At first I thought we were in a Jin/Sun flashback, because the beach looks like a proper campsite all of a sudden, with tents and everything, plus their hair looks a lot longer than usual. But no, it’s the island. I guess the materials came from the hatch? Hurley emerges from the tent next to theirs and gives Jin a smirky thumbs up. Methinks Hurley was awakened in the night by the thunderous bleats of passion emanating from Jin’s House of Nasty.

On a slightly less sexy note, Sayid is digging a grave for Shannon. It seems odd that he’d choose a site so close to people’s tents. Down in the hatch, Jack is tending to Sawyer, who asks after Kate, and then proclaims his love for her. He’s practically unconscious, though, so I suppose we could take that with a grain of salt. The lady in question is in the jungle picking mangoes. A horse suddenly appears! The exclamation point makes it seem more exciting. But really, polar bears, crazy French chicks, secret hatches…what’s a horse here and there?

It must be important on some level, though, since it sends Kate into flashback mode. She’s playing with a lighter and sitting on a stoop, waiting for a guy who shows up drunk in a pickup truck. He leans into her kind of inappropriately, which here is a good hint that he’s probably her dad. As she gets him into bed, he gets cruder and cruder, asking her if she’s going to take his pants off. She leaves on a motorbike, and the house explodes into flames behind her. Ha! Kate finally did something awesome!

She heads into a diner, where the sassy, no-nonsense waitress is her mom. Her arm is bandaged, and though she tries to say it was an accident in the kitchen, Kate knows that her husband beat her. This obviously isn’t the first time, and also obviously Kate just killed the wife beater who did this. Kate doesn’t outright tell her mom what she did, but pretty much foreshadows the hell out of what her mom’s going to find when she gets home later. Kate hands over an insurance policy she bought for the house and hustles out of the diner with her mom yelling after her. It seems somewhat single-minded of Kate to blow up the entire house just to kill her dad, but I suppose that fits with the character.

Back in the hatch, Jack and Kate discuss who’s going to go to Shannon’s funeral and who’s going to watch Sawyer/reset the button. Kate obviously wants to stay with Sawyer and Jack obviously wants to prevent any alone time between those two. Jack ends up leaving, and we cut to Eko and Ana, another island couple of sorts. She’s doing something aggressive with a rock and a stick (what else would she be doing?) and he apologetically tells her he’s going to the funeral. Eko says he thinks most people know Ana murdering Shannon was an accident (and implies she’s forgiven), and there we have the first patently stupid thing he’s said.

Sayid struggles to give a eulogy for Shannon, where he basically struggles with the fact that they only met because of the plane crash, yet he still loved her. He walks away, leaving Jack to take over and finish up. Things are much more lighthearted in the hatch, for once, where Kate has put on a country record and is mashing some fruit for Sawyer, laughing about how that would make him feel if he were conscious. He starts to murmur, so she leans closer – the better for him to grab her by the neck and growl, “Why did you kill me?” Silly Sawyer, she didn’t kill you! Duh! You’re still alive!

Back from the commercials (is that woman in the Old Navy campaign freakin’ adorable or freakin’ annoying?), Jack and Locke find the hatch post abandoned, Kate nowhere to be found. Jack runs to Sawyer, who’s lying on the floor, while Locke goes to the computer and kind of panics, because the alarm is going, he only has 20 seconds, and he keeps messing up the code. He finally gets it, of course, but I think letting the timer run out would be the most interesting thing they could do at this point, so I don’t share his relief. Meanwhile, Jack is putting Sawyer back into bed. Man, how many slash fiction masterworks did that shot just inspire?

Kate’s off in the woods and is accosted by Charlie. Aw, I know most people are getting sick of the little hobbit, always interfering and getting in people’s way. He’s just bored, is all! Trying to give Claire some space! Anyway, he gets the understatement of time immemorial when talking about who came to Shannon’s funeral: “not her, the one who killed Shannon. That would’ve been a bit awkward.” Totally deadpan delivery. This is why I love him.

Kate’s all crazy-eyed and distracted, and asks Charlie if there are horses on the island. She walks off into a flashback in a bus depot. She’s trying to run away to Tallahassee, but the Marshall we all recognize stops her after a little non-witty banter and some light violence. “Your momma gave you up, Kate,” he tells her. Oh, burn!

Posted by Kat on December 2, 2005 2:23 PM