Contains spoilers for this episode and earlier episodes.
Flashbacks follow Jack's difficult relationship with his father, Christian, who discourages him from trying to rescue others after a childhood fight. Years later, Jack travels to Australia at his mother's request and finds evidence of Christian's drinking. He identifies his father's body at a morgue and argues with an airline employee about transporting the coffin home. His insistence on making the flight is tied to needing the funeral, and the search for Christian, to be over.
On the island, Jack rescues Boone from the sea but cannot save Joanna, the woman Boone had tried to reach. Water supplies are dwindling, and the survivors expect Jack to solve the shortage. Instead, he follows repeated sightings of a man he recognises as his dead father. The pursuit leaves him hanging above a cliff. Locke saves him and encourages him to continue searching, although Jack cannot explain what he has been seeing.
Jack reaches caves containing fresh water and finds his father's coffin among aircraft debris. It is empty, and he smashes it in frustration. At the beach, the missing bottled water is traced to Boone, who says he took it to manage the rationing. Jack returns before the argument becomes worse, announces the source he found and urges the survivors to work together. He accepts a public role in organising their survival after trying to withdraw from it.