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Great. Daniel goes on vacation, and I get stuck with Boone's funeral, a shooting, and a suicide. Boone? Still dead. Which wasn't really a certainty, was it? Jack, deprived of both sleep and blood, is still crazy with rage against Locke. But not as crazy as Shannon, who asks Sayid to take care of Locke. Sayid pesters Locke with questions and makes Locke show him the plane that fell on Boone. To earn Sayid's trust, Locke confesses to being the guy who knocked him out so many episodes ago. Sayid ends up believing that Boone's death was an accident, but he clearly doesn't believe everything Locke is telling him. Sayid's belief in Locke is not enough for Shannon, who steals one of the guns and goes hunting Locke. She gets him cornered, and is prepared to shoot him until Sayid arrives and tackles her. The gun goes off, grazing Locke's temple. She's hella pissed, and doesn't seem to want to have anything more to do with Sayid. We also get a little more backstory on Sayid, which basically involves him ratting on a friend for the CIA so that he can find out where Nadia is. The friend kills himself when he learns that Sayid's a rat, and the CIA ends up putting Sayid on Oceanic Flight 815. And in the C story, Charlie takes Claire's giant-headed baby for a while so she can get some sleep. The baby won't stop crying until it hears Sawyer's dulcet tones. At the end of the episode, Sayid confronts Locke and makes it clear that Locke is going to have to show him the hatch. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Open on the very pretty, though slightly shiny, face of Sayid. You would think that with all the cosmetics that were so obviously on the plane, there would have been some good facial cleanser, maybe a little astringent. Sayid is watching Shannon wipe the brow of Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses. Sayid walks over to Shannon, sits down, and asks, "Is there anything I can do for you?" She ignores him. He tells her that Boone refused to let Jack save him because he didn't want to use up all of their antibiotics. Which isn't what I recall, but…whatever. The point of Sayid's story is that Boone really was God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity. Shannon still doesn't say anything. Sayid somehow made a seamless transition from staring at Shannon to the Thousand-Yard Stare of Impending Flashback. I bet they taught him that trick in the Republican Guard.
We hear a British voice making a special security announcement, directed at the passengers in Heathrow airport. Sayid is glumly walking down an airport hallway. They totally fooled me here, by the way -- I was certain that Sayid had that despairing look on his face because he expected to be racially profiled. But as the camera moves out, we see that he's already been taken into custody by airport security.
In an interrogation room that was last used to perform a body cavity search on Patsy Stone, the security guards remove Sayid's shackles while Agent Tina Turner looks on. She thinks that eighteen hours in a holding cell should have had the effect of making Sayid willing to speak to them. I was about to ask if they really have holding cells at the airport, but then I recalled some of the immigration cases I've worked on and I remembered that of course they do. There's practically an entire prison at JFK. ["I thought JFK was the prison." -- Sars] Agent Turner introduces herself as being from Central Intelligence. The tall lemon-pussed man standing behind Sayid is Robbie Hewitt from "A.S.I.S." The "A" stands for Australian (as we learn when he opens his gob), which is all we really need to know. Agents Turner and Robbie tell Sayid that they want him to help them recover three hundred pounds of C4 explosive stolen by a terrorist cell in Australia. Sayid's not sure how he can help them, seeing as how he is not a terrorist. It turns out that one of the members of the cell is Sayid's old college roommate. Sayid isn't going to help them, until Agent Turner tells him that they know where Nadia is, and that they'll give Sayid the information in exchange for his cooperation.
Back on Craphole Island, Kate is walking through the jungle, when she looks down and finds…THE HATCH! Ha! Fooled you! She actually finds a piece of white cloth, which I think is supposed to be Jack's bandage. All of a sudden, Jack stumbles out of the brush, looking about as dead as Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses. We see the key to the case o' guns on a string around Jack's neck, by the way. Kate points out to Jack that he's walking in circles and should really get his ass back to the camp, but he won't go back without Locke. And why is Jack so angry at Locke? Because apparently, he thinks that if Locke had told him that Boone's leg was crushed in a fall in an airplane rather than broken in a fall from a cliff, he would have been able to save Boone's life. Kate appeals to Jack's sense of himself as an indispensable hero by lying to him and telling him that everyone else needs him to return to camp.
Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses, has been wrapped in a blue tarp and is being carried on a stretcher to a freshly dug grave near the beach. A bunch of lostaways gather around, although I must point out that there are no more than twenty-five people there, thirty tops. Did Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses really alienate that many people while he was alive? And where's Rose? String music, all very sad, weep weep weep. Jack, barely able to speak because he's breathing so hard, asks Shannon if she wants to say anything. She doesn't. And then I jump out of my skin as we hear Sayid loudly screaming out a eulogy for Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses. Blah blah, he was a great guy who was the first to try to save a drowning woman. (And enough with the callbacks to earlier episodes. All this linking is a pain in the ass.) And then we hear Locke, calling out, "It was my fault." He's standing by a tree, covered with much more of Boone's blood than when we last saw him. He tells them the story of finding the plane, leaving out all the stuff about how they searched for it as a result of his dream and how he was losing the use of his legs. Every sentence he starts just kind of fades to nothingness about halfway through. Of course, if I had a crowd of people looking at me the way the lostaways are looking at him, I'm not sure I could finish many sentences either. But it turns out that the point of Locke's story is that Boone died trying to help everyone by using the radio on the plane to call for help. And then Jack starts shouting at Locke, "Where were you? Where were you? Where the hell were you, you son of a bitch!" He's walking straight at Locke, and he tackles him, yelling out, "What did you do to him?" Woo hoo! It's not a funeral until there's a fistfight. Or maybe that's just my family. Some of the other lostaways pull Jack off Locke while he keeps screaming. Credits.
Right back where we left off. Jack is screaming at Locke while Sawyer and Charlie hold him back. And then Jack collapses. I think he vomits right onto the sand. Which will surely make things easier for the janitor when it's time to clean up the mess. Locke looks at Jack, and then notices Sayid staring at him.
Moments later, Jack, Sayid, Kate, and Sun are walking down the beach. Jack is fixated on the idea that Locke is lying, telling the rest of them that Boone said something about a hatch before he died, and that Locke had told him not to tell. Everyone else insists that Jack has to get some rest, and Sun leads him…away. I don't know where.
Flashback! A group of Muslim men pray. As they all bend their heads to the ground, the head closest to the camera belongs to Sayid. As they sit back up (I mean, they're all kneeling, but they are no longer touching their heads to the ground), Sayid looks over at another man in his row. Cruising guys during prayers -- that can't be good. There's a point at which everyone turns their heads first in one direction and then in another. The other man sees Sayid. The prayers end, and the other man is looking a bit disturbed.
Sayid walks across the central courtyard of the mosque (at least, that's what I assume it is). The other man runs up behind him, calling his name. Sayid acts all surprised to see his friend, whom he calls "Assam." (My apologies if I've butchered the spelling.) Everybody on the forums seemed to think Assam was a major hottie, but I was creeped out by his insane eyes. Chitchat, smalltalk, and catching up ensue. Sayid asks after the welfare of Assam's wife -- it turns out she was killed by a stray bomb. Assam pulls himself together and invites Sayid to come to his place so they can catch up.
On a rather large TV, some guy plays a videogame that involves lots of shooting other people. We're at Assam's place, which he shares with a couple of other guys. The guy playing the videogame complains that he's run out of ammo -- his friend suggests that he use the crowbar, but the game player points out, "That only works on the zombies." I hope that Sayid has filed that information away for the inevitable moment when Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses becomes Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Zombies. One of Assam's pals suspiciously asks what Sayid does, and he explains that he is at liberty for the moment. Assam starts talking about the hot Australian chicks to be seen at the beach, while Sayid notices the smoke detector on the wall. Despite the fact that Assam's two buddies are smoking up a storm, not a sound is coming from the detector. Sayid keeps talking about beaches, but he walks towards the detector, grabs the cigarette out of the mouth of one of Assam's roomies, waves the cigarette around under the detector, opens the detector, and removes the bug that is contained therein. Once he's dropped the bug into a glass of tea, he asks them to tell him what they are really doing in Sydney. Assam's pal asks Sayid who he is, and he and Assam explain that Sayid was a communications officer in the Republican Guard. Assam's pal says, "Perhaps it's not happenstance that you and Assam met at the mosque. [Tense pause.] Perhaps it is fate."
Back on Craphole island, Claire tells a worried Charlie and Sun that she's fine, despite the fact that she hasn't slept once since giving birth a few hours ago. She doesn't seem to want to let the baby go. Um, is she planning on staying awake until he's eighteen? Charlie offers to "take care of Turniphead for a while." Claire is not amused, but Charlie explains that he's just calling the baby that because his enormous six-month-old head looks like a turnip. Claire's scared that someone will take the baby away, and Charlie reassures her that he would never let that happen. Again. Claire eventually relents and gives the baby to Charlie.
Shannon is sitting on the beach when Locke (still wearing the shirt that is soaked in Boone's blood) walks up with a small bag in his hand. He gives her the bag, explaining that it belonged to Boone. He sits down to make small talk with her about the weather. Dude, you're covered in her brother's (and/or lover's) blood -- go take a bath and change your clothes. Locke thinks that he should never have let Boone hunt with him in the first place, but Shannon doesn't think that would have made a difference. Locke tries to act all sympathetic, but Shannon doesn't seem to be buying it. Not to harp on a point, but perhaps the presence of her brother's blood is interfering with Locke's attempts at empathy. He tells her that he hopes she can forgive him. And then he leaves.
Sayid is doing something to some electrical part. Shannon walks up to him and tells him that she thought of what he can for her: "John Locke killed my brother. Will you do something about that?" Commercials.
Kate and Jack are sitting in a shelter. He's drinking some juice, and she wants him to drink the entire cup: "You need to get your blood sugar level up." So she's a doctor, as well as being a bank robber and expert tracker? He insists that he's fine, and that he needs to go find Locke. But as he tries to stand up, he staggers. She gets him to lie down, and then tells him that she crushed up some sleeping pills and put them in his drink. And then he passes out. The key is still around his neck at this point.
Shirtless Locke is washing the blood from his shirt. At last. He notices Walt staring at him and gives him a small wave, but Walt just walks away. Sayid walks up behind him and notices the scar from Locke's surgery, and asks him how he got it. Locke calls it a war wound. Sayid asks Locke about the radio in the plane that killed Boone. I mean, the plane killed Boone, not the radio. Sayid thinks that even if the radio was damaged in the fall, he can still use the parts in the transmitter he's building for the raft.
Sayid and Locke walk through the jungle, Sayid peppering Locke with questions about how he found the plane. Locke continues to lie, insisting that he found the plane accidentally. He does at least admit that they were not hunting, claiming that since the boar all disappeared, they were out exploring. You know, I can't tell if Locke is wearing a new shirt that happens to be light brown, or if that's the color his formerly white shirt turned when he tried to wash the blood out of it. Sayid interrogates Locke, trying to catch him in a lie, and Locke is aware that Sayid is interrogating him. And then they find the plane.
Flashback! Sayid and Assam play soccer in a park. Sayid tries to get information from Assam about what target they are planning to attack, but Assam knows nothing. Nothing! All he does know is that there is going to be a bombing, and he will be playing the role of suicide bomber. He seems upset, but wants to play more soccer. Sayid isn't down with that -- he grabs Assam and asks him what's wrong. It turns out that Assam isn't sure he wants to blow himself up along with a lot of innocent people.
Sayid meets with Agent Tina Turner and Agent Robbie on a jetty somewhere. I wonder if being back in Australia makes Agent Turner feel nostalgic for the Thunderdome? Sayid thinks that he can get Assam to turn himself in, but if he doesn't know where the C4 is, Agent Turner is not interested. She tells Sayid that he has to get Assam to go through with the bombing, at least until the point where they know where the explosives are. Sayid really doesn't want to, but Agent Turner tells him that if he quits now, Nadia will be arrested as an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo. Damn, Agent Tina Turner is a real hard-ass. I'm really surprised that she ever took any shit from Ike.
Back on Craphole Island, Charlie walks down the beach, carrying Turniphead. Vegetable Baby won't stop crying. Charlie tries reciting "Itsy-Bitsy Spider," but says that the rain "drowned" the spider out. Hurley comes along at that moment and corrects him, telling him that the word is "washed." Charlie is frustrated that Turniphead won't stop crying. Hurley wonders if he's hungry, but Claire nursed him a lot before taking her nap. They sniff his diaper to see if he needs changing, but he does not. And then Hurley says that "it's time to break out the big guns." Fortunately, he is referring neither to his arms nor to his breasts. Instead, he starts singing "I Feel Good" at Turniphead. It does no good.
Back at the plane, Sayid confirms that the Virgin Mary statuettes on the plane were full of heroin. He asks Locke, again, about where the plane was and how it fell and why Locke didn't climb up in it. He asks Locke why he lied to Jack when he said that Boone fell off a cliff, and Locke can only say, "I made a mistake." Sayid enters the wreckage of the plane to try to salvage any parts from the radio. He notes that there's a storm coming, and he'd like to get back to camp before it hits. While Sayid is crawling around in the plane, Locke asks him why he doesn't trust him. Sayid crawls out and points out that Locke has been carrying a gun he didn't mention to anybody. Locke tells Sayid that he found the gun on the body that he and Boone found, along with some Nigerian currency. He pulls the gun out of his pocket and hands it to Sayid. Locke asks if Sayid trusts him now that he's handed over the gun, but Sayid does not, because Locke only gave him the gun after Sayid confronted him about it. So Locke tells him, "Okay, I'll tell you something you don't know." And of the many, many things that Locke knows that Sayid does not know, he actually chooses to tell him something the audience doesn't know either. Namely, that he was the one who knocked Sayid out back when he was trying to track down the source of the French woman's transmission. Commercials.
Sayid grabs Locke by the throat with one hand and jams the gun into his neck with the other. Locke tells him that he what he did because he thought it would be foolish to go to the source of a transmission that talked about how something had killed everyone on the island. For some reason, Sayid accepts this bullshit logic. At least, he lets go of Locke's throat, although he does keep pointing the gun at Locke. He asks why Locke didn't tell him this earlier, and Locke points out that he feared that Sayid would go apeshit. He thinks people are too focused on getting off the island, going on to say, "It's like what's happening now with the raft." Sayid asks if Locke burned the raft, and Locke pretty convincingly denies having any involvement in that. And then Sayid asks Locke what the hatch is. Locke plays dumb, and eventually suggests that Boone must have been referring to the hatches on the plane in which he fell to his doom.
Assam and Sayid are walking down a street in Sydney. Assam is unsure whether he can be a suicide bomber, and Sayid talks him into it. At one point, Sayid tells Assam that "innocent lives will be lost, in service of a greater good." I'm just going to have to pretend that all of them are speaking in Arabic, because they're speaking loudly enough that every passerby can hear what they're saying. Sayid convinces Assam that if he loved his dead wife, he will go kill some other people. He does this in part by talking about how much pain he is in because of the woman he lost. He does not mention that the woman he lost is not actually dead. And then Assam asks Sayid if he'll join him in the suicide bombing. Sayid tells him that he will. It's TWoP's first ever Homoerotic Suicide Bombing -- or HoSuBo, if you will.
Back on Craphole Island, Shannon is going through Boone's bag. She finds a picture of the two of them in his wallet. Sayid walks up to her and asks her to take a walk with him. As they walk along, he tells her that Locke showed him the plane and that he believes that Boone's death was an accident. She wants to know why Locke lied about Boone falling off a cliff, and Sayid is not sure. Shannon is pissed that Sayid didn't whack Locke for her.
On the beach, Mercutio, Walt, and Jin work on the raft. Well, Walt's not really working -- instead, he's asking all sorts of questions that reveal his fear that the raft is a death trap. And I don't mean to be gross, but did they eat his dog? 'Cause we haven't seen him in quite a while. Charlie and a still-crying Turniphead arrive, and Charlie asks Michael for advice on quieting the baby. Michael's only advice is to walk with him. Charlie also tries to ask Jin if he knows where Sun is, because he needs her help with the baby. Charlie is the only person on the island stupid enough to continue to try to have complex conversations with Jin. What a moron. Sawyer arrives, actually doing some work to help construct the raft (by gathering materials, it seems), and tells Charlie to shut the baby up. As soon as Sawyer speaks, the baby becomes silent. And as soon as he stops speaking, the baby starts crying again. Even Charlie isn't so stupid that he doesn't make the connection pretty damn fast, and he ends up following along behind Sawyer, trying to get him to keep speaking.
Close-up of a sleeping Jack. Man, they really have been finding a lot of food on the island, haven't they? Dude is getting kind of fat. He wakes up to find Kate sitting to him. He does not, as I would, jump at the sight of her hovering over him. He is also way too alert for someone who was drained of blood and then fed sleeping pills. She offers him some soup, but he passes. He touches his neck and starts freaking out when he realizes the key is gone.
Charlie and Kate walk down the beach. She thinks the key might have fallen off in the fight with Locke, but he's sure it didn't. As are we. They run into Sayid, who asks them what's going on. Jack tells him that Locke took the key. Sayid runs after them to tell them that he's pretty sure Locke did not take the key.
Either Shannon is standing under the waterfall, or it's started raining. She opens the gun case and takes out one of the guns. Commercials.
Sayid is walking down a street in Sydney when a white van squeals to a stop. One of Assam's friends is driving, and he tells Sayid to hop in. Assam is already in the back of the van, and the friend tells the two of them that it's time. For some sweet Middle-Eastern man loving? Oh, no, time for a suicide bombing.
The van pulls into a warehouse, in which is parked a delivery truck. The cell leader opens the back of the delivery truck, which is full of small boxes of explosives. He hands Sayid and Assam jackets to make them look like deliverymen, and then hands a gun to Assam in case they run into any problems. He leaves, and Sayid and Assam get into the truck. Assam prays for a second and then starts the truck. Sayid tells him to stop, and then confesses to working with the CIA. He tells Assam that he will give him a chance to flee before he calls in Agent Tina Turner and the Ikettes. Unsurprisingly enough, Assam is upset to learn of Sayid's treachery. He asks about the woman Sayid allegedly lost, and Sayid admits that "lost" is a relative term. When he hears that Sayid helped the CIA in order to get info on Nadia's location, Assam asks him, "You used me to find a woman?" Pause. Pause. Pause. Action! Assam pulls the gun and shoves it against Sayid's neck. Assam shares in some detail all the ways that he feels betrayed by Sayid, while Sayid begs him not to pull the trigger. Pause. Pause. Pause. Action! Assam tells Sayid, "I hope she makes you whole again." And then he puts the gun under his own chin and pulls the trigger.
Running through the jungle (in the non-musical sense). Sayid is trying to catch up with Shannon and/or Locke. Kate and Jack are not far behind, but Jack collapses to the ground and Kate comes back for him (despite the fact that he "heroically" tells her to go on without him). And then Sayid runs into a clearing in which Shannon is pointing a gun at Locke. Shannon says that she's convinced that Locke killed Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Corpses. Sayid asks her to listen to him, and then tells her that she's not thinking rationally. To paraphrase Veronica Mars, it makes sense to insult the woman holding the gun…how? Sayid tells Shannon that she's never fired a gun before. She points down and to the side of Locke and fires. Heh. Well, if she never fired a gun before, she has now. And that is a remarkable pistol, without the slightest hint of recoil. More talk from Sayid, none of which Shannon is buying. Kate and Jack arrive. Shannon asks Locke what he did to Boone. He tells her that it was an accident, and when Jack says Shannon's name, she points out that Jack said that Locke was a liar. To which I say, a) Jack says lots of things, many of which are not true, and b) being a liar is not necessarily the same as being a killer. Pause. Pause. Pause. Action! Sayid tackles Shannon just as the gun goes off, and Locke falls straight backwards. Neither Jack nor Kate moves at all, other than to look in Locke's general direction. After a few seconds, Locke starts to move. I'm not quite sure why Kate, at least, did not rush to his aid -- it was not at all clear whether he had been shot at this point. Sayid has gotten the gun away from Shannon, and he apologizes to her -- she tells him to just get away from her, and leaves. Locke finally sits up. He's bleeding from the side of his head, where the bullet grazed him. Jack is just staring at Locke with utter hatred, but he doesn't try to fight him again. Strings. Strings. Strings. Commercials.
Charlie is holding Turniphead while Sawyer reads aloud from an automotive magazine. Claire walks up to them, but when she tries to speak, Charlie shushes her and invites her to sit down. Every time Sawyer tries to stop, Charlie looks at him and tells him to keep going. I'm not certain exactly what threat Charlie used to get Sawyer to do this, but I'm also not sure I care enough to be sad that I missed the conversation.
Nighttime. Shannon sits by the fire on the beach. Sayid watches her from a distance. Kate kneels down in front of Sayid and tells him that Shannon just needs time. What a busybody. Sayid thinks that time will not cause Shannon to forgive him, and he thinks that he made a mistake. Kate tells him, "You couldn't let her kill Locke. You had no choice." Sayid thinks you always have a choice.
Warehouse of suicidal non-bombers. The police and ambulance have arrived, and someone is taking Assam's body away. Agent Tina Turner tells Sayid that Nadia lives in Irvine, California. She hands him a ticket for an Oceanic flight scheduled to depart that day, along with some walking around money. Sayid asks what will happen to Assam's body. Agent Robbie tells him that once the police are done with it, it will be released. Seeing as how there is nobody to claim the body, it will be cremated. Sayid points out that Muslim tradition requires burial, and offers to claim the body. Agent Robbie points out that Sayid has to be on a plane in two hours, and Sayid asks them to change his reservation by a day so that he can stick around to claim the body and make arrangements, and Agent Turner signals to Agent Robbie that he should do that. Sayid walks away.
Sayid walks up to a different campfire, to which Locke is sitting. Sayid asks him how his head is, and Locke says that it will heal. And then he thanks Sayid for saving his life, despite the fact that it meant losing a fine piece of tail like Shannon. Sayid tells Locke, "I did it because I sensed you might be our best hope for surviving here." And then Sayid tells Locke that it's time to take him to the hatch. Locke again tries to act ignorant, but Sayid just looks at him and says, "John. No more lies." End credits.
week: Hatchalicious!