Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Hey! Kate! I got a new complaint!
By Daniel | Season 1 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.10.2005
That appears to work, because next thing we see is Tom's pulling his car up under this huge-ass tree while longhorns go stampeding by in the background. And this tree is apparently either the same tree from Carnivale or just like some tree from Carnivale, which I wouldn't know since I don't watch that show. I tried to like it, and I was intrigued at first, but I eventually had to cut that one loose under the I Don't Have To Watch It Just Because It's HBO legislation that I approved a year or two ago (and you watch yourself, Six Feet Under, as you're about a dream sequence and a melodramatic screaming match away from qualifying). Tom looks around all paranoid as he opens his trunk and gets out a shovel. Meanwhile, Kate marks off six paces from the tree trunk, and they get to work digging. Because if Lost needs anything, it's more digging.
Back on the island, Jack and Locke are striding across the beach, and Locke's wondering if Mercutio's illness was heatstroke, but Jack says Mercutio would have felt that coming on. It's not bad fruit or fish, because Mercutio and Jin are on the same diet, and Jin's fine. Jack finds the cooler with the empty water bottles, and says that whatever felled Mercutio had to have metabolized quickly. "So you think it was the water," says Locke. Jack picks out a particular water bottle and shows it to Locke. "I don't think it was the water. It was something in the water," he says, and sure enough, at the bottom of the bottle is some sort of white residue. Commercials.
Jack asks Mercutio how he's doing, and Mercutio says the cramps are going down, so long as he doesn't move or breathe. Mercutio sees Locke over by the raft, talking to Hurley. "You and Locke kiss and make up?" he says. Jack shakes his head. "Good," says Mercutio, sitting up. He moves to take a swig of the water, but Jack stops him, handing him his own. After about five hours, Mercutio figures it out. "Someone did this to me?" he says. Jack says he isn't sure. Mercutio, however, is more than ready to jump to conclusions. "Sawyer," he says. But as my coach always taught me, when you make an "assumption," you look like an "ass" and the "ump" will "tion" you.
Meanwhile, Inspector Locke is quizzing Hurley. And I love Hurley, but dude could stand to enunciate a little more clearly, you know? It sounds like he's saying, "I know he bambooed you, but yeah, Sawyer was helping me fill the water." I think that's right, but it took multiple viewings to get it, because the crappy old television I'm currently doing this on doesn't have closed captioning. Locke asks Hurley if Mercutio and Jin are getting along, and Hurley says they fight like a married couple building a raft together, which I guess means that Jin is giving Mercutio the silent treatment just like he does with his actual wife.
Jack strolls up, and Locke asks if Jack told Mercutio (about the poisoning). "We think Sawyer mighta done it," says Jack. "Oh, 'cause of Kate?" asks Hurley, but Jack and Locke don't know what he means. "Yeah, I guess she wants on the raft. And Sawyer went off on Mercutio because he gets to decide who goes." Then Hurley, sounding more curious than anything, asks if they think Kate did it. Locke's totally going for the "Poison? Who said anything about poison?" playing-dumb-to-trap-the-suspect interrogation thing, and asks why Hurley would suggest Kate did it. Hurley says, "Well, you know, the whole fugitive thing." Locke's puzzled, while Jack looks away all "awkward!" Hurley looks over at Jack and surmises that Locke doesn't know. Finding out that's so, Hurley gets pissed. "Well how'm I supposed to keep straight who knows what over here? I mean, Steve didn't know about the polar bear!" Heh. Locke ignores this, though, to ask Jack what Kate did. Jack, all Mr. Tough Guy, suggests that Locke can go ask her. Then Locke's pointing out that Jack knew something that he declined to share with the rest of the island, so Jack reminds him of the "discretion" thing, which doesn't work quite so well, since Jack was the first one to get holier than thou over keeping secrets.