...is this the 50's or 1999?

Desmond is on the beach watching Claire put Aaron to bed. She’s writing in her diary when he comes over to tell her that there’s a problem with their roof. He asks if she’ll move down to the beach for the night so he can fix it. She tells him Aaron just fell asleep and she doesn’t want to move him. Jealous little Charlie comes over. "Whatcha doin’ brother?"
Des tells him about the roof and Charlie tells him he can take care of it, he’s quite handy. "I was building a church before Eko... exploded."
Des leaves and Claire asks what that was about. Charlie doesn’t know, but he thinks they need to get that guy another button to push.

Jack’s watching the TV. It’s some old cartoon with a vulture trying to eat a baby swan - our losties destroying the station?

Juliet pounds on the door and he assumes the position. She enters with some food for him. "Am I gonna keep watching cartoons or are you gonna tell me why I’m here?"
- If he keeps acting like a three year old they're gonna keep feeding him cartoons - She won’t answer any of his questions, so he decides to start pushing some buttons of his own. He asks if he should be talking to Benjamin, instead of the person that just brings him his food. "You work for him? He’s in charge?"
"It doesn’t work that way over here Jack, we make decisions together."
Aww, utopia!
"Really? Cause when I was holding that broken plate at your neck he seemed happy to just let you die. It felt like he made that decision on his own."
...or not.
She's smiling, but you can tell he's getting to her. "You don't know what you're talking about. I don't answer to him."
As if on cue, Ben bursts through the door. "Juliet, I need you."
She feels she needs to assert herself in front of Jack, "Can it wait?" – but now’s not the time for that.
"The sub is back - we have a situation. So come with me now."
The sub? Nice... did they use that to get the Elizabeth? how did they get onto the beach without getting wet though? Pop up and jump onto the dock? Not too shallow for a sub there?

Colleen is being rushed thru the jungle on a makeshift stretcher. She’s pale as a ghost.
Danny’s opening up Sawyer’s cell. It’s time for work. He has a bandage on his nose from Sawyer’s beating last episode. "Sounding a little stuffy there, Chinatown."
Before Sawyer can insult his mother, Danny gets a call on his walkie-talkie. Ben and Juliet come running from one direction while Tom and some Others come from the other, with Colleen. They all rush off together. Kate asks Sawyer what happened. "We happened."
"What?"
"We been on this rock long enough to realize they ain’t in the business of shooting each other. We did it. Our team."
Kate asks if he’s smiling. "Damn right I’m smiling. Cause we just got our ticket out of here."



Sawyers setting off the fish biscuit machine. "You know that chick they brought in on a stretcher? That’s Broken Nose Man’s girl."
"They call him Pickett."
Sawyer has a plan. He’s made a puddle with the water from the fish biscuit machine – and when someone comes to let him out, he’s going to shock him by hitting the red button three times; then they can make their escape. Kate’s impressed with the plan, but what about Jack? "What about him? We don’t even know if he’s here, hell, we don’t even know if he’s alive. We gotta take of us. It’s every man for himself, freckles."

Flashback – James Ford is boxing in prison. Prisoner number 840. He’s good... explains how he beat the crap out of everyone last week.

He’s being herded back to his cell when he sees a prisoner getting the crap beat out of him by another inmate. He asks the guy in front of him who the punching bag is. "Name’s Munson. Rumor has it he ripped off the government for ten mil, but they never found the money."
The warden breaks up the fight, and he and James exchange a look.
Later on, James, on trash duty, approaches the new guy. "You think the warden’s breaking up those fights because he thinks you’re cute, Costanza? He’s making a play for that ten mil. First step, butter you up... step two, warden'll reach out for your wife, use her against you. Textbook con."
"And you’re telling me this out of the kindness of your..."
"Advice is free, murgatroid. Past nine months that warden has made my life a living hell – he gets that ten mil you ain’t got, I’ll just have to kill myself."
As if on cue, the warden shows up. He’s a bad ass and he doesn’t like smart-ass Sawyer.

He threatens to extend his stay, telling him it would only take one call. He drops his half-eaten apple at Ford’s feet and tells him to clean up the trash.
Munson can see why Sawyer would want to stick it this guy.

Back in the cages – Sawyer sees Ben approaching. He mutters to himself, "Oh yeah... big kahuna."
Ben stops just short of the puddle in front of the door and asks Sawyer what he weighs.
"One-eighty, give or take."
Ben steps closer, but still not in the puddle. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-two."
"Don’t lie."
"Thirty-five."
Ben says good, and takes one more step, right into the trap. Sawyer grabs him by the arm and kicks the red button three times. "Sayonara, sucker!"
But nothing happens. Ben tells him he turned it off, and then cracks Sawyer in the face with a Snoop Dogg baton. He beats him with the thing and then kicks him in the head, knocking him out while Kate watches helplessly.
Sawyer wakes up strapped down to an operating table in a cell similar to Jacks. Tom is complaining to Ben. "...been two days since the sky turned purple, we’ve been blind, our coms are all down, I can’t get 'em back up again, and in case you forgot, Colleen’s in critical..."
"Juliet’s taking care of it."
Sawyer tries to sit up and they take notice of him. There are two other guys in the room as well, both armed. One of them, Jason, puts something in Sawyer's mouth and tells him to bite down on it. Ben tells him it’s for the pain, as the other armed guy taps a long-ass syringe. Ben hates needles. Sawyer’s not particularly into this one, either. The guy holds it as if he’s going to spear a fish in Sawyers chest.

Quick cut to Jack in his cell, where the scratchy intercom is kind of working again. – maybe the release of the magnet brought this ‘com’ back to life? He can barely make out Sawyer’s screams...

Back to Sawyer on the table... Jason tells the other guy it has to be in the sternum, and taps it for effect. "You know, like in the movie..."
Maybe it would be easier if he could write on it with a big fat magic marker.
I guess if they can watch the Sox win the World Series, they probably have some Tarantino on tape, too. Looking back at it, the shot pulling back from the cartoon in Jack's cell was kind of reminiscent of the Bruce Willis flashback in Pulp Fiction. The Walken speech part, great moment in cinema history... and then Sawyer referring to Ben as the big kahuna, you know, like the burger...
anyway - the other guy counts as Sawyer yells, and then plunges the syringe into his chest.

Paulo’s hitting some fruit into the ocean with the golf clubs. Des comes over and asks to borrow one. "Hurley said it’d be alright."
"Hurley, huh? This mean you’re off to save the day? Take the five iron, I never use it. That way when you die in the jungle doing whatever you’re doing I don’t have to go looking for it."
So the other survivors seem just a little bitter that they haven’t been included in all the action, no?
Des tells him to square his shoulders a bit. "You play golf?"
"I’m Scottish. Cheers."

Sawyer comes around, still tied down. He has a band-aid where the needle stabbed him and some bloody gauze taped over his heart. Tom and Ben come in with an albino bunny in a cage. It’s got the number eight stenciled in black on it. Ben starts shaking the cage and yelling at the bunny. Faster and faster, louder and louder, until the bunny just drops. Sawyer asks if he just killed that bunny.
"Do you know what a pacemaker is? They stick them in the tickers of people who’ve had bypass surgery; whose hearts need just a little jump, a kick-start. The rabbit had a small pacemaker, set to deliver its kick-start should it get too excited, or anxious or frightened... or should it try to escape."
He shows Sawyer something that looks like a digital watch before putting it on his wrist. "Assuming that you were telling the truth about your age and weight, your resting heart rate should be about seventy beats per minute. Your active heart rate would be about 140, which is the point at which your pacemaker will cause your heart to explode. Which is how I know that you’re going to start behaving now. The watch monitors your pulse. If you get within 15 beats of your danger zone, it will start to beep. When it beeps, you’re going to want to relax yourself. Do some deep breathing, some yoga."
"If you want me dead why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with?"
"Because we’re not killers, James. Oh, and one other thing... Kate. You tell her what we did, what we put in you, we’re watching you; you tell her any of these things, we’ll put one in her, too."

Tom locks Sawyer back in his cage, gives them both a bucket of water and a sponge to wash up with, and gives Kate a sack with some new clothes in it. He leaves them and she asks what happened, but Sawyer just tells her they asked some questions. She knows he’s lying... She dumps the clothes out and tells him to turn around... this should get the heart rate going... uh oh. He checks under his gauze to find a long slice... and then looks over his shoulder at a half-naked Kate.

The watch starts beeping... he’s up to 125. Kate asks when he got a watch. He’s frustrated. "I don’t tell you everything! Just leave me alone, damnit! Put some clothes on!"
He dumps the bucket of cold water over his head.

Flashback - in the visiting area, Sawyer is watching Munson arguing with his wife, Munson looks over at him, defeated. Sawyer was right. His old flame and long con Cassidy shows up to visit. "Hello, Sawyer."
"It’s James Ford, and I know you know that cause you got it right when you pressed charges."
Hey, he conned her, what did he expect? She shows him a picture of a baby girl.

"What’s this?"
"This is your daughter."
"You think I'm going to take one look at this picture and turn into Father Knows Best?"
"We’re living in Albuquerque, near the university... I just thought that you could write her a letter. Her name’s Clementine."
"What the hell am I gonna write; ‘Dear goo goo ga ga’? She’s a baby, she ain’t mine. I ain’t got no daughter."
Clementine? Poor kid... or is it even real? It could be that Cassidy is pulling a long con back on Sawyer.

Back in the cages, Kate is coming up with a plan. She wants to climb her cage and crawl out thru the wider spaced bars at the top. Sawyer tells her not to bother. "I think we should just chill out here a while, get the lay of the land."
Kate knows something is up.

Jack is still listening to the scratchy intercom in his cell. Juliet comes in wearing a Hydra logoed smock covered in blood. Jack asks what they did to Sawyer; he thinks it’s his blood. "I heard him yelling, you’ve got blood on your clothes, what did you do to him?!?"
"It’s not his blood. It’s the blood of a woman who’s dying. Jack... I need your help."

She and some Others walk a hooded Jack past Kate and Sawyer in their cages, as an earsplitting claxon sounds. Kate and Sawyer scream his name, and he turns slightly, seeming to hear them over the din, before being hurried away.

Damn, they’ve got a hospital. Why didn’t they bring Claire here instead of that little bunker? Ben is following Juliet and the hooded Jack as she leads him through the halls. "Have you lost your mind? You bring him here!?"
"He’s a doctor, he can help."
"Look, this is not why..."
"Do you want her to die?"
She unhoods Jack and shows him Colleen in the next room, lying prone on an operating table with Danny standing over her. Tom is in the room as well. They scrub in and Jack asks what happened. "Gunshot wound. To the abdomen."
Jack takes note of some spinal x-rays on the wall. "Those aren’t hers. Come on."
Danny gets upset when he sees Jack. "Tell him who did this, he oughta know that. She’s my wife"
Tom takes the frantic Pickett out of the room. Jack tells Juliet to assist him. "I’m not a surgeon."
"I know."
Colleen flatlines and Jack asks for a crash cart, but it’s broken. "We haven’t had anything happen before..."
Jack tries to start up her heart manually, but she’s gone. Tom, Danny and Ben watch from an observation room. Jack looks around for a clock to call the time of death, but there isn’t one. "She’s gone."
Tom tries to calm Danny down, but he storms out.

Storms out and goes directly to Sawyer’s cage. He pulls him out and starts beating the shit out of him in front of Kate, as the heart monitor beeps wildly. "Do you love this guy?"
With every punch, he yells out, "Do you love him?"
Sawyer won’t fight back... Kate is hysterical...
"Do you love him?" Wham!
"Yes, I love him, I love him. I love him, please..."
She’d say anything at this point, just to get him to stop.
Danny stops and tells someone to lock Sawyer back up. He then leaves, crying.

Flashback – Sawyer’s reading Of Mice and Men. Munson, prisoner number 248, comes up to him. "I need to talk to you. You were right. I loved her, and I really thought she..."
"Ten mil is a lot of greenbacks, killer. Tends to change things. That’s why you can never get attached. Once you care, that’s when they can come at ya."
Munson asks what the woman that was talking to Sawyer wanted. "Something I ain’t got. That all? Mind if I go back and see if George gets his farm?"
"I need you to move it. The money."
Sawyer refuses and walks away. Munson begs, "If you don’t help me the warden’ll get it all. He’ll win. Please."
A smile crosses Sawyers face.

Back at the cages. Sawyer’s washing up. Kate asks if he’s okay. "Just dandy. The guy hits like a girl. No offense."
"Why did he do that?"
"Hell if I know. These people ever make any sense to you?"
Kate scales her cage and slips through the bars at the top. Sawyer tries to get her to stop, telling her the time isn’t right. It starts to rain. "I don’t know what they did to you, but I know you’re scared enough to lie about it, and that scares me more than anything that they’ve done to us before."
She’s free. She runs to Sawyers cage and starts hitting the padlock with a rock. He tells her to leave him, to run. His watch starts to beep. "What is that thing?"
"You run, you go. It’s every man for himself."
"Why didn’t you fight back? Tell me the truth for once in your life!"
"If you really love me, go."
"I only said that so he’d stop hitting you."
Ouch.
She climbs back into her cage, ignoring Sawyer'spleas for her to run and hide. "Damnit freckles, go. Every man for himself!"
She lands on the floor of the cage. "Live together, die alone."

Ben and Tom are watching all of this on the monitors. Tom tells Ben that Danny wants to kill Sawyer.
"Danny can wait."
"You want me to bring Shepherd back?"
"No, I want him to sit with her for a while longer."
The monitor shows Jack chained to the gurney in the operating room, alone in there with the dead Colleen. Juliet enters. "I’m sorry they had to put handcuffs on you. I’m a fertility doctor. I’m not used to death."
Jack asks the dead woman’s name. "Col, short for Colleen. I should have come to get you sooner."
Jack says it wouldn’t have made a difference, that she was dead before they put her on the table. "Are you just saying that to make me feel better?"
Jack laughs at this. "I don’t care about making you feel better."
Nice. Juliet leans in to take the handcuffs off and lead him back to his cell. Jack grabs her arm. "Whose x-rays are those outside? Those are spinal x-rays and they belong to a man about forty years old, and whoever he is, he has a very large tumor on his L4 vertebrae. And I just happen to be a spinal surgeon. So you tell me Juliet. Who am I here to save?"
Fox’s got to be the front-runner for an Emmy so far this year. Are they Ben’s x-rays? Has he never left the island because if he does, the tumor will spread and kill him? Of course, he could have been lying about never leaving the island, maybe he’s here because it’s considered inoperable, but the healing properties of the island have put it into remission, like Rose?

At the camp Desmond is building some kind of lightning rod or something... bamboo tower with the five iron up top, and some wiring leading down to a post in the sand to ground the contraption. Weird. Hurley’s making a healthy fruit salad. "Is that...art?"
"Nope. Just an experiment."
Hurley goes to leave and Des tells him to wait a minute. "Why’s that?"
Des just nods, and thunder crashes. Did he see into the future and know the exact moment it was going to rain, kind of like the clock tower in Back to the Future... is he trying to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity? The wiring he was running looks kind of like Doc's too. It starts to pour, and sure enough, Claire's roof leaks on her Charlie and Aaron. Lighting strikes the tower and it falls back to the beach in flames.

Charlie looks over at Des, who seems satisfied. He’s seen all this before – maybe in his "other life, brother". He’s just saved someone; the baby, Claire or Charlie, or maybe all three. In the other life the lightning killed them – he was trying to get them to move to the beach because of this. He couldn’t tell them the truth; that he knew lightning was going to strike there, because they’d think he was crazy. So he built the rod to attract the bolt. Was this what Boone meant last episode when he told Locke the three of them were okay, "...for now."? He’s their savior. But is Des fucking something up by changing the future? Think about Back to the Future again, Doc writing on the chalkboard... they’re now all living in a parallel timeline because of what he just did.

Kate and Sawyer are asleep. Ben wakes Sawyer up. "Good morning. Let’s go for a walk."

Flashback – James is led by some guards to the boxing ring, where the warden and some suits are waiting on him. "I have to be honest, Ford. When they first brought you here, I thought you were nothing more than a dumb hick. Now I know better. You’re a dumb hick that knows how to steal."
"Can we just get this over with?"
"Yeah, lets. You remember Agent Freedman from the treasury department"
They know each other. Freedman asks Sawyer what he’s got. "10 million’s in a red bronco parked in a store-quick facility in Sawgrass (could have used the five iron there). Right off 441, unit 23C. That’s where your money is."
The warden, per their agreement, commutes the last six years of James Ford’s sentence. He’s getting a commission too. They want to know what to do with it. "Set up a new account; don’t matter what bank. Just make it in Albuquerque. Put it in the name of Clementine Phillips. And I want it so there’s no way she can ever find out who the money’s from."
The warden congratulates him. "...you just lied and cheated your way out of prison. You’re a free man."

Back on the island... Ben and the two armed Others from the room are leading James on a strenuous hike... probably not too good for his heart (but if they didn’t have someone who could save Colleen’s life, who would know how to put a pacemaker in?) Ben tells him it’s not much further, just over the top of the next rise. "What’s up there?"
"Something I want you to see."
"'That little place you always wanted, George?'"
"Sorry?"
"What, don’t you read? It’s from Of Mice and Men. You’d like it... puppies get killed."
They keep climbing, along with Sawyers heart rate. The watch starts to beep. Sawyer asks if they brought him there to kill him, to make that thing inside him blow up his damn heart. "Your heart’s not going to blow up, James. The only thing we put inside you was doubt."
Ah hah! Ben pulls a rabbit out of his bag... the albino with an eight on it. "We gave him a sedative, not a pacemaker."
"How do I know that’s the same bunny, that you didn’t just paint an eight on another one?"
"You don’t."
Sawyer's had enough. He hauls off and punches Ben in the jaw. Ben spits blood into his hand. "The rabbit wasn’t the thing I wanted to show you."
He leads him further, past a PA post, way out here? They get to the top of the ridge and look out over the ocean... at the island. Home. Whoa.

"You ever been to Alcatraz? Take the tour? Right now you’re standing on a small island roughly twice the size of Alcatraz. And that over there, that’s your island. The one you’ve come to know and love. I just wanted to let you know, there’s nowhere to run."

- So does the Hydra connect the two islands? This one must be tiny... Alcatraz is pretty small. Alcatraz... the Golden Gate bridge was pictured on whatever it is Sawyer was holding/taking from Kate in Locke's hallucination last episode... Good thing polar bears are great swimmers. It makes a great hiding place though... So if the flashback is paralleling this, and Ben is the warden, what’s the set up here? He’s a guy Sawyer hates, but the only one that can give him what he wants, his freedom? Are they planning on using Jack only to fix whoever is sick, then use Sawyer’s love for Kate somehow to make him kill Jack, so their hands aren’t dirty? Are they good, in their own way? Goodwin is the only one that has killed anyone, right? Ethan did leave Charlie to die, but he could have just killed him outright, it was more like a warning for everyone else. It’s not strange that they’d want Jack dead, he is the de-facto leader of the group, the group that has now killed quite a few of them (and quite a few of their own)...their numbers are dwindling and it seems that they can’t reproduce or something, which is why they’re stealing kids and have a fertility doctor? –

Sawyer is dumbfounded. "You did all this just to keep me in a damn cage?"
"We did all this cause the only way to gain a con mans respect is to con him. You’re pretty good, Sawyer. We’re a lot better. Funny thing is, us telling you about the pacemaker wasn’t what kept you in line - it was when I threatened her. You work so hard to make her think you don’t care, that you don’t need her. 'A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. It don’t make no difference who the guy is, long as he’s with ya. I tell you, a guy gets too lonely and he gets sick.'"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It’s from Of Mice and Men. Don’t you read? Come on. Let’s get you back to your cage."

the good locke is in the smoke lodge...

Another eye opening opener... this time it’s Locke. He’s splayed on the ground, mirroring Jack in the pilot...

a naked Desmond runs through the jungle nearby - kind of mirroring Christian from the pilot – Locke tries to yell to him, but nothing comes out. John is bloodied and he can’t speak, but at least his legs are working. He looks like Frankenstein’s monster when he gets up – and as soon as he does, Eko’s Jesus stick falls from a tree (or the sky?) onto his head. Locke picks it up and reads it; it looks like a side of the stick we haven’t seen before.

‘Lift up your eyes and look north’ – which is from one of the many pieces of scripture etched into the stick:
‘gen 13:14’: And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:
‘hab 1:3’: Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause [me] to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence [are] before me: and there are [that] raise up strife and contention.
‘john 3:5’: And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.
‘acts 4:12’: Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
‘rom 6:12’: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
And scratched across the bottom? 4 8 15 16 23 42.
(I don't know about you, but ever since Pulp Fiction every time i read scripture - okay, BOTH times - it's Samuel Jackson speaking it in my head.)
Locke heads back to the camp. Once there, he begins cutting down the tarp sheltering his hammock. Claire and Charlie see him, and Claire is full of questions; “When did John get back? What’s he doing? Where’s he been, where’s everyone else? Don’t you think you should go find out?” Charlie can’t get a word in edgewise.

He follows Locke to the framework of Eko’s church. "So you’re gone for a whole day, after a massive hatch detonation. You don’t call, you don’t write..." We’ve heard this one before. Locke is putting something together using the tarp and some bamboo. He signals to Charlie that he can’t speak... but that he needs to say something. They're forced to play charades, and Charlie’s no good at it... granted, the answer isn’t obvious. Sand, the trees, Locke gets frustrated – but Charlie finally guesses correctly.
"The island...you need to speak to the island."



Later on in the camp, Charlie’s using some new kind of tarp (is it the balloon skin?) to roof a structure. Locke approaches with a sharpie and a pad of paper, writes something down and shows it to Charlie. "I need your help...I need you to stand guard."
Charlie’s not interested, he detests Locke and explains why; "You do remember repeatedly punching me in the face and accusing me of using heroin when I was not?"
Locke ignores this and shows him the pad again. "@ the sweat lodge."
"What the sodding hell is a sweat lodge?"
What Charlie, you’ve never read It?

Flashback – John’s driving a pickup (plate # 5Q49938) in the rain listening to the blues. Is the truck gonna roll? Is this when John ends up in his wheelchair? Nope. He pulls over for a hitchhiker, Eddie, who’s looking to get to Eureka and do some logging. John can get him as far as Crichville (I think)? Eddie’s just looking for a job somewhere away from his dead mom and drunken dad.

John can sympathize with the fucked up family thing. As the rain is letting up, a cop pulls in behind them, flashing his lights... Eddie asks John if he robbed a bank... he grins.
"’Fraid so."
Is there gonna be a shootout and that will be how John ended up in the wheelchair? Nope. It wasn’t a bank robbery, just a busted taillight. Officer Williams asks them to step out of the vehicle... he asks John what he’s got in the truck bed. "Guns and groceries."
He ain't lyin'... lots of guns (one of the pistols has a custom grip, looks like a sheriff’s star or something) and all the appropriate paperwork. Williams checks the paperwork. 3 handguns, 5 Winchester shotguns, a Varmint Pro rifle, 2 Nef Handi Rifles, and two H-S Precision rifles. We can see the info on the registration:
Jonathan Locke
25164 Franklin St
San Francisco CA 94099
He’s 5’10”, 175 – ss # 553-45-2651 D.O.B. 11/15/1946. He’s almost sixty on the island? Get the fuck outta here… I guess it makes sense, but he’s pretty damn hale and hearty for his age… 60 is the new 50.
The date on the registration is 10/20/97.
The cop tells him he could still bust him for picking up a hitchhiker, but Eddie tells the cop John is an uncle he just called for a ride. The cop doesn’t believe it, but lets them go anyway. The two get back in the truck. "So what is with all the guns, uncle?"

Back in the shell of a church, Charlie is admiring the completed sweat lodge. Locke’s now busy making the hallucinogenic paste that gave Boone bad dreams, and eating it himself. Charlie is aghast – "You’re not...taking drugs, are you John? I only ask because of the strict zero tolerance policy you’ve enacted. I don’t want you to start punching yourself in the face."
Locke shows him the pad. "I need u 2 stand gaurd."
Locke’s not booksmart, huh? He spelled it right the first time... Charlie agrees to wait outside the ‘magic hut’ in case Locke devolves into a monkey. Locke explicitly writes Charlie to not come in. A couple of minutes later, n the magic hut, a shirtless Locke (not exactly a shirtless Sawyer, but hey, he’s almost 60, cut him some slack – looks better than me without a shirt...) is eating the paste and making the fire smoky... he’s staring into the flames, waiting for his vision. It comes rather quickly.

Boone claps him on the shoulder. "Hi John. It’s good to see you again."

Locke mouths an apology. "That's ok... I was the sacrifice the island demanded.'
John tries, but can’t get any more words across. "Don’t worry... you’ll speak when you have something worth saying. I’m here to help you find your way again, so you can bring the family back together. Come on... I want to show you something."
Locke tries to get up and can’t... Boone points to his overturned wheelchair next to the fire and tells him he needs it. Some bad trip stuff starts happening (as in the camera gets all shaky and there are some rapid cuts – Hollywood for bad trip) and suddenly Boone is pushing Locke through the Sydney airport.
He tells John that someone there is in serious danger, and he is the only one that can save that someone.

Locke points to a dressed-up Charlie, Claire (with straight hair – nice) and Aaron, waiting in line.

"Not them, they’ll be fine... for a while."
For a while?

Sun and Jin are in line in front of the Oceanic departures wall and Sayid is standing behind them. Jin is arguing with Sun.

She walks away and Sayid pats him on the back, then points forward... the line is moving? "I think Sayid’s got it."

Hurley is behind the counter in a uniform, typing the numbers into a computer. He’s the one that knows where everyone is, and it shows in Locke’s dream.

But it’s not Hurley who needs help.

Desmond comes down the escalator. He’s wearing a pilot’s uniform and has three hot female flight attendants with him.

"Forget it; he’s helping himself."

Sawyer and Kate are in the screening line – Ana Lucia’s not waving the wand though... they should have gotten her back for that. Sawyer says something to Kate; I can’t make it out, something about stars?

Then something like, "Watch the line (watch and learn?), little lady." ...and it looks like he steals her plane ticket... it’s got a pic of the golden gate bridge on it. Sawyer has a cell phone in his hand as well.

Jack’s taking off his watch in line behind them. Ben (or Henry, as Locke knows him) is the one waving the wand over Jack.

Okay, that’s cooler than Ana, I guess. Locke flails his arms, trying to get their attention. "There’s nothing you can do for them, not yet. First you have to clean up your own mess."

Boone is suddenly at the top of a tall bank of escalators. He wants Locke to come up. Trippy again... cool cinematography and some great music... Locke lies down, riding the escalator up... he crawls across the floor when he gets to the top, and puts his hand in a puddle of blood. Eko’s stick is there too, covered in blood - but there’s no sign of Eko himself. Boone is standing above Locke. He looks like Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf in London, all torn up and covered in blood.

"Clean it up, John. They’ve got him. You don’t have much time."

Locke snaps to in the smoke hut. As he moves to leave, a polar bear comes lunging out of the flames at him. He spills out onto the sand next to Charlie, who asks him what happened, if he’s alright. Locke doesn’t answer right away, instead he goes over and picks up a knife out of its sheath and looks at it. Charlie asks what he's doing... as in, are you gonna cut me up with that thing? It’s first-season badass hunter Locke now, and he can speak again.
"I’m going to save Mister Eko’s life."

The two of them are searching for signs of Eko in the jungle a while later. I’m loving the music in this episode. Locke finds Eko’s cross... he tells Charlie that a polar bear dragged him this way. Charlie can’t believe it. "Sawyer killed the polar bear!"
"He killed A polar bear."
How many are there? Boone said 'they've' got him. Tom never answered Sawyer when he asked. They continue on... Locke finds some blood and tells Charlie he’s going to go on alone, and that he should go back to Claire. "You don’t want to go with me, Charlie. Bad things happen to people who hang around with me."

Flashback – John drives the pickup to a gate, and a little kid named Bobby opens it for them. Locke gives him a bag of candy. Kinda odd... This place is some kind of orchard, complete with a sweat lodge. Eddie, wearing a Geronimo Jackson shirt, asks about the lodge. "Anybody who wants can go in there and light a fire, get it nice and smoky... meditate...then you’re supposed to figure out what to do with your life ...figure out if you’re a farmer or a hunter."
"Which are you, John?"
They walk over to a large group of people just sitting down to eat... John introduces Eddie to Mike (it’s Norma’s husband!), who looks like he could be Tom's brother, and Jan. Mike compliments Eddie on the Geronimo Jackson shirt and asks John to say grace. "Thank you Lord, thank you for the food and the friends...and for me, thank you for helping me stop being so angry, and helping me find a real family. ‘Cause they’re a hell of a lot better than the ones I used to have."
He sits to eat, and Eddie thanks him greatly.

Back in the jungle, Locke and Charlie (I guess he's coming anyway)come across a huge crater – it’s what’s left of the hatch. It looks like it imploded. What the hell happened there and how the hell did any of them get out alive? Did the island or the black smoke save them somehow? Is this whole quest to get Eko a test from the island to see if Locke has regained his faith? Locke finds a dead boar nearby, recently gored. "It’s an active kill; meaning that whatever was eating this is gonna be back for more."
"If you wanna say polar bear you can just say it."
Locke finds some white fur stuck to a branch. "Alright... Polar bear."
They hear something in the jungle coming toward them... and take off running... it’s the bear, but they lose it quickly and stop in a clearing. Locke hears some more rustling and throws a knife in the direction it’s coming from... and they hear a man grunt in surprise. Locke parts the bushes to find Hurley with a knife sticking out of his canteen.
"Dude."

He tells them about Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, and the Others’ orders to stay away. "Oh, and that dude we had in the hatch, Henry? He was there... he’s like their leader."
This catches Locke off guard... or gaurd... but he has to fix his mess first. He tells Hurley to go on back and tell everyone what he just told them. Hurley wants to know what Locke and Charlie doing, so Charlie fills him in. "The island told Locke he has to save Eko. Apparently a bear's got him, and it’s just made an active kill. You may want to hustle."
He and Locke continue deeper into the jungle, leaving Hurley all by himself.
"Bear? What bear?"

Charlie tells Locke about the nature programs he watched on the Beeb when he was stoned; they told him that polar bears were the Einsteins of the bear community. Locke finds the cave... Einstein’s lair.

Flashback – Eddie and John are going to work in the orchard. Eddie’s razzing him about some girl, Lizze, saying that she’s into him... but she’s half John’s age and too granola for Eddie. He tells John she wants a daddy - like everyone else here. "You should take advantage of that."
"That’s not really funny, Eddie."
Eddie apologizes, and then asks Locke why he never talks about his dad. "Nothin’ worth talking about."
I dunno about that, it’s a pretty good story.
They pass a large opaque greenhouse next to the orchard. Eddie wants to know what they’re doing in there, but John won’t tell him, or isn’t allowed to. Eddie harps on it... he sees a lot of fertilizer going in (he’s been there for six weeks already) he wants in - he thinks they’re building a bomb and are planning on blowing something up... John laughs at him. He tells him he’ll talk to Mike and Jan about letting him in on the secret.

Back at the entrance of the cave – Locke’s going in alone... "I’m going in there because I’m supposed to go in there."
He’s putting together a torch and Charlie watches him pull a spray can out of his pack. "Hairspray? Now... I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but..."
Locke smiles... It kind of breaks the tension between them... they’re friends again. Locke lights the torch and enters the cave.

Hurley’s on his way to the camp when he hears something rustling in the jungle. "Bear... is that you?"
It’s not the bear. We hear a familiar voice. "Are you alone, brother?"
He says yeah, and a naked Desmond, looking an awful lot like Christ resurrected, emerges from the jungle. Uh oh, where’s his book? Hurley shields his eyes.
"Whoa, dude... I’m not alone!"
Des tells him he woke up in the jungle naked. "So, like, the hatch blew off your underwear?"
Hurley gives him a smelly oversized tie-dye t-shirt to wear and he and Hippy Jesus Des make for the camp.

Locke finds a toy Tonka truck as he makes his way deeper into the cave... creepy. Do the Others feed bad kids to the bears?

Flashback – John walks up to the guard at the greenhouse, who’s cradling a shotgun – Mike and Jan are looking for him. He goes in... there’s pot...lots and lots of weed. Damn! Mike and Jan are rushing around, packing everything up. "You screwed up John, you blew it big time."
They show him a file on Eddie – he’s an officer in the Humboldt county sheriff’s department.
Badge # 84023
Edward F Colburn.
"You know how much jail time we’d get for this much weed?"
"He has been in here for six weeks gathering evidence because you brought him here."
"He played you for a sucker... now it’s over."
Will John ever trust the right person? Has it happened at least once in his life?? John tells them to wait... "It’s not too late to fix this. I can fix this."

Deeper in the cave he comes across a lot of skeletons... one of them has a Dharma vest on or something.

How many people have the bears eaten?!? How long ago did they escape? He sees Eko lying behind a boulder, beaten and bloodied... Locke grabs his shoulders to carry him out, but the bear suddenly appears and pulls Eko back by his legs. Locke busts out the hairspray and gives the bear a high school flamethrower right in the face... it lets go, and he drags Eko away as the bear runs from them. Locke gets him out of the cave and Charlie helps to carry him. I bet they’re wishing the bear had chosen someone a lot lighter.

Hurley and Desmond are on their way to the camp, and Des tells Hurley what happened down in the hatch, and about the key. "That seems kinda convenient...if you had this magic key the whole time, why didn’t you, like, use it."
"I didn’t know what would happen."
"So what did happen?"
"The failsafe key must have detonated the electromagnetic anomaly, made the hatch implode."
"You didn’t implode... you’re not gonna like turn into the Hulk or somethin'?"
He tells Des what happened while he was ‘failsafing’. "...the whole island vibrated, and Kate and Jack and Sawyer saw it too, right before they got bags pulled over their heads..."
Des tells him not to worry. "Locke’s gonna go after them, he said so in his speech."
Listen: Desmond Hume has become unstuck in time. Fucking awesome. When did the hatch blow him to? What happened? Is it time travel or psychic shit? I’m hoping for time travel myself... maybe he’s already read his book and he’s dead?
"What speech? He said he was going to save Eko and kill bears."
I can’t read Des, is he confused himself, or is he angry with himself for slipping up? "Right, I'm sorry... I’m just a bit shook up."

Charlie and Locke are dragging Eko across the island. Charlie wants to know, now that they’ve survived the suicide mission, what Locke saw in the spirit tent. "I saw Boone. He told me I had to clean up my own mess."
"Well...I agree with Boone, after all if you kept pressing that button like Eko told you to..."
"We wouldn’t have had to save him in the first place – yeah, Charlie - that’s what cleaning up your own mess means."
"Spoken like someone who’s had a few too many messes to clean."

Flashback – John and Eddie are out hunting... John pretends to see something over Eddie’s shoulder, and when he turns to look for it, John points his rifle at Eddie’s back. He turns to see the rifle pointed at him, and John asks, "Did you know it would be me in the truck... did they choose me?"
(Did the island choose me?)
Eddie tells him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and starts to raise his own rifle. Is this when John ends up in the chair? John tells him he didn’t load that one. I guess not. Hey, it's like Jack and Michael...
Eddie drops it.
"So how about you just answer the question, Eddie."
"Yeah, they chose you, John. Because you hadn’t been here long, didn’t have a criminal record, and psych profile said you'd be amenable for coercion. Lower the gun... this isn’t personal."
Eddie starts to back away and John tells him to stop. "I’m sorry John, but you’re not gonna shoot me. You’re not a murderer (we heard this last week... remember how that turned out...), you’re a good man (sounds like an Other), you’re a farmer."
"Nope, I’m not a farmer. I was a hunter... I’m a hunter..."
BLAM!!!
Nah, he doesn’t shoot... he’s too busy fighting back tears; he can’t believe he’s trusted the wrong person yet again. Eddie walks off. So maybe Mike and Jan end up busting Locke’s legs over this? How does he go from being a pot farmer to working in a box factory? argh, I wanna know!

Charlie, Eko and Locke stop by a stream to get some water. Charlie takes off to fill the water bottle and Locke sits down next to the unconscious Eko. "Sorry. Sorry I ever doubted you. Sorry I gave up on my faith (he says something here - in god? again?). I messed up... now our people are captured... if I’d just listened to you, if I’d just let you keep pushing the button; I could have gone with them… I could have protected them, I could have saved them."
Eko’s eyes open. "You can still protect them. You can still save them."
"I don’t even know where they are..."
"You will find them. After all, you are a hunter, John."
Charlie comes back and Eko is unconscious still... he never actually woke up... or did he?

The two of them get him back to camp, where Hurley has arrived as well. Hey, a couple of the background people are getting their SAG cards this week! One of the extras wants to get Jack to take care of Eko. Hurley pipes up; "Jacks not coming back. They’ve got him."
Two of the background artists are getting definite roles here... the girl who wanted to get Jack snaps, "Okay, when were you planning on telling us this Hurley?!?"

She looks like Ashley Judd, but she can act, so I guess it's not her. Some guy with a beard has a few lines too, "What do you mean, they? Who’s they?"

Everyone is starting to freak out.
Locke stands and speaks. "’They’ are the Others. And yes, they’ve taken Jack and Kate and Sawyer."
Claire asks about Sun, Jin and Sayid, if they’re okay.
"I don’t know. I’m gonna find our friends. I don’t know how yet, but I will."
Hurley looks nervously down at Des, who’s standing at the shore throwing rocks into the ocean.
"We're gonna find them, all of them. And then we're gonna bring them home. But first things first, we gotta look after Mister Eko, so Paulo (beard guy) and Nikki (fake Ashley Judd) bring towels and water. Claire, we gotta clean him up, so bring all the first aid supplies."
Okay, I guess they've had some speaking roles before. Paulo is also listed as 'Neil' in The Glass Ballerina. Huh?
Locke goes into the tent where they laid Eko. Charlie, speaking to Hurley, hammers the point home, for those of you that might have missed it. "Not a bad speech."
Hurley does his best Keanu impression. "Whoa. I just got hit with... you know... deja vu."
He's watching Desmond. Charlie watches him - he thinks he’s crazy. Can he not see Desmond? Is there a Sixth Sense/Dave thing going on here? "Okay, well when that wears off can you get bandages from the kitchen?"
There’s look of confusion - and maybe a little anger - on Hurley’s face as he continues staring down at Desmond, who is still casting stones into the ocean.

Damn, he looks like Jesus here... halo and all... casting stones - is Desmond without sin now? Reborn after the implosion?

the glass ballerina

The glass ballerina is spinning slowly through the air – then it’s hitting the ground and smashing into pieces... A little Sun runs away from the shattered mess.

She’s practicing at the piano a short while later when her father enters, holding the pieces of the ballerina in a trash bag. He asks if she did it, and she tells him no, that it was the maid. "If you tell me the maid did this, I will be forced to fire her...who broke it?"
"The maid did."
Wow, Sun was a baaad girl.

Present day, Sun, Jin, and Sayid are on the Elizabeth, just offshore from the beach where the black smoke signal fire is burning. Sayid is busy checking Danielle’s maps. Jin interrupts with questions, which Sun translates (for us as well, Jin isn’t subtitled). He wants to leave, he doesn’t think that Jack and the others are coming – it’s been over a day. Sayid believes it could be because they aren’t able to see the smoke, and he wants to sail a little further and light another signal fire. Jin disagrees, and Sun tries to convince him. He reminds her that Sayid is not her husband (we have subtitles now). She tells Sayid, "My husband thinks we have to do as he says because he’s the only one who knows how to sail. But he’s wrong. I can help you sail the boat."
Bad girl.

Jack’s crouched and broken in the corner of his cell. Juliet comes in with a tray of food. "I made the soup myself."
Jack won’t speak or even look at her. It’s the three year old version of Jack again. She leaves, and this time there’s a guard at the door (although he’s missing when they show her in the hallway – maybe he just ran away quickly). Juliet knocks on a door with a red handle and Ben answers. He’s in a room reminiscent of The Pearl – video monitors mounted in the wall. We can see Jack’s cell and the cages. "You never made soup for me."
So the cell is wired for sound as well. But why would he care about the soup? Did Juliet hold him captive in the past? Were they together? Another blonde woman enters the station and asks if she’s interrupting something? "Would it really matter if you were?"
There’s no love lost between the two women. She tells Ben that Ryan has informed her they have a problem. The Iraqi has found the decoy village. Ben doesn’t care about that, "...that’s what we wanted."
How did they know about Jack and Sayid’s plan? Is the survivor’s camp wired for sound too? Ben is surprised when the woman tells him what Ryan found when he followed Sayid. The sailboat. Now they’re worried they could be found.

Ben is flustered – which makes me think he planned to get caught... this guy doesn’t strike me as someone used to surprises. "How quickly can you put together a team?"
Within the hour, she tells him. "Then don’t waste time talking to us."
The woman turns to leave, and Ben has one last thing to say. "Hey Colleen...I want that boat."



Tom, Pickett, and a few other Others are rousting Sawyer and Kate from their cages. Pickett hands Sawyer a lunch box. "...you’re gonna need to keep up your energy."
They’re leading them down a trail under a canopy when they meet up with Colleen and some other Others. Pickett's first name is Danny, and he and Colleen are a couple... why would she care about Ben and Juliet? Tom leaves with Colleen’s group as Sawyer and Kate are led on.

Back on the boat, Sayid is loading a rifle, while Sun is trying to apologize to Jin. She’s telling him that she shouldn’t have disagreed with him in front of Sayid. "You shouldn’t have disagreed with me, period."
He asks her why she came on the boat with them, and she tells him, "I didn’t want to be without you."
Is she lying? Why?

Flashback – Well, she has been lying. She’s nekkid in bed with baldy Jae. She’s trying to end it. Before she can get up to leave Jae hands her a beautiful string of pearls, but she tells him she can’t wear it because of Jin. Jae is insistent. "I don’t want to share you anymore."
So this affair has been going on for a while? He wants her to run away to America with him. She doesn’t answer, but they move in for a kiss. They’re interrupted by a knock at the door – Jae gets up and answers it. It’s Sun’s father.

He ignores Jae completely and walks into the bedroom, where he finds a naked Sun. "Get dressed."
He leaves.

Back on the island, Dan and friends have led Sawyer and Kate to some kind of rock breaking work camp chain gang thing. There are some Others breaking rocks and carting them around, are they prisoners as well? Or being punished for something? Danny hands off his gun to someone – it looks like one of the AK’s from the Swan. He turns to talk to Sawyer and Kate. "Alright, here’s the jig; see these rocks here? That’s where you two come in."
He orders Kate to chop them loose, while Sawyer carts them away.
"You expect me to work in this dress?"
"It’s up to you; you can take it off if you want."
Ha ha ha... she looks to Sawyer for support, but he just grins like it’s a good idea, until he sees that she’s hurt, at which point he tries to redeem himself. "How dare you?"
Ha ha... nice try Sawyer. Dan ignores this and continues. "If you need anything, raise your hand."
Sawyer raises his hand. "I got a question, boss."
"No questions."
"She got to ask a question!"
Danny’s losing patience; Sawyer has gotten under his skin. "If you try to run off, you will be shocked..."
Sawyer mishears (or is just playing with) him, "Shot? We don’t even get a warning?"
Now Danny is really irritated. "Shocked! I said shocked! If you talk to each other you’re gonna be shocked. If you touch each other, you’re gonna be shocked...matter of fact you do anything at all that pisses me off, you’re gonna get shocked."
Kate demands to see Jack, and won’t start working until she does. Dan takes a couple of threatening steps toward her – reaches over, and shocks Sawyer, knocking him to the ground. "That was a partial charge. You got any more questions?"

Flashback – Jin enters his father in-law’s office. Dad slides a folder across the table to him. "We have a problem."
Jin opens it – it’s a picture of Jae. Uh oh. "This man has been stealing from me."
So he’s not going to tell Jin? Either way, he wants Jin to kill him. Jin refuses, dad tries to force him into it, and Jin quits. "You don’t get to quit! This man has shamed me. You married my daughter Jin...that makes you my son. My shame is your shame (yeah – in this case it sure is). I need you to restore our families honor."
Jin takes the folder from him and bows.

Now – Jin, Sun and Sayid have reached the Pala ferry dock. Sayid doesn’t believe it’s been used in quite some time. He wants to tie the boat to the dock and start a signal fire on the beach. Jin wants to know if it’s safe. Sayid snaps at him. "Yes Jin, of course it’s safe."

At the work camp, Kate is busy chopping rocks with a pickaxe while Sawyer is busy checking out her ass.

Danny and Juliet are nearby, going over some kind of schematic. Danny notices Sawyer slacking and yells for him to get back to work. "Whatever you say, boss."
Alex is hiding behind some bushes near Kate. She gets her attention. "Careful – don’t let them see you talking to me. Are they keeping you in the cages?"
Kate nods yes. "Did you see another guy in there with you? About my age, named Carl?"
Kate tells her it’s just the two of them. Alex either says, "I thought he was supposed to be in that cage," or, "I’m not supposed to be in that cage."
I couldn’t make it out. Neither could Kate, she asks what’s she’s talking about, and who she is.
Alex doesn't answer, but asks where she got the dress and Kate tells her, "They gave it to me."
"It’s mine. You can keep it. Looks better on you anyway."
Alex takes off as Sawyer approaches Kate. "Having fun yet, Freckles?"
"Quit staring at my ass."
"Gimme something else to stare at."
Danny tells them to shut up. "Yezzir, boss."

At the Pala beach, Sun is bringing a gas can from the boat to Sayid (the sailboat does have some kind of motor). She’s wondering about the size of this fire and Sayid tells her he needs a big one so Jack won’t miss it. "Why are you lying to me, Sayid?"
"And what would you know about lying, Sun?"
A lot more than he thinks... and she’s better at it than him. Nevertheless, he comes clean. "I’m fairly certain our friends have been captured. There are tracks all over the dock...fresh, as recent as yesterday."
His plan is to build the fire so the Others will send a scout party... by the time they get there it should be night, and Sayid will ambush them, taking two of them hostage and killing the rest. "Two," Sun asks?
"One to make the other cooperate."
He asks Sun to lie to Jin for just a while longer, until the fire is lit, at which point there will be no turning back.

Flashback – Jin comes home to Sun and tells her he saw her father today. She’s sweating it... He tells her dad in-law called him Son for the first time; because he wants him to deliver a message. Sun understands what that means, and tells Jin he doesn’t have to do it. They could run away and start a new life – he won’t have to do this anymore. "I do this for you, Sun. I do this because your father expects it. I do this because that’s what it takes to be married to you."
"And what does it take to be married to you?" Sun snaps back.
Jin leaves, presumably to deliver the message.

Back at the Pala beach – Jin asks Sayid for a gun. Once again we don’t get subtitles for Jin, as Sun translates for Sayid (she’s such a good liar, how do we know that Jin is saying what she says he’s saying?). "He knows what we’re doing...he says he understands English better than I think he does...he knows I betrayed him."
Sayid hands a gun over, asking Jin if he can handle it. Jin answers by deftly popping the clip and checking the chamber or something (I dunno, I don’t have any guns - looked impressive though). The men send Sun back to wait on the Elizabeth. Sayid tells her where he’s hidden a gun on the boat, in case the Others get past him and Jin. "If they get past you that means my husband is dead. And I won’t care anymore."

The work camp again – Juliet tosses Sawyer a Dharma canteen. He opens it, dumps the water out, and tosses it back at her feet. He walks over to Kate and plants one on her...

Danny runs over and hits Sawyer from behind with his rifle. What follows is one of the best fight scenes on Lost so far. A big guy is getting the best of Sawyer, who reaches in and tries to use his own taser on him... but it doesn’t work – the safety is on. Sawyer manages to throw him to the ground anyway, and picks up an AK from the ground. He holds the others back at gunpoint. "James!"
It’s Juliet, holding a gun to Kate’s side. "Put the gun down, right now."
He knows she’s not bluffing and drops the gun. Danny tasers him and he goes down hard.

It’s nighttime now on the Pala beach, while Jin and Sayid wait in the jungle, Sun is making tea aboard the boat. She hears some footsteps and grabs the gun from its hiding place as we see the Others boarding the boat.

Flashback – Jin follows Jae up to the second floor of the hotel – room 1516. Jae turns to see him, and is rightfully scared shitless. Jin pounds Jae’s head against the door, throws him into the room, and proceeds to beat the tar out of him. Is Jae going to confess? Has Jin known all along? "Do you know why I’m here?"
"I’m sorry!"
Jin puts a pillow to the side of Jae’s head and holds a gun against it... but he can’t do it. He tells Jae to leave the country and never come back. "And if I hear you’ve returned, if you have any contact at all (holy shit – DOES Jin know??) I will finish this. Am I clear? You don’t exist."
He leaves him and walks back out to his car. He’s composing himself in the driver’s seat when he hears a strange flapping sound. A second later Jae does his glass ballerina impression and lands on the hood of Jin’s car, smashing the windshield.

He’s clutching the pearls he gave to Sun. I don’t think it was someone finishing the job for Jin, I think Jae just jumped. But did he go up to the roof first? Cause that was a pretty rough landing from just the second floor.

Back on the boat, Colleen finds Sun down in the cabin. Sun points the gun at her and asks to be let off the boat. Colleen can’t do that... she tells Sun there are five of her friends up top. She takes a step toward Sun, who tells her to stop, or she’ll shoot. "No you won’t Sun. I know you, Sun-Hwa Kwon and I know you’re not a killer. Despite what you might think, I am not the enemy, we are not the enemy. But if you shoot me, that’s exactly what we will become."
She takes another step toward Sun as the engine starts up, and Sun pulls the trigger, shooting her in the gut. It seems like she may have been startled by the engine and that’s what caused her to pull the trigger – regardless, Colleen now has a bullet in her torso.

An Other brother peers down into the cabin and sees Sun... he starts shooting at her. Jin and Sayid hear the shots and run to the dock, where they start exchanging gunfire with the Others on the boat. Another great action scene – shootout at the Pala dock. Suns makes her way topside, where Tom spots her. He takes a shot at her as she jumps/falls off the side of the boat. Jin jumps into the water to get her, and they find each other as the boat motors off.

Flashback – Sun is at Jae’s funeral, but standing off in the distance. Her father comes up behind her and tells her she shouldn’t be there. She wants to know what he’s doing there. "I do business with the young man’s father. I’m told he jumped from a balcony (well this kinda makes me think that he DIDN’T). He must have felt a great shame."
He’s hoping that if she didn’t learn her lesson about lying from the glass ballerina, maybe this will do the trick? But it didn’t; she’s still lying to Jin as far as we know. She asks dad if he’ll ever tell Jin. "It is not my place to tell him."

Jin’s drying Sun off on the beach. "I don’t know what I’d do without you..."
He puts his hand on her stomach – "...without both of you."
Sayid apologizes, and asks Sun to tell Jin that he will listen to him the next time. "We should go; we have a long walk ahead of us."
Sun looks pained – is she considering telling Jin the truth? She doesn’t know about Rose and Locke’s miracles – even if the island did get Jin’s little guys swimming again, as far as she knows, the kid is Jae’s.

Sawyer and Kate are being thrown back in their cages – Sawyer’s still hurting. Kate asks him what he was thinking. "I couldn’t help myself. You just looked so damn cute swinging that pickaxe...chain gang looks good on you, freckles."
But he had an ulterior motive – "Two of the guards got some real fight in ‘em, the rest...I ain’t worried about. The heavyset guy packs a helluva punch. Shaggy haired kid's got some martial arts training, but I think I could take him if I had to. FYI, those zapper things got a safety on ‘em."
Kate’s impressed. "Did you see the look on their faces when you got a hold of that rifle?"
"I’m guessing most of these boys never seen any real action. But that blonde that had a gun pointed at you? She woulda shot you, no problem."
Kate asks Sawyer why the woman called him James.
"’cause that’s my name."
Kate looks hurt that he’d never told her that before. "I noticed something else, too. You taste like strawberries."
The hurt goes away. "You taste like fish biscuits. So what do we do now?"
"Well shortcake, now we wait for these bastards to make a mistake."
The POV switches from outside Sawyer’s cage to Ben watching him on one of the monitors in the Hydra.

Jack’s on the monitor above him, Kate to the right. Bottom left is the other half of Jack’s cell, above that, I’m not so sure – it looks like the inside of another station. The top right is a jungle shot, but there’s a floodlight there – maybe somewhere along the canopied path? The monitors seem to change cameras as well, so who knows how many places Ben can observe ...and there’s audio. "...sooner or later they’re gonna let their guard down. And when they do, we’re gonna be there to put them in their place."
Argh, that sucks... it’s a good plan! Frigging Ben.

Jack in his cell – Ben comes in for a visit. He unfolds a chair and sits down. "You know what’s crazy, Jack? A week ago you and I were in exactly the opposite situation."
He knows Jack was angry because he lied about being Henry Gale, but if he had admitted that he was "...one of those people that you and your friends have been calling ‘Others’ all this time, it would have been right back to Sayid and his fists...I want for you to change your perspective, and the first step in doing that would be for me to be decent enough to introduce myself honestly, so... Hi, my name is Benjamin Linus and I’ve lived on this island all my life."
He holds out his hand, but Jack won’t take it. Ben has an a/v cart with a television on it wheeled into the other side of the room. He tells Jack that Kate and Sawyer are safe and close, and that’s all he wants to tell him about them. He says that if Jack cooperates, they’ll send him home. Jack doesn’t believe him. "If you could leave this island why would you still be here?"
"Yes Jack, why would we still be here... your flight crashed on September 22nd, two thousand and four. Today is November 29th... that means you’ve been on our island for sixty-nine days. We do have contact with the outside world, that’s how we know that during those 69 days your fellow Americans re-elected George W Bush, Christopher Reeve has passed away, the Boston Red Sox have won the World Series."
Jack laughs at him. "If you wanted me to believe that you probably should have picked someone else besides the Red Sox."
"No, they were down three games to none against the Yankees in the league championship and then they won eight straight."
Jack still won’t believe him, and Ben looks flustered again. He hits play on the remote in his hand and the TV clicks on, showing a very familiar sight (to me). "Back to Foulke...Red Sox fans have longed to hear it...the Boston Red Sox are world champions!"

Jack is watching the celebration on the field incredulously. "That’s home, Jack... if you listen to me, if you trust me, if you do what I tell you when the time comes... I will take you home."

i was shivering inside...

Ah, the obligatory eye-opening to start off a new season!

Mirroring last seasons opener, a hand brushes over a CD rack (the only title I can make out is ‘Self Sufficient'?), chooses The Talking Heads ‘Speaking in Tongues’ case, takes out the CD and puts it in a player. We get a look at this blonde woman as she tries to compose herself in the mirror. Petula Clark singing ‘Downtown’ seems to perk her up a bit (does she have to hide that song in a talking heads case?), but it still looks like she’s fighting back tears... great acting here...

she walks around her house, setting up some chairs and fluffing some pillows – and either a timer or a fire alarm starts beeping. She rushes to the stove – her muffins have burned... she burns herself on the tray while pulling them out and drops it, scattering them across the floor as the doorbell rings. We see an outside shot of a small yellow house. There’s an old woman in blue waiting at the door when our blonde-haired woman answers. She tells her about the muffins, and they both peer around the corner at a pair of legs sticking out from under the house. "He hasn’t fixed your plumbing yet?"

Later, seven people are sitting around, including the blonde and old woman... it’s a book club. One guy is complaining about the book they’re reading, saying that its popcorn, not literature. "There’s no metaphor, it’s by the numbers religious hokum pokum – science fiction."
It’s Carrie by Stephen King. The blonde looks distracted, but the guy, Adam, gets her attention when he mutters, "Now I know why Ben isn’t here."
Julie is the blonde-haired woman, the host, and she’s thrilled that Adam can’t stand her favorite book. "Silly of me, for sinking so low as to select something that Ben wouldn’t like. Here I am thinking that free will still actually exists on th..."
She’s cut off suddenly by what seems to be an earthquake...it’s strong, but over just as soon as it started. They go outside, and we see what looks to be some kind of tract housing, military maybe, all the houses look the same. The person fixing the plumbing pops up from under the house – and it’s Ethan Rom. Fake Henry Gale walks out of another house. Julie walks over to him while everyone gathered is looking up at the sky, seemingly waiting for something, almost as if this has all happened before.

They can hear it before they see it... Oceanic flight 815, breaking into two pieces in the sky above them. Fake Henry is all business now. "Goodwin."
Our old buddy Goodwin looks up. "You see where the tail landed? You run you can make that shore in an hour. Ethan, get up there to that fuselage, there may actually be survivors; and you’re one of them, a passenger, you’re in shock. Come up with an adequate story if they ask, stay quiet if they don’t. Listen, learn, don’t get involved (Goodwin blew that one). I want lists in three days... go!"
They take off running. Fake Henry looks over at Julie, still holding her copy of Carrie. "So I guess I’m out of the book club."
She turns away from him.

The camera pans around the village, then cuts to a shot from further away – the village is set in a clearing on the island – what looks like Charlie’s dove flies out of the trees - does a single dove always fly away on this island when a plane crashes? The camera jumps back twice more, and we can see the vapor trails leading down to the wreckage on either side of the island.

Goodwin must be a fast runner; that beach is far away and this island is huge, way bigger than I’d imagined. The Others' village would seem to be the ‘Downtown’ of the island.



Flashback – Jack’s hospital ID is next to a pager (it’s 7:15:23 am) and a finished crossword puzzle, all resting on the front seat of a car. Jack’s in the driver’s seat, unshaven, still wearing his wedding ring. He’s waiting outside a schoolyard, watching Sarah from a distance as Moonlight Sonata plays on the radio. She’s being flirty with some artist-type.

Jack wakes up... he’s laying on some kind of table – he takes a bandage off the inside of his elbow; he’s been injected with something, or they drew blood. He gets up and tries to force open a nearby door, no luck. There’s a big old intercom on the wall. Jack pushes the ‘Communicate’ button under it, but nothing happens. He sees an open door across the room and rushes over to it, getting about halfway before smacking into a wall of glass dividing the room in two. He tries to kick it down, but it’s not budging. He yells out to Kate.

She wakes up on the floor of a locker room, and Tom, Mr. Friendly, is standing over her. He won’t answer any of her questions, and tells her to take a shower. "I’m not showering in front of you."
Tom looks surprised, and then laughs at her. "Kate, you’re not my type."
Is he the first gay person we’ve met on the island, or is he just into chunky blondes? Maybe it's a black thing, and Bernard will have some competition?
She has the same bandage as Jack.

Sawyer wakes up in a cage... it looks like Jurassic Park or something. There’s a Dharma symbol on a nearby water tank, and a post with P.A. speakers mounted on it. There’s also a dark haired kid in another cage across from Sawyer, but he’s not talking. Inside Sawyer’s cage is a big red jolly candy-like button, with a knife and fork painted on it. Under that is a chute, next to a pipe leading into a dry trough. There’s a huge foot pedal kitty-corner from this contraption, and a lever near the top of the cage in another corner. He presses the button, and there’s a loud buzz, accompanied by a woman’s recorded voice saying, "Warning."
He pushes it again, same thing. He moves to push it one more time, and the kid speaks up, "I wouldn’t do that."
"If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it."
He pushes it a third time and an electric shock sends him flying back into the bars of his cage.

Jack starts yanking on a chain in his cell, trying to rip it from it’s moorings on the ceiling. After a few tugs, he hears a woman’s voice from the other room. "Stop that."
It’s Julie, the blonde-haired woman from the book club. "Hi Jack. I’m Juliet."

Flashback – Jack’s meeting Sarah in a large office building, presumably to finalize the divorce. She wants to know where his lawyer is. He’s still wearing his ring; he wants to reconcile. Before she can say much, her cell phone rings and she answers it, speaks with someone, and they share a laugh before she hangs up. It makes Jack insanely jealous, and he insists on knowing the other mans name. "I just want to know the name of the man who is sleeping with my wife!"
Sarah gets up and leaves.

Back in the cell, he’s still yanking the chain furiously, while Juliet is speaking to him calmly. She fiddles with a mixing board on a table in her side of the room, turning up the speakers in Jack’s cell.

She says she tell him where his friends are if he promises to let go of the chain and get down from the table. He barks at her, "Do you think I’m stupid?"
She doesn’t, but "...I think you’re stubborn."
Yeah, stubborn like a three year old throwing a tantrum. He keeps jerking the chain.

Meanwhile, Kate’s finishing up her shower. Sometimes I really wish this show were on HBO. She gets out to find her clothes are missing... there’s an open locker nearby (# 841) and a piece of masking tape with "wear this" written on it is stuck to the door. Through the looking glass.
It’s a sundress... Tom comes up and whistles at her while she’s looking in a mirror. "C’mon, Kate. He’s waiting."
Tom, along with two other men and a woman, walk Kate outside under a canopied pathway leading to a beach. Fake Henry is waiting there at a table set with breakfast for two. He pulls out a chair for her and she sits. There’s a pair of handcuffs on the table, and Henry asks her to put them on. Is it for Henry’s safety, or is it a psychological dig at Kate, they know she’s a fugitive? "...and if I don’t?"

"Then you don’t get any coffee."
She slips them over her wrists. "A little tighter, please."
Kate asks him about Sawyer and Jack, and he’s curious as to why she asked about Sawyer first.
"You don’t know me," she spits at him.
"Of course we don’t," Fake Henry replies, looking down at her handcuffs.
She asks for her clothes back, and Fake Henry tells her they’ve been burned. "Why did you bring me here? Why did you make me put on this dress, why are you feeding me breakfast?"
"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. I gave you the dress so you’d feel like a lady. I wanted you to eat your food with a real live fork and feel civilized. I did all these things so you’d have something nice to hold on to. Because, Kate, the next two weeks are going to be very unpleasant."

Flashback – Jack's in his office being a frigging creep. He has Sarah’s cell phone bill, and is calling every number on it. Christian interrupts him and sees what he’s up to. "You’ve gotta stop this, Jack. It’s over."
Jack dials the next number on the list and Christian’s cell phone rings. Jack starts to accuse his Dad, but Christian tells him she only called because she was afraid for Jack. She could see that he was losing his grip. No shit, I think even Ray Charles could see that. Christian tries to help, telling Jack that he understands obsession. "Being a drunk is not obsession," snaps Jack.
That hurt, and Christian walks away.
"Let it go, Jack."

Back in his cell, Jack is trying to force the door open again. He opens his mouth to swallow some water dripping from above, and promptly spits it up. Seawater? The intercom comes to life, emitting scratchy noises... Jack approaches it and hears Christians voice.
"Let it go, Jack."
Jack jumps back just as the lights snap on. Juliet is in the other half of the room, where she has some water and a grilled cheese on a tray for him. "This is how it will work. You sit there, across from the door, back against the wall. I open the door and leave the tray. Can I trust you to do that, Jack?"
Jack tells her the person on the intercom can just give it up. "Maybe you’re hungrier than you think. That intercom hasn’t worked in years."
He points at a button on the wall behind her and asks what it’s for. "It’s for emergencies."
Man, is he three years old or what?
She asks if he’s going to sit against the wall and he tells her she can have the sandwich. She puts the tray down and asks what his profession is. "I’m a repo man."
She asks if he’s married. "No, I never saw the point."
He asks Juliet what she does when she’s not making sandwiches. "Oh, I didn’t make it. I just put the toothpicks in."

She gets a genuine smile from Jack. "When your plane crashed, where were you flying from?"
He tells her about the trip and his dad, and she’s sympathetic. She touches her hand to the glass separating them. "You can trust me, Jack. I’m not going to hurt you."
Jack gets right down to it. "What the hell is going on here?!?"
Juliet walks away.

In the cage, Sawyer is trying to figure out the switches and levers... the kid across the way asks how long it would take to get back to the survivors’ camp. "You talking to me now, Chachi?"
Chachi wants to know what the people from the plane are like. "Oh, they’re just awesome. Last one of you boys came for a visit got tortured by an Iraqi – he tortured me too."
While Sawyer was talking, the kid picked the lock on his cage. He comes over to Sawyer's cage and picks that lock too, telling Sawyer to run one way while he runs another. The P.A. lady is repeating "Subject escaped" as Sawyer runs past some more cages and an aviary (Hurleee!!).
"Hey!"
It’s Juliet. Sawyer stops and looks at her, just long enough for her to taser him.
Cut to Sawyer being tossed back into his cage by Tom, while some Planet of the Apes music plays. Tom holds the kid up against the bars of Sawyers cage.

"Say it, Carl."
"I’m sorry I involved you in my breakout attempt."
They take Carl back through the jungle. He’s a lot younger than the rest of them, it seems, maybe a little older than Alex. Where did he come from? Why was he in the cage?

Back to Jack and Juliet. She’s telling him the drug they gave him causes dehydration, and that if he doesn’t eat soon, he’s going to start hallucinating. - are they behind all the hallucinations we’ve seen, somehow? - She tells him once more to sit against the wall so she can give him his food. "I know it feels like you’re giving up, like you’re losing if you do anything I ask you to, but you’re not. You need to eat."
He moves over and sits with his back to the wall. "Thank you, Jack."

Flashback – Jack’s in the hospital, watching his dad talking to someone on his cell phone. He gets angry when Christian starts laughing. He follows him to the Lynford Hotel, into an AA meeting. The director of the meeting asks Jack to take a seat, telling him that they’ve heard a lot about him. Jack cracks, totally losing it... "What’d you tell them about me, dad? That your son never really had it, not like the old man? I didn’t have the will to make it work, my life, my job, my marriage... WHAT DID YOU TELL THEM ABOUT MY MARRIAGE, DAD?"
The director tries to diffuse the situation, telling Jack that they are all proud of Christian, now 50 days sober. "Wow, dad! I wonder what helped you turn that corner; you think maybe it was a new lady friend? I will not let you sleep with my wife!"
"Oh, Jack, I’m your father, please just let it go."
Jack tackles him.

Back in the cell... as soon as the door opens Jack tackles Juliet, throwing the taser across the room and holding a broken piece of plate to her neck. He drags her into the hallway and tells her to open the nearest door. "I can’t Jack. I do that, we die."
He screams at her to open it, and Fake Henry comes out from the shadows. "She’s telling the truth, Jack."
He holds the broken plate against her skin. "I swear to god, I will kill her."
"Okay..."
Juliet didn’t like that answer from Fake Henry. "...I have her open the door and she dies anyway, we all do."
Jack pushes her away and begins opening the door himself. Fake Henry escapes through the door nearest him, closing it before Juliet can make it though. She’s trapped with Jack – he gets the door open and water quickly fills the hallway. He and Juliet manage to make it into Juliet’s side of the interrogation room and close the doors, but it doesn’t sound like they’re going to hold for long. "The yellow button!"
Jack pushes it, stopping the flow of water, and then Juliet swings and knocks him the fuck out.


Sawyer has finally figured out the contraption in his cage. It plays some carnival music while saying, "Reward...Reward...", and shoots out a fish-shaped biscuit with Dharma etched into it. A bunch of peanuts follows this, and some water flows into the trough. He takes a bite of the biscuit and a sip of water, and then hears Tom’s voice. "Keep movin’"
He looks up to see Kate being locked into Carl’s old cage.

She looks a bit worse for the wear since we’ve last seen her, and she looks a bit ashamed or something when Sawyer looks over at her, she turns away from him at first. Tom takes off her handcuffs, and we see that her wrists are all cut up from them. What happened? Was she beaten? Tom tells her he’ll bring some antiseptic later. Sawyer pipes up, "How about you bring me an ottoman? While you’re at it, I could use a blow dry."
"Hey! You got yourself a fish biscuit! How’d you do that?"
"Figured out your complicated gizmos, that’s how."
"Only took the bears two hours."
Tom leaves them alone. He really reminds me of Sawyer.
"You okay, freckles?"
She nods, and asks about him. He says he requested the cage she got, but whatever. "Nice dress."
"They made me wear it."
She trembles and looks away for a moment. Was she raped? "You hungry?"
He tosses over the fish biscuit and she takes a bite.

Jack comes to... he’s figured out where he is. "It’s an aquarium."
Juliet is busy reading something in the other room. Jack looks down at the table he’s on. "This thing is for what, sharks?"
"Dolphins too."
"We’re underwater, aren’t we?"
He asks if it’s a Dharma station. Juliet tells him they called it ‘The Hydra’. "So you people are just...whatever’s left over of them?"
"Well, that 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 Shepherd. I know that you’re a spinal surgeon based out of Saint Sebastian’s hospital in Los Angeles. I know that you went to Columbia, and you graduated med school a year faster than anyone else. I know that you were married, only once, 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."
She won’t answer when he asks where she got her information, but when he asks what the large folder she’s holding is, she tells him. "This, Jack, is your life."
He asks if it’s simply about him, or if they have information on his family and friends, and if they know about Sarah. "It’s pretty much about everything...we know all about her. What would you like to find out?"

Flashback – Jack's in a prison cell. A guard lets him out; telling him someone has posted his bail. He walks out to find Sarah waiting. Christian told her he was there. "I called you a cab, so...goodbye."
He follows her outside, where there’s a guy waiting for her across the street. "I need to know who he is."
"It doesn’t matter who he is, it just matters who you’re not. Jack, your father, he called me...to help you. He was so drunk I could hardly understand him. Look at the bright side... now you have something to fix."
She walks across the street and leaves with the guy.

Back in the cell, Juliet asks again, "What would you like to find out?"
"Is she happy?"
"Yes, Jack, she’s very happy."
Jack starts to cry. Juliet wants to bring him food again, but needs to know he’ll behave. "Can I trust you, Jack? Put your back against the wall, please."
He’s a broken man now, and he does what she asks.
Juliet leaves the room, and Fake Henry meets her in the hall. "Good work Juliet."
"Thank you, Ben."