Episode Report Card Dan Kwa: B+ | 317 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Sucked In
By Dan Kwa | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 2004.09.22
As dark begins to fall, we see that the castaways have started two bonfires on the beach: the Cool People bonfire and the Loser Bonfire. A scruffy blond dude lights a cigarette. The pregnant woman stands in profile, looking down at her prosthesis. She is one skinny pregnant lady. Hurley stacks up airline dinners: beef on the left, fish on the right. One of the guys who helped Jack pull Leg Injury out from under the wreckage sits on the beach -- you know, ruminatin'. We meet Sayid and Charlie; Sayid is from the Middle East, Charlie from the Shire.
Meanwhile, Fake Kate Beckinsale is stitching up Jack's back. She asks him why he doesn't seem afraid and he goes off on this long speech about fear that I won't even relate because its writerly details and the circumstances of its telling and the one glistening tear Jack cries while telling it are so ludicrous as to beggar belief, so I'll just point out that the whole point of it is that if you're scared you should count to five.
Night on the beach. Time to meet the castaways! Charlie is writing "FATE" on his fingers, and some girl is painting her toenails. I'm glad everyone is making an effort to keep their digits looking good. I have to watch this show, after all, and there's nothing worse than watching a show filled with people with boring, unadorned fingers and toes. Toenails's companion, the Pen Wrangler, comes over and offers her some chocolate, which she rejects out of hand. Many folks on the boards have talked about how this scene proves she's a bitch. And I'm not disagreeing that she's a bitch, but I also like to imagine that she rejects the chocolate because she's actually deathly afraid of chocolate and cannot get near it, even if there's no other way to stay alive. She's not a chocoholic; she's a chocophobe. Pen Wrangler tells her that they may be stuck on the island for a while; she tells him that help is on its way, and that she'll eat on the rescue boat.