Okay, ladies and germs, here's the deal. This is my last recap for TWoP for the foreseeable future, because I just got a job which will simply not allow me to spend eight hours a week cracking jokes about J.J. Abrams. (It's totally worth it, though; I'm gonna work on an offshore oil rig!) I've had a great time writing recaps for you, and I'm sorry to be losing such a delightful connection to an attentive, appreciative, and lively audience. I sneak a peek into my praise thread every once in a while (read: ten times a day), and I'm always touched and energized by the nice things you write. Mele kalikimaka and happy holiday-of-choice to all of you. You've been a great audience, so that's why I'm going to include in my final TWoP recap (until my ass gets fired, or blown off in a petroleum explosion) a Sneak Peek Inside the Recapping Process with Dan Kwa.
As always, I spent much of Friday afternoon in front of the TiVo, writing the first draft of the recap. As always, that first draft is plot-heavy and mostly bereft of jokes. So in order to give you, the TWoP customer, the scattershot laff-strewn recap to which your subscription fees entitle you, I am now, as always, editing the recap on Sunday night, totally stinking drunk. I mean, tanked on apple-tinis.
But this time, I'm leaving all my drunken edits in blue, so you can see the magic added to an official TWoP recap through the miracle of alkyhol. Tomorrow morning, before I send the recap in to Sars, I'll remove the more egregious spelling errors and sexist slurs, but for the most part, you'll be seeing this recap as it took shape. Magical!
We open in the Rape Caves. We're just moments after the end of "Raised by Another." Hugo explains to Jack it's Ethan who wasn't on the manifest. Jack can tell something is wrong. He can smell it! It's like a sixth sense! He and Locke go running through the jungle after Charlie and Claire. Exciting jungly music plays as the branches whip by them. It seems as though the trail from the Rape Caves to Midsection Beach is so well-traveled, someone should open up a Vince Lombardi Rest Stop in the middle. Though moving at a full run, Locke spots Claire's backpack twenty feet away on the jungle floor; Jack asks what could have happened to them. I now must issue a mea culpa to the technical staff of Lost; I watched this week's episode at my friends Sean and Jordi's house, and have determined that my criticism of the lighting level of past episodes of Lost was off-base. It turns out that my TV just sucks. Sean and Jordi have a normal, decent TV, and everything was much brighter and clearer on it. Recapping this scene on my television a few days later, I can barely see the backpack, but it was dead evident on their TV. And it turns out not everyone on the show is African-American! Anyways, Locke manages to sort out the three separate sets of footprints in the mud to determine that there was a struggle and Claire and Charlie were taken prisoner. Did anyone read that New Yorker piece last week about INS border agents, in which a good border agent could determine the names and birthdates of every member of a sixteen-person group of illegal border crossers by spotting, like, a Twix wrapper and a bent blade of grass? That's what this episode reminded me of. Except that to get that good at tracking took the INS agents years of daily practice, while Locke had never actually tracked anyone through the wilderness before this, had he? He was too busy getting berated by Dave Grohl. Jack starts calling out for Claire and Charlie, but is shushed by Locke.
Credits and commercials. Hey, Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi want to tell us about their new movie, "Lost" in the Desert. Giovanni Ribisi would also like you to know he's not actually retarded.
Jack and Locke follow the trail. "How does one man drag off two people, one of them pregnant?" asks Jack. "You're asking the wrong question," replies Locke. "Not how. Why?" Locke, there's no such thing as a stupid question. There is such a thing as a stupid answer, though, and that was one. They bicker a bit about what this all means vis-à-vis Sayid's revelation that they're not alone on Craphole Island, until Jack asks which way Claire and Charlie went. Locke makes a good case for going back to the caves and organizing a search party, but Jack wants to know which way they went right now. Locke points, and Jack runs off that way, his sprinting melting into a...
FlashJack! We're in an operating room. The makers of Lost, eager to give their hospital scenes a different feel than ER's, have replaced that show's circle-around-the-table shot with a series of shaky close-ups, which I'm not convinced is an improvement. Jack seems to be operating on a woman who's not doing well; her blood pressure is dropping while Jack tries to seal up an artery. As Jack finishes, the patient goes into cardiac arrest. They bring over the defibrillators and zap her a couple of times, to no avail. Jack tries some chest compressions, muttering, "Come on, come on," as the rest of the surgical staff looks on uncertainly. Finally another doctor tells Jack to "call it," to declare the patient dead; the other doctor is, of course, Jack's father. "It's over, Jack," he says. Jack strips off his mask and Kenneth Cole safety glasses and says to his father, "You call it."
The Rape Caves. Kate reports to Locke that no one on the beach has seen Charlie or Claire. She also tells him that -- wait, no, seriously -- you'll never -- she's coming with him. "I thought you might," Locke replies. Heh. Shannon and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity approach, Shannon pleading with her brother to get their water and get back to the beach. Instead, Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity volunteers for the search party, just to get five minutes of peace away from that harridan. "We're on a deserted island," Shannon says. "No choppers, no Amber Alert." It's cute that Shannon actually cares about her brother. Or maybe what's actually cute is that gray tank top she's wearing. Locke agrees to bring Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity along.
Walt suggests bringing Vincent, which seems like a fucking great idea to me, but no one follows up. Boy, Vincent has gone from being a cool character to being a boring one. What once seemed mysterious and complex -- his inscrutable face, his habit of popping up unexpectedly -- now just make him seem like a furrier Kate. Meanwhile, Mercutio offers his help to Locke, who bewilderingly claims that one more person would slow them down. He suggests that Mercutio go south, which is exactly the direction they know Claire and Charlie didn't go. To add insult to insult, Walt looks at him like he's the biggest doofus in the world.
Jack, running through the jungle aimlessly, stops and tries to find some kind of sign. He finally spots a twig that's been snapped. Clearly, Charlie and Claire snapped that twig during their kidnapping. It definitely wasn't snagged by a polar bear, or trodden on by a boar, or KATANGed by the Iron Giant, or blown off in a rainstorm. Jack's Thousand-Yard Stare of Impending Flashback leads us to a...
FlashJack! The operating room. Though it will eventually become clear that Jack's dad was the initial surgeon operating on the patient and that Jack filled in later once a crisis came about, the actual deets are very muddy in this scene, and unintentionally so, I think. Whatever, they argue for a while, and the key here is that Jack believes his father has had too much to drink to perform the surgery and that's why the patient died. Also, Jack tells his dad that one of the nurses came to get him when it was apparent his father was screwing up, and his dad asks which nurse it was, and Jack, happily, isn't a fucking rat, because we know what happens to rats, don't we? They get shot by Little Stevie Van Zandt.
Back inna jungle. Locke, Kate, and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity find Jack. "Good thing you were going in a circle," Locke says. Heh. Locke tries to send Jack back to the caves and says that this whole thing is his own fault. "I hunted with Ethan, spent time with him, and never sensed anything...off," Locke says. Maybe, Locke, that's because you yourself are a bit...off. Just maybe. I don't want to insult you, because -- hey, what are you doing with those 400 knives? Aiiieeeeeee! Locke points out that Ethan knows more about hunting and tracking than Locke does, and tells Jack that if it comes down to a fight, he doesn't want anything happening to the only doctor on the island. Once again, Locke is the sensible voice of reason, and once again Jack's guilt trip makes him ignore Locke's advice and push on. Kate gives Jack one of those looks that is supposed to make us believe she senses something deep within his soul, but ends up looking, y'know, sad and pensive.
Back at the Rape Caves, Mercutio's complaining about Locke to Hugo. "I'm getting sick of being treated like a second-class citizen because Mount Baldy can bag a boar." If I recall correctly, "windsurfing on Mount Baldy" was one of Letterman's Top Ten phrases that sound dirty but really aren't. Dan Kwa! Droppin' the trivia all ovah yo' asses! Then, on top of everything, Mercutio gets bitched out by his own kid. "[Locke's] a warrior," Walt says. "He can hunt, he can track, and he's the only one who brought knives. If it was me, I would listen to him." Hugo gives a look like, Oh, no he di'n't! But oh, yes, Hugo, he d'i'd. "Well, I don't want you to," Mercutio says as his score on the Good Dad Parenting Scale plummets. "I may not be a warrior, but I'm going south." He takes off. Apropos of nothing, Hugo muses, "Back home, I'm known as something of a warrior myself." Awesome.
Locke ties a scrap of red t-shirt to a tree, explaining that that's how they'll mark their progress as they search. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity asks if Locke doesn't think he'll be able to find his way back, and Locke points out he won't if he's dead. Jack and Kate show up, Jack annoyed that Locke seems to think they need a break. The point of this episode and all the flashbacks is to garner up more sympathy for Jack by showing the degree to which he's "driven," but the net effect on me is to make me think he's behaving like a big jerk again, just like in the pilot. Kate notices too, and calls Jack aside, asking him if it would kill him to give Locke a little space. "It might," Jack says. He's not even engaging in a real conversation here, just peevishly snapping at whatever she says. In debate club, they call that the Snapping Turtle defense. Jack and Kate play a little game called "Let's find the subtext!" with their three lines.
Kate: "Stop that!"
Subtext: "Stop being a dick."
Jack: "What?"
Subtext: "I love being a dick."
Kate: "That."
Subtext: "Dick."
Kate asks what's going on, and Jack explains that he didn't believe Claire's initial claims that she was being attacked -- the point being, of course, that now his guilt is driving him to find Claire. It's also all tied up with his guilt about the dead surgical patient, but don't worry if you don't quite get the connection; just bear in mind that Jack is frigging tortured, dude. Their convo is interrupted by a shout from the others; they've discovered that Charlie's left behind something to mark his trail: an elven brooch! Er, one of those dirty pieces of tape he wraps around his fingers!
Commercials. More scenes from this movie starring Dennis Quaid as Jack and Giovanni Ribisi as Locke, maybe, or -- God forbid -- Kate. Each scene makes me want to see the movie less than the last. Had they never advertised this film, they'd have had a better chance getting me through the door.
Back inna jungle, the trail has split. In one direction, Jack's found another elven brooch; in another, Locke has found footprints. Kate posits that Ethan might know they're after him and might be leaving a dummy trail. Oh, Kate, dear-heart: every trail you walk on is a dummy trail. Zing! "Now you're a tracker?" asks Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. "You're just full of surprises," says Locke. Jack wants to split up; Locke thinks it's better to stay together. Jack overrules Locke, of course, and Jack and Kate head one direction, Locke and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity the other.
The Rape Caves. Sawyer's getting news direct to his desktop from Walt. "Ethan took 'em, huh? And who the hell's Ethan?" he asks. Walt says Ethan wasn't on the manifest; Sawyer suggests that perhaps Ethan lied about his name. "It's stupid to lie about your name," says Walt. Wow, from the mouths of babes, huh? I can't remember the second half of that aphorism, but I bet it's ...comes subtext made text by lazy screenwriters. Sawyer summarizes, and passes critical judgment on, The Story So Far: "So a tribe of evil natives planted a ringer in the camp to kidnap a pregnant girl and a reject from VH1 Has-Beens. Fiendishly clever." Hey! Lay off! TWoP recappers commentate for VH1 Has-Beens! He also asks himself why he's getting "the evening news from a six-year-old." "I'm ten," Walt protests. "Then it must be true," snaps Sawyer. I like that he isn't particularly nice to the kid, but I sort of wish he'd take it farther and just rough Walt up for his lunch money. Walt lets slip to Sawyer that Sayid's back from his constitutional; Sawyer fails miserably at pretending to be totally uninterested.
Hot On the Trail. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity, tying a red t-shirt to a tree, comments on the Red Shirt trope. "They always got killed," he says, and Locke, who admits he hasn't watched much Star Trek, says Kirk "sounds like a piss-poor captain." Heh. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity asks Locke what he does "in the real world," guessing he's "either a taxidermist or a hit man." Locke laughs and reveals that Initech is actually a bit more Outtatech than we all thought: "I was a regional collections supervisor for a box company," he says. "A box company?" asks Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. "They made boxes," Locke adds, hilariously. As he walks away, Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity shakes his head and mutters, "Yeah, right."
Hot On the Other Trail. Jack's running down a hill, Kate on his heels asking him to slow down. "I think they went this way, but I'm not as good at this as Locke is." "Where'd you pick up the tracking skills?" Jack asks disingenuously. "Was that before or after you were on the run?" "I'm trying to help, Jack," an exasperated Kate replies. "You know what might help?" Jack says. " A little honesty." Actually, Jack, Kate's honesty has no bearing on whether you are able to find Claire and Charlie, so maybe this heart-to-heart should wait for later. Nevertheless, as they trudge through the jungle, Kate tells him that her dad was in the Army and would take her on tracking trips through the Washington state forest: "Being in the woods was like his religion." Jack's dad had a religion, too! Well, not a religion so much as an addiction. He was like a chocoholic, but for booze! Speaking of which…
FlashJack! Our Lady of Vodka and Tonic Hospital. Jack enters his father's office and his dad offers him a stiff...greeting. His dad places a form and pen in front of Jack and motions for him to sign, saying the form contains "the truth" -- the line he wants Jack to stick to, that he and Jack did nothing wrong during the botched surgery. Jack responds with the kind of snippy passive-aggressiveness one might expect out of a six-year-old. Sorry, a ten-year-old. Jack's dad tries a number of ways to get Jack to sign the form and help him slide by on the whole drunk-surgery dealy: veiled threats, appeals to logic, flattery, and playing the family card. "I know I have been hard on you, but that is how you make a soft metal into steel," he says. "That is why you are the most gifted young surgeon in this city." A city that, from the view out the window, looks to be Honolulu, by the way, but probably is supposed to be Chicago or something. All TV hospitals are in Chicago. He finally wins Jack over with some bald-faced flattery, combined with a promise not to spill his margarita in a patient ever again. Jack signs the form and looks none too pleased about it.
Commercials. I'm writing this recap on a Friday afternoon, and boy am I sleepy. (The fact that it's pitch black outside at 4:00 in the damn afternoon doesn't help.) In the middle of the last graph I kinda dozed off and woke up to find I'd typed "that he and aJAck id noting ewong f erwfwefn." That's how totally exciting this episode is!
The Rape Caves. Sawyer menacingly wakes Sayid up, and they dodge and parry for a while, using words they like was blunt instruments. Sawyer suggests he might beat Sayid up; Sayid tells him he left the camp out of shame for what he did. "Sorry, fresh out of sweet forgiveness," Sawyer says. This is one of the scenes where the writers' tendency to add flash and filigree to Sawyer's lines doesn't serve the actors very well. Sawyer asks why Sayid comes back, and Sayid responds with a mini-recap of "Solitary.". His recap's okay; it lacks drunken jokes, but on the other hand it's way shorter than nine pages. Sawyer asks what it was that Sayid heard in the jungle on his way back, and Sayid asks, "Are you going to continue asking me questions you know I don't have the answers to?" This line manages the tricky triple feat of being a) untrue -- how the hell does Sawyer "know" what Sayid does and doesn't know?; b) baloney portentous TV-speak; and c) boring. This whole scene is boring. Boring, boring, boring, boring. I just fell asleep again, dammit, while typing the word "boring" over and over. I think the writers wanted this to be the Lost equivalent of Pacino vs. De Niro in Heat, but the scene's so overwritten, the actors barely have any room to maneuver within their lines. Let's move on. Sawyer leaves.
Midsection Beach. Hugo and Walt are playing backgammon. Is this any way to utilize your most valuable leadership resource -- making him baby-sit the weird kid? Free Hurley! In college, my favorite pizza place, annoyed that customers filled their free water glasses with lemonade, posted a big sign on the soda dispenser that read, "Lemonade is NOT FREE!" We used to speculate about lemonade's tragic enslavement, and the perils faced by the heroic free-lemonade movement. Boy, that joke offered very little payoff. A wiser and soberererer man than I would delete it. Walt rolls a four and a three, apparently the exact right roll to totally kick Hugo's ass; Hugo complains that he can't believe he's losing to a kid, considering he once took seventeenth place in a backgammon tournament. Do such things exist? That seems like the kind of tournament you'd attend if you want Scrabble freaks to call you a nerd. Walt rolls double sixes, as per his own request. "No one's that lucky," Hugo says. "My dad says I'm the luckiest person he ever knew," says Walt. "Not [Mercutio]. Brian. My other dad," he adds portentously. Oh, just great. Now they're about to screw up the only characters with a semi-normal backstory. Walt wins, then offers Hugo another game, double or nothing. Hugo gets up and leaves, saying he has a meeting. "You owe me $20,000!" Walt protests, and Hugo says, "You'll get it." Heh.
By the way: We've gotten no Jin and Sun this episode, and in fact have barely seen them in the last couple of weeks, which is a shame because they're my favorite characters to recap. We had brunch this morning with our friend Denny, who speaks Korean, who asked me how the recaps are going. Well, actually, what he said was, "How's the misquoting me going?" I said it was all coming to end this week, sadly, and he completely failed to act disappointed in any way. I think he's just a little overwhelmed by the rigors of fame: tourists stopping him on the street to translate not just Korean but any foreign language; getting propositioned by complete strangers; daily death threats from the Korean Overseas Information Service. It can be tough to adapt to celebrity life for someone who previously was a mild-mannered friend of mine who just happens to speak Korean. Oh well, Denny: back into anonymity!
Hot On the Trail. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity reveals that in the real world, his mom is a wedding-planning mogul -- "the Martha Stewart of matrimony" -- and he runs one of her subsidiary companies. He also doesn't mention what Shannon does, but surely she's the company's VP of consumer relations. "It's gonna start raining in one minute," Locke says, and tells Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity he should head back. He refuses. "I admire your courage," Locke says. It starts pouring, and I counted: it's only been twenty sugar plum fairies since Locke said it would rain in a minute. "They teach you how to predict the weather at a box company?" yells Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Garters 'n' Corsets.
Hot On the Other Trail, Jack and Kate find another elven brooch. Then we hear Claire's echoing screams coming from nearby, and Jack takes off running through the rain, despite the fact that Kate seems not to have heard them. They try to pull themselves up a rise via slippery vine; that works as well as you might think, and Jack lands face-down in the mud by a big puddle. He looks up to see Ethan, who is literally angry with rage! "If you do not stop following me," Ethan says, "I will kill one of them." He kicks Jack, and says, "Do you understand?" Nope! I don't think he does, Ethan! He needs more kickin'! Luckily, Ethan is ready to oblige, as he opens up not just a can, but a Heineken keg-can of whoop-ass on Jack: two shots to the face, a dodge of Jack's wild swing, a whack in the stomach, and another punch to the head that sends Jack face-down into the big puddle. "No more warnings," he says, and knocks Jack out. Bad-ass!
Commercials. The President wants you to be careful frying your turkey.
FlashJack! Our Lady of Perpetual Lowered Inhibitions Hospital. Jack sees his father talking to an irate-looking gentleman; a discussion with a nurse reveals that it's the dead woman's husband, who's threatening to sue. Apparently Jack's dad talks him down, because when we see him last, he's crying and Jack's dad is rubbing his shoulder.
The puddle. A frantic Kate wakes Jack up, and he immediately disregards Ethan's seemingly genuine warnings and starts the chase again. "Not again!" he shouts.
FlashJack! Our Lady Looks Pretty Hot Through The Bottom Of This Highball Hospital. It's an administrative hearing of some kind; Jack's dad (whose name is "Christian") is spinning his web of lies for the review board, who seem to buy it just fine. They ask, however, if Jack's dad was aware the patient was pregnant. "Absolutely," he says, though Jack's expression suggests this is not the case. But, uh, who cares? I mean, why would he lie here? It is his fault if he's operating drunk, but it's not his fault if no one in the ER told him the woman was pregnant. As a precipitating event for Jack's sudden attack of conscience, this revelation lacks oomph. But of course, the dead woman's pregnancy dovetails with Claire's pregnancy, so for a writer desperate to make a fundamentally square character seem multifaceted and cool, that's enough to build a whole dramatic confrontation around. And so Jack suddenly about-faces and reveals to all and sundry that his dad is a drunken failure who never really loved him.
Back on the trail. Say what you want about Ethan -- he's evil, he's a kidnapper, et cetera -- but he's a man of his word. Because Jack and Kate won't stop following him, he has killed Charlie. Jack and Kate coming across Charlie's body, dangling from a noose, is a pretty freaky scene. Jack tries to support the body's weight; Kate climbs a nearby tree and frantically cuts Charlie down. I must admit, when I saw this, I had that weird, self-contradictory set of emotions one has while watching a really great TV moment. I mean, I like Charlie, and have no desire to see Dominic Monaghan forced back to his life as a gigolo, but all the same, I was impressed by the balls of the Lost people to kill Charlie off, and that made the show kind of thrilling. Jack takes off Charlie's blindfold, blows air into his mouth and pounds on his chest, once, twice, ten million times, but he's totally freaking dead. Kate's holding his hand, but he's 100% dead. Jack says "Come on, come on," but he's all the way dead. The music is sad and Hall & Oatesy again, but Charlie is dead as a dead fucking doornail. Kate finally stops Jack, who's basically landing all the punches on Charlie he couldn't land on Ethan, saying, he's gone, while Charlie lies behind them, dead as dirt. The music stops and we go to a nice sad long shot of the two of them and Charlie's totally dead corpse...but then, instead of going to a commercial, we see Jack fill with resolve and the music starts again, and uh-oh, they're about to screw this up. We get a couple of brutal shots of Jack punching Charlie some more while Kate cries, and then Charlie gasps for breath. Jack cradles him as Charlie wonders why his sternum feels so, uh, broken. The closed-captioning claims that Kate is both "sobbing" and "laughing," but I disagree. As the scene fades out, Charlie hums a snippet of the song Driveshaft recorded for a court-ordered television PSA after an unfortunate incident in a Bayswater hotel room: "There's Nothing Autoerotic About Autoerotic Asphyxiation."
Commercials. Look, you can make all the arguments you want about how Craphole Island itself saved Charlie or whatever, but the fact is, what could've been a totally shocking, awesome TV moment turned into a cop-out. Why does Charlie's near-death need to turn into a redeeming moment for Jack, who has behaved like a moron throughout this entire episode? I certainly don't want Charlie off the show -- especially because my attractive lawyer wife spent this whole scene saying "Not Merry! You can't kill Merry!" -- but dude, Lost people: how much more interesting would the scene have been if, instead of using it as a chance for Jack to feel good about himself, you simply had Jack and Kate give up and leave Charlie for dead, only to have him gasp and sit up on his own? Spooky! Awesome! Not so hero-worshipping! Barring that, just kill the bastard. Fucking eagles will fly down from the sky and rescue him anyways.
The Rape Caves. Mercutio returns, and Walt seems guilty about being such a little turd to him, because he gives him a hug. He tells Mercutio that Charlie hasn't spoken since he got back. Jack's trying to get Charlie to tell him what happened, but Charlie stares straight off into space and won't answer. Finally, Charlie says with a dead look in his eyes, "I didn't see anything. Hear anything. I don't remember anything." Then he adds, "All they wanted was Claire." First Liam, now Claire. Charlie's always so jealous when someone else gets all the attention!
Shannon approaches Kate and worries about her brother. "They probably made camp for the night," Kate says. "Don't worry. If there's anyone on the island your brother's safe with, it's [that weird geezer and his 400 knives]."
Hot On the Trail of Nothing. Locke and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity are hiking up a hill in the rain. Locke denies that they're lost; "Don't you feel it?" he asks. Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity finally says he's gonna head back to camp; Locke tosses him the flashlight, saying, "You need this more than I do." Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity catches like the kind of guy who runs a garters 'n' corsets business; the flashlight hits the ground with a loud metallic clank. They both look at each other, then crouch down to see what made that noise. Locke taps something with his knife and declares it steel; Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity wants to know if it could be part of the wreckage. They smear mud off the steel in an attempt to get a closer look. I squint at my shitty TV and vow to get a better TV. I see some strange symbols, but I can't tell what they are. I think they're just strange symbols of some kind.
And so the castaways learned how to function as a society, and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe.