1.11 All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

Hurley now reveals that Ethan was not on the manifest. Jack and the others piece together that Ethan, Charlie, and Claire are together on the path to the beach. Off they go to find out what is going on. Jack and Locke discover Claire’s bag and signs of a struggle.

Jack takes off on the fresh track, while Locke goes back and organizes a search party with Kate and Boone.

Locke catches up to Jack and the four of them head out. They pick up Charlie’s purposeful trail of his lettered finger wraps. When two different trails head off, Jack and Kate take one, while Boone and Locke take another.

Kate tells Jack that she got her tracking from camping/hunting trips she made with her father, who was an army ranger.

Sawyer hears from Walt that Sayid is back, so he pays him a visit and learns about the French woman and the ‘Others’.

Jack and Kate find the trail and find Ethan, who tells Jack to stop following or he will kill one of them (meaning Charlie or Claire). Ethan and Jack fight and Jack loses.

Jack and Kate find Charlie hanging from a tree. Jack works on him furiously, refusing to give up even after Kate begs him to, and against all odds, Charlie comes to life again.

Charlie is returned to camp but has not said anything. When he does speak, he says he doesn’t remember anything.

Just as Boone is about to head back to camp, he discovers a steel case buried in the ground.

Jack’s backstory flashback:

A hospital where Jack’s drunk father killed a woman on the operating table. When his father cleans things up and asks Jack to sign a version of the story that vindicates him, Jack initially refuses. But when his father praises his surgical abilities, apologizes for sacrificing parts of their relationship for that end, and begs Jack to save his career and life, Jack signs. But, during the hearing, when Jack finds out that the woman was pregnant and that his father knew that, Jack recants and instead tells the examiners that his father drunkenness led to the woman’s death.

Comments

This s a tense episode that combines Jack’s backstory, which in itself has a lot of emotional resonance, with the search for Claire and Charlie.

Quotable Quotes

"So a tribe of evil natives planted a ringer in the camp to kidnap a pregnant girl and a reject from VH1 has-beens. Yeah! Fiendishly clever."
- Sawyer

"Claire. That’s all they wanted. All they wanted was Claire."
- Charlie