Rewatching LOST: 1.13 “Hearts and Minds”

Boone is put through a grueling test by Locke when he threatens to tell Shannon about their project in the jungle. Elsewhere, Hurley bonds with Jin while trying to learn to catch fish.

• At the beach, Boone watches from afar as Sayid gives Shannon a thank-you present for helping him translate Danielle’s maps. The two of them are forming an unlikely bond, and Boone is openly jealous of their burgeoning relationship.
• Hurley approaches Boone and asks why he and Locke haven’t brought back any boar to eat in over a week, since they’ve been out hunting every day. Boone lies about his and Locke’s true work — uncovering the large metal object buried in the jungle — and assures Hurley they’re doing their best. Hurley impresses upon him the importance of the survivors having solid food to eat.
• Boone confronts Sayid and warns him to stay away from Shannon. Sayid interpreted this as a threat, but as would later be revealed, Boone was actually trying to help Sayid.
• Locke takes Boone on another trek into the jungle to their mysterious find, and Locke warns Boone not to make an enemy of Sayid because they will need him on “our side.” Boone informs Locke that the other survivors are growing suspicious about their daily hunts that turn up no boar. The two of them arrive at the buried metal object and Locke states that this is their priority right now. The object is revealed to be a doorway or hatch leading into some kind of underground structure. Boone later asks how long the two of them are going to venture to the hatch and stare at it all day long, as they have for the last two days. Locke explains that they’re not just staring at it, they’re trying to figure out a way to open a hatch that appears to have been made not to open from the outside. Later, as the two of them are returning to camp, Boone insists that they’re going to have to tell the others about the hatch, but Locke says the others aren’t ready to know. So Boone says he has to at least tell Shannon, because “she’s smart and special in a lot of ways.” Locke knocks him out and ties him up, kneeling next to a tree. When Boone awakens, Locke tells him he’s done this for his own good, because it’s time for Boone to let go of some things, and he’ll thank Locke for this later. He leaves Boone there alone, but not before challenging him to escape with a knife he leaves on the ground right in front of Boone. But Boone is at least a foot away from being able to reach the knife.
• Hurley reports to Jack confidentially that he’s been experiencing some “major digestive issues.” After examining Hurley’s diet, Jack tells him he needs more protein in his diet, and since there’s no boar to eat, he’ll need to go to Jin for some fish. But Hurley resists, believing that Jin “has it in for me” since he laughed in Jin’s face the day they first got here, when Jin offered him sea urchins to eat. Hurley later tracks Jin down and asks where the fish come from, saying that he’ll catch his own with a homemade spear he brandishes. But Jin just laughs at him as he goes fishing. Hurley tries to copy Jin’s actions at the edge of the water, but is unsuccessful, and as he leaves in a huff, he steps on a sea urchin and hurts his foot. Jin prepares something for Hurley to eat, but when he finally gets it down, he immediately vomits. Later, Hurley returns to the caves only to learn that Jin has followed him there — along with a fish that’s been cleaned and gutted, which he gives to Hurley.
• Jack stumbles across Kate in the jungle, who’s collecting passion fruit seeds. The two of them are still awkward towards one another after Kate’s many deceptions in the last episode (“Whatever the Case May Be”), but cautiously try to pick their friendship back up. When he asks what the seeds are for, she takes him to a small garden that Sun has planted in the jungle. Jack approves, agreeing with Sun’s idea since the boar seem to be running out. But Kate suggests that the boar might not be running out at all — maybe Locke is growing tired of feeding everyone. Jack later approaches Locke in a friendly manner and asks how the boar hunting is going. Locke concocts a story that the boars are smart, and are migrating out of the area because there’s a new predator in town — the survivors.
• Later, while Kate and Sun are working alone in the garden, Kate learns Sun’s secret (Sun speaks English) when she realizes that Sun understands everything she’s saying. Sun swears her to secrecy. But Kate asks why she doesn’t just start over now that they’re here on the island, and confess the truth to Jin. Sun says she can’t tell him because she loves him.
• The always-clever Sayid crafts a homemade compass to aid in his map-related research of the island. But Locke shortly crosses his path and gives him a real compass to use, claiming that he knows the island well enough now to not need it anymore. Later, while walking with Jack, Sayid shows Jack an odd mystery he’s discovered: the compass Locke gave him doesn’t point north. It seems to be pointing in a different direction altogether.
• Charlie has moved back to the beach, because he “needed a change of scenery.” Jack checks in on him there, and the conversation turns to Locke. Charlie gives Locke a ringing endorsement as “the one person I’d put my absolute faith in to save us all.”
• Michael finds his own luggage bag, and inside is a small wooden box containing something that he’s happy to see.
• Jack finds Kate at the caves and gives her a handful of Guava seeds for the garden, and she happily accepts it as an unspoken peace offering between them.
• Still tied up in the jungle, Boone hears Shannon crying out for help. She indicates that she’s tied up just as he is, and then suddenly they’re both greeted by the sound of the monster approaching. Properly motivated at last, Boone endures great pain to reach the knife and free himself. He finds Shannon tied up against a tree and frees her as well. The two of them hide in what looks like the same collection of tree stalks that Kate hid in back in “Pilot, Part 1.” They evade the monster for a while, but soon it takes up the chase again, grabbing and savagely attacking Shannon. Boone finds her bloodied and dead, killed by the monster. Furious, he returns to the caves that night with the intention of killing Locke. But Locke is too fast, and Boone can’t overpower him. Listening to Boone’s story, he notes that there’s no blood on Boone anywhere, and then points to Shannon, who’s alive and well not far away, talking to Sayid. Boone realizes that Locke drugged him, and Locke explains that he gave Boone an experience that was vital to his survival on the island. “It was only as real as you made it,” says Locke. But Boone is stunned and emotional, having held his sister in his arms as she died — only it wasn’t real. He admits to Locke that he felt relieved when he saw Shannon die, and Locke reiterates his earlier claim that it’s time for Boone to let go. He stands and asks Boone to follow him, and a very different Boone than the man he was before does just that.

• Jack is now wearing a key around his neck as a necklace. Presumably this is the key to the steel briefcase that holds the Marshall’s four guns.
• Just weeks before the fateful flight of Oceanic 815, Boone received a phone call from Shannon, his step-sister, who claimed that she was in trouble and faked the sounds of someone hurting her to lure him to Sydney, Australia. When he arrived, he learned the hard way that Shannon was working in cahoots with a partner to trick Boone into giving her money. Boone had paid off two former boyfriends to leave Shannon, and the current one, Brian, wouldn’t accept less than fifty thousand dollars. It ended badly, with a physical confrontation where Boone was beaten by Brian. At his hotel room that night, Shannon visits to tell him that Brian took all of the money and left. He accuses her of being drunk, and she accuses him of always having been in love with her. She seduces him and the two of them sleep together. After the deed is done, she suggests that when they return to L.A., he should tell his mother that he bailed his sister out of trouble again, and then the two of them will return to the brother/sister routine they’ve always followed.
• Shannon is divorced. (Unless Boone was lying about this, but why would he?)
• Boone and Shannon are two years apart in age, and he’s the older, which makes him 22 years old.
• Shannon’s last name Rutherford is her father’s surname. Boone’s mother married Shannon’s father when he was ten and she was eight. When Shannon’s father died, Boone’s mother kept Shannon from getting any of her father’s inheritance. Her son, Boone benefited from the money instead.
• During Boone’s flashback, he briefly visited a local police station in Sydney to enlist their help, when he believed his sister was being abused. While Boone was there, it was the first time he ever saw Sawyer, who was in police custody and raving angrily about some kind of altercation he was involved in.
• The hatch in the jungle has a small window that’s made of something much stronger than regular glass, and Boone suspected that the door was sealed shut with nothing less than concrete. It has no handle, no latch, no discernable way of being opened, which can only mean it is solely operable from the inside.
• Locke was not popular as a child.

• Boone and Shannon are not blood relatives; their single parents married one another when they were kids, and as they grew up as natural brother/sister antagonists, Boone also fell in love with his step-sister. He spent a lot of his time looking after her as well, and developed a sense of responsibility for her, being the elder sibling. Shannon knew this and often used her knowledge of his feelings as a way of getting whatever she wanted from him. After a failed con job on Shannon’s part led to a one night stand between them, Boone found himself filled with self-loathing and confusion where his “sister” was concerned.
  Question: What’s the source of Boone and Shannon’s difficult relationship? 1.02
• The object buried in the jungle that Locke and Boone found is a sealed-off steel hatch leading to some kind of underground structure.
  Question: What is the big steel thing in the ground that Locke and Boone found? 1.11

• What did Locke mean when he said he and Boone would need Sayid on their side? Their side of what?
• What’s inside the hatch?
• Why is the hatch only openable from the inside?
• Why was Sawyer in police custody in Sydney before the flight of Oceanic 815?
• Why did the compass Locke gave to Sayid not point north?
• What’s inside Michael’s small wooden box?
  Answered in 1.14.

• “Hearts and Minds” is the first and only Boone-centric episode of the series.
• This is the sixth episode of the series to begin with a close-up on a single eye opening.
• Even though this was Boone’s episode, we learned just as much about Shannon. It was previously revealed that she’s only 20 years old, but the writers repeatedly write her as if she’s much older: at some point she lived for a year in Paris, then she began a May/December flirtation with Sayid on the island, and now we learn that she’s divorced, too. Doesn’t sound like any 20 year olds I know. The one plausible thing we learned is why she has such an entitlement complex: her father died and her step-mother cut her off from her inheritance.
• Hurley stepping on a sea urchin and then trying to convince Jin to pee on it to stop the venom has to be the funniest scene in the show so far.
• This episode is the first time we ever hear Jin speak a word in English. The word was “no” in response to Hurley’s repeated requests for him to pee on Hurley’s urchin wound.
• I didn’t remember it at all from the first time I saw this episode, but looking back on it now, it’s almost comical the way Jack seems to check in with so many of the castaways. He really gets around, talking to Kate, Sun, Hurley, Sayid, Locke, and Charlie — and all in different locations.
• Locke’s final request of Boone, “Follow me,” reinforces my earlier notion that Boone is Locke’s disciple. Just as Jesus Christ frequently made disciples by asking them to follow him, Locke has hereby begun doing the same thing.

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