I'm writing to you from my own deserted island, the town of Duck on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My attractive lawyer wife and I came down to take some time off at her parents' beach house; I was foolish enough to bring down a videotape of Lost, and now I have to recap it. If I were smart I just would've gotten a sub this week, but now I'm sitting in a downstairs bedroom preparing to shit out everything that crosses my mind over the hour, just to give you, the Television Without Pity customer, the quantity recap you deserve.
(The island isn't really deserted, of course; we found that out this morning when we went to a local restaurant for breakfast and found it crowded with hardy fools who, like us, take their beach vacations in November. I had biscuits and gravy. It was cholesteriffic.)
Thankfully, it's not like I'm missing some beautiful day to deliver this recap; it's rainy and gray and gross outside. Likewise, the only football game I really care about isn't on until 8:30 tonight. So other than our dog, who races from the third floor to the ground floor every two minutes hoping that someone will do something interesting in the meantime, I face no distractions in writing this recap up. My goal is to finish this recap in less than one hour. (Usually it takes me about seven.) To do so I will be typing every single thing I think, without recourse to "editing" or "proofreading" or "ever using the backspace key." Also, to save time, I will never hit the rewind button on the VCR. No freeze-framing, no slo-mo, and no watching a scene more than once to get the subtleties. Subtleties are a luxury I can't afford. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! The fastest recap in recorded history begins…now!
Sayid's private beach. He's taking a break from his mapquest, and sits staring at the photograph of the rather severe-looking Iraqi woman we saw his staring at a few episodes back. (Which episode? I should find the link! But screw it, I don't have time, and our internet connection is shaky at best here at the beach, and it's located up two flights of stairs, so I can't be bothered! No time!) He turns over the photograph to read the writing on the back; this passage will be translated for us later in the episode, I'm sure, so there's no need for me to show off my knowledge of Arabic. He looks down the beach and sees a tiny bit of cable sticking out of the sand. He pulls the cable up and sees that it actually goes off makai into the ocean, and mauka into the jungle. The music goes crazy here with bongos and shit.
Crap, I can't figure out how to make the closed captioning work on this TV. Oh well! No time to worry about it! On Midsection Beach, Jack's patching up Sawyer's arm. They bicker like old biddies for a while until Jack tells Sawyer he's here because no one else wants anything to do with him. With Sawyer, that is. Everyone wants something to do with Jack! This shuts Sawyer up for a moment until he says, "She does." Jack chuckles bitterly and tells Sawyer to change his own bandages.
Outside Casa de Sawyer, Kate's staring off into the middle distance, as if trying to encourage a flashback; unfortunately, she's already used her allotment of Season One flashbacks, so no Beckinsaliana is forthcoming. Jack asks her if she's looking for anyone in particular or just admiring the view. She worries aloud about Sayid, who's been gone for two days. "He'll come back when he finds what he's looking for," Jack says. (Well, "says." All quotations in this recap are as verbatim as one can get without closed captions and refusing to use the rewind button.) That's a nice line, as it implies of course that Jack feels Sayid's going through something similar to his own Vision Quest or whatever a few episodes back. (Again, I should link to the episode, but I'm not gonna. Hey, maybe Sars will do it for me!) Kate reminds Jack that Sayid left because of the torture he and Jack put Sawyer through. "Sayid's a trained soldier, Kate," he says. "He can take care of himself."
Sayid the trained soldier follows the cable through the jungle, stopping only when he sees a tripwire cunningly hidden along his path. He carefully steps over the tripwire, only to put his foot plumb into a snare, which jerks him off his feet. He ends up swinging upside down ten feet above the jungle floor, and wangs right into a tree, getting a stake of some kind stuck in his leg.
Commercials! So far, so good! Ten minutes down, a solid seven or eight minutes of the show recapped. It's nighttime, and Sayid is still dangling upside down. His praying is interrupted by the sound of footsteps nearby; like everyone else on this island full of morons, he responds to danger by saying, "Hello?" to it. A knife flashes in the moonlight and Sayid tumbles to the ground.
Back at the Caves I Named Something Last Week But I Can't Remember What, Jack's checking out a fellow castaway's rash. The patient, a wuss in glasses whom I'll call Rashhole, feels certain his rash is a horrible tropical disease; Jack tells him he has hives. Meanwhile, nearby, we can hear other castaways arguing; Hurley confirms it's just more folks yelling at each other over nothing. As Rashhole walks away, muttering to himself, Jack tells Hurley, "I got enough on my plate without something something hypochondriacs." Hurley points out that the castaways are all stressed out. "It would be sweet if we had something to do," he says. Jack points out that they're all surviving and says that's his priority. "It could be worse," Jack says. "How?" Hurley howls.
Well, Hurley, I guess you could be waking up in a mysterious bunker with your hands tied down, as has apparently happened to Sayid. The bunker also has electric lights and a muttering, pacing crazy person, who asks, "Where is Alex?" in about ten different languages. When Sayid replies, "I don't know what you're talking about," we see the crazy person rush across the room to some kind of switch and Sayid cries out in pain at the electrical current going through him. Oh, excellent. More torture. But this time Sayid is the victim! How, um, ironic? Is "irony" the word I'm looking for? After all, in a way, anvils are iron-y. His tormentor hits him with the hee again, and Sayid flashes back to…
Iraq. Let it first be known, before I address any other issue, that Naveen Andrews looks about ten thousand times better with short hair in these scenes than with his long, lustrous Jheri curls on the island. Anyhoodle, Sayid's punching some poor bastard in an interrogation room while a supervisor looks on. In subtitled Arabic, Sayid tells the poor bastard that if he wants the torture to stop, he should give up some information. "We already know the truth," Sayid says as the camera tracks behind the interrogatee's head. When we see Sayid again he's speaking English, a la The Hunt for Red October, where everyone speaks Russian for like two minutes before they all switch to speaking English with Russian accents, and the viewer is just supposed to "know" that the characters are "actually" speaking Russian. This would work better if we hadn't recently had an episode (Sars?) in which Korean characters spoke Korean all the way through, but I guess that's what happens when you cast Koreans as Koreans but an Indian as an Iraqi. Naveen Andrews had to learn those Arabic lines phonetically, like poor Andie MacDowell in every film she's ever appeared in. Sayid tells the poor bastard that if he confesses, he might just lose his hands instead of his life. Then he very efficiently turns the poor bastard's head away as the poor bastard horffs all over the place.
Outside the interrogation room, Omar, Sayid's superior, tells him he handled himself very well, and that he's being transferred to intelligence. Sayid seems happy about the move. Omar and Sayid seem to have some prior friendship, as Omar discourages Sayid from calling him "sir." "But you're my superior officer," Sayid says, and Omar answers, "I'll enjoy it while it lasts." As they speak, Sayid eyes a women being led past by two soldiers, only to reply properly to whatever the hell Omar just said.
Back at the Caves I Named Something Last Week But I Can't Remember What, Hurley greets the Hunting Committee -- Locke and a new guy named Ethan -- who have trapped and killed a few wild suitcases. They explain that they found the luggage in the jungle. Hurley cracks open a bag while Walt sneaks over to Locke and asks him if he can come with him on his hunting trip. Before Locke can answer, Mercutio hustles Walt back to bed. Meanwhile, Hurley finds something cool enough to warrant a "Dude!" in one of the bags, though, to be fair, Hurley deals out "Dude!"s so liberally, it could be, like, anything, from a hairbrush to the head of Stanislaus Grumman.
Back in the bunker -- which I'm going to call the State of Nature, for reasons that will later become apparent -- Sayid's getting another sip of Jolt, if you know what I mean. He finally gets fed up and explains that he's a survivor of a plane crash, and that he followed the cable into the jungle, and mentions the SOS of Doooooooom, and really expositions the hell out of this scene, mostly so that the woman who's interrogating him can reveal herself as the voice on the transmission, which she does. "Sixteen years," she says, stepping into the light. "Has it really been that long?" She has long stringy hair and an effectively sinewy look. "And you just happened to hear my distress call?" she asks, but apparently the question is rhetorical, as she then punches Sayid in the mouf.
Commercial. I'm falling behind, because I took a short break from recapping and checked out other channels, only to find some movie that appeared to feature Isabella Rossellini and Craig T. Nelson, set in the Middle Ages. I watched for a few minutes trying to figure out what this film was, but I'm pretty sure no such movie exists. (Update! I refuse to use the Interweb to help Sars locate specific recap links, but I will look up this movie. It turns out it does exist. It's from 1989, and it's called Red Riding Hood.) (Second update! Half an hour gone and I don't think I'm halfway through. Crapola. Must...push...harder. Must...resist...urge to digress!)
The State of Nature. Sayid wakes and reads his captor's name off a jacket hanging nearby: Rousseau. So Rousseau joins Locke as this show's clues that I should have paid closer attention in college philosophy. I eagerly await characters named Søren, Sun Tzu, and Plato. (Sars: I just don't have time to add the many funny jokes sure to ensue from these names. Also, I don't know anything about philosophy. Be a dear and add a bunch of hilarious lines to this paragraph. I don't mind if everyone thinks I wrote them, it's cool. Maybe Plato could live in a cave or whatever. That was Plato, right? Thanks oodles! Love, Dan Kwa. ["Dan Kwa: I took Philosophy 101 Pass-D-Fail. Sorry, dude." -- Sars]) Sayid asks if this is where the distress call is transmitted from, and Rousseau tells him that it comes from somewhere else. "But they control it now," she adds. Whoever "they" are, Rousseau believes Sayid to be one of them. She produces Sayid's mystery photograph and asks who the woman is; Sayid says her name is Nadia.
FlashIraq! Omar leads Sayid down some stairs to an interrogation room, while they discuss arcane details of a prisoner's arrest that are totally irrelevant to the story as a whole. The point is, there was a bombing, and Sayid is supposed to figure out what this woman had to do with it. When he enters the interrogation room, he is immediately told by the prisoner that her name is Nadia, and it turns out they know each other; as children, they attended the same school, and Nadia claims she used to push Sayid into the mud. My first grade class had no Sayids and no Nadias but it did have two Kellys: Kelly R. and Kelly S. Kelly R. was beautiful, elegant, and unattainable. Kelly S. was cute, tomboyish, and rambunctious. I was in love with Kelly R., but every day at recess Kelly S. would chase me around the playground, shoving me to the ground and just fucking whaling on me. I don't recall exactly what I said when my mom told me this meant Kelly S. liked me, but I bet it included the word "grody." Anyways, they chit-chat about the past: Nadia was rich, Sayid older than his years, blah blah strained-formality-cakes. Sayid threatens to hurt Nadia if she doesn't tell him what she knows about the bombing, but she tells him this is not her first interrogation. "This is where they burned me with acid," she says, and also points out the (grody!) holes in her hands. Sayid, shaken, tells her that this bombing is a different matter, and she needs to tell him what she knows. She refuses and says, "Do your work."
Back in the State of Nature. Rousseau demands to know more about Nadia. I hope that as the episode progresses, we'll get a little more out of this character than a) vomiting out gobbledygook and b) drilling Sayid for information we will receive in flashback anyway. Sayid asks who Alex is.
Caves I Named Something Last Week But I Can't Remember What. Walt's bored, but Mercutio's busy and tells his son to entertain himself. Meanwhile, Hurley's searching for something in one of the new suitcases, and, once he finds it, rushes off past a surprised Jack. When asked what he's doing, Hurley giggles like someone my grandfather would have called "a damn fool."
The State of Nature. Rousseau still seems to think Sayid is misrepresenting himself in some way, asking why he's alone if he's among the survivors of a plane crash. He explains that he left the other castaways because of something he did. "And Nadia?" asks Rousseau. "She wasn't on the plane," Sayid replies. Then he actually does misrepresent: "She's dead," he says -- which isn't necessarily true, we later find out -- "because of me" -- when in fact we'll later find out the opposite is true. If she is alive, it's because of what Sayid did. So Sayid's also haunted, eh? I don't even know why they bother writing these torture scenes, since it seems like every frigging character on this show is constantly torturing himself anyway. By the way, Rousseau sure has Aragorn hair. She could use some conditioner. She approaches Sayid and says, "I'm so sorry." Then she says she wants to show him something.
Caves I Named Something Last Week But I Can't Remember What. Mercutio has designed a nifty shower system, complete with architect-style fonts across the top reading "Aquaduct [sic]." Jack is impressed, and Mercutio says that in "a life" he was an artist. "I thought you worked in construction," says Jack. "Long story," says Mercutio. It's the kind of story, Jack, that takes a full 44 minutes to tell, and so he doesn't have time right now. Maybe another Wednesday. Charlie shows up and tells them Hurley wants them to come see something. Jack, Mercutio, and Hurley step onto a large meadow to see Hurley standing beside a flagstick. "Welcome to the first, and hopefully only, Island Open," Hurley says. His hair is tied back in a quite adorable fashion. "Two holes, three par, and no waiting!" Jack and Mercutio can't believe this is what Hurley has been "wasting [his] time on." Hurley good-naturedly points out, "Our lives suck. We're trapped on an island, runnin' from boars, monsters, freakin' polar bears…" "Polar bears?" a doubtful Mercutio says, only to hear Charlie say, "You didn't hear about the polar bear?" Ha! Hurley elegantly makes his case for including fun in the survival scheme, or else the castaways are "just gonna go crazy waiting for the bad thing to happen."
The State of Nature. Rousseau is prattling on about a music box she got from Robert, her "love," that once was a comfort to her but now has broken. Sayid says he could try to fix it if she freed his hands. "I'm very good with mechanical things," he adds hopefully. Instead, Rousseau pulls out a syringe and prepares to inject Sayid with some kind of drug. Right now, Charlie's feeling unexplained pangs of longing elsewhere on the island. Rousseau asks Sayid what is written on the back of Nadia's photograph, but she really does like the rhetorical questions, because this time she injects him before he even answers. It's a magical drug that makes its recipient view 30-second advertisements for Papa John's, Allstate, and Radio Shack. The drug was developed by a super-secret research branch of the FCC for use on TiVo users nationwide. Wow, that sucks. That joke was brought to you by all the keys on the keyboard with the exception of BACKSPACE.
Jack and Mercutio stand face to face, pretending like something critical and scary is going on; regular viewers of David Fury Angel episodes have scenes like this coded in their DNA, and are fully aware that the two are just musing over a golf shot. Nevertheless, this is a cute bit. Anyways, everyone seems to be having a grand old time, including Charlie and Hurley, who stand far away on the green, gyrating madly in an attempt to distract Jack. (Charlie's also singing Driveshaft's #124 smash, "Drivin' Your Green With My Three-Iron of Love." What's really distracting, though, is when someone talks during your backswing, which is exactly what happens now, as Rashhole shouts for Jack just before he hits the ball. Man, if Tiger Woods's caddy Steve Williams was there right now, he'd cut that guy a brand new rashhole. Anyways, Rashhole's come to impart more great news about his hives, but stops short when he sees Jack's playing golf. "You're playing golf?" he asks. Man, David Fury can write some rhetorical fucking questions. "Can I play?" he eagerly says.
The State of Nature. Sayid wakes with a start to find himself untied. Rousseau tells him she had to use a sedative to safely untie him, which makes basically no sense at all, so let's move on. She asks Sayid why he offered to fix the music box even after all she did to him. Uh, to get you to untie his hands, lady. Sayid says he'll do it if she tells him her first name; she says it's Danielle. As Gregg Easterbrook (and >Daniel) would say, tastefully named. She says she was on a science team. "Was Robert on the team?" Sayid asks, and she says he was. "And Alex?" Rousseau pointedly doesn't answer. Apparently her boat was three days out of Tahiti when everything went to shit and the ship ran aground in a storm. The team made camp for two months, before -- and then Sayid interrupts her, asking what she meant in her distress signal when she said, "It killed them all." "We were coming back from the black rock," she says. "It was them. They were the carriers." Sayid is all, "Please offer me more context clues so that I can understand the peculiar details of your tale." Just kidding! He just shouts, "Who were the carriers?!?" Rousseau says she hasn't seen other people on the island, but she can hear them in the jungle. "They whisper," she says. Sayid gives a look that makes me laugh out loud, because it so clearly conveys the sentiment, "Oh, I get it. This woman is nuttier than my shit 18-36 hours after I eat something with nuts in it." Rousseau sees it too. "You think I'm insane," she says. "I think you've been alone for too long," he replies.
Time for another short break! Too bad the only thing on another channel right now is some movie with Laura Dern and Raul Julia where she spends like forever talking about the torture she went through at the hands of some Latin American soldiers. Boy, does she have bad hair in this movie, which it turns out is called Down Came a Blackbird, and was Raul Julia's final film -- he died six days after filming ended. So really a downer on every level. Twenty minutes left! I'm not counting time spent watching this movie in my total, by the way. Screw you if you think I'm cheating.
FlashIraq! Sayid has smuggled some bread to Nadia in her cell, and tries to get her to identify suspects in custody for the bombing. If she identifies someone, he says, he can convince his superiors to free her. "Then I won't have these visits to look forward to anymore," she retorts. "This is not a game," he says. She shakes her head and replies, "Yet you keep playing it, Sayid." This was a nice scene.
Speaking of a nice scene, a tanned and bikinied Shannon is reading on the beach when Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity says, "You're never gonna believe this." "You finally learned to tie your own shoes?" Shannon asks sweetly. "Funny," her brother answers, and says that he hears people at the caves have built a golf course. When he says Jack's playing now, Kate, nearby and listening in as always, is all, shhyeah right! Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity goes to check it out, and Shannon tells him to wait for her, bonehead. A lot of the venom has gone out of these two's relationship, but I'm sure it'll be reinstated for the Shannon and Her Brother Spectacular episode, coming up sometime soon, I'll bet. "A doctor playin' golf," Sawyer says as Kate walks past. "Now I've heard everything. What's ? A cop eatin' a doughnut?" Kate grins and says if Sawyer wants to come, he should just say so. Sawyer notes that the castaways aren't too fond of him right now, and Kate says, "One outcast to another? I'd think about making more of an effort." Wow, just when I sort of like Kate -- due primarily to her absence during much of this episode -- she goes and says something irritating like that. "Outcast"? Kate is basically the Queen Bee of this island, with three guys vying for her attention. What a pud.
The State of Nature. Sayid has fixed the music box, which tinkles and twinkles away. "You see? Some things can be fixed," he says, which is a metaphor, you know. For what? I simply do not have time to explain. Sayid asks Rousseau to let him go, but she refuses. "It's not safe," she says. "You need me." At that moment there's a roar outside, and Rousseau collects up a rifle. "If we're lucky, it's one of the bears," she says. As she climbs the ladder, Sayid calls, "It might be that thing up there! The monster!" Rousseau responds, "There's no such thing as monsters." Hey, did anyone ever see that Hal Hartley movie No Such Thing, with Sarah Polley? Was it any good? What the fuck happened to Hal Hartley, huh? From Henry Fool to that, wow. Sayid grabs the other rifle and takes a moment for a…
FlashIraq! Omar tells Sayid he must execute Nadia. Sayid is obviously upset about the news, but agrees to do so. Omar seems unimpressed with Sayid's job performance; if Sayid was a public school, he'd lose his Federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act. That's the kind of "joke" you come up with when you only have twelve minutes left to finish a recap and you're not self-editing at all.
Nadia's cell. Sayid opens the door, and Nadia asks, "What did you bring me today?" He tosses her a mask and says, "Put it on." She looks like she doesn't really like it. Perhaps it's not her size? Sayid, when buying a gift for a woman, always buy one size too small! Chicks love that!
Fuck, I have like three minutes left. I'm just going to watch the rest all in one straight shot and then summarize it from memory. Sayid urges Rousseau to come with him, but she won't. She tells him to watch the castaways carefully. He asks who Alex was, and she replies, "Alex was my child." Then, commercials. I have nothing funny to say about them. Wait, that's not true. What is up with people in Old Navy ads? Does Gap Inc. breed them on a farm? Grow them in test tubes? Are they freshly-scrubbed each morning?
Back on the golf course, Charlie misses a putt, and then Jack lines up his putt for the big win. Hurley offers five bucks that Jack makes it. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity makes it ten against him; Rashhole bets his dinner on Jack. Sawyer shows up and bets sunscreen that Jack will choke. Kate will "take that action," if you know what I mean, bow chicka bow. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity will take it too; Shannon reminds him that he's now basically bet against himself, to which Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity replies, "We need sunscreen, Princess." Jack taps the putt and…
A knife flies into a tree. Locke's doing his wild man shtick nearby; apparently golf isn't his game. Walt shows up and asks if Locke can teach him how to throw knives. Locke holds one out and hands it to the awestruck kid. Did anything else happen in this scene? I don't think so, but there's no time to check.
Sayid walks through the jungle in the dark. All around him he hears whispers. I'm sure he would have a haunted look in his eyes if they didn't shoot this show too frigging dark for any TV I've ever watched it on.
week on Lost, Claire's water breaks.
Zigazow! One hour flat! Okay, gentle readers, you can breathe again. Dan Kwa has achieved the impossible! Now my time is my own here in beautiful Duck, North Carolina.
I wonder what's on TV?