“Fire + Water”
Flashing back, we see Charlie as a young boy, getting his first piano for Christmas. Charlie is thrilled, but before he can even begin to enjoy the gift, he learns it comes with a price. Later, we see his addicted brother, Liam, still sliding down that slippery path. Liam has become a dad for the first time. When his wife kicks him out, Charlie consoles him and tells him they can still make music and pull themselves out of this rut.
It shakes Liam out of his drug-induced stupor–but instead of staying with Charlie to try to make the band successful again, he takes off to Australia with his wife to work on staying clean for his family. Now abandoned by his only family, Charlie is truly lost.
Which of course reverberates for him on back on the island, where Charlie’s forced isolation is tearing him apart. He misses Claire and the baby desperately, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Claire’s doing just fine…with Locke. While paying a visit to a stash he has so far been able to resist, Charlie is surprised by Locke who tells him what he already knows. Locke confiscates the statues. What little goodwill Charlie had left, whatever hope of being redeemed is all gone now.
Still, Charlie keeps having strange dreams, which seem so real to him, in which baby Aaron is in mortal danger. At one point, Charlie swims out into the ocean to rescue Aaron’s cradle being tossed on the waves–only to learn that his mind has betrayed him and the entire thing was just a cruel dream. And while he wakes up and sees he is indeed holding the baby, he tries to explain to Claire (and everyone else) that he had a dream and was only trying to save him. No one believes him. Claire and Locke think he’s on drugs while the rest think he’s just losing it.
But Eko offers some hope for Charlie. He tells Charlie his dreams might mean something—that maybe the baby needs to be baptized. Charlie grabs onto this diagnosis with both hands, willing to follow it to a resolution–one way or another–to save the ones he loves.
Claire and the baby do privately get baptized, but Charlie’s one last, desperate leap towards salvation ends up costing him everything. He saved everyone but himself.
