Dan Liebke’s Astonishing Tales

1. Pilot (1)
2. Pilot (2)
3. Tabula Rasa
4. Walkabout
5. White Rabbit
6. House of the Rising Sun
7. The Moth
8. The Confidence Man
9. Solitary
10. Raised By Another
11. All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
12. Whatever The Case May Be
13. Hearts And Minds
14. Special
15. Homecoming
16. Outlaws
17. …In Translation
18. Numbers
19. Deus Ex Machina
20. Do No Harm
21. The Greater Good (aka Sides)
22. Born To Run
23. Exodus (1)
24. Exodus (2)
25. Exodus (3)

Episode One: Pilot (1)

We open the show in the aftermath of a plane crash, surely the boldest opening for a television show since Mork arrived in his egg, lo those many years ago. Dr Charlie Salinger, free from Party of Five and blessed with a medical degree, goes to work fixing everybody up. Because, y’know, plane crashes can really hurt. The gang soon discover that there’s also a scary sounding giant monster roaring around in the jungle - perhaps a dinosaur, perhaps Anna Nicole Smith. Doc Salinger therefore decides to head into the jungle and find plane wreckage. He’s helped in this by Freckles, a hot woman who fills out a T-shirt nicely and Merry, a hobbit, who doesn’t. In the end, the pilot tells them that he forgot to turn on his radio, so rescuers don’t know where they are. He is then eaten by the monster for his stupidity.

Episode Two: Pilot (2)

It is decided that the very best place to turn a transceiver on and receive a rescue signal will be in the middle of the jungle. This seems less than perfectly thought out, especially since Dr Salinger, Freckles and Merry have filled in everybody on the monster and how it likes to slaughter people. Regardless, Crazy Arab (a crazy, but resourceful, Iraqi), Freckles, Sawyer (a bad boy troublemakin’ type), Merry, The Princess (a spoiled blonde bimbo) and The Prince (her less useless brother) all head jungleward. As is so often the case, a simple quest for a radio signal leads to a polar bear attack. Luckily, Sawyer has a gun so that’s enough bear nonsense. But, also, they find a signal and because The Princess can (eventually) speak French they discover that the signal is from a French woman who was trapped on the island sixteen years ago.

Episode Three: Tabula Rasa

Doc Salinger busily tries to cure a dying air marshall, who regains consciousness long enough to tell him that Freckles is a con artist criminal type. Perhaps, but she’s also as cute as a button, and on this island that’s a far more important consideration. We flash back to Freckles’ time in Australia, conning farmers out of their precious crop water and crashing trucks hand over fist. Also, Merry, figuring that Freckles is taken by Doc Salinger, starts making the moves on Pregnant Chick (pregnant). In the end, the marshall won’t shut his screaming, so Sawyer shoots him dead, as if he was nothing more than a tropical island polar bear. Cold.

Episode Four: Walkabout

Davy Crockett (king of the wild frontier) is the focus of this particular episode. He’s a bald huntsman of renown and he decides, in a bold tribute to Asterix the Gaul, that it’s time to go hunting wild boar. Freckles and Black Dad (the father of the only kid on the island) decide to hinder him with their incompetence and lack of knife-hurling proficiency. Still, the important thing is that Davy Crockett stares down the monster mano a mano and Doc Salinger makes a bonfire out of all the dead bodies. Oh, also, Davy Crockett used to be crippled before the plane crash. No word yet on whether this unorthodox cure for paraplegia will be trialled elsewhere.

Episode Five: White Rabbit

Doc Salinger is very tired, what with all the medical work he’s been doing and also the staying up late at night trying to comprehend the plot. So it’s no surprise when he starts to see his dead father wandering around the island, offering worldly (but inappropriate) advice and generally being a ghostly nuisance. Despite the fact he’s clearly wigging out, everybody still wants Doc Salinger to be King of the Island. He eventually agrees, on the condition that nobody drowns. Idiotically, some woman then goes out for a swim less than 45 minutes after a meal, with inevitable tragic results.

Episode Six: House of the Rising Sun

Doc Salinger’s first official order as King of the Island is for everybody to move into the awesome kick-ass caves he’s just discovered. About half the people ignore him, thereby igniting civil war!! Or whatever. Also, we flash back and learn more about Hit Man Jin (a Korean mob warlord) and Mrs Hit Man Jin (his wife). Turns out he’s bad news indeed and she can secretly speak English, which is often the best way to speak it. In other news, Merry loses a fight with bees.

Episode Seven: The Moth

Merry is starting to have drug withdrawal symptoms. Because he’s, like, addicted to drugs and stuff as a result of his hard-hitting lifestyle as bass player for Middle Earth’s number one band, They Might Be Hobbits. To ease his pain, Davy Crockett tells him a parable about moths, which works less well than one might have initially imagined. Also, Merry and Doc Salinger get trapped in a cave for kicks. But they manage to get out, because they hear that Freckles, Crazy Arab and The Princess are going to be putting on a fireworks show. They do so. Ewoks dance in celebration.

Episode Eight: The Confidence Man

Time to learn some more about Sawyer and his tricksy past. He does the flash back thing - we see him tricking other children into painting the fence, attending his own funeral (!) and making out with Becky Thatcher. Eventually, Doc Salinger and Crazy Arab decide to start torturing him, ostensibly to find out where he’s hidden The Princess’s asthma inhaler, but more likely just because they’re bored shitless. Freckles also gives him a kiss, probably for the same reason. Then, with Sawyer still tied up, the others switch roles, and with Crazy Arab moving in for the pash, we fade to black…

Episode Nine: Solitary

After Crazy Arab’s torturing antics last week, it’s now his turn to be taken captive by the French woman who has been living on the island for sixteen years. So, y’see, what goes around, comes around. And, indeed, vice versa, as you’d expect. It turns out that like all French women, this one is crazy as a cumquat. And armed. So that spells trouble for Crazy Arab. The others, realising the urgency of the situation, join forces and decide that the crisis demands an immediate game of island golf, to be played on a course built by Porky (Doc Salinger’s overweight caddy). The Doc double bogeys.

Episode Ten: Raised By Another

Pregnant Chick is going a little bit nutty. She starts having nightmares that her baby is going to be kidnapped. Also, she may have been attacked in the middle of the night or may have just had another nightmare. It is so difficult to know one way or the other that Porky decides to conduct a census (?) This leads him to discover that Ethan Zohn (winner of Survivor: Africa) was never on the plane, despite being a happy island camper. Pregnant Chick starts giving birth, accompanied only by a startled, drug-recovering hobbit - just as a psychic back in Australia once predicted. Uncanny.

Episode Eleven: All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

Pregnant Chick and Merry have been kidnapped by Ethan Zohn. In hot pursuit are Doc Salinger, Freckles, Davy Crockett and The Prince. Eventually they decide to split up, so it’s easier for them to be defeated and (in the case of Davy Crockett and The Prince) be totally distracted by something else altogether. Doc Salinger and Freckles have a fight with Ethan Zohn, but lose. They find Merry who has been hanged to death. But Freckles cuts him down and Doc Salinger punches him in the chest until he comes back to life. Is there nothing modern medicine cannot cure?

Episode Twelve: Whatever The Case May Be

While out on one of their regularly scheduled waterfall jaunts, Freckles and Sawyer discover a briefcase at the bottom of a lake. Oh, and also a plane carriage full of dead people. But mostly, a briefcase. Tragically, the case is locked, which leads to hilarious grave-digging escapades and first-class sleight of hand. Also, Crazy Arab and The Princess are bonding over stolen French mathematical notes. Which we all know is going to lead to something more serious. We are, after all, not children.

Episode Thirteen: Hearts And Minds

A closer look at The Prince and Princess reveal that they used to shag one another in their previous life. It also turns out they’re not biological brother and sister, but step-brother and sister, which makes it less wrong, but still rather icky. This is not The Brady Bunch, guys and you’re not Greg and Marcia, despite obvious character similarities. To punish the pair of them for the nastiness of the image, Davy Crockett decides to sacrifice The Princess to the monster. Or, at least convince The Prince that’s what he did. Or something equally loopy. In other news, Hit Man Jin refuses to urinate on Porky.

Episode Fourteen: Special

Davy Crockett is starting to get on Black Dad’s nerves, what with his teaching of elementary kniving skills to Black Kid (the only kid on the island) and all. Black Dad therefore decides that he and his son are going to build a raft and sail away to safety! The others snort at this notion as they have important island golf tournaments to complete. Eventually, Black Dad and Davy Crockett team up to rescue Black Kid from one of those pesky island polar bears, perhaps not realising that there’s a very strong possibility that the kid somehow willed the polar bear into existence and so had nobody to blame but himself.

Episode Fifteen: Homecoming

Pregnant Chick returns to camp, having apparently escaped Ethan Zohn, who tells Merry that if he doesn’t return Pregnant Chick immediately, he’ll start killing one person a day, saving Merry for last. The others are unhappy about Merry’s immunity and decide to set a trap for Ethan. They plan to capture him for interrogation purposes. No matter what happens, he is not to be shot with any of the guns they’ve just pulled out of the briefcase. Ethan is far more important alive than dead. Got it? Got it. They spring the trap. Merry shoots Ethan dead. The others sigh and head home, muttering (cf. Grey, Gandalf The).

Episode Sixteen: Outlaws

Sawyer is having boar difficulties, so decides that his only sane course of action is to take Freckles into the jungle and play drinking games with her about who has senselessly killed the most men. Sawyer also takes the time and effort to flash back to his most recent murder, which was, of course, the wrong person completely. Sawyer, murderous but sloppy with the details. It also turns out that Sawyer met Doc Salinger’s father in an Australian pub, where they discussed sons who disapproved of getting drunk and operating on people, as well as the necessity to murder people without checking all the facts. Also, the boar? Possibly Sawyer’s reborn murder victim. That’s Davy Crockett’s somewhat controversial (ie insane) opinion anyway. So treat that as you will.

Episode Seventeen: …In Translation

Mrs Hit Man Jin is wearing brazen bikinis on the beach and Black Kid is burning down his father’s surprisingly competent raft. So naturally, Sawyer organises a beach fight between Black Dad and Hit Man Jin. The fight is declared a tie by Mrs Hit Man Jin and so now the pair of them have to build an all-new raft together. In other news, The Princess and Crazy Arab are getting down and dirty.

Episode Eighteen: Numbers

We focus more closely on the ample girth of Porky this week. Turns out that he’s one of those annoying cursed multi-millionaires, which explains how he knows so much about golf course design. He became a multi-millionaire by the time-honoured tactic of using numbers provided to him by an insane asylum inmate, who, in turn, got the numbers from a radio message that emanated from the very island on which everybody’s now trapped (this happened back when the insane person was leading the Royal Australian Navy (ie two kayaks and a rubber duckie named ‘Bluey’)). Further investigation leads Porky to the realisation that he’s a) used cursed numbers (any half-competent mathematician could have informed him of this), b) overly friendly with insane French women and c) guilty of interacting with the single worst Australian accent to appear on the show to date. Of course, Merry doesn’t believe a word of it.

Episode Nineteen: Deus Ex Machina

Davy Crockett has gone just about completely out of his little mind now. This is hardly surprising because flashback scenes reveal that his mother thinks he’s the second coming and his father nicked his kidney (long renowned as the organ that holds all the sanity) while he wasn’t looking. Anyway, Davy has a dream about a plane which, of course, then turns out to exist. Cleverly, he pretends he can no longer walk again, inspiring The Prince to climb into the plane and investigate instead. It therefore immediately falls off a cliff. Elsewhere, The Doc surprisingly outwits Sawyer, tricking him into confessing his venereal disease history. Oh, Doc. You’re a hoot.

Episode Twenty: Do No Harm

Pregnant Chick has decided that after twenty or so episodes on the island it’s about time she went into labour. Unfortunately for her, Doc Salinger is far too busy applying leeches to The Prince, preparing to hack his legs off and so forth, all the while offering forth the grim threat that no matter how painful this will be for The Prince, the Doc will never permit him to escape into the blissful salvation of death’s embrace. It comes as no surprise that Mrs Hit Man Jin is a willing 2IC to this cruel torture. It is therefore left to Freckles to deliver the umbilical-cordless baby while Hit Man Jin (?!) and Merry pace around in the waiting room nervously. While all this is going on, The Princess and Crazy Arab are finally gettin’ nasty! The Prince hears about this. ‘Good night!’ he says and dies. The Doc is so furious he flashes back to the time he married Bailey’s babysitter.

Episode Twenty-One: The Greater Good (aka Sides)

Turns out The Prince is still dead, so The Princess enlists her new mindless sex slave, Crazy Arab, to butcher Davy Crockett since, according to Doc Salinger, DC’s the one to blame for the death. Got that, Crazy Arab? Davy Crockett is to blame. Not the Doc. Doc good. Davy Crockett bad. The Doc is adamant on this point because flashbacks reveal that Crazy Arab used to be friends with terrorists - because, y’know, stereotypes can be real, too! It’s all for nowt, though, because in the end The Princess shoots Davy Crockett, but not properly, thanks to Crazy Arab (!) pushing her down at the last second. Just another day on the island, really. In other news, Merry is Comically Trying to Make the Baby Stop Crying. He has dubbed the baby Bombadil. Nobody understands why.

Episode Twenty-Two: Born To Run

The boat that Black Dad and Hit Man Jin are building is coming along staggeringly well, with a built-in jacuzzi, badminton court and self-contained casino room. It’s looking so good that Freckles decides she wants on, hoping to revive a hitherto unmentioned cruise ship singing career. Selfishly, however, Sawyer refuses to give up his ticket on this Antarctica cruise. So Freckles and Mrs Hit Man Jin poison, um, Black Dad (??). Also, the annoying Black Kid can now read minds. Apparently. Sure, it’s only Davy Crockett’s mind, but that still counts.

Episode Twenty-Three: Exodus (1)

Everybody, off of the island. That’s the message of the crazy French woman who wanders back into camp babbling nonsensically (ie in French) about ‘the others’. Sure enough, there’s black smoke emanating blackly from a black rock which surely portends black times indeed. Sensing this, Sawyer, Black Dad, Black Kid and Hit Man Jin set sail. So rushed are they, they abandon the dog. In perhaps the most well-reasoned strategy seen to date, everybody else decides that they’ll go hide in the spooky hatch. Not sure, but it sounds like one of Merry’s ideas.

Episode Twenty-Four: Exodus (2)

A new character tries to worm his way into the established cast. Obviously, Doc Salinger, Freckles and co are having none of that, and so trick him into blowing himself up with dynamite. Hahaha! That’ll teach him! Sawyer, Black Dad, Black Kid and Hit Man Jin continue to sail seas one through seven. Black Dad lets Black Kid steer the boat and he immediately breaks the rudder. Luckily we can rely on Merry to do something even more stupid. Back on the island, he leaves Pregnant Chick and the baby Tom Bombadil alone with the crazy French woman. She immediately steals the baby and cracks Pregnant Chick’s head open. After briefly and inexplicably having a go at Crazy Arab, Merry eventually blames himself for this turn of events. So does everybody else.

Episode Twenty-Five: Exodus (3)

It’s the final episode of the first season and all the big questions are finally answered! Is Davy Crockett truly insane? (A: Oh, yes) Is there any way Doc Salinger can prove his love for Freckles? (A: Yes, by carrying her share of dynamite - oh Doc, you smoothie…) Can Merry manage to bring back the baby Bombadil without totally fucking everything up in his usual fashion? (A: Yes. (Season finale shock twist!)) And finally, and most importantly, will Hit Man Jin’s growing grasp of the English language prove far more dramatic and suspenseful than ‘The Others’ kidnapping that creepy bloody Black Kid (A: Yes) All other questions remain unanswered until next season, most notably Freckles’ island waxing secrets.

---

Related Pages

If you hated this, you'll probably also hate:

1. Lost Cast: Sawyer - Sawyer [caption id="" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Sawyer"][/caption] AKA Sawyer Josh Holloway Scruffy McGee Strengths Hoards everything...
2. Lost Cast: Jack - Jack [caption id="" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Doc Salinger"][/caption] AKA Dr Charlie Salinger Matthew Fox Doc Do-It-All...
3. Lost Cast: Kate - Kate [caption id="" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Freckles"][/caption] AKA Freckles Evangeline Lilly Strengths Very, very cute Can...
4. Lost Cast: Sayid - Sayid [caption id="" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Crazy Arab"][/caption] AKA Crazy Arab Naveen Andrews Strengths Translation of...
5. Lost Cast: Locke - Locke [caption id="" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Davy Crockett"][/caption] AKA Davy Crockett Terry O'Quinn King of the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.