Fire and Water (Lost)

:"For other uses, see Fire and Water."Infobox Television episode | Title = Fire + Water
Series = Lost
Season = 2
Episode = 12


Caption = Charlie returns to his drug stash.
Airdate = January 25, 2006
Production = 212
Guests = Neil Hopkins
Vanessa Branch
Sammi Davis
Jeremy Shada
Zack Shada
Craig Young
Writer = Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz
Director = Jack Bender
Episode list = "Lost" (season 2)
List of "Lost" episodes
Prev = The Hunting Party
Next = The Long Con

"Fire + Water" is the 36th episode of "Lost". It is the twelfth episode of the second season. The episode was directed by Jack Bender, and written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. It first aired on January 25, 2006 on ABC. The character of Charlie Pace is featured in the episode's flashbacks.

Plot summary

Centric Character(s): Charlie Pace

"The episode begins with a "dream-back", where Charlie (as a child) is given a new piano. His family wants him to use his musical talent to "save" them and get them out of their current impoverished circumstance, but his father, dressed as a butcher, appears, saying, "He ain't savin' no one, he is," and cuts the head off of a doll with a cleaver. The scene changes to the island's shoreline, where Charlie hears the sound of a baby crying from inside of his piano, and realizes that it is the baby Aaron. He tries to open the piano, but it is pulled out to sea. Charlie then wakes up from his nightmare and rushes to check on Aaron, who he eventually learns is being safely cared for on the beach."

"In the next flashback, Charlie is seen in a hospital, where Karen, his brother Liam's girlfriend, has just given birth to a daughter, named Megan after Charlie and Liam's mother. However, Liam’s increasing drug habit is causing problems: it prevented him from showing up at the birth, and is interfering with the brothers’ band, DriveSHAFT. When Karen throws him out, Liam turns up on his brother’s doorstep, but abuses Charlie's hospitality by secretly selling his piano, defensively claiming that he needed the money in order to travel to Australia to get a job and enter rehab, "for his family." Back on the island, Charlie again hears a baby's crying from the direction of the ocean, and sees Aaron's cradle floating away. He swims out to save the baby and bring him back to the beach, where Claire and Charlie’s mother, dressed as angels, repeatedly call out to Charlie that he must "save the baby." Hurley also appears, dressed as John the Baptist. Charlie awakes from his dream, finding that he is holding Aaron, but with no memory of how it happened, at which point a frantic Claire runs up and takes her baby back from Charlie, after slapping him across the face.

When Charlie tells Eko about his dreams, Eko, who once spent time as a priest, says that the dreams might mean that Charlie does need to save the baby. Charlie goes to Claire and expresses his concerns about Aaron being in danger, meaning that they must baptise him, but Claire no longer trusts him. Charlie heads to his hidden stash of heroin-filled Virgin Mary statues, but Locke follows him and confiscates them, despite Charlie's protestations that he was going to destroy them himself. Locke then stores the statues in the hatch, in the same room where the guns are being secured.

Later that evening, Charlie starts a fire as a diversion, and then steals Aaron and runs to the ocean. Locke persuades him to give the baby back, and then punches Charlie repeatedly, leaving him breathless and bloody.

However, at the end of the episode, Claire seeks out Eko herself, and at her request, he baptises both her and her infant son.

Production

The episode is the subject of a detailed "Making of" documentary on the Season 2 DVD set. All of the location for the episode, despite appearing to be filmed in different countries, were actually modified locations in Hawaii.

The producers had intended for the DriveSHAFT video to be a remake of the Beatles "Abbey Road" album cover, only with the bandmembers wearing diapers. However, they were unable to get permission to reproduce the scene, so instead used the diapers in a different way, singing inside of a crib while they wore the diapers.

In one of the dream sequences, Charlie's mother and Claire appear as angels. This was a reproduction of the Andrea del Verrocchio painting, "The Baptism of Christ". In the background of the scene (only viewable in the widescreen format), an Easter Egg was introduced, where the Nigerian drug plane, the Beechcraft containing Eko's brother, can be briefly seen en route to its crash on the island. ["Lost: The Complete Second Season" DVD, Disc 7 — "Anatomy of an Episode" documentary]

References