Charlie and the others play forensic pathologist trying to find out what killed Nikki. Hurley says Nikki's last words were "Paolo lies." Backtracking Nikki's path, they find Paolo dead in the jungle. There's no immediate indication how he died, either, but his pants are undone and his shoe is in a tree. Sawyer thinks they were poisoned, but Jin thinks it was the monster. Going through Nikki's things, Hurley finds a script for Expose, and also a walkie talkie indicating they had had contact with the Others. Tension rises at Sun mentions her near-kidnapping by the "Others." Charlie and Sawyer get all shifty-eyed.
Desmond tells Hurley Nikki was with Sawyer that morning, yelling at him, although Sawyer has claimed he didn't know her. Charlie confesses to Sun that he was the one who kidnapped her, in cahoots with Sawyer, when he stole the guns. Sun is not impressed. Hurley confronts Sawyer about his fight with Nikki. Nikki was trying to get a gun from him. They had both been digging, hiding the diamonds.
Sawyer digs a grave in the sand. Sun confronts him about the kidnapping. Of course she waits until he has his shirt off so the scenery will be more enjoyable. At the funeral, Hurley speculates that Nikki and Paolo killed each other over the diamonds. Sawyer buries the diamonds with them.
And what really happened was this:
Backstory: We open with Nikki "dying" on a TV show called Exposé. She's meant to leave Sydney afterwards, but she's in love with the director, Howie, who's old enough to be her grampa, and doesn't want to leave. 84 days ago, they were having dinner. Paolo is Nikki's boyfriend's chef. Now Paolo I remember. Howie has a heart attack at the table after giving Nikki a diamond bracelet. Maggie Grace and Ian Somerhalder show up in the credits, and yes, that was Billy Dee Williams. He only had one quick scene--kind of a bummer, that.
Anyway, Nikkie and Paolo are running a scam, and they poisoned the poor old dude to get into his safe, which holds only a Rusian nested doll. Waiting for the plane, they encounter Shannon and Boone, who are having a tiff in the middle of the airport. On another note, were half the people on this damn plane running cons?
Next we revisit the plane crash from Nikki's POV. She and Paolo are searching the wreckage for Nikki's bag. They run into Ethan and Artz, and they also apparently find the plane in the tree and the hatch before the rest of the castaways, but don't act on the discoveries, all in the course of looking for Nikki's bag, which apparently is worth $8 million.
Paolo finds the bag in the spring where the guns were hidden, but doesn't tell Nikki. He instead goes into the hatch and hides the doll in the toilet tank. He also has a near-encounter with Juliet and Ben, who are spying on Jack, trying to figure out how to coerce him into doing Ben's surgery. Their chat partially explains what's happened with Michael. I'm not completely sure of the timeframe here, but I'm guessing this was the motivation behind Walt's kidnapping. Now this is a good reveal.
Jumping forward to 12 hours before their deaths, Nikkie and Paolo are canoodling a bit, while Paolo reflects that losing the bag might have been a good thing. But he drops his Nicorette, cluing Nikki in that he's found the bag. She goes to demand a gun from Sawyer, who refuses. Nikki pulls a con on Paolo to get him to admit he has the diamonds. She flings a poisonous spider on him, that she got from Artz. The spider paralyzes rather than killing. So Paolo's probably not actually dead. And then the spider bites her, too. So, hey, she's not dead, either. This could be a problem.
And back on the beach Sawyer continues to bury them. Her last words were actually, "Paralyzed." Nikki's eyes open just as Sawyer dumps a pile of sand on her face. No last-minute reprieves here--Nikki and Paolo are buried alive.
I liked this episode quite a lot. The quick re-run of the past 84 days on the island from a slightly outside POV was very well-done, as well as revealing. I liked that they answered some questions without making a big deal about it. Also, even though the episode was from an outsider POV, it still included many of the major players that we haven't seen over the past few weeks while the story has concentrated on Jack, Kate and Sayid. And the ending was nicely creepy. I'm glad they didn't cop out there.
