Reprinted with permission from LOSTblog.com

White Rabbit is a Jack centric episode, that tell two stories.  The first is about his relationship with his father and the second it about his relationship with his father. Bah! Well kinda.  The flashbacks flip back to Jack as a kid, and continue to his getting on the plane in Sydney with his father in a coffin.  On Island Jack is feeling the pressure of being the leader, and not sleeping very well, and still haunted by the death of his father.  The survivors are caught up in the quest for drinking water, and it all starts going Lord of the Flies until the ending scene.

Last night’s Live Tweet was well attended, but we had some technical difficulties.  Twitter search went down about an hour before our viewing started, then didn’t come back up until after the viewing ended.  This pretty much left us using the All Friend Feed to follow the conversation, rather than being able to rely on the #s1e5 hash tag in search to filter out non-live watchers.  I made a PDF of mine to use as a transcript of the live tweet.  You can read the whole thing here. S1E5 WhiteRabbit LiveTweet Transcript

One WFTBer, MollyFaraday escaped the curse of the broken search by live tweeting the episode early, so you can see her thoughts here.

The rest of the Live Tweeters were: @LOST_WFTB, @ccollinsmith, @batchout, @DieCer, @KatGirl44, @ASHATL, @kristin_madeja, @justinkeyes, @bejaedblost

This time I asked for some summary tweets in #LOST140 format, but I didn’t get a lot of those.  So I’m gonna write a re-cap, then add some of the tweets at the end.  Read the transcripts.

Open on a close up of a kid’s eye. “Don’t get up Jack.” – Oh, its Jack’s eye. And Oh LOST you’re becoming a cliche with the eye close-up openers.  Don’t stop we love it. Kinda.

Lil’Jack is lying on his back on a playground with one ruffian hovering over him while his friend, Marc Silverman (remember that name, seems Big’Jack still likes him, another time, another episode), gets the tar beaten outta him by another young turk. Jack can’t resist trying to help someone and get’s up, then gets flattened by his ruffian friend, “You should have stayed down, Jack.”

Flashdance. er. forward. ah. Back on the Island.

Charlie is calling Jack’s name (see common transition gimmick of the name linking past to present… ) and Charlie is alarmed, there is someone struggling in the water. Charlie can’t swim, can’t swim.  Jack goes all Baywatch, and dives into the Hawaiian surf and swim, dives and comes back up with … Boone. Boone asks, “Did you get her?”  There is another lady still struggling, not that far away.  Jack makes the decision to take Boone back in, then go back for the lady.

Which leads us back to an uncomfortable scene where Lil’Jack gets to talk about his failure to save Marc from a bully-beating.  Dad’s some big muckity muck at a hospital, and just home from losing a kid on the table. So in good Dad form, Dad unloads all his baggage on Jack. Thanks, Dad! (do you get that I’m sarcastic? does it come through? cuz, yeah, I am).  So Jack’s pa, lets call him Christian, ends up telling Jack that he shouldn’t decide, because tough decisions are hard and Jack, ‘just doesn’t have what it takes.”  You can see in Jack’s eye’s the ‘Thanks, Dad, can we go play ball now?’ – No. actually this little talk has a profound effect on…

Boone confronts Jack about not going back to get the girl.  While Boone (aka Captain America, aka God’s Gift to the World, aka Can’t Do CPR right, aka Good Pen Finder) goes off on Jack for being a Bad Decider, Jack sees a man in a dark suit, and white sneakers. Jack totally disses Boone and starts following the shadowy figure, at one point the figure turns, and OMG. It’s Jack’s Dad (code name Christian).

This leads on-island Jack on a vision quest.  Where Christian leads him to the brink, literally and figuratively (which is SO LOST).  And Jack falls off a cliff, hanging by a thread vine, a hand reaches down, it Locke (hey wait, where’d Christian go? it’s like he doesn’t even care).  Locke pulls Jack up and they fall down together at the top of the cliff, arm in arm. Bromance!

Later after the commercial (which are wonderfully absent in my DVD set) Jack and Locke have a heart to heart.  Locke tells Jack this crew of people are scared and they need a Leader.  Locke can’t be the leader yet, something about island rules and yadda yadda yadda. Locke tells Jack that like it or now the survivors are looking to him to step up and lead.

Flashbacks show Jack’s mom, looking a bit sullen, that he needs to go and get in father and bring him back from Australia.  She’s says after what Jack did, he can’t refuse her this.  So we see Jack in a hotel room in Sydney (is that an Alias shoutout?) and gets all up in the hotel manager’s mug about his father being the “Chief of Surgery”. “What. Ev.” goes the manager, clearly Jack doesn’t have what is takes. (this is all non-verbal. really.)  Then we see Jack in the morgue, identifying his father’s body.  Then we find Jack at the airline counter, where Jin observes him passionately telling the underpaid airline counter person that damn your paperwork, I need to get my father back to Los Angeles, because … He needs too.  So the airlines totally dismisses all protocol and puts him and his father’s coffin on the plane (Musta gotten a call from Darlton or JJ or something)  But still, WAY leaderly of Jack.

Back on the Island. (bah buh BaHHH) Jack is grieving that he didn’t get his father’s body back to LA in time for the Dodger game, when he hears a rustle in the bushes, and follows a shadowy figure into the brush.  Uh, Jack, last time you did that… well it was a cliffhanger, literally.  This time however, he emerges in a cave/cavern/grotto with a nice waterfall.  Just what the survivors needed.

Oh, didn’t I tell you?  The survivors, sans Jack (touched by Jacob we now know) are in a struggle to find water, all the water they have has been swiped.  Kate and Sayid, the LOSTian Law & Order police, investigate and prime suspect is … wait for it … Sawyer.  Only he has an alibi, so the DA says to lay off him.  Clair, the pregnant one, has succumbed to the heat, and lies prostrate in need of water.  At night fall, someone sneaks in and starts giving Clair a drink, its Boone.  Charlie, the Hobbit no less, confronts him and asks how he got the water? (Hobbits can be menacing when riled)  Boone said he stashed it, because someone needs to step up and do something, “I run a business!” (no wait that was earlier). So this starts going all Lord of the Flies, Hobbits fighting Metros, Terrorists on the side of Rednecks in the blood lust for RETRIBUTION. When suddenly.

Jack. Everyone silent.  Kinda creepy really.

Jack gives the “On St. Crispin’s Day” speech to the survivors and caps it off with, “if we don’t learn to live together, We’re gonna die alone.”

Hit the LOST logo.

So read the live tweets.  I’m going to post some of the #LOST140 summaries that they sent me, and you can add your own in the comments. PLEASE!

MollyFaradayPoor Joanna,Tired Jack,No water,Daddy issues,Geminis,400Knives,Literal cliffhanger,Light comma sticks,Empty coffin,Live Together, Die Alone!

LOST_WFTB#LOST140 #s1e5 Water brings death and life, black and white forces battling unseen, Jack goes from crazed to finding place and peace for now

KatGirl44#LOST140 Jack’s ALWAYS saved people. Dad’s a jerk but doesn’t want him to die of thirst. Boone = idiot. Live together, die alone. LOST