We open on an eye, oh hang on, that’s static. Big ratings puller. The static goes away and the camera movement is very fluid over an oceanic trench. We hear from a VO that whoever’s narrating isn’t picking up anything. Then he says the SONAR is picking up something. Apparently there are a lot of magnetic anomalies. The camera goes over a reef and it’s none other than the tail section of the plane they’ve found. That’s cool because we know that the tail section landed in the water so the island must be that-a-way. Ah but there’s the midsection and the cockpit...they definitely landed on the island. The only logical explanation is that the island sank! Or Oceanic did a stupidly high budget cover up – what ridiculously rich association would bother? We cut to a bulletin on the news which informs us that the plane was found by a salvage team in the Indian Ocean in the Sunda trench near Bali. The flash of news is being watched by the dude from Saving Private Ryan from last week, or alternatively ‘Dan’. He is quietly sobbing at the news. His wife is confused, but Dan doesn’t know why he’s crying.
Snap to the near present time on the island where the camera is crabbing about in a tiny cockpit of sorts and there’s lights flashing and a lot of shouting. It feels like a Michael Bay film. An Asian who played the blonde in Rush Hour forces Dan out and we’re treating to a neat first-person point of view of jumping from a plane. Dan pulls the ripcord and lands in a heap on the island. He hears running, and quickly checks his gun. Jack and Kate burst out of the bushes to encounter him and it’s the final seconds of last week’s ep. Jack says that he is Jack (shock!) and Dan introduces himself as Daniel Faraday. He’s there to rescue them.
LOST
Jate quiz Daniel, but he doesn’t hold up well to questioning. Even the simplest of questions like ‘Where’s the rest of the team?’ causes him to sweat, look shiftily from side to side, wipe his hands on his trousers, rock back and forth, stare at the ground, and stutter. He needs a phone to track the team and Kate volunteers Naomi’s phone. He calls up Minkowski, and he brings him up to date. Minkowski starts getting pissy when he realises that he’s on loudspeaker and Jack and Kate can hear. Daniel has to carry his conversation elsewhere, and then Kate reassures that Naomi covered for them. Kate gets tense when she sees the gun in Daniel’s trousers. Daniel comes back to tell them how the phone will help them track the team. Jack agrees to help them and Kate meanwhile smiles. Evangeline Lilly is an underrated actress as this smile is her ‘I don’t trust you one bit and I will incapacitate you as soon as I can’ smile, last seen when in The Flame with Mikhail.
Daniel’s first question is ‘where’s everybody else’ Most of them are at the beach. The rest are either dead or…
…getting spiritually cleansed by the rain. Hurley’s sound advice to Locke is that they will get struck by lightning, but Locke’s meteorological powers correctly predict the abrupt cease of the storm. Team Locke head off, and Sawyer notices they aren’t going the right way. Locke says they have to detour to the Cabin. Hurley, not thinking says ‘Isn’t the cabin that way?’ Uh oh…this is of great interest to Locke and Ben. Hurley lies rubbishly, not fooling anyone. Ben obviously wants to shoot him, but Locke is a bit more inscrutable. Will Locke get jealous like Ben and try to make out that he isn’t special? Or does, like the look on his face suggests, he admire Hurley for him spiritual encounter with the Cabin, and will he encourage it?
Sawyer doesn’t want to mess around, but Locke says it’s just something he’s supposed to do. Sawyer questions Locke’s motives as it was just 13 hours ago that he threw a knife at Naomi. Locke says that he got them from Walt. Yes! Locke’s a brilliant leader for his honesty, I’m so glad he told everybody.On the Midsection Beach, Juliet sits down with Sayid. THAT’S her closest friend now? Sayid’s looking for the freighter. Sayid asks Juliet why Ben would say that the Rescuers are coming to kill them. Juliet asserts that that is what Ben does when he wants to scare people…or that they really are coming to kill them. Sayid is perturbed and Juliet asks how many guns are left. A glimmer of a grin pops up on Sayid’s face. That’s the kind of question that gets him weak in the loins.
We’re back with Daniel, Jack, and Kate who comes across some fallen wreckage. It’s a battered chrome case, which they had to jettison to relieve the weight. Jack wants to know why the case contains gas masks and plastic bags with the Biohazard symbol on them. Daniel, who really needs to get tutored by Ben, says ‘Umm…I’m not in charge of…pckngstff…’ he trails off weakly. Jack asks why he has a gun. Kate gives Daniel a hard stare, unintentionally looking beautiful and getting me to fall in love with her
Daniel tries to says that it was just as a precaution. It transpires that rescuing their people isn’t the rescuer’s primary objective. Jack asks what is, and it’s nowhere near as satisfying as the ‘other’ famous Jack’s ‘WHAT IS YOUR PRIMARY OBJECTIIIIVE??’ from 24. Daniel uses the sudden appearance of Miles’ transponder to dodge the question, and hurries after him.Back with Team Locke, Sawyer wants to know more about this vision of Walt. Locke says it wasn’t even a dream it was actually Walt…only taller. Heh. ‘Like a giant?’ ass Sawyer. I wish I could see his face if the answer was yes. Locke says that Walt told him that he had work to do, he needed to stop Naomi. Sawyer considers this absurd until Locke justifies his reasoning with the fact that Ben had just shot him, and Walt saved his life so he had to take his word for it. This is news to everybody, and Locke proves this with his gunshot wound. The bullet went in one side (obviously) and then out the other. Locke was saved because he didn’t have a kidney there anymore. Irony of fucking ironies, Cooper saved Locke’s life. Locke doesn’t have intestines or ribs? Team Locke are in awe, just like the audience, and I can’t say enough how much I like this open honesty of Locke’s. Locke heads off, but the stunned team take a moment of pause before following.
Jack, Kate and Daniel are walking unsteadily over the death place of Kelvin Inman, and find this Miles in the same place. Jack bounds over to him as Miles appears to be unconscious. He’s not. Miles pulls out a gun and waves it in Jack’s face. Daniel tries to stop things from kicking off. But Miles isn’t really listening. He wants to know where Naomi is, and deems Kate responsible for her murder. Naomi didn’t cover them a bit!
We FLASHBACK to Inglewood in California, where Miles has just pulled up to a house. A report on the radio confirms that everyone on the Oceanic flight was dead. He takes a suitcase from the boot, is let into the house by an old black lady called Miss Gardner. She has a picture of Eko as a boy on the wall. Miles demands money upfront, but has doubled the fee because her grandson was murdered. If there wasn’t enough tragedy in the poor woman’s life, he’s fleecing her because the kid was murdered! Miles assembles some sort of instrument and receives the cash, and he counts it. What a bastard. As if she would lie. He tells her not to come up, no matter what. He enters a bedroom with many posters on the wall. He turns on the weird random instrument, sits down on the bed and starts shaking. This stops and he says ‘You are not doing you grandmother any good by staying here, man…causing her a lotta pain…I wanna go downstairs and tell her you’ve gone, but the only way I’m going to be able to do that is if you tell me where it is…so where is it?’ A bang from the right signals that it’s behind the cupboard in a little grate. Miles finds a paper bag with money and a sachet of browny-yellow powder. He takes only the money and puts the bag back. He turns of the ghost attracting vacuum cleaner and tells the spirit to generally bog off. He comes downstairs and Miss Gardner asks if it worked. It did, ‘he’s’ at peace, now. Miles pauses to look at the pictures of Eko again. He gives 100 dollars back to her. She hugs him.
Back on the island, Daniel steps over to defend Jack. Miles reveals that Naomi used a distress code, and doesn’t even have a sister. Bugger. Miles demands to be taken to Naomi’s body. Daniel says perhaps Charlotte and Frank are more immediate concerns. Miles still wants to see Naomi’s body. Kate tells the truth that Locke killed Naomi. Miles must be sick of repeating himself, and demands to get taken to Naomi.
Speaking of devils, Locke is taking a minute to get his clarity back. Ben calls Alex and says she needs to do something for him. Karl tells him to keep his mouth shut. Ben hilariously sizes him up like a true father and insists that the formalities gets dropped and call him Ben. This enough for hot headed Karl to draw his gun. Sawyer intervenes and tells Karl to take a hike. Alex goes with Karl leaving Ben with Sawyer. With no one else to talk to, he talks to Sawyer, saying that Sawyer doesn’t have a chance. Sawyer falls into Ben’s verbal snare of saying something closed and enigmatic so he’ll get asked a follow up question. Sawyer asks it, calling Ben Yoda. Even Ben smiles. Ben tells Sawyer that in the real world, a no-class con man can’t compete with a world famous surgeon. Ben says Kate must have been upset when he decided to come with Team Locke. Sawyer leads Ben on. Ben has to go too far and say, now completely in Sawyer’s head, ‘Thank god Jack’s there to…’ and gets pummelled. Locke tries to stop the fight and Sawyer is fuming. Locke, with his great leadership tells Sawyer that they are keeping Ben alive because he has information, and is completely harmless other than his mouth. Sawyer brings up the good point that Ben’s mouth didn’t put the bullet in Locke’s side. This scene feels like some religious painting, as Locke with his wisdom, caresses Sawyer’s soft spot and puts forth the hypothetical point that a child witnessing their parent’s murder is a case of history repeating, and Sawyer hands Ben over to Locke, warning that someday Ben will get the best of them.
Miles is using his mystical powers of Ghost Whispering to find the truth about Naomi. Kate is genuinely confused. Daniel mutters that the light on the island is weird and doesn’t ‘scatter right’. Kate gives a friendly pretty smile
and coaxes Daniel to hand over the gun. There are lots of close ups of Jack’s face. Daniel doesn’t want to relieve the gun. Jack interrupts to say that she’s wasting her time and just let things roll. Then he winks at her
We ALL know what THAT means. The phone goes off signalling that Charlotte is near. Jack tells them to stop and put the guns down. Miles is obviously confused that Jack would try this when he is unarmed, and is over confident. Pfft...Jack and I both feel it’s necessary to put Miles in his place, I mean, you go over to a man’s house for the first time, do you take off your shoes? You put your feet up on his coffee table? You walk into the kitchen and eat food that doesn’t belong to you? You open doors to rooms you got no business opening? This is not your island, Miles, and the only reason he’s still living on it is because Jack’s let him live on it. For that they are going to take their female lead hostage and have his armed friends shoot near their head.We FLASHBACK to Medenine in Tunisia. It’s the frigging desert, man. A woman in shorts checks out the front page headline (in Tunisia? Not likely that they would put that at the front page) that 815 has been found. She walks decisively past a man trying to prohibit her entry with a deft bribe. She reaches the site of a fossil excavation. Her aide thinks it’s a dinosaur, she wrong, though. It’s an Ursus Maritimus. And my A in Latin and many hours of trying to figure out the stuff on the Blast Door Map tell me, to my honest surprise, that it’s a Polar Bear…in the desert. Charlotte does some of her own excavating to find a collar with the Dharma station The Hydra’s logo on it. I mouth ‘what the f…’ and Charlotte looks positively vampiric.
On the island she looks well ugly…almost like this dude I knew way back in boarding school who had no friends and was obsessed with eating yoghurt. Charlotte is in a precarious position, and I’m very impressed with the realism and stunts of this scene where she is dangling from a perfectly horizontal tree over a pool. She ditches the parachute and falls into the pool and emerges, laughing with delight until she sees Team Locke.
Juliet exposits her and Sayid’s deus ex machina to Jack, who thanks her. Kate’s feeling rejected (and she should be, the father of her probable child ditched her for Hurley) and Jack tries to say that he forewarned her with his wink. He’s like bloody Anne Robinson, these days he can’t stop doing it. Juliet has a huge grin on her face. Sayid is doing what he does best and interrogates the captives. He find out that Daniel is a physicist but before he can find out more, Miles threatens Daniel. Turning his attention to Miles, Sayid asks him what he does. Miles says he collects soil samples. Heh. Sayid probes him more, asking that if the Lostaways are meant to be dead, why isn’t Miles more surprised to see them. Miles reacts sarcastically.
Meanwhile Charlotte, who is beaming like a follower of Ben who just found out that there was a cripple on the plane who got cured when he crashed, is acting like Harry Potter when he went to Diagon Alley and asking many questions. Everyone is eyeing her with suspicion. It’s as if one of their best friends had just died and his last words were to warn them that she was some sort of murdering vampiric bitch, honestly. On being asked how many of them are there, Hurley considers the question for a while, and decides to speak honestly. Locke stops him from saying too much. Charlotte turns her attention to Clairon. Claire reacts like how she would if a mad bag lady on the bus asked the same question and responds with politely closed answers. Meanwhile, Ben is taking advantage of everyone’s diverted attention to concentrate on Karl’s gun. Charlotte tells them how the transponder works, to reassure them. I find this hilarious because no one looks like they want to be rescued nor appreciate being spoken to as if they are victims. Locke asks her how many are on her team. ‘Four,’ she says. Bit disappointing. Charlotte has a justifiably bemused expression on her face as she tells them that she’s lucky to be alive. No one cares. Locke is taking her with them. The news of this surprises Charlotte because she asks ‘Don’t you want to be rescued?’ Nuh uh.
Sayid is tapping away on the sat phone, which irritates Miles. The phone makes a noise, which irritates Miles. Perhaps his nickname should be Mana-Lucia. The noise was Charlotte’s transponder. Jack looks round fearfully. They run towards the transponder’s signal. In true horror movie/Chief Wiggum style, Sayid says ‘According to the signal, she’s right here’ Kate looks pretty badass with her gun
It turns out to be Vincent. Jack’s extraordinary powers of deduction outdo even Sayid’s confusion as he says ‘Locke’s got her.’
A toy plane drops into a fish tank. The person responsible is Nick Nolte, at the time of this scene, in Eleuthera, in The Bahamas. Lucky git. A news bulletin concerning the crash site comes on TV, takes his interest. The report shakes him up pretty bad, until he notices something as this heartless news station broadcasts images of rotting corpses. Dude. He calls the hotline and demands to speak to the supervisor, he has information. We discover that the crash is phoney solely because the pilot is not wearing his wedding ring. The supervisor wants to know how he knows this. The answer is that HE was meant to be flying the plane of September 22nd 2004. It’s nice that at least one of the newbies ties into the mythology.
Nick Nolte is on the island and stumbling up a hill. He comes across a cow. Mikhail’s? It moos. The look on his face is priceless. The cow moos off. Meanwhile, he falls over, and fires a handy flare he had in his pocket. Team Locke sees the flare. Charlotte gets all excited again. Please, girl. Charlotte looks hurt by their lack of enthusiasm. ‘What’s wrong with you people?’ she says. Is she deaf? They don’t want to be found! Locke stresses that they should head on to the shack, and Sawyer voices his scepticism with ‘Sure, who are we to argue with Taller Ghost Walt?’ Charlotte decides that she’s outta here and begins to leave. Locke tries to stop her, but Ben has a different idea and shoots her twice in the chest. Sawyer beats the snot out of him. Locke checks Charlotte’s body and she comes back to life. This sets Locke’s libido racing and rips off her clothes to get inside her. His disappointment that she is not a living miracle who can get shoot and still live like him, shows like the bullets caught in her Kevlar vest obtained from Miles on the helicopter. Ben is rubbish at shooting, the only time he’s been accurate is with GAS, that’s how lame he is with weaponry.
The other rescuers and Lostaways are stood over Nick Nolte. After checking that he is ok, Miles asks where the chopper is. His reply is ‘I saw a cow’ Miles asks again, this time addressing him as Lapidus. Lapidus says that it didn’t crash and is safe and sound just metres away. What happens next is my favourite scene from the whole episode, mostly just from Giacchino’s music. He’s mixed ‘Credit Where Credit’s Due’ into a much stronger louder tune, and it flows so well. They all stride up the hill to see it. Sure enough, it’s there. The music and expressions on Jack, Sayid, and Kate’s faces are more than enough to give this episode an A.
Back from commercials, pictures of all our new characters are being placed on a wood table. A familiar girlie Manc accent is moaning. It’s not Spice Girl, Mel B, it’s Scary Parachutist, talking to the Scariest Spice of all, Matthew Abbadon. Creepy-Eyes Abbadon manages to outdo his creepiness yet again with his unnerving appearance. His torso is *ridiculously* long. Freak!
Also, I’m drawn to how tight Naomi's jeans and arse are in this frame. She says it’s a high risk covert op in unstable territory. Glad we’re on the same page. It’s dodgy enough, she says, without having to babysit a headcase, ghostbuster, anthropologist and a drunk pilot – it’s madness, what if she finds survivors from 815? What an ODD thing to say when being given a mission. What led her to connect high risk covert op to a disproved conspiracy theory. That’s like being told to go buy some eggs, and arguing that I might buy a prop from a supposedly fake moon landing by accident. I’m drained, and I’ve been writing all day, and I’ve got work tomorrow. Abbadon terrifies everybody and maintains that there weren’t any survivors. How the hell does he know, he’s obviously wrong. I’d love Sayid to meet him. He reasons that everybody on the team was selected for a reason, Naomi’s only concern should be to get everybody in and out without getting killed. Mission Accomplished!Kate and Daniel are bringing Naomi’s body over to the helicopter. Sayid is surveying the helicopter. It seems alright. Miles wants the phone. After some intermittent arguing Jack hands it over, saying ‘Don’t say anything about your sister,’ Heh. Jack made a funny. A woman called Regina answers. He tells her to get Winkowski, but he’s busy. Miles argues with her, so far having not made one nice conversation with anybody. Mana-Lucia. Miles gets into an argument over the point of flying Naomi meatbag of a body. A man who makes a living from talking to the dead, everybody! Practically speaking, Miles is right, there isn’t much fuel in the helicopter. Juliet is nursing Lapidus’ injuries. She introduces herself. Cool as a cucumber, Lapidus tells her she wasn’t on the plane. Juliet pulls the same BS smile Dexter Morgan gives everybody at Miami Metro. Without breaking eye contact, Lapidus calls over for Miles, and tells him she’s a native, he knows this because of all the times he studied the manifest. Miles goes from angry to very angry and shouts ‘Where is he??’
How the hell is Juliet supposed to know who he is. Someone please tell the writers of this show that ‘He’ is a pronoun, not a noun, it is a word of address, but not a name; ‘He’s gonna be wondering where I am’; ‘He’s a great man’; ‘He’s in Room 23’; ‘He’ is not a word to be thrown about willy nilly in moments of dramatic story telling, I want names!! And so does Juliet. Miles is there for Benjamin Linus. They needed a covert ops soldier, a physicist, a Mystic Meg, an English muffin, and some Cardinal drunk for Ben? A man who managed to be incapacitated by a berserk French raver three times? Or perhaps that vest he’s wearing is so awful for human eyes no one stable human could stand to be near it.
Ben is right now being beaten up by Saywer…still. Locke is making sure that Charlotte’s ok, she’ll survive. She’s not getting away easy, though, Locke needs her to be alive for the Wicker Man they got round back. He turns his attentions to Ben, and concedes that Sawyer told him so about Ben. Locke decides to take care of Ben, and cocks the gun. No, Locke, what happened to your rules of not being a murderer? Alex is crying, the indecisive beautiful little snot. Claire tries to get John to talk about this, and John plays of her weaknesses justifying the likely case that one of the bullets could have hit her or Aaron. Ben tries to use the old ‘Stop Locke from killing me by promising him answers’ scheme. Locke asks Ben what the monster is. Locke hasn’t made contact with the monster since Season 1, an exact 50 days ago. Ben says he doesn’t know. DAMN HIM! Locke says goodbye to Ben. Ben says Charlotte’s full name which stops everyone in their tracks. He lists her birthday, family history, upbringing and education. Then he outlines her mission with the names of her partners. Everyone is stunned.
‘What do they want?’ Sawyer asks
‘Me, James, they want me’ replies Ben irritably
Locke and the audience ask ‘How do you know all this?’
He simply answers ‘Because I have a man on their boat’ and arches his eyebrows smugly
LOST
Grading: A+
Interesting points raised: About a million. The most recent of which being Ben’s man on the boat. The man on the boat will most likely become integral to the following season, and one can logically deduce that this person should be a series regular. Aah but we’ve met all our series regulars. Oh, wait, no we haven’t. Harold Perrineau Jr is in the main credits: Michael!
Was that really Eko on the walls? The picture frames randomly changed.
Why couldn’t Minkowski come to the phone?
Why is Ben stood across a person using an unplugged monitor in the picture?
1 comment:
"Alex is crying, the indecisive beautiful little snot."
Ben raised her since she was a baby. What did you expect?
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