Tom Friendly

In a flashback during "The Other Woman", set around three years before the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, Tom has a brief conversation with newly recruited Other Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), where he mentions he is a patient of therapist Harper Stanhope (Andrea Roth). Shown in flashbacks during "Maternity Leave", when Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) is kidnapped by the Others a few weeks after the plane crash, Tom oversees Ethan Rom's (William Mapother) progress at the Others' medical station. He criticizes Ethan for kidnapping Claire before making "the list". Tom makes his first appearance in "Exodus: Part 2", where he arrives in a motorboat, wearing a fake beard and old clothes, with a crew of Others who kidnap Walt and destroy the raft. Tom warns them not to come any closer to the Others and then leaves with Michael in tow. There, Tom knocks Jack, Kate and Sawyer unconscious and transports them to a small island nearby. He loses trust in Juliet, believing her to be plotting against Ben, and expresses his views to the Others' sheriff, before returning to the Island. Shown in a flashback during season four, Tom leaves the Island and tracks down Michael in Manhattan, where Michael is trying to kill himself. He tells Michael that the Island will not let him die and gives him the address of his hotel penthouse. Shortly after this, he and the Others abandon the barracks, making camp in the jungle en route to the temple. Tom is shocked when Ben agrees to take one of the survivors, John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), to see Jacob, Ben's superior. His faith in Ben's leadership is shaken, and he ignores Ben's calls to intervene when Locke begins to beat another Other, Mikhail Bakunin (Andrew Divoff). In "Through the Looking Glass", the season three finale, Jin, Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) and Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson) are captured by the party, and Ben radios Tom to shoot them. ==Characteristics==

" When Tom is introduced in the first season finale, he wears a fake beard and old clothes. which Emerson believes makes him "cuddly". Gainey does not think he is very similar to Tom, commenting, "He seems to be very loyal and I'm a very loyal person so I have that in common, but other than that, I don't really know what he's about. He seems much more socially awkward than I am." After Tom was revealed to be gay during season four, M. C. Gainey stated that "anytime you've got a group of people, somebody's got to be marching to a different drummer - that would be Tom Friendly." ==Development==

M. C. Gainey first met Lost producer Carlton Cuse while working on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. The opportunity to work with Cuse again was motivation enough to take the part of Tom, even without a script or description of the character. then in his season two appearances as "Mr. Friendly". In the Official Lost Podcast, Damon Lindelof confirmed Mr. Friendly is not his real name, but is how the producers refer to him internally, because "he's so friendly"; however, his surname was later suggested to actually be Friendly during Comic-Con 2009. In the season two finale "Live Together, Die Alone", his name is revealed to be Tom. In the third season premiere "A Tale of Two Cities", Tom tells Kate that she is not his type. This comment resulted in online discussion in regard to Tom's sexual orientation, and Lindelof and Cuse hinted that a Lost character would later be outed. Gainey joked, "if [Kate's] not your type, you're gay", and began playing the character as such. He tried to subtly flirt with Jack, claiming that this attraction "got [him] through the first half of the season." In the fourth season episode "Meet Kevin Johnson", Tom is seen kissing his New York lover Arturo (Francesco Simone). Lost writer Edward Kitsis stated that "It was great to see [Tom] and realize that... he is a true gentleman." ==Reception==

Chris Carabott from IGN "loved" Tom's first appearance because "It's a great scene and our first introduction to The Others besides Ethan's infiltration of the camp." Gainey found the fan reaction to his first appearance "really tough", because "everywhere [he] went people would just give [him] dirty looks and they were like 'What are you going to do with that boy?'", but he noted this gradually improved after his appearances in season two. In her review of the season four episode "The Other Woman", Nikki Stafford of Wizard called the return of her "favorite Other" (Tom) a "highlight". Following his posthumous flashback appearance in "Meet Kevin Johnson", Martell said "Now I feel even worse about his death. He wasn't just one of Ben's scary, Walt-napping minions. He had a heart." Tim Goodman from the San Francisco Chronicle thought the revelation that Tom is gay was a "unique and funny twist". Jay Glatfelter of The Huffington Post noted this revelation "seemed a little oddly placed, kind of like 'Let's make one of our characters gay just for the heck of it' but still it's cool that the show has a perfectly normal (well for an 'Other') not over-the-top gay character." ==References==