“Special”

Lost season 1, episode 14
Original air date: January 19, 2005

Backstory: Michael and his girlfriend are preparing for the birth of their baby, debating whether they should get married and what to name the baby. Michael wants to get married and wants to name the baby Walt, after his father, but his girlfriend wants the baby to have her last name and doesn't want to marry Michael. She caves on "Walt," though.

When Walt's eight or ten months old, Susan informs him that she's moving to Amsterdam to practice international law and taking Walt with her. He argues with her, but can't change her mind. She points out that since she's steadily employed, even if Michael tries to sue for custody, no court will grant it to him, especially since they're not married. Michael's been working construction, but work has slowed since it's winter now. She takes Walt and leaves.

Michael calls her from a pay phone when Walt's two years old, and she refuses to put him on the phone. Michael hears another man's voice in the background and realizes that his girlfriend has met someone new. She informs him that it's the partner in the law firm who hired her to move to Amsterdam, and Michael flips out. He says he's coming to Amsterdam to get Walt, but as he hangs up the phone and steps into the street, he's hit by a car.

Michael spends months in the hospital recuperating. Susan shows up at the hospital, having left Walt in Amsterdam with Brian, and she says she's paying his medical bills. She also informs Michael that she's moving again — to Italy — she's marrying Brian and he wants to adopt Walt.

In the present day, Walt's nine. Susan and Brian are having a conversation about how she's not feeling well lately, around the fact that Walt's supposed to be doing homework on "Birds of Australia." He says he picked the bronze cuckoo, because he likes the name. Brian and Susan continue not to pay attention to him, though, as they discuss how she's not feeling well. All of a sudden a bird flies into the window and dies. It gets everyone's attention, and Brian's horrified to realize that it's a bronze cuckoo, just like the one Walt was supposed to be studying.

Susan dies, and Brian shows up at Michael's apartment in New York to inform him. He tells Michael that he wants him to take Walt. He tells Michael that he never wanted to be a father, that he only adopted Walt because Susan wanted him to. He also tells Michael that he can't be around Walt. He says that sometimes when Walt's around "things happen," and that Walt's "just different, somehow." Michael flies to Sydney to pick Walt up, and Walt doesn't know who he is. Michael says that Walt can bring his dog — Brian's dog, really &dmash; and Walt's nanny hands Michael a box with all of the letters he sent to Walt over the years. Susan never let Walt have them.

Current: Michael continues to tell Locke to stay away from Walt, but Walt keeps disobeying and sneaking away to be around Locke. Michael gets more and more frustrated by Walt's disobedience, but he continues to take it out on Locke. When Walt won't listen to him, Michael throws Walt's polar bear comic book (in Spanish) on the fire. Walt slips away from everyone with Vincent, his dog, and they end up wandering in the woods. Vincent runs away as Walt encounters a polar bear in the jungle.

Fortunately, Locke and Michael are already out looking for Walt, and they find him hidden in a small thicket of trees where the polar bear can't get to him. Michael and Locke shimmy up trees to get above Walt, and they throw the knife down into the stand of trees. Walt stabs the polar bear in the paw, which drives it away temporarily. Michael ties a vine around Walt, so that Locke can pull him up, and then Michael confronts the polar bear with the knife again. He stabs it deeper, and the polar bear runs away with the knife in him. When they get back to camp, Michael gives Walt the box of letters that he's never had a chance to read, and Walt's impressed by the drawings that Michael made for him.

Meanwhile, Charlie gathers Claire's things and realizes that her diary is missing. He and Kate go to Sawyer, believing correctly that he's pilfered it, and Sawyer, as usual, refuses to hand it over. Charlie resorts to punching Sawyer in his arm, where Sayid speared him with the knife, and then gets Sawyer's fist in his face. Charlie does recover the diary, and after much hemming and hawing, he decides to read it. He discovers that Claire considered him a friend, which comforts him now that she's missing.

Sayid has been doing some thinking about the French woman's drawings. He lays them over the top of each other and realizes that rather than describing the navigational location of the island itself, the equations and figures describe a location on the island, a black rock. He remembers her saying that the rest of her team came down from the black rock, and Charlie figures that perhaps that's where Claire's been taken.

Boone and Locke hunt for Vincent in the brush with a dog whistle. They hear rustling, which Boone wants to believe is Vincent, but Locke readies his knife. It's neither Vincent nor the monster, though: Claire steps out of the underbrush, dirty and bruised.