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AIR-DATE: 4/10/06
Written by: JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof Directed by: Jack Bender
Starring: MC Gainey, Julie Bowen, John Terry
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In Flashback Jack is going through a divorce with his wife Sarah. She refuses to tell him the name of her new man, making him paranoid. Jack begins to suspect that she’s going out with his dad, so he follows him one night. But his dad is only attending an AA session and has been sober for weeks. Jack is still convinced that his dad is dating Sarah, though, and attacks him at the meeting. He’s arrested and thrown in jail until Sarah pays his bail to get him out. As he leaves the police station he sees Sarah’s new bloke. It’s not his dad.
On the Island The episode kicks off with a mini-flashback to the day the aircraft crashed. We see it from the point of view of the Others, who, it’s revealed, live in a small town (with all mod cons) on the island.
Having been caught by the Others, Jack, Sawyer and Kate all wake in separate places. Jack is in a metal cell, where an Other called Juliette tries to win his trust. Instead he attempts to escape, and opens a door that lets in hundreds of gallons of water and he almost drowns. It seems his cell is underwater.
Meanwhile, Sawyer’s in a cage full of logic puzzles designed to train animals to access food.
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Kate wakes up in a changing room, where Mr Friendly forces her to shower and change into a dress. Handcuffed, she’s taken to see “Henry Gale” for breakfast on the beach. He tells her to be ready for two very unpleasant weeks ahead, then she’s put in a cage opposite Sawyer’s.
Juliette breaks Jack’s will. ‘Henry’ congratulates her, and she replies, “Thank you, Ben.”
Trivia Mike Emerson (Ben), Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliette), Rodrigo Santoro (Paulo) and Kiele Sanchez (Nikki) are now listed as a regular cast members, though Santoro and Sanchez don’t appear in this episode.
Review And so the big revelation of the episode is… Henry’s really called Ben. Wow. That’ll get ’em tuning in next week. Though, to be honest, it’s more exciting than Jack’s dull divorce flashback (which may have been more interesting if Sarah had been revealed to be dating an Other, or something).
Okay, so we all expect Lost to do the unexpected, and some may argue it’s brave to open the season with an episode that doesn’t feature three quarters of the main cast. But, to be honest, it’s simply not a very exciting opener. Luckily, Jack, Kate and Henry all have some great scenes, and the opening sequence is a corker – totally unexpected and brilliantly realised. And some people I know really liked the image of Sawyer in a cage…
Dialogue
Tom: “How’d you do that?” Sawyer: “I figured out your complicated gizmos, that’s how.” Tom: “It only took the bears two hours.”
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