Episode Report Card Daniel: C | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Lockdown
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 17 | Aired on March 28, 2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Thank god we open with Sayid, Charlie and Ana-Lucia finding Henry Gale's balloon, since ABC kind of blew that for us in the previews. But, as suspected, things aren't quite what they seem. We'll come back to that.
Henry continues to worm his way into Locke's good books by driving a wedge between him and Jack. And when a mysterious and garbled radio transmission is followed by the sealing up of the hatch (pinning Locke's legs underneath when he foolishly thinks a toolbox can hold up these massive steel doors) Locke needs a little help from the man who calls himself Henry Gale, who makes Locke promise to protect him from the avenging Lostaways, "no matter what." No, that's totally not suspicious or anything. Alarms sound, and the lights go out, and Locke sees a large black-light map of what looks like the island hatches on the steel door pinning him down, but just for a second.
Jack finally realizes that maybe it's not a good idea for the island con artist to hoard all the medical supplies, especially when the going rate for a tube of Neosporin is 10 loads of laundry. Luckily, the Texas Hold 'Em fad has somehow even permeated Craphole Island, and Jack acts like he's a master player, because skill is what gets you pocket kings. And he gets the medical supplies back.
At night, Jack and Kate see a flashing strobe light and find what appears to be a shipment of Dharma supplies (there's mac and cheese, at any rate). Big deal, since they still have lots of food, apparently, even after Hurley's big food orgy.
Back in the hatch, Locke now trusts Henry, except turns out that in the grave that Charlie found? Henry's wife wasn't buried there. A man named Henry Gale was.
The flashbacks? Oh, Locke's dad fakes his death, and he needs Locke's help to get some money he conned from these two thugs (we never get to that particular fireworks factory). Locke does it, for some reason, and Helen leaves him, engagement ring in hand, because he needs his dad's love more than he needs Helen's. It's not like we didn't know this. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Flashback. Locke's digging through his sock drawer. One of his socks looks a little more cubical than usual, and that's because Locke (he has hair!) has hidden a little jeweler's box with a diamond ring inside.
And now he's in the kitchen, packing up one of those fancy picnic baskets that accommodate wine glasses, while Helen putters around the kitchen happily asking what she's done to earn this, and Locke asks if her "fella" can't just take his "girl" out for a picnic, and maybe Locke wants to come back from the 1950s at some point, and he rolls the diamond ring up in a napkin and puts it in the basket. Helen asks if she can do anything to help, but he tells her he's got it under control, and he rather clunkily says, "Just read your obituaries and drink your coffee," and how obvious could it have been what was coming next? I know lots of people who enjoy reading the obits, but this was really awkward, and made worse by Helen going on about how it's the nicest part of the paper because no one says anything bad about people after they die, and I guess this was filmed before Milosevic kicked it. Meanwhile, you're thinking, "JUST TELL US JOHN'S FATHER DIED ALREADY," and Helen's reading and she suddenly looks concerned and asks Locke what his father's name is. He asks why. "Is it Anthony? Anthony Cooper?" Locke says it is. "He's dead," she says, looking stricken. She looks more emotional than Locke does about it; he just looks stunned.
And we cut to present-day Locke, sitting across from Henry, still chowing down on cereal, picking up right where we left off last time. Jack grabs a pen and tells Henry to draw his map again, but Henry says he was joking (about whether he's an Other). Jack and Locke are not laughing. "There's nothing out there besides my balloon. I was just frustrated. It was a stupid thing to say. I'm sorry," says Henry, looking quite contrite. Locke offers up that Ana's already long gone anyway. So yeah, no sense going after them if they're in trouble…? "So what's done is done?" says Jack, somewhat sarcastically. That's right, says Locke. Jack flat-out orders Locke to put Henry back in the armory, and he stomps off. Locke watches him go, and Henry does his little up-to-no-good eyes-widening thing, and says, "Why do you let him talk to you like that?" Locke doesn't answer, but he does seem sufficiently pissed off to grab Henry by his shirt and practically drag him back to the armoury. Hey, shit rolls downhill, Henry! Henry starts apologizing again, not that it does him any good.
Out in the pouring rain, Sayid and Ana-Lucia are arguing about the search for the balloon in question, since they haven't found it.