Lost : Expose

Lost. 3.14. In the flashback, Nikki guest stars in an Australian television show called Expose. She’s ingratiated herself with the director, Zuckerman, who’s also hired Paolo as a personal chef. Nikki and Paolo, lovely people that they are, conspire to poison Zuckerman and steal a matryoshka doll, or whatever’s inside it. When the plane crashes, they can’t find their bag. Professor Arzt talks to Nikki about the medusa spider he’s collected but we’re guessing she didn’t listen as carefully as she should have in school. Ethan suggests they look inland for their stuff. She and Paolo find the Pearl hatch, the small plane and the pond, but tell no one. Paolo lies and tells her the bag wasn’t at the bottom of the pond when it was. Locke later sees him digging a hole and warns him things don’t stay buried on the island. Especially when the beach erodes during high tide.

Paolo puts the doll in the Pearl hatch, seeing Henry and Juliet as he does so. Again, he tells no one. But viewers learn that Henry’s intention was to manipulate Jack into performing surgery, not to take Locke. He planned to find out what Jack was emotionally invested in and exploit it. When Locke finds the Pearl hatch, Paolo goes with to recover the doll. Later Nikki sees some nicotine gum Paolo has. Gum that was in the bag. She asks Sawyer for a gun but he’s not giving his stuff away so Nikki takes Paolo on a little walk. She knows he has the diamonds. To get them, she throws a medusa spider at him. The spider bite quickly paralyses him, with his heart rate slowed to near death. He’ll stay that way for eight hours. Unfortunately Nikki didn’t pay attention to Arzt when he said the pheromones released during a spider bite will bring lots of little friends. She’s bitten too but only has time to run towards the beach.

Before collapsing, she says something to Hurley and Sawyer. Power lines or plywood or Paolo lies. They can’t tell. Her trail leads to Paolo who’s also dead. There’s no forensics hatch that Sawyer knows about, so they can only try to piece together what happened. Sawyer does a perimeter sweep, a la Jack Bauer. Hurley checks with Desmond but as far as superpowers go, his are kind of lame. Sun suspects the Others, since they abducted her which leads Charlie to confess that he was the one who did that, although he’s quick to add it was Sawyer’s idea and way of getting even with Locke. Everyone suspects Sawyer who doesn’t wait for the villagers to get themselves some torches. He says he noticed dirt under Nikki’s nails so she must have hid something. They dig up the diamonds that were in the doll and then dig a grave for Nikki and Paolo, not realizing Nikki was saying “Paralyzed.” By the time her eyes open, she and Paolo have been buried alive.