Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sacrificial Ham
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 5 | Aired on 02.11.2009
Daniel and Charlotte: Charlotte is coughing and crying and generally dying, so it's time for her deathbed confession. She tells Daniel she's been there before -- that she grew up there at the Dharma Initiative, and then she moved away with her mum. Her father didn't go with them and she never saw him again. Back in England, whenever she asked her mother about the island, her mother would tell her it wasn't real -- just something Charlotte had made up. And then Charlotte Staples Lewis would hide in the fur coats of the wardrobe until she fell out into the snows of Lantern Waste. Er...or something like that. So that's why Charlotte became an anthropologist -- to find the island again, because um...the geography major was full-up? Okay, given how this season's going, I'll give the writers more credit than that, but just enough to cover, because on the face, that's still a pretty dumb line. Anyhow, Charlotte's been searching for the island her whole life. Daniel wants to know why she's telling him this, which seems like a weird question to ask. Why wouldn't she? Or why wouldn't he ask why she didn't tell him before. Charlotte explains: "Because I remember something now. When I was little, living here, there was this man -- a crazy man. He really scared me. And he told me that I had to leave the island and never, ever come back. He told me that if I came back, I would die." Daniel says he doesn't understand and I wonder how he made it through high school, never mind college, and grad school and super-scientist school. Crying, Charlotte says, "Daniel. I... I think that man was you."
Locke stares down the well and explains he's hoping to find a way off. When Sawyer asks him if he's expecting a subway (ha), Locke just pats him on the shoulder and says, "Goodbye, James," and prepares to descend the rope. Jin stops him and makes it crystal clear that he cannot bring back Sun. Locke protests that they all have to come back, but Jin wonders how Locke actually knows that, Locke admits he doesn't know. Jin grabs the rope in one hand and holds his machete (or a machete -- where'd he get the machete) with the other, threatening to cut the rope, and holy cow would you look at the guns on him! Oh, my. Locke seems oblivious to the loveliness that is Jin's arms, which is probably a good thing because he needs to concentrate. He contends that if Jin cuts the rope he'll kill "every one of us." Jin reminds them that the emperor has no clothes, i.e. "This island is bad." A beat. "You promise -- you don't bring Sun back. You don't bring my baby..." and it seems he means their (to him) unborn child (you know Miles' mother), but it's kind of sweet to think he sort of means Sun, too. Locke promises, but he would do anything to fulfill what he perceives as his mission du jour. He wants to know what he should tell Sun. He won't go to her, but if she finds him, he needs to know what to tell her. Jin insists that Locke tell her he died -- that he washed up and that Locke buried him, then he hands Locke his wedding ring. Locke tells everyone he'll be back as soon as he can, and you know he means that, because there's no place like home -- is there, Johnny?