't do it? Come on, Lost, you're supposed to be answering questions now, not raising new ones!
Is it just me, or at about 2:20 in this video does Roger Daltrey sing "substitute my Coke for Jin"? Or maybe I'm just suffering from Lost on the brain.
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