Rewatching LOST: 1.11 “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues”

Jack relentlessly pursues Ethan, who’s kidnapped Claire and Charlie. Flashbacks dealing with a troubled surgery reveal why Jack and his father Christian were at odds right before Christian’s death.

• Picking up immediately after the events of the last episode (“Raised by Another”), the survivors at the caves piece together the facts: Ethan Rom is not one of the survivors, he’s been lying about having been on the plane, and now he’s very likely intercepted Charlie and Claire in the jungle. Jack and Locke take off into the jungle to find them; Locke finds Claire’s bag and evidence of a struggle nearby, as well as marks that Charlie and Claire have been dragged away. Locke sums it up: Claire and Charlie have been kidnapped by Ethan. Locke wants to continue the pursuit smart, by returning to the caves and organizing a search party, but Jack goes now, alone.
• Back at the caves, Kate insists on joining Locke’s search party, and Boone volunteers as well, over Shannon’s objections. Michael tries to volunteer too, but Locke shoots him down. Later, while venting to Hurley about Locke, Michael is interrupted by Walt, who defends Locke’s reputation as the group’s hunter. Michael forbids Walt from spending any more time with Locke.
• The three of them manage to catch up with Jack, and Locke pleads with Jack to go back to the caves and not risk his life as the only doctor the survivors have, but Jack won’t hear of it, so they continue the hunt. After a while of searching, Locke loses the trail and takes a break to regroup, but Jack is frustrated at stopping. He admits privately to Kate that he feels responsible for what’s happened because he didn’t believe Claire when she told him she’d been attacked in the night back at camp.
• Charlie leaves his finger bandages behind in the jungle as a trail for rescuers to follow.
• When the trail seems to fork, Kate reveals that she has tracking skills, so she and Jack follow one trail while Locke and Boone follow the other. Later, Jack’s aggravations boil over as Kate tries to reason with him and he irrationally asks her to tell him something about herself that’s not a lie — such as how she picked up skills as a tracker. Kate reveals that her father was a Ranger in the Army, stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. He taught her how to track and survive in the woods.
• Walt informs Sawyer of the day’s events, but when Sawyer expresses skepticism at the idea of anyone else living on the island aside from the survivors, Walt points him to Sayid for convincing. Still angry about his torture at Sayid’s hands, Sawyer ventures to the caves and confronts him. Sayid tries to explain that he left the camp out of shame, never intending to return, but Sawyer’s not interested in offering forgiveness. Sayid tells Sawyer his story of being captured by Danielle Rousseau, and her claim that there are others living on the island. Sayid admits that he’s not sure he believes Danielle, but he tells Sawyer about hearing the Whispers in the jungle.
• Sawyer tells Sayid that the tide is coming in at the beach, and will soon bury the hull of the plane underwater, eventually dragging it under the sea. But Sawyer kept Sayid’s signal fire burning while he was away.
• Hurley and Walt play Backgammon to pass the time, and Walt demonstrates an uncommon luck at rolling the numbers he needs.
• When their trail runs cold, Locke urges Boone to return to the caves, but Boone refuses.
• It starts raining as Jack and Kate find another of Charlie’s bandages. Jack hears Claire scream in the distance, but Kate doesn’t. He falls from a ledge and lands in a gulley, where Ethan appears and warns Jack to stop following him, or he’ll kill either Claire or Charlie. Jack tries to fight him, but Ethan handily puts him down, and leaves, claiming he won’t give another warning. Kate finds him after the rain stops, reporting that the rain has washed away the trail, and implores Jack to stop this pursuit because he hit his head. But Jack is relentless, and immediately picks back up the chase.
• Ethan makes good on his promise: Jack and Kate very soon find Charlie strung up from a tree, seemingly dead. They quickly cut him down, and Jack begins CPR, eventually beating on Charlie’s chest to start his heart. After several minutes, Kate stops him, saying that it’s over and they were too late. But Jack doggedly starts back up again, hitting Charlie in the chest even harder than before, and against all odds, Charlie takes a breath and wakes up.
• That night, back at camp, Charlie is nearly catatonic, refusing to speak. Jack implores him to tell what he remembers, but when Charlie finally talks, he claims to remember nothing. Yet this is a lie to keep from having to talk about what happened, because in his next breath, he tells Jack that Ethan only ever wanted Claire.
• Still deep in the jungle, Locke and Boone make an incredible discovery: there’s something big and solid steel buried in the ground. They set to work uncovering it.

• Jack’s father, Christian Shephard, was a serious alcoholic. Jack once interrupted him during woman’s surgery and took over for him, believing his father was too drunk to continue. But Jack was unable to save the woman and she died on the table. Christian later tried to pressure Jack into helping him cover up his impairment during the surgery, but when Jack refused, Christian promised him it will never happen again. Jack finally agrees, but Christian was then visited by the husband of the woman who died, who was threatening to sue the hospital. When the two of them faced the hospital review board, Christian reported that the woman was already too far gone before he began his emergency surgery, that neither he nor Jack could do anything for her. When the review board pointed out that the woman was pregnant, Jack was stunned, having not known about this, and found it impossible to go through with their planned lie. He confessed the truth to the board, and his father was dismissed from the hospital.
• Kate has experience as a tracker, though according to her, she’s not as skilled as Locke.
• Walt’s stepfather is named Brian.
• Hurley is a champion Backgammon player. He once took 17th place in a tournament.
• Before the crash, Locke was a regional collections manager for a cardboard box company.
• Boone works for his mother, a highly successful wedding planner. He runs one of the company’s subsidiaries.
• Locke is so good at wilderness survival that he can sense when it’s about to start raining.

• The catalyst that sent Christian Shephard to Australia — and the thing that Jack did to cause a rift between him and his father — was Jack turning Christian in for performing surgery while intoxicated, resulting in Christian losing his license as a doctor.
  Question: What happened between Jack and Christian that drove a wedge between them two months ago, and ultimately caused Christian to run off to Australia? 1.05

• Ethan seems unnaturally strong. How is this possible?
• Why did Ethan abduct Claire?
• Where has Ethan taken Claire?
• Why is Hurley “known as something of a warrior back home”?
• Is there a reason or explanation for Walt’s uncommonly good luck?
  Answered in 1.14.
• What is the big steel thing in the ground that Locke and Boone found?
  Answered in 1.13.

• “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues” is the second Jack-centric episode of the series.
• Loved Sawyer’s theory: “So a tribe of evil natives planted a ringer in the camp to kidnap a pregnant girl and a reject from VH-1 has-beens…?” I love it all the more because it’s essentially true!
• “All the Best Cowboys…” had some fun moments of foreshadowing. Boone’s conversation about Star Trek’s “redshirts,” aka extra members of the crew who always wound up getting killed during away missions, was unsettlingly prescient of Boone’s own status on the show and ultimate demise, just a few episodes down the line. Kate even contributed to it at the end of the episode by assuring Shannon that “if there’s anyone on this island that your brother is safe with, it’s Locke” — and it’s Locke who would later be the reason for Boone’s fatal accident!
• But wait, there’s more… Walt’s status as “lucky” first planted the seeds for what we would see in the Michael/Walt-centric “Special.” And Hurley owing Walt $20,000 from losing their game also hinted at Hurley’s status as a mega-lottery winner (though I don’t think Hurley never paid him, even after both of them escaped from the island).
• Once again, “end-of-the-world” type rain occurs on the island as a portent of very bad tidings. In this case, it preceded Ethan’s sudden appearance and smackdown of Jack. It returned at the end just before Locke and Boone first discovered the Hatch. There are only two possibilities here: 1) the rain is genuinely some kind of prophetic warning when something momentous is about to occur, or 2) the rain is nothing but a plot device used by the show’s writers to underscore particularly frightening moments, and we’re not meant to question its use.

Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 1 cast promotional image and Oceanic Airlines logo: American Broadcasting Company.