Episode Report Card Dan Kawa: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby, Let Me Clean Your Slate (Until It Can't Get Any Cleaner)
By Dan Kawa | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.05.2004
Campfire! Having just finished a rousing group rendition of "Leavin' On a Jet Plane," the expeditioners try to determine their position. Sayid asks Kate to confirm that the pilot said he lost communication with the ground, which she does. So what the fuck? I guess they know? So what was the point of that entire last scene? Charlie asserts that they'll be found, noting that there are satellites in space that can take pictures of your hydroponic opium greenhouse -- er, "your license plate." Sayid makes an extremely vague point about satellite photography that doesn't really prove anything, but does nicely set up Charlie's "Bollocks." Oh, funny British man, what will you say next? Sawyer goes off on an expository rant about last week's SOS, containing no new information other than his pet names for Sayid ("Abdul") and Kate ("Freckles"). This whole scene is a gigantic waste of time and should have been cut. Sayid announces that they're not going to tell the rest of the castaways about the SOS because it will just sap morale: "Hope is a very dangerous thing to lose." The music gets all dramatic as they dwell on this. For the record, not telling people about the SOS is a dumb idea, Sayid.
Midsection Beach. "Was it a dinosaur?" Hurley asks. They're putting up tarps around Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium. "It wasn't a dinosaur," Jack replies. But if you didn't see it, Hurley asks, "then how do you know it wasn't a dinosaur?" "Because dinosaurs are extinct," Jack tartly notes. "Oh," Hurley says, throwing just the right note of disappointment into his voice. Cuz it would, indeed, be cool if there were dinosaurs. Hurley asks what's up with Marshal Shrap, who looks "kinda...dying." Jack says the antibiotics should work and that he's not going to die. Hurley then sees Kate's mug shot, which Jack stupidly left sitting out, and Hurley seems ready to go off on an all-night "dude"-a-thon about the hot women-in-cages movie in his head. Jack says it's none of his business what Kate did, and plucks the mug shot out of Hurley's hands.
Commercials! Including a truly hilarious ad for a minivan that is among the funniest things I've seen in a long, long time. Over the course of a week, a husband and wife wake up earlier and earlier each morning in order to be the first one out the door -- the one who gets to drive the new minivan to work. It ends with the husband throwing a great underwear-clad fit in the driveway at 3:45 in the morning as his wife peels away.