Season 3, Episode 4: "Every Man for Himself"

The title of this episode was EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF. This is what Sawyer tells Kate when she tries to escape and he refused to go with her. She then comes back with "Live Together Die Alone," which has been quoted several times by her and Jack, and was also the title of the season 2 finale. Sawyer is trying to say that he doesn't care and they should only look out for themselves, but Kate shows him by getting back into the cage that she does care about him, and that they are in this together.

NOT WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE:
One thing I have noticed so far in this season, is that in each episode we have learned that these characters aren't at all what we thought they were. Last season devoted so much to Good vs. Evil....the idea of who is "good" and showing that the Others only wanted "the good ones." Now we are learning, deep down, who is really good and who is not.

The first three episodes we have seen people who we thought were so good, turns out they are not so perfect after all. First we learn that Jack, who comes across as this noble doctor, the "hero" who everyone looks up to, is in fact obsessive-compulsive. Secondly, we learned that Sun is actually very conniving. She has been lying all her life, to her father, her husband, she learned English without her husband knowing, committed adultery, and now murder. Sun is not at all the innocent little housewife that we thought she was. Then last week we learn that Locke, who we've thought of as this wise, all-knowing man, was involved in a pot-growing scheme. Not at all what we would think of him. Just goes to show that these people are very different than what we think they are. So here are three people who we've thought of as GOOD, but we find out that they have flaws too...and they are not necessarily as good as we thought.

In this episode we see the opposite...Sawyer -- who we typically thought was so evil -- is actually "good" inside. He truly cares about Kate, he doesn't want her to get hurt. The OTHERS knew this and used it against him. They made up the story about the pacemaker to keep him quiet and so he wouldn't try to escape. He believed them and this is why he was so against Kate's escape plan, because he didn't want them to hurt her. Ben made a comment that he tries so hard to make it seem like he doesn't care about her, but they know that he does. This was also similar to his feelings with Cassidy, the woman he conned who ultimately put him in jail. Although he makes it seem like he doesn't care that he has a daughter, we find out that he really does, when he anonymously gives the money to her. Once again, Sawyer conned someone (the other prisoner) although he was working WITH the warden to bust the new guy in exchange for his own freedom. When he is given his share of the money for his help, he has the warden put it all in an account in Albuquerque for his daughter, though he wants it to be anonymous. We discover that Sawyer truly does care, but for some reason he doesn't want her to know. Just like Ben said, he tries so hard to play this evil, conman, but deep down he really is a good person and has good intentions. Just another example of how each person appears a certain way on the outside, but in fact is just the opposite.

OF MICE AND MEN:
Along with that same subject, we would not think that Sawyer is so well-read. In fact we have seen him reading quite a lot on the island. Funny that he and Ben both quote the same book, Of Mice and Men, which we saw Sawyer reading while he was in prison. We also know that Ben used to be part of a book club.

This classic novel, by John Steinbeck, is essentially about the nature of human existence and in dealing with the sense of loneliness and isolation. In fact, at the end of this episode, Ben quotes "A guy needs somebody to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long as he's with you. A guy gets too lonely and he gets SICK." Notice the usage of the word "sick" at the end of this quote. Is this the "sickness" that Danielle has been speaking of? She has been living alone for 16 years, maybe the idea of isolation and loneliess is what causes people to get "sick." This is also similar to Desmond in the hatch. This could be some kind of psychological experiment that the Others are performing, testing man's ability to live in isolation, and seeing if "he goes nuts if he ain't got nobody."

As we also see in this novel, Lennie, who is mentally retarded, has a physical strength that is like no other. He ends up killing both people and animals by accident, though he never meant to do it. His child-like heart was in the right place, but he commits murder unwittingly. Just like alot of the survivors. Deep down they are good people, but sometimes they do bad things.

Another thought, the very title "Of Mice and Men" deals with two very different groups, the all-powerful MEN vs. the trapped, experimental MICE. This is very similar to the Others and those they have captured. The Others (Men) are performing psychological and experimental testing on Sawyer, Kate and Jack (mice). They also showed that they do lab experiments on animals (rabbits) as we have also seen with the bears and the sharks. In this situation, they are treating their captors as lab mice (keeping them in cages, performing experiments on them).

COMS ARE DOWN
We hear Tom/Zeke telling Ben that "in the two days since the sky turned purple we've been blind, our coms are all down, and I can't get them back up again." Apparently they are not as certain about what happened as they would appear to be. It seems they don't know fully what happened when the hatch imploded (the sky turned purple) and that they are unable to figure out why their intercoms are no longer working. Interesting because the intercoms in Jack's cell suddenly ARE working. Juliet previously told him that they haven't worked in a long time, after he appeared to be hallucinating and hearing voices over the intercom. Now he is clearly hearing Sawyer being tortured. Also, later on he hears voices talking and tries to make out what they are saying..."It's under conrol...do you know what he's doing? It was a mistake bringing them here..."


WHO AM I HERE TO SAVE?
After the woman dies on the operating table, Juliet tells him that she is "not used to death," that she is a fertility doctor. He tells her she was dead before they even put her on the table, and Juliet asks if he's just saying that to make her feel better. He responds that he doesn't care how she feels. Jack then responds that he saw the X-rays on the wall and that there is a man with a very large tumor. He realizes at that point he was brought there for a reason. Now we finally know why they wanted Jack. Not because he is one of the "good ones" as they seemed to emphasize by whose names were on "the list," but because he is a spinal surgeon and they know that he has a need to "fix" things. They want Jack for his medical expertise. The question is, WHO has the tumor? Ben told Jack earlier that he wants him to do something, in exchange for his freedom. He said he could go home if he does this thing for them. Is this what they wanted from him all along? Now it's going to be a matter of whether Jack is willing to help them or not. He has already emphasized to Juliet that he really does not care about them or how they feel. I think that the reason they brought Sawyer and Kate was strategically for blackmail. They know that Jack cares for Kate and they could use her as a hostage if he does not agree to perform the surgery. We have already seen last season that when confronted in the woods, Jack had an opportunity to shoot them but put his gun down when they came out with Kate as a hostage. So this would give us reasons for why they wanted Jack, and possibly Kate. But what about Sawyer? We still don't know WHY they took him as well. Ben tells him that "danny" wants him dead. (Danny is the husband of the woman who Sun shot). But Ben says "Danny will have to wait. He is still needed."

I also think it's interesting that Juliet is a "fertility" doctor what with all the experiments they do and their kidnapping of children. Obviously there is something about children and babies that they want. A fertility doctor is someone who is needed when someone can't have children. What could she possibly be doing on the island? Also we know that Ben has been on the island his entire life. What about Juliet? If she was also on the island her whole life, she can't possibly be a "real" and accredited doctor. Where did she learn to be a doctor? I noticed that while they seem to have a full operating room and modern amenities (XRays, etc.), yet they don't seem to know much about actual surgery (she said she had never done this before.) Also the chest pumps "were not working." Is this because of the hatch implosion? Maybe the electromagnetic force being down somehow caused those not to work and therefore were unable to save the woman they were operating on.

DESMOND'S PSYCHIC POWERS
So now we have seen twice that Desmond does in fact have some kind of psychic ability. Last week he predicted Locke's speech before he made it, and now we see that he knew about the lightning storm before it happened. He knew that lightning was going to strike and hit the roof of the tent where Claire and Aaron were, so he made a lightning rod to defer it and help save her and her baby's life. I still think that something with the electromagnetic force and the implosion of the hatch somehow transferred this psychic power to him when he was thrown from the hatch. I also think something similar happened with the other "incident" that the Dharma videos talk about, which is why they want the people who have these "special" powers (such as Walt). So far we have seen that Locke, Eko and Desmond, all who were in the hatch at the time of implosion, have now come out with the ability to have these "visions."

NOWHERE TO RUN
At the end of this episode, Ben shows Sawyer that there are two islands. One island where their plane crashed and where the survivors are living, and the other island which they are now on. He tells Sawyer not to bother trying to escape because there is nowhere to run. Interesting that Ben refers to it like Alcatrez, using that against Sawyer since he knows he was formerly in prison. It appears that the Others have camps on both islands, as we saw that when the plane crashed they were able to run to the site of the plane crash from their "village" - but their medical station and the cages where they keep their captors are on this different island. Remember when we first saw Kate, Jack and Sawyer captured they were on a dock (Pala Ferry). They get back and forth by submarine. This is confirmed at the beginning of the episode when Ben interrupts Juliet while talking to Jack in his cell and tells her that "the sub is back." Also the wires that Sayid found going into the ocean could have something to do with their submarine. Maybe the sub is attached to their underwater station (where they were keeping Jack).

THE EYE PATCH
In the scenes for next week, we see a man with an eyepatch peering into the video monitor in one of the hatch stations. Could this be the same guy who had the glass eye? Remember when Eko found the box in the hatch, it had a bible...and a glass eye!



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