Whatever the Case May Be

But other than that, wooooo-hoooo! Lost is back, and -- okay, I'd also trade Jack and Kate and Sawyer and everyone else for, like, one period between the Oilers and the Stars (which reminds me: a shout-out's due to WynterWolf, with an honourable mention to Mister Z).

But other than that long list of shows, and sporting-related events, and news, Lost is completely my favourite thing to watch. And it's been torture, waiting to find out what's up now that we know there are other people on the island, and Claire's yummy-future-mumminess has been kidnapped. And we open on a long, slow pan to Kate, high up in a tree. She's probably found where the other castaways are, and is scouting out their camp or someth-- no, she appears to be gathering berries. Okay, that's fine. She's probably gathering sustenance for the cast of regulars, who are down below, in preparation for their Mad Max-like assault on the enemy compound, and we'll see them just as soon as she climbs down, which she's doing now.

Huh. There's no one there. At least, we think there's no one else there, at least until we hear a twig snap, which is a bit of a relief, since if you hear a twig snap, that means it's not the silent terror of a ninja that is stalking you (or at least not only the silent terror of a ninja). Kate hears it, looks around, then keeps walking. And she hears another twig snap. And if you were wondering might be the dumbest thing a person could possibly do in this situation, it's entirely likely that the answer is "picking up a rock and throwing it in the general direction of the noise," which is what Kate does here.

Improbably, she hits the source of the noise, which is Sawyer. Unfortunately, she hits him not in the mouth, but in the knee, so he immediately starts beaking off about it. For a guy who stood up to an Iraqi army torturer, he doesn't take well to getting a rock to the leg. They playfully bicker a bit, with Kate asking if he's stalking her, and him replying that he's protecting her, and she says, "From what, Southern perverts?" Oh, har har, considering that there is a very long list of quite legitimate answers to that question, including, but not limited to, wild boars, polar bears, Lostzilla, getting bonked in the head by an unknown assailant, and crazy island kidnappers, so maybe the crash survivors want to consider implementing the buddy system.

Sawyer asks what she's doing all the way out there, and the writers want us to believe that the survivors have been eating so much that this is the only place that the trees haven't been picked clean, like maybe if they were a bunch of locusts or something I would believe this. So they walk, and joke, and Sawyer says she shouldn't have been out there alone, and she contends that she can take care of herself. I guess it's been so long since Lost has been on that even the characters have forgotten what's happened. I mean, Kate saw the pilot grabbed from the cockpit of the plane and chomped in half. Shouldn't she be sobbing uncontrollably in a fetal position on the beach all the rest of her days? When she says, "I can take care of myself," what exactly does she think she's going to do against Lostzilla? Blow on a rape whistle?

Anyway, she says, "Shhh." And Sawyer says, "What, you smell blood on the wind?" because yeah, when people say "shhh" it's usually because they're trying to SMELL something, Sawyer. And then they find this pool with this beautiful waterfall that Kate managed not to see or hear from high up in her tree. Never mind. Sawyer takes his shirt off, sending many viewers scrambling for the remote to hit the "record" button and touching off a way too lengthy debate about how silly it is that he didn't take his pants off as well. Kate takes her pants off (but not her shirt), and they dive in and dunk each other and generally behave like the Beverly Hillsters of on their Hawaiian vacation.

But it's like my dad always says: it's all fun and games until you discover a couple of underwater corpses while you're engaging in sexually charged horseplay. At the bottom of the pool, Kate and Sawyer stare at a couple of bodies, still strapped to their seats affixed to plane wreckage. Kate and Sawyer seem confused, like they've forgotten there was a plane crash or something. Commercials.

So Kate and Sawyer surface, check to make sure they're okay (did the corpses attack them or something?), and Sawyer says he's going back down to check them out. "Check them out for what?" asks Kate. Why, to see if they've got anything on them, he says. "Sawyer!" says Kate, like this is totally out of character for Sawyer. She follows him down, spots a silver case tucked under one of the seats, and stares at it while Sawyer pilfers a wallet from the man's jacket.

When they surface again, Kate manages to call Sawyer "disgusting" just before asking for his help getting the briefcase. He calls her on her hypocrisy, but she says it's actually her case. So down they go again (Kate futilely tugs at the case, and needs Sawyer to yank it out), all the better for more chest shots of Sawyer and leg shots of Kate.

They surface one more time, and Sawyer hands the case to Kate, jokingly asking if she happens to have her key on her. Then he watches as she examines the case closely. If she's checking the sides and bottom for any other reason than for Sawyer to deduce that case isn't actually hers, I haven't figured it out. She admits that it's not. "Well, you wouldn't mind if I just take it?" he says. "I don't care," says Kate as nonchalantly as she can, which isn't very. Sawyer asks if there's anything she wants to tell him about the case. "Take it," she tells him, and strolls away.

Now we're back on the beach, where the waves have apparently given some viewers shivers in light of the disaster in southeast Asia, like, yeah, giant tsunamis that swept away villages and killed 150,000 versus the tide coming in and getting people's stuff wet on a television show on ABC, I can UNDERSTAND THE CONFUSION HERE, and as everyone hustles to move stuff out of the water's path, Sayid explains for our benefit that it isn't normal how quickly the tide has shifted, and Jack points out that there's a lot that's normal around this place, the fuselage will be underwater in days if this keeps up, and he suggests that the rest of the survivors move inland, which Sayid says people are reluctant to do (other than Kate, I guess).

So then they start talking about Rousseau, and Jack wants Sayid to take him there, but Sayid doesn't think that's a good idea, for whatever reason. Jack says Rousseau said there were others on the island, but Sayid says that Rousseau's mind is gone, and anyway maybe the wind was playing tricks on his ears, and none of this sounds like a good enough reason not to go back to the person who may know something about the people who kidnapped Claire, but WHATEVER, JACK, and WHATEVER, SAYID, and Jack asks about the maps and documents and what-have-you that Sayid got from Rousseau. Sayid says he's skilled in mathematics and decryptions, but these equations are unlike anything he's ever seen. There are French notations, and if Sayid were able to translate he might be able to make sense of the equations. Hmmm, if only someone around here could translate French, hey, Sayid? Someone who has already once TRANSLATED ROUSSEAU'S WORDS FOR YOU, SAYID? But his problem seems to be that "some things are better left untranslated." Jack's all, "Try telling that to him," as he points at Charlie, who's sitting all by himself, staring dejectedly into space. The best reason to figure out this whole Rousseau thing is Charlie's friendship with Claire, apparently, and not Claire's (and her baby's) well-being, or possibly getting off the island.

Shannon's reading a magazine, and Boone, God Help Me If I Refer To Him As Anything Other Than Boone, God's Friggin' Gift To Humanity stops by to sarcastically tell her how nice it is that she's making such good use of her time. Shannon wonders what he and Locke are doing in the jungle all by themselves all the live-long day. "Is he your new boyfriend?" asks Shannon, and Boone's lack of outrage at the suggestion has touched off a repetitive and pointless debate on Boone's sexuality, so THANKS A LOT, LOST WRITERS, and he says he and Locke are looking for Claire. "I thought there was no trail," says Shannon half-heartedly, and Boone, God's Friggin' Gift To Humanity says that at least he's trying to do something, and ridiculously asks Shannon if he's noticed the way the others look at Shannon and him, and says the others don't take them seriously (exactly what kind of treatment he's expecting from them I have no idea -- an invitation to join the Craphole Island Chamber of Commerce?), and he calls Shannon useless, and the three questions I have here are 1) Why doesn't Shannon just kick him in the nuts already; 2) What the hell are you talking about, Boone; and 3) shut up, Boone.

Nightfall, and Kate sits forlornly by a fire. Sawyer strolls by (in slow motion, for some reason), and Kate stares at the briefcase before shifting into the Thousand-Yard Stare of Impending Flashbackto a bank in New Mexico, where the helpful bank manager in New Mexico is processing the "loan app" of Kate, or as she's known here, "Miss Ryan." We learn that Kate is -- or says she is, which is a little more accurate -- a photographer commissioned to do a coffee-table book on old movie theatres in small towns. And the bank manager suggests one in Ruidoso, and "Miss Ryan" charmingly promises him acknowledgement in the book if she uses it. And immediately after he tells her to call him by his first name, the bank is overrun by a pack of armed ne'er-do-wells, yelling at everyone and herding the non-robber customers all together onto the floor. And if we didn't already know Kate was involved somehow, the way she alternates between appearing terrified and surreptitiously looking around is a dead giveaway. So the head bank-robber grabs the bank manager and tells him to open the money cage before people start getting killed.

Back on Craphole Island, Kate (and let's just take a moment to notice that Survivor Kate looks none the worse for wear than Bank Customer Kate) sneaks over to Sawyer's little piece of fuselage. He's sleeping, with the briefcase clamped between his knees, naturally. She tries to take it, and he wakes up, and she winds up on top of him, and they wrestle, and she head-butts him, and she orders him to give it to her, and he says no, and she walks away, and yawn. Commercials.

So Shannon was so hurt by Boone's "useless" comment that she's decided to show him bysunbathing on the beach. I guess I can't say I'm really complainingas usual, I have no point. She decides it's time to turn over onto her stomach, and undo the straps on her bikini top, all the better to fluster Sayid with, as he strolls up and tells her that the sun might be a little more intense than she's used to, since they're so close to the equator. "I've got a pretty good base," she says. Sayid does not seem to disagree. And Charlie pops up to say, "'Base'? Why yes, I am in fact the bass player for Driveshaft, I'm flattered you recognized me." Anyway, the point of the visit is that Sayid wants Shannon's help translated Rousseau's notes. Shannon considers this, before asking if her brother put Sayid up to this. Sayid's all, whuh? "You're the only person on this island who speaks French," he says, when she protests. "I barely speak French," she says. "Please, Shannon. Can you at least try?" Shannon just looks at him.

Sawyer's busied himself trying to pick the locks on the briefcase with bobby pins, or something. Mercutio, dragging a sledge behind him with stuff from the beach, tells him he's wasting his time, because if Sawyer can pick the lock on a "Haliburton," Mercutio will take Sawyer on his back and fly them both to L.A. Sawyer suggests finding a runway, because there ain't no lock ever been made that he can't pick. Hurley strolls by, wondering what Sawyer's up to. "He's trying to pick the lock on a Haliburton," says Mercutio, which makes Hurley break up and yell, "Good luck!" and I'd just like to point out that this is the first time I've heard Haliburton outside the context of A) a famous Nova Scotian, after whom a lecture room at my university was named; or B) Dick Cheney, so it's quite annoying that seemingly everybody on this island is all down with briefcase brand names and security features. Mercutio tells Sawyer that the only way he's getting it open is with "impact velocity," but because the writers think viewers are morons, Sawyer asks what that is, and Mercutio says it's brute force, and to further condescend to us, he suggests Sawyer hit it with something heavy, like a rock. "Or the axe," he adds, quite specifically.

I guess Mercutio mentioned the axe specifically so we could cut to Boone, God's Friggin' Gift To Humanity trudging through the jungle with it (because otherwise we might not know that it's an axe), catching up to Locke, who's pleased to see Boone got it. "Isn't there an easier way to get there?" says Boone, and Locke says something about how the easiest way isn't always the best, like maybe Locke wants to get back in his wheelchair if he wants such a damn challenge all the time, and then he argues with Boone a little bit because Boone is a little hesitant over whether anybody saw him take the axe, until finally assuring Locke that no one did. "Good. Let's get to work," says Locke.

Back on the beach, Rose is dragging some stuff from the beach along the path of greatest meddling potential, which is right in front of Charlie. She says hello, and he doesn't even look up, and she's all, "Oh, that's right. You're not talking much these days. But it doesn't mean you get to be rude." That gets a response from him: "Excuse me?" She points out that everyone is helping move the camp up the beach, except for him. "Are you serious?" he says. "You think you're the only one on this island's got something to be sad about? Baby, I got sob stories for you, so why don't you grab the end of this thing and help me." He takes his sweet time before getting off his ass and helping. He's probably thinking the same thing I am: of everyone there, Rose is probably the last one who gets to give out lectures to people for sitting and staring at the sea. But anyway.

Okay, I'm still not sure why Mercutio brought up the axe if Sawyer was just going to be bashing the briefcase against rocks. I mean, was there supposed to be a scene where Sawyer went to look for the axe and the group finds out it's missing and gets upset about it? What was the point of that, if we're just going to cut to Sawyer dashing the briefcase against rocks in the jungle? He tries this for a while, before climbing a little cliff and throwing the briefcase onto the rocks from up high. And he mutters, "Impact velocity," and "physics, my ass," and "son of a--!" and "unbelievable!" so I'm guessing this was supposed to constitute the comic relief portion of this episode.

Dropping the briefcase from on high fails to crack it. Worse, from Sawyer's perspective as he watches from up above, is that Kate scampers out from the bushes, grabs the case (much to Sawyer's chagrin) and runs off with it. A merry chase ensues, and once again I am disappointed with the show not playing Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle." Would it kill them to play a little Creedence?

So despite Sawyer chasing Kate, he somehow emerges into a field at a different angle from her, enabling him to tackle her. And they wrestle some more, and boy, am I titillated! This time, he's on top. She tries to head-butt him, and he dodges it and tells her she needs a new move, at which point shehead-butts him, successfully this time. He gets off her, still holding the briefcase, and makes her a deal: he'll give her the case if she just tells him what's in it. "Are you serious?" she asks. He says he doesn't care about it anymore, since there's no way to get it open. "At this point all I care about is satisfying my own curiosity," he says. But she won't agree, and he admits that he only wants to know why she wants it so badly. "Last chance," he says, and she just glares at him. So he walks away, and Kate flashes back

to a dog day afternoon in Mexico, where the dumbest bank manager ever is refusing to hand over the key to the money cage, since the thieves are just going to kill him anyway. I mean, let's set aside the fact that all bank employees, along with every retail employee, and people everywhere, are taught that when someone points a gun at you and asks you for money, you give it to them. That would be true even if the bank manager were the only one there; his actions in this case are not just stupid but dangerous to everyone else in the bank.

Kate rushes up to tell Jack that "we have a problem." "We have a problem, or you have a problem?" he says, ably putting the Jack in "jackass." Although, to be fair, he's bang-on. Kate glances at Sun for a moment, then decides it's okay to speak in her presence, since she won't understand. So Kate explains that the marshal escorting her from Australia had a silver briefcase that the airline made him check (which means it was under a seat how? But anyway); it had some travelling money, some of his personal thingsand four nine-millimetres with a few boxes of ammo. "Guns," says Jack. YEAH, WE ALL KNOW WHAT "NINE-MILLIMETRES" AND "FEW BOXES OF AMMO" MEANS, THANKS SO MUCH. (Sun seems to take particular notice at the mention of guns, and scampers off.) Jack asks where the case is now. Kate says Sawyer has it, but hasn't been able to get it open. "Lucky for us," says Jack, because yeah, Sawyer's the problem, it's not like anyone else on the island has ever committed a violent crime, like, say, armed robbery or anything, and Kate says that sooner or later Sawyer will get the case open. Jack wants to know what she needs him for. "I know where the key is," she says. The marshal kept it in his wallet, in his back pocket. "I buried him, Kate," Jack reminds her. "I know," she says. "Where?" Speaking of "where," where is Jin? Shouldn't he be at least hanging around the periphery to give the stink-eye to anyone who glances at Sun?

Kate and Jack look at each other a moment. Jack finally says, "So what else is in the case?" And she does a really bad job of lying, saying that it's just the guns. "If you want my help, we're going to open the case together." And again, Kate does a really bad job of acting nonchalantly as she says, "Okay."

Back on the beach, Charlie is doing his best to wipe the smile off Rose's face by pointing out just how much there is not to smile about. And I found myself really annoyed by this scene until I realized that it was just a conversation about the major developments on the show thus far and was meant to bring new viewers up to speed, so you won't mind if I fast-forward a little bit, will you? Rose does tell Charlie that no one blames him for what happened to Claire, since he did everything he could, and blah blah blah, and almost died, and he says maybe he should have died, and Rose puts her hand on his shoulder and says he needs to ask for help. "Who's going to help me?" he says. I think we all know where this is going, although you'd think a devout Catholic like Charlie might not need to be guided so much. And I don't think we do either, but just in case we do

we cut right to a twig cross marking a mound of dirt -- the marshal's grave, Kate and Jack staring at it. Kate asks why Jack didn't put the marshal with the other bodies when they burned the fuselage. "I needed to bury him," says Jack. There are, apparently, two schools of thought as to what he means by this. One is that this was to make up for not being able to bury his father. The other one, which I think is more likely, since Jack doesn't elaborate any further -- Kate would know what he meant -- is because Jack was the one who killed him. Anyway, they get to work

as do bank robber Kate and her boyfriend in a flashback. In this case, "getting to work" means beating up Kate in order to convince the manager to open the money cage. "Don't hold back," she says. "He won't talk if the details are off." "You and your details, Maggie," says her Bank-Robbin' Boyfriend, and he hauls off and whacks her across the face.

And back out in the bank proper, the boyfriend, mask back on, drags Kate, bruised and bloodied, across the floor. "Okay, Mr. Manager," says one of the robbers. "You want to be a hard-ass? Protect a vault that doesn't even belong to you? Okay. There's gonna be consequences." And Kate's sitting there, shaking her head, telling the manager that they're going to kill her anyway, so he shouldn't do it. Bank-Robbin' Boyfriend grabs her, tells her to shut up, and points his gun at her, telling the manager he has until the count of three. And finally, Stupidest Bank Manager Ever finally agrees to open up the vault.

Okay, none of this makes any sense to me. Why does Kate have to play this part? Her sit-down with the manager was clearly her first visit to the bank, or at least the first time she met with the manager, if we're supposed to believe she flirted with him enough that he already has a thing for her and is only doing this to protect her (which she didn't). I mean, if the holdup crew thought they might run into the Stupidest Bank Manager Ever, wouldn't they prefer to beat up a real customer instead of a member of their own team? All this does is let the police know what one of the gang -- Kate -- looks like. Because when the so-called Miss Ryan disappears, they'll know she was in on it. And if the point was that Kate set this up to get at the safe deposit box, as we'll learn later, could she not have done that just as easily -- and, more important, even more anonymously -- as a masked member of the holdup crew? And shouldn't Kate's telling the bank manager not to give in, as she's posing as a bank customer who's just been beaten up, arouse suspicion in him? Jesus, if I ever get beat up by a thug in the course of the bank robbery, I will be doing everything in my power to convince the bank manager that now might be a good time to OPEN UP THE DAMN VAULT ALREADY.

I mean, I realize there's not a lot of point in poking plot holes through a show like this. It just bugs me when shows ask us to suspend our disbelief on big things when they can't get the little stuff right.

Back to Craphole Island. Jack and Kate are pretty much finished exhuming McCarthy, and pause to take a gagging break. Jack lifts up the practically-already-a-skeleton corpse enough so Kate can grab the wallet out of the back pocket, and they hop out of the grave for some more gagging. Kate opens the wallet to find -- a bunch of maggots? Must be those maggots that feast on leather and credit cards instead of flesh. So she flings the wallet away. Jack picks it up, opens it. The key's not there, and Kate looks suitably discouraged, only Jack ain't havin' it. He tells her it was really good sleight of hand, distracting him with the wallet. He grabs her wrist, and tells her to open her fist, and there lies the key. "Jack, I --" she says, and gives her a double dose of "don't" and walks away. Commercials.

Hey, speaking of the suspension of disbelief, here's Shannon speaking French again. Sayid gets increasingly agitated, because the translations don't have anything to do with latitude, or longitude, or anything that he might find useful, but is a bunch of gibberish along the lines of "the sea of silver sparkles" and "blue infinity." Good thing Sayid got Shannon to translate that last one, by the way, since in French that would be "infinit bleu." And she struggled with it, too. "There's something about this that sounds so familiar," she says, and Sayid snorts, since she's been translating nothing but nonsense. So she practically starts crying as she points out that A) she warned Sayid that her French sucked; and B) it isn't her nonsense, after all. She asks Sayid if it occurred to him that maybe Rousseau's mind ain't all there after 16 years on "Mystery Frickin' Island." (And no, I will not write that out each and every time.) I mean, she's not wrong, but she could maybe stand to grow up a little bit. Sayid says that this was a mistake, which probably couldn't have angered Shannon more if he'd just asked her if it was her special time of the month. "Yeah, haven't you heard? I'm completely useless!" she whines, and stomps off.

Now we have come to the requisite scene in which someone comes to Sawyer to ask for something (usually Jack), and they act all tough about it, and Sawyer acts like a dick about it, and then eventually hands over the item. Key variations here are that Sawyer says it figures that Kate got Jack to do her dirty work, and that Jack threatens to withhold the antibiotics he's giving Sawyer to fight off infection in his knife wound. Also, they get so close that they might as well kiss. Before handing over the briefcase, Sawyer says, "I know you think you're doing her a favor, but however she talked you into doing this? She lied, brother." You know, honesty isn't exactly a key characteristic of the majority of the crash survivors, so whenever one complains about another one lying, it's kind of like an indignant eliminated Survivor contestant whining about the backstabbing going on. Jack doesn't say anything as he walks off, but it's not like Jack doesn't know that Kate has, at best, a casual relationship with the truth.

Kate's sitting on the beach when Jack walks by with the briefcase. He says that they're going to open it together. "Why?" asks Kate, and Jack is all, 'cause I said so. Kate obediently gets up and follows him, and flashes back to the bank robbery.

The manager's opening up the money cage, and after he does so, says that now that he's done what they wanted, they should let the girl go. Which, for some reason, gets Bank-Robbin' Boyfriend all cheesed off. This, again, makes no sense, as the robbery does seem to be designed to take advantage of the bank manager's crush on Kate, after all. So Bank-Robbin' Boyfriend says that it's Kate who picked the bank, and the vault, and set up the bank manager and all that. Poor puppy bank manager looks all hurt; such is the power of the affection he developed for Kate in the all of thirty seconds he spent processing her loan application. And Bank-Robbin' Boyfriend takes off his mask. This concerns Kate, since that and BRB's Bond-villain-esque spilling-of-the-plan routine adds up to a severely truncated existence for the bank manager. "Just cleanin' up after myself, Maggie," says BRB, and cocks his gun. Kate grabs one of the other dude's guns and points it at BRB, threatening to shoot him if he shoots the bank manager, since she was promised no one would get hurt. BRB's certainly pissed, but he's not convinced she'll do it: "I know you're cold, baby, but you're not that cold." But before he can shoot the bank manager, Kate shoots BRB in the leg. He drops his gun. Kate scoops it up, and plugs the other two bank robbers with some nifty cross-armed shooting, which, to me, indicates that she ain't just some smooth criminal. And, in one of the funniest lines I've heard in a while, one of the other bank robbers, while lying bleeding from a gunshot wound on the floor, yells at BRB, "I told you not to trust her!"

And we get down to the real purpose of Kate's participation: forcing the bank manager to let her into safe deposit box 815. It's gotta be significant that the box number is the same as the doomed flight. The bank manager sputters that they need two keys: the bank's and the one that belongs to the bank owner -- which Kate produces. "If you had the customer key, why --" says the manager, but Kate interrupts him to tell him she's not on the signatory card. You'd have thought that might be obvious to the bank manager. Did he win this job in a contest or something?

Bank-Robbin' Boyfriend's on the ground saying that Maggie better kill him, if she set this all up just for a safe-deposit box. "My name's not Maggie," she curtly informs him. And after she pulls the box from its safe, she pauses for a moment before opening it up to finddocuments that indicate her father asked for permission to execute her mother? What the hell? Whoops, never mind. Actually, what's inside is an envelope.

But we flash back to the present, where Jack and Kate are safely alone together in the jungle, Jack just about to open the briefcase. He pauses. "Anything you want to tell me?" he says snottily. Well, "fuck off, you sanctimonious asshole" comes to mind, but Kate says nothing. She just watches as he goes through the contents; everything's there she said was there -- the guns, the ammo, the money -- and a large brown envelope marked "Personal Effects." Inside is what looks to be the same envelope as was in the safe deposit box. Jack hands it over to Kate, asking if that's what she was looking for.

She opens it, and inside is -- a toy plane? That's it? If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of thousands of annoyed viewers' heads exploding. But don't worry; I'm sure Kate will explain it to Jack right now.

"What's that?" he asks, and, clearly upset, she says it's nothing. She gets up to leave and he asks again. "You wouldn't understand," she says, and he blocks her exit. "I want the truth. Just this once. What is it?" he says, angrily. "It belonged to the man I loved," she says, and he yells again that he wants the truth, so she ratchets up the volume and yells again that it belonged to the man she loved (and can I just say, to those of you who deduce from this that it's her father, ewwwwwww), and Jack's all yelling at the top of his lungs by this point, "STOP LYING!" and she yells that it belonged to the man she killed. That, finally, shuts Jack up. Only the floodgates are opened up for Kate now, and she starts bawling, and sits down. Jack looks somewhat chastened, but he doesn't say anything. He just leaves, and we watch Kate crying for what feels like about five hours. You know, maybe the way-more-complicated-than-it-needed-to-be bank heist makes a little more sense, in light of Kate's actions this episode. Because how does this sound to everyone: "Hey, Jack, Sawyer's got a briefcase that belonged to the marshal, and it contains a bunch of stuff like guns and money, but there's also a trinket that's of great sentimental importance to me, and I'd really like your help getting it back"? Seems to me like that would have worked just fine.

Anybody else feel like they're just going to keep piling on the twists and turns and mysteries and puzzles and when everything is revealed, it ain't gonna be worth all this?

And now it is the end of the day, and the beach bums have escaped the supposedly crazy tides by movinga little farther down the beach. Problem solved, I guess. That night, by the bonfires, Charlie settles in by his new best friend, Rose (were there any roses in Lord of the Rings? Could this be a shout-out?). Charlie tells Rose that her husband was in the tail section of the plane. That sounds, to me, like information Rose already has, but thank you, Charlie. She says he'll be back. "You think he's still alive?" says Charlie, all incredulously, like maybe somebody could take Captain Bringdown out in the woods somewhere and brain him with a rock or something. "I know he is," she says. "It's a fine line between denial and faith," she continues, "and it's much better on my side."

And then Charlie loses his shit and starts crying. Man, Shannon, Kate, Charliethere's been an awful lot of that this episode, I have to say. I accept that when a plane crashes there are going to be tears shed, but I don't feel like watching Crybaby Island all the damn time. "Baby, I'm not the one who can help you," says Rose. Other than Batman, I'm not sure who she might be talking about. Good thing, then, that she starts praying out loud: "Heavenly Father, we thank you for bringing us together tonight" and the camera pans up and away from Rose. Man, Rose is a better person than I am, because if I were in her position, bringing them all together like that would be pretty friggin' far down the list of things I'd be thanking God for.

Two things I'd like to point out before I drop this annoying treacly subplot: A) Charlie's already been depicted as a much bigger Jesus freak than Rose (which, like I pointed out earlier, makes it odd that she needs to lead him to prayer, but whatever) so also giving the black woman a little faith hardly seems like proof the writers are getting all their characters from Stereotype Central; and B) one prayer does not a Jesus freak make. All right? People need to learn this, or the Republicans will win the election too.

Shannon strolls over to Sayid's fire, so they can throw some smouldering looks at each other, and she can let him know that she recognized what Rousseau's notes were. But she can't just tell him that they're French lyrics. She has to tell this long boring story about this son of the French guy she knew or whatever (look, I long since checked out of this episode, sue me) had a kid named Laurent (or, as Shannon's French has it, Loh-raw) or something who watched "the cartoon about the fish, you know, one of the computer ones" over and over again, "like 900 times." Hmmm. If he watched it that often, you'd think she might have noticed the title, Finding Nemo. Anyway, it was dubbed in French, and the lyrics to the song at the end are what Rousseau scribbled, over and over and over again (is that last bit supposed to be news to Sayid? I don't think he'd have to be a French speaker to notice that the notes were repeated over and over again). He asks her what the song is. And I think he's looking for a title, but then she starts SINGING. And if the cast is to be believed (because entertainers never lie, of course), that's actually her singing. If that's the case, thank god she sings French much better than she speaks it. While she sings, Boone, God's Friggin' Gift To Humanity, stares (menacingly? jealously?) from the trees at her, Jack strolls around and looks at Kate, and Kate turns the toy plane over and over in her fingers, staring at it.

Then Shannon dances a little hoedown for a few seconds, and stomps off.