Goodbye, Mr. Eko.

The Cost of Living

This week we start out with a flashback of the young Eko and Yemi, breaking into a storage shed to steal food (the actor who plays Eko as a boy is perfect). Every Catholic child's nightmare of a nun catches them and brings them into the village church to confess. Eko argues that he stole to feed Yemi and he shouldn't have to confess, but the militant nun says that hunger is no excuse and demands that he confess.

Island: It's night, and Eko is lying unconscious in a hut on the beach, with Sayid, Hurley and Charlie looking over him. His rest is uneasy and he's clearly dreaming. He's been like this for a couple of days, since John rescued him from the polar bear. His dream is basically an abbreviated version an old flashback, when Eko had Yemi outfit him as a priest and help him to smuggle the Virgin Mary Heroin out of the country. It's also when Yemi was killed.

Through the dream he hears someone tell him to wake up. He opens his eyes and sees Yemi sitting in the hut with him, holding a lit cigarette lighter. Sayid, Charlie and Hurley have left. Yemi tells him, "It is time to confess, to be judged, brother. I will be waiting. You know where to find me." Suddenly, the hut is on fire and Yemi is gone. Charlie pulls Eko to safety, as Eko mumbles, "My brother, my brother..." Locke runs up to the fire, asks Charlie where Eko is, and when Charlie points to where he left him, Eko is gone.

Jack's Cell. He's doing chin-ups. You know, I'm so lazy - I would totally be sleeping. Anyway, Benry comes in, wearing a very cultish white tunic top and white pants, and he appears to be carrying another set of the same clothes. He asks Jack to join him for a walk and tells him to put the shirt on. As he walks to the door, Jack asks him, "Does it hurt?" He tells Benry he knows about the spinal tumor, and that he doesn't have long to live. Benry plays it cool, but his face clearly says, "Oh, shit."



Benry tells Jack that he has no idea what he's talking about.

Jack follows Benry down to a beach where Others are gathered, all in white, for Colleen's Viking-style funeral pyre. Benry goes down to the group, telling Jack to stay where he is. Juliet then joins the group (stopping briefly to tell Jack she hates funerals), and as they light the pyre a song begins to play over the loudspeaker behind Jack. I'm not sure what song it is, but it's reminiscent of an old Patsy Cline song. Benry, still shaken up, asks Juliet why she showed Jack his x-rays and she tells him that she didn't tell Jack they were Benry's - but obviously Benry has by his reaction.

It's daylight now, so I assume it's the next day. Locke, Desmond and Sayid are on the beach, brainstorming on the Jack/Sawyer/Kate rescue mission. Locke wants to go to the Pearl Station to use the computer there to contact the Others. Charlie and Hurley come up to the group and say they've looked but they can't find Eko. When Charlie tells Locke that Eko mentioned his brother right before he disappeared, Locke deduces that Eko is heading in the same direction as them. (if you remember, the plane that carried Yemi's body crashed right near the Pearl Station)

Eko's in a world of hurt, wandering deliriously through the jungle. He collapses into a flashback: this one picks up right where the dream one left off, with Eko dressed as a priest and being returned to the village church after the shootout at the airfield. He is mistaken for a new priest by everyone, including a young woman who works at the clinic and her son Daniel, an altar boy. He says he is there to replace Yemi, who was called away suddenly. While in the church, he picks up Yemi's old bible and finds a worn black and white photograph of him and Yemi together as boys. I almost cry.

Back in the jungle, Eko awakens and as he's dragging himself upright, a puff of black smoke flits across the background, accompanied by the chittering sound. He starts walking again and is suddenly confronted by 3 African men, all covered in blood, one missing an arm. Eko takes the machete from one of them and is about to strike a man who is on his knees, begging for mercy, when the man turns into Daniel in his altar boy outfit. Daniel puts his finger on his lips, shushes Eko, and tells him to "Confess." Eko drops the machete and they all disappear.

Beach Camp Kitchen. Locke announces to the group assembled that they (him, Sayid and Desmond) are heading to the Pearl Station to try to use the computer there to find Jack/Kate/Sawyer and invites anyone who wants to to come along. Hurley comments that Jack used to do that sort of stuff alone, to which Locke replies, "I'm not Jack." The new girl and new guy decide to join the group. I don't think anyone has spoken their names on the show yet, but since I know them, for the sake of my sanity I'm going to use them - Nikki and Paolo.

As they are filling bottles of water, Locke tells Desmond that Eko's plane crashed right near the Pearl Station, so they can kill 2 birds with one stone. Desmond cracks wise that it's quite the coincidence. Locke tells him not to mistake coincidence for fate. Now that's the fate-loving Locke I've missed so much!

Eko finds a stream and falls down to drink. And flashback. Eko and Daniel are in the church when they hear machine gun fire outside. They go out to see armed thugs drive up in a pickup truck. Their leader steps out of the truck and I'll be damned if he doesn't look like P.Diddy. Diddy asks for Father Yemi, and Eko asks who's asking for him. The clinic woman explains to Eko that when vaccine shipments come in, the clinic keeps 20% and the rest gets handed over to Diddy, "in exchange for protection." The current shipment has not yet arrived. Diddy says that he hopes Father Eko will honor the agreement, but Eko says he is not afraid of him. So Diddy pulls out a pistol and shoots and kills some poor woman standing nearby. He tells Eko he will be back in a few days for the vaccine.

Back at the stream, Eko nurses his wounds. He hears that chittering sound and sees in the water's reflection the shadow of the smoke monster right behind him. He turns around quickly, but it pulls out of sight as Locke and his group approach on the opposite bank.

Juliet enters Jack's cell with lunch. She's carrying one of those dishes that I've only ever seen in cartoons, the kind with the silver dome on top that's usually lifted to reveal Tom or Jerry or someone with an apple in his mouth. Juliet lifts this dome to reveal a cheeseburger and fries. They flirt back and forth a little bit until Benry comes in. He wants to talk to Jack privately and Juliet leaves. As Jack eats the burger, Benry tells him how they had a wonderful plan to "break him", to get him to trust them, especially since they hoped he would become "invested" because Juliet looks so much like his ex-wife, Sarah. They wanted him to want to save Benry's life, but it's too late for that now, now that Jack has figured out that Benry's dying. All Benry can do now is ask Jack to think about it. As he's leaving the cell, Benry asks Jack if he believes in God. When Jack throws the question back at him, Benry says that 2 days after finding out he had a fatal tumor on his spine, a spinal surgeon falls from the sky, and "If that's not proof of God, I don't know what is." Ah, don't mistake coincidence for fate, Benry.

Locke, Eko, et al are all walking to the Pearl Station/plane crash site, and Locke innocently asks Eko if he's looking for Yemi. Eko freaks and puts a knife to Locke's throat, telling him to never speak Yemi's name again. Because it triggers flashbacks, apparently: Eko is at the village clinic, asking the young woman about the timing of the vaccine shipment, about the black market, etc. She warns him not to go behind Diddy's back. Next we see Eko, dressed in civvies, meeting a man at a roadside bar to talk about some vaccine he wants to sell.

Our group has reached the crash site. Locke and Eko go to the plane and the others head down into the Pearl Station hatch. As they remove the rocks that were placed in front of the plane door, Locke asks Eko what he saw when confronted by the smoke monster. He explains to Eko that he saw the same thing, a "very bright light", and it was beautiful. Eko tells him that is not what he saw. They roll the boulder away from the doorway and find that Yemi's body is not there (*cough* resurrection *cough*). Dismayed, Eko pulls out the old photo of him and Yemi, sits down and tells Locke that he will wait there while Locke goes down the hatch with the others. Locke gives him Yemi's crucifix, which he had found last episode.

FB. Eko is in church, dressed as a priest and looking up at the crucifix on the wall when Diddy and his thugs walk in behind him. They have found out that Eko is trying to steal the vaccine himself and as punishment they are going to cut his hands off with a machete. Before they can, Eko attacks them, taking the machete and using it to kill all of them, including cutting off one of their arms. These were the men that Eko saw in the jungle earlier. He walks out of the church, covered in blood and carrying the machete, and the villagers look at him in horror.

Pearl Station. Nikki is watching the Pearl DHARMA film while Locke and Sayid work on the computers. After Sayid figures out that the computers are not networked, Nikki wonders if any of the 6 video monitors is connected to any of the other stations. Just then a toilet flushes and Paolo comes out of a small room, closing the door behind him, thankfully. Heh! Sayid gets one of the video feeds to work, and it seems to show a room with one of those antiquated computer systems with reel-to-reel tape. As they peer at the image onscreen, a man with a black eye patch comes into view, his creepy face filling the screen.



He reaches his hand up, covers the lens and the screen goes blank. John smiles and says, "I guess he'll be expecting us." I think you're setting yourself up for another huge disappointment, John...

Jack's Cell. Juliet enters the room that's on the other side of the plexiglass divider and explains to Jack that she's brought a movie ("To Kill a Mockingbird") for him to watch. He doesn't want to watch but she insists and pops in a tape, saying she'll keep the sound turned down. As the movie begins, she tells Jack that she's sorry for bringing him there and for everything that's been done to him and his friends. He looks down at the TV, and it's not "To Kill a Mockingbird" showing but a video of Juliet holding up a board with the message, "Ignore everything I'm saying."



As she continues to tell Jack about how great a man Benry is and how his life is worth saving, on the video she is doing the Bob Dylan thing and flipping cards with these mesages on them:

Ben is a liar.

And he is very dangerous

Some of us want a change

But it has to look like an accident

It has to look like we tried to save him

And that's up to you, Jack

It's a complicated surgery. None one would ever know

And I would protect you

Now tell me to turn off the movie.

He tells her to turn off the movie. Juliet takes the tape and as she leaves she asks Jack to think about what she's said.

Flashback. Daniel is sweeping the church and as Eko walks out with his suitcase, he asks Eko if he is a bad man. Eko replies, "Only God knows." As the full vaccine order is delievered to the clinic, the young woman asks Eko if he expects her to be grateful. She says that someone will take Diddy's place and it will start all over again. Men are boarding up the church, since Eko has defiled it. She tells him that he will be judged for what he has done, and that he owes Yemi a church. Aha.

Eko sits by the plane wreck. Yemi appears to him and starts to walk away. Eko follows him to a beautiful clearing. Yemi asks him if he is ready, and Eko says yes. As he holds out the crucifix for Yemi to take, Eko says, "I ask for no forgiveness, Father, for I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive." Yemi does not look happy at this development. Eko goes on to say that he is not sorry for killing a man to save his brother's life when he was a boy - in fact he's proud of it. He gets on his knees in front of Yemi and says that he did not ask for the life he was given, but he did the best he could. Cleary very unhappy, Yemi says to him, "You speak to me as if I were your brother," and walks away. Really confused (join the club, Eko!), Eko runs after him, demanding to know who (or what?) he is. The smoke monster reappears then, and grabs Eko, lifting him high in the air, throwing him against trees, beating him horribly and finally dropping him onto his face from a great height. It's horrible to watch.

The group from the Pearl hears something and runs out to investigate. The smoke monster has retreated by the time they reach Eko, who is dying. Locke cradles poor Eko's head, Eko whispers something in Locke's ear and then he dies. Damn. A brief scene of Eko and Yemi as boys is shown. They are walking arm in arm, together, again.

Sayid asks Locke what Eko said to him. He said, "we're next." Dun-dun-dun-DUN!!

Wednesday night: The Fall Season Finale!