Events: On the island, Locke and Boone return Claire to the caves, having apparently just escaped from Ethan. Locke, Sayid, and Jack discuss what to do about Ethan and Charlie is suspicious of their abilities to protect Claire and the baby. Ethan assaults Jin and threatens Charlie, demanding that they return Claire to him. When the men decide to offer Claire up as bait to trap Ethan, Jack arms Locke and Sawyer from the cache of guns he'd been hiding; after Jack forbids Kate from getting involved, Sawyer offers her one of his guns and invites her along. Charlie, shown in flashbacks to have taken advantage of a young woman named Lucy during his post-Drive Shaft drug days, increasingly frustrated over the group's inability to protect Claire and refusal to listen to him, shoots and kills Ethan after he'd already surrendered to Jack and Sawyer.
Greater Meaning: Charlie and Claire's budding relationship becomes suspended after Claire loses
her memory of all events after the crash, so in order to maintain any sort of exchange with her, Charlie appoints himself Claire's protector. Charlie's decision to shoot Ethan technically makes sense when considered with the flashbacks of Charlie's humiliation and poor choices regarding Lucy ("you'll never take care of anyone"), but still seems a little forced and unnecessary unless the writers are laying the groundwork to develop Charlie further as an egotistical and unstable person. The episode title is "Homecoming," after all, and Claire is the person who's just come home, but the events largely concern Charlie, Charlie's decisions, and Charlie's reactions. The episode ultimately works as it is, but seems a little disjointed and unsatisfying compared with the neatness and balance of all the previous ones.
Further Questions:
1. Are Claire and the baby really all right?
2. Where did Ethan come from?
3. Are there more people like Ethan?
4. Why does Ethan want Claire?
5. Is Charlie violent?
Events: Jack learns of Claire and Charlie's disappearance, which he takes personally as he had blown off Claire's stories of being attacked as pregnancy stress and paranoia in the previous episode (Raised by Another). A search group sets out but there are more disagreements about where to look and whether or not the camp can spare Jack, the survivors' only doctor. In one direction, Boone observes Locke's abilities as a gifted outdoorsman; in the other direction, Jack and Kate find Charlie's finger bandages, a threatening Ethan, and later, Charlie hanging unconscious from a tree, whom Jack revives. As Boone and Locke attempt to return to the camp, they stumble upon a strange metal structure in the jungle.
"That's how you shape a soft metal into steel."
Through flashbacks we learn that Christian and Jack worked at the same hospital and that there was an issue during a procedure where Jack was ordered, by Christian, to stop heroic measures to save a patient. After the woman dies, Jack confronts Christian about his drinking, which led to the error that then caused the death, but Christian convinces Jack to back him up with a pat on the shoulder. Later, Jack sees Christian use the same gesture with the patient's husband, who is threatening to sue the hospital over what happened. When a board member reveals that the patient had been pregnant, Jack refuses to lie about what happened and exposes his father's responsibility for her death.
Greater meaning: Jack continues to be stubborn when it comes to problem-solving, needing resolution immediately while putting his own health and safety at risk. Jack and Locke are at odds with each other as Locke seems more comfortable on the island and better able to appreciate Jack's worth as a healer. In many ways this echos the father/son dynamic observed in the flashback sequences---Christian, more experienced and who often thinks he knows better, tries to change Jack's mind but cannot just as Lock, also older and more experienced tries to get through to Jack and cannot. We can assume that Jack's bombshell admission had negative consequences for Christian (although we can't be sure that the comment in White Rabbit by Jack's mother was in response to this act---"You don't get to say, 'I can't,' not after what you did,"), we know that Christian died in Sydney just before Flight 815 crashed, and we know Jack seems to have unresolved issues about his father's death. Going after Claire and refusing to give up on reviving Charlie speak to Jack's unwillingness to give up and his constant need to be the savior. Out of guilt? Out of desperation? His role as a doctor fits with the needs to fix and save, but we also see that Jack is a very different doctor than his own father, Christian and that the issues he's faced with on the island are very different than those of a typical medical professional.
Further questions:
1. Is Claire safe?
2. Did Christian Shephard get fired after Jack ratted him out?
3. Was Christian's death caused by this issue?
4. How does Locke know the island so well?
5. What is the metal structure that Locke and Boone found?
LOST: fine. A good enough beginning. Kate kind of overreacted to the whole blood test thing, which I'm sure was engineered by Benjamin Linus somehow. Sun, I just feel kind of blah about. So getting revenge is more important than spending time with your daughter? Take a lesson from Beatrix Kiddo: sit in a hotel room, spend your money, and don't look back.
Sayid is the Iraqi Jack Bauer. I love it.
24: That killing of Samantha Roth was unnecessarily brutal. What luck that the secret service guy happened to catch a less than ideal position on the fall over the railing! Now if that first gentleman knows ANYTHING he'll call his WIFE and get someone outside the secret service over the ASAP to see the kid dead with this elaborate scheme all laid out and rubber gloves and plastic wrap still on his person.
I am starting to think that ETHAN is the rat inside the oval office. It obviously won't be the secretary that resigned but someone she thinks is on her side; he fits the bill. Plus he was the corrupt warden in The Shawshank Redemption, some stereotypes you just can't escape. . .
Jack needs to stop being tender with Renee Walker. She honestly believes the FBI ISN'T INFILTRATED? Like David Lynch said about the Iphone. . . GET REAL.
"After the missing Claire returns with no recollection of what has happened since before she boarded the doomed Oceanic flight 815, Jack and Locke formulate a plan of defense against her kidnapper, the mysterious Ethan (guest-star William Mapother), who threatens to kill off the other survivors one by one unless Claire is returned to him. Meanwhile, the disappointment Charlie feels when Claire does not remember him triggers recollections of a woman he had let down in the past."
Gross. why doesn't someone just slay Ethan? I mean, I know Jack has "skillz" and all, but he's kind of tall and lanky. My money is on Sawyer for being the best ass-kicker. Funny how Charlie and Sawyer have a bit more in common than anyone really knows....Sawyer scams chicks for money, Charlie does too.
"Survivors wonder why Charlie and Claire have been abducted - and by whom - and a search party ventures into the treacherous jungle to look for the pair. Suspicions focus on Ethan Rom (guest-star William Mapother), who, it was recently discovered, was not a passenger on the doomed flight. Jack battles inner demons relating to his father, while Boone and Locke discover another island mystery."
The last straw for Jack with his old man: chopping up a pregnant chick's artery. Not good. So this would be the event that inevitably led to the resignation of Jack's old man? What a shame. Isn't it funny how there are different camps within the camps on the island, Jack leading the scientific one?
"Claire has a horribly realistic nightmare about her new baby being harmed or kidnapped. Flashbacks reveal Claire's backstory: the former boyfriend who got her pregnant, then abandoned her, and the psychic who convinced her to take the ill-fated flight that landed her on the island. Meanwhile, Hurley is shocked and confused when he discovers that one of the plane crash survivors, does not appear on the flight manifest."
How interesting. Poor Claire. Getting creepy. The storytelling is good, working the Ethan angle the way they did. Very enjoyable. Of COURSE he'd be screwing around in the jungle with Locke, what with all the knives? Who else could it have been? Gross.
Greater Meaning: Charlie and Claire's budding relationship becomes suspended after Claire loses
