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You'd think it might be tough to sum up the Tailaways' first forty-eight days in just one episode. But then you watch the episode and realize, "Oh yeah, we already know JUST ABOUT ALL OF THIS." From the tail section's splashdown to the shooting of Shannon Rutherford, it's all here! In point form! Ana-Lucia is the Tailaways' Jack, taking charge on the beach. Mistereko is the strong, silent type, who takes a vow of silence after killing two Others who invade the Tailaways' camp. Red herrings are thrown our way to make it seem like a guy named Nathan (should have named him "Nathan Rome" -- unscramble it!) is this side's Ethan (he's from CANADA, and he likes two-hour bathroom breaks). Most of the episode stretches out what Ana-Lucia told Michael last episode: on the first night, the others came and took three. Later, they came back and took nine more, including the kids. But the Ethan in this case is a guy named Goodwin. Given that we've met Goodwin as a stakeholder already, and the ominous "remember Goodwin?," the fact that he turned out to be the bad guy seems a little more obvious in retrospect. Ana-Lucia (and thank God Michelle Rodriguez finally displays a facial expression other than "sneer" this episode) eventually figures it out (Goodwin explains that the Others only take the "good" people, which is I guess why the Lostaways are still roaming free), and the ensuing scuffle is how he comes to have a giant pole sticking out of his torso.
The decimated Tailaways take shelter in another, crappier Dharma bunker. While the Lostaways found food, showers, weapons, computers, Mama Cass records, and a washer and dryer in theirs, the Tailaways get a bible, a radio, and a glass eye. Bernard's the one who picks up Boone's last transmission, and we can stop fighting about whether it was "there were no survivors" or "we're the survivors"; it's the latter. Unfortunately, Ana-Lucia enforces radio silence, thinking Boone's transmission was a trick by the Others to draw them out.
Then Jin washes up on the beach, which is where we came in. The extra five minutes is, naturally, bullshit; it's mostly quick flashbacks, which are really only comprehensible if you've already been watching the show, thereby wholly unnecessary.
And now you know...bits of the rest of the story. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We open with a section of pristine Hawaiian beach, which we've come to know and love and/or hate as Mystery Frickin' Island. It's a picture postcard (the classy kind, not the kind with some bikini-clad pneumatic blonde preening for the camera and "Wish you were her" scribbled on it). Suddenly, the gently lapping surf is broken by a splash here, then a few more there (black objects flying out of the sky presaging the watery explosions) and then, from the upper left, a discarded giant cigarette butt with fins meteors into the water in a white spray of ocean water. We fade to black, and we're told this is Day 1. So for any of you piecing together your unofficial show timeline, make a note: The crash happened on Day 1.Watery chaos! Unlike the Lostaways, most of whom awoke on a beach surrounded by scrambled airliner, the passengers in the tail section were welcomed to Craphole Island with an unsolicited baptism. Bobbing to the surface is Ana-Lucia, gasping for air. There are people treading water, clinging to wreckage, debris floating everywhere. Ana-Lucia strikes out for the beach.
There's a suit-wearing, bearded Mistereko, staggering from the water. Ana-Lucia struggles to remove her water-logged jacket, while around her corpses and live (for now) people wash up, with some (like Mistereko) helping pull the more disoriented to shore. There's the stewardess presently known as Cindy! Miss, will the beverage tray be coming around soon? Ana-Lucia dives back in to help rescue some more passengers. There's Libby, almost unrecognizable without her skin all sun-blasted and covered in grime.
Mistereko carries in a young boy, who is yelling for his sister (who happens to be named Emma, like my Great Dane, who sat up and stared at the television screen when the boy was shouting for her). Mistereko sets him down on the beach, and looks back into the water, where he spots a young girl floating face down in the water. He retrieves her, and puts her down while her brother (who is now clutching a teddy bear he didn't have a moment ago) watches. Ana-Lucia, tending another passenger, sees the unconscious girl and comes over to help. "She's not breathing," Mistereko tells her, and Ana-Lucia tries mouth-to-mouth. No good. Good ol' CPR (on this island, it actually brings people back to life) is . Mistereko compassionately hustles the boy away, promising him that Emma will be fine, while Ana-Lucia pounds away on her chest. After several seconds, the girl comes to, choking up water. Ana-Lucia makes this facial expression, I have no idea what it is. It's like her usual frown, only it's upside down. Emma asks where her mother is, adding that she's meeting them in Los Angeles. Ana-Lucia looks around, presumably not confirming that this isn't in fact LAX's arrivals lounge (not unless LAX has a frantic man yelling for his wife Pam). "We're not there yet," says Ana-Lucia. "Promise, get you home soon, okay?" Jesus, why lie? And if you're going to make a promise like that, it's probably not best to look around all fearfully and doubtfully at the flaming wreckage and wounded and dead passengers all around you.
Cindy sits, head in hands, on the beach. Mistereko walks up, tow-headed youngsters in tow, to ask if she wouldn't mind looking after the children for a moment: "There's something I have to do." Cindy, still quite discombobulated, says okay. Mistereko tells the children to stay with the nice woman, and he'll be back in a moment. They sit down obligingly. Eko rolls up his sleeves and starts pulling in the dead bodies. Kind of reminds me of Sunday mornings after dorm parties. Those were some good times.
On the beach, some guy is screaming about his leg, and how bad it is, and you really want him to shut up, and then Libby rolls up the guy's pant leg, and there is a knobby part where there should be no knobby part. Oh, gross. Still, how about a little stoicism? While Ana-Lucia watches, Libby soothingly tells the guy that it's not bad, and starts telling this story about going skiing in Vermont, racing a "cute ski patrol guy," and the knobby-legged guy does seem distracted, when "I went off this mogul, lost my edge, and BAM!" says Libby, at the same time, wrenching the guy's leg back into proper non-protrudingness. And my lord, how he does scream, and passes out, I think. "Snapped my left leg," she finishes, like the guy's even listening. "Now that, that was bad," says Libby. As Libby affixes the poor bastard's leg to a splint, Ana-Lucia asks if she's a doctor. "Nope. Sadist," she says. Actually, she says she had a year of med school before she quit (quit my ass) and is in fact a clinical psychologist. So the Tailaways don't have a doctor like the Lostaways do. But at least they'll be very in touch with how they feel about dying. Libby notes Ana-Lucia saving the girl's life and asks if she's a doctor. AL says no. I don't think she was planning to say just what it is she does do, but before she has a chance, some Sean Bean Lite dude runs out of the jungle yelling for help, saying there's a man back there.
Ana-Lucia and Sean Bean Lite race into the jungle (Ana-Lucia was the only one who decided to help? That's cold). There they find Bernard, still strapped into his seat. Distressingly, in the still-attached seat to him, there's a presumably dead body keeled over, totally harshing the island mellow. Even more distressingly, their seat section is lodged in a tree, thirty or forty feet in the air. Sean Bean Lite wants to climb the tree and pull him down, but Ana-Lucia says no. She starts yelling at Bernard; she finds out his name, and tells him he needs to unbuckle his belt, sounding just like a cop talking someone down from a ledge. Bernard, as you might expect, is a little freaked out about the body to him, but eventually listens to Ana-Lucia, and unbuckles his belt (straining a little bit more than you'd think, because Day 1 Bernard has a little more padding than we've seen -- Rose wasn't kidding when she said he has a sweet tooth). Now Ana-Lucia yells for Bernard to grab the branch to him, which he doesn't think he can do. "Bernard, those seats are gonna fall," she says. Well, when you put it that way... He slowly reaches over and grabs the branch, just as, naturally, down come the seats, Corpsey and all. A quivering Bernard wraps his arms around the tree, looking for all the world like an elderly, terrified koala bear, and Ana-Lucia tells him to hold on, she's coming up. Sean Bean Lite just stands there watching.
It's a little later, and the sun is starting to set. Mistereko has returned to his child-guarding, while Libby tends to the wounded. Ana-Lucia comes over to Sean Bean Lite, who's trying to start a fire with the old Cub Scout method of rubbing a stick between your palms. She asks if he found any matches. He sure did; he just likes to challenge himself. …No, he didn't find any damn matches, Ana. He says that he's trying to start a signal fire. "What are you, a Boy Scout?" she asks. See? He says he's the "grown-up version," which would actually be creepy if he didn't mean that he's in the Peace Corps. "They still have that?" asks Ana-Lucia. Can she ask any question not loaded with sarcasm? Dude doesn't care; he's just happy that someone her age even knows what the Peace Corps is, so I guess it's fair to say that the Peace Corps has downgraded its expectations from "achieving world harmony" to "awareness that Peace Corps exists." She asks his name; it's Goodwin. She introduces herself. And she is SMILING again, I swear to god.
Nighttime. A tortured Bernard turns away from the fire, and practically waddles (he can't be comfortable with all that stuffing) over to where Mistereko is squatting, all by his lonesome. "I heard that you were the one who pulled the dead bodies out of the water," he says haltingly. Eko says yes. "Were any of them African-American?" asks Bernard, which is all kind of stilted. "No," says Eko. Bernard starts to break down. "Because my wife...I can't find her." Mistereko offers to pray for her. Oh, and while you're praying, how about them rescue planes? Where are they? Mistereko says he'll pray for them too. He looks so calm, it would be easy to believe that praying would actually, you know, do something.
Even later that night. The Tailaways are sleeping around the fire, when they're awoken by the sound of grunting in the bushes. Uh, you might want to be careful about checking that out. I'm just saying. Goodwin grabs a stick from the fire, and Ana tells Libby to watch the kids. "Over here," says Goodwin, and he and Ana, the island's Briscoe and Logan, chase through the bushes, and find a panting Mistereko crouched, looking rather feral, between two dead bodies. He's holding a bloody rock, and his clothes are red too. He gets to his feet, looking anguished. "What happened?" says Ana-Lucia. Mistereko gets to his feet, still breathing heavily. He says nothing.
Day 2.
Apparently everybody decided to get a good night's sleep and deal with the bodies later, as it's now the middle of the day. Ana-Lucia's searched the corpses, who are wearing rather rudimentary clothes, and couldn't find any wallet, cell phone, or any kind of identification. The other Tailaways are gathered around, except for Eko, who's standing a little ways apart, still in his bloody shirt, which he only now removes. Ana-Lucia strolls over to ask if he's okay. I sure hope this isn't the first time he's been asked that. Mistereko barely glances over his shoulder; he doesn't respond.
Some schmoe is saying that three people are missing: "The blond guy, the curly-haired guy, and the German who was helping with the injured" are all gone. Ana-Lucia deduces that the dead ones were already on the island, from the fact that they were in the jungle with no shoes, nothing in their pockets, no labels on their clothes (hey, dead guy! Who are you wearing?). While she's going on about this, Mistereko is busy uprooting a small tree to serve as a weapon.
"We need to get off the beach. We need to find a safer place," she says, but the guy who announced that three people were missing points out that there are kids and people who are seriously hurt, so where are they gonna go? And what about the signal fire? How will we be rescued? Naturally, the Lostaways had the same discussion. There is nothing I would enjoy more for this episode than seeing the exact same plotlines! "Nathan's right!" says Goodwin. "Nathan," hey? Sounds like...Ethan! Ana-Lucia argues that what with the satellites and black boxes and the modern technology, the rescuers won't need a fire to find them. Unfortunately for her optimism, Cindy reveals that the pilot was lost and turning around, so they had been flying for two hours in the wrong direction, so searchers won't know where to look. Any more good news you want to share, Cindy? Nathan and Ana-Lucia look at each other.
Day 3. The Tailaways look like they're confining their food-gathering to a ten-foot radius around themselves, gathering up clams and looking under beach rocks for anything to eat. Libby comes over to let Ana-Lucia know that Donald's infected leg is getting worse. "He'll be the fourth to go," says Libby. Ana-Lucia thinks for a moment. "What are we supposed to do about that?" she says. Seriously, Libby. You're the one with medical training, and if you don't know what to do? Donald's dead, baby. Donald's dead.
Donald dies on Day 5. Well, he's buried on Day 5, anyway. He's laid to rest in a hole that will be covered with fronds, much like the several other graves already dug and filled. Hey, know how many people are buried in the cemetery? All of them! Mistereko doesn't attend Donald's funeral. He's standing looking out to sea. I like to think he hasn't moved since Day 3.
Day 7. Some Tailaways have surrounded a chicken. Wild chicken in the jungle? I know less about jungle fauna than I do about Persia vs. Arabia, apparently (and sorry about that), but doesn't that seem weird? I don't remember the Lostaways choking any chickens. Goodwin finally tackles the bird, and snaps its neck. Peace for everyone but the poultry!
Eko's now sitting by the water, using a sharp stone to carve something into the end of his stick. Den mother Libby comes by with some chicken for him. He ignores her. Come on, dude. It tastes like chicken! She notes that he hasn't spoken in a week, and asks him why. When he, surprise, doesn't respond, she tells him that it wasn't his fault, that he was only defending himself. He seems to ponder this for a moment, then goes back to carving his club. My theory? Screw-up with the photocopier blanked out Eko's lines, and J.J. just decided to roll with it.
Day 12. The Lostaways have their golf course, and, judging from what Ana-Lucia's making, the Tailaways have made a field-hockey pitch to pass the time. "That'll work," says Goodwin, and it turns out that it's a hunting weapon, since Ana says she heard a "pig or something" out there, and "maybe [they'll] have bacon tomorrow." Day twelve, still smiling. She watches Emma and Emma's Brother (whose name is, apparently, Zach, but I don't remember that being established in the show) play, and she starts frowning, I guess feeling bad about the stranded kids (even though they look like they're having a great time). She notices Goodwin smiling at her, and she kind of snaps at him, but just then Nathan stumbles out of the bushes, where he apparently went to the bathroom. Ana angrily reminds him that they have a system for that, which is going in pairs. Nathan looks like he wants to tell her to bite him, but he holds his tongue and apologizes.
It's night again. Everyone's sleeping again. And you know that when they show everybody sleeping, that something is going to happen to wake them up. With deadly results!
Sure enough, there are some barefoot burlap-wearers standing by the fire. And then, more chaos, of the kidnapping variety. The Tailaways are being dragged and carried and the commotion wakes everyone up. Libby yells that they took the kids, and Ana-Lucia is running around and gets tackled by an Other, so she resorts to Eko-Fu and grabs a convenient nearby rock and smacks the Other in the coconut. Libby tells Cindy that Nancy's gone -- maybe this is another child? Ana-Lucia wants to know which way the Others went, but no one really knows. So she grabs the body -- actually, corpse -- of the woman she beaned and starts yelling at her. "Who are you! Talk to me!" and Goodwin has to point out that she's dead. Ana-Lucia starts searching the body, and finds a knife and piece of paper that she unfolds while everyone watches. "It's a list," she says. A list of what, asks Libby. "Nine. Of us," says Ana. Shopping list, then.
Eko's turned up nothing looking for the Others' trail, and Ana-Lucia can't believe it. "They drag nine people into the jungle -- the kids -- and there's no sign of them?" Eko doesn't say anything, which makes Ana-Lucia really lose it: "Now's not a good time to talk? What needs to happen to make you say something?" Nathan tells her to calm down, but she's got his "calm down" right here, pal, and starts waving around the list of names of the nine people taken, what they were wearing and what they looked like. "They could have gotten our names from the people they already took," suggests Nathan, but Ana points out that nobody knew anybody's names the first night. "Maybe they're watching us," says Nathan. Think so? Thanks, genius.
Ana-Lucia points out that he was gone for two hours yesterday, and Nathan says that he was going to the bathroom. Was it really two hours he was gone? Because if it was, shouldn't there be a little more to it than that? I mean, I'm as likely as anyone to bring a Sports Illustrated in there with me, but...two hours? You read the letters, check out that gossip section where it tells you what Anna Kournikova is doing these days, skip the weekly book excerpt/inspirational feature on athlete overcoming adversity, and then you're cruising through "The Week In..." and skim Life of Reilly and you're good. Two hours? Oh, I know! He's supposed to appear suspicious! Goodwin interrupts the impromptu interrogation by pointing out that everyone's scared, but there's no need to get paranoid, as they don't know anything. Hey, don't sweat it; twelve people have been kidnapped, but LET'S NOT GET PARANOID. Bernard thinks it's crazy they would try to infiltrate the group, which is true, but -- given that we've seen the results, are the motives that important right now? Libby says they have to leave the beach, since the Others know they are there. Ana-Lucia looks at Goodwin. "You said we needed to keep the signal fire burning." He quietly says he thinks it's time they let it go out. She ponders this, while at the same time managing to glare at Nathan all I'm not done with you yet.
It looks like Ana-Lucia agrees with Libby and Goodwin (Eko presumably not offering his opinion), but she's probably thrilled that she gets to lead one of her Bataan death marches through the jungle. They come across a stream, so she lets everyone break for five minutes. "We've been walking for three days straight, Ana," complains Bernard, who looks like he's already lost thirty pounds. "And you're still here. Five minutes," says Ana-Lucia, in some nice post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacious reasoning. But Nathan has other ideas: "You want to keep walking? Go ahead. Fresh water, rock wall at our back, lots of fruit trees -- right here looks pretty good to me." He unshoulders his pack, and he and Ana-Lucia look at each other, with the rest of them looking at her to see what her reaction will be, before she finally says, "Fine, okay. This'll work," the way you might pretend to give permission to someone who's already made up his own mind.
Day 17. Ana-Lucia is hard at work digging a giant hole in the ground. Hiding place? Boar trap? Wine cellar? Close, but you're way off. Libby comes in and asks about what Ana-Lucia said about Nathan being gone for two hours. "He creeps me out, Ana. Do you really think it's possible that one of us is...one of them?" Ana pauses a moment. "Why do you think I'm digging this hole?" she says. Your own personal Lord of the Flies/Apocalypse Now descent into madness? But that's just a theory.
Day 19. Bernard and Nathan are setting up a little string and stick trap thing that's supposed to catch rabbits. Bernard seems unsure, but Nathan's confident -- at least, he is until Ana-Lucia walks in and kicks him in the jaw. Now he's just unconscious. Bernard's all, Ana! Holy shit!
So Ana-Lucia dumps Nathan into the hole, which by now is the fully realized POW pit once occupied (well, I guess that should be will be occupied) by Michael, Jin, and Sawyer. Nathan coughs and comes to, and understandably wants to know what's going on. "You and I are going to have a little talk, Nathan," she says. All this, because dude likes to take a long, reflective crap. He demands that she let him out, and she just responds by covering the pit. Ignoring his protests of innocence, she tells the other Lostaways that Nathan wasn't on the plane: "We were in the air for two hours. I didn't see him once. Not once." Well, I'm convinced. I can't believe she's serious with this shit. Goodwin points out that it was a big plane, but Cindy chimes in to say that she didn't see him either. "I'm pretty good with faces, you know, with the passengers, and I did not see him." Not to get ahead of myself here, but Cindy, mind taking a close look at Goodwin over there? Libby piles on too, saying that Nathan never talks about himself: "Every time I ask him anything, he just dodges." From what we've seen, this is true of Ana-Lucia too. Bernard wants to know, if Nathan really is one of them, why he's still here. "I don't know, but I'm going to find out," she says, and strolls over to where Eko is standing all silent and scary, holding his huge stick. "You got a problem with this?" she asks him. Like he's going to say out loud that he does.
Nighttime. Ana-Lucia opens the pit cover. "Where are the kids?" she asks. He doesn't respond, so she asks again. Again, nothing. She asks where he's from. Was anybody surprised when he said "Canada"? I called it. I guess I was suckered too, especially since Nathan clearly looks like he has to think about the answers to the questions he's being asked. He says he was at a company retreat, so Ana-Lucia wants to know where the rest of his colleagues are. "They weren't on the plane. I stayed a couple extra days to sight-see," he says. She asks why nobody saw him on the plane. "I was in the lavatory," he says. "For two hours?" Well, that's consistent, if nothing else. He says he doesn't remember her being on the plane either. "That's because you weren't on it," she snaps, and closes the cover on the pit.
Day 23. For those of you keeping score, Ana-Lucia's been keeping Nathan in Guantana-lucia Bay here for four days. It's sunny out. Ana opens the cover again, asks Nathan where the kids are. He doesn't respond. "Not talking to me anymore?" Which, naturally, he doesn't answer. Ana-Lucia might want to take a minute to think about why the people around her sooner or later stop talking to her. Then she sees something, and tells Nathan to get up. When he doesn't, she THROWS A ROCK at him. He scoots out of the way, and behind him are some banana peels.
So Ana-Lucia holds a big Tailaways meeting to find out who's been feeding him. "I'm trying to find out what they did to us," she says, and accuses Bernard of taking care of Nathan, which he denies, but asks Ana what if she's wrong. "We don't even know that there is a spy," he says. Sounds like it's time for some more circumstantial evidence! "Whose idea was it to stay at the beach where they could pick us off one by one? His. Nathan's," says Ana-Lucia, and Libby is there chiming in again: "Well, they haven't come since you put him there." Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Libby's looking more and more suspicious to me. Ana-Lucia asks again who did it, and Eko strolls up. "You?" says Ana-Lucia. Eko says nothing, and walks away. Not so tough now, are you, Ana?
Ana's drinking at the stream. Goodwin comes in, crouches beside her as she pulls out the knife and starts cutting fruit to eat. "I'm worried about you, Ana. You've had him down there four days." Ana then blames the torture on her promising Emma that she'd get her back home to her mom. Goodwin asks if she has any kids. "No," says Ana, after a bit of a pause, and she shifts her spot a little farther away from Goodwin, so read into that anything you want, or nothing at all. "We should let him go. We're not savages," says Goodwin. "If I were a savage, I would have cut his finger off already," she says. Goodwin's looking like, "I don't like where this is going..." "That's tomorrow," says Ana, closing the knife and walking away.
That night. Guantana-lucia Bay. Nathan sits. Does he ever sleep? Maybe Ana-Lucia's got him too scared. He hears footsteps approach and tenses up as the pit is opened. But it's Goodwin, throwing a rope down and telling Nathan to grab it and he'll pull him up. Nathan eagerly does so, and Goodwin hands Nathan a package. "Ana-Lucia -- I think we all think that she's going to hurt you. Now, you need to get away from here. There's some fruit in there. Now, just go." Nathan seems hesitant, but I don't think a thank-you is unwarranted (well, not yet, anyway), and then asks which way to the beach. Goodwin I think is supposed to flex his arm while pointing and saying, "THAT way," to show off his bicep, but he just says, "That way, maybe five miles." Nathan walks past him -- and Goodwin grabs him from behind and snaps his neck with as little effort as it took to choke the chicken. Yeah, you heard me. I went there. Again. Then, in case we're not fully clued in yet that Goodwin is evil, he glances around all shifty-eyed.
Day 24. Long slow pan up Ana-Lucia's body while she sleeps. She wakes up, rolls over, and sees Goodwin lying there (all the Tailaways are in the same general area), already awake, looking at her. "Morning," he says, and instead of flipping out because he's creeping her out, she just says "morning" too. Then Cindy comes running into the camp, yelling that Nathan is gone. I'm going to presume now that Cindy went to feed him, and that the rest of the Tailaways were also helping to look after him. That being the case, shouldn't they all have told Ana-Lucia to stuff it and let him out of the pit? Strength in numbers and all that? They head to the pit, and yep, he's gone. Goodwin acts as surprised as anyone. Bernard asks Ana what she's going to do. Not what they are going to do? "They found us. It's time to move," she says.
Day 26. The death march continues, and they come back to the ocean (not to the beach where they were before, though).
Day 27. The bunker door. Cindy asks what it is. Did anyone get here before you, Cindy? Well, Goodwin, but he looks genuinely as perplexed as the rest of them. Is it possible the Others don't know about the hatches? I suppose it's possible. Eko approaches the door, despite Ana saying, "What are you doing?", and then she and the rest follow him, presumably figuring that he'll be killed first if anything happens, giving them time to get out of the way. He slowly opens the big creaking door, which reads "Quarantine" on the inside in block letters. The place is, as it was when we first saw it, a cave compared with Swan station. The Dharma logo is on the wall, with an arrow instead of a swan. "What is this place?" asks Cindy. Again, we DON'T KNOW, Cindy. ["At least this is somewhat natural dialogue involving the asking of questions, for a change; I'd say the same thing even if I knew nobody else would likely know the answer." -- Sars] Goodwin offers the theory that it's a storage facility. Ana-Lucia, meanwhile has found some sort of control panel and turns on some lights, which is very exciting. And they find a trunk. Inside are a bible, a radio and a...glass eye? Is this Tom Waits' office? Half his songs on my iPod are about or inspired by those three things.
Outside the hatch, Bernard tries the radio, but he gets nothing but static. Goodwin helpfully points out the hills are blocking any signal, and they need to get to higher ground. Guess who volunteers. Ana says she'll come with, and Goodwin, as nonchalantly as he possibly can, says she should stay and get the place set up as a shelter. Exactly what would that entail? It's a bunker, and they're a bunch of castaways. They're going to fortify it how? Ana-Lucia says they can all set it up, and she and Goodwin can be back in a couple of hours.
So they're hiking, and to make conversation, Ana-Lucia wonders why the Others (not that they're referring to them that way) are attacking them. "Maybe they're not attacking us," says Goodwin. Now that we, the viewers, are aware that he's one of the Others, is he now actively trying to arouse suspicion? Ana-Lucia just says, "Yeah, they just drag us into the jungle every now and then. No real harm done." She also wonders why they took some and not the others. Goodwin provides KEEN INSIGHT into how these people are thinking: "That first night they took the strongest of us -- your quiet friend, three other guys. They're all athletic...tough...threats." They didn't take you, points out Ana. Ooh, burn. "Guess they changed their plan after two of them got killed," he says, which isn't an implausible explanation.
They've come to an open area, and Goodwin suggests taking a break, so they sit to have some food. Goodwin pulls the radio out of his backpack and sets it down beside him. Then he asks for the knife. She just stares at him for a moment, and he holds up a pomegranate, and she hands over the knife. So...she's suspicious of him? And isn't making an effort to hide it? Yet she hands over the knife anyway? And he's letting her know that he's aware of her suspicion but not saying anything about it? He cuts off a slice of the pomegranate and offers it to her. She takes it, with an extra-special close-up of him holding the knife as she takes the piece of fruit. She wonders aloud where the Others got an army knife, when they don't even have shoes. He looks at the knife, perplexed, not knowing what she's talking about. "Here, I'll show you," she says, reaching for the knife. He hesitates before handing it over. So he knows that she's suspicious, and gives her back the knife anyway. It would be nice if these two could try to keep up appearances. Anyway, now Ana-Lucia has the knife, which has U.S. Army stamped on it. "You see the tang stamp? This knife's probably 20 years old. You don't see these anymore, yet here it is, on this island. Weird, huh?" Goodwin nods. Then Ana-Lucia asks if she can ask him something. You just did! Goodwin says sure. "When you ran out of the jungle the day of the crash, how did you find Bernard up in the tree?" "I heard him shouting from the beach," he says. "From the beach?" says Ana-Lucia. Goodwin tosses away the last bit of pomegranate and wants to know why she's asking. Ana-Lucia's face reads "the jig is up" as she says, "Did he see you out there? Is that why you pretended to be one of us?" Goodwin just watches her. "You ran out of the jungle ten minutes after the crash. You weren't wet. You were never even in the ocean," she says. Goodwin closes his eyes, slowly shakes his head, sighs. Ana-Lucia asks where his friends are. Goodwin says nothing. Ana-Lucia starts to ask about Nathan, and Goodwin calmly interrupts her: "If you had cut off his finger and he still told you he was on the plane, I think maybe you would have started to believe you had the wrong guy." Did you kill him, asks Ana-Lucia. "Nathan was not a good person," is the chilling response. Goodwin leans forward. "That's why he wasn't on the list." So the Others have something against Canadians, but Ethan was fine using us as a cover story? Not cool. Ana-Lucia asks if they killed the children. "The children are fine," says Goodwin, and for those of you who think they're dead because that's what people mean when they say someone is "in a better place," please take note of what Goodwin says: "They're better off now." ["And the teddy bear we saw in the first act went off in the third, so." -- Sars]
And now it's time to rumble! Ana-Lucia swings at him and he throws her to the ground, knocks the knife out of his hand. And then...oh, that's right; we know that this ends with Goodwin dead, a stake sticking out of his chest. It was awfully fortunate for Ana-Lucia that during the struggle she landed right by a large stick with a (I kid you not) sharpened point on one end. This island is crazy for lethal weapons just sort of lying around within reach whenever you're in a fight. Cheers, Goodwin.
Ana walks out of the bushes into the clearing where the rest of the Tailaways are waiting. "Where's Goodwin?" asks Libby. "We're safe here now," is all Ana-Lucia says, and she walks away. Well, that explains EVERYTHING.
Day 41. Bernard's fiddling with the radio, and Ana-Lucia snidely asks him why he's wasting his time with it. He's in the middle of saying that he turns it on only a couple minutes a day, when we get Boone's final transmission, finally settling the argument; when Boone says, "We're the survivors of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815," Bernard says, "We're the survivors of Flight 815." Then Ana-Lucia grabs the radio away from him, saying it's just the Others trying to draw them out. Bernard protests that whoever was transmitting knew the flight number. "They know our flight number because Goodwin knew our flight number," says Ana-Lucia. Bernard's desperate to find out if there are survivors out there, but Ana shuts him up with, "There are no survivors!" Your own presence proves otherwise, but never mind. "This is our life now. Get used to it," she spits, and stomps off.
She kneels by a stream, and starts to break down. Who says Michelle Rodriguez can't act? She stops herself when she sees Eko standing there watching her. She barks at him, for no one must see her cry. He tells her that everything's going to be okay, and he crouches beside her. "What, you're talking now?" he says. "It's been forty days," he says simply. "You waited forty days to talk?" she says. "You waited forty days to cry," he says, and that totally sets her off, and she collapses, sobbing in his arms. I'm going to hope that the tears aren't strictly of the "even a girlfighter needs to let it out once in a while" variety, and that some of these tears are being shed for Nathan, whose death Ana-Lucia bears some of the responsibility for, whether you like her or not.
I would like to point out that after the ensuing commercial break, we'll be at 59 minutes, meaning that everything up until happened within the regular episode time allotment. So the upcoming "bonus" minutes had better be good.
Day 45. Cindy and Libby are fiddling with a net on the beach. Cindy glances around, sees a body washing in with the tide. "Libby," she says, and Libby checks it out. They make their way across the sand and roll Jin over onto his back, where he starts coughing up water. "Get Ana-Lucia. Quick!" says Libby. Oh, and Cindy, before you go, would you mind taking a close look at Jin's face and checking it against your amazing stewardess's passenger-face memory? Because we know Jin was on the plane. So if you could confirm that before getting Ana-"Hang 'Em High"-Lucia involved, you might save a few people some unnecessary and painful beatings.
Cut to a blindfolded Jin, tied to a tree. Cindy, you suck. Eko pulls off the blindfold and asks Jin who he is and where he comes from, and Jin responds in Korean. And this time, nobody but Ana-Lucia thinks he's one of the Others. And while they argue about it, Jin manages to break free and go running through the bushes to the beach, where he finds Michael and Sawyer, and warns them just in time for them to get hit with some serious Eko lumber.
They're dragged through the jungle and dumped into Guantana-lucia Bay. Ana-Lucia tells Eko to hit her, so she's more believable when she goes undercover as a prison snitch. "You think they're okay? Let's find out," she says. Eko belts her. Is that because he's the biggest, or did the rest of the Tailaways hold a raffle for the privilege? Slow-motion montage of all that ensues. It's slow motion! The four "bonus" minutes isn't even four full minutes! What kind of bullshit is this?
Day 46. We need a mon-taaaagggee... Our heroes climb out, we revisit the bunker, we see Bernard.
Day 47. Jungle march. Michael! Ana-Lucia! Eko! Sawyer fall down!
Day 48. We pick up right we last saw the Tailaways, looking around frantically for Cindy. Suddenly, there's motion in the bushes, and the rather trigger-happy Ana-Lucia shoots Shannon in the gut. Can we now all agree that Shannon is dead and that Ana-Lucia is the one who shot her? At least those of us who don't need Maggie Grace herself to actually die before we believe it?