Sally Anne and Hasil have crashed with the refreshing and delightful Butch and his girlfriend who I don’t think the show ever got around to naming.

She is, by the by, the entire world, and wonderful, her legs are a million miles long and given how Butch appears and could so easily and lazily be as a character, the fact they went this direction with the pair and his girlfriend is trans, is a dream come true and I hope Sally Anne and she become besties. Forever.

She intuits Sally Anne is pregnant from her sobriety and also her already habitual tummy rubbing, and makes her an extra egg for breakfast, and they bond while the boys discuss how in the hell Hasil is going to make any money. Butch’s girlfriend talks up her own desire to have kids some day, via surrogacy or adoption, she’s just waiting on Butch to grow his ass up.

The exhausted look the girls throw their men on this line is the most relatable thing in the history of the human race, and excuse me while I die.

The adoption line doesn’t feel like foreshadowing, either, Butch is clearly years away from being ready for kids, though when he’s ready he’s honestly one of the most chilled out, level headed dudes in the whole town ,and his girlfriend is, obviously, the very best.

Later Sally Anne’s explaining pre-natal vitamins, doctors visits and just the broad and expensive complexity of giving birth in the USA down the mountain, and Hasil is stunned because on the mountain, you just have the baby. The long and short is, they need mad money, at least 10 thousand dollars. It’s so much money Hasil has never heard ‘thousand’ before and has to actually ask if it’s a lot. Oh, my stars.

Butch helps Hasil, who he’s convinced to put on pants and leave the kilt at home (BOO!), to get some day labour, but the asshole giving them the work doesn’t tell Hasil that he docks pay for water and pee breaks. What should be eighty bucks, is forty. Hasil doesn’t eat his face, which shows real growth for our boy. He does know the money is nothing at all. Butch offers him a job as security for him while he deals drugs at an underground bar and fighting ring, and it takes all of ten seconds for Hasil to figure out he can make crazy money winning fights against jumped up Losties.

I would like to brag ‘I told you so’ about the obvious direction Lil Foster’s internment would take but … it’s not like it was an especially clever guess that I made, because it’s not an especially clever story.

Sigh.

We’re brought into Lil Foster’s story by a bickering Matt and Wade. Matt is reaching the limits of his patience with Wade’s quiet work to move Lil Foster to county jail; it seems like Wade is growing into his own a little bit as he calmly listens to Matt’s complaints like ‘…. and?’.

Apparently ,they have bigger problems, like the two missing guards from the impossible fence, but Wade points out any of that stuff is all on Matt. Those words will take on way more meaning when they realise the guys are not sleeping off a drunk somewhere.

Matt gets angrier, but Wade retains that eerie calm as he explains that they’re trapped in a tug of war, with Matt thinking they have the murderer, Wade knowing they don’t. He makes a delightfully veiled threat about how ‘one of us’ will end up facedown in the mud over this … unless Matt — because ‘one of us’ meant Matt, obviously — moves Lil Fos to county. Matt yells, actually yells, like an impotent principal at the other adult in the room and Wade’s ‘…’ response gives me a thrill. Wade is reaching the limits of his own patience, too.

Back to the big man …

… Lil Foster is out of solitary eating lunch and some Neo Nazis approach, because of course they bleeding well do, and they make noises that he’s at their table and must pay tribute. Tribute? Dude, no. You ninny.

They offer him free membership to the lamest club of all time, their little gang of angry white men, but he declines.

At this point in my notes I predicted he’d have an innocent exchange with a black prisoner that will somehow raise the ire of the Nazis. I was half right. Later, in the yard he watches an African American prisoner lift weights and (delightfully) asks how many stones of weight it is. Aheh. A stone is 14 lbs., by the way. The kid is irrationally defensive, as Lil Foster tries to actually pay him a compliment about how heavy the weights appear. None of these dudes have an ounce of common sense.

I know they’re already living out the fact they don’t, but you guys must have some survival instinct, and it should be shrieking ‘leave the scarily calm, giant mountain man the fuck alone’.

Yard guy swings a dumbbell at Lil Fos, who easily defends himself and would have continued to easily defend himself to the immediate detriment of, ooooh everybody, but the Nazis spring up and things settle. Later on they confront him in the showers because everything shady in prison happens in the showers. Over in another corner, I can just see Ava Crowder killing that mean old drug lady …

Trevor and his friends have brought the kid from the yard for Lil Foster to have his way with, but Lil Foster only plays along enough to get his hands on the terrifying, nightmarish weapon, which looks like a club, a shiv and maybe a penetrating object all rolled into one, away from Trevor. He makes it clear where he stands as he unties the yard guy and stares Trevor down.

It’s okay, soon enough Boyd will find the guard responsible and intimidate him into confessing — oh, wait — no. Different show, same bullshit.

I wonder if Lil Foster will symbolically cut his hair.

On the outside, Wade might be edging closer to a solution, though you just know Matt will screw it up somehow. After his argument with Matt, he’s called to one of the town’s zany residents. She’s noticed a child stealing her dogs food, and when Wade arrives he finds silent little Samuel hiding beneath the house. Big Foster’s friend from the massacre house. This is about to go off.

We’re reminded in a few brief scenes that Wade is not only a dad, but when he needs to be, a fucking great one as he drives the boy around all day, trying to find his home, guessing at streets based on what little information Sam gives out about a road with ‘bear’. in it.

When the search fails, Sam is fed spaghetti for the first time ever, and sent off with a nice, kind social worker to be made safe somewhere.

I didn’t mention earlier that I nearly cried with relief when Sam turned up, and the worst thing that happened to him was being hungry and lost. Later, Wade is with his own son, Caleb and while he settles him from a nightmare (because fucking great dad), he figures out the few clues Sam gave and tracks down a road with a distinct marker; a log carved into a bear.

He finds the house Samuel came wandering from, and inside, of course…he finds Big Foster’s revenge.

Oblivious to this danger, though dealing with some of his own, Big Foster finds Kinnah stealing his generator, taking note of the stone and bone charms they decorate themselves with. He rescues the source of his power from their conniving hands (I didn’t write the heavy handed symbolism, I just noticed it, and groaned), and complains to Gwen, but she’s still got Morgan buzzing around and kissing ass, and claims it was her idea to remove the generators as they can no longer steal the fuel to power them, what with the impossible fence and all. She orders Big Foster to go and find Lil, mostly just to have him gone and Morgan, surprise, schemes and fills Gwen’s ears some more.

Big Foster at once goes to the smoking shack and breaks out some mountain CSI skills to find proof a Kinnah burned the cabin, and left one of her charms behind when she did. He reports to Gwen who still isn’t having it, and repeatedly claims he’s not to be trusted.,

And look, she has no reason to trust him and owes him nothing. He was a lunatic, and he tried to strangle her to literal death. But, he’s only there at all because she decided he could stay, and has demanded the clan respect her decision in particularly authoritarian way. I hate that she’s such a hypocrite, demanding respect for a decision she can’t even justify to herself in private.

She softens and we see that Big Foster is working at least some of a game when he tries to kiss her. She Nooopes across the room, reminding him about all the strangling, and he finally shows a flash of nasty old Big Fos, demanding what more she wants of him, when all the work he’s done since he came back has been for her!

Two things, bro; 1) it’s been about three days 2) if it had been ten years, and then one day you cut the meat from your own bones to personally feed her through the winter, she doesn’t owe you what you think she owes you. Be better, big man.

She parrots Morgan’s words to Big Fos about his having dueling emotions for Gwen, but he calls them out as Morgan’s, not hers. It’s a pretty damning moment for her, when we see just how close Morgan has gotten. Gwen thinks he’s only doing it so he can take the Oak, so he backs off, tells her he’ll stop telling her and counseling her at all, if that makes her believe him.

And … it appears to. She calls Morgan to her and naturally Morgan can’t help but scam and scheme about the clan and Big Foster. Gwen is finally showing that old hard Gwen she was on season one as she watches, rather than falls enraptured to Morgan’s promises, and finally she outright asks if the Kinnah burned the shack.

And Morgan says … yes, they did. She claims the meat, even the Kinnah caught meat, was all tainted by the use of the guns and while I’m shrieking at my screen Gwen tosses Morgan and the Kinnah out. But she’s still, you know, Gwen, so she does it by herself and doesn’t appear to tell LITERALLY ANYONE.

Big Foster is in his feelings, and in his cups as he drunkenly throws knives in the barn. Last time he did this was with Asa, just saying. Even Enoch, of the Big Fos crew suggests the drink he’s handing the big man be his last, and when Big Fos just passes clean the fuck out the boys leave him to sleep it off on the floor. Hehehehehehe.

It was light when she spoke to Morgan and pitch black as Gwen frets, then leaves her entirely unprotected, unguarded house and displaying no situational awareness at all, heads off to find Big Foster at his house. Hours and hours after the fact. Jesus wept.

She misses the small army of Kinnah who bust in her place ten seconds later. She’s also got her gennie running and lights on. Morgan being a liar doesn’t get you back your resources, woman.

The next morning Gwen finally finds Big Fos because she apparently waited all night in his cabin and didn’t go and check the barn at all. She’s on side, of course and wants Big Foster’s help tossing the Kinnah out of camp. They confront Morgan, who has no intention of leaving and ominously reminds Gwen she’s not Bren’in to the Kinnah.

Threats are made, but it’s too late, because the Kinnah, who apparently don’t consider the Farrells meat, have all the guns from Gwens house and they’re using them, killing one of Big Foster’s men and taking over.

I got my wish and Gwen got smart, but of course, it came too late. It’s more clear than ever now why Asa had to die, as I stated last week; the Kinnah would never have gotten this far with him to compete with. The boy would have smelled the lies on them.

That said, it still feels pretty hollow. Big Foster had murdered his mother and staged his own coup around the exact same time last season, so it’s good to know we have in fact been treading mostly the same old territory the entire season long. Once again, the threat for the clan was, pointlessly, internal politics and squabbling and once again while they’ve wasted time with this, the Losties have gained ground and strength. Sigh.

But, Wade finally finding Big Fosters massacre? That is interesting. We already knew Sam was a confused, vulnerable child but this episode confirms on top of trauma there may be a cognitive problem at work. He doesn’t know his address or what road he walked down to get to town, I’m not even sure he knows his own last name.

I can’t see him accurately describing Big Foster. If he’s shown Lil Foster, I can see him saying it’s the guy. He might confirm a bearded hairy giant from the woods came to his house, and the time of death will be, at least, the same day Lil Foster came to town.

Lil Foster might get pegged with three more murders, since they happened on the day he was arrested. We know they happened when he was already in custody, though no one else can prove that.

I wonder if Sam will remember the killer had a big, gaping chest wound that Lil Foster doesn’t have …

Or, is Big Foster — assuming he survives Morgan — going to have to prove himself changed once and for all, by turning himself in to save his boy?

Ged Ged Yah!