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

1.10 Raised By Another

Claire wakes in the middle of the night and wanders into the jungle, where she meets Locke. Locke says she gave ‘him’ up. In the distance, she finds a cot filled with blood. She wakes up screaming and is calmed down by Charlie. The blood on her hands is from her own fingernails digging in.

Charlie reaches out to Claire as a friend, but she gently turns him away.

Her next incident is of a man holding a hand over her mouth and stabbing a needle into her belly. She believes it happened, but Jack suspects it may be a dream. Charlie says that he will stay all night to watch over her.

Jack prescribes a sedative for Claire, and that agitates her. She leaves the caves and heads back alone for the beach.

Hurley has been making a list of everyone as a way of keeping tabs and taking an inventory. Boone tells him to simply get the manifest from Sawyer. Charmed by Hurley, Sawyer gives up the manifest without having to be asked twice.

Charlie catches up to Claire just as she goes into labor. At her request, he leaves her to get Jack.

Claire’s pains go away, but she and Charlie may have another problem. Ethan was supposed to get Jack, but he shows up alone. In the meantime, Hurley has just found out that Ethan is the one person from their group who was never on the plane.

Claire’s backstory flashbacks:

When Claire got pregnant, her young boyfriend was all for keeping it and raising a child, even though they had little money. She visits a psychic who first reads that she is pregnant, then sees something else that scares him. He gives back her money and tells her to leave.

Claire’s boyfriend gets sick of the idea of having a baby and left after a few months.

Claire returns to the psychic, who tells her that she must raise the baby herself – that danger awaits the baby if she puts it up for adoption (as was her plan). She rejects his warnings, and goes ahead with adoption plans.

Claire attends the meeting with the adopting parents. At the last minute, after two pens do not work when she tries to sign, she walks out and goes back to the psychic. He has a plan to save the baby. He has found a couple in Los Angeles to adopt. But this psychic new that the plane was going to crash, and he insisted she get on that flight. He wanted her to crash on the island.

Comments

This episode is a vast improvement over the last two. Claire’s backstory is compelling, and the final revelation works well as a cliffhanger.

Memorable Moments

• Hurley’s closing line, revealing that someone in the group is an invader

Quotable Quotes

"My name isn’t ‘Hurley’! It’s Hugo Reyes! Hurley’s just a nickname I have, alright. Why? I’m not telling!"
- Hurley

Hurley: Why is everyone so uptight about answering a few questions?
Boone: Well, maybe we’re just not cool with you setting up your own little Patriot Act, man.

1.9 Solitary

Sayid, off on his own, finds a cable on the beach. One end trails off into the water. He follows the other end into the jungle and finds a trip wire. He carefully steps over it, but is caught in a leg trap and suspended in the air.

Jack visits Sawyer to change his bandages, but after Sawyer is his usual mean self, including taunting that Kate is interested in him, Jack tells him to change his own bandages.

Sayid is captured in a hut somewhere and tied up, and is asked repeatedly about ‘Alex’ by a woman who we cannot identify. When he says he does not know, he is given painful shocks. We flash back to Sayid torturing a suspected Shiite bomber.

Sayid is being held by the woman who made the 16 year old transmission. She is quite mad – or at least highly paranoid – and suspects Sayid of something sinister. She is interested in Sayid’s past, so he tells her of Nadia, a woman he played with when they were children together. They met again when she was accused of being an accomplice to the bomber, and Sayid’s role is to torture her for information. Sayid tries to help her, but Nadia refuses to capitulate and take the easy way out, preferring to remain true to her cause. Faced with having to execute Nadia, Sayid arranges for her escape.

Meanwhile, to relieve tension, Hurley builds a two-hole golf course.

Back in reality, the woman (Danielle) seems to be warming to Sayid, but then injects him with an un-named drug. When he comes to, he is seated but still chained.

Danielle tells of how her science vessel went off course and stranded the team on the island. Danielle is the only survivor – she hears voices of ‘The Others’ but has not seen them. Is she crazy? Sayid takes the opportunity to escape, then ends up in a showdown with Danielle in the jungle – except his gun does not work. At the point of a gun, Sayid manages to talk his way out of the situation. Danielle will not return with Sayid, leaving him to walk through the windy, spooky, jungle alone – where he hears mysterious voices.

In other events: Sawyer joins in at the golf course, betting against the doc making the final putt, of course; Walt, ignored by Michael, finds Locke, and gets a lesson in throwing a big knife.

Comments

This episode nicely combines two diverse storylines.

I wonder if the plot will allow for Sayid to make it back to the other survivors to share all the information he has received. It would be more typical for him to either die on the way back or at least lose his memory.

Just as I was unsure why this show was originally so compelling, I have now reached the point where I have just started to lose interest in the fate of the characters. Hopefully the next episode can bring that back.

Nits

Although I twice listened to Sayid’s argument when he convinces Danielle not to shoot him, I still don’t understand why Danielle was going to shoot him, or how he convinced her not to do it.

Quotable Quotes

Hurley: We’re lost on an island! Running from boars, and monsters – freakin’ polar bears!
Michael: Polar bears?
Charlie: You didn’t hear about the polar bear?

"Doctor playing golf! Whoof! Boy howdy! Now I’ve heard everything. What’s next? Cop eating a donut?"
- Sawyer

1.8 Confidence Man

It’s time to find out Sawyer’s backstory this time. He’s good with the ladies and he’s a clever grifter. Back in the present, Sawyer catches Boone digging through his stash of goods and beats him up pretty good. Boone had been looking for inhales for his asthmatic sister. When Kate comes to get the inhalers, Sawyer makes her read a letter he received from a child, blaming him for killing his parents (Sawyer had swindled them out of their money).

Searching for his assailant, Sayid confronts Locke. Locke convinces Sayid that Sawyer is the most likely suspect. Locke says Sawyer could have used a slow fuse to detonate the bottle rocket at the moment he was attacking Sayid.

Shannon is now having serious trouble breathing. Jack is losing it and punches Sawyer repeatedly, but Sawyer will not give up the medicine. Sayid agrees to torture Sawyer until he tells. Sawyer finally agrees, but will only tell Kate. He asks her for a kiss, and she gives in, kissing him for longer than the required time. Then he tells her that he never had the medicine. Incensed at finding this out, Sayid rushes back to extract the truth. Sawyer has freed his hands. They grapple and Sayid stabs Sawyer in the arm.

Jack patches Sawyer up. Sawyer tells Kate that his parents were swindled by a grifter and then his father killed his mother and himself. But Sawyer became a grifter nonetheless.

With Michael’s help to gather herbs, Sun is able to help Shannon to overcome her asthma.

Sayid leaves the group to map the island until he can come to terms with the torture that he did.

Comments

This is an interesting contrast to Charlie’s arc that was explored in the previous episode. Sawyer does not change a bit, despite what he has been put through.

Nits

Some of the clothes the stranded people are wearing (in particular, Kate’s new green top) look too perfectly ironed and clean.

Granted, Sawyer could have used a slow fuse to delay detonation of the bottle rocket, but how would he have gotten the rocket to go off precisely at 5pm like it did? Sayid should have realized this straightaway.

It’s unlikely that Sayid could survive for long on his own, carrying only the contents of the small daypack that he has on his back.

Memorable Moments

• Kate and Sawyer’s kiss

Quotable Quotes

"Wow man, like, that was awesome. That was like a – Jedi moment."
- Hurley

1.7 The Moth

Kate and Jack ‘have it out’ about their decisions to live in different camps.

Charlie is unhappy about being used as boar bait by Locke. He flashes back to his decision to leave his band just before they got signed to a recording contract. Charlie wanted to quit, but his brother convinced him to keep going. It quickly turns wild, with drugs and girls, but it’s too late for Charlie to get out. When his bro

Charlie is detoxing. He asks Locke to give him back his drugs, but Locke refuses.

Sayid has a plan for pinpointing the 16 year old distress signal, but he needs a battery. Kate manages to coerce one out of Sawyer.

Charlie is getting more and more agitated and takes it out on Jack. Charlie’s yelling triggers an avalanche that buries Jack in a cave. Michael, the construction expert, leads the relief efforts, and Boone joins in, leaving Shannon in charge of turning on the third antenna to enable triangulation of the signal. When Sawyer tells Kate that Jack is trapped in a cave-in, she leaves Sawyer to mind the second antenna.

Charlie volunteers to crawl through a small opening and rescue Jack. He makes it in, but not before the tunnel collapses, trapping both of them. But Charlie finds a way out.

Sayid is just about to triangulate the signal when he is knocked cold by an unseen assailant.

Comments

This is probably the best episode so far, intertwining two very strong story lines.

Sayid thinks that there was more than luck involved in their survival of the crash. Was this whole thing planned in some way?

Despite Jin’s protestations, Sun has taken to wearing a sheer white camissole top. She says it is because it is hot. I agree.

Nits

It’s typical of television and movies that people can creep up on other people without making a sound (they do it by turning their sound effects off). How did Sayid’s assailant creep up without Sayid hearing something? Have you ever tried to walk across a field full of grass? It makes a lot of noise.

Memorable Moments

• Locke’s ‘moth cocoon’ analogy to explain why he is only going to give Charlie his drugs if he asks three times

• The emotional moment when the group (and especially Kate) see Jack and Charlie

• Charlie throwing his stash into the fire, then seeing the moth flying above the flames. He tilts his head back, and the hood of his sweatshirt falls away

• The general arc of Charlie’s character in this episode, as he battles demons and drug addiction

Quotable Quotes

Walt: We should get Mister Locke.
Hurley: Locke's out in the jungle killing stuff.

"You see this little hole? This moth's just about to emerge. It's in there right now, struggling. It's digging its way through the thick hide of the cocoon. Now, I could help it - take my knife, gently widen the opening, and the moth would be free - but it would be too weak to survive. Struggle is nature's way of strengthening it."
- Locke to Charlie

1.6 House of the Rising Sun

Jack, Kate, Charlie, and Locke’s hike to water, where Charlie stands on a beehive. In their flight, Kate discovers two mummified bodies of a man and a woman that died 50 years ago.

Jin instigates a seemingly unprovoked attack on Michael and appears ready to kill him, until Sayid and Sawyer intervene and handcuff Jin to the plane.

In flashback, we learn about Jin and Sun’s courtship – how Sun’s father gave permission for Jin and Sun to marry, but only on the condition that Jin work for Sun’s gangster father – and some of that work involved hurting others. Sun watches Jin change to an uncaring, inpatient man, and she makes plans to leave him. But at the last minute, she is unable to follow through.

Jack comes to the conclusion that the people should be moved to the caves at the water source. But convincing others to move off the beach will be difficult, as they must then admit that they are not going to be seen or rescued.

Sun explains to Michael, in English, that Jin’s attack was an honorable attempt to stop a thief. Jin saw Michael wearing Sun’s father’s watch, a watch Michael found. Michael gives the watch back to Jin and frees him from the handcuffs.

Locke helps Charlie stop taking drugs, and finds his guitar.

Despite the connection, Kate decides to stay on the beach, even though Jack asks her to come with him to live in the caves.

Comments

Kate is rapidly becoming an aloof, annoying enigma.

The natural solution of having a beach group and a caves group makes sense.

Quotable Quotes

Kate: [about her t-shirt] Anyway, it was full of bees.
Charlie: I would have thought C’s, actually.

1.5 White Rabbit

Jack’s memories of being bullied as a boy are interrupted by Charlie telling him that someone is drowning. Jack charges into the surf and saves Boone, then goes back – but is too late to save the woman. While discussing his regrets with Kate, he again sees the man in the suit in the distance.

Water is running out, but Jack is reluctant to take a leader role and make decisions.

Sun is starting to express discontent with Jin’s decision to isolate them.

Shannon wants some bug spray, but isn’t willing to put up with the flirtatious Sawyer to get it.

Jack’s flashbacks continue, this time showing a cold father figure who belittles his son. Jack finally confronts the suited man – it is his father.

While Jack pursues the phantom, Claire passes out, and Kate has to attend to her – but someone has stolen the remaining water. Locke volunteers to go into the jungle to look for more.

Jack’s pursuit gets him close to his father, but not close enough to make contact. When he slips and falls, he ends up hanging to a tree root over a deep drop, where Locke somehow arrives to save him. After a pep talk from Locke, Jack stays in the jungle, eventually finding a water source, and, nearby, his father’s empty coffin (Jack had been on the plane to bring his father back from Australia, where he had drank himself to death).

Jack returns to take the leadership role again, just in time, before wholesale fighting breaks out.

Comments

Matthew Fox is emerging as the standout actor in the show.

I personally identified with Jack’s backstory, as would anyone who found their childhood a challenging time filled with bullies and difficult choices.

Nits

Jack too easily uses a pipe to splinter the coffin. Most coffins I have seen are made from very thick wood, and this one appears to be also, at least until it falls apart like a cheap prop.

Quotable Quotes

Locke: Why you out here, Jack?
Jack: I think I’m going crazy.
Locke: Oh, you’re not going crazy.
Jack: No?
Locke: No, crazy people don’t know they’re going crazy. They think they’re getting saner.

"I looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw…was beautiful."
- Locke