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"White Rabbit"
Lost episode
Jack visits a morgue
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 5
Written by	Christian Taylor
Directed by	Kevin Hooks
Production no.	103
Original airdate	October 20, 2004
Guest stars
John Terry Veronica Hamel John O'Hara Sev Palmer Andy Trask Geoff Heise Meilinda Soerjoko
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "Walkabout" "House of the Rising Sun"
Lost (season 1) List of Lost episodes

"White Rabbit" is the fifth episode of the first season of Lost. The episode was directed by Kevin Hooks and written by Christian Taylor. It first aired on October 20, 2004 on ABC. The character of Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) is featured in the episode's flashback.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Flashbacks

A young Jack (John O'Hara) and a friend are being beaten up. One bully gives Jack the chance to leave, but he decides to help his companion, causing him to be further assaulted. When Jack's father (John Terry) sees his son's beaten face, he tells Jack he shouldn't be a hero because "he doesn’t have what it takes."

Many years later, Jack's mother (Veronica Hamel) tells him that his father has left for Australia. She wants him to bring his father back and Jack reluctantly agrees. Jack flies to Australia and while searching the hotel at which his father was staying, the manager informs Jack that his father has not slept at the hotel for several days following an incident at a bar.

Jack is shown at the morgue, where the coroner tells Jack that his father died of alcohol poisoning. Jack identifies the body and prepares to fly his father's body back home. While at the airport, the airline refuses to put his father's body on the plane because he does not have the proper documentation.

[edit] On the Island

Joanna, one of the crash survivors, is drowning in the ocean. Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder) swims out but can't reach her, and Jack rescues Boone. Jack is distraught that he failed to save her and sees the mysterious man in a suit again.

Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan) want Jack to decide how to handle the lack of water. On the island Jack once more sees the man in the suit, and chases him. He catches up and discovers it's his father. Frightened, he calls out "Dad?" to the man, who silently turns and walks away.

Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) faints from heat exhaustion, and the survivors discover that the remaining water has been stolen. John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) goes into the jungle to look for some.

Jack deliriously stumbles through the jungle looking for his father. On the island, Jack falls off a precipice while running after his 'father'. He hangs on to a branch, but cannot climb up. Fortunately, Locke appears and helps him up.

Charlie offers Claire some water. They talk and form a bond. Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) finds out that Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim) and Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) have water, and they reveal that James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) gave it to them. Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) follows Sawyer to his stash of items he looted from the fuselage, but he doesn't have the water.

Locke tells Jack that the others need a leader, and it should be he. Jack reveals that his father is a hallucination. Locke claims the island is "special," and everything that happens on it does so for a reason. He says, "I looked into the eye of this island and what I saw was beautiful." They split up; Locke looks for water and instructs Jack to follow his hallucination, saying "You need to finish what you started."

That night, Jack discovers caves with an abundance of fresh water. More wreckage from the plane is at the caves, including a coffin. Jack opens the coffin after a few hours to find it's empty, and angrily destroys it.

On the beach, Boone gives water to Claire. Charlie sees him and drags him out of the tent. The others start pushing Boone, asking him where the water is, making Sawyer delighted that people hate Boone more than him. Jack appears and tells everyone about the caves, telling them they need to work together; introducing the show's well-known phrase "live together, die alone."

[edit] Reception

16.82 million American viewers watched this episode.^[1]

[edit] References