Close-up on a young boy's eye. I like this recurring opening device. I'm a fan of motifs, even possibly trivial ones like this. We see that the boy is lying on the ground, looking scared. We hear the sound of action-movie punches -- you know, the kind that, if you landed them in real life, would punch through a guy? The kind that sound like a wrecking ball striking a side of beef? Some crew-cut creep tells the kid we started with to stay down on the ground like a Desert Rat, and looks over toward the schoolyard fence, where another small kid is being punched in the gut by a bigger kid. This fight is so TV-fake that it makes my head hurt. There has never been a playground fight in the history of playgrounds in which someone stood someone against a fence and punched them in the stomach -- I counted -- eighteen times. That simply doesn't happen. No one ever gets punched hard in the stomach in a schoolyard fight, because there's too much kicking and scratching and wrestling and rolling around going on. And if a kid does get punched hard in the stomach once, he goes down to the ground. Instantly. He curls up in a little fetal ball and doesn't get punched seventeen more times. This scene irritates me. Anyways, the kid standing over Young Jack, who looks like Dewey after three years and a lot of sibling abuse, tells our hero to stay down and he won't get his ass kicked. Young Jack stands up and tries to rush to his friend's aid; for his efforts, he gets clocked.
Broody Beach. Charlie comes running to Jack, calling out that someone needs help far out in the ocean. "I don't swim!" Charlie adds. Jack, to the sound of pounding jungle drums, strips off his shirt and dives into the water, and oh, God, does that water look great. Bright aquamarine, with a gentle break and some nice coral formations a little further out in the bay. Perfect for snorkeling. Anyways, Jack swims out, and the camera operators have a grand old time following him out there. Camera operators really like when they get to do something new. I can just imagine them all arguing with each other about who gets to go out into the ocean with one of ABC's waterproof cameras. After swimming through a couple of swells, Jack looks around but can't see the swimmer in distress. He submerges once, twice, and comes up with a sputtering Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. Jack tells him to breathe, but Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity asks if Jack got the woman he had swum out to save. Jack looks further out to sea and sees another person waving her arms and screaming for help. Here the music goes fucking apeshit with horns and strings crescendoing in a totally ridiculous manner. Man, what kind of a lifeguard was Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity? Probably he worked at some snooty country club pool where there are no such things as riptides and the most strenuous work is estimating how many of the old ladies swimming afternoon laps couldn't hold in their three-martini lunch.
Pounding drums! Exciting frame-rate change, à la the fight scenes in later episodes of Angel! Kate Beckinsale and Charlie sprint down the beach to help Jack pull Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity out of the surf. Jack dives back in, explaining that someone's still out there. The camera cranes up to see Jack swimming out, the castaways watching him from the beach. This is one of several shots that basically implies -- via shots taken through leaves or brush -- that someone is watching them. It's hard to know whether this is intentional or just sloppy camerawork by the second-string cameraman who's pissed he didn't get to go swimming with the waterproof camera.
Commercials and credits. Boy, I lucked out with one of the few fall shows that didn't tie or set a record for fastest PH ever, unlike poor life as we know it. Although really who we should pity is Kim.
Midsection Beach. A very pale Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity watches Jack haul a backpack up past the waterline. Kate follows Jack and tells him the woman who drowned was named Joanna, and that she was only on their plane because an ear infection grounded her for a couple of days in Australia. The ABC website has a nifty online "Diary" which gives a little more information about the dearly departed Joanna, by the way, and notes again how weird it is that rip currents should capture supposedly strong swimmers. Jack bemoans both that in six days he never talked to this Joanna and that, out in the water, he chose not to go after her and to save Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity instead. He looks over Kate's shoulder and, with a jolt, sees the Magritte-lookin' dude in a suit from the last episode standing in the surf. Kate doesn't see him, and asks Jack how long it's been since he slept.
Walt's brushing his teeth with Sun's Korean toothpaste plant. Mercutio tells him not to swallow seawater; when Walt asks why, Mercutio obviously doesn't know exactly what the deal is with drinking salt water, so he just says, "Just don't drink it, man."
Sun is watching them while folding a blanket. Jin turns her head away and tells her she needs water. "When will someone tell us what to do?" Sun asks, adding that she doesn't think anyone's coming for them. Jin tries to reassure her. She complains that none of the other castaways talk to them. Other than the guy who saw me topless, she doesn't add. Jin angrily tells her that they don't need anyone else, and that he will tell her what to do. Aw, that's sweet.
Shannon stomps up to Sawyer and asks if he's got something for her. Sawyer, hilariously, is reading Watership Down. Sawyer says, "You're in my light, Sticks." Another nickname! I've finally decided who Sawyer reminds me of, with his distrust of Iraqis and his constant nicknaming: George W. Bush. Sawyer's nicknames sound just like the lame-o nicknames the President likes to invent for everyone he meets. "What the hell are you talking about?" Shannon starts to ask, and Sawyer says "light, comma, sticks. As in those legs of yours." Any nickname you have to patiently explain isn't one that's going to, er, stick. Shannon, awesomely, is wearing huge hoop earrings, some kind of chiffony pink top, and a frilly lime green skirt. She looks like the table centerpiece at a Fort Lauderdale wedding. Sawyer pulls out a bottle of lotion. "It'll keep off sand fleas?" she asks, idly scratching the back of her leg. When she asks him how much he wants for the lotion, he tells her that her money's no good here, and gives her a lewd look. Uh, Sawyer, I wouldn't go there. Unless you want a case of "sand fleas" too. Some half-witted banter ensues, ending with Shannon throwing the bottle at him and stalking away while Sawyer gives a squinty grin.
FlashJack! Jack's walking down a corridor with an Australian medical examiner, who's telling Jack his father drank himself to death. Or at least gave himself a myocardial infarction -- "a sizable and fatal heart attack," the examiner says. Isn't it a little weird that the ME is explaining an MI to an MD? He takes Jack to a walk-in fridge, not unlike the one I used to sneak into when I worked at Kopp's Frozen Custard in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in order to sneak handfuls of pralines. Only this walk-in fridge has, instead of pralines, a dead person in it. Shot from underneath in cold light, with stubble and red eyes, Matthew Fox looks like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. The ME unzips the bag, whacking Jack's dad's nose in the process. A weeping Jack acknowledges that yes, that's his father.
Back at his late-night fire, Jack's crying again. Behind him, a branch snaps and we hear ice cubes rattling. Huh: obviously this isn't just a hallucination -- there's something corporeal out there. These scenes sure make me hope the writers are awfully creative to come up with an explanation for all this stuff that doesn't seem like grade-A baloney. Jack pulls a handy perfectly-formed and -fueled torch from the fire and takes it into the jungle with him. A search leads him to a nice-looking waterfall and pool. Don't drink the water, Jack! You'll get leptospirosis! A creepy white-faced doll sits at the bottom of the pool, staring up at him. He follows a path of similar dolls to a pile of wreckage, including what appears to be a chunk of a plane, sitting near the mouth of a cave. We get a number of extremely dark shots of wreckage, most of which I'm sure are meant to show some interesting set design detail but on my crappy TV come out as black blobs. I want to get HDTV, so I can see how bad local news anchors really look. Jack sees a coffin lying amid the wreckage, and it's time for another FlashJack!
A harried-looking Jack is begging Chrissy, an Oceanic Airlines ticket agent, to let him bring his father's body back to the United States. He shouts, which catches the attention of other passengers, including a skeptical-looking Jin. Jack launches into the kind of impassioned speech that ticket agents at real airlines are specially trained to ignore, telling Chrissy that he needs to get his father's body back to the United States, and straight to a cemetery, right away, because he needs it to be done. Seriously, that's what he says. "I need it to be done. I need it to be over." Well, lemme tell ya, buddy, these kinds of passionate pleas don't make the average ticket agent lift an eyebrow. And I say this as someone who went to the airport with his wife for their honeymoon only to find out that the first of their flights was canceled, the second was going to leave without them, and no, they would not be offered any kind of refund, thanks for asking. "I need to bury my father," FlashJack finishes, and now we're back in the jungle, where a bedraggled Jack cries over the casket at the melodramatic turn his life has taken. He pulls the casket out of the pile of wreckage, places his torch in a handy nearby torch-holder, and opens the coffin, .-- .... .. -.-. .... / .. ... / . -- .--. - -.--. In a fury, Jack begins hammering at the coffin with a metal pipe or a baseball bat or something that happened to be sitting nearby. Jack, what are you doing! That's the nicest bed on the island! ["So I'm not the only one who thought that. Phew." -- Sars]
"A sexy pajama party gets too hot to handle! , on The Bachelor!" Wow, nice segue to the commercials there, ABC.
Midsection Beach. In the darkness, perfectly manicured hands set several water bottles down, then pour some water into Claire's mouth. It's Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity, who has stolen the water, he tries to explain to an angry mob, for safekeeping since Jack just left. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity is rescued just in time by Jack, who arrives outta the jungle in a flourish of pounding drums. Jack has been rehearsing a speech since he beat up that casket, and let's be kind and just say it ain't exactly St. Crispin's Day. "It's been six days," he says, "and we're all still waiting. Waiting for someone to come. But what if they don't? We have to stop waiting. We need to start figuring things out. A woman died this morning just going for a swim. And [Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity] tried to save her, and now you're about to crucify him? We can't do this. Every man for himself is not gonna work. It's time to start organizing. We need to figure out how we're gonna survive here. Now, I found water. Fresh water, up in the valley. I'll take a group in at first light. Now if you don't want to come, find another way to contribute. Last week, most of us were strangers. But we're all here now. And God knows how long we're gonna be here. But if we can't live together, we're gonna die alone." There's a silence, and then someone asks, "How many monkey butlers will there be?" "One at first," replies Jack, "but he'll train others."
Later that night. Charlie fills cups with water and distributes them around the camp. "Thank you for getting me water today," Sun says to Jin, who tells her, "That's what husbands do." Mercutio brings water to a sleeping Walt, and then lets a panting Vincent get a drink. The music has turned into a gentle piano line suspiciously reminiscent of the song "One on One" by Hall & Oates. Seriously, suspicious enough that either Hall or Oates ought to think seriously about filing a suit. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity is over at Broody Beach, getting taunted by Sawyer for taking his place "at the top of everyone's most-hated list." Kate brings Jack a cup of water and asks him where he spent his day. "Just had to take care of a few things," he replies. Pressed, he tells Kate that his father died in Sydney. "I'm sorry," Kate says. "I'm sorry too," says Jack. Great. Now everyone looks sad and pensive.
week on Lost: Jin hates Mercutio! Mercutio hates Jin! That desiccated corpse hates everyone!