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Much like last year's season opener, Lost kicks off with a confusing bit of misdirection set to classic pop music. In this case, it's Petula Clark singing "Downtown" over a bafflingly acrimonious book club meeting. The meeting is broken up by an earthquake-rumbling, but it's not coming from the ground. As the passionate Stephen King lovers and haters make their way outside -- "It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...yup, a plane!" -- to see the final airborne moments of Oceanic Flight 815 as it breaks apart and crashes somewhere near their bucolic Craphole Island community, populated by Ethan, Goodwin and Henry Gale, known here as Ben, who appears to be the former squeeze of the book club hostess, Juliette. He orders Goodwin and Ethan to make their way to different parts of the wreckage and to pose as survivors.
In the present day, Jack, Kate and Sawyer are facing various trials. Kate has a long, hot shower and then gets to play dress-up for a beach breakfast with Henry Ben-Gale, who insists on handcuffs. Later, her wrists are raw and bleeding, but we don't see what happened, although Hen-Ben warns her that the six...sorry, two weeks will be very unpleasant. Meanwhile, Sawyer is proving himself to be a very poor lab rat, as he is bested in a push-the-button, get-the-food test by bears, apparently. And Jack engages in mind games with Juliette, who recently should rethink her method for delivering food to prisoners. Then again, she can't even keep her CDs organized. Jack jumps her -- no, not that way -- but his escape is thwarted when the door he tries, to Ben and Juliette's dismay, turns out to let in the whole damn ocean. Juliette clocks him good.
The flashbacks are about a very unhinged Jack, who obsesses over finding out who Sarah's new boyfriend is. It gets so bad that he starts suspecting his dad, and follows Christian to what turns out to be an AA meeting. And it's not long before Jack attacks his dad. Fortunately for the both of them, the Rageaholics Anonymous meeting was just down the hall.
None of the other Lostaways is even so much as mentioned, possibly because Hurley is still making his way back to camp. Since this wasn't one of the most action-oriented episodes ever, I was kind of expecting a big cliffhanger ending. Which turned out to be Jack asking Juliette, who has a dossier on him, not what Sarah's new man's name is but if she's happy. Screw Sarah! Make me happy! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Closeup on an eye, which turns out to be scanning a CD rack. A hand reaches out and grabs what is recognizably the case for Speaking in Tongues by the great Talking Heads, and since I am one of those guys who have to know these things and let everyone else that I know these things, I immediately announced, "Cool! Talking Heads!" to everyone watching with me. Much to my chagrin, Petula Clark starts warbling "Downtown," instead. That is not a song I hate. But it is not Talking Heads. And I can only surmise that either a) Lost planned to use a Talking Heads song but couldn't work out a deal or b) this person is a natural enemy to music geeks like myself: that person who takes CDs from the player and puts them in the case of the CD they now want to listen to instead, such that none of the discs match up with the cases in their collections, and when you want to listen to something, you have to work your way backwards until you suddenly find the Talking Heads CD in, like, the My Bloody Valentine case or some such. And forgive me if it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but those people are the greatest evil mankind has ever known.
Besides, for this show, the Talking Heads album you want is Stop Making Sense.
Anyway, this woman is now looking at herself in the mirror, and I thought it was Penny, but it turns out it's another blonde woman for me to get mixed up with the rest of them. She looks like she put on "Downtown" to try to cheer herself up about something, but she almost breaks down anyway, and then resolutely starts bopping her head, forgetting all of her worries and all of her cares.
She's rearranging furniture, putting chairs in the living room and propping up the sofa cushions, before a buzzer alerts her to the fact that she's apparently smoking some muffins in the oven. She grabs an oven mitt to futilely wave the smoke away, and she grabs the muffin tray with it but burns her hand anyway, dropping the tray. Muffins roll every which way. This is when the doorbell rings.
The muffin mangler opens to the door to an older woman, who notices -- oh, let's just call her "Juliet" -- the towel wrapped around Juliet's hand. "I burned my hand. On my muffins," she sighs. They both glance around the side of the house, where we see the lower half of someone tinkering on something. "He still hasn't fixed the plumbing?" says the visitor, and the indignant repairman yells out that it's a work in progress.
Inside, some douchebag is asserting his alpha male status all over the book club, which doesn't exactly make me afraid of him. He's grouching about how the book isn't even literature, it's religious hokum pokum, science fiction, etc. "Now I know why Ben isn't here," says "Adam," which snaps Juliet out of the daze she's in. "Excuse me?" she says. Adam says he knows that the host picks the book, but Ben "wouldn't read this in the damn bathroom." Well, not everything can be Bad Twin, I suppose. Juliet sticks up for her selection, saying it's her favourite book, and she's thrilled he hates it. The older woman smirks at the Book Club Bully being taken down a peg. Juliet sarcastically calls herself silly for picking a book Ben wouldn't like, and starts going off about "free will," but before these two can paper-cut each other to death, the house starts shaking.
The book club puts aside its internal strife to seek the safety of the house's doorframes, but the shaking lasts just a few seconds and then stops abruptly. They spill out of the house, as does everyone on the street. The plumber scoots out from under his work, and he turns out to be Ethan Rom, Esq., deceased and possibly Canadian. From another house Juliet sees, comes the man we know as Henry Gale, looking even more discombobulated than everyone else. And while it may just me, it looks like Henry is looking up at the sky while everyone else is still looking for damage at the ground level. Of course, he's also kind of short, so maybe that's just how he's used to looking around.
And then we see it: a plane trailing smoke, streaking across the sky, much too low without an airport anywhere in sight. The tail rips off, confirming that this is Oceanic Flight 815, and the plane falls to ground.
Henry barks for Goodwin, and there he is! The peace corpse from the peace corps! Henry asks where the tail landed, because Goodwin has those magic eyes Henry doesn't that can see through the trees and mountains, and Goodwin says probably in the water. "If you run, you can make that shore in an hour," says Henry (or, if he doesn't stop for lunch, apparently, ten minutes!), who then calls Ethan over: "Get up there to that fuselage. There may actually be survivors. And you're one of them. A passenger. In shock. Come up with an adequate story if they ask. Stay quiet if they don't. Listen, learn, don't get involved. I want lists in three days. Go!" Ethan and Goodwin scurry off.
Henry turns to Juliet, who's watching him, and she managed to hang onto her book the entire time, through the apparent earthquake and then the rubbernecking. It's a Stephen King book with the title covered up. Henry raises his eyebrows. "So I guess I'm out of the book club," he says. Juliet doesn't say anything. She half-smiles and then turns away. And the camera does a step-zoom-out to show their little community, situated smack dab in the middle of Craphole Island. In none of the aerial shots do I see the Chapters outlet, so my biggest question for this series now is: where does the book club get its books? The original Amazon.com, I suppose.
After the first commercial break, we watch some shady-looking unshaven guy drinking coffee and creepily watching a playground full of children. This can't be going anywhere g-- oh, it's Jack. He's listening to the Glenn Miller Orchestra's Moonlight Serenade, which this show seems to love. With eyes like two piss-holes in the snow, he watches a laughing Sarah strolling out of the school, and getting rather chummy with what looks to be another teacher. They canoodle, apparently oblivious to the withering glare emanating from the car across the street.
But it's a short flashback. Island Jack snaps awake, lying on some metal bench or shelf in a dimly lit room. There are chains hanging from the ceiling. He sits up, rubs his head, and tries to get his bearings, looking like he doesn't recognize this room. On his left arm is a bandage over a cotton ball, like the nurse gives you after she's given you a needle. Jack tries the door; it's locked. There's also a decrepit intercom on the wall. He tries pushing the button, but there's no sign that the thing has worked even in years. On the far side of the room, he spots a door that's slightly ajar, and he makes for it, only to run smack-dab into... an invisible force-field! No shit! Oh. It's just the glass. How prosaic. Really clean glass down here in this dingy Splinter Cell-esque location. If we look closely enough, we can see the seams. Jack tries kicking it a few times, to no avail. Then he starts yelling for Kate. Not Sawyer.
Kate is elsewhere, groggily waking up in what seems to be a locker-room shower. Standing nearby is Zeke. He's beardless, and dressed more like a retired traveler, in khakis. All he needs is a Tilley hat. "Rise and shine, Kate," he says. She asks where she is. "You don't really think I'm going to answer that, do you?" he says. So she tries asking where Sawyer and Jack are, like that's going to work. Zeke just suggests she take a shower -- he's got a towel and soap and shampoo for her. She snarls that she's not going to shower in front of him, which sets him chuckling. "You're not my type," he says. There's some debate over whether, by "you," Zeke means, "you people with vaginas," which I have to admit was my initial response. Mainly because... well, damn. It's Kate! He leaves, and she briefly looks a little chagrined that her feminine wiles have no effect on Zeke whatsoever. Or maybe he brought the wrong shampoo for her hair type. Too bad she's not going to be able to manipulate him like she does Jack and Sawyer. And she too rips off a bandage-and-cottonball on her arm.
So that leaves just Sawyer, who wakes up outdoors in some sort of cage. He looks around, at the building and Dharma logo-stamped canopy and P.A. speakers -- it looks very much like an abandoned zoo. Across from Sawyer is another cage, with someone sitting in it, his back to Sawyer. "Hey!" Sawyer hisses. "Where are we?" There's no response, so he snarls something sarcastic about the other guy not talking because he's got something better to do. Sawyer's been awake twenty seconds and has already managed to alienate the only other person around.
So he looks around his cage, and sees a large red button with a graphic of a knife and fork on it, over top of a little chute and a pipe, for water presumably. Nearby is some sort of foot pedal underneath some kind of lever. Sawyer puts on his best stink-eye and pushes the red button. No food comes out, but from a speaker above the button a recorded voice says "warning." Scowling, he tries again. This time a buzzer sounds in addition to the "warning." Displaying less learned behaviour than Pavlov's dogs, Sawyer's all set to push the button again, when the dude in the other cage says, "I wouldn't do that." "Want your advice I'll ask for it," snarls Sawyer, who pushes the button and is zapped with a shock powerful enough to send him flying backwards, smacking into the bars. I like the new season already! "Son of a bitch!" he yells, writhing on the ground, earning a "told you" from the other guy. Don't take it personally, guy. He never listens to anybody.
Back in Jack's prison, Jack decides to yank one of the chains hanging from the ceiling, which looks to be run through some sort of pulley system. He heaves on it as hard as he can, but it doesn't do anything except make a whole lot of noise. I guess he figures that that's better than nothing, because he keeps yanking, until someone tells him to stop it. On the other side of the force-field (I can still pretend) enters the Stephen King fan. "Hi, Jack. I'm Juliet." So "I'm Juliet" is the act break, huh? Maybe if we keep watching we'll find out her last name!
When we come back, Flashjack is checking in with a receptionist at some office. Sarah's already there, on a couch behind him. "Where's your lawyer?" she asks, and Jack just says, "You look pretty," as he strolls over and sits down, so you know things are going to go well. She ignores the compliment and asks again about his lawyer. Jack says he fired his lawyer. Then he begins apologizing for pushing them to this place. But he's interrupted by Sarah's cell phone ringing, because she's one of those people who have that disease wherein they can't locate the fucking OFF BUTTON on their cell phones, and another symptom of this disease is that they have to answer the cell phones instead of pushing the ignore button. Like Sarah is lacking the thought process wherein a normal person might say, "You know what? During the divorce proceedings, I will not rudely answer a cell phone call FROM MY NEW BOYFRIEND."
So naturally after she's done giggling on the phone with her new man, Jack's not in quite so conciliatory a mood, especially as she sits back down and starts to say, "Jack, I'm going to say this as simply as I can... " and Jack interrupts her to say, "What's his name?" She tells him to stop, and he says he won't, and he's going to keep asking that until she tells him. "Look, you can have everything -- the cars, the house -- I don't care. I just want to know the name of the man that is with my wife." He'll give her the house and the cars for that? Firing his lawyer was a bad idea. Sarah stares at him, but doesn't say anything, just gets up and leaves instead of taking the deal.
Back on the island, Jack is still standing on the table and yanking on the chain for god knows what reason. He's like a three-year-old who's just been told that he will not, in fact, be going to Chuck E. Cheese's tonight. Juliet turns up the volume on the sound board -- is the other room soundproof? -- and asks if Jack can hear her. He just keeps yanking on the chain. "Where are my friends?" Juliet tells him to come down from the table first. Jack's all "make me" and yells again for her to tell him where his friends are. Jack, use your indoor voice! "I will, if you let go of the chain," she says. "You think I'm stupid!" says Jack, who, in Juliet's defense, isn't really doing a whole lot to disprove that idea. "I don't think you're stupid, Jack. I think you're stubborn," says Juliet, as if the two are mutually exclusive. As if to prove that he can be both, Jack starts yanking on the chain again.
Kate is still showering, and must have used up all of Craphole Island's hot water by now. With a towel wrapped around her, she pads over to the locker where she left her clothes, only they're not there anymore. I understand the plan is to have Kate in a towel all season long. It could happen! "Hey! Where are my clothes?" she yells. No one answers. But on a nearby locker is a piece of masking tape that says "WEAR THIS" and you should always listen to masking tape. Inside is a sundress with a floral print. She puts it on and admires herself in the mirror...instead of maybe looking around to see if she can't, you know, escape? At any rate, Zeke is right there whistling at her, like I guess in addition to everything else, the Others are also sexist pigs, even the gay ones. But she does clean up nice. She crosses her arms and glares at him. "Come on, Kate. He's waiting."
Zeke and three armed Others walk Kate outside and down some steps to a covered walkway, and then down to a nearby beach where Henry -- I mean "Ben" -- sits under a thatch-roof hut at a table set for breakfast. Kate briefly looks surprised to see him for some reason, but then puts her mad face back on. Ben pulls out a chair for her to sit on, which she does, noticing a pair of handcuffs on the table. "Sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to put those on, Kate," says Ben. Well, she's got experience, so I'm sure it'll be no problem. "And if I don't?" growls Kate. "Then you don't get any coffee," pouts Ben, pushing down on the French press coffee thingamawhatsit. Kate apparently really wants coffee, as she puts the cuffs on. "A little tighter," prompts Gale. Kate glares at him, but she complies. Ben still has those ouchy looking cuts on his lower lip. He needs some Polysporin action for that, get them healed right up.
"What did you do with Sawyer and Jack?" asks Kate. Ben asks her why she asked about Sawyer first. Because no one can say "Jack" and "Sawyer" simultaneously? And when she says "Jack and Sawyer" she always gets that John Cougar Mellencamp song "Jack and Diane" stuck in her head? Kate looks almost as tired of the love triangle as I am, and just snaps that Ben doesn't know her. "Of course I don't," says Ben, who has dispensed with any kind of table manners and is completely stuffing his face. Kate asks for her clothes back, but Ben says they burned them. Kate wants to know why he brought her to breakfast and made her put on a dress.
Ben gazes out over the water, and says, "I brought you here so you'd look out at the water and feel comforted -- comforted that your friends were looking out at the same ocean." Is he talking about Sawyer and Jack? 'Cause those guys aren't doing any kind of whale watching. But Ben's got more to say: "I gave you the dress so that you'd feel like a lady. And I wanted you to eat your food with a real live fork and feel civilized. I did all those things so that you'd have something nice to hold on to. Kate stares at him as he wipes his mouth. "Because, Kate, the two weeks are going to be very unpleasant." He gets up and walks past Kate, who I don't imagine is going to be enjoying that bacon, which is just sitting there.
Flashjack is sitting in his office, dialing numbers from a pad of paper on his desk, and offering up some bullshit story about meeting a woman named Sarah on the train and she dropped her cell phone, and blah blah blah. Christian strolls in, despite Jack asking his father to give him a minute, but his dad puts two and two together pretty quickly and wants to know why Jack's dialing all the numbers on Sarah's cell phone. Actually, I guess he didn't put quite all the pieces together, because it's pretty obvious why Jack's doing it, but Jack spells it out anyway. "One of them is him," he says, and his dad tells him to stop it. "Not until I know his name. Where he works, where he lives, when they first kissed -- I want to know what it is about him," says Jack. Maybe he's not a psycho. At this point, that could be all that Sarah's looking for. While he's been talking, Jack's been dialing another number, and Christian's cell phone rings. Hee! Well, I'm sure Jack will react calmly and rationally.
Jack stares in shock, and Christian makes an, "Oh, shit" face. "Why is Sarah calling you, dad?" asks Jack. Christian says he thinks Jack should let it go. In a surprise move, Jack refuses to let it go. "Why is she calling you?" he yells, and Christian offers the entirely plausible answer that she was afraid for Jack. "She could see that you were slipping, you were losing your grip, which is exactly what's happening here." Jack vehemently disagrees, but Christian says he knows a little something about being obsessive. So Jack drops a bomb in Christian's backyard: "No, being a drunk is not obsessive." That may be so, Jack, but at least in the morning Christian's going to be sober.
Christian stares at him for a little while but doesn't say anything, because really, now that the argument has gone to that place, there's no point, right? "Let it go, Jack," he says quietly, and leaves. I do think Jack looks at least a little regretful about what he said. As for whether Jack should have recognized his father's cell phone number, I confess that most numbers I dial are programmed into my cell phone and I select a person's name from the phonebook and never see the number. I also think that on the scale of unlikely things that have happened on this show in the past two seasons, Jack not recognizing his dad's cell phone number is pretty far down the queue.
Back on the island, Jack's so thirsty that he tries to catch some nasty dripping dungeon water in his mouth, but that turns out to have been a bad idea, and he spits it out. Nearby, the intercom starts emitting little scratches of static, with a very faint voice underneath. Jack goes over and starts yelling that if someone's trying to talk to him, he can't hear them. And then, barely audible, is Jack's father's voice saying, "Let it go, Jack." So we're revisiting Jack hallucinating about his old man, huh?
Jack doesn't have a whole lot of time to think about this, because an overhead light switches on, and Juliet's come into the room opposite with food and water. "I know you're hungry," she says, and tells him to sit across from the door, with his back against the wall; she'll open the door and leave the tray. "Can I trust you to do that, Jack?" she asks. "I don't want your food," snarls Jack. That would be a big ol' negatory, Juliet. Be careful. Instead, she tries touting the sandwich's virtues; i.e., its deliciousness. But what Jack wants is for her to tell the guy trying to talk through the intercom that he can stop. "Maybe you're hungrier than you think. That intercom hasn't worked in years," she says. Plus, your father's been dead for months!
Jack notices a big red button behind Juliet and asks what it's for. She presses it, and all her office supply needs are instantly met, Jack. Jesus. What are big red buttons always for? "It's for emergencies," she says.
Jack wants to know who's watching him, but Juliet ignores this to ask him again about sitting against the wall so she can open the door. We get an extra-special closeup of what seems to be a grilled-cheese sandwich, cut diagonally into quarters, each with a -- what the hell? -- toothpick stuck into it. Give the prisoner some tiny sharp objects. Good idea. "It's just off the frying pan," she says, but Jack tells her she can have it.
Juliet sets the tray down, but then picks up the plate and holds it for some reason as she asks what Jack does. "I'm a repo man. You know, when people don't pay their bills I go into the bank and collect their possessions," he says, stalking back and forth. There's just enough edge to his voice to indicate (even if we didn't already know) that he's lying, and furthermore, he doesn't care that it's obvious he's lying. And I've never seen the movie, so if anything coming up is a reference, I'm going to miss it. If Jack had said, however, that his name is Jeff Lebowski but everyone calls him "Dude," I'm on it. "I'm a people person, so I really love it," he smirks. Juliet half-smiles and asks if he's married. "No, I never saw the point," lies Jack, this time as though he's trying to sound believable. Then he asks her what her job is, besides making sandwiches. "Oh, I didn't make it. I just put the toothpicks in," she says, and that's enough to earn a chuckle from Jack.
Laughing time is over! Juliet asks where Jack was flying from when his plane crashed. Sydney, says Jack, who explains that he was bringing his dead father home. "I'm sorry," she says. Jack snickers. "Yeah, I'm sure you are. Thanks."
By this point, Juliet's moved right up to the glass, and she puts her hand up. "You can trust me, Jack. I'm not going to hurt you." She seems sincere, plus she's hot, so you should totally let your guard down, Ja-- there you go. "What the hell is going on here?" he asks quietly. She doesn't answer; she walks to the door, opens it -- and then takes a bite from the sandwich. Well, he did say she could have it.
Back in the Skinner box, Sawyer's trying to work the levers and the buttons, with no luck. The guy in the other cage yells over, "Hey, how long would it take to get to your camp?" Sawyer sarcastically asks if "Chachi" is talking to him now. What's a "Chachi"? Chachi ignores Sawyer acting like a six-year-old: "From where they got you, how long a walk was it? A day? Two days? And what are the people like from your plane?" "Oh, they're just awesome!" says Sawyer. Hee! He goes back to trying to operate all the parts of the machinery at the same time, throwing his belt around the lever, stepping on the foot pedal, etc. And he blathers on, back to Chachi, who's busy picking the lock on his cage. "Last one of your boys came for a visit got tortured by an Eye-raqi. He tortured me too. But hell, he don't know any better."
Since he's surprised to not hear any response to his ramblings, Sawyer turns around, only to see the door of Chachi's cage open with no Chachi inside. The loudspeaker starts blaring: "Subject escaped. Subject escaped." He glances around, and Chachi is suddenly at the door to Sawyer's cage and starts to pick the lock. "Hey, how'd you get out of there?" says Sawyer, a con artist who is unfamiliar with the art of lock-picking, apparently. Chachi opens the door and tells him to run, pointing right. Sawyer tries to talk to him a second, but Chachi yells again for him to run, and takes off in the opposite direction. What I don't get is why, if Sawyer has Chachi pegged as one of the Others, he listens to what he says. Well, I suppose it's better than being in the cage. Sawyer takes off, into the jungle, and stops for a moment, looking around. And there's Juliet. "Hey," she says amiably, smiling.
Then she whips out a Taser or some such and shoots Sawyer right in the neck! Holy shit! Nice shot! Sawyer drops like a Lost plotline and starts convulsing. Then he's dragged by Zeke and this other Other, with that special type of shot where the camera is attached underneath Sawyer, so he's centered throughout the shot but the background spins and shifts. I don't know what you call it. You know, like in Evil Dead. Anyway, Sawyer gets thrown back in his cage, and Juliet gazes in at him for a moment, and we see that Zeke has Chachi too, and shoves Chachi's face up to the bars. "Say it. Say it, Carl," says Zeke (but I will keep calling him Chachi). Chachi's been beaten up since we last saw him, looks like. "I'm sorry. Sorry I involved you in my breakout attempt," he says, and is led away. It's nice to see that they're sticklers for manners here in the Others' prison.
Jack's sulking in his cell. Juliet strolls into the other side, carrying food and water again. She tells him that the drugs they gave him when they brought him here have a dehydrating effect. "Your head is probably sore, your throat is raw. If you don't eat or drink something soon, you're going to start hallucinating." Because she knows what the incredibly obscure condition known as dehydration is, Jack asks if she's a doctor. "No, I'm a repo woman," she says, and they share a smile. She tries again to get him to take some food, telling him that there are no strings attached, that he doesn't have to answer any questions. "You don't have to do anything but sit with your back up against the far wall. Let me open that door, put the plate down and leave." Jack doesn't say anything. He doesn't even look at her. She keeps trying: "I know it feels like you're giving up, like you're losing, if you do anything that I ask you to. But you're not. You need to eat." He looks at her. "What do you say?" she says. He thinks about it for a long while, and finally gets up and walks over to the wall. She thanks him and exits out her door to come around to Jack's side.
Jack's in the hospital, in a patient's room, giving instructions to a nurse. And despite some of the forum chatter about the patient being Zeke, I'm not convinced. "Let's take out the epidural catheter and get him started on a PCA," says Jack, and as the nurse asks if he's sure the patient's ready to self-administer his pain meds, Jack sees his dad out in the hall take a call on his cell phone. He's laughing away, and Jack looks so pissed that he's apparently thinking Sarah's calling to set up another sex-crazed evening with Christian. Hopefully the patient's going to be okay on his own, because Jack is not answering the nurse's queries at all.
Cut to Christian pulling up at the swanky Lynford Hotel, the kind of place where art on the walls consists of a giant red square. I think it speaks to man's tempestuous relationship with nature. Either that or it's a commentary on man's inability to say, "Fuck is that? I asked for a painting!" Unsurprisingly, Jack (still wearing his O.R. scrubs) pulls up just after his father does and follows him inside. Jack follows his dad through a door with a paper sign on it -- "Friends of Bill W." If that has some significance, I don't know what it is, but I suppose it beats "Friends of Jack D." or "Friends of Johnnie W.," considering what this place turns out to be.
Inside the room, Christian's getting coffee, when he sees an intense Jack stomping up to him. "Give me your cell phone," snaps Jack, and Christian tries to calm him. "Look where you are, Jack. I mean, just look around you, please," he says. There are several people there, all drinking coffee, and there's a poster with twelve certain steps on it. But Jack doesn't care; he just wants his dad's phone. And in the funniest line on this show ever, a woman, clearly the moderator or facilitator or group leader or whatever, looks at the unshaven psycho in the doctor costume and chirps, "You must be Jack!" She invites Jack to pull up a chair and join them. Jack's surprised that she knows who he is, and the moderator says Christian's told them all about him. She doesn't seem to be implying anything; it could just as easily be Christian bragging about his hotshot doctor son, but Jack flies into a rage, asking if Christian has told them that his son "never really had it, not like the old man." He's yelling at his father, and I'm sorry -- I'm pretty sure this isn't supposed to be, but this is hi-lar-ious. "I didn't have the will to make it work? My life, my job, my marriage?" Jack wants to know what Christian told them about Jack's marriage. "You want to know how he manages his marriage? A bottle of scotch every night before dinner." Like, it's an AA meeting, Jack. That's what they're there for. It's not like the group at your Assholes Anonymous meeting would be shocked to hear about this.
The moderator says Christian has been sober fifty days now, and they're very proud of that. I'm impressed. I can't remember the last time I spent fifty hours sober. But Jack suggest that maybe a new "lady friend" helped him turn the corner.
Christian's finally had enough and says he won't let Jack talk to him that way, and Jack says he won't let Christian talk to his wife, which is awfully paternalistic of him. He looks like he's starting to walk away, as Christian yells after him to let it go. It turns out Jack was only walking away so he could get some room to charge his father, which he does, and tackles him, the both of them knocking over the twelve steps display. "Ow! My spleen!" yells Christian. At least I'm pretty sure he did.
But we don't get to watch Jack and Christian scrapping; we flash back to the island, where Jack has his eyes on the door latch. As it starts to turn, he rushes the door, surprising Juliet and knocking the plate out of her hands, which crashes to the floor, breaking. He throws her down on the table, pins her arms back, and sees her taser thing tucked into her pants, and he tosses it aside, opting instead to use a shard of shattered plate for a weapon, holding it to her throat. "Which way out?" he snarls. She pleads with him not to do this, so he drags her out into the hall, kicking at a locked door in the passageway. So he tries another door, this one with a large wheel lock and yet another Dharma logo, this one looking like a squid or something, on it. He tells her to open it. She stammers that she can't, and he doesn't believe her, despite her protests that if she opens the door they'll die.
Suddenly, at the end of the hall is Ben, saying Juliet's telling the truth. Jack looks surprised, but quickly recovers. "I swear to god, I will kill her." Perhaps still pissed that Juliet picked a Stephen King book for the club, Ben says, "Okay. Have her open the door and she dies anyway. We all do."
Jack thinks they're lying -- so would I, I think. And even if I thought they were telling the truth, my feeling would be, "They're probably going to kill me anyway. Might as well take a few of them with me when I go." So he pushes Juliet away and goes for the door; Ben and Juliet start running in the opposite direction while Jack spins the wheel. Ben runs out the door he presumably came in and doesn't wait for Juliet; he closes the door in her face. "That's for Carrie!" he yells. Juliet looks back at Jack, who's just about got the door open; there's a loud creaking and groaning, and suddenly water starts gushing in, flinging the door open and knocking Jack backwards. Juliet manages to grab hold of a pipe and she yells for Jack, who slowly makes his way over. And in about thirty seconds, this doorway has let in enough water that it's up to their chests, and it's still coming in, yet the two of them are able to shut the door. Yep. Then Juliet yells for Jack to push the button, which she calls the yellow button, although it still looks red to me. Jack flips open the cover and slams the button, and then turns around, right into Juliet's fist, which knocks him out. Nice glass jaw, Jack. Puss. Jack flops face-down into the water, and Juliet, perhaps a little reluctantly, pulls his head out of the water.
Sawyer's stretching his arm out through the bars of his cage, trying to reach a large rock that's conveniently nearby and conveniently flat enough to slide through the bars of his cage. It takes him forever to get it, and when he finally does he pushes down on the foot pedal and uses the rock to hold it in place. He takes his boot off and holds it in one hand while he gets ready to push the cutlery button with the other hand. He does so, and the warning goes off, and he chucks his boot at the other lever, nailing it on the first try. We hear this John Phillip Sousa march blaring through the speakers, and the recorded voice is now saying "reward, reward," and Sawyer annoyingly starts air-conducting the music. And Sawyer's reward? An orange fish-shaped cracker thing with "DHARMA" stamped on it that comes sliding down the chute. He's less than impressed. But wait, there's more! A load of food pellets drop out, piling up at his feet. Sawyer opts for the hopefully less-nasty of two evils, and takes a bite of the fish cracker. But at least there's now water coming out of the pipe, so he crouches down for a drink.
He's interrupted by Zeke saying, "Keep moving," and looks up to him leading Kate to the other cage. She and Sawyer look at each other, with Kate looking like she's going to break down any moment. Sawyer looks genuinely concerned as Zeke puts Kate in the cage, and tells her to stick her arms out through the bars so he can take off her cuffs. Her wrists are raw and bleeding. "They scratched you up pretty bad, didn't they? I'll bring you some antiseptic later." Sawyer calls over, "How about you bring me an ottoman? While you're at it, I could use a blow dry." And, uh, "dry" is not what I heard him say at first. My initial reaction was "they can say that on television now? Did Janet's nipple teach us nothing?" Zeke ignores him to praise Sawyer's ability to get a fish biscuit, and Sawyer's bragging about figuring out the "complicated gizmos." "Only took the bears two hours," says Zeke, leaving. I think they might have been smarter than your average bear, however. "How many of them were there?" yells Sawyer. Heh. Then he asks "Freckles" if she's okay. She still looks freaked out but says she is, and asks about Sawyer. "Just swell. I requested that cage, but whatever." Hee! Kate laughs too. With Jack being such an ass this episode, Sawyer's not quite so disagreeable. But it's only the first episode of the season -- plenty of time to be a dick yet. Sawyer compliments Kate's dress. "They made me wear it," she says. And that's all the talking they'll do about that. Instead, Sawyer asks if she's hungry and tosses her the fish biscuit. Aw. Kate looks hungry enough to take a bite, so I guess she didn't have any of that breakfast.
Jack wakes up, back in his cell. The water appears to be gone. And we can hear... whale sounds, I guess. Juliet's at a desk looking at some papers. "It's an aquarium," says Jack. Well, it almost was, thanks to you. Juliet's all, excuse me? "This thing's for what, sharks?" says Jacks. And also dolphins, confirms Juliet. "We're underwater, aren't we," says Jack, and Juliet confirms this as well. But don't worry, Jack, since you can SHUT THE DOOR ON THE OCEAN. He asks if this is one of Dharma's stations, since nothing gets by Jack, and Juliet tells him it was called the Hydra.
"So you people are just whatever's left over of them." Juliet says Dharma was a long time ago: "It doesn't matter who we were. It only matters who we are. We know exactly who you are, Jack Shephard," she says, opening her file. And yeah, this show really ought to consider exploring themes of identity, and how who we were informs who we are, and how the island is a chance to make a fresh start and all of that. They really ought to give that a shot.
"You don't know anything about me," says Jack. Oh no? "We know that you're a spinal surgeon based out of St. Sebastian's Hospital in Los Angeles. I know that you went to Columbia and that you graduated med school a year faster than anyone else. I know that you married only once ["only"?] and that you contested the divorce. I know your father died in Sydney. I know this because I have a copy of his autopsy report." Jack looks stunned by this. He asks how they got the autopsy report, and all Juliet says is, "We got it." Not like they're going to share their methods with the Lostaways, but I'm sure we'll get a real explanation later as to how they've come by this kind of documentation, right? So he asks about the massive file she has on him. "This, Jack, is your life." Jack wants to know if the file is just about him or if it's about his family and friends, too. "It's pretty much about everything," says Juliet, and Jack needs to be told that "everything" includes his ex-wife. "What would you like to find out?" she asks.
Flashback to Jack sitting in a jail cell, at least until the guard strolls over and says someone posted his bail.
Leaving the booking area, Jack's putting his wedding ring back on, and he sees Sarah standing there waiting for him, or at least waiting to make sure Jack knows that she was the one who bailed him out, because as soon as she tells him that his dad told her he was there, and that she called him a cab, she spins on her heel and leaves.
He follows her out of the station, which means he gets to spot the man waiting for her, who isn't waiting in the car like a normal person would, but standing there leaning on the car. So now we get to watch another soap-opera argument about who this guy is and why it matters and blah blah blah blah, and this is certainly more interesting than checking in on Locke, or Eko, or Hurley, or Claire, or Desmond, or even freakin' Charlie, isn't it? Sarah gives him a lecture about how Jack's dad called her to help, and that he was so drunk he could hardly understand him. "Look at the bright side. Now you have something to fix," she says, and stomps away without telling Jack what this guy's name is.
So we've been set up to think, now that we're back on the island, that Jack's going to ask Juliet what this guy's name is. But anyone who's watched a television show before knows that that's not what he's going to ask. I have a three-month-old daughter, and even she was all, "I bet he doesn't ask what that guy's name is!" And several people (myself included) were able to predict the maudlin "Is she happy?" question that Jack comes up with. Juliet smiles and says Sarah's very happy. And Jack starts to sob. I'm not saying it wasn't well-acted. I'm just saying it was boring.
But that's okay, right, because we're in the final minute here, so given the lack of any real plot this episode, I'm sure there's going to be a killer cliffhanger, right? Like finding out Rousseau's transmission had been broadcasting for sixteen years? Like Ethan not having been on the plane? Or Michael shooting Libby and Ana-Lucia? Wait for it...
Juliet says she has some food and water for Jack, but she needs to know she can trust him to be good. Jack's spent, and meekly sits against the wall. Juliet walks out into the hall. Ben's standing there. Here it comes... "Good work, Juliet," he says, with a little string stinger to set up Juliet's response. This is gonna be fuckin' great...
"Thank you, Ben," she says, and walks by, and the camera zooms in on Ben. And... that's it. Huh? Hold on, let me rewind that; I must have missed something.
"Thank you, Ben," she says, and... no, I didn't miss anything. Is it me, or with the music and the camera angles, was this not all played up like it's a big shocking reveal? But weren't we supposed to know that Henry is actually Ben from his "I guess I'm out of the book club" line? I'm confused. And disappointed. And I need a drink.
And damn. I know the last season of The Sopranos was kind of disappointing, but at least Tony got shot in the first episode. You guys couldn't have shot one Lostaway? Last season you couldn't shoot people quickly enough. All right, week, we'll see. But there better be some blood on the floor.