Episode Report Card Daniel: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Leaving your mark
By Daniel | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 02.20.2007
Back in Thailand, Jack strolls out of his hut and slings his backpack over his shoulder, showing no effects of having recently been tattooed, so either it's been a few days or the writer has never gotten a tattoo.
That little urchin is on the beach again, and Jack holds up two fingers for soda, but this time the kid fearfully runs away. Jack's all, "Where you going?" But he'll soon have bigger worries; a group of men, including Achara's brother, Chet, approach him from behind. Jack doesn't seem to notice their murderous glares, as he's all, "Hey, I know you!" They still look pissed, so Jack's all, "I'm Achara's friend!" Friend? Was he so drunk he doesn't actually remember what happened? Chet lifts up Jack's sleeve, and sees the ring of Chinese characters around his arm (no number five, no stars). "Let go of me, man," says Jack. In response, Chet and his friends suddenly start whaling on him, knocking him to the ground, kicking and punching like a good beat-down in a prison movie. Jack's too outnumbered to do much else than turtle and eat sand. Chet's friends stand back to let Chet finish Jack off with a couple of good slugs to the face. "You will get off of beach!" he yells, pulling Jack up to his face. "You will leave this country! Do you understand me?" Not waiting for an answer, Chet lets Jack drop back to the sand, and he and his friends leave, walking past a tearful Achara a short distance away. Jack looks at her, and she turns away, crying, and walks away.
Back on Alcatraz, Juliet, looking like hell, slowly approaches Jack's cage, limping, carrying a sandwich. She manages a smile as he gets up and approaches the bars. "I heard you only liked them grilled," she says. Jack says he misses the toothpicks as well, and she slides the sandwich to him through the bars. Then Jack's all, "So, about this mark... " and wants to see it. She turns and lifts up the back of her shirt -- she's got what looks kind of like an asterisk, with the top centre arm a little longer than the rest, branded into the small of her back. I think it looks kind of bad-ass, actually. Jack tells Juliet to break off a branch of a nearby aloe plant. Juliet says it's okay, but Jack insists. Juliet probably just doesn't have the heart to tell him about the Body Shop they have back home in the Craphole Island mall. But this way, Jack gets to put his big comforting doctor hands all over her skin.
She asks why he helped her. "He told you he was going to let you go home. He told me the same thing. We're going to make sure he keeps his word." Juliet wants to know how they're going to do that, and all Jack can say is, "Together," so make sure you've got your bags packed and ready to go, Juliet. She tells Jack that everybody's going to be vacating this place, since the Lostaways know where it is. "We have to leave this island to go back to where we live," she says. And where's that, Jack asks. "Well, Ben calls it home," she says. Are we to infer that this is where Ben was promising to let Juliet go? That seems to have been a significant remark.