Lost 2:1, "Man of Science, Man of Faith"

[cleolinda]

So the Lovely Emily, a bottle of moscato and I watched this one together, and then we watched Invasion, and then I went to bed because my eyes hurt like hell, and then today I watched it on tape (my mother was taping it so she could watch something else), and so between y'all's comments and the tape, I was able to catch a lot more stuff. Yeah, it's not a same-night recap, but the process is a lot more relaxed this way, so... who knows what we'll do next week?


Previously on Lost: OMGWTFPOLARBEAR! Them bitches are hungry. Tourniquet necktie ACTIVATE! "Guys... where are we?" "Vincent, is that you?" HHHHHHWEEEEEEE. Bom-chicka-wa-BOOM. "They make boxes." Only the shadow knows where the Doomrador goes. Unf unf unf. "Shattered... sternum! Internal... bleeding! Ack...!" "Locke murdered my brother with a CLIFF and a PLANE." SHENANIGANS! P.S. Your wife speaks English and SHE HATES YOU.

The one-hour special was kind of the opposite of Lost: The Journey--it was mostly character flashbacks, which is what we were all expecting that other time, and substantially more useful than just rehashing everything that had happened on the island (although, since I missed "Born to Run" and "Exodus Part 1," I hadn't seen the Michelle Rodriguez scene or the Sawyer Tells Jack About His Daddy scene). On to the actual show:

Given the title of the show, you might think that this episode is about Jack and Locke. It is, in fact... all about Jack. I'm sure you're shocked.  

Traditional Extreme Eyeball Shot. Some guy's been awakened by beeping, and jumps out of his (upper) bunk bed, although I would like to note that the lower bunk has stuff (books?) on a little shelf above the pillow, so it doesn't look entirely unused itself. He's in a white t-shirt and boxers combo, and executes some command after a bunch of typing on a computer, but we don't see what. (Or do we? I didn't see anything, but someone reported that he types in THE NUMBERS.) At this juncture, it seems to be morning, and possibly the '70s, because the guy gets up to do his morning routine to the tune of "Make Your Own Kind of Music" on a record player. Like, seriously, he pulls this record down off a shelf and chooses to play it, so I don't know what that's supposed to say about him, but I'm a little scared. The interesting thing is that there seem to be windows (or "windows") at various points in the background of this twisty little apartment, and they're flooded with bright white light--the kind you might get in the morning if your blinds were closed. Only way brighter, really. So he's going around and doing his exercise bike and his pull-ups and his crunches and--dude, that's a lot of exercise equipment he's got there. He makes himself a shake of some kind--looked like protein powder, a slice of some yellow fruit, and... red egg yolks? Or possibly another kind of fruit. But I found that whole shot interesting. And then the guy washes his glass with unlabeled dishwashing liquid and runs the washing machine and takes a shower and gives himself A GIANT FREAKIN' SHOT with, like, a hypodermic gun or something, and someone at TWOP reported seeing THE NUMBERS (CR 4-81516-23 42, FOR INJECTION, 30ml Multiple Dose Vial, Rx-1) on whatever it was. And then, a faint BOOM above him, and the place shakes--Some Guy freaks out and starts running around getting dressed (was that a jumpsuit of some kind?) and loading a rifle (which reminded me a lot of Rousseau's rifle, with the shoulder-strap and all) and turning off the lights and basically battening down the hatches. The camera moves through all the little twists of the "apartment," as I'm calling it, past a series of periscope mirrors bouncing back the reflection of a long tunnel that is THE HATCH WTF with Jack and Locke, in the pitch-black jungle, staring down into it.

Title card.

Jack and Locke are huddled over the opening. Hurley's pacing back and forth behind them, frantically muttering The Numbers, and then announces that he has to pee. Well, the little boy's tree is unoccupied, man--I say go for it. Kate goes to join the guys--"Great," says Hurley, "go look into the burning death hole." They throw something in and it makes kind of a splashy thud. "Water!" says Kate. "Sounds like a puddle!" says Locke. They excitedly decide that it's probably forty feet, fifty at the most, down. Locke wants to make a harness of some kind--I think he mentions the cables back at camp at this point--and Jack's all like WE ARE ALL GOING HOME NOW. (My notes are handwritten and thus there's fewer of them, so if I get things out of order... frankly, I don't really care.) "This is what we came for!" says Locke. "To open the hatch!" "And TO SAVE EVERYONE," Jack says pointedly, and Locke's like, yeah, well, that too, but... HATCH!! Jack pulls imaginary rank and decides that there's no way to get all the castaways down there, what with the broken ladder and the NOTHING AT THE BOTTOM, so therefore the hatch, she is moot.

Flashjack. I can't tell how many years ago this is supposed to be (I doubt it's all that many given the presence of Julie Bowen), but the production has decided to signal the past tense by having Jack wear the pelt of David Duchovny. Seriously, that is some fug hair, y'all. He's in the ER and two crash victims come in, first a pretty blonde (whose tires blew out, they tell him) and then an older man, and I'm not entirely sure why he chooses to stick with the blonde, except that she came in first and is a pretty blonde. He tells another guy that Older Guy needs to be intubated and the guy says something along the lines of "I can't do that," which--thanks, Some Doctor Guy, that's helpful. So older guy, whose name is "Mr. Rutherford," dies. Mr. Rutherford? You mean, as in Shannon "Your Mom Screwed My Dad Over After He Died" RUTHERFORD? Why, yes, I do believe so. Thanks a lot, Captain Hero Doctor Jack. Back on the other side of the room, Jack yanks a chunk of steering wheel column (SQUELLLLLLCH) out of the blonde's chest, and she gasps, "I have... to dance... at my wedding." Which means, of course, that this is the Future Mrs. Captain Hero Doctor Jack Omg.

Cavetown-on-Dead Pool. I think. I can't really tell, because this whole episode is fucking dark. But I seem to remember the plan being that they were going to evacuate New Jungleton because of the Others and retreat to Cavetown. Charlie is telling some poor extra who does, in fact, actually get to talk that Crazy Rousseau just made all that about the Others coming up to get Claire's baby, and that she set the signal fire on the other beach herself and that "she's got a wingnut loose," and Sayid kind of looks at him like he would challenge Charlie to a duel for the honor of Crazy Rousseau if he weren't so tired, and Charlie's like, "What?," and Sayid's like, "... Nothing." And then Snicker Bitch comes through asking if anyone's seen "the damn dog," because she's already managed to lose Vincent in, like, the half a day she's had custody of him.

The Republic of Hatchnya. "Why'd you light the fuse, man?" Hurley is demanding of Locke. "Why wouldn't I light the fuse?" "Maybe because I was yelling DON'T LIGHT THE FUSE?" says Hurley. Locke chuckles: "Well... you got me there." And then he says--oh, crap. Yeah, here's the whole conversation about saving people in my notes. So, uh, mentally move that down here: "This is what we came for!" says Locke. "To open the hatch!" "And TO SAVE EVERYONE," Jack says pointedly, and Locke's like, yeah, well, that too, but... HATCH!! Jack pulls imaginary rank and decides that there's no way to get all the castaways down there, what with the broken ladder and the NOTHING AT THE BOTTOM, so therefore the hatch, she is moot. "Hey, you guys?" says Kate. "You need to come look at this." It's the hatch door they blew off, and on the underside--I assume, because they would have noticed this on the outside--is printed QUARANTINE. Brilliant, you guys.

Department of Animal Control, Snickerbitchapan. "Vincent will come back," Sayid is telling Shannon out in the jungle. "He always does. How long has it been since you've slept, or had anything to eat? You're exhausted." "This is the only thing anyone has ever asked me to do," retorts Snicker Bitch in a sudden fit of responsibility, "and I can't tell that kid I lost his dog because I was exhausted." And then they see Vincent out in the foliage, where Vincent makes a sound remarkably like "Heh," and Sayid's going to go around and "surround" him, as it were, from the other side, and then Vincent bounds off and Sayid runs after him with Shannon's torch and Shannon is yelling for Sayid and she trips over a branch or a root or a vine or something and wipes out on her face. So she's crawling around in the dark, in the jungle, looking fairly freaked out, and then the whispering starts in again. Great. So she's whipping around in terror and then she sees--WALT. Walt who was, you know, carried off by the Others at sea. And he's just standing there, dripping. He lifts a finger to his lips and I think he says "Shhhh," but then we get a closeup of his face and there's something clogging his throat and I don't know what he says to her, because they seem to be running his voice backwards, I'm not sure. (Wait, wait, breaking news: "Push the button. No/The button's bad.") And then Sayid comes bounding up and Shannon looks back and Walt is gone. Shannon's hair, by the way, is awesome.

Walking back through the jungle to Cavetown: Kate wants to know why Locke is so antsy to get down into a hatch covered by a foot-thick steel door with QUARANTINE written on it. "Well, look on the bright side," says Locke, smiling: "The damage is already done." I kind of want to thump Locke. "I can't really blame Jack if he thinks I've lost it," adds Locke, "but just today I was dragged around by a column of black smoke, so..." Which Kate also saw. "So I guess we're both crazy," he says, eyes gleaming. AIEEEE.

Meanwhile, Hurley's telling Jack that they need to catch up: "Don't want Locke makin' time with your girl." Heh. Jack is not in the mood. After some sarcastic bantering about how dour Jack tends to be ("Hey, things aren't so bad. Yeah, we've got the Others coming to eat us and every now and then someone blows up, but you do get to sleep in"), Jack asks Hurley why he was shouting "The numbers are bad!" right before Locke lit the fuse. (I really wish I had a recap to link back to for this episode, but... yeah, I still have to catch up on the last four.) Hurley says he's afraid Jack will think he's crazy, but here goes: he was in a psych ward for a little while, and there was this guy Leonard who did nothing but chant these numbers all day, and when he got out he went to the Qwik-E Mart or whatever for a burrito and still had the numbers in his head and so he played them on a lotto ticket. And then he won... $114 million dollars. (Jack looks only sort of vaguely surprised by this. Then again, he spent the day covered in Arzt pulling Locke away from The Nothing, so... ) "And then bad things started to happen. My grandpa died, my house burned down, the chicken joint where I worked got hit by a meteor... well, a meteorite..." HA.

Jack: "You were in a psych ward?" Hurley: "I AM NOT CRAZY." "They're just numbers," says Jack. A METEORITE, JACK. "So that's it? That's all?" "What do you want me to say?" says Jack. "What's that thing where just talking to a doctor makes you feel better?" "Bedside manner?" "Yeah. YOURS SUCKS."

A Flashback In Which Jack's Bedside Manner Sucks. Sarah asks what happened to the guy she hit, and Jack tells her that he died. Then he breaks the news to her that he can operate on her, but she's probably totally paralyzed and will never, ever walk again, much less dance at her wedding, and will probably die old and alone. Or... you know, something like that. Jack's dad overhears this and pops in to say, "Dr. Shephard, could I see you for a moment?" Jack, in the hall: "Okay, what'd I do wrong?" "Wrong?" "You're frowning." "I always look like this," his dad deadpans. Again: HA. Basically, Jack's dad's like, "Son, you've got to give a patient hope, even if it's 1% hope against 99% suck, even if it's false hope, and for the love of God, cut your fugly hair before some cancer patient turns to stone just looking at you." Normally I would say it's out of character for Jack's dad to advocate being positive in any way whatsoever, but doing so allows him to bag on his son, so... A-OK right there!

A Cavetown Scene In Which Jack Gives People Hope. Right before the Hatchnyans arrive, Charlie and Shannon are arguing over whether she actually saw Walt or not, and whether there are actually Others are not (I can't tell if Charlie honestly thinks there are no Others, given that whole hanging situation and all, or if he doesn't want anyone to talk about them because they'd scare Claire), and then Sun's all worried that something happened to the raft (which, of course, Walt was supposed to be on), and all of this is in front of a large crowd of frightened extras, and then Jack arrives to tell them woss wot: "We found a hatch a couple of miles away, and we blew it open so that people--so that EVERYONE--could hide inside... but there's no way that's going to happen now, so..." Charlie pipes up, "Where's Dr. Arzt?" Oh dear. Jack: "Dr. Arzt... didn't make it." The extras buzz worriedly. Shannon blurts out, somewhat sullenly, "Did you see the Others?" Charlie: "THERE ARE! NO! OTHERS!" A slight pandemonium breaks out with the extras murmuring "Peas and carrots! Peas and carrots!" "WATERMELON!!" at each other. (Theater joke, sorry.) "HEY!" shouts Jack. You can see him processing the flashback he just had, aaaaaand... "Everything's gonna be okay! We're gonna stay here tonight! Together! We've still got guns! We'll post lookouts on every side! I mean, I know Boone was kind of useless, but he's dead now, so I'm sure the watch will be much more effective this time!" "HEY!" "Sorry about that, Shannon." Jack finishes his speech off with, "The sun comes up in three hours, and we're all gonna be here to see that happen." And then: "Locke... what are you doing?" Locke: "I'm getting cable. For the hatch. I'm goin' in." "Do you really think this is a good idea?" says Jack sternly. The extras are all like, "Mommy and Daddy are fighting again!" "I doubt it," says Locke, hilariously. "In fact, you're right. We should wait here, wait for daylight, but me, I'm tired of waiting." Thanks for fomenting unrest, Locke.

So Jack is sulking when Kate comes over, all surprised that he could be all glass-half-full back there, and Jack says, "There's a glass?" Heh. "You did a good thing," she says, eyes shining with The Epic Love of Jack and Kate, "giving us someone to count on. If you weren't here... I'm going into the hatch." A non-sequitur for the win! While Jack's sputtering, she explains that if Locke falls and breaks his neck, someone's gotta be there to haul his carcass out: "Live together, die alone, right?" she says, and Jack's like, "Dammit, you were actually listening to that speech?"

Flashjack to Captain Hero Dr. Shephard's office, where he's meeting with Sarah's fiancé, Kevin. Kevin is, by the way, the worst fiancé ever. "She was goin' to some fitting... looking at tablecloths," he mutters. (Five bucks says Sarah was at a Sabrina Carlisle emporium, by the way.) Turns out the wedding's eight months away. Jack tells him that there will have to be a lot of physical therapy at best ("Will we be able to... make love?" asks Kevin, taking a really long time to come up with a network-appropriate euphemism that still somehow makes him sound like an utter douche), and at worst, Sarah may need professional care for the rest of her life. "What... she can't go to the bathroom by herself?" I'm not sure the line by itself can convey how hateful this guy sounds. Like, he's not worried for Sarah's sake; he's slightly disgusted that he's going to be saddled with this.

Cut to the operating room, where Sarah's on her stomach looking awful: "C'mere. I gotta tell you a secret," she whispers. Jack, en scrub, is looking at her like, "Man, you better actually tell me something, because there's this guy on the island who's a total ass about 'secrets.'" "Closer," she breathes. I actually had to watch the tape twice to catch what she says: "I know... I'm not going to be dancing... but I can roll around at my wedding anyway. And you're invited." The Meh Ship Jack Is Obsessed With Saving People steams off towards Hawaii. He leans down and whispers, with the intense intensity of intenseness, "I'm gonna fix you." Everyone else in the operating room kind of looks around, like, AWKWARD.

The Hatchen Republic. "I expected you to be halfway down there by now," says Kate, emerging from the jungle. "I was waiting for you," says Locke, smiling with his back still turned to her, because he is CREEPY. He proposes to send her down and she's like WHAAAAAAT? until he points out that she's lighter, and he can haul her up and down, which... it's true. "And then there's the part where you just want to see if I get eaten," Kate says grimly. "Well, yeah," says Locke cheerfully (hee!). "What should I say if I want you to stop?" she asks, and Locke's like, what, are we picking safewords now? You say STOP. So he lowers her down on sort of an ass-sling he made out of the cable, which is run around two or three young trees... which, unfortunately, kind of snap and break and send Kate plummeting down the hatch screaming. Locke manages to catch her, but his hands are dripping with blood from the cable now (ew). "I dropped the flashlight--" she starts to say, but he's already started lowering her again ("Okay, then!"). And then you hear, "John! Stop! I think there's something d--AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" And then that giant bright white light from the end of "Deus Ex Machina" comes on, and Locke's shouting for Kate, but there's no answer, and you can hear metal moving down there and the cable is jerked several feet out of Locke's hands, and the light goes off--and Kate's gone.

Cavetown. "You're kidding--you're going back?" splutters Hurley. Jack's loading up with gear: "I changed my mind."

He gets back to the hatch--and isn't that a hike of a couple of miles, actually? I'm surprised the sun hasn't come up yet--and shouts, "Kate? LOCKE?," but no one's there. He throws his torch down into the hatch, but having forgotten about that puddle, just listens to it fizzle out at the bottom. So he pulls out some fabric--a shirt?--from his bag and tears it into strips to wrap around his hands because he, unlike Locke, knows proper cable-handling procedures, and uses the cable to rappel down the hatch.

Flashback to Captain Hero Doctor Do-Rag running up the steps at some stadium. A second guy starts going up the next set of steps, and Jack gets competitive and pushes himself too hard and falls on his face. The other guy comes over and diagnoses him with a sprained ankle, because he "was nearly a doctor." Jack's like, "Yeah, actual doctor right here, thanks." The guy's all like, "Small world!" (in retrospect: nooooooooooo kidding) and I'm not sure, but I think his accent is Irish. He's got sort of a Crazed And/Or Magical Irishman twinkle about him. Not unlike that guy in Braveheart, actually. There's a strange and credibility-straining conversation that follows about how Magical Irishman's "excuse" for running up and down a stadium is that he's training for "a race around the world" (again: something I couldn't understand until I rewound the tape), so what's Jack's excuse? It's a girl, isn't it? "No, a patient." "A girl patient?" I kind of want to thump this guy, too. "I made her a promise I couldn't keep," says Jack. "I said I could fix her, and I couldn't." "But what if you did?" says Magical Irishman. "What? That's impossible, in her case--" says Jack. "But what if you did?" insists Magical Irishman. And then he tells Jack "to lift it up." What? Oh, his metaphorical ankle. They exchange names: "Jack." "Desmond." At this point I started shrieking, "THAT'S DESMOND?!," because... well. Oh, and I forget when he said it, exactly, but one of Desmond's speech tics is that he tends to call people "brother." So Jack goes on his unmerry, ankle-sprained way, with this parting shot from Desmond: "See you in another life."

Hatchnya. Jack spelunks down and finds... an abandoned pair of athletic shoes? Weird. There's weirdly artistic graffiti that's kind of fixated on the number 108 over and over again--108 in a sunburst, etc. (108, you will notice, is the sum of 4+8+15+16+23+42.) There's a lot of weird nondescript stuff down there, including some kind of wall magnet that lifts the gun-case key and its chain right off Jack's neck. And just as a mirror swivels around--like a security camera would--to take a look at Jack, and Jack's getting closer to get a look at the mirror, "MAAAAAAAAAAAKE YOUR OWN KIND OF MUUUUUSIC!" starts blaring and I do not blame Jack for having his shit freaked out by this. But he persists, into a low dark geometric Epcot dome filled with a bunch of computers and tape reels and Mama Cass still blaring and a small computer with a flashing execute prompt. He reaches down to mess with it, because that's what you do, naturally, with strange computers, when he hears Locke say "Don't do that!" from the doorway.

Jack pulls a gun on Locke, because that makes any kind of sense. (I think he's still bitter over Boone, y'all.) "WHERE'S KATE?" And then a gun pops out from behind the door jamb pointed at Locke's head. YAY STANDOFF.

Flashback to Sarah's hospital room, because that's what we care about right now. Jack arrives to give her the bad news. But first and most importantly: "You smell." Sarah is obsessed with telling him, with what little breath she can muster, that he smells bad. Really bad. He says, apologetically, that he just came back from a run. "You smell like you ran far. Also, your wig is fugtastic." He tells her that he ran a tour de stade (thanks to celebrate's subtitles--I was fumbling around with some pseudo-German word along the lines of "tournestad" in my notes), and he took a shower but "didn't cool" and DOESN'T ANYONE CARE WHETHER SHE'S GOING TO EVER WALK AGAIN? Jack explains what a tour de stade is (the running up and down all the steps) and Sarah's like, "Why would you want to do that?" "I'm intense," says Jack. I am thinking there will be no greater understatement this season. "Did you finish?" "No, I hurt my ankle." "Sucks for you," says Sarah, and I would have paid her a hundred dollars to finish that sentence with, "AT LEAST YOU CAN RUN." "Is Kevin out there?" "I didn't see him," says Jack, and then fumbles that he'll be back in a little while, sure, of course. "Gonna tell me how it went?" asks Sarah. Oh, like you weren't encouraging him. Here's Jack's beside manner in action again: "The damage was... extensive. I did everything that I could, but... I couldn't repair it. You're gonna be paralyzed for the rest of your life. I'm so sorry, Sarah. [Jack starts crying.] I'm so, so sorry."

"You're yanking my chain, right?" says Sarah. More crying from Jack. "Then how come I can wiggle my toes?" And yea, the toes doth wiggle. I blurted out, "Jack's not a very good doctor, is he?" at this point, but my mother's theory is that Desmond actually cured her, being a Magical Irishman and all. After all: "But what if you did?" Jack pokes Sarah's legs and she winces in pain and they smile and laugh and cry and Sarah thinks, "Hey, maybe I will be able to use that wedding dress after all."

Wartorn Hatchnya. "Drop it!" says the guy with the gun. The more the guy says, the more the game is given away, but oh well: "Drop it! DROP IT! I'll blow his head off! DO YOU WANT HIM TO DIE?" Jack just keeps asking where Kate is, and asking Locke if this is his destiny: "'All roads lead here'?!" And then Hatch Guy calls him brother and you see him over Locke's shoulder and Jack gasps, "YOU."

Title card.

Previews: We find out what happened to the Raftketeers. Next week, I mean.

An interesting theory that either inspired the Lost people, or that they've made up out of whole cloth (and I'm more inclined to believe the latter). The important thing isn't whether it's real, so much as the fact that it was put out there on this site (which is connected to ABC) for people to see. Even if it's just to fuck with us.

Oh, and Invasion? I'm totally confused, except for the fact that I am dead certain that William Fichtner is in on the whole thing. Whatever the whole thing is.