Episode Report Card LTG: A | 673 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT What Is The Monster?
By LTG | Season 4 | Episode 2 | Aired on 2008.02.07
Previously, the Lostaways split into two groups, one (led by Jack) waiting for the rescuers, and the other (led by Locke) heading for the hills to avoid potentially being murdered by the rescuers. And since this show already has the Lostaways, the Others, the Tailies (R.I.P.), the Hostiles, and the Boaties, I think I'm going to hold off on nicknames for these two subtribes as long as I possibly can.
Our P.O.V. is from an underwater camera, moving along the rocky ocean floor. We hear two voices talking about the stuff they see. Once again, I expected someone to run into Charlie's corpse, and once again the show disappoints. On rewatching, I realized that there are two underwater cameras, and there's a cool bit where one camera sees the other and then the feed switches to that other camera. The voices also tell us that the "magnetometer is picking up a hell of a lot of anomalies down here." And then the camera comes upon the tail of an Oceanic Airlines jet, which the voices soon conclude is Oceanic 815. And I was genuinely surprised by the fact that the cameras see not only the tail (which we all know dropped into the ocean), but the entirety of the plane in one (fairly messed up) piece. So I guess that makes up for the lack of Charlie corpse action.
Cut to another view of the nose of the plane, with a newscaster's voice telling us that the footage was taken by a boat named either the "Christian 1" or the "Christy-Anne 1," or some variation thereof. The newscast cuts to a map, telling us that the plane was found in the Sunda Trench, just south of Bali. The camera moves back from the television, where a thin woman whose face is never seen moves around a house and asks Dan how he wants his eggs cooked. It's possible that the body belonged to any number of people, with the definite exclusion of Hurley, but the voice was completely unfamiliar to me. Dan doesn't really seem to want any eggs at all -- he's just sitting in a chair, watching the television and quietly weeping. That's just what I used to do with my last gig. (Dan, by the way, is the guy Kate and Jack met at the end of the last episode.) The mystery woman is getting pretty impatient to know how Dan wants his eggs, and she walks over to him (giving us a glimpse of her wedding ring) and asks him why he's so upset. He's not quite sure.
Cut to a helicopter, flying around in a rainstorm. Things are chaotic, and everyone seems to be in a bit of a panic. One guy announces that they all have to bail, and then he opens the door and pushes Dan out of the chopper. Cut to Dan's P.O.V., as he plummets toward the ground, opens his parachute, and then crashes through the canopy. Nice camera work there. It was at this point that I made my first incredibly bad prediction for this episode -- I thought we would learn that the helicopter emergency was staged as a way to force Dan to jump out. My bad. Dan rolls around in the mud and tries to get his bearings. As he stands up, he hears the creepy sound of someone or something rushing through the jungle in his direction. He wisely pulls a gun out of a pocket and hides it in the back of his waistband. And then the creepy sound of someone rushing through the jungle turns into Jack and Kate. We get a repeat of the end of the last episode, except that this time Jack answers the question, and asks who Dan is. Dan thinks long and hard before answering, "I'm Daniel Faraday." Look out! He'll try to put you in a cage! Yeah, that's right -- I'm pulling out the physics jokes. Daniel ignores my rude interruption, and tells Jack, "I'm here to rescue you." Credits.