Episode Report Card Daniel: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Get your hands off my chicken
By Daniel | Season 2 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.15.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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 next. 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.