LOST Rewatch: S1E13 "Hearts and Minds" and S1E14 "Special"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 13 and 14 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Stay tuned for my commentaries on episodes 15 and 16, "Homecoming" and "Outlaws", coming soon!

Season 1 Episode 13 - "Hearts and Minds"

This episode starts out on Boone's eye as he jealously watches Sayid flirt with Shannon.

We find out that Shannon has been pulling a long con on Boone: she consistently feigns involvement in an abusive relationship to get Boone to pay substantial amounts of money to her boyfriends to get them to leave her, and then the faux boyfriends split the money with her. Shannon sees it as her way of getting what Boone's mother owes her after treating her unfairly after Shannon's father died.

Sayid discovers a magnetic anomaly on the Island after Locke gives him a compass. Sayid notices that the reading on the compass is dramatically incorrect based on where the sun rises and sets. He tells Jack, "A minor magnetic anomaly might explain a variance of two or three degrees, but not this." Sayid presumes the compass to be defective, but of course this episode takes place before anyone knew about the powerful magnetic anomaly at the Swan Station.

In the past I've heard rumors that in Boone's dream sequence, Shannon was missing an arm after the monster killed her. However, after watching this scene again, I can confirm that this rumor is not true. Each of Shannon's arms is clearly visible in a couple of shots as Boone approaches and picks up her body.

Jack asks Charlie about his opinion of Locke, to which Charlie replies, "Trust him? No offense, mate, but if there's one person on this island I would put my absolute faith in to save us all, it would be John Locke." Charlie's assertion may have been partially true, but sadly Locke didn't save Charlie.

Locke told Boone, "I gave you an experience that I believe was vital to your survival on this island." As shamanistic as Locke may seem, he was rather incorrect about this one. Boone didn't even survive until the end of the season.

Season 1 Episode 14 - "Special"

We begin the episode on Michael's eye. Through the flashbacks in this episode, we learn how Michael ended up being separated from Walt very early in Walt's life, and we learn that this was quite a struggle for Michael.

Locke teaches Walt how to throw a knife. When Walt visualizes throwing the knife into the tree, he can do it perfectly. Walt excitedly says, "It was weird. I actually saw it, in my mind or something, like it was real," to which Locke responds, "Who's to say it wasn't?" Here we have yet another hint about Walt's apparent psychic powers, and we get more hints later in the episode. Locke tells Michael, "Maybe you haven't spent enough time with him to see it, but he's different. ... And we're not back home, Michael. As long as we're here, I think Walt should be allowed to realize his potential."

Shannon decides to help Michael build a raft and asks Boone to help her, but he just says "No thanks." Boone apparently has so much faith in Locke that he thinks the hatch is more important than trying to find a way off the Island.

In a flashback, Walt's adoptive father Brian Porter ignores Walt when Walt is trying to talk to him. When Walt got angry at Brian, a bird suddenly hit the glass window and died. Walt had been reading a book about birds when he became angry. Brian seems very disturbed by this.

In one of the LOST: Missing Pieces mobisodes (which are officially part of the LOST canon), we learn that Walt was held in Room 23 after being captured by The Others—the same place where Alex's boyfriend Karl was later brainwashed. When Walt was in that room, several birds of all shapes and sizes crashed into the window and their bodies piled up outside.

In another flashback we learn that after Walt's mother Susan died, Brian came to Michael to convince him to take custody of Walt because "Sometimes when he's around things happen. He's different somehow."

When Walt wanders off with Vincent, he is chased by a polar bear. Earlier in the episode, Michael burned the comic book that Walt was looking at, and the pages Walt had been reading showed a polar bear attack. Obviously, Walt was angry about his father throwing his comic book into the fire. Was this polar bear a manifestation of Walt's anger, or summoned by his anger or his visualization of a polar bear?

The comic book that Michael burned was Hurley's Spanish edition of Green Lantern and Flash: Faster Friends Part One, the same one that Walt was reading in "Pilot, Part 2" (see my rewatch commentary for that episode). I was curious about the words that Walt was trying to read aloud, which didn't sound much like Spanish except for "oso polar" (polar bear) at the end. (I happen to speak Spanish, by the way.) I took a screen capture of the comic book so I could find out what it really said. In Spanish, the sentence is "Wally se pondrá muy feliz cuando sepa que me comió un oso polar," which in English means "Wally will be very happy to know that I was eaten by a polar bear." Wally and Walt are both nicknames derived from the name Walter (Walt's full name is Walter Lloyd).


In a flashback, a nurse suggests a silly joke for Michael to write in his birthday card to Walt, and says "Trust me. Mother of 4 talking here." This is another appearance of one of the Numbers.

After fighting the urge to read Claire's diary in her absence, Charlie ultimately succumbs to the temptation. He reads in her diary that she dreamed about a black rock: "I had that weird dream again, the one with the black rock I can't get away from. I try to leave it but it won't let me." Charlie wonders if it was the same black rock that Danielle referred to. Of course, we know that there's a slave ship on the Island called the Black Rock, but there have also been other black rocks including the large black rock at The Line. Refer to Lostpedia's article on the Island's various black rocks.

At the very end of the episode, Locke and Boone are looking for Vincent, and they come across Claire walking through the jungle all by herself, perhaps still delusional; as we find out in the next episode, she doesn't remember anything beyond being on the plane, and yet she went with strangers back to their camp prior to revealing that she has amnesia.


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