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."