The Dope Box TV Blog

I assume the title of the episode refers to Aaron although, frankly, the kid is a little dull. He was born on a time-traveling, smoke-monster infested, inexplicably paranormal island! Would it be so  implausible for the wee fella to have some kind of freaky ability? How about gills? Hallucinogenic saliva? Or, perhaps, laser-beam retinas? All we’ve seen him do is cry and eat fries.

Despite all his boringness, Kate still wants to keep him so she heads over to see her mystery rival’s lawyer. Sun agrees to babysit and receives a package with colorless pictures of Ben and bearded Jack. Oh, and a golden box of chocolates atop a handgun. A little unrealistic if you ask me. I mean, who uses black and white film anymore?

Kate tries to make a deal with cranky lawyer guy (who I can only think of as Angela’s dad from My So-Called Life) but he won’t budge. He tells her, quite simply, “You’re going to lose the boy.” If the goal were really to take Aaron away, wouldn’t the police have been notified? This leaves me to gather that the real goal is mental manipulation.

In the meantime, Sayid is just waking up from a relaxing 42 hour snooze caused by 3 horse tranquilizers. Jacky-boy gets in trouble for hanging around the hospital since they tend to frown on pill-popping alky doctors tending to patients. While Ben and Jack shoot the breeze, a fake orderly tries to re-tranq Sayid. But he’s quick-witted and sprightly, grabbing the intruder’s gun, and shooting fluffy purple darts through his scrubs. Sayid retrieves Kate’s address from the lame assassin’s pocket (who claims she sent him). I smell a set-up!

Kate, who’s sounding especially Canadian lately, and Jack follow the lawyer to a hotel where he’s meeting with (cue dramatic music) Claire’s mother! They sit in the car through a commercial break and rainstorm before Jack decides he’ll fix everything. He marches right up and starts yammering excuses about the many lies they’ve told. Claire’s mom just looks perplexed. Turns out she’s suing Oceanic and has no clue Aaron is alive. Good thing Jack’s bumbling explanation conveniently left out specifics!

That lawyer sure gets around. He meets with Ben in the middle of a parking lot to discuss Hurley’s release from prison. Later, Ben admits to being the one who’s been mercilessly screwing with Kate. She says, “Why don’t you just leave me and my son alone?” He replies, coolly stating the obvious, “Because he’s not your son, Kate.” At that moment, Sun pulls up, toddler o’ insipidness sitting in the backseat, and grabs the gun out of her purse. Assuming she’s after Mr. Linus, we can look forward to a dose of genius puppet-mastery next week as he talks her out of pulling the trigger.

On the island, the crew continues their jaunt through the space-time continuum. All this time-hopping is starting to feel like a theme park ride. With nosebleeds. And H-bombs. Charlotte isn’t dead after all, just bloody and forgetful. Miles and Juliet both start exhibiting symptoms of what Daniel Faraday casually calls “really bad jetlag.”

Sawyer spends much of the episode crinkling his brow and pining for Kate. After an island spazz (or time-jump, if you prefer), he ends up coming across Claire and Kate during Aaron’s birth. Seeing them gives Sawyer a serious case of gloomy eyes. The group hop into abandoned boats strewn with empty bottles of Indian water, and are soon getting shot at by strangers. Time jump! It’s dark and rainy, so they head back to land. By the way, wouldn’t the boats have disappeared after the shift since they weren’t part of their original gear?

French wreckage litters the shore, with one container reading Besix Douze. “Douze” means “twelve” but not even AltaVista Babelfish could tell me what the hell Besix means. It is possible that the name is irrelevant but dismissing seemingly extraneous details only leads to trouble. Of course, over-analysis of the show has been known to cause excessive nerdiness, leading to the haunting of Lost forums and an aversion to sunlight.

From the moment Locke said “French” I knew we were in for a visit from Danielle Rousseau. But not the stealthy, dirty, jungle loon we’ve grown to love. Instead, she’s young, smiley, and pregnant. Snatched up out of the water and taken with the Frenchies to shore is…Jin! Except for a raging case of chapped lips, he’s alive and well.

“Time travel’s a bitch.” -Sawyer

Convincing a staunch lesbian that she’s in love with a misogynistic, egomaniacal, testosterone-driven manwhore is no easy feat. But the supernatural power of Christian’s penis has cast a spell of heterosexuality over Liz. They’re giving romance a try, and it isn’t going well. For starters, his instructional guidance on fellatio was about as sexy as a quilting bee. When she gets up, having failed at oral, he throws her a robe. She knows it’s because he doesn’t want to see her naked, although he claims he’s just preventing her from getting chilly. In the bathroom, she cries and pulls her face back as if contemplating a surgical lift. Their relationship is definitely not good for her self-esteem.

Clearly satisfied with his pectoral reconstruction, Christian quickly brings home plenty of tail. Realistically, wouldn’t he have still looked swollen and bruised from the surgery? I know, I know. Realism has little place in the Nip/Tuck universe. While he enjoys a rotating door of easy women, Liz spends all day getting beautified for a date with him. She walks in on him partaking in some bathtub lovin’ (which just looks uncomfortable) and he doesn’t even take a momentary thrusting pause.

All Christian’s vigorous humping knocks his implant loose. He and his wandering boob rush over to Liz for a consolatory hug. And in a case of perfect karmic reprisal, she happens to be entertaining a lady friend. Christian seems mildly jealous and says, “Are you cheating on me?” She says yes, dismisses his peck displacement as no big deal, and shoves his ass out the door.

Days later, following yet another walk-in on Christian doing some random chick, Liz resigns. The quirky friendship between them and their playfully sarcastic banter is a huge asset to the show, so hopefully this rift is only temporary.

The patient plotline was clearly a spoof of the Mary Kay Letourneau debacle. Blatantly naming the teacher Carrie May was an amusing touch. Ricky, her teen lover/husband, has hair plugs implanted on his upper lip, widow’s peak, and sideburns. The final effect does indeed make him look older…and also like a 70’s porn star. She looks horrified by his transformation and, naturally, hops into bed with his little bro.

Mattie’s quest to become a doctor is quickly losing steam. He’s clueless about organic chemistry and sucks at basic anatomy. While under the tutelage of Sean, he does surgery on a dead pig and removes the wrong organ. For some reason, the ubiquitous fake blood doesn’t gross me out but the stringy slime dangling from the pig organs made my stomach lurch.

Raj’s father stops by McNamara/Troy for a little abusive parenting. First, he pressures his son to perform a penis enlargement on him (uber-creepy). Then, upon hearing about Christian’s suture mishap, he decides to take his penis elsewhere, smacking and belittling Raj on the way out. Sean and Mattie introduce Raj to the world of chicken wings (”My mouth is burning but I can’t stop eating these amazing poultry samples!”), underage drinking, and pot-smoking. After getting supremely baked, Raj confesses to fantasizing about cutting his own hands off so he wouldn’t have to be a doctor anymore. And how, like every other teenage boy, he’d like to be a Playboy photographer. He and Matt bond over paternal neglect and swap stories about sexual escapades with trannies. Then Mattie honors Raj’s request for a brutal hand-crushing. The event causes Mattie to conclude that doctorin’ is way hard and he’d prefer simply playing one on TV.

“Sorry, pal. Women are women…even if they used to be lesbians.” -Sean