Season 2, Episode 3:
Orientation
In flashbacks, Locke attends a group counselling session. He mocks the other attendees for their petty problems and tells the story of how his father conned him out of his kidney. He meets a like-minded woman named Helen, with whom he begins a relationship, but he has trouble opening up to her. Locke makes nightly visits to his father's house, hoping he will come out to see him, but Cooper only talks to him once, to tell him to knock it off. Eventually, Helen makes Locke choose between her and his father, and he chooses her.
The raft crew is beaten senseless by the strangers and thrown into a pit. Ana Lucia, the woman Jack met before the flight, is thrown in with them, and they introduce themselves. Sawyer plans to ambush the strangers with his gun next time they come by the pit, but Ana Lucia steals his gun and gets pulled up out of the pit, revealing that she is with the strangers and they are the survivors from the tail section of Oceanic 815.
In the Hatch, Kate ambushes Desmond from behind, but his gun goes off and hits the computer. He panics and explains the computer's purpose: the code has to be entered and the button pushed every 108 minutes to save the world. Locke and Jack watch an orientation video, explaining that the Hatch, or the Swan, is a scientific station for a group called the DHARMA Initiative, used for the study of electromagnetism. Kate fetches Sayid to fix the computer, and returns with him and Hurley. Desmond runs away. In the jungle, he talks with Jack, and recalls their encounter at the stadium. Jack returns to the Swan, where Sayid has fixed the computer. Locke insists Jack should push the button, but Jack believes the whole thing is a mind game. However, he relents, and pushes the button just before the clock reaches zero.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Helen meets Locke when he tries and fails to light a cigarette and tosses it in frustration.Helen: Probably a good idea. You know, if you get kidney cancer, you've only got one.Locke: (smiles) That's funny.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Jack thinks he's asking one of Desmond, only for Desmond to make clear that he's already considered the same thing himself.Jack: Do you ever think that maybe they put you down here to push a button every 100 minutes just to see if you would? That all of this — the computer, the button — it's just a mind game?! An experiment?Desmond: Every. Single. Day.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Eko vs Michael, Jin and Sawyer. He beats the crap out of them with a large wooden stick, and they don't even manage to get a single shot at him.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Given how extensive the DHARMA Initiative is later shown to have been on the Island, it seems odd that the orientation film for the Swan station would include background history for the group.
- Desmond tells Jack with strong emphasis that he wondered if the button was really some kind of sick experiment every day, while later episodes will reveal that he already has evidence that not pushing the button would be catastrophic - he'd already almost caused an Island-wide earthquake by not pushing it in time, though he doesn't connect it to the plane crash until he gets the specific date. In fact, later on, Locke has to actively convince him that it could be a trick.
- For the Evulz: This is Anthony Cooper's stated reason for stealing Locke's kidney and abandoning him.
- Foreshadowing: During his conversation with Locke, Anthony Cooper puts particular emphasis on the word "conned." This would have significant foreshadowing of who he actually is later on.
- Mystical 108: The DHARMA Initiative has a computer setup requiring a button to be pressed once every 108 minutes.
- Oh, Crap!: Hurley starts to freak out when he finds that the Numbers are the code that needs to be entered into the computer.
- Race Against the Clock: After Desmond accidentally shoots the computer, he scrambles to try to repair it before the timer runs out.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Locke gives one to his support group, noting that compared to his parents abandoning him at birth and his father stealing his kidney, the others don't seem to have it that bad.
- When Locke asks Cooper why he stole his kidney:Cooper: There is no "why". You think you're the first person that ever got conned? You needed a father figure and I needed a kidney, and that's what happened. Get over it. And John, don't come back. You're not wanted.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Having apparently failed to fix the computer, and shorted the power in the bunker, Desmond immediately flees.
