Follow along! The episode guide to "Tabula Rasa" is in Finding Lost, pp. 21-24.After the fun and foreign feeling of the pilot, “Tabula Rasa” begins to feel more like the show we know and love. Sawyer’s nicknames are far more inventive (“Al Jazeera,” rather than the obvious “Lardo”) and he’s not just an ass, but a really funny one. Jack’s holier-than-thou self is already in fine form – he can be a hero... but just for one day.
Fun stuff I noticed:
• This episode features the first time Sawyer calls Kate Freckles. Aww...
• Sawyer is a complete dick to Jack from the get-go.
• I don’t think I caught this in the numbers in my book, but the marshal’s temperature is 104, which is the numbers added up, except for the 4.
• Aaaaaand... this is the beginning of us saying, “shut UP Jack.” He acts like he’s the new marshal and Kate should be telling him everything and that she OWES him that. Um... if I recall, SHE is the one who sewed YOU up, Buddy. Ahem.
• Wow, Hurley’s CD player looks SO outdated only 5 years later!!
Things that have new meaning:
• Kate gives a fake name to Ray, and it’s Annie, the name of Ben’s childhood sweetheart
• Ray, the guy who owns the farm, has the same name as Jack’s grandfather (how AWESOME would it have been if, in hindsight, they hadn’t made this guy Australian, and instead Jack’s grampy was living in the Outback?)
• Ray’s arm is prosthetic, just like Chang’s hand. The camera holds on it, as if showing us that things and people and places aren’t always as they seem.
• I meant to mention this in the blog for the previous episode, but Rousseau’s distress call is so different now that we’ve actually SEEN Smokey come and kill them all
• In “Namaste,” Sawyer has his harsh talk with Jack where he reminds him that his reactionary leadership cost a lot of people their lives, and that instead, Sawyer’s going to think things through. And that sometimes the hard choice is the only one you can make. In this episode, Jack’s pouring all the stash of antibiotics into one guy, and Sawyer confronts Jack about giving their only meds to someone who’s going to die anyway.
• Charlie changes the tape on his fingers. It originally said FATE, now it says LATE... which is an interesting foreshadowing of the time travel that will happen in a few more seasons.
• Jack: “Three days ago we all died... we should all be able to start over.” Interesting choice of words, there, Jack. Hm... no wonder that whole purgatory theory started so early. And now Jack is detonating an H-bomb that will cause all of them to die... so they can start over.
