Episode Report Card LTG: B+ | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Confirmed Dead
By LTG | Season 4 | Episode 2 | Aired on February 6, 2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Well, um...Holy Schneikes! Okay, here's the deal. This episode is basically the story of four Boaties who are scattered around the island after they are forced to bail out of their helicopter. As we meet each of them, we get a little flashback with just a touch of backstory. First, we meet Daniel Faraday, an extremely weepy and neurotic physicist. (He's the guy Jack and Kate met at the end of the previous episode). His entire backstory is that he cries a lot. Then we meet Miles, who pulls a gun on Jack and Kate because he knows that Naomi was murdered. Fortunately, his backstory is that he can speak with the dead, so when he is brought to Naomi's body, he comes to the conclusion that Kate and Jack didn't murder Naomi. And then he's relieved of his gun when Sayid and Juliet ambush the group.
The third Boatie we meet is Charlotte Lewis, an anthropologist who found a polar bear skeleton with a Dharma collar...in the middle of the Tunisian desert. She has the misfortune to be found by Locke's group, who kind of take her hostage. Then we meet Frank, the pilot of the helicopter. His backstory is that he was supposed to be the pilot on Oceanic 815, and when he sees news coverage of the discovery of the wrecked plane, he recognizes that the corpse that is allegedly the pilot's is not, in fact, the pilot's. The best part is that he's such a good pilot, he was able to land the helicopter instead of crashing it. And it may still work. Hurray! Rescue is right around the corner.
Of course, nothing is as it seems. The last flashback we get is Naomi, being given the assignment to take charge of this ragtag band of rebels by one Matthew Abbadon. Their real assignment? To find Ben. Ben, of course, knows who they are, and takes the opportunity to snatch a gun and shoot Charlotte. Fortunately, she was wearing a bulletproof vest. Ben, in order to avoid being shot by Locke, reveals that he knows who Charlotte and the others are because he has a spy on the boat. Whoa! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
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.