LOST- Episode 10: Raised by Another

  Previously on LOST- they picked up the French woman's transmission and Sayid went off on his own.

  We begin with an eye opening wide- it is Claire's eye and she has been awakened by the sound of an infant crying.  Strangely enough, she is no longer pregnant.  She hears the crying repeatedly- it leads her into the jungle where she finds Mr. Locke at a table playing with a deck of cards. But this is not just any Mr. Locke, this Locke's eyes are made out of one black stone and one white stone. He tells Claire that since she gave the baby away, everyone must now pay the price. She leaves him and finds a crib with a strange mobile hanging over it. Instead of Elmo or Winnie the Pooh, this mobile is decorated with Oceanic airplane models. Claire digs through layer after layer of blanket inside the crib but all she finds is... BLOOD!

  Of course, she wakes up screaming and it takes a while for Charlie to calm her down and tell her she was dreaming. Or was she? For her hands are covered in...BLOOD! Cue creepy LOST title screen...

  Back from commercials, Jack ends the suspense immediately by telling Claire that she balled her fists so tightly that her fingernails drew...BLOOD! I'll stop that now, I swear. Jack starts laying into her with the doctor questions- when he asks her how far along she is, it triggers a flashback to when she and her boyfriend, Thomas, found out she was pregnant. They are both unsure of what to do, but eventually Thomas convinces her to keep the baby.

  Later in the jungle, Charlie brings Claire some tea and finally makes a real move on her, offering his friendship.  Yeah right, buddy, we all know what you really want!  Anyway, she shoots him down without having to say anything other than "Charlie..."  After he leaves, Claire closes her eyes and thinks back to the time when she and her friend went to visit a psychic.  He takes her hands and immediately proves his credentials by asking when she found out about the baby.  But then things go horribly wrong!  The psychic gets a pained look on his face, breaks his grip and tells Claire to leave.  "What a freak!" friend says. 

  Back to reality, where once again Claire is sleeping soundly.  That is until a hand covers her mouth and we get flashes of her being attacked.  There's even the classic Hollywood knife sound effect.  After break, Claire is screaming for help which arrives in the form of most of the cave boys.  She says that someone tried to stab her with a needle and hurt her baby.  Moments later, Hurley tells Jack that no one was found lurking around the perimeter.  You know we're building toward a Hurley episode when he starts making points and revealing stuff about himself.  Basically, he wants to take a log of everyone on the island, just so they know who's who.  Maybe if they all know each other, they will stop attacking each other.  Also, his name is not Hurley- it's Hugo Reyes (sp?).

  Elsewhere, Charlie comes to comfort Claire and promises to look after her.  He says he won't leave her which we suspect she has heard before.  Claire thinks back to the time when Thomas came home and told her the relationship wasn't working out.  Cold-hearted snake!  They argue- he accuses her of getting pregnant on purpose and leaves without looking back.

  The next day on the beach, Hurley has begun his census and approaches Locke.  Locke answers the questions politely, making sure to be mysterious enough for Hurley to want to get away from him.  Why were you in Australia?  Looking for something.  Did you find it?  It found me.  I mean, what's the point?  Just say I was going on safari, my dear chap.  Meanwhile, Jack and Charlie are conducting their own investigation of Claire's attack and disagree on whether or not something actually happened.  Charlie defends his would-be girlfriend's sanity and storms away.  I've been watching Jack in slow mo and fast forward a lot now and he tends to look down or back and forth a lot.  I think this is Matthew Fox brilliantly conveying the uncertainty inherent with having leadership forced on him.  Whether he is or isn't doesn't matter now- either way you will not stop noticing it and will join me in calling him Bobblehead.  Back to Hurley, who has met Ethan Rom from Ontario.  He was the guy helping Locke hunt last time.  They make awkward small talk and Hurley excuses himself.  Now why would they make a point of showing that guy, you ask?  I heard he's Tom Cruise's cousin, that's why.

  Jack returns to Cavetown and tries to convince Claire that pregnancy has caused her to go off the deep end or something to that effect.  He even offers a mild sedative.  Obviously, Claire doesn't take kindly to this and storms off, determined to return to the much safer beach.  As she walks through the jungle, she thinks back to the time when she knocked on the psychic's door, determined to find out what had freaked him out so much.  He agrees to try again and this time things get even weirder.  He insists that the baby is in great danger and must have its mother in its life in order to protect it.  Claire MUST NOT give the baby up for adoption.  Slightly freaked out herself now, Claire blows off his advice and leaves.

  This is rare.  We return from a commercial in a new flashback scene.  The psychic is now calling Claire in the middle of the night begging her not to give up the baby.  This is one psychotic psychic.  That's almost a tongue twister!  Maybe not.  Back in the jungle, Charlie catches up to Claire and tries to talk some sense into her.  She says she's not crazy and keeps on walking.

  On the beach, Shannon and Boone are not taking kindly to Hurley's questions.  Boone suggests that Hurley would have a lot easier time of it if he just obtained the plane's manifest.  This is, of course, possessed by Sawyer.  Hurley asks real nice like and gets surprisingly little resistance from Sawyer.  Maybe if they keep getting along, they can start an Alias fan club.  Get it?

  Back to the jungle again, where Claire and Charlie continue to argue until they are interrupted by Claire going into labor.  Charlie rolls up his metaphorical sleeves and is prepared to deliver the baby, but Claire insists that he go and get Jack.  Even more so after he reveals that he is a recovering drug addict.  So Charlie runs off, bumps into Ethan and passes him the Jack-fetching baton, so that he can go back to Claire. 

  While Charlie was gone, Claire kept herself occupied by flashing back to the time when she was about to sign over her baby to a Melbourne couple.  Things were going smoothly until not one, but two pens were out of ink.  We in the writing business call that a sign.  Claire apologizes and leaves, saying she can't do it.  The actress playing the adoptive mother really gets the most out of her scene, tugging at my heartstrings by shouting NO!  Powerful stuff, whoever you are.  In the very next scene, Claire is knocking on the psychic's door, asking him what his proposal is.

  In the present, Charlie returns and Claire tells him about the psychic.  The writers make up for all the times they wrote Claire out by giving her yet another flashback scene.  In this one, the psychic has completely changed his tune and is no longer recommending Claire raise the baby herself- instead he wants to give her $12,000 to go to LA and give the baby up.  Charlie helps her realize that the psychic was yanking her chain about the couple in LA- he just wanted to make sure she was on the doomed plane so she would be forced to raise the baby herself.  Now that she thinks about it, he WAS pretty insistent that she get on Oceanic Flight 815 tomorrow.  That's Oceanic... Flight 815... tomorrow!

  Elsewhere, we finally get a glimpse of Sayid as he limps through the jungle in quite a hurry.  Then Charlie and Claire decide to get up and go back to the caves.  Turns out she was just going through some false labor and she is fine for the moment.

  In Cavetown, Sayid stumbles into camp panicked and dehydrated.  He tells Jack, Kate and Locke that he found the French woman and that they are not alone.  Hurley races through the brush and gives our heroes some more interesting news.  The manifest and his personal census don't match up entirely.  One of them was not on the plane...

  And not coincidentally, we see Ethan greeting Charlie and Claire on the path back home.  He is looking super creepy, so Charlie instinctively puts his arm around Claire and we fade to black as both look fairly distressed.

Next week on LOST: Kate, Locke and Bobblehead pursue Ethan, who has somehow dragged off both Charlie and Claire, while Sawyer looks for revenge against Sayid.  Then Ethan puts his foot on Jack's chest and says, "If you don't stop following me, I will kill one of them!"  Oh man, I can't wait.  You can't even tell who the flashbacks will be about- Ethan?

Coming for Christmas: The talking Kate doll with her two break-out catch phrases-  "What do we do?" and "I'm coming with you!"  Order now.