The 23rd Psalm

So anyway, the episode finally starts, and it's the first new content in what, six months? I want to say six months.

So we're in Africa, which you can tell because it's brown and dusty, and the show goes for the stereotypical bongo drum music that signifies Africa. It's Nigeria, specifically, and a bunch of kids are playing football, or, as it's called over in Europe, "American soccer." And there is a marketplace, and goats, and women carrying things on their heads, and a Coke bottle dropping from the sky.

Suddenly a truck full of gun-toting thugs comes roaring into the village. Replace the kids playing soccer with kids playing hockey and you have a normal small-town Alberta Saturday night, really. One of the boys, who turns out to be Young Eko, is wearing a cross around his neck. He looks concerned, as well he might, because now the ne'er-do-wells are hopping out of the truck and herding the children together. Shrieks and cries from the villagers earn a "be quiet" as the men run them out of the market.

A priest comes running out of the church, yelling for them not to take any more of the children, and he earns a rifle butt to the back of his head. One of the thugs yells, "Grab the old man," and said old man (not the priest) is dragged forward and forced to his knees. "Get the little one," says one of the thugs. "The little one" is the younger boy Young Eko is clutching to his chest. The leader of the gang steps forward, unholstering his gun, and rips the boy from Young Eko's arms. The leader puts the gun in the boy's hands, and helps him point it at the quivering old man. "Kill him," says the leader, stepping aside. "Shoot him now." I get it: the old man represents the viewers! The boy's terrified but doesn't pull the trigger, so he gets cuffed in the head by the leader, who orders him again to shoot the old man. Just as it looks like the boy is about the pull the trigger, Young Eko runs forward, grabs the gun, and shoots the old man himself, looking sick at what he's done. It's too bad he didn't grow up playing Grand Theft Auto, because then he'd be desensitized.

The leader grabs the gun from Young Eko's hands. "What's your name, boy?" he yells. "Young Eko," he says, quietly. The leader laughs. "Look at Mr. Young Eko," he says. "No hesitation. A born killer." He puts his arm around Young Eko's shoulder, rips the cross from Young Eko's neck, and hurls it to the ground. "You won't need that anymore," he says, leading Young Eko to the truck. The other boy picks the cross up and watches Young Eko drive off.

I don't know about you, but I have no idea how they're going to connect Young Eko and the cross and the Nigerian thugs to the dead bodies and the cross in the Nigerian drug plane.

Back on Craphole Island, Eko's carving words into his stick, which already has "hateth" and "Colosians [sic]" and "Titus" and "Revelations [sic]" carved into it. He seems to be really concentrating, and is startled to be interrupted by Claire, who's standing there behind him, holding Aaron, so maybe it's Charlie's day off. "What are you writing?" she asks. Eko considers the question. "Things I need to remember," he says. Email passwords and PINs, I guess. Claire could tell him that she's not exactly sure how crappy they had it over on their side of the island, but over here at Swan Station, they've got paper. "You mind if I sit?" she says, and he says go ahead. "So you're Eko, huh?" she says, and she introduces herself and Aaron. "Aaron? The brother of Moses?" he asks. No, I'm pretty sure it's a different Aaron. And then Claire does a little mini standup routine about the pressure of living up to Moses. Even Eko's all "whatever" about it. Then he asks why she chose that name, and Claire says she just liked it. "Aaron was a great man. Moses had great difficulty speaking, so it was Aaron who spoke for him," says Eko. She just liked the name, Eko. Claire says that Eko should talk to Charlie, who won't admit that he's religious, even though he totes around a statue of the Virgin Mary wherever he goes, the statue that he says he found on the island. That gets Eko's attention, and he asks to see the statue. He has a look on his face like Claire just turned into a zombie and started munching on Aaron's brains. Note to Lost: if I see that happen during sweeps, you're welcome. And also, I want a cheque.

So back at Claire's little piece of the island, Eko stands there glaring at Charlie's Virgin Mary statue, which I guess for the convenience of this scene Charlie isn't actually carrying with him wherever he goes. Eko interrogates Claire, getting quite riled up, about where Charlie found it, and she tells him that it's just a statue. "Just a statue?" he says. He puts it down on the table and smashes it with his stick, and holds up the baggie he finds inside. She clearly knows what it is. "Where is Charlie?" he asks.

Back from commercial, Locke's down in the hatch, fiddling with the combination lock (combination locke?) on the gun vault. Michael strolls in, asks if Locke's breaking in or breaking out. This is one of those conversation starters that lets Locke go off on one of his Grampa Simpson ramblings: "I used to love those old silent movies where the robbers would crack a combination lock with their ear pressed up against the safe. And the money they stole was always in a white bag with a big dollar sign on it." Michael kids Locke about not being old enough for silent movies, and Locke says, "I'm old enough," whatever that means. And since Locke didn't actually answer Michael's damn question, Michael just asks straight out if he's setting the combination. "With the new folks joining us I figure we better limit people's access to the guns," he says, which is kind of judgmental if you ask me, that "there goes the neighbourhood" reasoning, like, it was okay to have easy access to guns for responsible people like Sawyer and Charlie and Kate and Shannon, hey? "Can't have just anyone who wants one walk in and help themselves -- which I'm guessing is why you're here, Michael," he continues, looking up at Mike, who just stares at him.

Out on the beach, Jin and Charlie are fishing. Well, Jin's fishing. Charlie's singing Kinks songs. He could very well be high. He's asking Jin if he knows the Kinks, and I'm sure he'll get a little farther than if he were asking about Jin's familiarity with Driveshaft. Still, Jin has no idea what he's talking about, so Charlie keeps singing. Jin makes a gesture that clearly means Charlie should shut the hell up and get to work, but Charlie just says, "Oh, thank you very much, Jin. I do have a beautiful voice, don't I?" Just make sure you let him sing the chorus, Jin. Jin looks really sad. Then his attention is diverted by something behind Charlie, who turns and looks to see an angry Eko stomping up towards them. It's kind of like the first time we saw Eko, but unfortunately Charlie doesn't end up with a face full of splinters.

Holding up a piece of the broken Virgin Mary statue, Eko demands to know where Charlie found it. "What happened?" is Charlie's initial response, and then he says he found it in the jungle. Eko wants Charlie to take him there. Jin starts to say something, but Eko tells him it isn't his business, and orders Charlie again to take him to where he found the Jonesin' Mary. "Okay, fine. Yeah, we'll go for a stroll. There's nothing there. We'll go first thing in the morning, all right?" says Charlie about as casually as he can muster (which isn't very). "We're going now," says Eko. "Okay, let me go tell Claire so she doesn't get the wrong idea," says Charlie, like, so much for bluffing your way out of this one. He starts to tell Eko to wait there, but Eko says Charlie can tell her on their way. Charlie looks at him for a good long while, and he hands his fishing pole to Jin (maybe Jin can find someone who will actually use it).

Flashback: Car pulls up into a village. Same one? I don't know. Probably not. My show was all screwed up, like I got a widescreen feed or something on my non-widescreen television, like the opening credits had all the names cut off on the sides, and I couldn't choose the "widescreen enhanced" option on my television for some reason. Anyway, Young Eko gets out of the car, only he's actually Adult Eko now, and he's all cornrowed. He looks around, then heads into a small building nearby.

A young boy slings a couple of duffel bags onto the floor, and is then ordered to get some beers by one of the men Eko's meeting. Moroccans? "Where did you find this?" Eko asks. "What does it matter?" is the answer. Taking great pains to flash his gold tooth at everyone, one of Eko's men takes a bag of heroin from a duffel and puts it in front of Eko, who takes out this huge knife, like Crocodile Dundee-size, and puts a bit of the heroin on the tip and puts it on his tongue. I always thought it would be quite the learning process to tell if drugs are any good that way. "Fifty," says Eko. Fifty what, dude wants to know. One of Eko's men dumps some money from a sack onto the table. "Fifty is what I will pay you in exchange for the favour you are asking me to do." Dude pretends to not know what Eko is talking about, so Eko lays it out: "You have a large quantity of heroin in a country that has no poppies and no market for its sale. Your drugs are of no value here, so you must get them out. The borders are all guarded by the military so you must fly. But as I'm sure you are aware, the only private planes currently allowed into the air are either UN aid or the Catholic missionaries." Yeah, I have no idea where this is going. Eko continues: "And so you have come to me for a favour. I will buy your heroin. For fifty." The two dudes confer briefly, in Arabic, and yes, one of them says a word that sounds like "sayid." I'd be pretty surprised if it turned out to have any significance, though. "It is true what they say about you," says one of the Moroccans. "And what is that?" asks Eko. "You have no soul." Eko chuckles -- and then sweeps his knife in a broad arc, catching both men in the neck with one swipe.

The sound of dropped beer bottles on the floor alerts Eko and his crew that the beer-fetcher has returned. Eko's men point their guns at the boy, who looks terrified (guess he's seen GoodFellas). But Eko stops them, and says to the boy, "Go. Go. And tell your friends that I let you live. That Mr. Eko let you live." He'll regret that decision when the boy grows up and brings back his friends to kick Eko's ass.

Back on the island, Claire is only now cleaning up the broken shards of Virgin Mary statuette. Better for dramatic purposes, I suppose. Charlie and Eko stroll up, and Charlie asks Eko for a moment with Claire. "Hi, Claire," he says all casual, as Claire ignores him. "What happened to the statue?" he says. Yeah, that's the way to handle this, Charlie. "Don't play stupid, Charlie," spits Claire. "Play"? Claire shows him the baggies. "What's this? Because this was in your little statue. And, unless I'm mistaken, I seem to remember you saying you're a drug addict." Charlie pretends to have no idea that there were drugs in the statue. After all, if it was sealed up, how would he have known about it? Claire rolls her eyes. I'm amazed that Charlie thinks Claire is as stupid as he is. He says that he's not using, and to prove it, he breaks open the baggies and dumps them. "Look, you believe me now?" Claire just makes a "whatever" face and tells him that someone's waiting for him.

In the jungle, a poor defenceless jar of Dharma Ranch Composite Dressing (now 15 percent less pasty!) is sitting on a log. We pan around to see Locke showing Michael how to shoot a rifle, which is pointed right at the ranch dressing. You sick bastards! Michael asks how Locke learned to shoot. "My dad used to take me hunting," says Locke, forgetting to add, "until he got my kidney." Michael says he knows people are talking, "thinking I'm going to go running off after Walt again, which tends to include me also yelling 'Waaaaaallltt!' at the top of my lungs, and everybody seems to hate that." Locke says if people are talking, he's not hearing it. "But if I was, I'd say it's not a very smart plan." No it's not, agrees Michael. I agree too, but in Michael's defence, this is his son, and I don't see anyone else coming up with a better plan. And maybe Michael remembers when Claire was abducted, and doesn't really want to go the "let's hope Walt just wanders out of the bushes on his own" route. Anyway, Locke loads up the gun and says they should try one for real. Michael shoots and of course hits the bottle of ranch, splattering it all over the foliage. "Bravo," says Locke, and walks forward (hopefully to clean up the broken glass, not to mention the ranch dressing currently eating away at the indigenous flora). Michael just stands there staring down the rifle, totally getting his Bronson on.

Trekking through the jungle, Charlie is, and I know you won't believe this, whining to Eko about how Eko got him into a lot of trouble with Claire, "so thanks for that. Hope you're happy. Oh, that's right, you don't do happy." Does he do whiny weasel? Or is that exclusively your territory too?

So anyway, they stop by a tree, and Charlie's all casual: "All right, well, we're here. I found it right here, right by that tree." He's clearly lying, and Eko calls him on it. "You know what? I don't even know you. You asked to see where I found it. This is where I found it. We're done. Have a nice hike." Charlie starts to walk off, but Eko grabs him by the neck and flings him up against the tree, which if I were running this show would happen every episode. "You did not find the statue here. Take me to the plane," Eko says menacingly.

Back from commercial, Charlie and Eko are hiking. "How'd you know about the plane?" asks Charlie. "It's old, you know. It's been out in the jungle for years. Of course, you would know that. You know everything." Eko ignores this, and instead asks why Charlie lied to Claire. "You told her you did not know what was inside the statue." I wasn't lying, says Charlie. "Then what is the wrong idea?" asks Eko, and Charlie, being a twit, has no idea what Eko's talking about. "When I showed you the broken pieces of plaster, you said you did not want her to get the wrong idea. What is the wrong idea?" Charlie glares at him, and starts yelling that he doesn't have to tell Eko anything. "You come traipsing across the island and what, suddenly now you're in charge? You want me to take you to your plane? You best start treating me with some respect!" Thankfully, Charlie's interrupted when something behind Charlie catches Eko's eye. It's the infamous black smoke whizzing through the brush. Charlie wants to know what Eko saw, but Eko just says, "Let's go." Hard to tell, but it looks like maybe that's not the first time Eko's seen the smoke.

Flashback to the Nigerian village from the first scene. Outside the church, a woman is selling Virgin Mary statues as Eko strolls up. "Sir! Sir, if you buy a statue the money will buy polio vaccine for the village. Two-hundred naira, sir." Eko's examining the statues when a young priest comes out of the church. "What are you doing here?" Not hostile, but not friendly either. "I have come to give my confession," says Eko, and the two of them break into smiles. "Hello, Eko." "Hello, brother."

Inside the church, Eko gripes that he's come to visit for the first time in three years, but his brother won't hear his confession. "You know, Monsignor would have said he failed to raise a proper Catholic boy." Eko's brother, still smiling, asks why Eko would waste his time confessing, since it won't help him. "For confession to mean something, you must have a penitent heart." We learn that Eko's brother's name is Yemi as Eko chides him for his guilt: "I've only done what I needed to do to survive. How is that a sin?" Look, guy, it's the Catholic church: everything's a sin. Yemi's smile is long gone. "You may live far from here, but that doesn't mean I have heard of who you are and what you have done."

And maybe Kate should be teaching climbing lessons, as Charlie struggles and grunts to get anywhere and Eko urges him to "get higher," which is probably not something anyone has had to tell Charlie twice. Eko looks around the jungle nervously, like something seems a little off. We listen to the jungle noises, and if we're supposed to hear something out of the ordinary, I don't hear it, unless it's supposed to be one of those "a little too quiet" situations. Eko seems to sense something in front of him, and peers intently into the jungle, when trees and turf uproot in front of him, with the attendant whirring and mechanical groaning we've come to expect from Lostzilla. Charlie starts yelling for Eko to run, but Eko stands still, even as some more trees uproot, closer to him. Then we get an Evil Dead-style Lostzilla POV shot racing through the brush right up to Eko's face. Charlie up on the tree branch looks terrified, and as we look down, we see the large black cloud hovering in the air, still billowing and shifting, coming almost to a point right in front of Eko's face. "Staring contest: go!" says the cloud, and Eko looks at it, as best he can, and it looks kind of like the other Star Wars characters making eye contact with Jar Jar Binks, if you take my meaning. Not that it's Eko's fault. Anyway, as the camera spins around behind or through the cloud, we hear whirring and clicking sounds, and we see faint images flashing in the smoke; I slowed it down, and this is what I can see: the church roof, complete with cross; a man who could possibly be Goldie; almost definitely the old man that Young Eko shot; an upside-down man; someone who is possibly Yemi; a woman, possibly one of the villagers; a man with his head thrown back in what looks like agony; and a few more that I couldn't really make out. Then the cloud slowly starts to simultaneously pull back and dissipate. Eko looks up at Charlie, who stares back down at him. He didn't say to stop climbing, Charlie.

Charlie gets down off the tree and wants to know what the "bloody hell" Eko did. "I did nothing," says Eko. Charlie points out that most people, when they see a creature made of swirling black smoke, they run. Most people would also discuss it in greater detail from time to time too. "I was not afraid of it," says Eko, and Charlie points out that thing kills people. Eko just wants to know if Charlie saw the plane, which he did, about a kilometer that way. Yay, metric!

Down in the hatch, Michael's furtively glancing around, making sure no one's there, before going into the computer room, like he's playing Doom on the office computer. He also checks his watch, and I'm going to guess he took Kate's shift because he wanted to be there at the same time as when he heard from Supposedly Walt before. He sits down at the Appleocalypse II and types, but there's nothing on the screen. "Come on, come on. Where are you?" he mutters. Then, on the screen: "Dad?" Michael: "Are you okay?" Computer: "Yes. Are you alone?" "Yes." "Can't talk long. They're coming back soon." "Where are you?" "You need to com--" And that's all we see, because we switch to a shot of Michael reading the screen.

And then Jack comes in. Michael's fingers twitch over the keys. They exchange pleasantries, and Jack asks if he's down here alone. Well, no, Jack; you're with him. Michael says Hurley was also supposed to be down here, but he's apparently running late. Behind Jack, the counter flips from forty-seven to forty-six minutes. I thought last episode that Michael had stopped the timer, but I was wrong; I forgot that the counter doesn't display seconds until the last few minutes. Hey, I never said I was perfect. No, wait; I probably did. So now you know that I'm perfect except for that one minor detail I got wrong about the timer.

So Jack pulls over a chair, and sits down, but he can't see the computer screen from where he's sitting. Then he says no one's forgotten about Walt. Michael's all surprised, and Jack haltingly explains that as soon as they can, they're going to figure out a way to "go out and bring him back," and I'm not sure how much more of a plan they need than "go out and bring him back," myself. Are they waiting until everyone finishes ninja training? Come to think of it, I could handle waiting a while longer if people actually were in ninja training. Anyway, Michael thanks him, and glances at the computer screen. Jack asks if he's okay. Michael says he's fine. Jack gets up and walks around, glancing at the computer screen -- which is blank. It looks like the monitor is still on. It didn't look like Michael made a move to erase anything, so I don't know if we're supposed to assume that he did manage to turn it off, or if we're supposed to speculate that he's hallucinating the whole thing. Jack claps a hand on Michael's shoulder: "Well, I'll leave you to it, then." Michael thanks him, and presumably starts holding his breath re: the Lostaways' Operation Get Walt Back Now.

Out in the jungle, Eko and Charlie approach the plane. Eko circles around, apprehensively. As he stares at the open door, we flash back.

It's the plane, idling on a runaway. Eko and Goldie are dressed as priests, loading boxes onto the plane. One of his other men is watching the runway, sees something, and raises his rifle, warning Eko. There's a van driving up. Way to break character, guy. It's probably just the airport manager, wanting to wish them a safe trip, and now the priests are locking and loading.

Actually, it's Yemi, who gets out of the van and says he came to stop Eko, who tells him to go back to his church. "Do not get on that plane, Eko. You saved my life once and now I'm here to save yours." If Yemi shoots an old defenseless man, that'll be kind of unexpected. Yemi doesn't want Eko to get on the plane: "Let me take your confession. Anything I can do, I will do. But please, don't go." Wow, Yemi offers to take his confession. He's pulling out all the stops.

Outside the plane, Eko hands Charlie another Virgin Mary statue. "For the one I broke," he explains. Interesting, that, given that Eko knows exactly what's inside. So the plane's on fire now, which seems a little premature, given that not all that long ago there was a working radio inside that, as far as I know, hasn't been checked since Boone did a half-gainer down the cliff. Charlie chooses this time to ask a follow-up question: "So, are you a priest or aren't you?" All the questions that you think someone would have about a crashed plane with dead priests and smuggled heroin in it, and Charlie wants to see this guy's priest license. Eko slowly puts the cross back around his own neck, and says, "Yes, I am." Then he starts reciting the 23rd Psalm. I'm not going to get into whether the writer of the episode made the biggest mistake in the world by having Eko say "the shadow of the valley of death" instead of "the valley of the shadow of death" right after finding the body of his long-dead brother, killed thanks to Eko, because, come on. And yes, Charlie joins in, but he only starts moving his lips around the time Eko gets to that part, and I only actually hear his voice a line or two later. It is entirely possible that, Catholics or not, a drug-runner-turned-priest-imitator and a musician-turned-heroin-aficionado maybe aren't the ones we should be relying on for authentic Scripture. Google "shadow of the valley of death" for yourself and you'll see that thousands of others make the same mistake, even when you filter out the Marilyn Manson. This show has many nits to pick; this one's too small to bother with.

And as the two continue with their psalm, we see a montage of scenes back at the beach: Ana-Lucia poking a fire with a stick and apparently not currently shooting anybody, when Sun and Jin walk up so Jin can introduce Sun to Ana, who looks surprised and then touched at the civility, and she accepts an offering of fish from Jin; then there's Libby doing some drying or folding or some such and having a hell of a time until Hurley hops over to give her a hand, and they smile at each other, and it's too bad that people can't smile at each other without viewers assuming they're going to rip each other's clothes off; and there's Sawyer admiring his hair in a mirror, and for the life of me I can't see what is different about his hair, like maybe Kate got her scissors from the same store where Charlie got peanut butter for Claire. And she and Sawyer joke around, and Jack gives them a quick glance as he walks up with some pills for Sawyer, and Kate looks mildly embarrassed but only so's I get the impression she still wants the Option of Jack, and I can't believe that this three seconds of dialogue-free filler warranted mention in ABC's episode summary.

Charlie strolls over to Claire's place, and in another example of convenient timing, she is only just now throwing his stuff out (well, "out" is not exactly the right word when you live on a beach), so I guess she was sitting around waiting for Charlie to show up both times before she got her huffy on. Little bit of drama from the baby mama.

Not that she's not justified, even if Charlie decides to go the contrition route by admitting he lied and saying he's sorry. Sorry or not, I can't imagine Claire's really reassured when Charlie says he just "felt safer" having the heroin around. Claire says she doesn't want Charlie sleeping anywhere near her or the baby. Charlie looks all hurt. Suck it, bass boy. He takes his guitar and his suitcase and stomps off down the beach.

Later, at night, Charlie's carrying a torch (not a British flashlight, but an actual stick with flame) through the jungle until he finds a hiding spot, where he adds his new Virgin Mary statue to a pile of several that he's apparently been sneaking from the plane. Looks like he's got almost as many statues as he has people to blame for his problems (new this week: Eko, Claire, Aaron, Yemi).