Episode 11 - Enter 77

What follows is my recap from TVGasm.com verbatim.
Unfortunately I couln't add the pictures from the site.

Old McDharma had a farm...

After last weeks lighthearted episode, the Lost pendulum swings back to the serious side with a Saayid-centric episode. Oddly though, the backstory we get in the flashbacks does absolutely nothing to flesh out his character, except to add the knowledge that he can cook. We already knew he was a torturer and we had a pretty good idea that he regretted his former occupation.

Remember the "Sadly for us both, you are wrong." line that he said to Sawyer way back in Season One when Sawyer said that he didn't believe that Saayid had ever tortured anyone? So what was the flashback for? Did we really need it? What was the point of a flashback with no new information or insight into the character in question? There is one clue from it that I think will turn out to be important.

Nope, not the cat.

The box. Rather, the cat in the box.

More on this after the jump...

This week opens with Sawyer on the beach. He spies some activity emerging from the jungle. It's a ping-pong table that Jin found in the jungle. Hurley figures that it was thrown clear when the hatch exploded. Sawyer isn't so sure, since he thought that the hatch collapsed.

Hurley's answer is probably as much for the audience as for Sawyer. "Look, Dude, all I know is the sky turned purple. After that, I don't ask questions. Just make myself a salad and move on."

Sawyer sees that Paulo is carrying a copy of "Guns and Ammo" that was once a part of his stash. When he confronts him about it, Paulo tells him that the group shares things now. However, since he's so insistent, Paulo offers to give the Hillbilly back his magazine.

As he tries to hand it to him, Sawyer spots the roll of toilet paper that the magazine was wrapped around and tells Paulo to keep it.

I guess he figures maybe Zorro doesn't always wash his hands.

Deep in the jungle, Locke, Saayid, Kate and Rousseau are following the bearing that Locke gleaned from Eko's Scripture Stick. Saayid remains unconvinced about the rationality of following the bearing and when they stop for food, he tells John exactly that. With that in mind, he leaves the group to go and gather some food.
As he gathers fruit, he hears a sound that's out of place in the middle of a jungle. Cautiously, he picks up his rifle and moves towards the strange noise. Parting the undergrowth, Saayid comes face to face with...a cow. Wearing a cowbell. Insert SNL/Will Ferrell joke here.

He follows the cow back to a clearing where a man is feeding a couple of cows in a paddock by a house. A house with a satellite dish.

On the beach, Sawyer approaches the group gathered around the ping-pong table. He has found the perfect ball for their new addition, but he's not giving it away. He wants his stuff back and even Nikki's admonition that the "stuff" wasn't really his in the first place doesn't phase him.

"A) It was mine when I took it.
B) Who the hell are you?
And C) Because I'm fair, I'm gonna let you play me for it."

He wants to play ping-pong against the group's best player, with the return of his stash as the prize. Sun comes up with his stake in the game. If he loses, he can't use a nickname for anyone for a week. Even the Hobbit thinks its a good idea.

Remember the game of guava-poker he played with Jack? Sawyer might be a con-man extraordinaire, but he hasn't proved very good at winning bets where his selfish interests are at stake lately. It certainly looks like the writers age going to get a week off from coming up with new "Hurley is a fat guy"isms.

The four intrepid adventurers are watching the house and planning their next move. Saayid figures that the only way to find out who the man feeding the cows is would be to ask him. Unarmed.

At a restaurant, Saayid chops vegetables. A fellow employee calls to him, calling him "Najiv" rather than "Saayid" and for the barest second, he hesitates, but then seems to remember that "Najiv" is his name. A patron wants to talk to him. The patron is Sammy and Sammy thinks that "Najiv"s cooking is delicious. So delicious that he wants to offer a fellow Iraqi a job at his restaurant at twice his current pay. It appears that "Najiv" isn't as effective at disguising himself as he might have hoped.

Arms raised high in the universal "Please don't shoot me" position, he heads in. Dead Eye McDharma shoots him anyway. In the arm. Saayid manages to convince him that he's not "who you think I am" (That sounds awfully familiar...) and to not kill him. Patchy comes out of the building but Kate and Locke get the drop on him and disarm him.

His name is "Mikail Bakunin" and he claims to be the last living member of the Dharma Initiative.

(*Philosophy Major side note. Mikail Bakunin was a very famous Russian political philosopher. An advocate of a form of anarchism called "Libertarian Socialism", he opposed the philosophies of Marx as too much based on a dictatorship and wrote that freedom must come from the masses, rather than in some way be imposed. He actually was exiled (!!!) to Siberia and managed to escape.*)

Locke heads inside to check the house and Kate and Bakunin get Saayid up and help him inside. The Russian has some experience with gunshot wounds, gained from time spent in Afghanistan with the Soviet Army. He tells Kate where to find the medical kit and proceeds to examine Saayid's wound. Bakunin grabs the bottle of Dharma Initiative Vodka (Next to the Dharma Initiative Merlot! - Both bottles carry the "Swan" version of the Dharma logo, for whatever that's worth.) and prepares to treat the wounded man. This gives Saayid the chance to do what he does best: Ask questions.

He asks how Bakunin came to be on the island, and when the Russian answers with an evasive "I hardly know where to begin," Saayid suggests that he begin with the Dharma Initiative. Bakunin spins a tale of growing up in Kiev, joining the Soviet Army and eventual dismissal from the military. He claims that a newspaper advertisment.asking "Do you want to save the world?" drew him to the initiative, who he describes as "Very secretive, very rich, very smart."

Well, duh.

Eleven years ago, he came to the island on their behalf, stationed at the Flame Station, the purpose of which is to communicate with the outside world. His assignment is perfect, since he likes computers and communications equipment. He survived the "purge" that the Dharma Initiative launched against the "hostiles" by not becoming involved. Four of the hostiles offered him a truce when the "purge" was over, taking only two cows, drawing an imaginary line around Bakunin's valley and then leaving him to his own devices.

When asked why the "hostiles" weren't interested or concerned about the satellite dish, he claims that it hasn't functioned for years. He doesn't know who the "hostiles" are, but he knows that they were here for a very long time before the Initiative arrived.

It turns out that Saayid's restaurant job was in Paris as we see the Famous French Phallus...er, Eiffel Tower lit up behind him as he walks to Sammy's restaurant. Sammy introduces him to his wife, Hamira who has some very painful looking scars on the back of her hand. One of Sammy's guys grabs Saayid by the arm and Sammy asks Hamira, "Are you sure this is him?" When she answers, "Yes," a brief struggle ensues that ends with Sammy's boot in Saayid's face.

Out comes the bullet and in go the stitches. As he sews up the wound, Mikhail notices that his cat is clawing at a rug. He says something to the cat in Russian and Saayid catches the name "Nadia" in the words. Turns out that the cat is named after Nadia Comaneci, the world famous Romanian gymnast, not Saayid's lost love. If I had to guess, I'd say that the producers were slyly telling the audience to not get too hung up on the abundance of "Daves" and "Brians" in the show. After all, most people know a bunch of Daves and a few Brians...

Also, kind of odd that Mikhail came to the island 11 years ago with a poster of a gymnast who was almost 20 years out of the spotlight. Comaneci was the darling of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where she scored the first ever perfect 10 in Olympic competition on the Uneven Parallel Bars. She went on to score a total of 7 perfect 10's. She's Romanian, not Russian, so it's also a bit odd that a Russian man would admire her, considering that she's from a competing country, but that might be nit-picking.

Finished with the doctoring (Who needs a spinal surgeon when there's a crazy one-eyed Russian ex-military dude handy?) he offers Kate and Saayid some iced tea. He also takes a moment to check in on Locke. Locke is playing chess with computer and losing.

(*Terrible continuity/sloppy chess alert. The chess board changes DRAMATICALLY from the moment the "Checkmate You Lose" box pops up to the next shot of it when Mikhail opens the door. In the first shot, the White King is on its own rank in the right hand Bishop's position, yet in the next shot, the right side of the rear rank is empty and several other pieces have shifted noticeably. As for the Chess part, IF Locke was playing White, there were no pieces threatening his King, yet he was Mated. If he was playing the Black, how could he lose when his piece (Black Queen) was the last one moving?*)

Mikhail tells Locke not to bother trying to beat the computer as it was programmed by three Grand Masters, and it cheats. Darn tootin' Cyclops.
Locke's take is that computers don't know how to cheat, which is "What makes being human so...distinctly wonderful."

A) What the hell kind of statement is that?
B) Was he playing the same game I was watching?
C) What kind of an idiot goes into the house of the man who just shot one of his friends and starts playing computer chess?

Don't get me wrong, I really like the Locke character, but in this case, I'm baffled by his behavior. Sure, he likes games. We know that, but this is like sitting down to play tic tac toe with one of the lions in the Roman Colosseum. Saayid is in the other room with a bullet in him and Locke is playing a game?

While Locke goes another round with the chess game, Saayid reveals to Kate that he is certain that Bakunin is NOT Dharma and most definitely NOT alone in the house.
On the beach, Sawyer prepares for a different kind of confrontation. It turns out that Hurley is the group's choice to play Sawyer for all the marbles...er, booze and porn....

Hurley asks for a "Mercy Rule" to avoid anyone getting beaten too badly. Judging from the first point, Sawyer will be very glad he agreed to it.
Like I said before, it looks like the writers are going to get a break from making up clever nicknames for Sawyer to torment his fellow castaways with...
Mikhail brings Kate and Saayid the promised iced tea and a conversation about the Flame being the hub and FINALLY an explanation for that cable that Saayid found on the beach surfaces. It seems that it runs from the Flame Station out into the ocean where there is a sonar buoy that helps guide in the Dharma submarines.
Saayid now understands how the Others were able to get around his position and grab the sailboat out from under them.

When he tells Mikhail, "At least we were able to kill one of them," all pretense drops and the two men attack one another. Bakunin moves like a trained boxer, but despite his wound, Saayid holds his own until Kate can put a gun (followed by a boot) in the Russian's face.

Just in time to be of absolutely NO help, Locke comes out of the computer room, gun drawn.

Saayid instructs Kate to get some rope.

In a storeroom, Sammy places a metal bowl in front of a shackled Saayid and bids him drink. When the bowl is drained, the interrogation begins. Sammy knows about Saayid's background as a torturer and tells him that he is certain that the chained man was the man who tortured his wife when she was arrested for harbouring an enemy of the State.

Saayid admits that he is using the false name "Najiv" and that he was indeed a torturer. He tries to convince Sammy that his wife is mistaken and that it was not he who tortured Hamira. Sammy wants him to admit that he was that man, and if he doesn't, Saayid will not leave the storeroom alive.

As they bind the one-eyed Russian, Kate asks Saayid how he is so certain that Mikhail isn't alone in the house. Turns out that the saddle that is still on the pony outside has its stirrups set up for someone much shorter than Bakunin. Saayid figures that they sent someone out to check on the Russian and the downed comms after the sky turned purple.

"Well, if there's someone else here, they're hidin' pretty good. I checked every nook and cranny of this place."

Saayid flips back the clawed carpet to reveal a trap door in the floor. "Not every nook and cranny, John."

In the storeroom, Sammy uses his fists to convince Saayid to admit his guilt. The once and future torturer refuses to admit to something he did not do. Probably because if he admits it, he's just as dead as if he doesn't. Hamira stops the beating before it can escalate to anything more serious than fists.

Beneath the Flame Station, Saayid and Kate search the basement for the horse's rider while Locke stands guard over the unconscious Russian. The chess playing computer is distracting, but he is supposed to be keeping an eye one the prisoner.
In the underground part of the Station, Saayid sees blocks of C4 explosive wired into the structure.

John doesn't see any explosives, and the game is just too darn tempting. He leaves his post and moves into the computer room.

Saayid breaks through a door into a room full of bank boxes and Dharma binders. One of the binders is an "Operations Manual". Sounds important. I'd take it.
Locke is back at the chess game.

(*Terrible continuity/sloppy chess alert! The chess board once again changes dramatically. When we see the board that lures Locke away from his job of guarding the Russian, it has no Knights left on the board for either side. When we see the game he actually plays, there are several knights on the screen. How many games does he play? As for the chess, his Checkmate? Not a Checkmate. Granted, it's only 2 moves to Mate, but still! How hard would it have been to make it a real Checkmate??? In a game with a real player, the player might resign after the move Locke made, but most computer programs will force you to play to Mate even when you have them dead to rights.*)

While he sits there congratulating himself, the screen goes all squiggly and there's Dr. Candle or Wickman or whatever his name is this week.

"Manual override achieved. For pallet drop enter '24'. For Station Uplink, enter '32'. For mainland communication, enter '38'."

Surprisingly, despite his Season 1 (Hit Saayid over the head to keep him from triangulating the radio signal) aversion to them getting rescued, he enters "38". Unfortunately the satellite dish is inoperable. The helpful Candle/Wick-guy suggests that if he wants "Sonar Access" he should enter "56", so John tries that. Sorry, John, Sonar is down too. Candle asks "Has there been an incursion on the Station by the Hostiles? If so, enter '77'."

Seems rather ominous.

Not quite as ominous as the knife that Bakunin puts to his throat just as he's about to enter the first "7". Nice move John.

In the basement, the horse rider gets the drop on Kate, but just as she's picking up Kate's gun, Saayid gets the drop on her. It's Ms. Klugh and Kate's not happy to see her. Her fist is though.

Saayid asks her if there are any more people he needs to worry about. Despite the gun pointed at the middle of her chest, Klugh seems remarkably unafraid. Saayid directs her up the ladder to the main level.

Seems that John is Mikhail's bargaining chip. He wants to trade his hostage for theirs. Locke figures that if Bakunin was going to kill him, he'd already be dead. While he and Saayid argue, a vehement back and forth between Klugh and Bakunin erupts, mostly in Russian.

I freely admit that my Russian is rudimentary at best. A friend found this translation on the net, but I can't speak to its accuracy. If anyone has a better version, please post it for us.

Klugh: Mikhail. Mikhail! You know what to do.

Mikhail: We still have another way [out].

Klugh: We cannot risk. You know the conditions.

Mikhail: There is another way.

Klugh: They captured us. We will not give (or let, or betray) [unintelligible].

Klugh: You know what to do. It is an order.

Mikhail: We still have another way!

Klugh (in English): Just do it, Mikhail.

Mikhail: Forgive me. (shoots)

If it's accurate, the conversation has a pseudo-military feel to it. "It is an order," implies a rigid chain of command.

Regardless of the translation, the result is that Mikhail appears to kill Ms. Klugh with a single bullet to the chest. Locke and Saayid proceed to subdue him with extreme prejudice. Saayid doesn't kill him though.

On the beach, Hurley makes peace with Sawyer after humiliating him at the ping-pong table. He even gets the opportunity to preempt one of Sawyer's trademark nicknames for him, which was probably at least as satisfying as whuppin' Red Neck Man's ass.

As Kate grabs some extra ammo, Locke sits in front of the computer where Candle repeats his question about the incursion. Saayid hollers for Danielle as he leads Mikhail away from the Station. Saayid questions him about his true history, and now he claims to have never been a member of the Dharma Initiative, while asserting that the rest of his story was true. Saayid remains skeptical as Danielle joins him. He tells her that they now have a "ticket" to find where the Others live, find her daughter, rescue Jack and just maybe find a way home.

Mikhail tells them that there is nothing they could do to him to make him give up that secret. The look on Rousseau's face says "Wanna bet?"

Turns out that Mikhail isn't the "ticket" that Saayid spoke of. Nope. He was talking about a map that shows a "Barracks" with running water and electricity. It's a good bet that the Others would use a place like that for a home base.

Bakunin warns the Iraqi that when his guard is down, he won't hesitate to kill him. As long as they keep Locke away from any board games, I'm thinking they can handle this guy. Rousseau isn't so sure though and suggests that it would be wiser to kill him, considering they only need the map.

On the floor of the storeroom, Saayid awakes to see Hamira enter. She carries a cat. She sits down and relates how when she first came to Paris, she was always afraid and never left the safety of her apartment. Until one day, she saw this cat being tortured by some children. They trapped it in a box and they were dropping firecrackers into the box.

Let's just stop there for a second. Cat. In a box.

I mentioned that before, didn't I.

(*Geek Side Note. Schroedinger's Cat is the name of a famous postulation about quantum physics. See, Schroedinger used the analogy of a cat in a box to explain the quantum principal, part of which states that the act of measuring or observing actually has an effect on the outcome. If you place (and no this was never a physical experiment, it's a postulation) a cat in a box and then place a can of poison gas in the box, when you seal the box something interesting happens. There is a 50/50 chance that the cat is alive or dead at any given moment. If you never open the box, because it is in this "quantum" state, the cat can never be considered dead. As soon as you observe the interior of the box, the cat's odds of survival change dramatically. I'm sure there are folks out there who can explain this more thoroughly than I, so I leave it to them.*)

She talks about how the cat turns violent when it forgets that it is safe. She understands how the cat feels. And it's all Saayid's fault. She only wants him to acknowledge what he did to her.

Weeping with regret, he admits his guilt.

This very moving moment in which Saayid faces his demons and is forgiven does nothing to change our perception of Saayid. We already knew that he regretted being a torturer. We already knew that he was basically a good man. We already knew that somehow he was going to get out of the storeroom.

We didn't know about the cat. Or about the box. While the human part of the equation is important to the character, the cat is (in one geek's opinion) important to the plot.

In the jungle, Locke and Kate catch up to the other three and Locke smugly tells Mikhail that he beat the chess game and why the Russian didn't want him playing it.
When Saayid asks, "Meaning what?" the Flame Station explodes in...um...flame.
Saayid is understandably pissed off at Mr. Blow Up A Hatch A Month. When asked what he had done, Locke explains about the Incursion protocol that he tapped into by beating the chess game.

Considering that the communications gear in the Station has been completely destroyed and given Locke's history with Saayid and radio gear, I'm going to bet that Saayid keeps a much closer eye on John from now on.

The group heads out into the jungle, but not before Saayid shares one last, meaningful look with the cat...

Episode 12 - Par Avion

What follows is my recap from TVGasm.com verbatim.
Unfortunately, I couldn't add the pictures from the site.

Oh My Goth! Jackth Got A Thithter!

Sonic fences, another car accident (that's five by my count - Kate 'n Lefty, Shannon's Dad, Jack's future wife, and Michael), tagged birds and a tub of black hair dye all come together in this week's "Par Avion" episode. "Par Avion" can often be seen on "Air Mail" packages (At least here in Canada - the literal translation for those who skipped that day in French class is "By Plane") and obviously refers to Claire sending her "Air Mail" message on the wings of a seabird.
I'll be honest, Claire is my LEAST favourite character on the show. I was dreading this week's show, knowing it would be Claire-centric, and after watching it three times to try to get into "write a recap" mode, my opinion hasn't changed. I just hope that whatever ends up knocking off poor old Charlie, it has to go through her to get to him.
On to business.

This week's episode opens on a tight shot of Claire's eye.

(*Lost fan side note. When I recapped Season One at my website this summer, I counted a total of ten episodes (out of 24) that opened with this kind of shot. Could the producers be trying to tell us something? Something about how our characters see and perceive the world? Nah...*)

By the smashed glass and deployed airbag, Claire sees that she's in a car that has been in an accident. The bit of the odometer that we can see reads "108". Those prop guys never miss a trick.

A radically different hair do (The only kind that most of the men in the audience would even notice!) tells us that this is a flashback and not a "Hurley I've got some bad news about the van" moment.

On the road in front of her, a woman lies motionless, obviously thrown through the car window on impact. It's Claire's Mom, as we learn after the young woman scrambles out of the gaping hole in the windshield and tries desperately to rouse the unconscious woman. Claire applies that age old First Aid technique, "shake victim vigorously until consciousness returns" to no avail.

Cut to another tight shot of Claire's eye. Her blonde hair lets us know that we are back in "Island Mode" and she opens her baby blues to find an arrangement of fruit laid out with a note reading "G'Day", which is Australian for "Good Morning" and often for "How's your hangover?"

It seems that Charlie has laid out the fruit as the first part of a breakfast picnic he's set up in Claire's honour. He's got a new lease on life and is doing his best to stop feeling sorry for himself and make the most of Island life. By her blushing response, Claire likes his new attitude.

Out in the jungle, Sayid is trying to fix their position relative to the "barracks" using the map he found in the basement of the Flame station. Locke is less than confident that the wiring map is going to accurately lead them to where they're going.

"It's an electrical wiring map, Sayid. I'm not sure it's as accurate as you think."

"Well, it's certainly not as infallible as the magical carvings on your stick."

"Hey the stick did get us to that station."

"Oh, the station which you accidentally blew up."

"Well if you'd have warned me that the basement was rigged with C4, I might have been a little more careful."

Kate interrupts the two men's verbal tussle by suggesting that their prisoner could tell them if they're on the right track. He says they are, and after a brief debate about keeping Bakunin alive, the group heads off to follow the map.

On the beach, Charlie and Claire arrive at the picnic area that Charlie has set up. As they are about to sit down to breakfast, Desmond emerges from the trees and invites Charlie on a boar hunt. Given what Charlie knows about Desmond's "visions" the conversation becomes quite awkward as the Scot is obviously trying to take Charlie out of harms way, while neither of them want to explain the situation to Claire. Fortunately, her attention is drawn from the odd exchanges between the two men by a flock of seabirds passing overhead. Realization dawns on her and she exclaims that she thinks she knows a way to get them off the island and then runs off down the beach.

She runs to Sun and Jin, and explains her plan. By trapping one of the migratory seabirds, many of which are tagged for tracking by scientists, they might be able to send a message by bird to the outside world. Hopefully.

Sawyer overhears the plan and just when he's about to call Claire "Barbie" or maybe "Barba-mamma", he remembers his defeat at the hands of Hurley (with a little help from Sun's "I'll kick your Redneck Ass" look) and narrowly averts a nicknaming. Best moment of the whole show.

When Claire tries to enlist Charlie's help, he questions the depth of her knowledge of migratory seabirds and suggests that the whole exercise might be a waste of time. Claire isn't impressed with the new, new Charlie.

In a hospital, black haired Claire is being questioned about the accident by a policeman. When he suggests that there was a fatality, Claire corrects him, reminding him that her Mother is in surgery, not dead. The policeman retreats. Did anyone else think that the exchange was just really odd? When Claire points out that her Mother isn't dead, he seems to accept it and let her off the hook, despite the fact that he's investigating a serious accident. Just odd.

As she's filling water bottles, Kate asks Rousseau why she hasn't tried to find out any more about the daughter that Kate told her she met.

Rousseau explains that she knows that her daughter doesn't even know about her, making any questions about her too painful to ask.

The group walks through the jungle and Kate asks Bakunin how he got on to the island. He came by submarine. Kate surmises that the existence of the sub means that Bakunin's people can come and go as they please. Not quite. The "even" of a few weeks ago, the electromagnetic pulse (presumably the hatch imploding, purple sky turning, quarantine door flinging, failsafe key turning, Desmond vision inducing electromagnetic pulse...) damaged their underwater beacon, meaning that they can leave, but never return.

Kate wonders why anyone would ever want to return.

Bakunin tells her that she wouldn't understand. Because, she's not on the list. It seems that the man who brought Bakunin to the island is a "magnificent man" (I'm trying to imagine any man I've ever met that would rise to the level of "magnificence" in my description of him and coming up blank. Anyone else out there ever meet anyone you'd describe as "Magnificent" in conversation? That bit just gave me pause. Obviously this "Magnificent Man" is "Jacob", and I'm guessing he'll turn out to be more than just a normal man...) and that the four people who have captured him are not on the list because they are, in turn, flawed, angry, weak and frightened.

Sayid suggests that Bakunin's people aren't as omniscient as they would like the survivors to believe. Bakunin rattles off their full names, Sayid Jarrah (Sayid gave him this one last week, just after he got shot), who he could not know, Kate Austen, a complete stranger to him and John Locke, who he might have a fleeting memory of.

"I must be confused, because the John Locke I know was para..."

I don't think he was going to say "Paragliding when I met him," when Rousseau interrupted him. Notice he didn't claim any knowledge of the French woman.

She interrupted what might have been very revealing (surprise, surprise) to show them something just a bit out of place on a deserted tropical island. A series of posts, looking very much like a fence or at least the remains of one. They extend off in both directions, equally spaced and in a vague oval shape that extends out of site.

On a secluded portion of the beach, Jin and Claire are building a bird net. As Jin puts the finishing touches on the trap, Sun arrives with the bait. She and Claire cut it while discussing Sun's Mother's hopes for her daughter. When the subject of Sun's Mom's never having worked comes up, we learn that Claire's Mom was a Librarian. We also hear Claire talk about her Mom in the past tense, a fact Sun notes but Claire doesn't let her pursue.

In the hospital, Claire walks in to her Mother's room and is confronted by her Aunt Lindsey. The dynamic between the two women is, to say the least, strained.
Lindsey is, to say the least, a bitch.

A doctor comes in and explains that Claire's Mom may never regain consciousness. When Aunt Lindsey turns the conversation to the question of the bill she is told that the money is being taken care of, by an anonymous benefactor.

(*This shouldn't be an issue, as Australia has a form of Universal Health Care similar to Canada's that would mean that unless they planned on paying for "extra" services like a private room and special nursing care, the basic medical bills would be paid by the whatever Aussies call their National Health Care program.*)

On the beach, just as Jin (counting aloud IN ENGLISH!) is about to trap the bird, a gun goes off twice, frightening the bird.

It's Desmond and Claire figures that for some reason, Des and Charlie don't want her to catch the bird.

Back at the mystery posts, Sayid tries to get an explanation out of Bakunin. The prisoner is less than helpful, but he certainly seems pleased to see the row of posts. Sayid figures that it's a security perimeter of some sort, perhaps even a trap. Bakunin tries to assure him that while his postulation is correct, the thing no longer functions, like most everything else on the island. There is also, according to Bakunin and the map that Sayid carries, no way around the thing. Locke figures he'll see if there's a way through. He uses Bakunin to test the thing, bodily throwing him between the pylons. When the Russian dies, foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the ears, Locke's only word on the subject is a less than heartfelt "Sorry."

Kate won't let it go at that. While Sayid tries to figure out what killed Bakunin, she berates Locke, since in her eyes he's taken away the one bit of leverage they might have been able to use to get Jack back. Locke stands firm in his opinion that Bakunin wouldn't have been any of help or value to them.

"Pardon me for not knowing that they had a, uh, uh, a sonic weapon fence."

Kate comes up with the solution to the problem of getting through the fence. They'll go over. That means they need the axe, which is in Locke's pack. And lookie, lookie, not only is the axe in his pack, but along with it, there's a nice block of C4 explosives.

"I thought you didn't know there was any C4."

"Well, I stand corrected."

Remember last week when I said that I'd be willing to bet that Sayid keeps a much closer eye on Locke from now on? I'd bet that someday soon, Sayid and and John are going to be having a LONG chat about truth, justice and exploding Dharma stations.

On the beach, Claire confronts Charlie about what Desmond did to scare off the birds. Since he was watching Aaron all day, he really has no idea what she's talking about, but she labels him a liar despite his protests and banishes him from her shelter. I see where Aunt Linsey gets her skills, or vice versa. Have I mentioned that I don't really like the Claire character?

Speaking of Claire and her family, she's back at the hospital to visit her Mother. She walks in to her Mom's room to find a strange man hovering over the bed.

It's Christian Shephard.

After meeting him for the first time, Aunt Lindsey arrives and the two older people start arguing. This was one of those scenes that showcases one of the few things I really dislike about Lost. The tendency to occasionally lapse into Soap Opera cliche. I swear I could see the guy who plays Victor on Y&R saying "You are not the arbiter here!" instead of the actor playing Shephard.

Come on folks. An argument in the hospital room of a woman in a coma while her daughter watches, followed by the "big reveal" that Shephard is Claire's father? That's Friday afternoon on every soap on the tube. All that was missing was the close up of the Mother's eyes fluttering.


At the fence, Locke and company fell a tree and build a makeshift ramp to scale over the fence. Sayid figures that if they don't break the plane between two of the pylons, the sonic pulse weapon won't fire. Kate volunteers to climb over first.

She makes it, but not before every red blooded man in the audience finds himself wishing he was that tree...

Locke and the rest follow.

Auntie Sun helps Claire put a nappy on Aaron while the two of them discuss what happened.

"Desmond's never gone boar hunting before and the boar never come that close to the beach." Well, except the time that they found the boars in the fuselage scavenging the dead bodies and the time that a boar tormented Sawyer by raiding his tent and taking his tarp...

Claire, it turns out, has something in common with her half-brother Jack. She digs tattoos. Enough that she works as a piercer in a tat shop. Guess those Goth-Locks of hers aren't posing after all.

Christian comes into the shop and convinces her to go for a cup of coffee before he leaves her life for good. The two go to a mall and Claire asks him about the circumstances that took him out of her life. It seems that while he tried to be a father, between her Aunt's hatred of him and her Mother's distaste for the fact that he had a whole other family in the States, it just wasn't meant to be.

When she asks why he bothered to fly to Australia now, rather than just paying the bills from the States, he tells her that he came to help. His version of helping involves "ending her pain", which seems to be his euphemism for euthanasia. Personally, I was hoping to hear him say that he wanted to help in a way that implied the apparent miraculous curative power of our mystery island, but alas, no such luck.

Claire isn't impressed by his suggestion. She storms off, but not before telling him that she prefers to not know his name. So, now we know how she and Jack don't know about their relationship. Good thing it wasn't her in the net with him...

She also wasted a perfectly good opportunity to make a Dr. Kevorkian reference.

"Do not keep your Mother alive for the wrong reasons. Now there is hope and there is guilt and believe me, I know the difference."

On the beach, Claire follows Desmond as he hikes along the beach. Just when he's about to round a rock, she confronts him. He keeps her back and we see that he's found one of the seabirds and it's sitting there patiently waiting for him to pick it up. (*I don't recommend trying this with wild seagulls. If they don't rip your hand to shreds with their beak, they're almost guaranteed to crap all over you. Either way, Desmond is a braver man than I.*)

She pushes for an explanation and he points out where Charlie died, dashed to death on the rocks trying to catch a bird for Claire.

She takes the bird back and brings it to Charlie, showing him its tag. She tells him that she knows everything, but Charlie shrugs off the visions. Claire's faith in Psychic Phenomenon might just be restored.

In the hospital, Claire, now blonde and pregnant, turns her Mom's TV back on, to a show about migratory birds, Canada Geese in this case.

She tells her Mom about the baby for the first time and the forthcoming adoption. She finally admits that the accident was her fault and tells her Mom how sorry she is for all the things she's said and done. It's another one of those soap moments I love so much.

On the beach, Charlie reads Claire's message aloud. It's perfect. He tucks it into the bird's tag and Claire sets the little Air Mail package free.

The two have a lovely hand hold-ee moment as they watch the birds fly South out to sea.

Kate looks up to see similar birds flying over her head. Hmm.

Sayid emerges from the undergrowth to tell the little band that they've arrived. Staying in the brush, they spot Jack running toward them. Only, he's not running to escape. He's running to catch a football thrown by "I'm Tom, by the way." Kate is understandably confused by what she sees.

Jack seems to have found a new home.