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Let's rewind a little bit and pick up with what happened to the raftaways after the raft blew up, shall we? Sawyer and Mercutio drift together, and bitch at each other, each blaming the other for attracting the Biker Gang Pirates, who kidnapped Walt. Jin's nowhere to be found. In the flashbacks, we learn that Walt's mother took him away. Well, I guess we didn't "learn" it so much as "watched it boringly unfold for the sole purpose of seeing Mercutio give Walt a stuffed polar bear, apparently." Future flashbacks involving Walt will include him watching those Coca-Cola commercials with the polar bears.
And we rewind to watch Locke go down after Kate in the hatch (week, are we going to rewind and watch Kate enter?) and wind up with Desmond's gun in his face. Down the hatch-hole, that computer with the angry emoticon prompt is used to reset some sort of timer. The PIN? The sequence of numbers you've all memorized by now. Thanks to Locke's quick thinking, Kate's able to untie herself and she's creeping along the air ducts, so she's able to watch the standoff between Desmond and Jack (and almost inadvertently take a bullet), as well as displaying what wasn't so much cleavage as her entire rack. That's a good Alberta girl right there.
Not much more is revealed about Desmond's motivation, just that he's apparently waiting for someone. His replacement? He asked Locke, "Are you him?", and Locke, clearly having seen Ghostbusters, wisely answers that he is, but can't maintain the charade, which is when Jack enters and we stop at the same point we ended last week.
Out on the raft, Mercutio and Sawyer quit arguing like children in order to switch their raft for a bigger raft. Mercutio shoots a shark instead of jumping it (the shark has a logo on its tail that's the same as the one scattered throughout the hatch).
They finally wash up back on some other section of the island, and hear Jin yelling and shouting, and then he comes running up to them, hands bound behind his back. His English is coming along; he croaks out "Others!" who are indeed coming, armed and not so fabulous. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Two minutes worth of "previously on Lost" scenes! I've never seen that much outside of 24.Ultra-brief recap of the opening scenes: "WALT!" "DAD!" "MIKE!" "KATE!"
We pick up moments after we left off with the guys on the raft. Sawyer's sputtering in the water, we hear Walt screaming in the distance and Michael (time to retire "Mercutio," I think, because I was kind of confused at first when Sawyer was yelling "Mike!") is yelling "Waaaaaaallllllt! WAAAAAALLLLLLT!" over and over again, so not too much line memorization for Harold Perrineau this week. The raft is scattered all over the water, and what there is of it is on fire, except for one piece that Sawyer swims to, yelling for this "Mike" person, who, in between yells of "Walt!", seems to be drowning. Sawyer reaches into the water and hauls a rapidly sinking Michael out of the water and onto the raftlet. Michael's unconscious, so Sawyer starts thumping him on the chest really hard, because there's no watery death that can't be improved by a set of cracked ribs.
Quickly, now, over to the hatch-hole, where the bright light that came on when Kate got hauled in last week shuts off, and a concerned Locke starts yelling Kate's name over and over again. When no answer is forthcoming, Locke grabs the rope and starts to descend into the hatch, and the opening scenes lasted barely longer than the "previously on" scenes.
Sawyer is still doing his best to drive his hands actually inside Michael's chest. Then he tries for a little more traditional CPR, which does the trick, with Michael sputtering and coming to and saying, "Walt!" adding, "Where is he? Where the hell's my son?" before collapsing on the raftlet.
Flashback to Michael in a lawyer's office, with said lawyer being portrayed by the great Saul Rubinek, who will be sorely underused in this episode. Michael's got a cane, which Saul asks about, and Michael explains that he got hit by a car. Through the window, in the distance, we can see the Twin Towers, easy to miss if you're focused on the scene between Michael and the lawyer. Small talk out of the way ("got any hobbies? Like any sports teams?"), Saul says he's got the paperwork that Michael's ex-wife sent over, and Michael is quick to point out that she's not his ex-wife, she's just Walt's mother. I'm sure Saul's thinking, "Well, this is shaping up to be amicable." Michael explains that Susan just got a job in Rome, and she and her boyfriend want to take Walt with them. "Well, don't worry, I'm going to take good care of you, Mr. Don," and Michael pulls a "this guy can't be any good if he can't get my name right" face and says his last name is "Dawson." Saul stops. "Right. Sorry. Dawson." Glancing through the paperwork, Saul asks about the boyfriend, Bryan Porter, saying Susan's asking Michael to relinquish his parental rights. "She wants me to sign my son away?" asks Michael, incredulous. Saul explains that that's the only way Susan and Bryan can proceed with the adoption. Michael's all, the a-what-ion? Saul very carefully explains that Michael would be giving up all his parental rights, and Walt wouldn't be any different, in a legal sense, from any other kid Michael passes on the street. Michael wants to know if there's anything he can do to stop them, and Saul half-heartedly says he could file an injunction, and Michael's all, yeah, yeah, let's do that injunction thing.
Saul appraises Michael a moment before saying that the fact Michael walked through his doors tells him something: that Saul is the best Michael can afford. Saul might want to take this shining can-do attitude into court, it'll do wonders with the judge. "If we go forward, it's going to take money. A lot of it, even at my rates." Michael starts to wonder if it would be bad form to ask Susan to pay his legal bills the way she's doing with his medical bills. (And his telephone bills? And his "automo-bills," whatever those are.) Saul compares the situation to David and Goliath (well, David won, so nice analogy there), and asks if Michael's sure he wants to go ahead with this. Michael leans forward and says, "They're not taking my son away."
Back to the raftlet, where they have indeed taken his son away. Michael is still yelling Walt's name into the night, even though there's not a peep from Walt. Sawyer tells Michael to save his energy, and Michael's all, "What part of 'they took my son' don't you understand?" And Sawyer says they took Walt on a boat, which means they're not without shouting distance, and Michael says Sawyer doesn't know that, and Walt might be able to hear him, so he needs to know his dad is alive and is coming for him. Michael is assuming that Walt will have more faith in his dad's "getting me back from the biker gang pirates" abilities than he currently has in his dad's "preventing biker gang pirates from kidnapping me" abilities. Sawyer backs down in the face of Michael's shouty fatherly devotion, and Michael starts yelling again.
Locke has made his way to the bottom of the hatch-hole, and he splashes in the water at the bottom of the shaft. "Kate!" he whisper-shouts as he makes his way down the corridor, by the paint-with-numbers mosaic thingy. He gingerly makes his way forward, and when his boot makes a surprisingly loud squishy noise, he takes them both off and lines them up neatly against the wall, so those were his boots Jack saw last week. Or in a few moments. Whatever. You know what I mean.
Let me repeat that. He gingerly makes his way forward, and when his boot makes a surprisingly loud squishy noise, he takes them both off and lines them up neatly against the wall. Did Terry O'Quinn know what a firestorm of controversy he would touch off? Did he have any idea, as he removed his shoes, that countless people would be parsing such a simple act for a deeper motivation? O'Quinn's a fine actor, an opinion I don't think I've shared before (to my discredit), with an enviable range that deserves a far bigger screen than Lost, as good as it is and as popular as it is. He can play friendly and he can play menacing and several shades in between. He can move you (see "Walkabout") and anger you (see "Deus Ex Machina"). Would it break his heart to find out that had he rehearsed the Taking Off Of The Shoes once or twice more, people would have had no trouble distinguishing "sneaky" from "reverent"? I think it would break his heart. I think it would, a little bit.
He looks around the underground lair, examining an octagonal logo that looks a lot like this, which is called a ba gua, only in the centre is a silhouetted snake or a swan and the word "Dharma," and it's slapped on some breaker-box-looking thing. He makes his way into the living quarters, past a lava lamp (I don't know what it is, but I love lave lamps) and a ping-pong table that's got one end folded upright, for the solo ping-pong enthusiast. He checks out the blinds that appeared to have morning sunlight streaming through last week, and turns them so that we can see that it's merely a powerful light shining through.
Then he hears mumbling, turns a corner, and sees Kate, lying on the floor. He crouches beside her, and she comes to and says, "Hey, Locke," kind of nonchalantly, and then she sees something, and says, "Behind you," but she says it so quickly that it really sounded like "budge." Locke turns, and Desmond's there, pointing a rifle at him.
"Are you him?" asks Desmond. Locke appears to be thinking, undoubtedly trying to figure out if it's in his best interests to be him or not be him. Desmond asks again.
Back on the raftlet, Sawyer's standing up and yelling "Jin!" over and over again. Michael's sitting and sulking, all, "Oh, sure, it's okay to yell for Jin, but when it comes to yelling for my son, we have to 'conserve energy,'" and Sawyer says that the difference is that Jin is out there in the water, so if it's okay by Michael, he's going to keep shouting. Michael glares at him. "Feeling guilty," he mutters, and Sawyer's all, "What?" and Michael says, "You made me fire the flare," and Sawyer's completely amazed that Michael is blaming him for this, as am I, but since Michael just had his son kidnapped by biker gang pirates, I'll cut him some slack for not thinking straight. Less slack I'm giving Sawyer, who says, "At least Walt is on a boat," and he also says that Walt is "probably wrapped in a blanket with a cup of cocoa." I SWEAR TO GOD HE SAYS THOSE WORDS. And Michael tells Sawyer to get off his boat, which Sawyer also can't believe, and this asinine argument is interrupted by some banging directly underneath the raft. Sawyer pulls his gun as he and Michael look wildly around them. We pull back and can see a rather large shark-like creature, swimming shark-style through the water.
The local ABC affiliate is doing a feature story on UFOs. "UFOs: Do They Exist? We'll tackle that question tonight, and also on the hit new series Invasion, which, and you're not going to believe this coincidence, also airs on ABC."
Back from commercials, the waters seem a little calmer, although Sawyer and Michael are still anxiously watching the water. Michael looks at the gun and says he sees Sawyer managed to hang onto his "best friend," although I submit that Sawyer's best friend is still in his pants. Michael says the gun won't work anyway, since Sawyer was underwater. "What do you know about guns anyway, hoss?" snaps Sawyer, who takes the clip out to check the bullets, because if the bullets are dry, the powder's dry, and he's going to say that if the powder's dry the gun will work, but he's interrupted by another a shark-esque smashing of the boat, and he falls over and spills some of the bullets. Sawyer thrashes around for the bullets -- good luck finding those -- and then he spots a tail rising out of the water and just as quickly submerging again. "What the hell is that?" says Michael, and Sawyer says, "It's a shark," although I don't think that the above-water tail-flick is a standard shark move. Then Sawyer says, "It's only a shark," WHATEVER THAT MEANS, and Michael can't believe that he said that either, and implies that the shark's hanging around because of Sawyer's bleeding shoulder, so Sawyer snaps that he'll just stop bleeding then. Amazing. There's no actual scenery for miles and miles, yet there's still a whole lot of chewing going on. Sawyer asks if Michael suddenly forgot what just happened. Probably not, but something tells me we're going to listen to Sawyer deliver some clunky expository dialogue. It's Sawyer's position that Michael should thank him for shooting at the biker gang pirates, but Michael says Sawyer was just trying to save his own ass.
So Sawyer risks a shark attack by actually swimming over to another little raftlet. That's how hurt his feelings are. And then he yells back at Michael, "I was trying to save your damn kid!"
Michael flashes back to the custody hearing, which oddly enough seems to be happening in the same room in which Claire almost gave her baby away, and I wonder if this room is Lost's standard child-surrendering set or something. Susan's officious lawyer is saying, "Let's talk about Walt, shall we, Mr. Dawson?" and Michael says, "Sure, okay," probably confused since talking about Walt is the sole PURPOSE of this hearing. Can we go back to the shark now, please? There's a reason Discovery Channel doesn't hold "Boring Custody Battles You Already Know The Outcome Of Week," you know. So the questions are of the "when was the last time you actually saw your son" variety. He says, "About a year," and she says, "It was fourteen months, actually," which sounds an awful lot like "about a year" to me. Saul says, "Is that a question, Lizzie?" and Lizzie the Lawyer asks "why so long" and Michael explains that Susan took Walt to Amsterdam. Lizzie the Lawyer calls it "inconsistent" that Michael didn't seem to have a problem with Susan taking Walt then, but he's filing an injunction now, and despite Saul warning Michael that she's baiting him, Michael gets quite agitated.
"You said there was nothing I could do!" he says to Susan, who doesn't say anything, and Lizzie the Lawyer says, "And you didn't do anything, did you?" and Saul says, "He's not going to answer that question," and Lizzie says, "That's because there is no answer," like now she's Lizzie the Philosophical Lawyer (her last name is probably "Sartre"). So she moves on to Michael's accident, with its several surgeries and lengthy hospital stay, and extensive rehabilitation, and she asks who paid for it. Michael throws up his hands and tells Susan that he didn't ask her for anything, and once again Susan says nothing. She's been better coached by Lizzie the Lawyer, who leans over to the stenographer and asks that the record reflect that Susan paid Michael's bills. We get a close-up on the stenographer for some reason.
Michael starts pleading with Susan, who still won't say anything, and Lizzie the Lawyer tells Michael not to address Susan directly, and then starts in with the "Do you know what Walt's first words were?" and "Do you know what Walt's favourite food is?" and Michael takes a beating while you're thinking, "Any time you want to step in, Saul," which he finally does and says this is unnecessary.
"Wow," says Lizzie the Lawyer sarcastically. "For someone who wants to retain his parental rights so badly [somewhere, Locke is pleased], you don't seem to know much about your son." Her mouth doesn't seem to open all the way. It's a little disconcerting, I have to say. "I'm his father," says Michael quietly. Lizzie the Lawyer asks if he'll say that again a little louder for the record. And Michael actually DOES THIS.
Full moon on the water, with Michael on his raftlet and Sawyer on his, drifting together, caught in the same current. Michael keeps looking over at Sawyer, who's examining his bullet wound. Michael yells that Sawyer's crazy if he thinks he can pull that bullet out by himself. Sawyer can't believe that Michael doesn't shut up. And then he proceeds to dig into his wound with two fingers, yelling, "Ahhhh! AAHHHHHHH! NNNNNNGH!" He keeps going, adding, "NNNNRGHHH!" and finally he's holding the bullet in his bloody palm. He gives it the patented Sawyer Stink-eye, then throws it out into the water. That'll learn it, hoss. He clutches his shoulder, then looks over at Michael. "You got a Band-Aid?" he says, and Michael ignores him, and Sawyer collapses back onto the raftlet, and Michael continues to studiously ignore him. Yeah, he just wants attention, Michael.
Back down in the hatch-hole, Desmond is still asking Locke, "Are you him?" Locke either decides it's in his best interest to say he is, or he just remembers the words of a wise Ghostbuster: "Ray, time someone asks if you a god? You say yes!" Good advice. I have it in cross-stitch hanging by my desk. Locke stands up. "Yes I am," he says, smiling. "Can't believe it. You're finally here," says Desmond. "Well, here I am," says Locke, grinning. Don't oversell it, dude. Desmond looks at Kate, still lying on the floor. "Who's she?" Locke helps Kate to her feet, and finally just says, "She's with me." Given that Locke doesn't even know whom he's pretending to be, it's understandable that that was the best cover story he could come up with for Kate (much better than trying, "She's for you," and thrusting her at Desmond, I suppose).
Desmond seems quite perplexed by this, so he tests Locke: "What did one snowman say to the other snowman?" Locke does his best to come up with an answer (which is either "do you smell carrots?" or "drop your pants, here comes the snowblower," or "freeze!" depending on who you ask). Locke says, as nonchalantly as he can, that he has no idea what Desmond's on about. Desmond raises the rifle again, tightening his grip, and orders Locke to throw down the knife. "You're not him," he says.
Locke takes off his Rambo-sized knife and throws it to the side. "We didn't come here to hurt you," says Locke. Good thing, Locke, since Desmond's got the drop on you. Desmond wants to know why they did come here then, and Kate helpfully says that they were in a plane crash. Since that really doesn't answer Desmond's question, he says "Were you now," and asks when that was, and Locke says, "Forty-four days ago," and Desmond repeats this and thinks about it for a moment. Notice also that Desmond has a Dharma logo on his jacket.
Then he circles around them, still training the rifle on them, and he orders them to move. They pass by a wall covered with counting notches, four vertical strokes with a diagonal. Likely days he's been here, or solo ping-pong victories. Locke asks how long Desmond's been here. "Shut it!" That's how long!
to a door, Desmond tosses some rope to Kate and orders her to tie up Locke. She hesitates, and he yells, "Do it!" Locke tells Desmond that he's tying up the wrong person. "How's that, brothah," says Desmond, and Locke says he's not the dangerous one. Kate, on the other hand, is a fugitive, says Locke. Kate just stares at Locke in disbelief. Desmond considers this, then swings his rifle back to Locke. "So what does that make you then, brothah?" Locke says, "I'm a regional collections manager for a cardboard manufacturer. Boxes, primarily."
Now, Desmond may very well be crazy, but I don't think he's stupid. Locke was the one with the disemboweler of a knife strapped to him, not the five-foot ninety-pound woman to him, but Desmond changes his mind and orders the "box man" to tie Kate up. He goes to do it, and Kate resists, getting the rifle shoved into her face some more. As Locke pushes her against the wall, she asks what the hell he's doing, and he whispers that he's doing what's best for all of them. With their backs to Desmond, Locke pulls something out of his pants and shoves it down the front of Kate's pants. Let's presume it was a little folding knife. Let's also hope Locke took a bath this morning before sticking his knife all down in his junk. Having finished his highly suspicious tying-up of Kate, Locke turns around, and Desmond has him shove her in a dark room, with her yelling and pleading, presumably for show.
We rewatch that scene where Jack gets ready to go after Locke and Kate, with Hurley reacting with disbelief. This time, though, we also see Jack stomp past Charlie and Claire and little Aaron. Claire asks what Charlie thinks that was all about. "I reckon Jack's going to do something heroic," he says, and Claire rolls her eyes at him, which I can't believe isn't the standard reaction whenever Charlie says anything anyway, and she complains that he always tries to be funny when he doesn't want to answer a question. To be fair to Charlie, I don't know that he doesn't want to answer that question so much as he doesn't actually know the answer to that question, but Claire can continue to be rude to the guy who's done quite a lot to help her out since they crashed if she wants. (Charlie takes offence to her qualifying it as him trying to be funny.)
So Charlie's making funny faces at Aaron while Claire...is...going through his stuff? Or something? I guess. Whatever, she finds Charlie's statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Drugginess, and she asks him what it is, and despite his obvious concern about her bogarting his stash, he tries to be all nonchalant as he explains that he found it in the jungle, and he hands Aaron back to her so he can snatch back the Virgin Mary. "She's holy," he says. "I didn't realize you were so religious," she says, and he claims that he's not, just that it might "come in handy," and Claire looks all warm and happy, not knowing that, if she's not careful, Aaron will be a drug mule one day.
These screamy scenes with Michael and Sawyer out on the raftlets are really starting to get to me. Sawyer's come to the conclusion that the biker gang pirates weren't attracted by the flare gun; their boat wasn't an oceangoing vessel, so it must have come from somewhere close by. "Boat like that, had to have left port from somewhere close. Like the island." He's finally figured out that the Others that Rousseau told them about came for Walt. Good. You know, some of this is kind of no duh, Sawyer, but at least he's figuring it out. See if you can figure out where Sawyer goes off the rails, though:
Michael: "You're saying this is my fault?"
Sawyer: "That's what I'm saying."
Not that Michael's any more right in saying it's Sawyer's fault; true, the flare gun helped the pirates find them, but they couldn't have known Walt was going to be kidnapped. "What are you gonna do, splash me?" sneers Sawyer. And Michael does just that. And Sawyer's raftlet FALLS APART. Nice construction job, Michael. Sawyer founders in the water, with an ominous shark's-eye-view shot from underneath, before he hauls himself onto Michael's raftlet, clutching his shoulder in pain. Then he half-heartedly starts to try to make nice with Michael, who shuts him up with a "shut up" and a "you have no idea what it's like to care for somebody else."
Flashback to the Custody Battle Dome, where Michael walks in to find Susan there all by herself. He asks where the lawyers are, and she says she told them she wanted to talk to Michael by herself. And I'm sure the lawyers agreed what a brilliant idea that was, legally speaking, and have gone to Six Flags for the rest of the afternoon.
"I think you're gonna win," she says, which surprises Michael. She says she think the court will rule that she can't leave the country with Walt, and she wants to know why he's doing this. "He's my son!" "Since when, Michael?" She goes on about how in Rome she'll be a senior partner and give Walt whatever he wants, while Michael's still on disability and about to be evicted from his apartment. "Nobody's winning here, Michael," she says, and gives him some platitudes about his "rare talent" as an artist, and he needs to get healthy and back on his feet financially so he can get back to pursuing his art. "How are you gonna do that, any of that, and still be a part of Walt's life?" "I'll do it by doing it," he says. Yeah, that kind of empty rhetoric will go over big-time in court, so Susan's doing the right thing by trying to come to a deal on their own. Michael says Walt's his responsibility too, and she says, "Then let him go." Flashback Michael looks quite conflicted. I just can't figure out what we're supposed to be learning from these flashbacks. We know Walt winds up with his mom. If these flashbacks are supposed to show the guilt Michael feels about giving up Walt (and now losing him again), then why is it being presented as though continuing to fight for Walt would have been the selfish thing to do?
Back in the hatch-hole, Kate writhes on the ground for an eternity, doing that thing where your hands are tied behind your back, so you slide them under your bum so you can get them in front of you. She's grunting like her life depends on being able to do this, which it just might. She then pulls out Locke's hidden knife, unfolds it, and saws through the binding on her wrists. Getting up, she heads over to the door and starts feeling around in the dark. She finds a light switch, but no way to get out. Frustrated, she turns around and leans back on the door, where she learns she's been locked inside a Costco full of preserves and canned goods, all with that Dharma logo on it. Oooh, that's a good price for eight pounds of nutmeg! She also spies an air duct in the ceiling, but can't reach it by jumping. She pulls some boxes underneath, but her desire to escape is thwarted when she sees a box labeled "CANDY," which she opens, and then proceeds to stuff her face with "Apollo" chocolate bars. Then she has a chocogasm, and stuffs several more bars into her pockets so she can have multiple chocogasms later. She clambers up onto the box, knocks the metal grate into the air duct, and climbs in herself (clearly getting a boost from a stage hand underneath, judging from how she climbed in. Just don't smush the chocolate, pal).
Elsewhere in the hatch-hole, Locke is explaining to Desmond about how the plane was a thousand miles off course when it crashed, so any search parties, which would have given up a long time ago anyway, would have been looking in the wrong spot. Locke's sitting by the phony sunlight.
Locke asks what Desmond's name is, and Desmond looks surprised, and then almost a little pleased, to be asked, and tells him. Sensing an opening, Locke tells Desmond that the gun is unnecessary. Opening closes. Desmond points it at him and sarcastically asks if he should just hand it over to Locke. Try saying yes again, Locke. It might work this time. "How many of you are there?" asks Desmond, after he cools off slightly. "Forty-three," says Locke, adding that four sailed away on a raft this morning. Desmond chuckles at the idea of leaving by raft. Locke asks about the simulated sunlight: "Is that because you never leave?" He asks if there's another way out, but instead of answering either of those questions, Desmond asks how many of the group are sick.
Locke doesn't seem to understand the question, so Desmond has to snap, "As in ill! As in dead!" "Is that why it says 'quarantine' on the inside of the hatch?" asks Locke, and Desmond tells him to just answer the question; the answer is no one.
Then the beeping starts. The biker gang pirates are sailing down the hatch-hole? Up in the air duct, Kate hears it too. Desmond tells Locke to get up, and they go into the room with all the ancient (well, '80s, anyway) machinery. Pointing to the computer, Desmond asks Locke if he knows how to use it. Locke says he hasn't seen one of those in twenty years. Locke, time someone asks if you know how to use an old computer? You say yes! Actually, that's exactly what then happens, with Desmond's rifle used as an exclamation mark. There's a timer on the wall behind the computer, reading , with the first three digits in white numbers on black, and the last two black numbers on white. Looks like minutes and seconds. Desmond tells Locke to enter exactly what he's told and nothing else. Then Desmond starts listing the numbers: "Four, eight, fifteen..." Desmond's momentarily distracted, asking if Locke heard that (I didn't hear it). Locke didn't. Desmond finishes telling Locke the sequence (how freaked out would Desmond have been if Hurley were there and he guessed the rest of the numbers?), then orders Locke to hit the EXECUTE button. Locke hesitates, presumably worried about what might happen when he does, but then hits it. The beeping stops, and the timer resets to .
Then we hear, in the distance, "Kate! Locke!" Desmond whirls around, points the gun back at Locke. "What's that?" "That would be Jack," says Locke, looking more curious than anything about how this is all going to play out. Of course, Locke's odds of survival just went up. I don't mean because Jack is there to rescue him, just that...well, if you had a rifle, who would be your first choice to shoot? Jack or Locke? That's what I'm talking about.
Back from commercial, Desmond hauls Locke over to his bazooka telescope tube, where he watches Jack make his way down the hall. He asks Locke who it is. "He's our doctor," says Locke. Desmond asks what he's doing here. "To be honest with you, I'm surprised to see him." How about you try answering the crazy rifle-toting man's question instead of making a wiseass remark? Desmond keeps watching him. "Your doctor has a gun, brothah." He hauls Locke over the record player, and you're kind of half-expecting him to say, "Have you ever actually really listened to Jethro Tull? Like really listened to it?" Instead, he drops the needle on a record, and "Make Your Own Kind of Music" comes back on.
Up in the Air Duct of Skulking Pendulous Cleavage, Kate stops creeping along just long enough to make her patented My God, Is That Mama Cass? face.
"Make one sound and I'll shoot," says Desmond, shoving Locke and telling him again to move.
Kate hustles as fast as her elbows and knees will take her, making her way to a vent overlooking the room of obsolete machinery room, where she can see Jack looking around. She shouts his name a couple of times, but Kate's got a long way to go before her lungs can compete with Mama Cass.
The rest of this we saw last week, with Jack about to press a button on the computer, Locke coming in to say he shouldn't do that, and then Desmond pointing his gun and then Jack taunting Locke and then Jack recognizing Desmond. (This time, though, when Desmond fires his warning shot, we see that it almost hits Kate.)
Back on the raftlet, Sawyer and Michael are still glaring out into the blackness. Sawyer sees a larger piece of raft, one with its own pontoon. Presumably he's looking for his own place again, so he gets down on his stomach on the edge of the raftlet and starts paddling with his one good arm, without saying anything to Michael, who looks over to see what he's doing, and sees the pontoon portion himself. He tells Sawyer to stop paddling, since that'll put a strain on the bindings, which will break up the raftlet. I'd buy that, considering that splashing Sawyer's other raftlet was enough to destroy it. Sawyer ignores him, and sure enough, his portion of the raftlet collapses, so Sawyer's treading water again. Shark's-eye cam checks out Sawyer's butt. Michael offers his hand to Sawyer and tells him to climb up, but Sawyer says, "I do and we both sink," so I guess the fight's over, but Sawyer still manages to sound like kind of a dick saying it. He says he's going for the pontoon. Underwater-cam, and we see the shark glide by. And yep, there's a Dharma logo on its tail. You have to freeze-frame it, otherwise you'll miss it. That's the kind of touch I like from this show. You'll find it if you're looking for it (but it doesn't really matter if you miss it), and it'll add something to your enjoyment, a reward for close watching. "Don't be an idiot," says Michael. Yeah, no kidding. The island already has plenty of those. Before he goes, Sawyer hands over his gun and tells Michael that if he sees that "toothy son-of-a-bitch" to aim and squeeze.
Then he starts splashing his way over to the raft, screaming like the baby of Monica Seles and Maria Sharapova, if such a thing were biologically possible. At Dharma, we're working on it! Shark's-eye-cam gets closer and closer to Sawyer, until finally they bust out the phony shark dorsal fin to break the surface of the water. Michael fiddles with the gun, then starts shooting, and to improve his aim and his terminal deadliness, starts screaming. "AAAAAAAHHHHH!" he screams. One of his shots finds the target, as evidenced by the red splash of water, and just like that, the bio-shark or cyborg shark or whatever the fuck stops. My own experience with sharks is minimal, definitely, but this one seems like kind of a puss. Especially if it's a guard shark. But now there's no sign of Sawyer, so Michael starts yelling, and then he gets down on his stomach and starts paddling over, which I guess he knows how to do in the special secret way to keep the raftlet from falling apart, like it did when Sawyer did it. He gets over to the pontoon portion, which is when Sawyer hauls himself up on the other side, and then he grabs Michael's hand and helps get him onto the new, improved raft (now with pontoon). It's nice that they're friends again. Surviving shark attacks will do that.
Final flashback of the episode. Michael waits on a park bench for Susan, who shows up with an impossibly cute Walt, looking about, I don't know, two? Three? Four? She apologizes for being late, since packing's "been a disaster" and the plane leaves first thing in the morning. Michael's unsure what to say, so he shows Walt the stuffed polar bear he brought for him. Funny how being attacked by a polar bear a while ago didn't make Michael think of this.
So Michael has a touching scene with his son as he talks about how they're not going to see each other, but Walt's going to have a great life, and his mommy's going to take really good care of him, as is Bryan (it clearly takes a little effort for Michael to say this pleasantly). "But you know what? I just want you to know, that no matter where you go, I...that your daddy...yeah, your daddy, he loves you very, very much. And I always will. Always. 'Kay?" Walt says nothing. Susan apologizes, but Michael says it's okay, and he stands up, and he hands over a bag to Susan and asks her to let Walt know sometime that it was from him. She smiles warmly and says she will, then says goodbye. "Goodbye," says Michael, trying not to cry as he does so, which gets harder as Susan and Walt turn their backs and walk away.
So Michael loves his son and it was tough to give him up? And here I was thinking we didn't learn anything from these flashbacks.
Present-day Michael is on the pontoon, sobbing. And it is getting a little dusty in here. I'm not saying the Walt custody thing wasn't well-acted or anything, just that it didn't really present anything we didn't know. And I don't buy the argument that we're supposed to make a connection between Michael losing his son back then and losing his son now. There's a huge difference between giving your son up because you think it's better for him (even if it sucks for you), and having your son kidnapped by biker gang pirates. Besides, would Michael feel any better now if he'd kept Walt all these years?
Anyway, Sawyer wakes up looking rather uncomfortable, sees Michael crying, and quietly asks if he's okay. "It's my fault," says Michael. "I never should have brought him on the raft." Sawyer looks down. Not to pile on, but I think he's probably right about that, although it's not like that would have been an easy call. Any other deserted island, leave him there, no question. Steady source of food, a doctor on the island, several people around. Because if your little rafting expedition is successful, then Walt gets rescued anyway. And if it's not, and you wind up running into biker gang pirates and bio-sharks, then he's still safe on the island. But this is Craphole Island, with polar bears and monsters and crazy Canadians and French women. And it might have been really tough for Michael to leave Walt behind, having found it so hard to give it up before.
Wait...did I just learn something from the flashbacks? Shit. I hate when that happens.
"I'm going to get him back. I'm going to get back my son," says Michael. Well...that's certainly a good idea. Sawyer looks kind of pained, maybe wondering if that's even possible anymore. Then he notices that the current's brought them right back to the island. "We're home," he says, resignedly.
Michael and Sawyer stumble ashore. I imagine both of them are wondering how awful it's going to be to face the other lostaways, especially Sun. Sawyer collapses on the sand, and they catch their breath for a moment. Then they hear, in the distance, someone shouting in Korean. "Jin?" says Sawyer. Oh sure, all Koreans sound the same to you, redneck. Oh, wait. It is Jin. He's running out of the woods, yelling at them, including "Michael!" and "Sawyer," while looking back over his shoulder fearfully. He falls down on the sand, still yelling, and Michael and Sawyer work to free him. His gibberish finally coalesces into the one word neither of them wanted to hear: "Rambaldi." I mean, "Others."
Oh, man. And Jin looks up, and they follow his gaze, to see a bunch of silhouettes, armed with spiked sticks, cresting a hill, coming towards them. Looks like Jin didn't use his Capital One card.