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We start off with what looks like a flashback, only in "guess the character" style we don't see the face of the guy getting up, having breakfast, listening to music, doing sit-ups, and you're thinking, "Is that Jack? The hair's wrong. Who is that?" -- and then his apartment/house/condo whatever is rocked by an explosion, and Dude goes to his Firepower Closet and locks and loads. And if you haven't figured it out by now, maybe by making the connection to the explosion from the "previously on" scenes of the gang blowing open the hatch, this guy is down there in the hole. Best basement apartment I've ever seen.
Locke and Jack argue about going down the hole. Locke wants to, being a man of faith. Jack doesn't, being a man of chickenshitness. Since Jack hoped the hatch would be a haven for the Lostaways (remember, the Others are supposedly coming), he tells them that there's no way they can all get down there. Locke pretends to agree, and then says "screw this" and says he's tired of waiting and he's going down the hole. Except what happens is that Kate goes to help, and she goes down first, being smaller and therefore more appropriate to be the canary in the coal mine. And Locke almost drops her, even though she weighs about sixty pounds. And then she gets hauled in, and when Jack shows up later, Locke's gone too.
The flashback is all about Dr. Jack, who borrowed the Ross Geller flashback wig for the scenes in which he meets his future wife, the car accident victim. Dr. Flashback Jack has the bedside manner of a salted slug, making a likely paralyzed-for-life Sarah feel even worse about her situation. Jack's daddy upbraids him for it, and Jack responds by promising Sarah that he'll fix her spine during the operation, even though he doesn't think he can.
Bear with me, we're almost there. Jack takes his frustration out by maniacally running up and down stadium steps, and twists his ankle, so a helpful fellow stadium runner gives him a bunch of clichés, but it's delivered in Desmond's Irish accent so they come across as wise. And guess what? Jack IS able to fix Sarah. Physically, anyway. Presumably he soon begins work on crippling her emotionally.
Back in the present, Jack heads down the hatch-hole, finding a complex of pipes and buckets and artistic murals and the kind of computers Richard Pryor used in Superman III. And he finds Locke, only Locke's got the business end of a gun pointed at his own head. Holding that gun is -- again, you've figured this out, since the show took great pains to introduce us to him a moment ago -- Desmond. Dun dun dun!
Oh, and nothing about the guys on the raft. Shannon did see -- or did she? -- Walt in the jungle, looking all scared and wet, but she hasn't eaten or slept in days, and this show always fucks with us in terms of what people see in the jungle anyway. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Since so many people were unimpressed with the lack of revelation on last season's finale, I've come up with a plan. We'll do this Sopranos-style: the episodes that are starting now aren't actually a whole new season. They're bonus episodes of Season 1.Just like the first season, this one opens with an extreme close-up of someone's eye. Brown, and slightly bloodshot. Then a shot of a cursor on a green computer screen, reminiscent of the '80s. The cursor comes after a prompt that resembles an angry emoticon: >:, and the computer's beeping. The Eyeball Kid hops out of the top bed of what appears to be a bunk bed, and the light coming in the room looks like morning light. He hops down to the floor and slides in his chair Alex P. Keaton-style over to the computer, clickety-clacks on the keys, and presses a well-used EXECUTE button. The beeping stops.
We've yet to get a look at this guy's face. It's always obscured, or shot from above or from the back, in the usual television "guess the character" style. Simply from his being a man, I've eliminated Shannon, Kate, Sun, Claire, and Rousseau from the list of possibilities. While that sort of deductive reasoning may impress you, please keep in mind that I am a professional television-watching guy.
The Eyeball Kid wanders over to a bookshelf in his space-age bachelor pad and thumbs through some records (actual vinyl) to the lava lamp. He chooses a record, and the California sunshine voice of Mama Cass starts singing "Make Your Own Kind of Music" while the Eyeball Kid grabs dishes from the table and rinses them out in the sink and goes about his day. I'm visiting my parents for a few days, and trying to work on the recap here in Calgary, and Mom made me play the scene over again because she wanted to sing along (and when the song stopped because of the upcoming explosion, Mom says, "What the hell?" so if my mom starts posting in the Bitterness thread, you'll know why. Sample complaint: "And also, WTF is with Daniel not calling me often enough?").
Anyway, Eyeball Kid gets on the exercise bike (an older one, with an analog odometer), does some pull-ups and sit-ups. So, um, no judgment here, but I've just eliminated Hurley from the list of possible characters. At this point, I was thinking it was Jack, assuming the first person to get what appeared to be a flashback (as the show started, thinking of the cliffhangers we'd been left with, I yelled, "They're starting with a flashback? Assholes!") would be the show's, for lack of a better word, hero. But the hair's wrong. And as he showers, we see the shoulders aren't slopey enough to be Sawyer's.
Laundry is done, and protein powder is thrown into a blender with some cherries and peaches. And, like most people do in the morning, he grabs a vial of some golden liquid, pops it into an injection gun, and shoots it into his bicep. If this guy weren't so tall, I'd be shifting my money to Charlie.
Suddenly, a distant explosion reverberates through the place (and here's where I got it), sending the phonograph's needle skittering across the record, sounding like every crap radio ad ever. Eyeball Kid, startled, puts the injection gun away, puts on some clothes and boots, and opens a combination lock on a cupboard full of killing-people guns and loads up a rifle or two. He turns some knobs on a hi-fi-looking thing and races to some bazooka-looking apparatus hanging on the ceiling that he unhooks and points down the hallway, putting his eye to one end. He flicks switches. We see camera lenses whirr and tilt, and we cut back and forth, seeing that the lenses and mirrors are leading through a maze of corridors of pipes and cement, leading to a mirror propped up at the bottom of a dingy pit. Reflected in that mirror tilted upward is a light, and we slowly zoom in to the mirror, then draw upwards, ten, twenty, fifty feet or more, where we turn around and see Jack and Locke, holding a torch, staring in bafflement down into the blackness of the blow-open hatch. Well-played, Lost. Well-played.
Back at the hatch, Hurley is quietly losing his shit. He's repeating those annoying numbers over and over again -- 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 -- and then adding little gloomy predictions between each of them. "Four, eight, we're doomed, fifteen, doomed, dead," that sort of thing. How nice to have his sunshiny self around. Kate asks if he's okay, but I think she was only doing that to shut him up. Hurley says he's fine but he just has to pee. What's he waiting for? There's a whole jungle there. And he keeps repeating his numerical mantra, but it's not going to replace "Two, four, six eight, who do we appreciate?" in cheerleading routines any time soon.
So Kate crouches down with Locke and Jack, who are still peering down the hatch-hole. "What is it?" she asks. "Doesn't matter what it is," says Jack, who's being a bit of a hatch-hole himself. Getting to his feet, he gripes that they blew the door off so they could get everyone inside, but that's not going to work, as they'll never get everyone down there in time (remember, the Others are coming). Locke seems to have taken no heed of this exchange, and grabs a nearby rock and drops it down the hole. The resulting splash (but one that sounds shallow, as if in a puddle) happens quickly, so he and Kate estimate the depth is forty feet, fifty tops. Locke excitedly says that they could use wire pulled from the plane's fuselage to rig up a harness. (Michelle Rodriguez's name appears on the screen in the credits, but she does not appear tonight. Was this supposed to be a two-hour premiere?) Jack interrupts to tell MacGyver here that they're leaving now, earning a vote of approval from Hurley. Locke protests that everybody went through a lot to get here not to find out what's inside, in what could be a nod to fans annoyed by the ending of last season. "The ladder's broken," says Jack, who says everyone's waiting back at the camp to be told what to do. God complex. He asks if Locke's planning to lower forty people down one by one, but before Locke can even say, "Well, I guess," Jack just snaps that they should forget about harnesses. Kate interrupts with a "Jack?" and he snaps out a "what?" at her, but she doesn't add anything. Locke suggests everyone just calm down, and by "everyone" he clearly means "Jack," but Jack's on a roll, telling Locke that if he wants to go exploring in the morning, he's welcome to do so, "but tonight, we're done." He says he's going to retrieve the dynamite they didn't use and they're going to head back to the caves. "So how about you pack it up, John?" finishes Jack in a flourish of finger-pointing self-righteousness. Locke just stares at him in disbelief for a moment. Kate and Hurley await Locke's response, which I'm hoping is of the "you're not the boss of me" variety, but Locke finally just says, "Sure, of course," although it looks like he doesn't think so and is only agreeing because now's not the time to nail his 95 theses to the middle of Jack's sanctimonious forehead. Jack looks sort of pleased, sort of relieved that Locke agreed, and turns away. "Why don't you want to go down there, Jack?" asks Locke. Jack turns back around and glares at him.
We flashjack to a hospital emergency room, with a "female, late twenties, no ID" being wheeled in on a stretcher. She's bringing a huge jagged piece of metal with her, but since that metal is embedded in her stomach, she might not have had much choice. She "coded" twice on the way over, apparently. "Where's the other one?" asks one of the admitting doctors, and is told by a paramedic that they're coming right behind, and that the fire department had to "use the jaws." I guess growing up watching medical dramas means a certain expectation that viewers know the lingo. I don't watch ER or House or anything, and even I got it.
Another doctor comes in and asks what we got, and he sees the metal and wants to know what it is. "Piece of the steering column," says an arriving Dr. Jack Sheppard, who is wearing what appears to be a muskrat on his head. It is fortunately quickly covered up by his little doctor's cap. He asks someone if his daddy has been paged, and is told he has been. "Her tire blew, car jumped the divider," says the paramedic, "went head-on with an SUV." She was driving, had no ID? I sincerely hope she gets ticketed. Unless of course the lack of ID is just because we're not supposed to have already figured out that this woman is going to turn out to be Jack's future wife. A nurse shouts out that PresumablySarah's blood pressure is dropping, and Jack says it's because her (something)'s pierced, and I guess the closed captioner couldn't make it out either, as it's not in the subtitles. Jack asks about the other driver, who it turns out is being wheeled in right now. "Adam Rutherford, 57, chest trauma, no breath sounds," yells the paramedic.
Jack tells the other resident, who we'll call Dr. Useless, to "tube Mr. Rutherford," but Dr. Useless says he can't, that Dr. Jack has to. Can't Dr. Useless even just give it a try? Look, I own a Great Dane. And lots of Great Dane owners have an intubation kit at home because that breed is prone to bloating, and the dog can die really quickly from it. And I know a person is a more important organism than a dog and all that, but it seems to me that if "not breathing" guarantees death then maybe, just maybe, the resident can at least give it a shot (and that's without figuring that intubation has to be one of the skills a resident would have to possess before spending time in the ER). A nurse yells out that PresumablySarah's blood pressure is 80 over 60. Someone else from Rutherford's side says, "His breathing is deteriorating." Dr. Jack glances over. All he needs now is Jack Bauer pointing a gun at him and making the decision on who to work on for him. But he makes his choice, and continues to work on PresumablySarah. Those of you who want to condemn him for making that choice are kidding yourselves if you don't think doctors aren't faced with similar decisions every single day in emergency rooms across the country. What do you think triage is?
Anyway, Dr. Jack orders up a syringe and yanks the steering column out of PresumablySarah's chest, while her worsening blood pressure is being updated by the nurse. Also, there's no "radial pressure," and Jack says he knows, because the "sac's flooded." And he uses the syringe to draw the fluid out of the sac, I guess. Her BP starts to stabilize. Rutherford's not so lucky. We hear his monitor flatline as someone on the other side says, "Time of death, 8:15 AM." You guys didn't even try a defibrillator or anything? Note: If using a defibrillator on someone who is having breathing problems would kill him, don't send me Comic Book Guy emails. I am not a doctor. Jack finishes up a few more things on PresumablySarah while the Rutherford gets ready to be bagged and tagged. "I want to dance…wedding," she croaks out. The nurse tells her to take it easy, while Dr. Useless and Also Hard of Hearing asks what she said. "She said she has to dance at her wedding," says Dr. Jack, with about as much emotion as he might have said, "Time of death, 8:15 AM." We get our first good look at the female, twenties, no ID, and Sarah's status gets upgraded from Presumably to Definitely.
Back at the caves, Charlie is taking a break from wrestling with heroin addiction to assure a bunch of the non-speaking extras that there are no Others. "No one is out there. No one is coming," he says. One of the non-speaking extras gets a line that she's been practising for weeks. Half a line, anyway. She brings up Rousseau, and Charlie points out that Rousseau's "missing a bloody wingnut." "It was all bollocks. It was a ghost story," he adds, saying Rousseau set the fire herself. Sayid over by the fire is guzzling some water and cocking an eyebrow at Charlie's there's-a-little-more-to-it-than-that assurances. "What?" says Charlie. "Nothing," says Sayid. Well, now that you mention it, Charlie, Driveshaft kind of sucks. Sorry, someone had to say it.
Shannon is accosting people, angrily asking them if they've seen Vincent ("the dog," she explains). No one has, although their denials are barely audible. So she grabs a torch and starts stomping off. "Where are you going?" asks Sayid, who might have gotten a whole lot dumber over the summer. "I lost the damn dog," she says. Sayid goes chasing after her, looking for some brownie points.
Back at the hatch, we get a shot from below of Locke looking down through his feet at the hole, in a shot that looked a lot like Locke lying on the beach and discovering he can move his legs. Hurley, who let's presume has urinated by now, wants to know why Locke lit the fuse for the dynamite. "Why wouldn't I light the fuse?" says Locke, over his shoulder. "Uh, maybe because I was running towards you, waving my arms, yelling 'don't do that'?" Locke laughs. "Well, you got a point there." Jack comes strolling back, presumably with the dynamite that hasn't already been used to blow up the hatch or blow up Arse. Locke says he was just excited, since this what they came here for. "We did it so that we could get inside, Hugo," he says. "And to save everybody's lives," reminds Jack, although it seems to me that it was by getting inside that they were going to save lives, but if Jack wants to make out like Locke is doing this for self-aggrandizing reasons, you could argue that pot needs to borrow your cell phone to call kettle. Don't worry; it's a local call. "Or maybe it was just our destiny, right, John?" "Maybe," says Locke, thankfully not descending to Jack's sarcasm. Kate interrupts the brewing power struggle to get everybody to look at the underside of the hatch door. In stenciled paint is the word "quarantine." At some point, what with the isolation and the monsters and the polar bears and the Others and everything else, you'd think things would just stop freaking them out. "Quarantine," they're supposed to be afraid of? Wouldn't want to get the mumps.
Back on the Vincent hunt, Shannon is explaining that she saw Vincent five minutes ago. Well, what was she asking everybody else for, then? Sayid's saying this is a bad idea, but Shannon says he said there was no one out there. No, that's what Charlie was saying. Sayid points out the crucial detail that they just didn't see anyone out there. He says the dog will come back on his own, like he always does. Shannon bitches that looking after the dog is the one thing anyone has ever asked her to do, like, let me know when we are supposed to feel sorry for you. Sayid says she hasn't eaten or slept in forever and that she's exhausted. She says she can't tell "that kid" (you mean "Walt"?) that she lost his dog because she was exhausted. Does "irresponsible" work better for you?
Then a dog barks, and Shannon goes running over, and there's some dog that's hard to tell if it's actually Vincent or not, and Sayid says he'll circle around behind him, and the dog takes off, and naturally Sayid and Shannon get separated. And Shannon runs along until she falls flat on her face, and she yells for Sayid, not Vincent. She doesn't get up or anything, just lies there while the camera circles around overhead and there are "ghostly voices whispering," according to the closed captioning. Suddenly, there's Walt! He's several paces away, and he appears to be dripping wet. Hey, Shannon, it's that kid! "Walt?" she says, clearly worried because she hasn't found Vincent yet. "Shhh," says Walt, putting his finger to his lips. "What are you doing here?" she says, and Walt whispers indistinctly (thanks again, closed captioning!), and apparently if you play it backwards, he says, "I buried Paul." Then Sayid arrives, and of course Walt's gone, and Shannon's all freaked out. Are we supposed to think this is anything other than another one of the jungle visions?
Locke and Kate are strolling through the jungle, Locke leading the way with his torch. "Why do you want to get down there so bad?" asks Kate, and Locke actually has the nerve to correct her grammar with a "bad-ly." You know, she's killed people, Locke. I'm just saying. He doesn't actually answer her question. "Jack thinks I'm crazy, doesn't he," he says. Kate: "Why, 'cause you want to drop into a hatch, that's been locked from the inside, by a foot-thick steel door that says 'quarantine'?" Well, sure, it looks bad when you put it that way, i.e. "accurately." "Well, look at the bright side. The damage is done," he says, whatever that's supposed to mean. He says he can't blame Jack for thinking he's lost it, but then again, he reminds returning viewers and informs new ones, a few hours ago he was almost dragged into the ground by what appeared to be a column of black smoke. "Did you see it, Kate?" Kate glares at him, meaning, "You know I did." Locke's all, so I guess we're both crazy! "Wonder what Jack thinks he saw," says Locke, glancing into the jungle behind them.
That's where Jack and Hurley are following along. Hurley tells Jack to go ahead, since he doesn't want Locke "making time" with his girl. Jack takes a moment to shoot a stink-eye at Hurley, who says, "Joke, dude." Jack says he's not in the mood, so Hurley feigns surprise and points out that Jack is normally "Mr. Ha Ha." That earns a chuckle from Jack. Then Hurley blathers on, mainly providing information to new viewers about the Others and what have you, and I'd like to point out that Hurley has rather quickly gotten over how freaked he was to have Arse explode all over him.
Jack thankgodfully interrupts his nonsense: "Uh-huh. And the numbers?" Hurley's all, whuh? Jack reminds Hurley that he was yelling, "The numbers are bad!" when Jack tackled him. Hurley calls it a long story, and Jack responds that he's got time. Yeah, we probably have another season or two before we get to the bottom of it. So Hurley reluctantly launches into the numbers saga, starting with, "A while ago? I was in this kinda psych ward…" and you can read all about it here. Jack looks mildly surprised when Hurley gets to the part about winning $114 million. Hurley wraps it up with, "And that's why I tried to stop it. Because that thing is cursed, man." Jack ponders the whole thing, before saying, "You were in a psych ward?" He sounds part curious and, weirdly, kinda disappointed. Hurley frowns. "I'm not crazy," he says, and Jack's all, "I didn't say you were…" and it's probably a good thing that he didn't finish that with "…but my reaction indicates that I clearly don't think your story has any credibility." Instead, he just says, "What do you want me to say?" Hurley spits out that believing him would be nice, and Jack's opinion is that they're just numbers. Hurley stares at him. "What's that thing, where doctors make you feel better, just by talking to you?" he says. "Bedside manner," says Jack. "Yours sucks, dude," says Hurley, and stomps off. Jack watches him leave, and something tells me we're going to get a flashjack illustrating just that.
Dr. Muskrat Jack is checking Sarah's chart at the foot of her hospital bed. She wakes up and wants to know what happened to the other driver. Jack won't tell her, just tells her to try to relax. "The other driver was older," she says, and Jack brusquely informs her that Rutherford died in the ER. A tear rolls down Sarah's cheek. Wow, that was quick. She says she can't feel anything. Hey, neither can Jack! Only he doesn't have a car accident for an excuse. "I know," is all he says, and she actually has to prod him for information on what happened to her. "You have a fractured dislocation of your thoracic lumbar spine, with multiple crushed vertebrae," he says. For his tone of voice, imagine someone ordering a Big Mac meal in the drive-thru. Someone who's a bit annoyed or in a hurry, even. Jack sums all that up as a broken back, just on the off chance Sarah that the medical jargon just made her condition sound worse than it actually is. She just stares at him, horrified, but he goes on, obliviously: "Your spleen is ruptured and leaking into your abdomen, and that has to be stopped." Through the window, in an adjoining room, we see Jack's daddy look up and listen in as Muskrat Jack says he'll operate and repair the damage as best he can, but blah blah blah and "even the most optimistic" and blah blah blah and "retaining mobility" and "extremely unlikely" and blah blah blah and he does everything short of pointing her to the nearest razor blades and/or plugged-in toaster and full bathtub. Sarah can barely muster up an "oh." But before Muskrat Jack can really ruin her day, Jack Daddy interrupts and asks for a word.
Out in the hall, Jack wants to know what he did wrong, and he knows it's something, because Jack Daddy is frowning. Jack Daddy is all Ringo Starr, "My face is always this way," but Muskrat Jack tells him to spit it out. Jack Daddy says his son should try holding out a little hope once in a while, because even if it's ninety-nine percent certain that a person is screwed, he'll cling to that one percent chance that he's not. "Her spine's crushed," says Jack, adding that if he tells Sarah everything's going to be okay, that's false hope. Seems to me there might be some middle ground between being all gloom and doom and saying "everything's going to be okay," but I'm not a doctor. "Maybe, maybe," says Jack Daddy. "But it's still hope." Jack makes some kind of exasperated noise, and the two Sheppards go their separate ways. Two stashes of liquor in the hospital?
Back at the camp, Shannon is telling everyone that she saw Walt. And she sounds really angry about it. Sayid tries to keep her from upsetting everyone, particularly Sun, who asks Shannon if she thinks something happened to the raft. Sayid assures Sun that nothing's happened to the raft, and she doesn't point out that there's no way he could possibly know that. "Sayid, I know what I saw!" says Shannon. Then Jack and his merry band return, and all the whispering and arguing and rhubarbing stops, awaiting Jack's proclamations.
He hesitates for moment before filling everyone in on the hatch, which he says is about a half-mile from the caves, and that the plan was to hide everybody in the hatch. He says that doesn't matter anymore, because there's no way to get everybody down there tonight. Charlie interrupts to ask where Dr. Arse is, and Jack says Dr. Arse's two-episode contract has been terminated. With a vengeance. "Did you see them? Did you see the Others?" says Shannon, prompting Charlie to tell her angrily that there are no Others, and everybody starts bickering again, at least until Jack yells "hey!" Everyone looks at him expectantly. So he starts blathering on about how everything's going to be okay. They'll all stick together, and they'll post lookouts and have a big ol' campout right here! "The sun comes up in three hours, and we're all going to be here to see that happen. I promise." Wow. When Jack decides to hand out false hope, you really get your money's worth. Hurley and Kate look less than convinced, but they don't say anything.
And then everyone's distracted by Locke, who all don't-mind-me making sure everyone notices him gathering cable. Jack wants to know what he's doing, and Locke says, "It's for the hatch. I'm going in." Oh, this will not do, decides Jack, who stomps over to speak a little more privately in front of the Others bait. "Do you really think that's the smartest thing to do right now, John?" he says. He's tres pissed. John sarcastically says that the safest thing is probably to stay there and wait for the Others to show up, wait for the "brave folks on the raft to bring help." Shot of Sun looking forlorn. There's something different about her this season, like a weight change or something that I can't quite put my finger on. "But me? I'm tired of waiting," says Locke, and stomps through the group of people that he didn't appear to have to stomp through on his way to get the cable in the first place. Everyone watches him go. Kate looks back at Jack with a look that says, "Your turn. I already tried to talk to him."
Hey, looks like Dr. Phil cured racism! Awesome!
Jack is giving the Thousand-Yard Stare of Impending Flashback, but instead we get Kate wanting to know if he really believes that everything's going to be okay, and Jack says he does, and Kate says that's a new one from him, being a glass-half-full kind of guy, and how nice this episode has been for Jack with everyone telling him what a humourless cowardly prig he is. And she says it's a good thing, him lying to everyone, or as she puts it, giving them someone to count on, and Jack is clearly thinking to himself, "Yes, she's right. I am a good man." Here's the thing, though: Kate's going with Locke. Jack's surprised. "I understand why you can't go," she says. "They need you here. I get it, I do..." She points out that Locke will be going into the hatch on his own, and if something happens to him, well…and I can't say I fault her reasoning. "Live together, die alone, right?" she says, and Jack chuckles and agrees, and he watches Kate walk away.
Flashjack: Dr. Muskrat is explaining to Sarah's fiancé that as she was badly hurt, the surgery could take ten to twelve hours, and Jack won't know until he gets inside her. And it's the subject of getting inside her that the fiancé's most interested in: Jack's prediction of an extensive and intensive rehabilitation process has the fiancé -- who apparently attaches even less importance to shaving than Jack does -- concerned that at their wedding eight months hence, Sarah won't be able to consummate the damn thing. I swear to god that's what he's worried about. I mean, he says "make love," but this is his most pressing concern. Naturally, knowing that Sarah and Jack wind up together, you could have easily predicted that her fiancé would turn out to be an asshole, so it's okay when she leaves him for Jack, but this was almost cartoonish. Jack just stares at him for a moment, then tells him there's a good chance Sarah will need professional care for the rest of her life. "What, like, she won't be able to go to the bathroom by herself?" Jack stares at him some more. Would it have killed the writers to give this guy even one redeeming quality, if only so that it's at all plausible that a woman would consent to marrying his selfish ass? ["Maybe the point is that 'selfish ass' is her type." -- Sars]
Operating room. Jack strolls in, puts on his gown. Sarah, lying on her front, hoarsely whispers for him to come over to her so she can tell him something. Shouldn't she be out by now? Jack leans over so she can break his heart by telling him that it's okay, she knows she won't dance again. "I can still roll around at my wedding," she says. "And you're invited, okay?" Jack considers this, then steps forward a little closer, and says, intently, "I'm going to fix you." Then he seems to snap out of it, and looks around. The nurse is looking at him like, "Dude, that was not cool." Then everyone gets to work.
Locke is doing his best to fashion a harness from the cable. Kate strolls up and says she expected to find him halfway down by now. Without turning around, Locke says, "I was waiting for you." He smiles, and turns to her.
Cut to a moment later, and Locke has apparently decided that Kate should go down the hole first. "Well, you're lighter. I can belay you down, and bring you back up just as easy." ["Nice of her not to correct his grammar in return here." -- Sars] He points out the shaft might also get narrower farther down below. "You left out the part where you just want to see if I get eaten by something," she says. "Yeah, well, that too," he says, and Kate makes a face at him, only I don't think Locke is at all kidding about that.
So he hooks the rope under her bum, then takes her hand, and she steps gingerly down the first couple of intact rungs on the ladder. Before she goes any farther, though, she asks Locke what she should say if she needs to stop. "'Stop,'" says Locke, and Kate looks almost as chastised as earlier in the night when he gave her a grammar lesson. "Okay, let's go," she says, and he starts to lower her down. She's pointing a flashlight down the hatch, and breathing hard. The rope shifts suddenly through the jungle trees, and Kate drops down a few feet, faster than she expected, but Locke holds the rope fast, at least, for a moment; then a tree snaps and Kate plummets down the well, with Locke up above being dragged by the rope until he can brace himself against the hatch. Kate drops her flashlight, which hits the ground below and bounces into a corridor. "Kate, you all right?" yells Locke, but Kate's too freaked out to answer for a moment. Then she says she's fine. "I dropped the light," she says. "Maybe we should --" but Locke's already lowering her down again whether she likes it or not. "Well okay then," she says, mostly to herself.
Then these jungle drums start up, which would certainly raise a red flag with me, but Kate takes no notice. Maybe her eardrums aren't hooked up to surround sound like mine. She inches closer, and starts counting to herself, just like Jack taught her to in the series premiere to help her conquer her fear. Now she can see light from down the corridor into the bottom of the hatch-hole. She's more fascinated than frightened right now, although that situation is quickly remedied when it sounds like a door being closed in the distance and the light at the bottom of the hole is extinguished. "Stop!" she screeches, and Locke does. Another metallic creaking noise, and the light comes back on. "What is it?" yells Locke. "Locke, I think there's something down here --" yells Kate, but she's interrupted as a beam of bright white light rips out of the hole. Locke can't be too surprised, having seen this sort of thing before. But he's awestruck for a few moments before finally asking if Kate's all right. No answer; instead, the mechanical winching sound starts up, and the rope in Locke's hands is pulled downwards, despite him straining to stop it. Then he falls backward, all slack gone in the rope. Kate's gone. He scrambles to the hole and yells her name a few times. So, Kate got eaten. Looks like Locke's going to need a few more lostaways.
Jack's slamming an ammo clip into one of the .45s. Hurley says, "You're kidding, right? You're going back? What about all that stuff you said about waiting until morning, and watching the sun rise?" Jack's slinging on a backpack. "I changed my mind," is all he says.
When Jack comes upon the hatch, Locke and Kate are nowhere to be found. He finds a rope tied to a tree and running down the hole, so he crouches and yells Kate and Locke's names. No answer. Then HE DROPS A FLAMING TORCH DOWN A HOLE AT THE BOTTOM OF WHICH FOR ALL HE KNOWS IS AN UNCONSCIOUS KATE AND LOCKE. Fortunately for him, they're not there. He grabs a shirt or something from his backpack, tearing it into strips of fabric to wrap around his palms, takes a deep breath, and starts rappelling down the hole.
Flashjack to a deserted stadium. Jack thankfully has the muskrat wrapped up under a bandanna as he runs up and down the stadium steps. He's not alone; there's another masochist one section over doing the same thing. Only he's going faster than Jack is, so Jack steps up the pace…and trips and twists his ankle. Hee! "You all right, brother?" asks the other runner, who comes over, in a stirring display of stadium sprinter solidarity. Jack all macho says that he's fine. Other Runner helps Jack into a seat, and tells him to get the weight off the foot. Lucky for Jack's foot that this guy is around to dispense such specialized advice. "Does that hurt?" asks the guy in what is clearly a Scottish brogue, despite my calling him Irish in the recaplet. Should have caught that. I've actually read an Irvine Welsh novel, not to mention this guy sounds just like Magnus in Rushmore (who is responsible for me barking "Fishah!" at the screen whenever I'm watching a sporting event with a Fisher on one of the teams). Anyway, that doesn't hurt, so it's not sprained then. "I don't fancy your chances of catching up with me tonight, though," he says. Jack denies trying to catch him. "Aye. Of course you weren't," says the Scot. For Christ's sake, he actually said "Aye," and I still called him Irish. He could have been wearing a kilt and I probably still would have done so. Jack wants to know how he knows about sprains. Maybe because he's a runner so dedicated that he's running up and down stadium steps like a maniac? That would be my guess. But the Scot says he was "almost a doctor once," whatever that means, and Jack says, "Small world," which Scot takes to mean that Jack actually is a doctor.
Scot settles in beside Jack and offers him his water bottle, which Jack takes without thanking him or anything. Scot wants to know what Jack's excuse is for running like the devil's chasing him. Jack doesn't answer, so Scot says his excuse is that he's training for a race around the world. "Impressive, I know," he says, joking. I'd say they were flirting, but as I intend to continue my crusade to rid TWoP of the notion that a person needs to shout "HoYay!" whenever two male characters share screen time, I won't do that. "So your excuse better be good, brothah," says Scot, and Jack offers only that he's trying to work a few things out. "Ah, a gull, right?" says Scott, although upon further consideration he might have said "girl." Jack says it's a patient. "A gull patient," says Scot, who asks what the gull's name is. "Sarah," says Jack, and Scot, who you'd think would be a little too familiar for Jack's liking, asks what Jack did to her. Jack says he made her a promise he couldn't keep: "I told her I'd fix her, and I couldn't. I failed." Well, that seems to have finally wiped the grin off Scot's face. "Wow," he says, before adding all Columbo, "Just one thing. What if you did fix her?" "I didn't," says Jack. "What if you did?" insists Scot, who might wind up with a punch in the face if he's not careful. "You don't know what you're talking about, man," which would be the North American equivalent of Scot's "brothah." So now we know they're being straight with each other. "I don't? Why not?" "Because in her situation, that would be a miracle, 'brother.'" Ah, there's that Jack standoffishness, after he got Scot's medical advice and water bottle. "And you don't believe in miracles," says Scot, who then offers this advice: "You have to lift it up." And Jack's quite confused as to just what the hell "lift it up" is supposed to mean, as am I, until Scot says he was talking about Jack's ankle, which we all know he wasn't AT ALL.
Scot gets up to go, and says, "It's been nice chatting…?" and Jack tells Scot his name, and Scot's name turns out to be Desmond, and Desmond says, "Good luck, brothah. See you in another life, yeah?" Or at least a few more scenes, yeah?
Jack reaches the bottom of the pit, examines the mirror, and starts exploring the corridor. It's clearly been there a while; the pipes are rusted and dripping. As he moves from the part-rock/part-manmade area of the corridor, he decides to pull out his gun. He notices a pair of hiking boots set neatly side-by-side against one wall. There's some sort of breaker box. There's also, curiously, some sort of painted mural on the wall. An almost child-like style of painting, but what's interesting is (and it's not clear whether Jack notices it or not) that Hurley's magic numbers are scattered throughout, with the addition of the number 108 (painted in the middle of the sun), which is the sum of all the other numbers.
Jack continues on. Filthy buckets full of god knows what. Debris scattered everywhere. As Jack inspects a wall, the key on the strap around his neck is drawn towards a metallic object in the centre. A magnet that powerful certainly could make compasses go screwy…ah, who am I kidding. I don't know from compasses or magnets. But that's going to be the explanation anyway.
Jack notices a camera lens whirring in the corner, but as he approaches it, Mama Cass starts bellowing again. Several quick cuts of Jack, open-mouthed in surprise, spinning around, pointing his gun, fully prepared to take down any Mamas and/or Papas coming his way. A bright light also comes on at the end of the hallway, blinding him and forcing him to duck into a nook on the side, which he then notices opens up into what looks like the inside of a dome made out of triangular windows, you know? He also appears to be used to the music, which is still going, but this is just a really good song, so maybe he's groovin' on it by now.
Machinery is whirring. Some fairly old-school technology, too. Tall computers with tape reels spinning. Clunky boxes with oscilloscope thingies on them. Banks of lights flashing. And an old-timey computer like the one the guy was using in the opening scene, complete with the >: prompt, which I'm told was never actually used on computers like these, which has to be the first implausibility ever on this show. The camera slowly zooms in on the computer as Jack approaches it, and it looks like he's about to press the Execute button for whatever reason, but the needle scratches on the record again, like, whoever owns that LP is going to be plenty pissed, and Locke says, "I wouldn't do that." He's standing over in the entrance to the room. Jack points the gun at him. "Where's Kate?" Locke doesn't answer. "What the hell did --" says Jack, but he can't finish the question before someone -- we can't see who, even if we know who it's going to be -- points another gun at Locke from the side. So yeah, this probably wasn't Locke's best-case scenario going down into the hole. And am I nuts or does Locke actually look scared?
When we return from commercials, we flashjack to Muskrat Jack sitting in Sarah's hospital room, waiting for her to wake up. When she does, she asks if she's alive. She's alive, uh-huh, so alive. He scootches over in his chair, and she tells him he smells. Well, at least she'll be able to smell at her wedding (Stinky Jack might no longer be invited, though). Jack does have a bit of a sweat ring around his OR scrubs, and he explains that he just went running. "You smell like you ran far," she says, and she has this look on her face like she's a little upset about it, which I found funny. He says he showered, but apparently it didn't take. Then he goes into this whole thing about how a tour de stade is when you run all the steps in a section of a stadium. Hey, Dr. Jack, are there any other things you can do with your legs that you can describe to Sarah, who can't do that anymore? Do you have a kickboxing class later? Do you like to make your own wine by stomping grapes in a tub? Did you stub your toe earlier and want to complain about how much it throbs because of the way your nerve endings all annoyingly connect? Maybe you should keep this to yourself. Sarah just wonders why Jack would run around a stadium. Jack says, I swear to god he says this, that he's "intense." She asks him if he finished, and he says he hurt his ankle. "That sucks for you," says Sarah, with just a twinge of pointed anger, and Jack takes the hint. She asks if her fiancé -- Dickwad, I think his name is -- is here, and Jack says as nonchalantly as possible that he didn't see him. "I'm sure he'll be back," says Sarah, clearly not actually believing it and likely not unaware that Jack doesn't believe it either.
So finally she asks how the surgery went, and the look on Jack's face says as much as he needs to about how extensive the damage was and how he did as much as he could. She watches him the whole time. "I couldn't repair it," he says, blinking back tears. "You're going to be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of your life." She glances downward. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Sarah." Calmly, she says, "You're yanking my chain, right?" and Jack says no. "Then how come I can wiggle my toes?" Jack's all, whuh? He glances down at the end of the bed, where sure enough, her feet are moving underneath the sheet. Hey, Jack: lift it up. Seriously, LIFT IT UP. He pulls up the bed sheet (going up a little high, aren't you, doctor), and pulls out a, um, surgical pokey thing from his pocket and stabs Sarah in the leg with it. "Can you feel this?" Yes, she says. He tries the other leg. "Can you feel this?" Yes, she says smiling, and he pokes her a few more times, with her saying yes each time. And he's almost completely bawling by this point, looking kind of like I looked by the end of March of the Penguins (as an aside: if you see just one penguin-themed movie this year, let it be that one).
Back to the present day, where Locke has somehow pissed off enough people this episode to earn two guns pointed at his head. "Move, and I'll kill him," says the second gunman, hiding himself around the corner, as though his brogue doesn't give him away instantly (at least to us, if not to Jack, who as far as we know only met Desmond the once). Jack doesn't put the gun down, but asks where Kate is, with Locke saying that it's okay and Desmond yelling for Jack to drop the gun. Jack refuses, so Desmond fires a shot above Jack's head and yells, "Do you want him to die?" Note that Jack doesn't actually say no. He decides to taunt Locke! "Is this what you were talking about, Locke? Is this your destiny? All roads lead here," he says. Locke tells him to calm down. Desmond quickly moves from the side to behind Locke, who still can't see his face. "Lower your gun, or I'll blow his damned head off, brothah!" The closed-captioning actually italicized the "brothah" for us, so even the caption typists are hitting us over the head. Jack looks stunned, and Desmond steps out slightly from behind Locke. His hair's longer, he's unshaven, and he looks quite a bit more maniacal than when Jack met him in the stadium. "You," says Jack. Desmond did all this just because Jack backwashed into his water bottle?