Homecoming

WHY AM I WATCHING HOMECOMING?

In which the shortest cowboy has masculinity issues.

Sorry Chuck, you're not going to out sexy stare Sayid.

PREVIOUSLY, ON LOST

About two weeks ago, that lovable scamp Ethan stole Claire and tried to kill Charlie. He also beat the shit out of Jack as a bonus. Last night Claire came stumbling back into camp.

THE ISLAND

Claire's back, but don't break out the party hats just yet. She's got AMNESIA!!!!! Yeah, someone was really scraping the bottom of the cliche barrel this week. The whole camp is hovering around trying to help, while Sun and Jin look on. Jin has no idea what is happening, but he's beginning to think Sun does. To help jog Claire's memory, Charlie returns her diary, presumably with all the bookmarks, highlights, dog ears, and footnotes removed. She asks "Are you a low level creeper who is nice and friendly to me, but only because you hope that I'll sleep with you?" He responds "Yes."

The next day Charlie and Jin are walking through the forest, laughing back and forth at what the other has to say. Wait, that's not right. Charile is babbling at Jin the way you talk to your cat, just sort of saying things, knowing full well they can't understand you. Pretty rude, Chuck. Then Jin gets beaned in the chest with a rock and is out cold. The camera pans over to reveal Ethan, doing his creepy dead arm stare. He shoves Charlie up against a tree and threatens to kill one person a day until he gets Claire back.

When they get back to the beach, Charlie tells Jack and Locke what happened. No one bothers to tell Claire. They go on the defensive, setting up alarm traps and guard posts. Boone decides that he wants a shift on guard duty. It goes as well as you'd expect, which is to say that Boone falls asleep. One of the alarm traps goes off in the morning and wakes him up. When Boone hears it, he takes off  running into the woods with a case of "WHAT? NO! I'm awake!" Then he slips on a banana peel and falls face first into a pie. But he did find the dog, so it wasn't a total waste. He didn't find the dead body on the beach though. Yeah, Ethan swam up through the ocean and killed Scott (or possibly Steve).

Up at the caves, Claire realizes that everyone is avoiding her. So she goes to the only non-extra there to find out what's up. Unfortunately for her, it's Shannon. So she finds out in the bitchiest way possible that people are going to keep dying unless she goes back to Ethan's weird baby eater clubhouse. This pisses her off for some reason, so she goes and yells at Charlie for a bit. But he's all "What? I'm just a nice guy who wants to protect and take care of you and not tell you about very important decisions that directly involve you." She doesn't buy it.

Meanwhile, Jack tells Locke about the ZERO Halliburton brand suitcase (order yours today!) full of guns. They channel their inner Fred Jones Jr. and come up with a clever trap for Ethan. Using Claire as the bait, they lure him out into the open, then throw a butterfly net over him. One problem though, there's four guns, but only three dudes that know how to use them. Jack, Locke, and Sayid rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to recruit Sawyer. It's Jack, because of course it is. Kate finds out that there are shenanigans, and the possibility of getting to hide in a tree, and wants in. But Jack is all "Sorry, we've only got four guns and you're a girl, sooooooooo...." Luckily, Sawyer still has his polar bear hunting pistol, so Kate gets to be a cowboy with daddy issues too. Seriously. I don't remember Sayid's family history, but the rest of this little posse has some fucked up fathers.

Claire agrees to be the bait, (mostly to spite Charlie) (and also because she has a terrible father) (Now that I think about it, her kid is sort of part of the posse too and he has a terrible father) (Where was I?) (Oh yeah) Claire goes out to Ethan's tree fort and everyone else sets up their ambush. Ethan does his Jason Voorhees bit and lumbers through the jungle after Claire, but she leads him right to Jack, who just beats the ever loving fuck out of him. It's raining again, which is a really nice callback to their first fight. It's a good fight in it's own right, but it nicely echos the original fight, to make it extra satisfying. Jack subdues Ethan, but before the gang can pull off his mask to find out who he really is, Charlie shoots him dead. Because he was a bad guy and deserved to die. So much for interrogating him and finding out if there's any others people on the island.

ZOINKS!

THE FLASHBACK

Charlie is living the high life. Literally. His dealer is giving him free heroin and he gets to go out and sleep with rich girls and steal their stuff when no one is looking. He finds his mark, Lucy, a 30-something college, excuse me, university student (very British). Her dad has a sweet cigarette case that was owned by Winston Churchill. But over the course of his con, Charlie ends up falling for the girl. When he admits to her father that Driveshaft is dead, he accepts a job offer from him to sell copy machines,

This does not go over well with Charlie's dealer at all and he cuts Charlie off. Which is odd. You'd think that with a steady source of income, Charlie would be more likely to pay his debt. I guess that's why I'm not a heroin dealer. Anyways, Monday comes around and withdrawal is in high gear for Charlie's first day of work. It's so bad, he ends up stealing the case anyways. Then at an easy first sale, he horks all over the copy machine. At the hospital, they find  the puke-crusted cigarette case and obviously the girl breaks up with him. For some reason this is supposed to reflect his current relationship with Claire, but it's a stretch (to put it mildly) and very ham fistedly done, so I'm not buying it.

It's like James Bond's nephew borrowed one of his suits. 

THE RANDOM THOUGHTS

• Damon Lindelof has said that this is his least favorite episode (yes, worse than Jack's Magic Tattoos). I don't know about that. I mean, it's not great, the flashback is basically filler. But the island stuff was fun. A solid mid level episode. Anytime there's a Kate/Jack/Sawyer pissing contest and I don't hate it is a win. At any rate, this isn't even the worst episode I've done so far. That honor goes to Kate Robs Banks. And Climbs Trees. 
• A big problem with the flashback (besides the fact that it doesn't tell us anything new about Charlie's character) is that Lucy was incredibly miscast. Nothing against the actress, she did a fine job. But she is nothing like the girl that is described in the dialogue. They are all acting like she's a fat student, but she's an attractive woman in her late 20's-early 30's. She's not even TV ugly. I mean she's tall, but she's also standing next to Dominic Monaghan, so that hardly counts.
• Another thing I liked about this episode is how there wasn't really a B plot, and the A plot was so expansive it gave most of the characters something to do. I know this isn't something you can do every week, but it's good every once in a while. 

Ladies, you are now all pregnant. 

THE CATCHPHRASES

• None this week, which is weird. But Charlie isn't much of a catchphrase character. 
• We do get two nicknames from Sawyer, though. That sort of counts
• Jack is "Hoss"
• Ethan is "Jungle Boy"