Highlights from "Every Man for Himself" and "The Cost of Living" Spoilers

At the beginning of the episode "Every Man for Himself," we see Desmond stroking his beard, watching Claire and Aaron. When he offers to do fix their shelter's roof as a favor, Charlie walks up and is obviously quite jealous. Will Desmond become the third part of the love triangle to which LOST's executive producers alluded recently?

Jack seems to not have any romantic interest in Juliet. In their first scene together in this episode, Jack belittles her by saying, "Should I talk to Benjamin? Because I'm starting to think that you're just the person who brings me my food." Juliet tries to keep her cool and tells Jack that "we make decisions together." With perfect timing, Ben barges in and orders Juliet to come with him, seemingly proving Jack's theory correct. Ben tells Juliet that "The sub is back. We have a situation." Apparently, the sub to which he is referring (presumably the Galaga) is the means by which The Others sneaked past Sayid and Jin and boarded Desmond's sailboat in The Glass Ballerina.

As Sawyer is awakening after having been beaten unconscious by Ben, Tom can be heard saying that ever since the sky turned purple (which occurred briefly after Desmond turned the fail-safe key), that there have been communication problems. He says, "the comms are all down" and that he "can't get them up again." This may indicate that The Others have lost their link to the outside world.

Ben comments to Sawyer, "we're not killers, James." This is a lie, however, as The Others have been known to kill or attempt to kill other Flight 815 survivors. Sawyer must have known that Ethan Rom murdered a survivor named Scott and attempted to murder Charlie. As viewers, we also know that Goodwin, the Other who infiltrated the tail section survivors' camp, murdered a survivor named Nathan. The Others have proven that they are capable of murder, despite Ben's claim that they're not killers.

In a Sawyer flashback, Cassidy tells Sawyer that he's a father and shows him a picture of a baby girl. While it's certainly possible that Clementine is Sawyer's daughter, one can only wonder whether Cassidy was getting back at Sawyer for conning and leaving her, and whether perhaps Cassidy is pulling a con on the con man.

When Ben complains to Juliet about bringing Jack to help with Colleen's surgery, Ben says "that's not why we—" and is cut off. What was Ben about to say? Perhaps something to the effect of "that's not why we brought Jack here"? This seems likely after hearing Jack's analysis of the X-rays. Jack says to Juliet, "Those are spinal X-rays, and they belong to a man about 40 years old. And whoever he is, he has a very large tumor on his L4 vertebra. And I just happen to be a spinal surgeon. So you tell me, Juliet, who am I here to see?" Based on the preview for next week, we will probably know the answer to this question very soon. (The preview implied that Ben may be the one with the tumor.)

A hot topic among LOST fans is who Kate will choose as her love preference. At Comic-Con in July, Damon Lindelof stated that "Within the first six episodes... [she] will be officially making her selection." In Every Man for Himself, Kate tells Pickett that she loves Sawyer, but she later confesses to Sawyer, "I only said that so he'd stop hitting you." It will be interesting to see whether she chooses Sawyer after all, or whether she chooses Jack, or more interestingly, whether she chooses some other character (perhaps Ben, who may have made a deal with her after the breakfast on the beach, or Tom, who was very "Friendly" to Kate in this episode?). There were some hints that Kate might be holding out for Jack; first, she did not seem interested in escaping without him, and second, she paraphrased Jack ("Live together, [or] die alone") when explaining to Sawyer why she wouldn't attempt to escape by herself.

The conversation between Tom and Ben seems to give further indication that Ben is acting as a leader of The Others, despite what Juliet claims or would like to believe.

Jack gives further indication that he isn't interested in Juliet when he says to her, "I don't care about making you feel better."

We find out that Desmond had been building a lightning rod next to Claire's shelter, and we see a sudden storm hit and lightning strike the rod. The camera focuses on Charlie, who seems to have figured out that Desmond predicted the lightning strike. The intriguing question is: was Desmond's experiment to see whether his prediction of lightning was correct, or was the experiment to see whether he could change the outcome of the future? As an aside, this week's episode seems to give less credibility to the time travel theory. As I mentioned in the Comments section of the blog last week, Damon Lindelof stated during the filming of Season 1 that "There isn't any time travel [on LOST]," and assuming that the producers are sticking with this statement, then it seems clear that Desmond is predicting the future. This still doesn't explain, of course, how Desmond can now see the future, nor how "the hatch blew off [his] underwear."

Shortly before Ben tells Sawyer that they're on an island that's adjacent to where the plane crashed, we find out in Sawyer's flashback that he had been working with the authorities (his captors) to pull a con on another criminal in the jail. The timing of this scene may be a hint that The Others want to use Sawyer as part of a con. On the other hand, Ben remarks that Sawyer is pretty good at pulling cons, but "we're a lot better."

Are The Others trying to hook up Sawyer and Kate? Earlier in the episode, Danny Pickett seems to have tried to elicit an admission from Kate that she loves Sawyer. At the end of the episode, Ben's quote from Of Mice and Men (Paperback, Audio CD) made reference to Sawyer becoming lonely:

A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.

Was Ben's quote a hint that The Others are trying to pair Kate with Sawyer? Was it Ben's way of teasing Sawyer about Kate retracting her statement about loving him? Or was it an indication that Sawyer might be getting sick because he's lonely?

In the preview for next week's episode, Pickett says to Sawyer: "[The] only reason you're still alive is they need you." What do The Others need Sawyer for, to pull a con, perhaps? Also from the preview, Jack appears to be telling Ben that he has the tumor. There's a fire of some sort. Eko and Locke get in yet another fight. Desmond, Sayid, Locke, and Nikki go inside the Pearl Station. One one of the Pearl Station's television monitors, Nikki sees a man with an eyepatch who stares right at the camera and then covers the lens with his hand. The man with the eyepatch may be connected with the glass eye that the tail section survivors found in the Arrow Station. Another interesting note: the last time Locke visited The Pearl, the monitors displayed camera views of The Swan, but as we have seen, the Swan hatch imploded. Therefore, we can assume that this monitor is showing someplace else, perhaps another DHARMA Initiative station on the island. The executive producers recently revealed that we would see the Flame Station this season, so perhaps the one-eyed man seen on the monitor is inside The Flame.

The official ABC synopsis of the episode is as follows:

A delirious Eko wrestles with demons from his past, while Locke and some of the other castaways head back to The Pearl -- one of the Dharma Initiative's island stations -- hoping to find a computer that they can use to locate Jack, Kate and Sawyer. Meanwhile, Jack doesn't know whom to trust when two of "The Others" seem at odds with one another.

It wouldn't be surprising if the two Others at odds are Ben and Juliet since we already know that they don't see eye-to-eye. It's also possible (although perhaps less likely) that the at-odds Others may be Pickett and Ben, since Pickett wants to kill Sawyer but Ben won't let him.

MAJOR SPOILER—Stop reading NOW unless you want to be majorly spoiled! According to TV Guide's Ask Ausiello column, one of LOST's main characters is going to die in the upcoming episode. Quote:

Next week, a major character (as in a series regular) whose name is not Sawyer will join Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia and Libby in the big island in the sky. And you're not going to believe who it is. I won't believe it until I see it with my own eyes.

Of course, it is unknown who will die, but many spoiler readers speculate that it will be Mr. Eko. After all, the upcoming episode will feature his flashbacks, and both Shannon and Ana Lucia had flashbacks in the same episode in which they died. The following statement by Damon Lindelof, from an interview that took place before the very first episode of LOST aired, may possibly be fulfilled in the next episode:

We've always loved the idea that one of our series regs goes traipsing off into the jungle with one of the castaways we've never seen before. The audience is thinking the poor yahoo with one line is gonna die a gruesome and horrible death, but then it's the REGULAR who gets wiped out. It will be done. Watch and see.

(Source: Ain't It Cool News interview, August 21, 2004. Bold emphasis mine.)

Update (continuing on the MAJOR SPOILER theme): Following is a quote from Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (the actor who plays Mr. Eko) from an October 4 article on ABC's Web site:

"The nature of the show is that nobody's safe, so you can go any minute," said Adewale Akkinnuoye-Agbaje, who plays Mr. Eko.

Could he have known so early that his character would be dying this season? Also, Akinnuoye-Agbaje is scheduled to be on Live With Regis and Kelly the morning after this week's episode appears. This is by no means proof that Eko will get killed off; after all, this week's episode is Eko-centric. On the other hand, Michelle Rodriguez, who played Ana Lucia Cortez, was a guest on Regis the day after her character was killed off (read a transcript). Rodriguez knew as soon as she was cast on LOST that she would ultimately die near the end of the second season. Perhaps Akinnuoye-Agbaje knew in advance as well, hence the quote above.