I loved this episode.  There is so much happening here that you just have to watch closely.

The episode is a Sayid-centric episode where Sayid is captured at the end of Desert Storm and the Americans, led by Kelvin Inman of all people (the Kelvin who winds up in the Swan station with Desmond) and Kate’s father.  They want to find an American helicopter pilot captured by the Iraqis and they use Sayid as a translator.  Eventually, Sayid becomes a torturer to gather the info he needed.

Back on the Island, Rousseau arrived with news for Sayid.  She took him to one of her traps where she had captured a man calling himself Henry Gale.

Now, the introduction of Henry Gale is one of the most important moments in LOST’s history as we all know that Henry is actually Benjamin Linus, the leader of the Others.  So when Danielle said to Sayid that he should not trust anything Henry says because he is a liar, I thought to myself, “Danielle, you have no idea how much of a liar he is.”

I mean… he is breathing so he is lying.

But, at this time, no one knew for sure.  It was great to be uncertain because either way there is supreme emotional moments.  Either you have captured on of them or you have been torturing an innocent man.

Of course, Henry Gale is Dorothy Gale’s uncle in the Wizard of Oz and there is a hot air balloon involved as well (by the Wizard).  The Wizard, a man who is pretending to be someone he is not, is how the Wizard arrived at and leaves Oz.  See the connection.

Michael Emerson played Henry Gale who would become Ben Linus.  Emerson won several Emmys for the role and he was consistently brilliant as the conflicted and manipulative Ben.  Emerson is magnificent here already as he is completely believable as a man who is frightened about being tortured despite not knowing anything.  He sounds as if every question is answered perfectly.  But Sayid still did not believe him.  It could be that Sayid has been waiting for someone to take out his anger and frustration on over Shannon’s death.  He even said it here.  He said that Ana Lucia was responsible but it was an accident because she had been made to fear the Others so much through the 48 days of hell they went through.

When I first saw this, I believed that Henry was lying because I trusted in Sayid, but there was always that doubt in the air.

We also got the first glimpse of the hieroglyphics that happen when the timer reaches zero in the Hatch.  Jack was forcing John to open the armory where Sayid was torturing Ben and Jack threatened to let the timer go to zero.  John opened the door and rushed off to put in the numbers as quickly as he could.  You would think that John wouldn’t constantly mistype the numbers, but he put 15 in twice and had to go back over it.  The hieroglyphics were extremely scary as they started to turn and the buzzer got worse.  Imagine what would have happened if Locke hadn’t entered the number with Ben in the armory with Jack and Sayid.

The secondary story was a funny one involving Sawyer and Hurley and a tree frog.  Everyone has rejected Sawyer, so he had to blackmail Hurley into helping him catch the tree frog that was keeping Sawyer from sleeping.  When Sawyer crushed the tree frog in his hand, it cemented Sawyer as the jerk.

By the way, Charlie showed up with his hood down, so I guess he was not Dark Charlie at the moment.

This was an epic episode with an amazing debut of a vital character.

Dark Charlie returns with vengeance in his eyes.

And everyone gets played by Sawyer.

“The Long Con” is a Sawyer-centric episode that sees James Ford, aka Sawyer, get his teeth back after becoming a little soft over the last season or so.

Triggered by people taking his stuff, Sawyer sets up a long con to get his hands on the guns.  Sawyer plants seeds in Kate’s head about Ana Lucia after Sun gets grabbed at her garden.  The Others?  Maybe not as Sawyer points out that it makes more sense for it to be Ana Lucia. An expert at sowing the seeds of mistrust, Sawyer spreads things around, playing against Jack and Locke, getting Charlie to do his dirty work and sticking it to everybody.

Charlie was easy for Sawyer to manipulate because Charlie, in his full evil hoodie, wants revenge on Locke.  He wants Locke to look like a fool and feel like Charlie has been feeling.  Sawyer takes advantage of Dark Charlie without breaking a sweat.

“There’s a new sheriff in town,” Sawyer said, referring to his new position of power as the keeper of the guns.

Flashback:  We see Sawyer preparing to pull the con that we have seen him do before with the money falling out of the case.  The woman in bed though, Cassidy, sees through Sawyer’s deception and calls him on it.  Sawyer seems dejected by his failure and admits that she got him.  Cassidy, however, asks if he would teach her how to con people.  Sawyer does so for the next several months until it becomes clear that Sawyer is running a long con on Cassidy.

There is some implying that Sawyer has fallen for Cassidy, but he does his best to avoid getting too close to anybody.  In the end, Sawyer walks out with $600,000 not only on Cassidy, but also the partner who he was working with.

Outside of Sawyer and Evil Charlie, we had some Hurley and Sayid goodness.

Hurley brought Sayid the short ranged radio that Bernard had on the other side of the Island.  Sayid, at first, does not want any part of it, but Hurley just trying to cheer him up.  Sayid goes ahead and tries to use the “glorified walkie talkie” as he put it and is able to pick up radio waves playing the Glenn Miller Orchestra and “Moonlight Serenade.” Hurley is excited, but Sayid said radio waves could be picked up easily and it could be from any place.

And Hurley joked “or any time…. just kidding.”

But Hurley was absolutely right as time becomes a huge theme later on in the series and, according to LOSTpedia.com, “producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse confirmed in the Season 5 recap episode “Lost: A Journey in Time” that the radio broadcast was indeed from the 1940s, a result of time travel.”

Dude.

Welcome, Dark Charlie.

Who wanted this to happen?

Charlie takes a turn to the darkside in “Fire + Water” as he is trying to “save Aaron” by getting Claire to allow Eko to baptize the baby.  The problem is that Charlie is really going to extremes to try and get it done.

First, Charlie is having these bizarre dreams with Catholic imagery throughout and when he awakes, he has taken the baby from his crib.  Second, Charlie is continually growing more and more jealous of the attention John Locke has been giving Claire and Aaron.  Third, even after claiming all the statues had been destroyed in a fire, Charlie gets caught with his stash of eight Virgin Mary statues by Locke, who takes them away from him.  Fourth, Charlie sets a fire on the beach in order to kidnap Aaron and baptize him, I guess (that last one doesn’t make much sense).

It seems clear that this episode is Charlie dealing with his heroin withdrawals, but it feels as if this was too late to have this episode.  With “The Moth” way back in season one dealing with it, this should have happened closer to that.  Sure I know the time on the Island is different than the time for the episodes, but to the viewers, it feels like a backwards step.

Then, with Charlie ominously putting up his hood at the end of the episode, it implies that Dark Charlie is not over with yet.

I’m not sure the reasoning behind turning Charlie heel like this, because he has always been a personal favorite of many viewers.  He was a sweet character with a heart of gold.  The pairing of Charlie and Hurley was always a good time.  If it were closer to “Greatest Hits” then I might be on board with the idea that they had to have Charlie hit rock bottom so he could be redeemed, but that doesn’t happen until the end of season three.

Fire + Water is recognized as one of the worst LOST episodes of them all.  With the whole nonsensical and out of character aspects of Charlie’s storyline, we get very little else form any other characters on the Island.  Hurley and Libby do laundry together, starting their own little romance.  We see the story of Charlie’s brother and how he is able to get off of heroin and save his own life.  I felt terrible for Charlie when Liam sold Charlie’s piano to get money to get to Australia, and he does it without asking Charlie.  I’m sure Charlie feels deserted by Liam and plenty of other people in his life, which is part of the reason why he can’t just stay away from Claire.  Claire asked Charlie to stay away for awhile, which sounded as if she might be willing to forgive him later, but Charlie can’t do that and only increases the schism between himself and Claire.

But…we have Dark Charlie.

M.C. Gainey makes a tremendously menacing villain.  We saw Mr. Friendly, or “Zeke” as Sawyer calls him, in the season finale “Exodus, Part 2” on the boat abducting Walt, and now the bearded version returned in “The Hunting Party” to put Jack and the group on notice.

Jack, Sawyer and John took off in pursuit of Michael, who grabbed some guns and headed off to try and find Walt.  This all led to the ultimatum dropped by the Others… do not cross this line.

Jack wasn’t about to back down, until Mr. Friendly brought out Kate, who had been captured following the group after Jack specifically told her to stay behind.  Kate was not happy when Jack told her to stay behind, despite the fact that he was simply tying to keep her safe and so Kate ignored the order and followed them any way.  Playing of that, Jin was going to follow as well, but Sun told him not to, and Jin backed down.  Of course, Sun and Jin had a nice talk about it later and they grew closer because of it where as Jack and Kate grew apart more.

Back to Mr. Friendly, there is a distinct air of magic surrounding  him.  Of course we know now that it is all a trick and that he isn’t at all what he is pretending to be, but when the torches are all lit up, it is a moment of despondency for Jack and his group.

The Others were really a great second season villain since we knew so little about them.  There are hints dropped throughout the second season that they are more than what they seem, but, in season two, they were mysterious and baffling.

There is great dialogue between Jack and Locke and Sawyer in this episode as well.  I am continually amazed that anyone would be with Jack against John, since John always appears to be in control and calm whereas Jack is hot headed and yelling.  Sure Jack is redirecting his own frustrations and guilt toward other people and he is really angry with himself, but that really does not excuse his behavior.

The flashback this episode sees us with Jack and Christian at a hospital telling an old man and his daughter that surgery on his spine to remove a tumor is not going to work for him.  The daughter, Gabriella, said that they weren’t here for Christian but for Jack, the man who performed a miracle on Sarah.  Jack agrees to try to operate.

Jack, in his own fashion, then spends his whole time at the hospital stressing and worrying about the surgery.  As I said before, Jack might be an amazing doctor, but if he kept this up, he’d be dead from stress.  In the end, Jack is able to get the whole tumor removed, but the old man’s heart gives out on the table and he dies.  Gabriella kisses Jack, who backs away because of Sarah.  Unfortunately, Sarah reveals to Jack that she is leaving him for another person who she has been seeing.  So Jack’s marriage started with a specific surgery and ended because of another surgery.

The episode ended with Jack going to talk to Ana Lucia and he asked her how long it would take to train an army.  This is an interesting cliffhanger, but it really does not ever go anywhere.

Mr. Eko had a great start on LOST.  He was one of the most original characters on television in both look and story.  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje does a remarkable job pulling off this complex character, and perhaps never does it better than in The 23rd Psalm, the 10th episode of LOST in season 2.

When Eko discovered from Claire that Charlie had a statue of the Virgin Mary, he wanted to see it.  Breaking it open, Eko showed Claire the heroin hidden inside and demanded to know where Charlie was.

Eko knew about these statues because he was the drug runner who was responsible for putting the drug inside these statues.  Eko demanded that Charlie take him to the place where he found the statute.  Charlie tried to lie to Eko, but with his background knowledge, Eko was having none of it.  On their trip, they discovered the same dead body of a priest that Locke and Boone had found.  Of course, it was not a priest. Mr. Eko said it was the man who saved his life.  He would be known by fandom as “Goldie” because of the gold tooth he had.

Then, we had the standout moment of the show.  As Charlie was up in a tree trying to see the plane, the Smoke Monster came out of the jungle and approached Mr. Eko.  Charlie yelled for Eko to run, but instead, he just stood his ground.  This was the best look we had gotten of the Monster up until this point in the series.  Images of Eko’s past flashed through the smoke as they stared at one another.  Then the Monster took off, leaving Eko alone.  Charlie, amazed, climbed down and Eko said that he was not scared.

Eko and Charlie continue don to the plane where Eko found the body of his brother Yemi.  Yemi was a real priest who Eko was forcing into letting them use one of the church’s planes to fly the heroin out of Nigeria.  Yemi had called the army and a shootout ensued.  Yemi took a bullet to the chest and is helped on to the plane.  Goldie kicked Eko off on the ground and the plane took off.  The army came over and mistook Eko for the priest who tipped them off.

Eko burned the plane with the body of Yemi inside after giving Charlie another statue to replace the one he broke.  However, Charlie’s relationship with Claire had already been damaged and she wanted him away from Aaron.  Charlie took the new statue into a secret location where he had already stashed several Virgin Mary statues.

This episode takes Charlie down a darker path for a good chunk of the remainder of season 2.  So while the episode plays as a redemption story for Eko, it really goes in the opposite direction for Charlie.

One of the enduring mysteries of the first season of LOST was exactly what Kate Austen did to get the police and Marshals chasing after her.  Now, in season 2, we have that answer.

Seems that Kate blew up her step-father.

No middle ground here either.  No mistake.  No uncertainty.  Kate waited for her step-father Wayne to come home, drunk as usual, and she had the gas turned on.  She helped him to bed and then caused a massive explosion that consumed the house and Wayne with it.

Wayne had been married to her mother for many years and he was a rotten person.  He was a drunk, he beat on his wife, and made plenty of hints that would make one feel uncomfortable.  Yet, this was going on for years.  So why did Kate choose to roast Wayne at this point?

Kate had discovered that Wayne was not her step-father, but her biological father, and she could not stand the knowledge that this evil, dark man was a part of her.  That she would never be able to escape from him, knowing that she shared DNA with him.  So she decided to rid the world of him.

Of course, everyone’s least favorite Marshal, Edward Mars, had captured Kate and was bringing her in and he was trying to figure out why she had done it when a black horse stepped in the car’s path.  Swerving, Mars crashed the car into a pole and Kate is able to knock him out and take off in the car, escaping from Mars for the first time.

Later on the Island, Kate sees the same black horse that she first assumes is some kind of vision, that she is going crazy.  However, Sawyer sees the horse too, proving it to be more than just a hallucination.  Could this be the Smoke Monster again, playing tricks on the survivors?

This episode really puts into words the triangle between Jack-Sawyer and Kate.  Kate sees herself as unworthy of Jack, even though she has distinct feelings for him.  She sees her relationship to Sawyer as similar to her mother’s relationship to Wayne; that Sawyer is also a broken person to whom Kate is drawn.

It is clear with everything that happened in this episode that Kate is a conflicted character with severe self-loathing issues.  She sees herself as having a dark part of her soul and that is why she pulls away from Jack, who she claimed was “perfect.”

Other details from “What Kate Did”:

• Hurley made reference to Bernard being white.  Jack brushes it off.
• Mr. Eko and Michael see the orientation film.
• Mr. Eko provides John with part of the film that had been cut out and that he found inside a bible in the Arrow Station.  This clip said that they should not use the computer for anything else but inputting the numbers.
• Michael is inspecting the equipment in the Hatch when a message comes across the computer: “Hello”.  Michael responds to it and gives his name.  To that, the computer responds, “Dad?”- implying that this is Walt on the other end.
• They had the funeral for Shannon.  Ana Lucia did not attend.  Neither did Kate.
• Kate was strangled by Sawyer, as it seemed that Sawyer had been possessed by Wayne’s spirit.  Kate got away from him and ran off in the jungle.
• Jack found Kate in the jungle and tried to comfort her.  She kisses Jack passionately, but runs off afterwards.

The fallout of episode 6, Abandoned, happens here, as a grieving Sayid, moments after Shannon dies in his arms, moves to kill Ana Lucia.  He is intercepted by Mr. Eko, who just wants to prevent any further death.  Ana Lucia ends up with Sayid’s gun and forces Libby to tie Sayid to a tree.  Ana Lucia can be seen confused and uncertain about what she has to do.

The Ana Lucia-centric episode flashes back to Ana Lucia’s time on the LAPD, after returning from being shot four times.  In the flashback, Ana Lucia tries to return to her job normally, but she is continuing to have an internal struggle over what happened to her.  Ana Lucia came into conflict with her police captain, who also happened to be her mother, Teresa Cortez.  The Captain worried about Ana Lucia and was not sure she was ready to go back out on patrol.

When Ana’s assailant was captured and confessed, everyone was happy, except Ana Lucia.  Despite the confession, Ana Lucia claimed that this guy, named Jason McCormack, was not the guy who shot her, which led to his release.

However, it was him and Ana Lucia followed him to a bar, stalked him, and confronted him in the back ally.  She told Jason that she had been pregnant and then shot him three times in the chest before moving closer and shooting him three more times in the head.

Ana Lucia admitting she was pregnant was meant to help connect her with the audience, but it did not work very well as Ana Lucia was still out there shooting people.  She did not seem to be too good of a cop.

Finally, the rest of her people decided they had had enough.  Mr. Eko had already taken Sawyer to find the doctor, and now Bernard and Libby wanted to leave as well.  With Sayid’s blessing, Jin led them back to their beach camp.

My favorite moment of this episode was easily the reunion of Bernard and Rose, who although we had never seen together, was very emotional and loving.  We had loved the character of Rose in her unwavering belief that her husband was alive and her no nonsense approach to life and to see her so happy at Bernard’s return is wonderful.

The Jin and Sun reunion was nice as well, but you always remembered that Jin had been such a jerk to her for much of season one that, at this point, their reunion was tempered by that.  Subsequent reunions for this pair are much more relevant.

Jack got a look at the connection between Kate and Sawyer and you could almost see that he had that “I missed my chance” look when it came to Kate.  Sawyer was in bad shape and Kate sat at his bedside in the Hatch.

The dialogue between Ana Lucia and Sayid was dynamite as she told him most of the story about her shooting.  She claimed to feel dead already.  When she cut him loose, Ana Lucia believed that Sayid would kill her in retaliation for the death of Shannon, but Sayid said that since they were both already dead inside, why waste time killing her.

Sayid carried Shannon’s body back to the camp where he came across Jack and Mr. Eko who were on the way back to help.  When Jack was interrogating Eko, he showed that hot tempered attitude that made me question jack’s leadership skills.  Locke was there too and considerably more calm, which only seemed to infuriate Jack more.  Perhaps Shannon’s death played on Jack’s guilt at being unable to save everyone and that is why he was so angry.  He was angry at himself, not so much at Mr. Eko.  When he heard that it was Ana Lucia who had shot Shannon, Jack’s attitude changed, softened.  He remembered the meeting with her at the bar prior to the plane’s departure.

I do think the writers were setting up Ana Lucia as someone for Jack when they realized that Kate and Sawyer had become such a huge thing, but Ana Lucia and Jack were never going to mesh as their characters’ personalities did not go well together.

Another strong episode as season two started off on fire.

“The Other 48 Days” is the first all-Island flashback, as it focuses on the Tailies and the main situations they faced over the previous 48 days since the crash of Oceanic 815.

The Others immediately started coming for these survivors, attacking them the first night.  They took 3 people from the group and would have had more, if Mr. Eko had not killed two of them with a rock.

These actions did not sit well with Eko as he spent the next 40 days in a self-imposed silence, carving up his “Jesus Stick” as Charlie would eventually call it.

The Others returned again and grabbed even more survivors, including the children (one of which had been saved by Ana Lucia).

We knew from a previous episode that Goodwin would end up dead with a wooden staff in his chest and here we find out why.  Goodwin was sent to infiltrate the survivors and he came across Bernard in an airplane seat stuck in the tree. Ana Lucia talks Bernard through this, saving his life.

Goodwin continued to send intel to the Others, but Ana Lucia believed that it was actually Nathan who was the spy.  Ana Lucia knocked Nathan out and threw him into the pit she had dug.  She kept him in there for four days trying to get him to tell her where the kids were being held.  Of course, he did not know since he was innocent.

Before Ana Lucia could use the army knife she had found to cut off one of Nathan’s fingers, Goodwin let him free.  But, Goodwin broke Nathan’s neck with the hope that they would not be looking at himself as the spy.

Ana Lucia figured out Goodwin’s plans and confronted them after the group found a Dharma radio.  Ana Lucia and Goodwin fought and she killed him with her walking stick.

Later, Bernard was revealed to be the voice that Boone heard on the radio on the Nigerian plane just before it fell from the tree, crushing Boone with it.

The episode ended with a montage of scenes from previous viewed episodes, leading them back to the place where Ana Lucia shoots and kills Shannon thinking she was an Other.

This was the first episode of LOST that did not have Jack or Hurley in it.

Several Others were killed with this group way before Ethan showed up with the other group of survivors.

Be careful if you have sex on the Island. You are tempting fate.

That is something shown in this episode as Shannon Rutherford was shot and killed in a misunderstanding with Ana Lucia.

I had never like Shannon much in the first season, but this Shannon-centric episode, along with her developing relationship with Sayid, had really started making this character more likable.  Then…

BANG

Ana Lucia did not know who Shannon was and she was already on the edge because the Others had just taken Cindy (the stewardess), and Shannon was chasing after the vision of Walt that she had seen (Smoke Monster?).  Unfortunately, I do not think that the character of Ana Lucia ever got over the shooting of Shannon in the eyes of the audience.  It seemed like they were setting Michelle Rodriguez, who played Ana Lucia, for a relationship with Jack, but the whole Shannon thing, along with her initial attitude seemed to derail her.

Back on Shannon for a minute, the flashbacks involving Shannon were really sad.  Her father’s death really caused her life to spiral away.  She had earned a prestigious internship in New York at a dance school, but she could not afford to go.  Sabrina, her step-mother Sabrina, is one of the worst characters on the show.  She treated Shannon so poorly that you connect more to Shannon than when she seemed like nothing more than a spoiled brat.   Sabrina is such a vile woman that was so cruel to Shannon that you really want to see her get hers, but she never does.

There are several other minor things that happen here that are important…

• Sawyer has passed out.  His fever is getting worse and he has to be carried by Michael and Jin after they make him a stretcher.
• John has some nice scenes with Claire and she expresses some questions about how close Charlie has gotten to her and Aaron.
• John figured out that Charlie had one of the Virgin Mary statues filled with Heroin.
• In flashback, Boone came to Shannon’s father’s funeral and his first words were “Death sucks, doesn’t it?”
• Ana Lucia tells an abridged version of the first 48 days for the Tailies, who were tormented by the Others.  More next episode on this.
• Sayid tells Shannon that he loves her, mere moments before she is shot and killed.

This Jin and Sun-centric episode “…and Found” is honestly not a bad episode. There just is not that much to it.

After a hot start to season 2, this one kind of ground to a slow.

Ana Lucia and the Tailies decided that they were heading across the Island to where Michael, Jin and Sawyer’s group were found, but before they could take off, Michael ran off in search of the Others and Walt.

Jin and Mr. Eko went after him as the rest of them started heading back to the Losties camp.  Sawyer’s wound continue to get worse.

Meanwhile, Sun had realized that she had lost her wedding ring.  She frantically searched around for it.  This did lead to a nice scene with Sun and Locke.  It was one of those examples of Locke being like the wise man of the Island.  He came across Sun tearing up her garden in frustration and he calmed her down.  Locke told Sun a story about how he used to be frustrated and angry all the time, but that he was not lost any more.  She asked how he did that and John responded, “The same way everyone finds something that is lost: I stopped looking.”

Later, Sun found her wedding ring when she took Kate to show her the bottle with the messages that had washed up on shore from the raft.

The Sun-Jin flashback showed us their first meeting, and how Sun’s parents were initially trying to get her married off to the son of a hotel magnet.

The flashbacks here were fairly dull and did not do much to advance the story.

The biggest scene was when Jin and Eko hid in the jungle as a group of Others- in bare feet and seen only from the knee down, walked by in single file, the last one dragging a teddy bear along.

The other mystery shown here was when Jin stumbled across the dead body of a man named Goodwin.  Eko told Jin that he was one of the Others.  We do not know how he come to have a long stick rammed in his chest.

Hurley flashback episodes were always fun because Hurley was one of the most beloved characters on the show.  Interestingly enough, that very idea is played with during “Everybody Hates Hugo.”

Hugo “Hurley” Reyes had been given the job of taken inventory and rationing out the food found inside the Hatch, and it was a job that Hurley did not relish.

Many flashbacks are meant to mirror things that are happening on the Island, but honestly, few have had such a connection as this one did.  The off-Island scenes dealt with the hours after Hurley discovered that he had won the lottery, but before he claimed the money.  Hurley was worried that the lottery win would change things in his life, but not necessarily for the better.

I wonder if Hurley had “made his own luck” by believing in the curse when he saw how his friend Johnny turned on him when he discovered that Hurley had the winning lotto ticket.

Hurley quit his job, asked out the girl he had been crushing on, and had a day of fun because he knew that change was going to happen.

On the Island, Hurley worried over the responsibility and was scared that, just like Johnny who turned on him, the rest of the Island would hate him when he had to say no to requests for food.  Charlie, who had asked for peanut butter, was an example that seemed to support Hurley’s assumption.

It was such a concern for Hurley that he retrieved a stick of dynamite and was preparing to blow the food pantry up.  Thankfully, Rose came along to prevent Hurley from doing anything rash.  Hurley planned a big party to feed everyone at the same time so there would be no arguments.

Meanwhile, Jin, Sawyer and Michael are in the pit trying to figure out what they were going to do.  The lid was opened and a rope tossed down.  first Jin and then Michael, but they left Sawyer in the hole, to which Sawyer, in reference to Ana Lucia, said “Bitch.”

Jin and Michael convinced them that they were on the plane too and let Sawyer out.  We meet Mr. Eko (though not by name), Ana Lucia and Libby.  They take Jin, Michael and Sawyer to another Hatch where the rest of their people resided, including Rose’s husband Bernard.

The scene where Bernard asked Michael about Rose was very sweet and Bernard was very relieved by the news that his wife was fine.

As I said earlier, Hurley-centric episodes never fail, and “Everybody Hates Hugo” is just another example of a great one.

This one was great.

Episode 3 dropped a ton of mythology on us about the Dharma Initiative, and we meet Mr. Eko and his “Jesus Stick”- or at least, Sawyer met the Jesus Stick up close and personal.

There was so much going on in this episode that each scene fell perfectly in time with the last one.  In a Locke-centric flashback, we see John struggling to get through life dealing with the anger and confusion that comes when your father cons you into donating your kidney to him and then dumps you like yesterday’s garbage.  While John was dealing with that, he met Helen.

Back in Walkabout, John first mentions the name of Helen (although that is not the same Helen as we get here).  Played by the wonderful Katie Segal, Helen and John become a couple, but he just could not give up his obsession with his father.  John would go out in the night to sit in his car outside Cooper’s house.  One night, Cooper came and got in the car with John to remind us what a cold-hearted bastard Anthony Cooper was.  His dismissal of John was such a cruel scene that you cannot help but feel for him, a man who only wants to understand why his father would have done that to him.

The flashbacks end in a positive place as Helen forces John to choose between her and the obsession with his father.  Although this has a happy ending, we know where John ends up in the flashbacks, crippled and talking to a sex phone service to a woman he calls Helen.

Back in the Hatch, Kate, who has escaped her prison, gets the drop on Desmond.  During the scuffle, Desmond accidentally fires his gun and shoots the computer, causing Desmond to freak out.  “We’re all gonna die” he said.  Kate goes to get Sayid to fix the computer.  Jack seems very agitated and then Desmond appears to recognize Jack, to Locke’s surprise. Desmond then tells his story of being stranded on his race around the world in his boat, being grabbed by Kelvin and brought to the Swan station to push a button.  “Just saving the world” Desmond said, Kelvin’s words, not his.  Then, Desmond directs Jack and Locke to the bookcase where an orientation film is hidden behind the novel, Turn of the Screw.

The film is an orientation film used by a group called the Dharma Initiative to explain what the Swan Station’s purpose is.  It features a man who calls himself Dr. Marvin Candle, but we know as Dr. Pierre Chang.  He gives background on the Dharma Initiative.

John wants to watch it again.

I am not sure the reasoning behind Jack being so angry this entire episode.  He just seems so out of control, which, though Jack has been shown to be hot-tempered, this felt like a whole new level.  This, of course, continued to set up the conflict between Jack and Locke.

Sayid is brought in (with Hugo) to fix the computer as the timer continues to countdown.  Desmond takes off, leaving the Swan.  Jack departs too, which leaves John in a conundrum on what to do next.

Sayid is able to fix the computer and they enter the code into the computer which, to Hurley’s shock, is the numbers, 4 8 15 16 23 42.

This would be enough for most episodes, but we also get to see Sawyer, Jin and Michael, who had been subdued by the “Others”, tossed into a pit in the ground.  As they try to figure out what to do, a girl is dropped into the pit as well.  It is Ana Lucia, whom we met in the finale of season one.  She was on the plane, too.

When Sawyer pulls out the gun, prepared to shoot “Shaft” the next time he opened the cage, Ana Lucia disarmed Sawyer and called to be let out.  It was obvious that they dumped Ana Lucia in the pit to get information.  As she is being pulled out, Mr. Eko said “Who are they?”

Everything worked together in this episode so well, keeping tension with each second clicking off the timer.  In what could have been nothing but a big exposition dump, the show really found some creative ways to give information and still be remarkably entertaining.

I really found Jack unlikable here and I was glad that this was not the first impression I had of Jack because I would have hated him.  He was very close-minded and judgemental during these Swan scenes and even at the end, where he wound up pushing the button, Jack was on edge.

Desmond would not be seen again until the finale of season two.

“See you in another life, yeah?”

In episode two, “Adrift”, we learn what happened to Sawyer, Michael and Jin after the Others arrived and took Walt, destroying the raft in the process.

We also saw the events that led up to the ending where last episode “man of Science, Man of Faith” ended, with Desmond holding a gun on Locke as Jack recognizes him.

The story of Locke and Kate in the Hatch is told in a different POV and reveals new information about the Swan.  It is a very interesting story telling technique that allows the creators of LOST to tell the story in other ways than a simple narrative way.  I do remember being a little unsettled when the whole Hatch story ended in episode two exactly where it ended in episode one.  It was something that LOST would do on many different occasions.

On the pieces of the raft that remain, Sawyer and Michael struggle to survive while attempting to find someone to blame.  Sadly, they started by blaming each other. Michael blamed Sawyer for making him fire the flare gun and Sawyer blamed Michael because he knew this was the Others and he correctly inferred that the “child” that they were after was Walt.

The scene where Sawyer pulled the bullet from his shoulder with his bare hands was one of the most bad ass things in the history of LOST as was Sawyer’s snide remark about wanting a band-aid.

Bullet wounds and a falling apart raft was not the only trouble Sawyer and Michael faced.  There was a shark swimming around them, probably attracted by the blood from Sawyer’s bullet wound.  As you can see, the shark actually has a Dharma mark on its tail.  We see this Dharma symbol several times this episode, including in the Hatch, and on the products that Kate found in the storage room.

John manipulated Desmond to tie up Kate instead of him, and then he slipped Kate a knife.  John must have believed that she would have a better chance of escaping than he did.  Meanwhile, John tried to talk to Desmond, giving him answers to his questions and trying to keep him calm.

Then we hear the sound of beeping that takes over the Swan and Desmond forces John to type in the numbers, 4 8 15 16 23 42, into an old fashioned computer.  Once that happens, a timer on the wall resets to 108.00.

When Jack arrived, Desmond hears him, and sets up the stand-off that we see at the end of episode number one.

As this is going on, Sawyer and Michael have drifted back to the Island, and, a they come up on shore, they find, miracle beyond miracle, Jin running to meet them.  The problem?  Jin’s arms are tied and he is yelling about “Others”.  A group of mysterious people are following Jin.

We know they are not Others, as Jin mistakes them for, but that they are Tailees, survivors from the tail section of Oceanic 815.

Season two begins in a comfy home of someone we do not know going through a morning routine of exercise, eating, showering and playing “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Mama Cass on the record player.  Then, without warning, there is an explosion.

The same explosion that blew open the Hatch at the end of season one.

So someone had been living inside the Hatch this entire time.

His name was Desmond Hume, and he will become one of the greatest characters in LOST.

We see in flashbacks that Desmond and Jack had a meeting years before as both men were running the stairs of a stadium.  Desmond was training for a race around the world and Jack was just trying to sort things out in his mind.  This was the time referenced in season one where Jack “fixes” Sarah, who had broken her back in a car wreck (which was how Shannon’s father died).  Jack was emotionally invested in Sarah’s recovery and he did not believe that there was any hope in the surgery.  He believed that he failed and that Sarah would never walk again, let alone dance at her wedding.  As he talked to Desmond about it, Desmond asked him if he did not believe in miracles?  And of course, Sarah recovered feeling in her legs and did indeed dance at her wedding— to Jack as we saw in season one.

One thought I had while watching Jack get all emotional over Sarah having feeling in her legs is “how can Jack expect to be a doctor if he is this crazed over every patient?”  His stress level would have to be sky high.

Locke and Kate climb down to the Swan station but gets caught by Desmond and he is holding Locke at gun point when Jack arrives.  Jack takes this moment to condescend to Locke about his “fate” and makes some smart remarks.  However, when Jack sees who is holding the gun on Locke, he recognizes him as the man at the stadium.  Looks like Jack might have to swallow some of that fate talk as it is at the very least a HUGE coincidence.

Greta episode to start the season, but it does not go and show us what has happened to the people on the raft.  Shannon does see a drenched Walt in the jungle as she was looking for Vincent.  Is it a psychic connection? It can’t really be Walt since he was abducted by the Others.

Season one of LOST is in the books on my great re-watch.  It makes me remember how much I loved this show by watching these wonderful episodes filled with some of the greatest characters in TV history.  Let’s look at the first season.

Best Episode:  “Pilot”.  The first two episodes together make one of the greatest pilot episodes ever.  The first fifteen minutes should hook you, and if it doesn’t, I don’t know what you want.  Runner-Up:  “Walkabout”

Best Flashback.  “Walkabout” Admittedly, some of the flashbacks are not as strong as others, but the John Locke flashbacks are consistently excellent.  And nothing was better than the “Don’t tell me what i can’t do” reveal with the wheelchair.  Runner-Up:  “Numbers”

Best Performance: Terry O’Quinn “Deus Ex Machina”.  Very little can compare to the moment when John Locke realized that his father had conned him out of his kidney and then had nothing more to do with him.  O’Quinn was one of the best actors on the Island. Runner-Up:  Josh Holloway, “Outlaws”

Biggest Jerk:  Jin.  This was a tough category because there were a lot of people who could have been considered.  However, Jin was such a jerk for most of the year that he takes this.  Runner-Up:  Sawyer

Best Death:  Boone, “Do No Harm“.  It has to be this one.  The Boone death brought tears to my eyes during the re-watch and that was an amazing emotional moment.  It was also a main actor who was killed, which was not common at the time.  Runner-Up:  Leslie Arzt.

Biggest Surprise:  Locke is paraplegic.  “Walkabout”.  Tell the truth, you had no idea this was what was going to happen.  The shock still works today as John Locke has the use of his legs back on the Island.  Runner-Up:  Leslie Arzt blows up.

Funniest Moment:  Arzt blows Up.  Exodus, Part 1.  Yeah, this is a death, but, man, I laughed so hard at this.  It is also a perfect example of irony.  Runner-Up:  Golf

Best Moment:  The Others kidnap Walt, “Exodus Part 2“.  The whole season was building toward this moment, where the Others came for the boy, leaving his father Michael yelling Walt in the water.  Runner-Up:  Boone dies/Aaron is born.

Most Character Development:  Sun.  At first, she was a put on wife. As the year moved along, she became her own woman, a strong survivor and someone who could help anyone.  Runner-Up:  John Locke

Most tense moment:  Charlie is hanged in the tree.  Oh boy, I thought Charlie was gone.  Thanks to Jack and his need to save everyone, Charlie makes it through season one.  Runner-Up:  Sayid tortures Sawyer.

Season Two and the Tail section survivors are next!