Look at how mysterious my notes looked for this episode!

Anyway, in LA, the Stepfather pulls up to his house in his wheelchair-accessible van, which malfunctions, tossing him onto the lawn, which is when the SPRINKLERS come on and then Peggy Bundy runs out of the house! This show is the best comedy of the year!

It turns out the Stepfather and Peggy Bundy are getting married soon. She finds the business card Jack gave him at the airport and tells him he should call, because what are the odds of running into a spinal surgeon? I was gonna say they’re pretty good if you live in Lost, but actually, they’re probably pretty good anyway, because I’d imagine that spinal surgeons, while specialized, aren’t exactly hiding in caves, and they probably take a lot of interest in people with apparent spinal injuries. So, your odds are probably no worse in reality LA than they are in Lost LA, and they’re also probably no worse than running into a podiatrist when you have a pain in your foot.

Back on the island, the smoke monster is wandering around and then eventually turns into the Stepfather, so the Stepfather is also the Smokefather, but he’s not actually both, I don’t know. Anyway, he cuts Richard down, who’s been hanging from a tree in a big sack, and tells him it’s time to talk. Richard doesn’t look too happy.

Back in LA, the Stepfather is at work, where some weirdo comes up to him and welcomes him back from his trip. But, like, he welcomes him back like this, because he knows that the Stepfather didn’t actually spend the company-funded week in Australia at a conference. The Stepfather tries to apologize, but won’t say what he was doing while he was away, and then the weirdo fires him.

Back on the island, the Smokefather says, “I’m sorry I hit you in the throat and dragged you into the jungle,” which is the funniest line YET. Richard wants to know why the Smokefather looks like the Stepfather, and the Smokefather says that he needed to look like him to get access to Jacob (?) because the Stepfather was a candidate (?) and Richard is like, “IDK what you’re talking about,” and so am I. The Smokefather says that if he had been in Jacob’s place, he wouldn’t have kept Richard in the dark, and if Richard just comes with him, he’ll explain everything. But Richard’s been up in a bag for a few days, so he’s hesitant. Then the Smokefather sees a creepy boy staring at him, but Richard doesn’t see him, and the Smokefather leaves.

Ben is in the Indiana Jones temple, where he finds some lady crying over all the dead people killed by really bad animation, and Ben’s like, “Am I interrupting something?” because Ben is creepy/desensitized/crazy? He tells her that they died by the terrible animation, and that Jacob’s body isn’t there because it was burned in the fire pit, so she goes over and grabs a handful of Jacob ashes and puts them in the ash bag she’s had tied to her belt for months after she bought it at the island flea market because she’s the island hipster and she wanted to buy something odd and act like she was supporting the island craftspeople, but she didn’t actually want to spend a lot of money. Ben asks her if she knows why the Smokefather brought Richard to the jungle, and the lady says that he was recruiting.

The Smokefather has ended up at the vacation condos, where he finds Sawyer inside, drinking with no pants on. Sawyer thought the Smokefather was dead, and he says that he is. Which might explain why he doesn’t drink the whiskey Sawyer offers him, but it does not explain this:

Anyway, the Smokefather says that Sawyer is taking this talking-to-a-dead-guy thing remarkably well, but Sawyer tells him that he doesn’t care, and I mean, is this really the first time that the Smokefather thinks something weird has happened to these people? Isn’t he kind of the cause of a lot of the weird things they’ve seen? I don’t know if that’s true, but it seems like it would be. Anyway, Sawyer says that he knows the Smokefather isn’t the Stepfather, because the Stepfather was always scared, and the Smokefather isn’t. The Smokefather tells Sawyer that he’s the person who can answer the most important question in the world: why are they on this island. Sawyer says he already knows the answer.

His plane crashed, then his raft blew up, then his helicopter was too heavy because everyone wanted to take island souvenirs home. But then the Smokefather is like, No, duh, that’s why you can’t get OFF the island, I can tell you why you’re ON the island if you come with me, and then Sawyer’s, like, “I literally have nothing else to do because I live on a mystery island, so I’ll go put on some pants.

Back in LA, the Stepfather is angry that his van has been blocked in by a Hummer in the parking lot, so he starts punching it. The Hummer belongs to Hugo, who is like, “If you’re handicapped, you should park in the handicapped spot,” and the Stepfather is like, “You’re a dick, because I can park wherever I want,” and Hugo’s like, “But, the handicapped spot would give you room for your handicapped door because you’re handicapped, btw I own this company,” and then the Stepfather is like, “I just got fired,” and Hugo’s like, “I’ll get you your job back,” and the Stepfather is like, “I don’t want it back, but I will accept your offer of hooking me up at the temp agency you also own,” and then Hugo’s like, “Chin up.” No, really, he says, “Chin up.” Gross.

Back on the island, that crying lady comes out of Indiana Jones temple and asks where everyone went. Sun tells her that they went to the other temple, like, the hippie temple, and the crying lady’s like, Let’s go to the other temple then. Sun says she’s not going anywhere, so I guess these people have problems with each other. I guess they never got a chance to get in on the timeshare thing happening on the other side of the island. Anyway, the crying lady tells Sun that, if Jin is alive, he’s probably in the temple, but Sun says before they go they have to bury the Stepfather.

The Smokefather and Sawyer are walking through the jungle, when he sees that creepy boy again, and the Smokefather goes chasing after him. He catches up to him and the kid says that there are rules, and the rules state that he can’t kill him. The Smokefather yells, “You can’t tell me what I can’t do!” Meanwhile, Richard comes out of hiding to talk to Sawyer and ask what he’s doing with the Smokefather. Sawyer says he wants answers, but Richard tells him he won’t get any, but he hears the Smokefather coming and runs off. The Smokefather asks Sawyer who he was talking to and Sawyer’s like, “Your probably heard the tv I was watching out here in the jungle, btw, who was that boy?” and the Smokefather is like, “What boy? You probably saw me talking to that tree I was chasing through the jungle.”

Back in LA, the Stepfather is at the temp agency, and tells the woman that he wants to be a site supervisor at a construction site. She tells him that Hugo is her boss, and she will get the Stepfather any job he wants because Hugo said to, but that working at a construction site is a boneheaded idea, since they’ll just make him leave the next day. So, the Stepfather starts to get really discrimination-angry, but the woman cuts him off all, “I have cancer, so.” I get it. She wants him to get a job that he can work well in without having to fight a battle, because she’s gonna die soon and she doesn’t want to see other people wasting their lives. Or it’s just a really nice way of saying, “GET CANCER, JERK!”

Back on the island, Sawyer asks the Smokefather if he ever read Of Mice and Men, and tells him about the part in the book where George shoots and kills his friend Lennie because Lennie was going to be killed by an angry mob later anyway, you’re welcome, and the Smokefather’s like, “I’m made of smoke, I don’t know the cultural significance of this book,” and Sawyer’s like, “Look, I’m pointing a gun at you. You’re retarded. Get it? Do you get it? Of Mice and Men?” Sawyer asks what exactly the Smokefather is and he tells him that he was once a man and understands all of the human emotions that Sawyer has/is going through, but that now he’s trapped and he wants to be free, and that Sawyer could shoot him, but why would he do that now that they’re so close?

Meanwhile, the crying lady and Ben are carrying the Stepfather’s body to a little island cemetery, where they all bury him. She asks if anyone knew him and wants to say a few words, so Ben is like, “Yeah, he was a really great guy and I really liked him and he was a better man that I’ll ever be, so that’s why I’m sorry I killed him.” Everyone else is like, “We’ve been here six years, so we’re shocked, but we’re also not shocked, kwim?”

Back in LA, the Stepfather calls Jack’s office and then hangs up. Peggy asks why he did that, and he tells her that he was fired because he didn’t go to the conference. She asks him why not, and he tells her to open the luggage that the airline finally returned to him. It’s filled with knives, which he would have used on his walkabout, had the walkabout organizers not told him he couldn’t go because of his wheelchair. He yelled at them that they couldn’t tell him what he couldn’t do (OMG, RIGHT?), but then he realized that he’s sick of imagining a life where he can walk, because it’s never gonna happen. So, if Peggy wants to wait for a miracle, she shouldn’t wait for one with him. But she tells him that the only miracle she wanted was for him to be in her life, and tears up Jack’s business card. Ha! Jack never wins.

Back on the island, Sawyer and the Smokefather reach a cliff with a series of Super Mario Brothers 2-style ladders. They start to climb down, but Sawyer’s ladder breaks, so he grabs another one, which also breaks. Comedy! Anyway, the Smokefather saves him, and brings him into a cave on the side of the cliff that’s decorated like the little architecture tent Moses had in the Ten Commandments. The Smokefather picks up a rock from a set of scales and throws it into the water and is like, “That’s an inside joke. Get it? You don’t. Because you’re not on the inside.” Then Sawyer’s like, “Are you serious? Did I seriously just almost die twice on those broken ladders which are now so broken that we’ll actually never be able to get back out of this cave so you can tell me that the reason I’m on this island is two rocks on a set of scales?” So, the Smokefather lights a big torch and brings Sawyer further into the cave, where there are names scratched into the rocks, and says, “No, this is why you’re here.”

Back in LA, the Stepfather is now a substitute teacher at a high school. He goes into the teachers lounge and meets Ben who, in this reality, is a teacher at the high school who is fussy about coffee pots and thinks earl gray tea is a man’s drink.

Back on the island, the Smokefather tells Sawyer that Jacob wrote all the names (and their corresponding mysterious numbers), most of which are crossed out. Then he points out the ones that aren’t crossed out, which include the Stepfather, Jack and Hugo, and Jin and Sun’s last name, and they show a little flashback to Jacob meeting all five of those people at some point in their non-island lives. Sawyer’s name is there, too, but Sawyer says he never met Jacob. The Smokefather tells him that he definitely did, probably when he was younger, and they show a little flashback to Sawyer as a little kid sadly accepting a pen (?) from Jacob. The Smokefather tells him that Jacob met everyone when they were vulnerable and set all their paths to the island in motion, and that he was collecting a group of candidates who would protect the island. Is Jacob Jigsaw? Is that how the show’s gonna end? With like, a big cross-promo tie-in to Saw 7? Because as someone with absolutely nothing emotionally invested in this show, I can see that as being the best comedy routine so far.
Anyway, he tells Sawyer that they have three options: do nothing and probably get your name crossed out, become the new Jacob and protect the island (though he says Jacob was nuts and there was never any threat to the island), or leave and never look back. He asks Sawyer if he wants to leave, and Sawyer says, “Hell, yes.” Which wasn’t at all unexpected, so I don’t know why there was such a long suspenseful beat between question and answer, but that’s another mystery for another day.