Recon

Better late than never. Since it's no longer fresh in my mind, the thoughts won't flow freely, but I figured we may as well have a post if only as a placeholder, in case folks have things to say.

I guess the big thing is the Monster's mother. I don't have a lot to say on that matter.

Nice to see Widmore. Interesting how honest Sawyer was, both with Widmore (admitting the Monster sent him) and then with the Monster (admitting he told Widmore that the Monster had sent him). The Monster mentioned that Sawyer was the best liar he'd ever met (or something like that), but Sawyer did very little lying (except about future intentions). And his honestly kind of caught folks a little off-guard.

By the way, I understand that the Monster doesn't have a good name, and that makes things difficult. But I don't like calling him "Fake Locke" or, as I've somehow been hearing more often these past couple weeks, "Flocke" (which, while nice and monosyllabic, feels like a pretty silly portmanteau anyway).

"Fake Locke" was a reasonable term from the moment we saw Locke's body in the coffin up until the time it came clear that that man was the man in black and the monster. But it is no longer a reasonable term!

I'll quote this again:

JACK: Coffin was supposed to go on the plane in Sydney, but it didn't. Apparently he's somewhere in transit which is their way of saying, they have no idea where the hell he is.

LOCKE: Well, how could they know.

JACK: They're the one's that checked him in, I mean they've gotta have some kind of tracking system.

LOCKE: No I'm not talking about the coffin, I mean how could they know where he is. They didn't lose your father, they just lost his body.

David Hawkes' introduction in the B&N Classics edition of Paradise Lost talks a lot about the sin of confusing signs and referents. That's what Jack was doing by saying the airline had lost "his father," and that's what "Flocke" fans are doing by fixating so heavily on this man's incidental appearance.

Is "the Man in Black" any better? Is it even worse? He's not always wearing black, after all! And it's also out-of-date, because it predates the revelation that the smoke monster, fake Locke, and the man in black are all different avatars of the same man. But at least it's not associating him with *another* man.

So for now I'm using "the Monster," as it seems to refer to something closer to his essence. Post-"Ab Aeterno", "the Devil" or "el Diablo" would also work. Of course, those terms are problematic, too -- they may be contested. The Monster may not think himself monsterous or devilish. But it at least encourages us to think about "the man" as something distinct from his incidental body, as the writers are encouraging us to do.