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
She asks Jack to examine Ben; Jack says no, even though Juliet says she's asking as a personal favour to her. "You want me to help Ben again," he says, and she says yes, and Jack starts laughing, as he always seems to, and asks if she's sure about that: "Is this because he said he'd let you go home?" She says it's not that; it's that she's in trouble. She tells him she killed someone, but when Jack asks who it was, she says "it's complicated" for some reason. That's okay, because Dr. Jack is going to make things real simple: "I'm not going to help him. And I'm not going to help you." Disappointed, Juliet leaves with the guards, and the camera lingers on Jack for about five hours before we finally go to commercial.
When we come back, we're in Thailand, with Jack and Achara at an open-air restaurant, and the friendly chef is dropping off a couple of plates of "special Thai dish for you, you try." Jack plows right into it, and the cook laughs and calls Jack "very brave." After he leaves, Achara says, "My brother likes you." Jack stops shoveling food into his face long enough to say that he's a very likable guy, and I guess he figures he doesn't know anyone in Thailand to contradict that.
Achara teases him about not knowing how to fly a kite, and Jack says he just never learned: "My dad worked a lot and wasn't exactly the kite-flying type anyway," he begins, and thank God Achara cuts him off by saying that she has no interest in his father. Still, that seems just the teensiest bit rude, but fortunately Jack just laughs and says that's a "relief" because he's "pretty tired of talking about him." Whatever, Jack, she didn't force you to start behaving like you're on your therapist's couch. "Some things are personal," agrees Achara, and the two of them are silent a moment before Achara predicts that Jack's in Phuket to find himself. "Why would you say that?" asks Jack, smiling, and Achara simply says, "You are an American." Jack doesn't know what to make of that. I suppose it's better than assuming he's there to find underage prostitutes (not to give away the plot of Sawyer's upcoming Thailand flashback episode or anything).
Fortunately, before we can get into some trite discussion of Jack finding himself, a man approaches their table, and he and Achara exchange greetings in Thai, and then the man hands her an envelope, thick with what looks like cash. They speak a little more and the man leaves, a bemused Jack taking it all in. Achara puts the envelope in her purse, and notices that Jack watches. "I have a gift," she says. "Must be one hell of a gift," says Jack, good-naturedly, but if he's hoping for more details, they're not forthcoming.
Jack's sitting in his cage. The camera pans around, and the sheriff is there, looking at him, and she starts speaking Chinese, much to Jack's consternation. "Oh, I was just reading your tattoos," she says, calling the five and the stars "very cute," but the Chinese she finds ironic. "You find what ironic?" says Jack, like maybe Jack is one of those idiot white frat boys who get Chinese tattoos for words like "strength" and "courage" or whatever, because they're so proud of their Asian heritage, I guess, and I like to think that people with tattoos in languages they don't speak got screwed over by the tattooer and are actually walking around proclaiming themselves to be a "douchebag" or "syphilitic." Jack laughs and says he knows what it says. "Are you sure?" asks the sheriff. "Chinese is a very complicated language." Yep, so complicated that there isn't really "a" Chinese language but a family of languages, so let's hope the Others have appointed someone else sheriff of linguistics (although to be fair, a dissertation on Mandarin, Wu, and Cantonese and whatever else would kind of bog down the show).