CATCH-22

Or, A Poke In The Throat With A Sharp Stick

[Originally Aired April 18, 2007]

Desmond, Charlie, Hurley and Jin traipse through the jungle. Charlie and Hurley argue about Superman and the Flash. Until Charlie steps into a trap and is speared in the throat with an arrow. Awesome. Now maybe he'll quit being all concerned and shit all the time. Oh, I guess not. Desmond is on the beach and it's all been another of his visions. Damn. Not that I really thought he'd die. I am pretty sure I saw his ass on the cover of the season four DVD. Whatever. Desmond asks Hurley where the wire in the sand is. "This is future crap, isn't it?" Desmond asks again, telling him it's important. Why? "Because someone's coming." Flashback and Dez is cloistered reading the bible. A monk enters his cell and hands him some robes saying he's now one of them. Amen and hallelujah. On the beach Dez borrows Jack's first aid kit. He again asks Hurley to take him to the cable but Hurley refuses without an explanation. Dez can't give him one, describing his vision as a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. Dez tells him he's not going to stop it this time. Sawyer knocks on Kate's tent and goes inside and she's half naked. He stares at her boobs and asks if she told Jack about the two of them. Kate tells him about Jack seeing it on camera and Sawyer calls the Others pervs and then asks if Kate wants to do it. She walks out of the tent. "Come on, Freckles, you need me to make you a mix tape?" Hurley talks Jin into going "camping" with them, since he's in Dez's vision. If everyone isn't there, the vision fizzles out, it seems. Dez convinces Charlie to come too. He's kind of skeptical, but also kind of stupid, so he agrees to come so long as he can bring his guitar. Later, on the beach, they all whistle the theme from The Bridge on the River Kwai. Jin finds the cable in the sand. Dez decides this is a good time to make camp for the night. Flashback and Dez and his monk pal are slapping labels on bottles of wine. "I find the name the brothers have chosen for the wine made here interesting. Moriah's the mountain where Abraham was asked to kill Isaac. Its not exactly the most festive locale is it?" The monk tells him it was just a test, and besides, God spared Isaac. Yeah, I never understood that story. Someone tells Dez he has a visitor and then a man walks in and punches him in the nose. Back at the beach, Kate and Jack talk briefly before he heads back to his new BFF, Juliet. Kate then stomps off to Sawyer's tent and bones him. He asks "Are you crying?" and she tells him to shut up. At their campfire, Jin tells a ghost story in Korean, which kind of looks like the old one about the guy with the hook for a hand. It makes Hurley scream, even though he doesn't understand a word of it. Then Hurley starts to tell everyone about the chupacabra. Meanwhile Charlie asks Dez about the photo he's pining over and Dez says he's a coward for running away from her. Then they hear the sound of a helicopter. Holy shit! Then Hurley asks "Is that how a helicopter's supposed to sound?" Ummm, no. The engine sounds dies, and the copter can be heard splashing down into the ocean. Holy shit. A red light blinks up above and disappears into the jungle. What was that? Someone ejected they decide, though that is due largely to Dez's earlier contention that "someone's coming." Dez wants to head out to find the person now, but the others want to wait until daylight. Only when Charlie threatens to leave does Dez agree to wait until sun up. Flashback and Dez knocks on the door of the man who punched him. He tells him to beat it when Dez asks to see his sister. She comes to the door and the two talk. After six years of dating, and a week before their wedding, Dez disappeared. Ran off and became a monk. The woman, Ruth, calls him a coward. The next morning, on the beach, Sawyer challenges Jack to a game of ping pong. Jack wonders where they got the table. "Don't you recognize it? Fell out of the purple haze. We don't play every hundred and eight minutes, the island's gonna explode." The two play ping pong and talk about Kate. In the jungle Dez, Charlie, Hurley and Jin head toward the beacon. Jin finds a hula doll. Huh? Must been the pilot's. Then Dez finds a backpack in a tree. Inside is a copy of Catch 22 and a satellite phone. The phone doesn't work and the book ain't in English. Bummer. Inside the book is a photo of Dez and Penny. Back at camp Sawyer gives Kate her mix tape. Well, it's a copy of Phil Collins Greatest Hits. Then he asks if she jumped him after seeing Jack and Juliet eating dinner. It's not like that she tells him. Inland, Charlie asks Dez if he thinks it's Penny who jumped out of the copter. "Earlier I hoped it. Now I know it." It starts to rain. Flashback and Dez is pissed on a couple bottles of their wine. His monk friend is unhappy about it. Then he fires Dez, telling him the monastery isn't his calling. Back in the jungle Jin asks who Penny is. Hurley tells him "She's this chick Desmond used to date. And now he thinks she fell from the sky. So we're gonna go save her life, and she's gonna get us rescued. Dude, even if I spoke Korean it wouldn't make any sense." Then Charlie and Hurley bicker about Superman and the Flash and Charlie steps on the boobytrap. Dez tells him to duck and knocks him down and the arrow pierces his guitar. See? I knew he was on the cover of season four. Anyway, they split up, hoping to cover more ground. When they're alone Charlie asks Dez how he knew to tell him to duck. He tells Charlie was supposed to let him die. Or maybe not. Maybe God is testing him like Abraham and he is just supposed to go on saving Charlie's life forever. Jin yells and Dez and Charlie join him. Someone dangles from a tree by their parachute. "I'm sorry, Penny," Dez shouts as he climbs the tree. Flashback and Dez says goodbye to the monk. If he doesn't mind sticking around a couple hours, he can catch a lift into town with one of the monks. Sure, says Dez. Outside he helps load up several crates of wine into someone's trunk. It's Penny! He tells her he's just been fired and the two have a really great scene. It's well done, especially for a Meet Cute. Penny offers Dez a lift. In the jungle they pull the pilot down from the tree and Dez peels off her helmet. Only it's not Penny. It's a dark-haired woman. She looks at him and mumbles "Desmond."