Episode Report Card LTG: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Adultery Education
By LTG | Season 4 | Episode 12 | Aired on 05.15.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So this week is lots of set-up and not much payoff. First, let's deal with the flash-forward. We see the Oceanic Six land in Hawaii on a Coast Guard plane, where they are questioned by the press. They're already passing Aaron off as Kate's baby. Jack, Sun, and Hurley are all reunited with their families, and Nadia shows up for Sayid. Hurley's parents throw him a surprise party, but he freaks out when he comes face-to-face with the numbers. And then after the funeral for Jack's dad, Claire's mother introduces herself to Jack and tells him that Claire was his sister. Awkward.
In the present, Daniel uses the satellite phone to listen in on Keamy's communications -- they hear that the mercenaries are headed to the Orchid. Juliet claims not to know what that is, but Daniel thinks it's pretty bad news. Jack and Kate take the satellite phone and head off after the chopper. On the way, they run into Miles and Sawyer (and Aaron). Kate takes Miles and Aaron back to the beach, while Jack and Sawyer continue on the way to the chopper. When they get there, they find Frank, handcuffed to the chopper. He tells them that if they free him, he'll fly them the hell off the island before Keamy and his boys capture Ben and kill whoever is with him. Except that Sawyer knows that Hurley is with Ben, so he and Jack decide to head out and save him.
Sayid arrives on the beach to start ferrying people to the freighter. But then Kate gets there and tells him about Jack and Sawyer going after the chopper, so Sayid and Kate decide to take off into the jungle to find them. That leaves Daniel to ferry people (including Sun and Jin) back to the freighter. Things are a little tense when Jin is reunited with Michael. The engines are working again, but there's some kind of radio transmission coming from the boat that's interfering with navigation. So Desmond sets out to find it.
Meanwhile, Ben, Locke, and Hurley head to the Orchid, which is where they need to be in order to move the island. But they arrive too late -- the soldiers are already there. And just to wrap everything up we see the following: Kate and Sayid are captured by Richard Alpert and the Others; Jack and Sawyer trudge through the jungle to find Hurley; Desmond and Sawyer discover that a cabin on the ship is packed with explosives ready to go off; and Ben surrenders in order to distract the soldiers so Locke can get into the Orchid.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, the mercenaries from the freighter planned to torch everyone and everything on the island, and Frank dropped a trail of breadcrumbs out of the chopper. And Christian told Ben to move the island.
Open sky. You think we're on the chopper, but we're actually on a plane, with a couple of Coast Guard pilots. One of the pilots is rubbing his rabbit's foot. (That's not a euphemism.) He thinks they need luck in light of the scary cargo they're carrying. One of the pilots turns to a civilian-type woman sitting behind them and tells her to let the passengers know they are going to land soon. The woman is played by Michelle Forbes, a.k.a. Ro Laren, a.k.a. Admiral Caine, a.k.a. some characters on other TWoP-covered shows. She gets around, is what I'm saying. She makes her way to the back of the cargo plane, where we find the Oceanic Six glumly sitting there. She tells them that they're about to land at a military base near Honolulu, where their families are already waiting for them. She also says that the press is there, but it's completely up to them whether they speak to the press or not -- Oceanic (which is who she works for) doesn't care one way or the other. Jack tells her that they've decided to talk to the reporters. And hey, the reporters are already calling them the Oceanic Six. She leaves, and we can barely see that there's some other dude sitting about ten feet away from the Losties.
Now that they have some privacy (except for the mostly unseen dude), Jack tells the others that they all know the story, and that they should just avoid answering any questions they don't like. He thinks the press will accept their silence, believing them to be in shock. Sun: "We are in shock, Jack."
The plane lands. They unbuckle their seat belts, and the entire back of the plane opens up. We can see a crowd of people waiting on the runway. None of the Losties look very happy. Until they hit the runway. Hurley sees his mother and father and runs to them. Sun's parents are also there -- she hugs her mother and kind of ignores her father. And there's Jack's mother. Sayid and Kate have nobody waiting for them. Hurley pulls Sayid over to his family, and Mama Hurley gives him a big hug. And Kate stands there, looking lonely and kind of scared.
Beach. It seems like it was moments ago that the chopper dropped a phone on them, and they're trying to figure out what it means. Rose thinks it must have been Desmond and Sayid on the chopper. Sun thinks that if they were on the chopper, they would have just landed. Jack thinks they're supposed to use the phone to follow the chopper. Sun thinks that since they have a phone, perhaps they should just try to call the chopper. Jack hands the phone to Daniel, who pushes some buttons on the phone -- the display reads "monitor only," and we can hear people speaking. Keamy is telling Frank to land the chopper, and then tells the soldiers that they're heading to the Orchid as soon as they land. Daniel and Charlotte exchange some of their patented "better keep a secret" glances, but for once nobody seems to notice. Jack asks Juliet if she knows what the Orchid is; she says she does not, and also notes that she didn't hear either Sayid or Desmond on the phone. Jack takes the phone and asks Kate if she'd like to take a walk. While Kate fetches guns, Juliet runs after Jack and tells him it's moronic for him to run off into the jungle while he's just recovering from surgery. Jack tells her that he has to run off into the jungle because he promised the Losties that he would get them off the island. Juliet leaves him to his own stupidity.