Episode Report Card Dan Kwa: A | 143 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT The Second Time Is Always the Sweetest Time (For Rammin')
By Dan Kwa | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 2004.09.29
Walt tells Locke that he lives in Australia with his mother, but that she got sick and died a few weeks ago. "You're havin' a bad month," Locke replies. He then offers up a dissertation on the history of backgammon, blah blah Mesopotamia-cakes, and then delivers that previously foreshadowed foreshadowing. "Two players. Two sides. One is light. One is dark." He holds up two opposing backgammon pieces to drive the point home. Then the camera Spielbergs in as Locke asks Walt, "Do you wanna know a secret?"
Claire, the pregnant woman, is sitting in a solitary airplane seat on the beach, writing in her Dream Journal. Jin walks up to offer her some sea urchin. "Though I am being driven mad by my priapism," he says, in Korean, according to my friend Denny, who speaks Korean, "I would like to offer you this sea urchin. However, when you taste it, steer clear of me, because its aphrodisiac qualities may cause you to force yourself upon me, and I would have no option but to ravish you, and I do not want to dent the baby head." Claire takes a bite, makes a face that implies it tasted horrible but she doesn't want to be rude, but then leaps to her feet, holding her stomach. "I just felt it!" she cries, and grabs Jin's hand. "No, no," he protests, "don't make me touch your pregnant belly. You are too sexy. I DON'T WANT TO DENT THE BABY HEAD!" Claire is so excited about her moving baby -- whom she has decided is a boy -- that she doesn't even notice a shaken Jin walking away. This scene is an especially cruel one for pregnant women to watch -- not because they're particularly worried about Claire's baby, but because Claire, a pregnant woman, gets to eat sushi. (And for those wild speculators positive Jin is trying to poison Claire, she's surely fine; the ban on pregnant women eating sushi has mostly to do with the toxins present in fish caught where commercial fishermen troll, as opposed to desolate uninhabited pollution-free islands in the South Pacific.)
Up on a very pretty palm-studded plain, Sawyer and Sayid are bickering about whether to try the radio when a sudden roar shuts them up good. Something big's coming right at them. Most of the party takes off running -- Shannon hilariously screaming, "I shouldn't have come on this!" -- but Sawyer stands his ground and, as the thing comes close, whips out a pistol and lets loose a volley of shots. Something white and furry comes crashing down at his feet. The group returns and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity asks, "Is that what killed the pilot?" Kate looks askance, presumably because Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity shouldn't know that anything killed the pilot. Or at least that's what I thought at first. But the fact that no one else -- not Sayid, not Shannon, not even Sawyer, who really likes to talk -- says, like, "Killed the what now?" makes me think this is just an editing error and we're supposed to assume for some reason that Jack changed his mind and told people what he, Kate, and Charlie saw on their expedition to the cockpit. Anyways, Charlie notes that what killed the pilot was much bigger than a bear. Kate realizes that the bear, in fact, is a polar bear. This is the exact moment that this damn show got its claws into me.