Previously on Lost: I dunno, TiVo started recording too late. Read the recaps.
This episode begins with Locke's flashback to the aftermath of the crash. He's lying flat on his back in the wreckage, with the now-familiar gash above and below his right eye. The camera focuses on his sock-clad foot. Locke stares at it for a moment amid the screaming and the howling and the blowing and the glayven, mwa-hey!, and then reaches out for his shoe.
Midsection Beach. Night. Locke's face, appearing curiously better-shaven than in the crash footage, is lit by fire. Vincent the Shifty-Eyed Dog is barking furiously. Mercutio and Walt try to calm down him down, but he pulls Walt towards the fuselage. Mercutio apologizes to Shannon and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity, who are trying to sleep nearby. A clatter and growl from the fuselage wakes everyone else up, or at least all our main characters. Sleeping arrangements: Shannon sleeps by Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. Jin sleeps holding Sun. Sayid, Kate, and Jack sleep alone. Claire and Hurley sleep near each other, which is sweet. I imagine she's trying to protect her baby from predators by sleeping to the only castaway likely to be a slower runner than her. When my attractive lawyer wife was about three years old, she watched The Wizard of Oz and became convinced that the Wicked Witch of the West would visit her house during the night. For over a year after the viewing of that film, she refused to sleep in her own bed, instead sleeping at the foot of her brother's crib. Her parents thought it was adorable that she was protecting her baby brother, but she later revealed that she was sleeping there on the grounds that if the witch showed up, she'd probably kill the helpless infant first, giving my wife time to run away.
My anti-monster routine was a little different when I was a kid; every night I would insist on having a ridiculous number of stuffed animals in bed with me. My parents always thought it was because I believed the animals would protect me from a monster, but I inwardly scoffed at their rationale. What kind of a baby did they think I was? I knew that stuffed animals couldn't protect me from a monster. Instead, I slept on my side and arranged the stuffed animals under the covers in a pile by my stomach. Any monster sent to kill me would, of course, have a description of the child they'd been sent to destroy. (I imagined the monsters holding a ripped-out piece of spiral notebook paper.) That description would describe me as "skinny" -- which I was, once -- and the monster would look at the paper, look at my bed, see what appeared to be a kid with a gigantic fat stomach under the covers, look back at the paper, look at me again, look at my "stomach" again, look back at the paper, look at me one last time, and then, shaking its monstrous head, would retreat back into the closet. I couldn't fight a monster, I knew, but I could outwit one, because monsters are stupid.
"What is it?" asks Kate. Claire says it sounds as if someone's in the fuselage. What the hell? First Mercutio, now Claire? Can't anyone on this show identify frigging wild animals from their wild animal growling? Jack, mindful of the cheerful looter he encountered last episode, says, "Sawyer." "Right behind ya, jackass," Sawyer retorts. Jack, Sawyer, and Kate head for the fuselage, Jack and Sawyer holding flashlights. One of the castaways needs to make some tiki torches. Those would be festive and useful. Whatever's in the plane sounds as though it's unloading a dishwasher. I find it hard to believe that the boars we're about to see would actually waste time rooting around in the machinery of the fuselage when they could just head straight for all the tasty rotten meat in the seats. Sawyer's Big Man flashlight illuminates some cool glowing eyes, and Jack yells, "Run!" Then: Chaos! Squealing boars running amongst squealing castaways! Hurley saying, "Oh, crud!" Charlie falling over! Soon the boars have run off into the jungle, and Locke, with an adventurous gleam in his eye, confirms that yes, those boars were boars.
As the tour guide leaves the office, we see that Locke is in a wheelchair. I know everyone brags that they saw this coming, but I sure didn't, and I'm glad, because I think it was very nicely done. Locke shouts, "Don't tell me what I can't do! Don't tell me what I can't do!" as the bus pulls away. The music swells. Now we're at the crash site again, seconds after the crash, watching Locke stare at his own right foot. He wiggles it. Neat! As terrified passengers run past him, Locke carefully brings himself to his feet. So that's the miracle he mentioned to Walt. He looks up at the sky, a smile on his face. From near the engine, Jack calls Locke over to help him pull out a guy whose leg is -- medically speaking -- totally fucked up. Hey, whatever happened to Squashed Leg Dude? Did he die or what? Locke sort of traded places with him, huh? As the music gets even louder, we see an urgent Locke jog toward the camera.
We're back at the memorial service. Locke stares at his wheelchair, illuminated in the flames, and smiles.
week on Lost: Jack goes for a swim, Jack goes crazy, Jack goes off a cliff. Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack.