TV REVIEW: LOST: "Jughead" (Season 5, Episode 3)

First, let me apologize for not getting this review online sooner. I had technical problems that are hilarious and profanity-filled, but ultimately not very interesting, so we’ll just skip over that to the review itself.

This was another format breaking episode. The “A-Team” of Lost (Kate, Jack, Sayid, Ben, Hurly, Sun) aren’t in it at all. Instead we bounce back and forth between the “Back at the ranch” team of Sawyer, Locke, Juliette, and the newbies: Faraday, Miles, and Faraday’s lantern-jawed marked-for-death girlfriend who’s name I can never remember on the island, and “Team Hume” off the island.

Desmond and Penny and their son (!) Charlie are living on a sailboat, and have been hiding out from Penny’s dad, Charles Widmore, for three years. Desmond heads back to England to track down Faraday’s mother, as per the instructions last week. First he goes to Cambridge, where he’s told no such person exists, nor ever did. Knowing he’s being lied to, Des breaks in to Faraday’s old lab, and finds a picture of the man with a pretty blonde girl. A janitor tells him that the university is covering up the fact that Faraday was ever there, as his experiments have become extremely politically incorrect, but tells him how to contact an old lab assistant/girlfriend. At the Girlfriend’s house, Desmond finds the pretty blonde girl from the picture in a coma, attended by her pissed off sister and a nameless technician. Her mind is evidently bouncing around in time like Desmond and Faraday both have – Faraday experimented on her, and failed – and then he evidently cut and ran back to the states. Charles Widmore has been paying the girl’s medical expences. Des then heads to Widmore’s office, busts in, and demands the address of Faraday’s mother, since Widmore himself was bankrolling Faraday’s experiments for a decade leading up to the pretty-lab-assistant-accident. Widmore says that Desmond is in the middle of things that are very old and which he doesn’t understand, so “Deliver your message, and get out. Wherever you and my daughter have been hiding, go back there.” He seems legitimately concerned, as well he should, given that Ben intends to kill Penny. He also says that Faraday’s mother is a very private person who won’t want to see Des.

Just a hunch: Faraday’s mother is Mrs. Hawking, the woman who told Ben he only had 70 hours to get everyone to the island, and who once refused to sell Desmond a wedding ring. Republibot 2.0 points out that Miss Entirely-Too-Pretty is named "Ellie" and hence is probably the same Ms. Eloise Hawking that we already know, and hence she probably really is Faraday's mom. Republibot 2.0 believes that Faraday has already put this together.

Anyway, after some misgivings from Penny, Team Hume decides to head to LA to find this woman.

Meanwhile back (in time) on the island, our heroes have been split in to two groups following last week’s flaming arrow massacre. Faraday, Miles, Faraday’s girlfriend, and two redshirt survivors rendezvous at the lake, but the redshirts immediately set off some claymore mines, which blow them up. Faraday, Miles, and the chick are immediately taken captive by people wearing old army picklesuits, armed with rifles and bows and arrows, and led by a girl who’s entirely too short and pretty and frail