Summary: In flashbacks, Claire is in a car accident that leaves her mom in a coma where she may never wake up. She meets her father, Christian, who had been paying all of the medical bills. Claire sends him away but Christian tells her not to keep her mom alive out of guilt. Many years later, Claire's mom is still in a coma and Claire apologizes for everything. On the island, Claire sees birds that are tagged and plans to catch one to send an SOS message. Desmond, having seen Charlie dying because of these birds, prevents this. Claire follows Desmond and forces him to explain everything to her and he does. Claire sends out a message with a bird caught by Desmond. Meanwhile, Locke, Kate, Sayid, Rousseau and Mikhail reach a sonar fence encircling the barracks. After Mikhail threatens to reveal Locke's paralysis, Locke sends him into the sonar fence, killing him. Sayid discovers that Locke smuggled C4 out of The Flame. The group climbs over the fence and reach the barracks where they see Jack playing football with Tom.
The Good: Everything surrounding Locke and co. was the strongest stuff in the episode. The drama was engaging, and it was more than enough to overcome the fact that there wasn't very much character exploration done in the storyline. Mikhail's presence added a lot, particularly during the scene where Kate started quizzing him. Just like last episode, it was fascinating hearing what Mikhail has to say, and he offered us some very interesting insight about the others. Additionally, it was very interesting to see Locke's behaviour. Evidently, he seems to be following his own agenda and I have no idea what that is. I'm excited to find out what he's up to, and I think there's a lot of potential for strong character conflict if Locke continues to work on his own, away from Sayid and Kate's attempt to save Jack. Claire's story was fine. I was pretty happy to see somebody making a conscious effort to find a way off of the island, and I wish that the show explored the idea of trying to get off the island more often than it does. It was good to have Claire learn that Charlie is destined to die as I think this prevents a lot of more melodramatic stuff later in the season. The flashback story was good as well. Claire has always been the least interesting of the main cast, mainly because her character has hardly been explored. Here we finally delve into her backstory and we're given a nice story of Claire learning to come to terms with her own mistakes. Furthermore, we're actually given a good reason for Claire's poor treatment of Charlie last season. We learn that her father abandoned her, and adding on how Thomas abandoned her back in "Raised by Another", it's easy to determine that Claire has trust issues and likely finds it easy to believe that the men in her life would betray her, even if they haven't actually done so. The Christian twist works very well. We now know who Christian was visiting back in "Two for the Road", and we also know that Jack and Claire are half-siblings. This is an interesting twist as I'm uncertain about its significance to the story. It seems like more of a character detail for both Jack and Claire, knowing that they are connected through Christian. I imagine that this connection could be explored in an interesting way, particularly for Jack who would be forced to deal with even more turmoil from his father's messy life. The cliffhanger was pretty effective. It should be interesting to catch up with Jack and see how his feelings for the others have changed since we last saw him. The Bad: Did Desmond have to be so needlessly vague and ominous throughout the episode? He should have just told Charlie not to go bird hunting or he would die, and that could have solved so many of the episode's conflicts. Instead Desmond loses the ability to communicate normally so that the episode could have drama. No scene encapsulates this more than when Desmond explains to Claire that Charlie died after falling and breaking his neck. Why on earth would he tell her about his visions like this? This is so much more likely to cause her to panic, and it's done exclusively so that the episode could be more dramatic. Dialing the drama up to 11 and sacrificing any sense of immersion is a common problem of this episode. It's obvious that the birds won't lead to a rescue, so any drama centering around them doesn't work. The reading of the letter is another scene that didn't work for me because it didn't sound real and was overly dramatic in an attempt to make the episode more powerful. The letter should have been much shorter than it was, and surely there was more important information to write about instead of talking about what life is like on the island. Mikhail being interrupted right when he was about to reveal Locke's paralysis was very cliched. Furthermore, it made no sense that Sayid wouldn't inquire more about what Mikhail was saying, regardless of what Rousseau wanted to show them. The Unknown: Why isn't Kate capable of understanding why the others want to stay on the island? Why isn't she on the list? Is this the same list that Danny mentioned? Who is the magnificent man? Is it Jacob, who has been mentioned a few times before? Apparently the others can't return to the island now because the beacon has been shut down. Do they have any way of fixing this? How badly have they been impacted by being isolated from the outside world? What is Locke planning to do with the C4? Will Kate and Jack find out that they are half-siblings? What impact will this have on the story? Best Moment: Mikhail answering Kate's questions was a wonderful way to spoon-feed us more mystery, while also setting up conflict for the characters. Character of the Episode: Claire. Conclusion: This was a solid episode. There isn't anything particularly special and the excessive drama makes this feel like a pretty generic episode, but it's an easy watch. Score: 62
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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