Season 1, Episode 15: Homecoming

Ah, a good ol' Charlie episode: Turns out he was quite the douche in his pre-island life. Of course, that was probably to be expected of a heroin addict in his spiral toward rock bottom.

MAJOR PLOT POINTS

Claire returns from the jungle and Locke brings her to Jack, but when the doc rouses her she has no memory of the crash or anything that has happened after that. Got it?

In a flashback, we see Charlie running a nifty scam with his junkie buddy and dope supplier. He uses his status as the Drive Shaft lead singer to woo a girl and get her to take him back to her place, where his job is to swipe something of value that can be sold for heroin money. Trouble is, he kind of falls for well-to-do Lucy, whose father offers Charlie a job as a copy-machine salesman. He's trying to do right, but without a fix through the weekend after refusing to steal from Lucy, Charlie ruins his first sales pitch, capping a stupendous display by yakking all over a copier. Before heading to work that day, he also had swiped Winston Churchill's cigarette case from Lucy's dad collection of assorted junk, the drug's power proved too much. His drug problem and thievery, of course, upset Lucy and prompt her to declare that he'll never be capable of taking of another person.

Back on the island, Charlie, of course, is eager to prove that he can, in fact, care for Claire, who has become something of a pariah among the other survivors. She still doesn't know that she's been kidnapped, but everyone avoids her upon her return — except Charlie, for the most part. Ethan also makes his triumphant return, finding Charlie in the jungle and insisting that he return Claire to him or he'll kill one survivor a night until he brings her back. This is the first concrete evidence we have that Claire escaped and wasn't released back to the survivors' population as part of some evil scheme. Just how she got away, though, remains a mystery.

Ethan makes good on his promise the first night, killing Scott Jackson — an inconsequential character in every respect. Shit, his mother already assumed he was dead after the plane crash, so it didn't really affect anyone. It did, however, spur Jack into loaning out the marshal's guns as a small group hatched a plot to capture Ethan and interrogate him. Using Claire as bait, Jack, Locke, Sayid, Sawyer and Kate are each armed with a 9mm and positioned to nab Ethan. Jack gets to him first, is disarmed but wins round 2 against The Others' super doc.

Before Sayid can go to work, though, Charlie, who wasn't supposed to be with the group (since he didn't have a gun and didn't know how to use one even if another had been available), picks up Jack's gun from the mud and unloads a clip into Ethan's torso. So much for answers, huh? For the survivors as well as the viewers. But Charlie, who very nearly was killed by Ethan, had his reasons.

QUOTABLE

"I wasn't going to let that animal anywhere near her again." — Charlie explaining why he blew away Ethan