Season 1, Episode 11: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

Yet another Jack episode. It's already the third in which he figures prominently in the flashbacks. Then again, that's because he's got the most convoluted back story to unveil.

MAJOR PLOT POINTS

So, Ethan Rom wasn't actually on the plane. That means he's got some explaining to do, but first the gang goes to rescue Claire. Of course, she and Charlie already have been abducted by Ethan, so all that Jack and Locke find is a Claire's baggage. Despite Locke urging him to be sensible and muster a search party, take-charge Jack immediately tears off into the jungle in search of his missing friends. Locke goes back to camp and enlists Kate and Boone to help him.

Eventually, the trio catches up to Jack, who is not a tracker, and begin to follow a trail presumably left by Charlie, who is dropping the the pieces of the tape around his knuckles — it reads LATE — for rescuers to follow. There is suspicion that it also might be a ploy by Ethan, which is when we learn Kate has tracking skills and the foursome splits into two tracking duos. Jack and Kate follow the correct trail and come upon Ethan, who beats Jack senseless and threatens to kill Charlie if they don't give up the rescue effort.

Undaunted, Jack and Kate press on only to find Charlie hanging from a tree blindfolded. Kate cuts him down and Jack attempts CPR, eventually saving him. Charlie, though, doesn't remember the kidnapping, he only remembers that "all 'they' wanted was Claire."

Down the other trail, Locke can predict the precise arrival of rain. He and Boone stumble upon the hatch.

In a flashback, the tension between Jack and his father is revealed. Initially, we only see Jack stubbornly refusing to call a patient dead on the operating table. Christian urges him to call it, but later we learn that his father had nicked an artery while performing surgery drunk. It wasn't Jack's patient, it was his father's that Jack was so desperately trying to revive. He reluctantly agrees to sign a report about the incident after some coercing from Christian, but when he learns the patient was pregnant at a morbidity and mortality hearing, Jack rats out his dad. It ruins Christian professionally.

Meanwhile, the curious case of Walt continues as he defends Locke to his self-righteous father, deduces that The Others are natives and is declared the luckiest person he's ever known by Hurley after a $20,000 game of backgammon.