browser life

First, to get caught up on last week's episode of "Lost": I think it should be subtitled "Lost: the Tailies"....

It starts out innocently enough. A beautiful shot of the beach and the peaceful waves. Then, off camera, an odd sound, and then suddenly, pieces of the tail section of an aircraft pierce the perfect skyline and tumble toward the camera...

Next, an underwater shot, a brief rise to the surface punctuated by screams and chaos, then underwater again. Then Ana Lucia gasping for air. She stumbles to the beach, trying to comprehend what where she is and what's going on. Eko appears, nicely dressed, and begins pulling people out of the water. Ana Lucia gets her wits about her and starts helping out. Confused, injured people running around. Eko grabs a boy with a teddy bear, who is yelling for his sister. The girl is fished out of the water, but she is unconscious. Ana Lucia begins CPR, and Eko leads the boy away to not make him watch. The girl is revived, and Ana Lucia smiles uncharicteristically. The girl wants to know where her mom is. Ana Lucia at first fears the woman is still in the ocean, then relaxes a bit when the girl says she's supposed to meet in L.A. She says simply, "We're not there yet".

Eko takes the revived girl and her brother to Cindy, who was a flight attendant on the plane. Eko asks Cindy to look after the kids because he has something to do. He goes back in the ocean and starts bringing dead bodies to shore.

There's a man in pain from a broken leg. Libby starts chattering away about how she broke a leg skiing, which seems oddly incongruous until she sees she has distracted the man, and with a vicious yank, she snaps the man's leg back in place. Ana Lucia is impressed and asks Libby if she's a doctor. Libby says no, that she just had a year of med school before she became a clinical psychologist. Libby asks Ana Lucia if she's a doctor because she witnessed the CPR on the girl. Ana Lucia says no, but doesn't elaborate.

A new guy, Goodwin, comes in from the jungle, yelling about someone needing help. Ana Lucia follows him into the forest, from where a man is screaming. It's Bernard, still strapped in an airline seat (wasn't he in the BATHROOM at the time of the crash??) at the top of a tall tree next to a dead body. The seat is tilting dangerously, about to fall. Ana Lucia is able to talk Bernard into releasing the seat belt and grabbing the nearest tree branch. He does so, and the seat comes flying to the ground on top of the dead guy. Close call for Bernard, now clinging terrified to the tree.

The survivors gather on the beach at the end of the first day around a signal fire. Bernard asks Eko if any of the bodies he pulled out of the water were African American. He says no. Bernard says he can't find his wife. Eko says he'll pray for his wife. Bernard asks where the rescue planes are. Eko says he'll pray for them too.

That night, the survivors awake to the sound of a scuffle. Ana Lucia finds Eko standing over the bodies of two strangers, a bloody rock in his hand. Three of the survivors are missing. The dead strangers have no identification on them, but one does have an Army knife, which Ana Lucia pockets. Eko is so traumatized by having to kill to defend himself that he stops speaking.

Because the survivors from the tail section don't have the luxuries that the survivors of the fuselage had, like a doctor, an engineer, a hunter, a techie and supplies, they must scrounge however they can to live. The man with the broken leg dies from infection. They find a single chicken for meat. Eko fashions a large club for protection.

But they still are not prepared for another raid on their camp. The children and seven others are kidnapped right off the beach. No one even heard the Others sneaking up on them. Ana Lucia manages to kill one of the strangers. She finds on the body a list of the people who were taken. The survivors decide the signal fire is calling too much attention to them and head inland.

The survivors begin to suspect one in their midst is giving information about them to the Others. When the survivors make a new camp in the jungle, Ana Lucia begins digging a large pit. When she has finished it, she attacks a man named Nathan, knocks him unconscious and throws him in the pit. She begins questioning him when he comes to, asking him who he is and where the kids are. Nathan swears he doesn't know, that he was just another passenger on the plane, but none of the rest of the survivors seem to remember seeing him on the plane. Days pass, and he doesn't change his story. Then one night when the other survivors are sleeping, Goodwin helps Nathan out of the pit, supposedly so he can escape. But before Nathan can run, Goodwin kills him.

The survivors stumble upon a metal door in some overgrowth. On the inside of the door is a "quarantine" stamp just like the one on the hatch Locke and Boone found. Inside this hatch is a slightly different Dharma symbol. They also find a Bible, a glass eye, and a radio. Bernard tries the radio out, but the signal is blocked by mountains. Goodwin volunteers to take the radio to higher ground. Ana Lucia gives him an odd look and insists on going with him.

While they are hiking, Ana Lucia asks Goodwin his opinion on why certain people were kidnapped. Goodwin suggests they stop and rest for awhile. He finds a piece of fruit and asks Ana Lucia for her knife. She eyes him warily and hands it to him. He slices the fruit and offers her a piece, which she accepts. She comments how odd it was that one of the Others had an Army knife on him. Goodwin doesn't follow her. She asks for the knife back, and he hesitates before complying. She shows him the Army inscription. Then she lets on that she knows he's the one who has been ratting them out. A scuffle ensues, and she spears him right through the chest and leaves him to die. She returns with the radio to the rest of the tailies and offers a vague explanation regarding Goodwin.

Bernard continues to try to pick up a signal on the radio. One day, there is a response! It's Boone, using the radio he found on the Nigerian plane, stating that he's a survivor of Flight 815. Ana Lucia decides it's a trick concocted by the Others and switches the radio off. How terribly sad. But you can see the light of hope in Bernard's eyes that maybe his wife is alive after all.

Cindy and Libby are working on a net on the beach, and Cindy sees the body of a man washing up on the beach. It's Jin! They pull him out of the water. Eko tries to question him, but of course Jin only speaks Korean. Eko thinks Jin is probably all right, but Ana Lucia doesn't trust him because of the handcuff still attached to his wrist. While they are discussing this, Jin takes off, finding Michael and Sawyer on the beach as shown earlier this season.

The rest of the story was edited in short segments in rapid succession. At the end, they show the shooting from Ana Lucia's point of view....she couldn't see Shannon clearly at all, and just shot at something she saw moving in the jungle. It still doesn't quite justify what she did....after all, it could have been Cindy in those woods.

The choppy pace of this episode annoyed the hell out of me. And this was touted as an "extended" episode by the network....it was maybe all of five minutes longer! I would rather they had left the past few minutes out where we already know what happens, and fill that time with more about Eko and maybe some about Bernard and Libby. I am fond of Bernard, and fascinated by Eko. But if I am supposed to like Ana Lucia better now because she cries in this episode, it doesn't work for me. The actress who portrays her really doesn't have much of a range, so she just looks sullen most of the time. I wish Sayid would kick her ass, I have a feeling the reverse will end up being true.

What I AM looking forward to, though, is this week's episode, where both groups finally meet. We will FINALLY see Bernard and Rose together, which will be sweet. And I'm wondering what Sun and Jin's reunion will be like because Jin has really changed for the better since he left. And I bet Kate will totally flip out when she sees what has become of Sawyer.

Bring it on!