Tuesday, December 22, 2009

MEET KEVIN JOHNSON

Or, Bombs

[Originally Aired March 20, 2008]

Ben, Sawyer, Hurley, and Claire sit tensely around in Ben's living room. Locke arrives with Miles. He says there will be no more secrets and prods Miles to reveal why the freighter crew is there. He says they're here for Ben, and everyone is all "no shit, doucheknocker." Sawyer suggests turning him over to them, but that is countered with "Once they have me, their orders are to kill everyone else on the island." Hurley asks who the spy on the boat is. Michael. Sawyer is in disbelief. "I'm sorry. You mean the same guy that killed two women in cold blood to set this little bastard free? And then sold all of us out so he could get off the island? That Michael?" On the freighter Gault pounds on two crew members who were looking to escape. "Nobody leaves this ship without my say so! I'm not beating these men to scare you. I beat them to save your lives! Do you remember what happened to the last two men who took off in this boat? You remember what happened to Minkowski? As soon as we get the engines fixed, we're back in the hunt. In the meantime, everybody just hold on." Then he tells "Johnson" AKA Michael to clean up the blood. Everyone wanders away, except Sayid who gets in Michael's face. Not now, says Michael. Sayid asks him what he is doing on the boat. "I am here to die," he responds. After their meeting, Ben asks for a word with Alex. He gives her a map to the Temple and tells her to go there now. The rest of the Others are already there. Alex, Rousseau and Karl head out. On the boat, Sayid and Dez finally corner Michael alone and ask him what the fuck he's up to. Flashback to NYC, and Michael scrawls a note on some paper, then pins it to his shirt. He jumps behind the wheel of his car and drives full-speed into a storage container. Crunch! And then he wakes up in the hospital. And Libby is his nurse. What the fuck! He freaks out and his nurse morphs into someone else. Someone he didn't murder. She asks if he wants her to call someone. Walt maybe? No. Later Michael knocks on his mother's door. He asks to see Walt. She tells him to get lost. He says he has a right to see him. "I thought you were dead. They said your plane crashed in the middle of the ocean, but you show up here fine and dandy, only I can't tell anybody about you or Walt, can't call you by your real names. He barely talks to me, but he does wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and I'm the one that's got to tell him it's gonna be okay. So until you can explain to me where you were for over two months and what happened, you gave up your rights." Damn! As he walks away, Michael looks up and sees a digitally superimposed Walt looking at him from an upstairs window. Walt coldly pulls the curtains closed on his father. Michael visits a pawn shop and tries to sell Jin's watch. The guy offers him $300 for it. Michael says no, he wants to trade it for a gun. And some bullets. Moments later Michael sits in an alley and loads the pistol. He puts the gun to his head but is interrupted. "Excuse me, sir. You got the time?" No, piss off! "How about for an old friend?" Tom walks out of the shadows. Damn! Michael stands and tries to shoot Tom but misses. The two scuffle until Tom knocks him on his ass. Don't mess with Tom, he's one butch mo! Then they scuffle some more because Michael is kind of dumb. Tom gets the gun and puts it to Michael's head. Michael says to go ahead and shoot him. As if. Michael mumbles some shit about his son and Tom asks "You told him, didn't you? You couldn't carry the guilt of what you did to those two women all by yourself, so you shared it with a 10-year-old kid. Is that why you wanna kill yourself, Michael? Because that's the way he looks at you now? Because he knows you're a murderer?" Damn! Michael tells him to fuck off. "I got some bad news for you, amigo. You can't kill yourself. The island won't let you. No matter how bad you want to, no matter how many different ways you try, it won't happen. Give it a shot if you don't believe me. You got more work to do, Mike. When you figure that out, I'm in the penthouse at the Hotel Earle." Hey, wasn't the Hotel Earle the place they stayed in Barton Fink? Michael sits at home and tries to shoot himself. It doesn't work. He puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger but the gun doesn't fire. So Michael visits Tom at the penthouse suite of the Hotel Earle. Tom is there with his friend Arturo. Tom gives him a smooch and asks him for some privacy. Arturo steps out onto the balcony. See? I told you Tom was a mo. Tom eats grapes and says "Don't make it to the mainland too often so when I do, I like to indulge myself." Yeah, grapes and buttfucking: what life is all about. Michael asks about the plane found in the ocean. "That's not your plane. It's a phony. A man named Widmore put it down there, and he staged the whole wreck. He doesn't want anyone else finding where the real plane ended up." Okay, so who faked the wreckage? Ben or Widmore? Michael asks Tom to prove Widmore staged the crash. Tom whips out a file and starts thumbing through it. "That's the cemetery in Thailand where Widmore dug up the 300-odd corpses he needed. And the purchase order for the old 777 he bought through a shell company, and the shipping logs for the freighter he used to drop the whole mess down a trench deep enough to guarantee that no remains are ever gonna be identified. Do you have any idea what it would cost to bring those bodies up?" What's he want from him, Michael asks. "In a few days, a freighter is porting in Fiji. It's Widmore's boat. We have reason to believe he's finally found the coordinates of the island, and he's heading right for it. So congratulations, Michael. Your shore leave is over. You just got a job on that boat." Tom hands him a new passport. "Meet Kevin Johnson." Michael doesn't like the idea. Tom tells him this is how he can redeem himself for the murders and betrayal. Michael says he can't go back to the island. You're not, says Tom. You're going to kill everyone on the boat. Michael arrives in Fiji and meets Minkowski and Naomi. Miles tells him his name isn't Kevin. There is a package waiting for Michael. Tom calls and asks if he's ready. Michael isn't, until Tom reminds him of all the people he left on the island, and how they will die if Michael doesn't help. Later, Frank and Michael bullshit on deck. Frank says "What would you say if I told you the plane they found in that trench wasn't Oceanic 815? That's why I signed up for this trip, because the owner of this boat believes me. Charles Widmore. He believes that 815 is still out there somewhere. I mean, can you imagine what would happen if we found some of those people alive?" Later Michael watches Keamy and friends shoot skeet with machine guns. "I thought we were going on a rescue mission," he says. Keamy tells him to go mop something. Back in his room, Michael opens his package and carries the contents to the engine room. It's a toolbox with false bottom. There's a bomb inside. Michael keys in the detonation code. He hesitates over the "execute" button. Libby appears and tells him not to do it. He ignores her and presses the button. She disappears. The bomb counts down. When it hits zero, a flag on the bomb pops up. "Not yet." Damn! Later he sits in his room, and Minkowski comes in and tells him he has a call. No one knows I'm here, he says. Minkowski tells him it is Walt. Michael goes to the radio room but it's Ben on the other end. He asks Ben what's the deal with the fake bomb. "There are people on your boat who are innocent. They have no idea that the man they work for is a monster, a killer without conscience or a greater purpose. I had to show you the difference between him and me. When I'm at war, I'll do what I need to do to win, but I will not kill innocent people." Ben asks him to get a list of everyone on the boat. Ben will call back later for it. After that, destroy the radios. Then the engines. That way the boat will never get to the island. Michael says okay and Ben tells him "Consider yourself one of the good guys." And we're all caught up and Sayid asks if Michael is really working for Ben. Yeah. So Sayid grabs Michael and drags him to Gault and says "This is the man who sabotaged your radio room. He destroyed the ship's engine, and his name isn't Kevin Johnson. It's Michael Dawson, and he's a traitor." Damn! Meanwhile, in the jungle, Alex, Karl and Rousseau stop to rest. Karl drinks and there's a zipping sound and his canteen is punctured. Huh? Then he's shot in the chest and keels over. Damn! Rousseau grabs her and they start to run. But Rousseau is hit too. She collapses. Someone approaches through the brush. Alex raises her hands and screams "Wait! Wait! Don't! I'm Ben's daughter! I'm his daughter!"

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