Episode Report Card LTG: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT What Is The Monster?
By LTG | Season 4 | Episode 2 | Aired on 02.06.2008
And now we cut back to the island, where Blondie (whose name is Charlotte, by the way -- a little fact we learned in the previous scene) is hanging upside down from a tree, her parachute caught in its branches. And the tree is on the edge of a steep embankment, about 40 feet high, overlooking a small pond. Has Charlotte been hanging there all night? She stretches and struggles and finally finds a way to release herself, dropping into the water. Charlie's corpse isn't in this body of water, either. She seems thrilled to survive and to be in this tropical paradise, but is justifiably freaked out when Locke and his band of not-so-merry men (and women, Vincent, and Turniphead) emerge from the jungle and stare at her from the bank.
Jack, Juliet, Sayid, Kate, Miles, and Daniel are hiking through the jungle. Juliet explains to Jack that she and Sayid were worried, so they went to the cockpit and tracked him and Kate from there. Kate's put out that she was surprised by the ambush, but Jack points out that he gave her a wink for a reason. Sayid asks for their names, but Miles tells Daniel to shut up when he starts to reveal Miles's last name. He also gets pissed when Daniel tells us that he's a physicist. In response to Sayid's question, Miles claims to be a collector of soil samples. Sayid thinks that it's pretty odd that Daniel and Miles claim not to be there to rescue them, and to have been under the impression they were dead, but are not so surprised to find them. Miles pulls his best sarcastic teenager impression, expressing shock at finding survivors from Oceanic 815. Surprisingly, Sayid does not shoot him.
Charlotte has left the water and is sitting on a rock, with Locke's entire band arrayed around her and staring in her general direction. She is expressing non-sarcastic surprise that there are survivors from the flight. She asks, "How many of you are there?", but Hurley suspiciously responds with a question of his own: "Why do you want to know?" Charlotte: "Why wouldn't I want to know?" Hurley, defeated by the utter logic of her response, gives her a brief rundown of how many people survived, mentioning the Tailies (R.I.P.) in passing. Locke shuts Hurley up, and Charlotte's other perfectly innocent questions are met with suspicion. We see that she also has a gun tucked into her waistband. Which...did she get out of the water, take the gun out of her pocket or pack or whatever, and tuck it into her waistband while everyone was watching her? That's not very proper. She tells them that her other questions can wait until they are all back on the freighter, and then shows them her GPS transponder. Locke tells her to get up because she's coming with them. She thinks it's stupid to move -- they should just wait there for the others to find them. Locke: "See, there's your problem. We don't want to be found."
As the other group marches through the woods, Sayid messes around with the satellite phone. Miles tries to warn him off messing around with it, but Sayid thinks there's no harm in trying to call someone else. And then the phone starts beeping -- it's picked up Charlotte's signal, and she's moving fast in their direction. Jack decides she's running from something, and everyone in the group starts running in her direction to save her from whatever it is. Run, run, run! The phone tells them that Charlotte is right in front of them, but they see nothing. Daniel and Miles call out her name, and then Kate sees something moving in the bushes. It's Vincent, with Charlotte's transponder tied to his collar. See, you can't bring in an animal wrangler in the first act and not have the animal do something meaningful in the third act. Jack realizes that Locke has Charlotte. Commercials.