LOST Season 1 episode 11

 Far and away the craziest episode I've seen so far

This was going to be a part of the giant catch up post, but I pulled it separately. This episode in particular exploded my brain with badness. For the rest of episodes 6-12, check here.

We pick up from the previous episode and Doesn'tGetPregnancy Girl is going to have her baby, so naturally this comes with a series of psychotic dreams about being attacked. OR ARE THEY?

We learn through flashbacks that she believed in a psychic. Then we learn that the psychic planned on getting her into a plane crash. I'm not convinced I blame him, since I can't stand her accent or extreme levels of dumb. I vote we get this kid out so she can become Doesn'tGetParenting Girl.

Noel Underhill (formerly the Hobbit) is extremely sweet on her, now that he's sober. She decides Dr. J doesn't believe her, so she leaves the caves into the woods. Because the best thing to do in this case, is leave the only doctor while you are minutes away from labor.

Maybe pregnancy in Australia doesn't hurt as much because they're always around kangaroos?

Here's where things get weird again. Hurley decides to be Law and Order Hurley, which works out great to introduce us to Ethan Rom (not to be confused with Ethan Frome? Cuz I wasn't a fan of that, and Rom's clearly a bad guy who will go to great lengths over a girl. In my mind, Abrams did this on purpose to torment high school English teachers with a slew of "This book is just LOST" essays). Ethan is a guy that we only just met this episode, but apparently is a stalkermurderer who can out hunt and track Prof. X according to Prof. X. So now...DGPG and Noel are kidnapped.

As we go hunting for them, Vampire Diaries and X split off into their own group. X seems to want to wander off into the sunset, but VD (heh) keeps following him. Then they find out that the ground is made of metal. X decides it's steel, because his knife tells him so. I can only assume he's murdered enough steel with the tip of his knife to know the difference.

Meanwhile, Ethan "Bear Grylls" Rom appears out of nowhere, beats up Dr. J, and then hangs Noel.

• He does this after blindfolding him, with a blindfold no one had
• He does this with a giant vine, hanging from the space between a bunch of trees instead of a tree
• He does this without a way to hoist said vine, since it's hanging there like left over Spider-Man webbing in the middle of NYC, and there aren't any pulley systems in this jungle. OR ARE THERE?
• He does this without breaking Noel's neck, even though he would had to have climbed one of those near by trees and dropped Noel, then held him still in the middle like you would steady a punching bag.
• All of this while DGPG is probably in the early stages of labor, and hiking through the jungle, but doesn't seem to slow them down at all.

Ethan's a pretty powerful dude.

Learn from the best. And die like the rest, because there's only one Chuck Norris.

Dr J. and Kate find Dead Noel. They somehow cut him down, and then proceed to revive him in ER/Generic Medical Drama fashion. Only HORRIBLY. Kate paces around the waiting room jungle while Dr. J performs CPR that immediately cost him his medical license. I started laughing at the point where he was "punching" Noel in the chest for the second time (after Kate said "HE'S GONE!!!"), clearly stopping himself in his motion, AND Noel wasn't moving at all.  Good doctoring there, J.

Your "pounding the air two inches above the victim to restart their heart" technique meets all the requirements on this obviously medical clipboard I have. You win at doctor!

Of course, this display of unmitigated failure works suddenly and Noel's fine.

I want to take this moment to thank the internet for existing. I searched "lost jack revives" and this is the first thing that came up. It is better performed than the actual show by a factor of 3.8. I did the math.

I'll let you compare the two. But to give the real thing a chance of matching up, it won't be in English.

How much of a spell did Abrams have cast over America at this point to get away with this? There's no way he got a green light for episodes this far past the pilot with only the budget of the pilot. Did they just ship this sequence straight to production from the island? Was this part shot live and nobody told me?

"We did 27 takes and that was the best one."

To recap: Hurley starts a census to introduce us to the only new person we've met in 10 episodes. He's weird, no one knows him, and he's actually Bear Grylls trained by forest ninjas. Jack is able to revive people just by being angry near them. Noel can live through a lynching and DGPG reaaaaallllly annoys me, but not enough that I wish harm on the unborn child. We managed to cram more out of control crazy into this episode than the last 8 combined. I'm proud. I'm ashamed. I'm excited for the possibility of even more horrible jungle-doctoring. Guess the only way to know is to keep going!