Many sources claimed that episode 4.02, "Confirmed Dead," was going to be a letdown, but I thought it was far better than the premiere. We got a third-person view of the discovery of Oceanic 815 at the bottom of the ocean, a streamlined introduction of the "Freighter Four," an admission by Locke that he's taking orders from "Tall Walt," an almost-admission by Hurley that he's seen "Jacob's cabin," multiple shootings, a reveal that Abbadon (from Hurley's flash-forward) assembled the freighter team. All that, and we find out why (ostensibly) the freighter is there -- to get Ben!
Allusions
- "Fantastic Four" parallels: Daniel Faraday = Reed Richards, super-genius scientist, Charlotte Lewis = Invisible woman, who could make invisible force fields (ahem, the unseen bullet proof vest), Miles Strom = Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (a hothead, if you will), and the most obvious, Frank Lapidus = the Thing, the Fantastic Four's pilot, and "lapideous" means rocklike.
- Daniel Faraday (the twitchy "freightie") says light "doesn't quite scatter right" on the island. Michael Faraday was a physicist focused on electromagnetism. According to J. Wood, "one of Faraday's key observations was how light interacted with magnetism. Faraday found that when light passes through a transparent, non-conductive material that's subject to a strong a magnetic field, the polarization of the light waves shifts in proportion to the strength of the magnetic force." Whatever that means. But I bet it has something to do with Smokey.
- The sole female "freightie," Charlotte Staples Lewis, shares a moniker with Narnia author C.S. Lewis. Apparently, the scene in which Charlotte cuts her parachute loose and falls into the lake, smiling and splashing in the water, is similar to a scene in C.S. Lewis' book, Prince Caspian, in which children play in the water upon arriving in a strange land filled with odd creatures (tip of the hat to John Dunseith King).
Easter Eggs
- "Frank Lapidus" is an anagram for "Farad's Link-up" — a Farad is a unit of electrical capacitance named after Michael Faraday. A stretch, perhaps.
- A little self-reference: Jack pulls a Mr. Friendly on the freighties! Jack asks Miles to put the gun away, and when Miles asks why he should do that, Jack says he has people all around with guns pointed at them. Then Sayid fires a shot! The scene is almost identical to the one in the season two episode in which Mr. Friendly says the losties are surrounded, and then has an other take a shot at Sawyer's ear to prove it. Mr. Friendly then, like Jack, forces the losties to surrender their guns.
Burning Questions
- Is Miles (the ghost whisperer) there to get Nikki and Paolo's diamonds, the same way he finds the drug dealer's stash? Incidentally, that vacuum-looking thing he used in the old lady's house was a cold air generator -- according to ghost lore, chilled air flushes out spirits.
- Charlotte (Freighter chick) found a Dharma polar bear skeleton with a Hydra tag in Tunisia. What was the polar bear doing in North Africa? Jeff Jensen's theory is that Dharma was using the polar bears as guinea pigs for teleportation and/or time-travel experiments.
- Locke makes a face when Hurley blurts out something about going to a "cabin." If Locke realizes that Hurley can see Jacob, too, is Locke going to try to kill Hurley? Is that why, in Hurley's flash-forward last week, he tells Jack he's sorry for going with Locke?
- Who's Ben's "man on the boat"? A lot of internet chatter suggests it could be Michael, but someone else believes it might actually be Charlotte herself. Could she be an undercover other? After all, Ben loves to put on a charade, and he did shoot her conveniently in her bulletproof vest.