Previously on Lost: Plane crash, drug stash, Marshal Shrap sustains a gash. Polar bears in tropic climes, Kate's committed nameless crimes. The Iron Giant kills and maims! Backgammon's a better game! Jack the Hero saves the day! Pleas for rescue en français!
Midsection Beach. Castaways are sorting through luggage, and this is our first chance to see a number of the extraneous survivors whom we won't meet until they serve as Iron Giant Chow. There's a pretty woman foolishly wearing big hoop earrings, and a handsome dude staring at a photograph, and several pale, shirtless men who should be burnt to a crisp by now, and at least one couple, and what could be either a girl about Walt's age or maybe a smallish woman or maybe a regular-sized woman who's just far away. (Our TV isn't the greatest.) Marshal Shrap merrily bleeds away while Jack tries to stitch him up. "Don't trust her," Shrap gasps. "She's dangerous. She committed...an unspecified crime!" Jack humors him until Shrap mentions the handcuffs, and then tells Jack to look in his jacket pocket. There Jack finds Kate's mug shot, from "Harrison Valley," wherever that is. Kate Beckinsale's no Nick Nolte, but it's still a pretty good Smoking Gun-style mug. I notice the shot wasn't taken at an angle greater than 45 degrees.
Up on the mountain. The expedition team who went signal-hunting last episode is trudging along. The timeframe appears to be later the same day they heard the SOS of Dooooooom. Kate looks sad and pensive. Sayid suggests they should make camp before they reach the jungle, and Sawyer insists he's going to make it back to the beach. "Afraid the trees are going to get us?" Sawyer asks. "No," Sayid says. "What is knocking down the trees will get you." Sawyer says if they're so worried about him, they could give him the handgun's clip back. "Put your gun back in your pants, Sawyer," Kate says, which is a metaphor. She means he should put away his "attitude," and his "penis." "Sayid's right: if you keep walking, you're not going to make it to the beach." Sawyer asks why, and there's a cut to Kate, and then one to Charlie looking guilty, and then to Kate again, who says, "Trust me." Wait a goddamn minute! So now the show's trying to telegraph that they haven't told anyone about the fate that befell the pilot? Then how did Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity know?
Campfire! Having just finished a rousing group rendition of "Leavin' On a Jet Plane," the expeditioners try to determine their position. Sayid asks Kate to confirm that the pilot said he lost communication with the ground, which she does. So what the fuck? I guess they know? So what was the point of that entire last scene? Charlie asserts that they'll be found, noting that there are satellites in space that can take pictures of your hydroponic opium greenhouse -- er, "your license plate." Sayid makes an extremely vague point about satellite photography that doesn't really prove anything, but does nicely set up Charlie's "Bollocks." Oh, funny British man, what will you say ? Sawyer goes off on an expository rant about last week's SOS, containing no new information other than his pet names for Sayid ("Abdul") and Kate ("Freckles"). This whole scene is a gigantic waste of time and should have been cut. Sayid announces that they're not going to tell the rest of the castaways about the SOS because it will just sap morale: "Hope is a very dangerous thing to lose." The music gets all dramatic as they dwell on this. For the record, not telling people about the SOS is a dumb idea, Sayid.
Midsection Beach. "Was it a dinosaur?" Hurley asks. They're putting up tarps around Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium. "It wasn't a dinosaur," Jack replies. But if you didn't see it, Hurley asks, "then how do you know it wasn't a dinosaur?" "Because dinosaurs are extinct," Jack tartly notes. "Oh," Hurley says, throwing just the right note of disappointment into his voice. Cuz it would, indeed, be cool if there were dinosaurs. Hurley asks what's up with Marshal Shrap, who looks "kinda...dying." Jack says the antibiotics should work and that he's not going to die. Hurley then sees Kate's mug shot, which Jack stupidly left sitting out, and Hurley seems ready to go off on an all-night "dude"-a-thon about the hot women-in-cages movie in his head. Jack says it's none of his business what Kate did, and plucks the mug shot out of Hurley's hands.
Commercials! Including a truly hilarious ad for a minivan that is among the funniest things I've seen in a long, long time. Over the course of a week, a husband and wife wake up earlier and earlier each morning in order to be the first one out the door -- the one who gets to drive the new minivan to work. It ends with the husband throwing a great underwear-clad fit in the driveway at 3:45 in the morning as his wife peels away.
Opening credits. Someone's sneaking around the upcountry campsite. Whoever it is -- we're obviously meant to think it's Sawyer, blah blah blah -- sneaks the clip out of Sayid's pocket. Everyone wakes up and it turns out it's Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. He also managed to get Sawyer's gun off of him. He claims he's standing guard. Shannon snipes, "He doesn't believe in guns, he goes on marches." "I don't go on marches," whines Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. Ha! Sayid demands the gun back, and Sawyer scoffs, "Yeah, give it to al-Jazeera." "Al-Jazeera's a network," Charlie deadpans. Again, ha! This scene is so funny that it effectively distracts attention from the primary question, which should be: What The Fuck was Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity doing? Had the twenty-plus years of endless taunting finally boiled over into sororicidal rage? If so, neat! Shannon tells Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity to give the gun to Kate. Charlie and Sayid agree. Sawyer appears to agree tacitly, which, it should be noted, is the first thing he's ever done tacitly in the run of this show. An irritated Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity finally gives the gun to Kate, who's giving the Thousand-Yard Stare of Impending Flashback.
Australia, 1875. Well, maybe a few months ago. A snoozing Kate is awakened by a gruff Outback farmer pointing a shotgun at her. "You're sleepin' in my sheep pen," he says. Hey, that's Australian for a pick-up line! And Foster's is Australian for beer. "Put your shotgun back in your pants, Farmer Hoggett," Kate doesn't say, instead standing up carefully and telling him she walked here from the nearest town. "Nearest town's fifteen kilometers," he says, to which she replies, "Maybe that's why I'm so exhausted." She says her name's Annie. He asks if she's hungry. Cut to: Annie eating ravenously. I often wish that a gag like that would get subverted somehow, like maybe Farmer Hoggett asks Kate if she's hungry, and the camera stays on her for a second, and then right when I expect the ha-ha cut, she just says, "No, I'm on South Beach." Kate is wearing a Charlie-style Keystone Konvicts shirt, by the way. Is that supposed to mean something?
Shit, I dunno. She says she's Canadian and that she's on a post-college trip around the world, but after she flew into Melbourne she didn't know anyone so she just decided to walk for a while. "Melbourne's a hundred kilometers from here," says Farmer Hoggett, whose brain has been surgically removed and replaced by an Australian road atlas. "I like walking," Kate says. She also likes farms. "Do you know how to work one?" he asks, and she matter-of-factly says that she does. Farmer Hoggett says his wife died eight months ago, and he needs someone to help around the farm, because he's got "a hell of a mortgage." He offers a fair wage and a place to stay, and Kate accepts. They shake on it, Kate with her right, Farmer Hoggett with his left, because it turns out he has a big clunky artificial right arm, which you just know is going to have to come off later in the episode.
Midsection Beach. Sayid is announcing to the assembled castaways that they were unable to send a message, but says that if people collect up electronic equipment, he may be able to boost the signal. Sayid tells the castaways to organize three groups -- one for electronics, one for collecting water, and one for rationing food. If everyone does their jobs efficiently, surely they can live like damn hell ass kings. Kate takes Jack aside to tell him about the SOS of Doooooom. He asks if there's anything else she wants to tell him, but she'd rather ask suspicious questions about Marshal Shrap. Jack gives the Thousand-Yard Stare of Impending Commercials.
Man, that Desperate Housewives looks crazy! Hey Sars, why aren't we recapping that, huh? ["Prepare for your ouster, young man." -- Sars]
Hurley and Jack are hauling airplane seats to the edge of the jungle. They went to a lot of trouble to give castaways busywork to do during conversation scenes, and I like how, viewed independently, much of it seems entirely pointless. Why for they bring those airplane seats to the edge of the jungle? Who knows! Because they need to have a conversation away from other people, and Jack's not going to go on a long walk on the beach with someone who doesn't look like acclaimed actress Kate Beckinsale, the star of Cold Comfort Farm! Hurley can't believe Jack didn't confront Kate about her criminalitude; Jack says it's not his business or his problem if Kate is a violent criminal trapped among a bunch of innocent people who trust her. For realsies! Jack says he's going to look in the body of the plane for bags containing stronger antibiotics; Hurley is happy to let him do that by himself.
A storm's a-brewin', and Jack's inside the plane, a flashlight in his mouth, searching out meds. He hears a couple of creepy noises and shines his light in search of their source. I know the people in the Nitpicking thread have already worked this one pretty hard, but this friggin' plane should be so loud with the buzzing of flies and the gnawing of rodents that Jack couldn't hear Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a, Movement 2 (Allegro molto). Sawyer's in the plane with him, in search of "booze, smokes, a couple of Playboys." Jack gets all huffy, like, oh, my bag has medicine in it, cuz I'm a doctor, I save people's lives with my medicine and my doctor magic. I don't spill my booze all over my lit cigarette while masturbating to Playboy. "Brother, you gotta wake up and smell the gull crap here," Sawyer says, which is a terrible, terrible line, but does raise another question: shouldn't this beach be swarming with gulls? I guess maybe the gulls on this deserted island, unlike the gulls at every beach I've ever been to, haven't learned that humans = food. Sawyer tells Jack he's wasting his time trying to save the Marshal; "The last time I checked, he's got a piece of metal the size of my head stickin' out of his breadbasket." Jack quite obviously wants to be all, "I got that piece of metal out, bitch." Sawyer asks how many antibiotics pills Jack's going to use to try and save the Marshal. Jack says he'll use as many as it takes. Sawyer tells Jack he's "still back in civilization." "Yeah?" Jack asks. "And where are you?" Leaving the plane with a bagful of cigarettes and magazines, Sawyer boasts, "I'm in the wild." Then he holds up a big turkey leg and rips the meat off the bone with his teeth.
Charlie and Claire are hauling around luggage. Charlie helps Claire. Aaaaand...scene.
Sun believes she's found Jin's bag, but his subtitles say she's wrong. Also, she's filthy and disgusting and should wash herself. Also, he loves her. Flip-flopper! Aaaaand...scene.
Claire isn't married, and Charlie thinks she's cute. Aaaaand...scene.
Hurley's scared of Kate, but she reads it at first as him being intimidated by her high-wattage smile and adorably upturned nose. Also, Kate still has the gun. Aaaaand...scene.
It starts raining. Castaways run around higgledy-piggledy. Kate spends some quality time with Marshal Shrap, daydreaming about her delightful post-collegiate trip to Australia. Flashback! Australia, 1875. Kate's collecting up her wages and preparing to sneak off the farm in the middle of the night when Farmer Hoggett turns on the lights. Why is she keeping her wages in a jar? "I got trust issues," Kate says. She's been there three months, and she's going to leave without saying goodbye? "I wrote you a note," Kate replies. Kate Beckinsale, Quip Machine! Farmer Hoggett notes that he hasn't pressed "Annie" about her past, assuming she was on the run from a bad relationship, but asks her to stick around and he'll drive her to the station tomorrow morning. Kate foolishly allows herself to be guilted into it. "Everyone deserves a fresh start," Farmer Hoggett adds, which is Australian for "I am about to come into a great deal of money."
Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium. Kate and the Marshal are playing a little game called How Close Can I Put My Face To His Before He Wakes Up And Tries To Strangle Me? The Marshal wins. The music goes hilariously fake-Bernard Herrmann. Jack runs in and separates them, settling the Marshal back down. He tells Kate that the Marshal is bleeding internally and running a fever of 104°. A temperature you ascertained...how? You're an endothermic savant? I guess it's possible he found a thermometer in someone's checked baggage. They stomp outside into the pouring rain for the purpose of arguing more dramatically. Kate asks if the Marshal will suffer, and Jack angrily tells her that it will take him several painful days to die. "Can't you put him out of his misery?" Kate asks, causing Jack to stomp over and tell Kate he saw her mug shot. (My attractive lawyer wife: "Look at that mouth! That is gigantic!") "I'm not a murderer," Jack declares.
Flashback. Australia, 1875. Patsy Cline plays on the truck radio as Farmer Hoggett drives her to the train station. They small-talk for a bit while Kate fails to notice the big black SUV on their tail; thankfully, Farmer Hoggett stares into the rearview mirror so that she can start to get worried. Kate realizes that Farmer Hoggett turned her in, and asks how long he's known that she committed...an unspecified crime. He says he saw her picture in the post office, on a poster that said "Wanted! For An Unspecified Crime!" A hurt Kate asks why he's turning her in and he says the reward is $23,000 (Australian, I assume, which is $16,974 in real money). "I told you when I met you, I got a hell of a mortgage," he ruefully adds. He tells her that it was a hard decision to make. The SUV pulls up alongside and Marshal Shrap, in the full flush of health, points a finger-gun at her. I was at a wedding last weekend at which one of the groomsmen flashed the finger-gun at guests all the way down the aisle during the recessional. I think maybe the finger-gun should be reserved for informal occasions, like karaoke or pickup basketball, rather than solemn, formal occasions like weddings and the ends of manhunts.
We're back in the pouring rain outside Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium. Kate looks sad. And pensive.
Commercials! I think the only good Old Navy advertisement of the past ten years was the one that ended up being an ad for Geico.
Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. Walt and Mercutio are under a tarp. Mercutio asks Walt about Locke. "What did he say?" Mercutio asks, and is rightfully worried when Walt says, "Some of it's secret." Letting your kid get molested by an old man on a deserted island: -2000 Good Dad points. Walt says that Locke told him, "A miracle happened here." Mercutio points out that they did all just survive a fiery plane crash, and adds that he doesn't want Walt hanging around with Locke. Aren't I your friend too? he asks. Walt hauls out the big guns: "If you were my friend, you would find Vincent." Ouch. "I'm gonna get your dog back as soon as it stops raining," Mercutio says, at which point it promptly stops raining. Heh.
Out in the jungle, Mercutio's pushing through the tall grass, doing that baloney that TV and film always make wisecracking black guys do whenever they get shown up the scene before. "'As soon as it stops raining.' Good. Nice." You know what I'm talking about. Loud, "funny" repeating what one said the scene to one's self. Maybe I'm the only one who ever notices it. "Walkin' through the haunted damn jungle, looking for --" He's cut off by rustling in the underbrush. He then enacts the following one-act play:
Mercutio: Vincent?
Definitely Not a Dog: [Roooooar! Growwwwl...]
(Pause.)
Mercutio: Vincent? That you, buddy?
Obviously Not Even Close To a Dog: [Growwwwwl. ROOOOAR!]
(Mercutio EXITS, pursued by a bear or something.)
He runs and runs until he is stopped short by a topless and extremely bony Sun, who is washing her filthy self as per her husband's loving orders. A totally embarrassed Mercutio simultaneously gawks and doesn't gawk in a patently ridiculous manner; in his defense, I did get the impression he was worried that the thing that was 100 percent not a dog might still be on his tail. Sun looks at him like he's crazy. Mercutio tries to hand her her bra while averting his eyes, and then walks away, mumbling about how he didn't see anything. What the hell is this, The Wonder Years? Hey, speaking of Koreans, we saw Team America: World Police the other night, which I can heartily recommend, even though it's not the unified work of genius that the South Park movie was. But it did teach me that Kim Jong Il, Dear Leader of North Korea, besides being a tremendous golfer, also sounds exactly like Cartman with a speech impediment. Also, he's ronery. Kim Jong Il was definitely the funniest thing in the movie, other than the logo of Team America, which is a fierce-looking eagle holding in its beak a tiny globe.
While Marshal Shrap bleeds and groans the afternoon into the evening, we see a cavalcade of castaways trying not to notice him. ("Arrgh!" offers Marshal Shrap. "Aaaaah!") Charlie finds Locke whittling a whistle. "I used some tribal flutes in a recording session," Charlie says. "I'm in a band." ("Gaaaah! Grrrraaaaghh!!!") Shannon once again proves her worth to this show by declaring, "I wish he would just die already!" Sorry, Shannon, first he has to serve as a moral litmus test. Then he can die. ("Orrrrrrrrfh!! Gooooorrrg. Ungh.") Sayid tells Jack that people are getting upset because they think he can't save Marshal Shrap. ("Graaaaaaa!!!!! AAAAAAAAHhurg!!!") Sawyer shows up as Kate's trying to build a fire and offers her a light. He claims he came by to thank her, but actually he's just taunting her vis-à-vis her being the only one who can put Marshal Shrap down. ("GUUUURF!! NnnnnnnnnHGH!!!!!!") "Don't look so surprised," he says, lighting a cigarette. "I heard you tell the hero the same thing." Their faces are illuminated beautifully by the roaring fire that Kate managed to make out of wood that was soaked just hours before in a torrential downpour. "Hell, there's only one bullet left," Sawyer adds. "Be damn near poetic."
Inside Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium, the Marshal takes a break to warn Jack off Kate. "No matter what she does, no matter how she makes you feel, don't trust a word she says," Shrap says. Cock-block! "I wanna talk to her," Shrap insists, "alone." Jack looks dubious, and Shrap says, "She got to you too, huh?" By the way, Jack searched all those bags for antibiotics, but not a single person on the plane had any prescription painkillers?
Commercials. Sarah Michelle Gellar has a butt growing out of her head.
Australia, 1875. We're back on Flashback Road with Kate, Farmer Hoggett, and Marshal Not-Yet-Shrap. Kate grabs the wheel and, in an attempt to do I don't know what, veers the truck off the road. It flips over an amusing number of times and then bursts into flames. Kate drags Farmer Hoggett out of the truck, because she's really a good person. Oh, makers of Lost: 'twould have been so much more interesting if she had let Farmer Hoggett roast. So she's dragging him through the grass, and of course .... .. ... / .- .-. -- / -.-. --- -- . ... / --- ..-. ..-.! Elapsed time: 33 minutes. She gets him to a roadside, and sees the truck go by that could've saved her if only she hadn't wasted time saving him. Farmer Hoggett coughs, and faintly whispers, "That'll do, Kate." Then Marshal Soon-To-Shrap points a gun at her head.
Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium. Shrap wants to know what the favor was that Kate was about to ask for before the gigantic plane crash. Boy, ABC must really be worried about morons keeping up with the plot of this show, because they insert here a totally pointless one-minute rerun of Kate's flashback from the pilot. The mood in the tent, interestingly, is one of wistful old-times chumminess, rather than the homicidal rage previously exhibited when these two got together. Kate says she was going to ask that Shrap make sure Farmer Hoggett got his twenty-three grand. "The guy who ratted you out?" Shrap asks, wheezing away. "He had a hell of a mortgage," says Kate. Good Fucking Christ, makers of Lost: we get it. She's got a goddamn heart of 24-carat gold, even though she's guilty of an unspecified crime. GIVE IT A REST. But they won't give it a rest: "You really are one of a kind," notes Marshal Shrap. My turn: AAAUUUUrrrrrrghhhhhurgle. He notes that Kate would've gotten away if she hadn't taken the time to remove the farmer's artificial arm. "In case you haven't noticed," Kate says, "I did get away." "You don't look free to me," he cracks. The United States Department of Dialogue has issued the following nutritional breakdown of this scene:
76% Malarkey
9% Groans of pain
6% Coy avoidance of the specifics of Kate's crime
4% Unnecessary flashbacks
3% Exposition
2% Actual emotional or character-defining ingredients
Shrap asks Kate if he's going to die. Kate says he is. "So," he says, and this is finally an interesting moment, "are you gonna do it or what?"
Outside. Jack waits for Kate to finish her private conversation with Marshal Shrap. Hurley shows up with a delightful "Yo." He asks where Kate is, and Jack motions to the tent. At Hurley's protesting, Jack says, "What's she gonna do? She's a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet." Also, he adds, she has a dimple in her chin, she smells of lilacs, and she has type A-positive blood. Hurley points out that she's got a gun, and Jack looks suddenly alarmed. So wait a minute: Jack seriously thought that an unarmed Kate couldn't harm a mortally wounded man who's so weak that he can barely speak? What the fuck? Walt could kill the guy at this point. Jack runs toward the tent as behind him Hurley adds, "She's strapped, man! I saw it in her, in her, in her, in her..." The term you're looking for, Hurley, is "da kine." As Jack approaches Marshal Shrap's Bleeding and Groaning Emporium, he sees Kate step out of the tent, looking pensive. And also sad. Kate looks at him just as a gun goes off in the tent. Aw, Kate gave Marshal Shrap the gun. That's, um...sweet? I guess?
But then Sawyer stalks out of the tent holding the gun. Interesting! Kate had Sawyer do the deed. Probably a good idea, because if I were Kate, I would worry that if I helpfully gave Shrap the gun he'd blow me away. Sawyer looks pretty tortured about it, to his credit, but he puts on a brave face when Jack yells, "What did you do?" "What you couldn't," Sawyer replies. "Look, I get where you're coming from, bein' a doctor and all, but he wanted it. Hell, he asked me. So I don't like it any more than you do. But something had to be done." It's at this exact moment that, awesomely, we hear Marshal Shrap cough and gurgle back in Marshal Shrap's Coughing and Gurgling Emporium. The looks on Sawyer's and Jack's faces right now are priceless. Hurley adds a delightful "Aw, no way." This scene is an all-around pleasure, I must say. They rush into the tent to find the Marshal in dire straits. "You shot him in the chest?" Jack asks in disbelief. An ashen Sawyer says he was aiming for the heart. "You perforated his lung," Jack says. "It'll take hours to bleed out." Wait just a damn minute! I learned a lot of things from watching David O. Russell's fine film Three Kings, including the effects of a land mine on a cow and those of a rocket launcher on a tanker full of milk. But I also learned what happens when Marky Mark's lung gets perforated: air leaks out of the hole into his chest cavity, creating pressure that crushes his lungs, suffocating him within minutes. Remember? George Clooney had to stick that needle in his chest with the little valve he could turn to let air out? And then at the end, when he was cuffed at the Iranian border, he almost died because no one would let him twist the valve? Well, if that's what happens to Marky Mark, shouldn't that happen to Marshal Shrap, too? Where can I find accurate medical information if not popular entertainment??!?!?
Outside the tent, Sawyer pulls out a cigarette, tries to light it, and throws it away in disgust, which is kind of an annoyingly clichéd gesture, but it turns out it's only meant to distract us so that we don't notice at first that Marshal Shrap's coughing and gurgling has stopped, replaced on the soundtrack by helpfully Foleyed cricket chirps. Jack trudges out of Marshal Shrap's Ominous Silence Emporium, looks at Sawyer accusingly, and heads down to the water to wash the metaphorical blood off his hands.
Commercials. See, that scene was great. More fucking shit up, Lost people, less remembering things. I am interested in everyone's back story, but I'm more interested in the situation here on the island and watching people change. You've deftly drawn these characters as they exist here on the island; I've already been moved by the transformations that Sawyer and Jack have been forced to make, even though I have almost no knowledge of their past selves. I've been much more moved by their stories, in fact, than Kate's, even though you've given me a pile of flashbacks about her life before the island. I'm worried that this structure you seem to be setting up, of intercutting cool scenes on the island with not particularly deftly-drawn flashbacks, will result in you trusting the flashbacks to do all the work.
Or to put it another way: the strength of the lost-on-an-island conceit is that we, the audience, know only as much as the characters themselves know. They're all strangers to each other, just as they are to us, and none of them have any better idea than we do where they are. That's a unique and creative tack to take in a network television program. It means we're going to be constantly surprised by these characters and the things that happen to them...unless you give us, the viewers, access to huge chunks of otherwise secret information from the pasts of particular characters. As you seem to be doing. Now we feel manipulated, or at least I do, because now the Powers That Be are clearly showing their hands in the specific bits of information they choose to dole out. You'll show me Kate's sojourn in Australia, but you won't tell me what crime she committed? That's not storytelling; that's caprice.
Early the morning. Locke sits on a secluded part of the beach and blows on the whistle he's been whittling. We hear an extremely high-pitched sound, which I think is inaccurate, yes? I thought humans can't hear dog whistles at all? Also, why do dog whistles attract dogs? I mean, dogs don't know there's anything special about a dog whistle as opposed to the hundreds of other sounds they hear every day. Shouldn't you have to train a dog to respond to a whistle just the same as any other sound? This paragraph is boring, and I hope I remember to delete it before I turn this recap in. Anyhoodle, Vincent the Shifty-Eyed Dog trots out of the woods and plops himself down in front of Locke.
Midsection Beach. Locke wakes up Mercutio and tells him that he found Walt's dog and has tethered it to a tree nearby. "I know that Walt lost his mom," Locke says. "I thought that you should be the one to bring his dog back to him." Aw, that's kind of nice. Mercutio thanks him.
Broody Beach, located just down the way from Midsection Beach. Jack sits staring at the ocean, which I must admit is looking particularly fetching in this scene. A cold front came through New York Sunday night, and my attractive lawyer wife and I were walking back from the car to our apartment and she commented how chilly it was, and I gave her a plaintive look, and she realized she's in for another six months of not being able to mention the weather because I will immediately start yammering on about Hawai'i. Jack's wearing his white shirt and dark pants and brooding about how he killed Shrap. Cripes, if this island is haunted, I want it to be by ghost pirates or something, not by everyone's guilt. Kate plops down to him. With her white blouse and dark jeans they kind of look like one of those Midwestern couples who wear matching clothes on vacation. Also, they both look sad and pensive. Kate wants to tell Jack what unspecified crime she committed. Jack says no, he prefers that the crime remain unspecified. He says it doesn't matter who any of the castaways were before the crash. "Three days ago we all died," he thematicizes. "We should all be able to start over."
A montage? Seriously? It's the kind of montage where everyone does everything in slow motion. Hurley provides the Dogme justification for the montage by listening to a Discman, even though Sayid prolly wants that Discman and those batteries for more critical uses than a montage. (The song is called "Wash Away" by some guy named Joe Purdy, and is nice enough, though it basically sounds like the producers have been hanging out on the North Shore long enough to hear a lot of Jack Johnson and Bruddah IZ and wanted to find a song that sounded a little like both of them but would cost a lot less to license.) Jin strokes his sleeping wife's face in Korean. (My friend Denny, who speaks Korean, assures me that this means the same thing in English.) Shannon looks gloomy until Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity shows up with her sunglasses, repaired with a paper clip. She smiles delightedly and he looks tremendously self-satisfied. (What is the context of this scene? Those sunglasses have never previously been mentioned, have they? This makes me think that Maggie Grace and Ian Somerhalder were told that this entire episode actually revolved around his quazy quest to fix her sunglasses, and they filmed a whole bunch of scenes involving that issue, only to cut them all except this last bit. Perhaps in the Lost offices, they've assembled a separate cut of "Tabula Rasa," the "Zeppo" cut, where Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity fights his way through the jungle and robs corpses of duct tape only to have Shannon yell, "No! Not good enough!" and burst into tears.) Sayid walks along the beach holding what appears at first to be a cricket ball but instead is an apple; rather than bowl it, as I hoped he would, he simply tosses the apple to Sawyer, who's being a Gloomy Gus. Charlie replaces the F in FATE, written on his fingers, Radio Raheem-style, to an L, spelling LATE. I don't know what LATE refers to, but if he added a letter, he could be referencing Driveshaft's #19 smash, "Baby, Let Me Clean Your Slate (Until It Can't Get Any Cleaner)." Behind him, Claire tells her fetus that surely they'll get more lines episode. In the montage's climax, Walt runs across the beach to meet Mercutio and Vincent the Shifty-Eyed Dog. That dog is really panting a lot. Walt seems really happy. We see the back of Locke's head as he sits there watching them...
...and that's where my stupid TiVo stopped recording. Dammit! Thankfully, I asked my fellow recappers to tell me what happened and they came through like gangbusters:
Sars: "The camera panned around him to show his face, at which time he twinkled inscrutably."
Deborah: "The happy boy-gets-his-dog-back music turns foreboding as the camera swings around so we can look at Baldy's flinty stare and icy eyes."
on Lost, according to Jacob: "That hot chick is creepy and that fat dude is fat. And the orange guy is creepy, but not creepy enough, until sweeps. And somehow we shave our faces, but not enough that we don't look like we're stuck on a deserted island."