Episode Report Card Dan Kawa: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Just Because My Words Were Lies (Doesn't Mean My Love Weren't True)
By Dan Kawa | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.09.2004
Claire and Charlie are engaging in telegenic beach-related busywork, discussing what they miss the most. Claire misses warm, fluffy towels; Charlie misses banoffee pie. "Is food the only thing you miss?" Claire says, and Charlie manages not to go on about the pipeweed for which his body screams. "You're pregnant!" he says. "Do you not crave anything?" Claire says she's the only Australian who loves peanut butter. Charlie says he can get Claire peanut butter, but if he does, she has to leave Midsection Beach and move with him to the caves. She agrees.
The caves. Shannon is gasping very realistically for air. Poor Shannon; on top of not being able to breathe, she looks really shitty right now. I wonder which she feels worse about. Jack rushes over and spins a web of lies, lies! about how she's panicking and needs to calm down. No one I know who's ever been in the midst of a serious, can't-breathe-at-all asthma attack has ever managed to snap out of it by "calming down," but I guess they were weak, not strong like characters on a TV show. Anyways, Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity is still freaking out, but Jack gets him to shut up and gets Shannon to control her breathing. There's a really nice shot of a really scared-looking Shannon breathing through her nose. She calms down a bit, and Jack takes Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity aside, telling him not to let her panic. Then Jack takes off, Sayid following. "That was awesome, man," says Hurley. "That was like a...Jedi moment."
Sayid catches up to Jack and tells him that his five years in the Republican Guard should help them get Sawyer to talk. "I thought you were a communications officer," says Jack. "Part of my training entailed getting the enemy to communicate," Sayid replies, which is a little glib for a guy who later professes to be haunted by his time as a torturer. "Just give me ten minutes with him," he adds. After some time spent looking agonized about the decision, Jack agrees.
Commercials! Man, if Australia is anything like England, it is frigging impossible to get cheap peanut butter there. Whenever we travel to London, we always visit my former co-worker Ethan, who was born in America but moved to Balham with his lovely wife Sarah/Sally a few years back. Because peanut butter is like £8 for a tiny little jar there, I usually go to Costco before we leave and get him one of the 128-oz tubs of Skippy. Last week, however, I was unable to fit the Skippy in my carry-on because it was already stuffed with his request for this trip -- a Donald Rumsfeld mask he wanted to wear to a Halloween party. When I emailed him this week asking how the party went, he wrote back and said that other guests at the party refused to talk or dance with him when he had the mask on.