Wow. Now that's a great episode of Lost! "Sundown" was not only my favorite episode this season, but maybe the best since “There’s No Place Like Home”*. It just delivered at every turn - a gripping Island story, an intriguing and emotional flash-sideways, and an awesome, gut-wrenching ending. Just spectacular. Watching the likeness of John Locke lead Sayid and the rest of those traitorous Others out of the temple with that just-so-sweet-it's-creepy music playing in the background, I wanted to cry. And puke. And scream. That's Lost at it's best. And TV at it's best.
*When I say something like this mid-season, I generally mean it in terms of my initial enjoyment of the episode. That’s what I mean here. My opinions tend to change after rewatches for a variety of reasons (complexity, symbolism, interaction between flashes and Island events, overall significance, etc.), but right now “Sundown” is really revving my engines.
I'm starting my first day of big-boy work tomorrow, and with all the hoopla and anxiety that's accompanying that milestone, I don't have a ton of motivation to write a huge recap this week. This episode probably deserves better, but hey, that's what the DVDs are for. This won't be the last time I watch/discuss/write about Sayid's journey toward damnation I'm sure.
The big theme of this episode was summed up nicely by soon-to-be-dead Dogen when he told Sayid "For every man there is a scale. On one side of the scale there is good. On the other side, evil." Lost has tackled this theme many times before through many different characters, most prominently Sayid and Mr. Eko. Lets start with Sayid.
Sayid's episodes often explore how he balances the good and evil inside himself and how he deals with the balance he's struck. We've seen Sayid at one moment reluctant but willing to torture ("One of Them" flashbacks), at another, repentant of his actions (leaving camp after torturing Sawyer, building houses in the Dominican), and then at another, even eager and unremorseful (after putting the screws to Henry Gale in the hatch). After “Enter 77”, he appeared to swear off torture completely and for a while he held up that promise. The Island had benefited Sayid like it did many others; it allowed him to sort out his issues and reach a place where he was at peace with himself. Then he left the Island, Nadia was killed, and all bets were off.
Our first two flashbacks with Sayid established his love for Nadia and the great lengths he would go to in order to keep her safe. He shot himself and killed one of his fellow soldiers to allow her escape in "Solitary", then infiltrated a terrorist cell and put his life in mortal danger for the chance to see her again. She is the most important thing in his life and often his feelings for her cause him to throw his moral compass completely out the window when she's involved. See his vengeful killing spree and his sideways flash this week.
The day Nadia was killed was the turning point for Sayid. He didn’t have anything to live for anymore. The MIB might as well have taken the white stone off his scale and thrown it into the ocean right then and there. He had accepted his miserable fate. That’s what allowed him to pull the trigger on Ben and to go along with Jack’s crazy Jughead plan – he might as well take a chance and try to undo everything horrible that he’d done. I go as far as to say this means he was “claimed” even before he came back from the dead. He was beyond redemption because he believed as much.
Eko, on the other hand, refused to repent for all the bad things he'd done. When Yemi/Smokey asked for his confession, he answered with this - "I ask for no forgiveness, Father. For I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive." He did not acknowledge the evilness inside him. And it appears he was killed for that. But I agree with Eko. Before he was killed, he said this – “A small boy once asked me if I was a bad man. If I could answer him now, I would tell him that... when I was a young boy, I killed a man to save my brother's life. I am not sorry for this. I am proud of this!” And he should be proud! He saved his brother’s life at the expense of his own. It was a totally selfless act (and one not dissimilar from the one Dogan had to make with his son). Man, I wish Eko was still around. I’d feel much better about our team if he was.
My theory about all this? The MIB realized that he couldn’t turn Eko to his side so he killed him just like he killed all the Others who wouldn’t leave the temple. The Monster might be judging people, but he’s not making his call and then punishing the guilty. He’s looking for the people who know they’re guilty so he can use them for his own personal needs – the war against Jacob and his quest to leave the Island.
Still, Sayid went into the jungle with the intention to prove his goodness to the Others by killing the “incarnation of evil.” He wasn’t a completely lost cause yet. He tried to kill the MIB, and was smart enough to know the MIB was going to ask him for something. But then, like with Sawyer before him, the MIB made him a Godfather offer, and this time it was for “anything in the entire world.” Sayid was hooked. He had succumbed to the dark side. His insane “Not for me,” followed by the crazy-evil laugh sealed the deal.
When the MIB said, “What if I told you that you could have anything you wanted?” I got Des-like flashbacks to Ben’s speech to Locke in “The Man from Tallahassee”. In that episode, he said to Locke, “What if I told you that somewhere on this island, there’s a very large box... and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it, when you opened that box, there it would be.” He was talking about the now-fabled “magic box”. Notice the similarities in the two statements? Leading with “What if I told you”, the “whatever/anything you wanted…” in both. So I ask, is the Monster the magic box? Was Ben tempting Locke with dark side back in season 3? Something to think about.
Here’s another theory about the MIB. So he lured Sayid over to his side with the promise that he could give him anything he wanted in the whole world. For Sayid, this meant Nadia, whom he mentioned had died in his arms. The MIB more-or-less said that didn’t matter. Thus far, I think the MIB has been a pretty straight shooter. I don’t think he’s making promises he can’t fulfill. So somehow, I think he has the power to make this happen. And I think the result of that might be the sideways world. It was the way the scenes were spliced together that led me to this theory, and I think that’s intentional. That’s the conclusion we’re supposed to draw. But instead of being some lovely “happily ever after” for Sayid, it’s more of a “be careful what you wish for”. I don’t know if it all adds up perfectly, but that’s the impression I got from that scene. MIB=Magic Box → Sideways World.
That sideways world seems more and more like some sort of dream world to me every week. You know how in a dream sometimes you have people playing strange roles and appearing in places all of a sudden (or places they aren’t supposed to be? Walt? Please?)? No? Maybe that’s just on TV. But it’s like Locke’s trip in the sweat hut. In that vision, Ben was waving the wand at the airport, Hurley was behind the ticket counter, and Desmond was a pilot. Same deal in the sideways world. Keamy’s a loan shark, Des is on the plane, Jack’s a father, Ben’s a teacher, Rose works at the temp agency, and Ethan’s a doctor. It’s like the Wizard of Oz. That story has been referenced plenty of times on Lost already, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it held some clues here.
One last thing about good vs. evil. The Others always refer to themselves as the good guys, and they seem obsessed with this idea of a "good person". Ethan told Claire that Aaron would be safe with them because "[they]'re good people." Ben (as Henry Gale) bargained for his life in "Dave", crying, "I'm not a bad person!" One of Ben's best lines came at the dock at the end of Season 2 when he says, "We're the good guys, Michael." And I’m sure there were plenty more instances. So if the Others really are servants of Jacob, then were they the “good guys” all along? Some of the stuff we’ve seen from Ben and Widmore indicate otherwise, but that could be more of a knock them personally than the Others as a group. They’ve been in a struggle with Smokey to maintain “balance” on the Island, and now it’s up to our non-corrupted Losties to reestablish that balance, with the battle lines drawn as such. On the one side we have Jacob, Hurley, Jack, Ilana, Richard, Sun, Miles, and Lapidus. On the other side, there’s the MIB, Sayid, Claire, and a bunch of faceless Others. I’m going to put Ben, Kate, Jin and Sawyer in the “wild card” column, but my gut tells me that they’d all go with Jacob if given the opportunity. Hell, I’m an optimist.
I think the reason I love this episode so much, aside from all the action and danger and creepiness, was how it just fits so perfectly into where we are at this point in the season. The good/evil dynamic has been lurking in the background since last season’s finale. We knew a war was coming. And Sayid was due for a flashback because of all the mystery surrounding him being “claimed”. Now, the war has arrived, we know which side to choose, and they seamlessly integrated an awesome character story with on-Island action, all under the spotlight of the very same theme. I’ll say it again – that’s Lost at it’s very best.
Well, I guess that ended up being just as long as usual, only with less proofreading. Oh well. Until next week.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Lighthouse
Lost delivered another very strong episode last week with “Lighthouse”. Aside from the premiere, I enjoyed this one the most from beginning to end, and I’ve enjoyed thinking about it even more (as I tend to with Jack episodes). Let’s dive right into the sideways world.
"You just don't have what it takes."
We start off with Jack shortly after Flight 815. His father has been buried, but they’re still looking for the will. We find out Jack has a son – David – who’s every bit as surly and distant as Jack was as a teenager. Jack’s late picking him up from school, probably not for the first time and we start to get the idea that Jack isn’t a huge part of David’s life. When David says, “We see each other like once a month. Can’t we just get through it,” it’s pretty obvious – Jack’s relationship with his son is just as awful as his with his father.
After dropping David off at home and making plans for dinner, Jack heads to his mother’s house to help her look for Christian’s will. Between the casket and the will, Jack will never be done looking for his father will he? Margo asks how David’s doing, saying that he was pretty upset at the funeral. Jack tells her he doesn’t know anything about that, adding, “Communication is not one of his strong suits.” His mother responds that he was the same way with Christian at that age. “That’s because I was terrified of him, Mom.” “How do you know David isn’t terrified of you?” she answers. That stops Jack dead in his tracks. If he hadn’t realized it before, he does now – he’s in danger of losing his son the same way Christian lost him.
Jack arrives back home to an empty house. David’s nowhere to be found. Shaken, Jack tries calling David, but there’s no answer. He leaves a message, telling him, “If I did something to upset you I am really, really sorry…Whatever I did, I'm sorry.” It was heartwarming to hear Jack so apologetic, but heartbreaking that he was so upset over the whole situation. But as Adam pointed out to me, it was the call that Christian Shephard never made to Jack, the one he tells Sawyer he should make while the two threw back shots at that bar in Australia. In my book, that makes Jack a better dad (and really a better man) than Christian ever was. Christian already knew that. As he said, Jack’s “a good man, maybe a great one”, and he “does what’s in his heart”. If Jack does what’s in his heart with David, he will be in pretty good shape. More on that in a bit.
After some snooping around David’s room, Jack finds out that David has a piano tryout at the Williams Conservatory. He hops in his Rover, books it over there, walks past the “Welcome all Candidates!” sign, and catches the end of David’s performance. The whole time I was afraid David was going to catch a glimpse of Jack and totally bungle the piece, but luckily he made it through the end without a hiccup. Jack was blown away. So was Dogen, whose son was also performing that night (How come these Others keep popping up in Los Angeles? Are they keeping an eye on our Losties, or did they just settle there and lead normal lives after the Island sunk? Questions for another time). Jack cast a large shadow in the wall of the Conservatory as he entered, but David’s performance went a long way toward getting him out from under it. That’s a struggle Jack can relate to.
Jack meets David outside. He tells his son how scared he was and how great the performance was, how he didn’t even know he still played. David tells his father that he made his mom promise not to tell him, and that he snuck off because, “I didn’t want you to see me fail.”
Jack responds with an impassioned speech to his son, one straight from his own tortured heart –
“You know when I was your age, my father didn't want to see me fail either. He used to say to me that...he said that I didn't have what it takes. I spent my whole life carrying that around with me. I don't ever want you to feel that way. I will always love you, no matter what you do. In my eyes you can never fail. I just wanna be a part of your life.”
Beautiful. Maybe Jack did something to make David feel the same way Christian made him feel. Maybe he didn’t. But right there, Jack prevented David from suffering the same tormented fate that we’ve watched him suffer through for six seasons. He broke the cycle. Sure, their relationship won’t be all happy and perfect just because of this conversation, but at least David knows he has his father in his corner, something Jack never could say.
Instead, Jack’s father told him “You just don’t have what it takes,” because he didn’t want to see him fail. Jack realized that his father felt that way, so he refused to ever accept failure. He needed to live up to his father’s expectations. He needed to make sure he didn’t let his father down. While David hid from his father, Jack wanted to show Christian that he would succeed. So he pushed himself even when the odds were stacked insurmountably against him. He kept pounding on Charlie’s chest. He trekked after Michael without a break for water. He poured his own blood into Boone. Jack threw himself into everything he did so his father would never see him fail. That’s why he smashed that coffin to pieces when he found it empty in the caves. And that’s why he needed that coffin to land in Los Angeles. He needed it to be done. He needed to bury his father. Otherwise, Christian’s still walking around, and Jack still feels him looking over his shoulder.
“You have what it takes.”
That’s where we find Jack on the Island in 2008. He needs to put his father to rest. I think I mislabeled him early this year. His calm demeanor isn’t a sign of a mind at peace; it’s a sign of apathy. As he tells Hurley during their hike through the jungle, he thought the Island could fix him, and it didn’t. To that I say, not yet Jack! The night is always darkest just before the dawn. Or something like that.
We join the action with Hurley in the temple looking for something to eat. He sees Jacob dumping an unknown substance into that filthy healing pool (something to clear it up maybe? A little Balance Pack 200?), and he tells Hurley that he needs to get Jack and go to the lighthouse. Somebody’s coming to the Island, and Hurley and Jack need to help them find it.
My immediate reaction was “DesDesDesDesDes”. Nothing that followed gave me a reason to change that opinion. Ms. Hawking told us the Island wasn’t done with him, and I think we’re a little too deep in the game to be introducing yet another new character. Who are the other options? Penny? No, not without Des. Charles Widmore? Maybe, but I still think that he’s aligned with the MIB, so I can’t see Jacob actively helping him find the Island. Dharma people? Nah, that wouldn’t make much sense. And that’s the whole list. It has to be Des. And he can’t make it there soon enough, in my opinion. It’s been way too long since we’ve got a good “brotha” or “aye”. Might be a little added synergy with “Man of Science, Man of Faith” - the debut of our favorite Scotsman - which I’ll discuss further in a minute.
Anyway, Hurley has a tough job ahead of him of convincing Jack to sneak out of the temple. Jacob armed him with a secret weapon – “He told me to tell you ‘You have what it takes’”. Well, that hooked Jack, not because of the nice, encouraging sentiment, but because Jacob (who I think this is the first Jack has heard of) knows about the deepest secret of his past. Off into the jungle they go.
After a brief run-in with Kate, Hurley apologizes for wrecking Jack’s game by not allowing her to come along (not that Kate was going to follow them anyway). Jack responds that there’s nothing left to wreck. Right there, apathy. Just a couple days earlier he was blowing up an atomic bomb to get another crack at Kate. Now, he’s letting her walk off without much of a fight. For all he knows, he might never see her again. He knows it’s over between them. And now he’s a rudderless ship. He’s not a doctor. He didn’t get the girl. No one looks to him as a leader. He can’t define himself in these ways anymore. He’s alone with himself, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
Jack and Hurley keep walking. They stumble on Shannon’s inhaler (Man, we could have used that about a million years ago. Could have saved some serious tension around the camp!). After that, they find themselves in the caves, the same caves Christian led Jack to in “White Rabbit.” Is Jack better off or worse off right now than he was that day? A question to ponder. They talk about the coffin. They talk about the Adam and Eve skeletons. It was a nice trip down memory lane. I don’t think it was all just for nostalgia-sake though. I think it was a not-so-subtle reminder about both, because they’re going to come into play pretty soon. I actually thought we were going to get some sort of Jack-Christian standoff at the lighthouse, but alas, it was not to be. Soon though. I can feel it.
They finally make it to the lighthouse. Jack does his best Sayid impression and kicks in the door. They make their way up the stairs and find a set of mirrors attached to a giant wheel. The wheel turns by degree, and each degree is labeled with a number and a name. Hurley’s arm-scribbles tell him to turn the wheel to 108, but as he does that, Jack notices that some of the names on the wheel are their names. 15 – Ford. 16 – Jarrah. 23 – Shephard. When Hurley lands at 23, Jack catches a glimpse of his house in the mirror. It’s the house he grew up in. Jacob has been watching him – and all of them – their entire lives. And Jack reacts how he always does when he sees something he doesn’t like, something that he kind of understands but doesn’t want to – he gets angry, demands answers, and loses his cool. He smashes the mirrors to pieces and walks away.
The important part is that Jack really does understand the meaning of it all, but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. Last season, Jack came back to the Island looking for purpose, looking for his destiny. He’s given up on that. He doesn’t think he’s there for a reason and he doesn’t want to believe the Island is special. So when he sees something that challenges that worldview, he freaks out. It’s like when he saw Desmond in the hatch for the first time, and like when he came across his father’s empty coffin after following him through the jungle. He was confronted with a miracle and he refused to believe it. Same deal here. This is a clear message that he’s meant to be on the Island, that he was brought there just like Locke told him oh-so-many years ago, and he can’t handle it.
Jack is stubborn. He’s always been stubborn, and he will always be stubborn. That’s not what he’s there to fix. He’s there to get over his father issues, learn not to burden himself so much with commitment and guilt, and to believe in himself again. But first he has to believe in the Island. And Jacob’s trying to give him a little push. I loved Hurley’s response earlier in the episode to Jacob’s orders to get Jack to go with him – “You ever tried to get Jack to do something? It's like impossible.” Jacob has tried and it shows when he tells Hurley, “Sometimes you can just hop in the back of someone's cab and tell them what they're supposed to do. Other times...you have to let them look out at the ocean for a while.” I can’t wait to see how Jack responds to a little time looking out at the ocean.
Believe it or not, Jack, Hurley and Jacob weren’t the only characters in this episode. We also got a look at Claire, and three years in the jungle has not been kind to her. Way worse off than Danielle was after her 16 years in solitude, she’s angry, even murderous. She’s been looking for Aaron, killing Others, making creepy skeleton babies, and buddying up to the MIB. She tells Jin, “That’s not John, that’s my friend.” Does that mean she sees him differently than we do, maybe as a side effect of being claimed? I say yes. And that makes me ready to conclude that Christian Shephard isn’t a manifestation of the monster, but something entirely different. Otherwise, why would she refer to them separately? Any way you slice it, Claire’s fucked three ways toward the weekend. Luckily, Jin manages to convince her that Aaron’s at the temple, so that’s where they’re headed instead of hunting for Kate.
We’ve three other big storylines that appear to be coming to a head pretty damn quick. Jacob tells Hurley at the lighthouse that he had to find a way to get him and Jack away from the temple because “someone bad” was coming. We know that person is the MIB. We know Ilana, Sun, Ben and Lapidus are also headed to the temple. We know Kate’s looking for Claire. And now we know that Crazy Claire’s headed back to the temple with Jin and “her friend”. The stage is set for an epic confrontation at on the Others sacred ground. I have one prediction for what’s to come – pain.
Until next week.
"You just don't have what it takes."
We start off with Jack shortly after Flight 815. His father has been buried, but they’re still looking for the will. We find out Jack has a son – David – who’s every bit as surly and distant as Jack was as a teenager. Jack’s late picking him up from school, probably not for the first time and we start to get the idea that Jack isn’t a huge part of David’s life. When David says, “We see each other like once a month. Can’t we just get through it,” it’s pretty obvious – Jack’s relationship with his son is just as awful as his with his father.
After dropping David off at home and making plans for dinner, Jack heads to his mother’s house to help her look for Christian’s will. Between the casket and the will, Jack will never be done looking for his father will he? Margo asks how David’s doing, saying that he was pretty upset at the funeral. Jack tells her he doesn’t know anything about that, adding, “Communication is not one of his strong suits.” His mother responds that he was the same way with Christian at that age. “That’s because I was terrified of him, Mom.” “How do you know David isn’t terrified of you?” she answers. That stops Jack dead in his tracks. If he hadn’t realized it before, he does now – he’s in danger of losing his son the same way Christian lost him.
Jack arrives back home to an empty house. David’s nowhere to be found. Shaken, Jack tries calling David, but there’s no answer. He leaves a message, telling him, “If I did something to upset you I am really, really sorry…Whatever I did, I'm sorry.” It was heartwarming to hear Jack so apologetic, but heartbreaking that he was so upset over the whole situation. But as Adam pointed out to me, it was the call that Christian Shephard never made to Jack, the one he tells Sawyer he should make while the two threw back shots at that bar in Australia. In my book, that makes Jack a better dad (and really a better man) than Christian ever was. Christian already knew that. As he said, Jack’s “a good man, maybe a great one”, and he “does what’s in his heart”. If Jack does what’s in his heart with David, he will be in pretty good shape. More on that in a bit.
After some snooping around David’s room, Jack finds out that David has a piano tryout at the Williams Conservatory. He hops in his Rover, books it over there, walks past the “Welcome all Candidates!” sign, and catches the end of David’s performance. The whole time I was afraid David was going to catch a glimpse of Jack and totally bungle the piece, but luckily he made it through the end without a hiccup. Jack was blown away. So was Dogen, whose son was also performing that night (How come these Others keep popping up in Los Angeles? Are they keeping an eye on our Losties, or did they just settle there and lead normal lives after the Island sunk? Questions for another time). Jack cast a large shadow in the wall of the Conservatory as he entered, but David’s performance went a long way toward getting him out from under it. That’s a struggle Jack can relate to.
Jack meets David outside. He tells his son how scared he was and how great the performance was, how he didn’t even know he still played. David tells his father that he made his mom promise not to tell him, and that he snuck off because, “I didn’t want you to see me fail.”
Jack responds with an impassioned speech to his son, one straight from his own tortured heart –
“You know when I was your age, my father didn't want to see me fail either. He used to say to me that...he said that I didn't have what it takes. I spent my whole life carrying that around with me. I don't ever want you to feel that way. I will always love you, no matter what you do. In my eyes you can never fail. I just wanna be a part of your life.”
Beautiful. Maybe Jack did something to make David feel the same way Christian made him feel. Maybe he didn’t. But right there, Jack prevented David from suffering the same tormented fate that we’ve watched him suffer through for six seasons. He broke the cycle. Sure, their relationship won’t be all happy and perfect just because of this conversation, but at least David knows he has his father in his corner, something Jack never could say.
Instead, Jack’s father told him “You just don’t have what it takes,” because he didn’t want to see him fail. Jack realized that his father felt that way, so he refused to ever accept failure. He needed to live up to his father’s expectations. He needed to make sure he didn’t let his father down. While David hid from his father, Jack wanted to show Christian that he would succeed. So he pushed himself even when the odds were stacked insurmountably against him. He kept pounding on Charlie’s chest. He trekked after Michael without a break for water. He poured his own blood into Boone. Jack threw himself into everything he did so his father would never see him fail. That’s why he smashed that coffin to pieces when he found it empty in the caves. And that’s why he needed that coffin to land in Los Angeles. He needed it to be done. He needed to bury his father. Otherwise, Christian’s still walking around, and Jack still feels him looking over his shoulder.
“You have what it takes.”
That’s where we find Jack on the Island in 2008. He needs to put his father to rest. I think I mislabeled him early this year. His calm demeanor isn’t a sign of a mind at peace; it’s a sign of apathy. As he tells Hurley during their hike through the jungle, he thought the Island could fix him, and it didn’t. To that I say, not yet Jack! The night is always darkest just before the dawn. Or something like that.
We join the action with Hurley in the temple looking for something to eat. He sees Jacob dumping an unknown substance into that filthy healing pool (something to clear it up maybe? A little Balance Pack 200?), and he tells Hurley that he needs to get Jack and go to the lighthouse. Somebody’s coming to the Island, and Hurley and Jack need to help them find it.
My immediate reaction was “DesDesDesDesDes”. Nothing that followed gave me a reason to change that opinion. Ms. Hawking told us the Island wasn’t done with him, and I think we’re a little too deep in the game to be introducing yet another new character. Who are the other options? Penny? No, not without Des. Charles Widmore? Maybe, but I still think that he’s aligned with the MIB, so I can’t see Jacob actively helping him find the Island. Dharma people? Nah, that wouldn’t make much sense. And that’s the whole list. It has to be Des. And he can’t make it there soon enough, in my opinion. It’s been way too long since we’ve got a good “brotha” or “aye”. Might be a little added synergy with “Man of Science, Man of Faith” - the debut of our favorite Scotsman - which I’ll discuss further in a minute.
Anyway, Hurley has a tough job ahead of him of convincing Jack to sneak out of the temple. Jacob armed him with a secret weapon – “He told me to tell you ‘You have what it takes’”. Well, that hooked Jack, not because of the nice, encouraging sentiment, but because Jacob (who I think this is the first Jack has heard of) knows about the deepest secret of his past. Off into the jungle they go.
After a brief run-in with Kate, Hurley apologizes for wrecking Jack’s game by not allowing her to come along (not that Kate was going to follow them anyway). Jack responds that there’s nothing left to wreck. Right there, apathy. Just a couple days earlier he was blowing up an atomic bomb to get another crack at Kate. Now, he’s letting her walk off without much of a fight. For all he knows, he might never see her again. He knows it’s over between them. And now he’s a rudderless ship. He’s not a doctor. He didn’t get the girl. No one looks to him as a leader. He can’t define himself in these ways anymore. He’s alone with himself, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
Jack and Hurley keep walking. They stumble on Shannon’s inhaler (Man, we could have used that about a million years ago. Could have saved some serious tension around the camp!). After that, they find themselves in the caves, the same caves Christian led Jack to in “White Rabbit.” Is Jack better off or worse off right now than he was that day? A question to ponder. They talk about the coffin. They talk about the Adam and Eve skeletons. It was a nice trip down memory lane. I don’t think it was all just for nostalgia-sake though. I think it was a not-so-subtle reminder about both, because they’re going to come into play pretty soon. I actually thought we were going to get some sort of Jack-Christian standoff at the lighthouse, but alas, it was not to be. Soon though. I can feel it.
They finally make it to the lighthouse. Jack does his best Sayid impression and kicks in the door. They make their way up the stairs and find a set of mirrors attached to a giant wheel. The wheel turns by degree, and each degree is labeled with a number and a name. Hurley’s arm-scribbles tell him to turn the wheel to 108, but as he does that, Jack notices that some of the names on the wheel are their names. 15 – Ford. 16 – Jarrah. 23 – Shephard. When Hurley lands at 23, Jack catches a glimpse of his house in the mirror. It’s the house he grew up in. Jacob has been watching him – and all of them – their entire lives. And Jack reacts how he always does when he sees something he doesn’t like, something that he kind of understands but doesn’t want to – he gets angry, demands answers, and loses his cool. He smashes the mirrors to pieces and walks away.
The important part is that Jack really does understand the meaning of it all, but he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. Last season, Jack came back to the Island looking for purpose, looking for his destiny. He’s given up on that. He doesn’t think he’s there for a reason and he doesn’t want to believe the Island is special. So when he sees something that challenges that worldview, he freaks out. It’s like when he saw Desmond in the hatch for the first time, and like when he came across his father’s empty coffin after following him through the jungle. He was confronted with a miracle and he refused to believe it. Same deal here. This is a clear message that he’s meant to be on the Island, that he was brought there just like Locke told him oh-so-many years ago, and he can’t handle it.
Jack is stubborn. He’s always been stubborn, and he will always be stubborn. That’s not what he’s there to fix. He’s there to get over his father issues, learn not to burden himself so much with commitment and guilt, and to believe in himself again. But first he has to believe in the Island. And Jacob’s trying to give him a little push. I loved Hurley’s response earlier in the episode to Jacob’s orders to get Jack to go with him – “You ever tried to get Jack to do something? It's like impossible.” Jacob has tried and it shows when he tells Hurley, “Sometimes you can just hop in the back of someone's cab and tell them what they're supposed to do. Other times...you have to let them look out at the ocean for a while.” I can’t wait to see how Jack responds to a little time looking out at the ocean.
Believe it or not, Jack, Hurley and Jacob weren’t the only characters in this episode. We also got a look at Claire, and three years in the jungle has not been kind to her. Way worse off than Danielle was after her 16 years in solitude, she’s angry, even murderous. She’s been looking for Aaron, killing Others, making creepy skeleton babies, and buddying up to the MIB. She tells Jin, “That’s not John, that’s my friend.” Does that mean she sees him differently than we do, maybe as a side effect of being claimed? I say yes. And that makes me ready to conclude that Christian Shephard isn’t a manifestation of the monster, but something entirely different. Otherwise, why would she refer to them separately? Any way you slice it, Claire’s fucked three ways toward the weekend. Luckily, Jin manages to convince her that Aaron’s at the temple, so that’s where they’re headed instead of hunting for Kate.
We’ve three other big storylines that appear to be coming to a head pretty damn quick. Jacob tells Hurley at the lighthouse that he had to find a way to get him and Jack away from the temple because “someone bad” was coming. We know that person is the MIB. We know Ilana, Sun, Ben and Lapidus are also headed to the temple. We know Kate’s looking for Claire. And now we know that Crazy Claire’s headed back to the temple with Jin and “her friend”. The stage is set for an epic confrontation at on the Others sacred ground. I have one prediction for what’s to come – pain.
Until next week.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Substitute
Really solid episode this week. So solid, in fact, I watched it twice on Tuesday night. As I discovered after several hours of writing and over 2,000 words, I have a lot to say about this one. So let's get started.
We start off in the LAX world with Locke arriving home from the airport. He pulls into his driveway, but the wheelchair lift he needs to get out of he van stalls a foot from the ground. Angry, but determined as always, Locke decides to make the leap. He doesn’t stick the landing. Instead he flops face-first onto his front lawn, the sprinklers turn on, metaphorically pissing on him, and the Box Man lies there helpless and ashamed with his chair folded next to him. But Helen opens the front door and helps him up. Indeed, a fitting metaphor for the episode as a whole. It turns out John and Helen have a wedding planned for October, so one would assume that they've been together for a while. How nice for Locke!
That said, how could these two possibly still be together? Didn’t Locke mess up his relationship with her? And, from the picture of Anthony Cooper and Helen's suggestion that she and John elope with Cooper as one of the exclusively invited guests, it seems that everything between Locke and his daddy is a-okay. But…what?! Is Cooper somehow not an enormous ass in this timeline? And if it's not from his father pushing him out of a window (which I assume would nix any chances of a wedding invitation), then how does Locke become paralyzed? And how did he meet Helen if his father never stole his kidney and he never went to that anger management class? Is it the result of the universe "course-correcting"? Seems likely. If the universe says that Locke is supposed to be paralyzed, then either he never should have gone to the Island, or someone on the Island (Jacob? MIB?) defied the will of the universe. It’s one more tasty way we get to ponder who’s good and who’s bad. More on that later.
Helen or no Helen, Locke still works at the box company, and that douche Randy Nations is still his boss. Randy knows that Locke didn't attend the company seminar in Australia, and when Locke refuses to tell him how he spent the company dime while he was there, Randy fires him, with a sarcastic salute to Colonel Locke on his way out the door. Locke leaves without a fight. He makes his way back to his van, but because he refused to park in the handicapped spot, he finds a big, yellow Hummer parked right up next to him, leaving no room for his chair lift to operate. He decides to lower the lift anyway. But the it stalls just before scratching the crap out of the Hummer.
It turns out the Hummer belongs to Hurley (I can't believe I didn't catch that the first time through. It's the same car we saw him drive in "Numbers". I’m embarrassed), who tells Locke that he'll hook him up with a job. So Locke goes to Hurley's temp agency, where Rose proceeds to tell him that there are, in fact, things that he can't do. Obviously, this doesn't sit well with the Box Man, but Rose gives him a little lesson about being realistic, about how he needs to learn to accept the things he cannot change. Sounds like a lesson similar to the one Jack seems to be learning on the Island this season.
Locke has been told many times by many people about the things he can't do. And each time, he's ignored them. But this time, it was Rose who gave him the straight talk. And he listened. Now, that's not the first time in the LAX timeline that we've seen one 815er help another cope with post-815 life. It's becoming a trend. I'm not ready to say what I think that means, but I will say this much - do not mistake coincidence for fate.
To me, this was a huge turning point for Locke. This week, Doc Jensen explained how he saw LAX Locke as a very different person from the one we’ve seen in flashbacks, someone who wasn't angry, and who could laugh off the little slights that used to send him into a fury. I disagree. I will concur with him to the point that LAX Locke doesn't seem quite as angry as the Locke we came to know from flashbacks, but then again, it's bound to be the case that a man whose kidney was stolen from him would be angrier than the same man who didn't have that happen to him. But this Locke still has the same need to prove himself to the world that he can do anything he wants, whether it's the walkabout, a construction job, or just getting out of his van, and he does these things with the same grudge toward the world at large about his wheelchair-bound fate. I don’t see a fundamental difference in attitude there.
Locke heads home and confesses to Helen that he lost his job, that he will never be able to walk again, and that if she can’t accept that he wouldn’t blame her if she left. But Helen doesn’t leave. She accepts Locke for who he is, job or no job, legs or no legs. When she says to him, “the only thing I was ever waiting for was you,” he finally takes that to heart. He doesn’t have to change who he is for her, and that allows him to begin accepting the things he cannot do. She has set him free. And we all know, whether he’s on the Island or not, Locke longs to be free. After this scene, I started to get the feeling that LAX Locke's story will have a happy ending. Locke has always needed for unconditional love and support more than anything, and he’s getting it from Helen. He doesn’t need to serve the Island or Jacob or Cooper to feel a sense of self-worth anymore. With Island Locke meeting such a depressing end, maybe this Locke - really the only one we have left - will find happiness as sort of a consolation prize. I can only hope.
But really, that's what the LAX timeline feels like right now - a consolation prize. I don't know what the stakes are for anything that's happening with it. This week especially, it just felt like a fantasy world. A really cool fantasy world, but still just that. I said before that the point of this timeline would be to explore the effect the Island has always had on each of our characters’ lives. I still stand true to that but I've also started to fall into the mindset of almost everyone around me who speculate that there's going to be some huge twist that ties both timelines together. It's been preventing me from enjoying the LAX timeline how I did in the beginning – as simply a cool storytelling device. Maybe, for once, we're not going to have our minds blown with a Lostgasm tying up a major mystery. And that would be just fine with me.
Let's get to the Island stuff now. One thing I noticed is that while everyone at the Temple is scrambling around like the apocalypse is coming, the MIB/Locke/Smokey is acting calmly. A little too calmly. He’s the source of whatever wickedness the Others are preparing to combat. That's why I don't buy into the MIB's claim that Jacob was the bad guy, the Island isn't special, and that he's just trying to go home. He's trying to position himself as the good guy, but if he needs to slaughter all the Others at the Temple in order to accomplish his goals (which their Bruce Weber-like commitment to defense suggests), then I don't care if Jacob was manipulating our Losties to the Island this whole time. That's better than killing hundreds of people. Plus, he killed Eko. Case closed.
So the MIB’s going about his business of “recruiting”, and he starts with Richard. Richard refuses to join him, but it becomes clear that these two have a lot of history. When Richard asks what he wants, the MIB answers “What I’ve always wanted. For you to come with me.” Have Jacob and the MIB been fighting over Richard for all these years? That has to make Richard pretty specially I would think. But at the same time, Richard appeared clueless when the MIB talked about how Locke was a “candidate”. Do the Others know anything at all? Maybe they’ve haven’t been feigning ignorance this whole time after all. Maybe they really don’t know the answers to the questions our Losties have been asking them. After all, Ben had never seen Jacob, and if Richard didn’t know what Jacob was up to in that cave with all the names – a task that appears to be of the utmost importance – then maybe the Others just follow Jacob not as if he was their leader, but as if he was their god. They see the miraculous things he can do, like heal irreversible injuries, and they devote themselves to protecting him and his Island. Sure, they have learned a lot about the Island, like how to move the Island and summon the Monster (which seems even odder now), because they’ve been there for so long, but they’re kept in the dark about the real purpose of it all. That makes some of the terrible things that Ben and Widmore have done look even more awful. They weren’t following the will of Jacob; they were acting selfishly.
The MIB gathers himself after Richard’s rejection and moves on to Sawyer. Now, Sawyer’s in a pretty vulnerable place at the moment. But the whole time he was walking through the jungle with the MIB, I couldn’t help but think that there was no one else I’d rather have in this position, with the character that seems to represent the “bad guys” of the show, then Sawyer. I don’t expect him to do anything rash because even when he acts out of emotion, he does it in a calculated way. Take our first flashback with him, when he killed Duckett. Like the pain he’s feeling now about Juliet, he wasn’t acting in the heat of the moment. Killing the “real” Sawyer was an extremely emotional subject with him (and that’s an understatement), just like Juliet’s death is now. But even then, when he looked down the barrel of that gun, he had second thoughts about becoming a murderer. I have a hard time believing he will be thrown into a rage and threaten the lives of his friends as a result of anything the MIB can do now that he’s had some time to process Juliet’s death. I trust Sawyer. Maybe he’ll even pull off one of his classic cons.
Having said that, we’re dealing with a Sawyer who doesn’t feel he has a reason to live. Like he said, “I think some of us are meant to be alone.” If it means sacrificing himself to save his friends (if he still considers them his friends), I think he’ll do it. I guess I have always thought that this would be Sawyers fate anyway. I just thought he fulfilled it when he jumped from the helicopter. So I could swallow this one. On the other hand, I could see him going dutifully serving the MIB if it gets him something he wants, like some peace of mind. I’ll admit, I don’t know my Bible very well, but I’m sure there’s something in there about the Devil tempting a broken man to join him in some sort of evil plot. And this reminded me of that. So my enthusiasm for this new Sawyer/MIB team is muted at best. Nevertheless, for the second (or third?) consecutive week, Sawyer remains the most interesting and unpredictable character on the show. I’ll be rooting hard for him the rest of the way.
I should probably say something about the cave. We know there were six candidates remaining the last time Jacob was in that cave (I’m not going to entertain the possibility that it was actually the MIB’s cave with the MIB’s numbers. That’s too much to digest) - Locke, Hurley, Sayid, Sawyer, Jack and one of the Kwons (my guess is Sun). And each had one of The Numbers assigned to them. So now we know why those numbers are important; they each correspond to one of the candidates to take Jacob’s place. If this is the only answer we get to The Numbers, that’s just fine with me. I don’t know how much “meaning” a series of numbers can have, but I think we can conclude that the numbers follow our characters around because the numbers actually are our characters. If you told me and Ceddy that while we were watching season 2 sophomore year, you would have been scraping our brains off the ceiling because our heads would have exploded.
One last thing, and it’s a minor beef. I don't know how I feel about the structure of this episode. Traditionally, the Island events and the flashes both revolved around the same character, and it was used to illustrate a larger point about that character. But in "The Substitute", we followed Locke off the Island, but on the Island, we were really following the MIB. Just because he's in Locke's body doesn't make him Locke. I found this strange. Sure, it's a good excuse to give us a lot of LAX Locke, and if that's the reason, that's okay I guess. But I like the traditional format. Just looking at Terry O'Quinn in both timelines wasn't quite enough for me. And this didn't bother me at all while I was watching on Tuesday, but it has started to eat at me the last few days.
Then again, maybe we are following Locke in both timelines. When the MIB yelled, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" at that bloody blonde-haired kid while running through the jungle, I took that - once again - as more than coincidence. Maybe there's a little John Locke in there after all? (No Helen jokes please.) Remember how he knew Locke's dying thoughts? Maybe that was because Locke's spirit told him, Miles-style, but I think it's more likely that somehow Locke's spirit lives on inside the MIB. Perhaps within the macro-level fight between good and evil (Jacob vs. MIB), there's an inner battle for good and evil (Locke vs. MIB) within the MIB.
See? I did have a lot to say about this one. Until next week.
We start off in the LAX world with Locke arriving home from the airport. He pulls into his driveway, but the wheelchair lift he needs to get out of he van stalls a foot from the ground. Angry, but determined as always, Locke decides to make the leap. He doesn’t stick the landing. Instead he flops face-first onto his front lawn, the sprinklers turn on, metaphorically pissing on him, and the Box Man lies there helpless and ashamed with his chair folded next to him. But Helen opens the front door and helps him up. Indeed, a fitting metaphor for the episode as a whole. It turns out John and Helen have a wedding planned for October, so one would assume that they've been together for a while. How nice for Locke!
That said, how could these two possibly still be together? Didn’t Locke mess up his relationship with her? And, from the picture of Anthony Cooper and Helen's suggestion that she and John elope with Cooper as one of the exclusively invited guests, it seems that everything between Locke and his daddy is a-okay. But…what?! Is Cooper somehow not an enormous ass in this timeline? And if it's not from his father pushing him out of a window (which I assume would nix any chances of a wedding invitation), then how does Locke become paralyzed? And how did he meet Helen if his father never stole his kidney and he never went to that anger management class? Is it the result of the universe "course-correcting"? Seems likely. If the universe says that Locke is supposed to be paralyzed, then either he never should have gone to the Island, or someone on the Island (Jacob? MIB?) defied the will of the universe. It’s one more tasty way we get to ponder who’s good and who’s bad. More on that later.
Helen or no Helen, Locke still works at the box company, and that douche Randy Nations is still his boss. Randy knows that Locke didn't attend the company seminar in Australia, and when Locke refuses to tell him how he spent the company dime while he was there, Randy fires him, with a sarcastic salute to Colonel Locke on his way out the door. Locke leaves without a fight. He makes his way back to his van, but because he refused to park in the handicapped spot, he finds a big, yellow Hummer parked right up next to him, leaving no room for his chair lift to operate. He decides to lower the lift anyway. But the it stalls just before scratching the crap out of the Hummer.
It turns out the Hummer belongs to Hurley (I can't believe I didn't catch that the first time through. It's the same car we saw him drive in "Numbers". I’m embarrassed), who tells Locke that he'll hook him up with a job. So Locke goes to Hurley's temp agency, where Rose proceeds to tell him that there are, in fact, things that he can't do. Obviously, this doesn't sit well with the Box Man, but Rose gives him a little lesson about being realistic, about how he needs to learn to accept the things he cannot change. Sounds like a lesson similar to the one Jack seems to be learning on the Island this season.
Locke has been told many times by many people about the things he can't do. And each time, he's ignored them. But this time, it was Rose who gave him the straight talk. And he listened. Now, that's not the first time in the LAX timeline that we've seen one 815er help another cope with post-815 life. It's becoming a trend. I'm not ready to say what I think that means, but I will say this much - do not mistake coincidence for fate.
To me, this was a huge turning point for Locke. This week, Doc Jensen explained how he saw LAX Locke as a very different person from the one we’ve seen in flashbacks, someone who wasn't angry, and who could laugh off the little slights that used to send him into a fury. I disagree. I will concur with him to the point that LAX Locke doesn't seem quite as angry as the Locke we came to know from flashbacks, but then again, it's bound to be the case that a man whose kidney was stolen from him would be angrier than the same man who didn't have that happen to him. But this Locke still has the same need to prove himself to the world that he can do anything he wants, whether it's the walkabout, a construction job, or just getting out of his van, and he does these things with the same grudge toward the world at large about his wheelchair-bound fate. I don’t see a fundamental difference in attitude there.
Locke heads home and confesses to Helen that he lost his job, that he will never be able to walk again, and that if she can’t accept that he wouldn’t blame her if she left. But Helen doesn’t leave. She accepts Locke for who he is, job or no job, legs or no legs. When she says to him, “the only thing I was ever waiting for was you,” he finally takes that to heart. He doesn’t have to change who he is for her, and that allows him to begin accepting the things he cannot do. She has set him free. And we all know, whether he’s on the Island or not, Locke longs to be free. After this scene, I started to get the feeling that LAX Locke's story will have a happy ending. Locke has always needed for unconditional love and support more than anything, and he’s getting it from Helen. He doesn’t need to serve the Island or Jacob or Cooper to feel a sense of self-worth anymore. With Island Locke meeting such a depressing end, maybe this Locke - really the only one we have left - will find happiness as sort of a consolation prize. I can only hope.
But really, that's what the LAX timeline feels like right now - a consolation prize. I don't know what the stakes are for anything that's happening with it. This week especially, it just felt like a fantasy world. A really cool fantasy world, but still just that. I said before that the point of this timeline would be to explore the effect the Island has always had on each of our characters’ lives. I still stand true to that but I've also started to fall into the mindset of almost everyone around me who speculate that there's going to be some huge twist that ties both timelines together. It's been preventing me from enjoying the LAX timeline how I did in the beginning – as simply a cool storytelling device. Maybe, for once, we're not going to have our minds blown with a Lostgasm tying up a major mystery. And that would be just fine with me.
Let's get to the Island stuff now. One thing I noticed is that while everyone at the Temple is scrambling around like the apocalypse is coming, the MIB/Locke/Smokey is acting calmly. A little too calmly. He’s the source of whatever wickedness the Others are preparing to combat. That's why I don't buy into the MIB's claim that Jacob was the bad guy, the Island isn't special, and that he's just trying to go home. He's trying to position himself as the good guy, but if he needs to slaughter all the Others at the Temple in order to accomplish his goals (which their Bruce Weber-like commitment to defense suggests), then I don't care if Jacob was manipulating our Losties to the Island this whole time. That's better than killing hundreds of people. Plus, he killed Eko. Case closed.
So the MIB’s going about his business of “recruiting”, and he starts with Richard. Richard refuses to join him, but it becomes clear that these two have a lot of history. When Richard asks what he wants, the MIB answers “What I’ve always wanted. For you to come with me.” Have Jacob and the MIB been fighting over Richard for all these years? That has to make Richard pretty specially I would think. But at the same time, Richard appeared clueless when the MIB talked about how Locke was a “candidate”. Do the Others know anything at all? Maybe they’ve haven’t been feigning ignorance this whole time after all. Maybe they really don’t know the answers to the questions our Losties have been asking them. After all, Ben had never seen Jacob, and if Richard didn’t know what Jacob was up to in that cave with all the names – a task that appears to be of the utmost importance – then maybe the Others just follow Jacob not as if he was their leader, but as if he was their god. They see the miraculous things he can do, like heal irreversible injuries, and they devote themselves to protecting him and his Island. Sure, they have learned a lot about the Island, like how to move the Island and summon the Monster (which seems even odder now), because they’ve been there for so long, but they’re kept in the dark about the real purpose of it all. That makes some of the terrible things that Ben and Widmore have done look even more awful. They weren’t following the will of Jacob; they were acting selfishly.
The MIB gathers himself after Richard’s rejection and moves on to Sawyer. Now, Sawyer’s in a pretty vulnerable place at the moment. But the whole time he was walking through the jungle with the MIB, I couldn’t help but think that there was no one else I’d rather have in this position, with the character that seems to represent the “bad guys” of the show, then Sawyer. I don’t expect him to do anything rash because even when he acts out of emotion, he does it in a calculated way. Take our first flashback with him, when he killed Duckett. Like the pain he’s feeling now about Juliet, he wasn’t acting in the heat of the moment. Killing the “real” Sawyer was an extremely emotional subject with him (and that’s an understatement), just like Juliet’s death is now. But even then, when he looked down the barrel of that gun, he had second thoughts about becoming a murderer. I have a hard time believing he will be thrown into a rage and threaten the lives of his friends as a result of anything the MIB can do now that he’s had some time to process Juliet’s death. I trust Sawyer. Maybe he’ll even pull off one of his classic cons.
Having said that, we’re dealing with a Sawyer who doesn’t feel he has a reason to live. Like he said, “I think some of us are meant to be alone.” If it means sacrificing himself to save his friends (if he still considers them his friends), I think he’ll do it. I guess I have always thought that this would be Sawyers fate anyway. I just thought he fulfilled it when he jumped from the helicopter. So I could swallow this one. On the other hand, I could see him going dutifully serving the MIB if it gets him something he wants, like some peace of mind. I’ll admit, I don’t know my Bible very well, but I’m sure there’s something in there about the Devil tempting a broken man to join him in some sort of evil plot. And this reminded me of that. So my enthusiasm for this new Sawyer/MIB team is muted at best. Nevertheless, for the second (or third?) consecutive week, Sawyer remains the most interesting and unpredictable character on the show. I’ll be rooting hard for him the rest of the way.
I should probably say something about the cave. We know there were six candidates remaining the last time Jacob was in that cave (I’m not going to entertain the possibility that it was actually the MIB’s cave with the MIB’s numbers. That’s too much to digest) - Locke, Hurley, Sayid, Sawyer, Jack and one of the Kwons (my guess is Sun). And each had one of The Numbers assigned to them. So now we know why those numbers are important; they each correspond to one of the candidates to take Jacob’s place. If this is the only answer we get to The Numbers, that’s just fine with me. I don’t know how much “meaning” a series of numbers can have, but I think we can conclude that the numbers follow our characters around because the numbers actually are our characters. If you told me and Ceddy that while we were watching season 2 sophomore year, you would have been scraping our brains off the ceiling because our heads would have exploded.
One last thing, and it’s a minor beef. I don't know how I feel about the structure of this episode. Traditionally, the Island events and the flashes both revolved around the same character, and it was used to illustrate a larger point about that character. But in "The Substitute", we followed Locke off the Island, but on the Island, we were really following the MIB. Just because he's in Locke's body doesn't make him Locke. I found this strange. Sure, it's a good excuse to give us a lot of LAX Locke, and if that's the reason, that's okay I guess. But I like the traditional format. Just looking at Terry O'Quinn in both timelines wasn't quite enough for me. And this didn't bother me at all while I was watching on Tuesday, but it has started to eat at me the last few days.
Then again, maybe we are following Locke in both timelines. When the MIB yelled, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" at that bloody blonde-haired kid while running through the jungle, I took that - once again - as more than coincidence. Maybe there's a little John Locke in there after all? (No Helen jokes please.) Remember how he knew Locke's dying thoughts? Maybe that was because Locke's spirit told him, Miles-style, but I think it's more likely that somehow Locke's spirit lives on inside the MIB. Perhaps within the macro-level fight between good and evil (Jacob vs. MIB), there's an inner battle for good and evil (Locke vs. MIB) within the MIB.
See? I did have a lot to say about this one. Until next week.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Quick Thoughts
Great episode last night. I've already watched it twice. A couple of quick hits before the full recap.
-Sawyer's the man. If there's one character I'd trust in the role of gathering intel on the MIB/Smokey, it's him. Although he might be more vulnerable than usual right now, he's still the only one I can imagine pulling a move to actually get the upper hand over the MIB. I want to see one of his classic long cons.
-I'm not buying into the MIB's case that Jacob's actually the bad guy. Maybe Jacob's not entirely the free will proponent he makes himself out to be, but he still brought everyone to the Island and, whether the MIB think so or not, it is a special place.
-Ben Linus, professor of European History. Love it.
-Numbers, numbers, numbers.
-Sawyer's the man. If there's one character I'd trust in the role of gathering intel on the MIB/Smokey, it's him. Although he might be more vulnerable than usual right now, he's still the only one I can imagine pulling a move to actually get the upper hand over the MIB. I want to see one of his classic long cons.
-I'm not buying into the MIB's case that Jacob's actually the bad guy. Maybe Jacob's not entirely the free will proponent he makes himself out to be, but he still brought everyone to the Island and, whether the MIB think so or not, it is a special place.
-Ben Linus, professor of European History. Love it.
-Numbers, numbers, numbers.
Monday, February 15, 2010
What Kate Does
Surprisingly, viewers greeted the third hour of Season 6 with a heavy dose of animosity. I’m going to chalk that up to a definite letdown after a stellar premiere and generally unreasonable expectations about Season 6 as a whole, but I will admit, I wasn't entirely thrilled with everything that was going on as I was watching live on Tuesday night. But after reading a few recaps, a second viewing, and a little thought, I've come to appreciate "What Kate Does" as a strong stand alone episode that reflects Kate's new priorities along with a great setup for the rest of the season.
On the Island, our main story tracks Kate as she, Jin, and two Others – Aldo (an old favorite), and some dude named James – mount an expedition to bring Sawyer back to the temple. For a reason known to the Others but unknown to our Losties, it's absolutely essential that he return. Perhaps to prevent him from being "claimed"? I really don't know. What I do know is that Kate's prison break skills are is as fine a shape as ever, as she quickly put Aldo and James out of commission and took off on her own. Kate has her own priorities, as does Jin; he wants to find Sun, here motives are a little more ambiguous.
When Jin said, "Who do you care about, Kate?” at first I felt we were meant to fill in the blank with "herself". However, I now feel the answer is clearly "Aaron". At first I thought that she took off into the jungle for Sawyer, so that she could have another chance to be with him. And that's a tired storyline to say the least. But when she finds him, she confesses that the reason she chased after him this time was out of the hope that he would join her in her search for Claire, that maybe reuniting Aaron with his mother would make something good out of Juliet's death and all the other horribleness caused by the Oceanic 6's return to the Island. This made me realize something – the Kate that crashed on the Island in 2004 is gone. This new Kate might still be a runner, but she not just running away anymore, she's actually running toward something. And that's a Kate I can get behind.
The moment on the dock between Kate and Sawyer was tough to watch. Sawyer's in so much pain right now, it's hard to see him coming back to join the group any time soon. When he told Kate that he thought maybe some people were meant to be alone, then flung the engagement ring he planned to give to Juliet into the water, the room started to get a little dusty for me. He’s totally lost, and it looks like he's headed right into the latter part of the "Live together, die alone" motto. I said last week that Sawyer appeared to be regressing back to the man he was before the crash, the one who lived by the “every man for himself” philosophy, and after this week I believe that even more strongly. But I sure hope he snaps out of it. It’s already hard enough to accept that Locke’s whole life was a waste, and that Sayid appears on the path toward damnation. I don’t think I could deal with Sawyer’s remarkable (and extremely satisfying) transformation from con man to great man wiped away. I just couldn’t. Because of all that, he might be the Island character I'm most excited to follow this year. I really have no idea where he's going. But I’m going to stay optimistic.
Back at the temple, the Others, led by the mysterious (aren’t they all?) Dogen, run the newly resurrected Sayid through a series of tests, which we find out were to determine if he had been “infected”. He fails. Dogen then attempts to convince Jack to give Sayid some pill he made out of some strange herbs. Jack doesn’t give it to him. Instead, in what might be his most straight-up-badass move since pouring his own blood into Boone, Jack swallows the pill himself. Brilliant! Dogen jumps up, gives Jack a swift punch to the gut, a few Heimlichs, and Jack spits out the pill. He tells Jack that the pill was poison. So were the Others trying to kill Sayid before this “infection” problem got out of hand? I think that’s pretty likely.
But what is this “infection” anyway? We heard Rousseau ranting about a “sickness” back in the day, and that stemmed from a run-in with Smokey at the temple wall. Perhaps this is the same sickness, and there’s a connection between the healing pool and the smoke monster? Or are we only seeing that connection because the healing water was murky? But then how did Claire become “claimed” when we have never seen here near the temple? We did see her with Christian Shephard, and with theories abound that he’s actually a manifestation of the monster, maybe that’s our connection. It’s quite the twisted pretzel we have on our hands. But I still don’t see how the monster could have “claimed” Sayid when we’ve seen it Fake Locke form on the other side of the Island. And last season, didn’t we see Christian in the Dharma barracks while MIB Locke was sitting on the beach sucking on a mango? I don’t think we have the pieces to come up with an answer to this yet, so let’s just move on.
The cliffhanger left us with Jin caught in a bear trap with a Rousseau'd-out Claire pointing a gun at him. She had just shot Aldo and James, and looks ready to fire at Jin, but after Jin called out her name, it seem pretty clear to me that she recognized him. I really like the apparent parallels between Rousseau and Claire. Both left alone in the jungle, both missing children they’d given birth to on the Island, along with the history we witnessed between the two characters – it’s all another example of the cyclical nature of the Island. I love that kind of stuff. Plenty to dissect from a literary standpoint. I’m sure they’ll go more into this in the coming weeks. After all, it’s been three Island years since we’ve seen Claire, and if she’s been “claimed” like Dogen said, she could give us a peak into what the hell is going on with Sayid. We certainly have a lot of catching up to do with her.
Off the Island, we find ourselves in the midst of another story of Kate running from the law. But instead of the typical Kate flashback where she only laments the fact that she has once again put the lives of people she cares about at risk to further her selfish motives, we see Kate actually make amends to the person she has wronged. In this case, that person is Claire. After throwing her, pregnant and terrified, out of the taxi, Kate returns to offer her a ride to wherever it was she was going. Claire accepts, and the rest of the story follows the two women as Claire struggles with her pregnancy. I actually enjoyed having Claire around again. It was like back in Season 1 when she actually served a purpose to the story instead of just nagging Charlie and screaming about her baybaaaay. And throwing Ethan into the mix was a nice touch. I especially loved the “ I just don’t want to stick you with a needles if I don’t have to” line.
At first, I found some aspects of this story perplexing, even downright unbelievable. I mean, why would Kate return to help a total stranger? And why the hell would Claire accept a ride from a person who just threatened her at gunpoint? But the more I've thought about it, the more it seemed to me that there is something bigger going on in this alternate world that’s pushing these people - all of the 815ers - back together. I don't know if it's some sort of subconscious memory or destiny or what, but we've now seen several instances where our characters have given confused looks when confronted with people/moments/circumstances that resemble what we've seen transpire on the Island. In "LA X" Jack flashed such a look when talking with Desmond, and again when he bumped into Kate outside the bathroom. In this episode, Kate showed a similar sense of remembering when she took the stuffed whale out of Claire's purse, then again when Claire shouted out Aaron's name at the hospital. Then Claire explained that she said that name because it was as if "she knew it or something".
I refuse to believe these are all just coincidences. And I refuse to believe that the writers have just gotten sloppy. They're not going to undermine the credibility of these characters just to give us some cute situation where Kate and Claire get to spend some time with each other while 2008 Kate looks for Claire on the Island. Like I said before, there's something bigger going on here. By the end of this season, we'll be looking back on the choices these characters made and it will all make perfect sense.
On the Island, our main story tracks Kate as she, Jin, and two Others – Aldo (an old favorite), and some dude named James – mount an expedition to bring Sawyer back to the temple. For a reason known to the Others but unknown to our Losties, it's absolutely essential that he return. Perhaps to prevent him from being "claimed"? I really don't know. What I do know is that Kate's prison break skills are is as fine a shape as ever, as she quickly put Aldo and James out of commission and took off on her own. Kate has her own priorities, as does Jin; he wants to find Sun, here motives are a little more ambiguous.
When Jin said, "Who do you care about, Kate?” at first I felt we were meant to fill in the blank with "herself". However, I now feel the answer is clearly "Aaron". At first I thought that she took off into the jungle for Sawyer, so that she could have another chance to be with him. And that's a tired storyline to say the least. But when she finds him, she confesses that the reason she chased after him this time was out of the hope that he would join her in her search for Claire, that maybe reuniting Aaron with his mother would make something good out of Juliet's death and all the other horribleness caused by the Oceanic 6's return to the Island. This made me realize something – the Kate that crashed on the Island in 2004 is gone. This new Kate might still be a runner, but she not just running away anymore, she's actually running toward something. And that's a Kate I can get behind.
The moment on the dock between Kate and Sawyer was tough to watch. Sawyer's in so much pain right now, it's hard to see him coming back to join the group any time soon. When he told Kate that he thought maybe some people were meant to be alone, then flung the engagement ring he planned to give to Juliet into the water, the room started to get a little dusty for me. He’s totally lost, and it looks like he's headed right into the latter part of the "Live together, die alone" motto. I said last week that Sawyer appeared to be regressing back to the man he was before the crash, the one who lived by the “every man for himself” philosophy, and after this week I believe that even more strongly. But I sure hope he snaps out of it. It’s already hard enough to accept that Locke’s whole life was a waste, and that Sayid appears on the path toward damnation. I don’t think I could deal with Sawyer’s remarkable (and extremely satisfying) transformation from con man to great man wiped away. I just couldn’t. Because of all that, he might be the Island character I'm most excited to follow this year. I really have no idea where he's going. But I’m going to stay optimistic.
Back at the temple, the Others, led by the mysterious (aren’t they all?) Dogen, run the newly resurrected Sayid through a series of tests, which we find out were to determine if he had been “infected”. He fails. Dogen then attempts to convince Jack to give Sayid some pill he made out of some strange herbs. Jack doesn’t give it to him. Instead, in what might be his most straight-up-badass move since pouring his own blood into Boone, Jack swallows the pill himself. Brilliant! Dogen jumps up, gives Jack a swift punch to the gut, a few Heimlichs, and Jack spits out the pill. He tells Jack that the pill was poison. So were the Others trying to kill Sayid before this “infection” problem got out of hand? I think that’s pretty likely.
But what is this “infection” anyway? We heard Rousseau ranting about a “sickness” back in the day, and that stemmed from a run-in with Smokey at the temple wall. Perhaps this is the same sickness, and there’s a connection between the healing pool and the smoke monster? Or are we only seeing that connection because the healing water was murky? But then how did Claire become “claimed” when we have never seen here near the temple? We did see her with Christian Shephard, and with theories abound that he’s actually a manifestation of the monster, maybe that’s our connection. It’s quite the twisted pretzel we have on our hands. But I still don’t see how the monster could have “claimed” Sayid when we’ve seen it Fake Locke form on the other side of the Island. And last season, didn’t we see Christian in the Dharma barracks while MIB Locke was sitting on the beach sucking on a mango? I don’t think we have the pieces to come up with an answer to this yet, so let’s just move on.
The cliffhanger left us with Jin caught in a bear trap with a Rousseau'd-out Claire pointing a gun at him. She had just shot Aldo and James, and looks ready to fire at Jin, but after Jin called out her name, it seem pretty clear to me that she recognized him. I really like the apparent parallels between Rousseau and Claire. Both left alone in the jungle, both missing children they’d given birth to on the Island, along with the history we witnessed between the two characters – it’s all another example of the cyclical nature of the Island. I love that kind of stuff. Plenty to dissect from a literary standpoint. I’m sure they’ll go more into this in the coming weeks. After all, it’s been three Island years since we’ve seen Claire, and if she’s been “claimed” like Dogen said, she could give us a peak into what the hell is going on with Sayid. We certainly have a lot of catching up to do with her.
Off the Island, we find ourselves in the midst of another story of Kate running from the law. But instead of the typical Kate flashback where she only laments the fact that she has once again put the lives of people she cares about at risk to further her selfish motives, we see Kate actually make amends to the person she has wronged. In this case, that person is Claire. After throwing her, pregnant and terrified, out of the taxi, Kate returns to offer her a ride to wherever it was she was going. Claire accepts, and the rest of the story follows the two women as Claire struggles with her pregnancy. I actually enjoyed having Claire around again. It was like back in Season 1 when she actually served a purpose to the story instead of just nagging Charlie and screaming about her baybaaaay. And throwing Ethan into the mix was a nice touch. I especially loved the “ I just don’t want to stick you with a needles if I don’t have to” line.
At first, I found some aspects of this story perplexing, even downright unbelievable. I mean, why would Kate return to help a total stranger? And why the hell would Claire accept a ride from a person who just threatened her at gunpoint? But the more I've thought about it, the more it seemed to me that there is something bigger going on in this alternate world that’s pushing these people - all of the 815ers - back together. I don't know if it's some sort of subconscious memory or destiny or what, but we've now seen several instances where our characters have given confused looks when confronted with people/moments/circumstances that resemble what we've seen transpire on the Island. In "LA X" Jack flashed such a look when talking with Desmond, and again when he bumped into Kate outside the bathroom. In this episode, Kate showed a similar sense of remembering when she took the stuffed whale out of Claire's purse, then again when Claire shouted out Aaron's name at the hospital. Then Claire explained that she said that name because it was as if "she knew it or something".
I refuse to believe these are all just coincidences. And I refuse to believe that the writers have just gotten sloppy. They're not going to undermine the credibility of these characters just to give us some cute situation where Kate and Claire get to spend some time with each other while 2008 Kate looks for Claire on the Island. Like I said before, there's something bigger going on here. By the end of this season, we'll be looking back on the choices these characters made and it will all make perfect sense.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Jack Shephard, Post-Jughead
Quick thoughts stemming from last night's episode, "What Kate Does".
The most interesting character in this episode was Jack. To me, he seems to have reached a turning point when it comes to his leadership, and that's a very promising thing as our characters find themselves in as dire of circumstances as we've seen since they first landed on the Island.
Let's start with the past. It's obvious that Jack's issues with overcommitment had little to do with his altrusitic motives. While I do believe Jack has plenty of selflessness and empathy inside him, and a true desire to help people, I think a lot of his actions in the effort to help his fellow survivors had more to do with what he thought he was supposed to do as the leader and protector of the group. He had to keep beating on Charlie's chest after Ethan hung him from the tree, he had to keep pouring his own blood into Boone because he felt that if he wasn't giving every ounce of himself toward helping these people - people that have placed their trust in him as the leader and protector of the group - then he wasn't fulfilling his duties and obligations to them. In the latter case, literally.
The Jack we've seen this season recognizes his limits. When he can't help Sayid, when he doesn't know what to do with the pill Dogen gives him, when he can't keep Kate from running, he can admit it to himself without taking to rash decisions. Maybe it's as simple as when he says, "I don't even trust myself," but I think there's more to it than that. When his Jughead plan didn't work, he began to realize that drastic measures aren't always the best way. He doesn't always have to go the extra thousand miles when the costs (to himself and those around him) outweigh the possibility of success. More importantly, he's beginning to see this new way makes him a more stable person and capable leader.
While I love the old Jack, I love this new Jack too. He needed to recognize his limits and let go when he has to. He needed to stop acting how he thought he was supposed to act and start doing what's best. He now sees that whatever the image he had before of what a leader was supposed to be led him to a lot of pain and caused a lot of problems. This new Jack will find redemption, and will become the leader his father told him he never could be. And I can't wait to see it happen.
The most interesting character in this episode was Jack. To me, he seems to have reached a turning point when it comes to his leadership, and that's a very promising thing as our characters find themselves in as dire of circumstances as we've seen since they first landed on the Island.
Let's start with the past. It's obvious that Jack's issues with overcommitment had little to do with his altrusitic motives. While I do believe Jack has plenty of selflessness and empathy inside him, and a true desire to help people, I think a lot of his actions in the effort to help his fellow survivors had more to do with what he thought he was supposed to do as the leader and protector of the group. He had to keep beating on Charlie's chest after Ethan hung him from the tree, he had to keep pouring his own blood into Boone because he felt that if he wasn't giving every ounce of himself toward helping these people - people that have placed their trust in him as the leader and protector of the group - then he wasn't fulfilling his duties and obligations to them. In the latter case, literally.
The Jack we've seen this season recognizes his limits. When he can't help Sayid, when he doesn't know what to do with the pill Dogen gives him, when he can't keep Kate from running, he can admit it to himself without taking to rash decisions. Maybe it's as simple as when he says, "I don't even trust myself," but I think there's more to it than that. When his Jughead plan didn't work, he began to realize that drastic measures aren't always the best way. He doesn't always have to go the extra thousand miles when the costs (to himself and those around him) outweigh the possibility of success. More importantly, he's beginning to see this new way makes him a more stable person and capable leader.
While I love the old Jack, I love this new Jack too. He needed to recognize his limits and let go when he has to. He needed to stop acting how he thought he was supposed to act and start doing what's best. He now sees that whatever the image he had before of what a leader was supposed to be led him to a lot of pain and caused a lot of problems. This new Jack will find redemption, and will become the leader his father told him he never could be. And I can't wait to see it happen.
Monday, February 8, 2010
LA X
Wow. Now that's how you start a season! Despite weeks of hype and 8 months of anticipation, "LA X" exceeded my expectations and absolutely knocked my socks off. I really don't think I could have enjoyed the premiere more. A perfect blend of "lostlostlost" revelations and deep, engaging character moments, "LA X" set the stage beautifully for a season that I'm more confident than ever will give me and Lost fans everywhere the entertaining, mind-blowing, and – ultimately – satisfying conclusion we have hoped for.
I'll set the stage - It's Wednesday morning. I was out late the night before at the election night party, didn't get home until after eleven. I wanted to enjoy this premiere - the last premiere - as much as possible, so I didn't want to entertain even the slightest chance that I'd be struggling to stay awake at any point in the episode. So I slept on and off for about 6 hours, woke up at 6:30, worked out, showered up, waited for the P’s to go to work, and finally settled onto the couch with a smoothie, my jug of water, and a protein bar, prepared to have my world thoroughly rocked.
And rocked it was. Let's start on the Island, and then work our way through the alternate timeline (I'll call that the "LAX" group).
As a result of the Jughead explosion, the folks who were stuck in 1977 were sent forward in time to their rightful place in 2007, joining Richard, Ben, and the rest of the passengers of Ajira 316. I wasn’t happy to see Juliet die, but after she blew up the bomb last year, I kind of assumed she was a goner anyway. And her death led to what will certainly be an intriguing conflict this season between Sawyer and Jack. Just like the good old days! Last year, during “The Incident”, I was happy to see Sawyer beat the crap out of Jack during their jungle brawl. Jack’s Jughead plan was pure craziness, and he really had that beat down coming to him. But this Jack knows what he did was wrong, and clearly feels horrible about it. It doesn’t seem like the usual Jack guilt either; he’s actually empathetic toward Sawyer and sad to see Juliet die, rather than the typical pain over the blow to his ego that marked his character the past couple seasons. A sign of growth, perhaps?
With Jack busy avoiding Sawyer, Hurley took center stage in the quest to save Sayid. As Sayid lay dying next to the Dharma van, Hurley was approached by Ghost Jacob, who told him he needed to take Sayid and the guitar case to the Temple in order to save his life. After a few minutes of uncertainty, Hurley sprung into action (as much as Hurley can “spring” into anything), saying he knew a way to fix Sayid. He wasn’t letting anyone stand in his way, either, especially Jack. It reminded me of another premiere, “The Beginning of the End”, when Hurley defiantly told Jack, “I’m not listening to you! I’m listening to Charlie,” as the group had to decide whether or not to trust the freighter people. Hurley has always been willing to go the extra mile to help his friends, and it’s nice to see him showing some guts once again.
As for our big cliffhanger, I’m of the opinion that we’re not dealing with possession by the Man in Black or Jacob, but that it really is Sayid, resurrected. First, the MIB was too busy hauling Richard into the jungle to slip into Sayid like that. And second, we have only seen the MIB impersonate dead people, never inhabit their corpses. So I’m throwing that out. As for Jacob, I apply the same reasoning as for the MIB – we’ve never seen him do such a thing. It would make some sense, I suppose, since he was the one who told Hurley to get Sayid to the Temple, but other than that, it’s a pretty flimsy hypothesis.
The interesting themes surrounding Sayid this episode were that of salvation and damnation. As he slid closer to death’s door, he wondered aloud about what would happen to him after he passed, lamenting all the people he’d tortured, those he murdered. He said he deserved whatever horrible fate befell him. There would be no redemption for Sayid Jarrah. But then, once he got to the Temple’s healing pool, we got hit with a truckload of Christ-like imagery. With the healing pool acting like a baptism, these new Others carried Sayid from the pool and laid him down on the cloth, his arms extended to the sides, as if nailed to a cross. The resurrection also points in an obvious direction. So maybe there is hope for poor Sayid. But does he deserve it? I’m not so sure. He has had his chances to stop all the torturing and the murder, but time and again he goes back to it – with Sawyer, with Ben, with Widmore’s assassins. It’s what he his. He’s a killer. And no baptism will change that about him. (As always, I reserve the right to completely change this opinion after a few more episodes. Who knows, maybe this resurrection will change everything.)
At the statue, we get our first “answer” of the season – the Man in Black is the Smoke Monster! And they gave it to us in an awesome way: after ripping apart Bram and his henchman as Smokey, he returns in Fake Locke form and casually says to Ben, “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” That’s gold, Jerry, gold!
The MIB sure has a swagger about him, doesn’t he? He’s projects a tremendous amount of confidence, and seems to be in complete control of every situation. He really seems to think he’s done the right thing by killing Jacob, because there was a theme of freedom and release about the things he said to Jacob’s followers– first telling Bram and the “bodyguards” they were free, then telling Richard it was good to see him without his chains. I take this to mean that the MIB subscribes to the “every man for himself” approach. He doesn’t recognize that, while these people might have been serving Jacob, they were doing so willingly because they wanted to be apart of something good and meaningful. The MIB sees any sort of service as nothing but imprisonment, assuming such people must have been manipulated the way he manipulated Locke all these years to serve “the Island”. If there was any doubt before that the MIB was the bad guy, it has been removed.
While we’re hanging around the statue, I’d just like to say that I’m having trouble watching the Benjamin Linus of the past two seasons. He’s completely emasculated. The cunning and manipulative leader is gone, replaced by a weak and pathetic pawn. He used to be eight moves ahead of everyone else, setting up long cons, getting his way at every turn, always in command of the situation and acting effectively and decisively to respond to any impending crisis. Now, he’s sitting on the beach with this woe-is-me attitude that makes him no better than Roger Workman. Season 3 Ben would smack the shit out of this guy. I don’t think we will ever see old Ben again, but I hope he gets a little bit of that edge back this season.
Now, on to the LAX group. There’s not a ton of story going on with these people yet. Rather, scoping for interactions that differ between this timeline and the original has become the most compelling aspect of it. I loved the scene where Boone and Locke have a little heat to heart, with Locke (I think) lying about being headed home after finishing a walkabout. Maybe the best line of the episode was Boone telling Locke, “This thing goes down, I’m sticking with you.” Just like the story where Kramer falls down in mud, ruining the very pants he was going to return, that’s perfect irony!
There were plenty of other brain-tingling moments with the LAX group – Jack saving Charlie and Charlie’s response afterward that he “Should’a let that happen man”, Kate escaping from the marshal with help from Sawyer and barging into a taxi already occupied by Claire, security detaining Jin as Sun sat back and watched – all of which were very entertaining. But maybe best of all was the scene between Jack and Locke, where both seemed to offer the other the hope they needed to get through a tough time – Jack with his missing father, John with his irreversible paralysis. That one capped off with another great line, with Jack telling Locke, “Nothing is irreversible.” It’s great just seeing these two acting cordially toward each other. I can’t wait to see more of them. If somehow Jack finds a way to fix Locke’s paralysis, I don’t think I’m going to be able to control myself. I’m already getting the tissues ready.
I'll admit, I was skeptical about the prospects of a reset. I did not at all like the idea of wiping away 5-seasons-worth of action and character development. But the format they’ve chosen has the opposite effect. By juxtaposing the "real" timeline against a world without the Island, they have taken the traditional "flashback/flash-forward" dynamic in a new and very exciting direction. It illuminates different aspects of the characters in a remarkably fresh way, especially considering we're going on the sixth season of the show and thought we knew everything there is to know about these people. Not only does it reinforce how "lost" each of these people were before coming to the Island, it highlights how far (or in some cases, not far) they have come as human beings. I absolutely love it.
Notably, it pushes the Island to the forefront, almost like another character. This LAX group has experienced life as if the Island never existed, and after the brief glimpses we've taken into this alternative world, we can already see a couple obvious differences. For one, Boone is returning to Los Angeles without Shannon. For another, Hurley now considers himself the luckiest guy in the world. And maybe most glaring, Desmond is on the freaking plane! I'm positive other differences will come to light soon as well. Maybe Sun can't speak English. Or Jin can. Or Sawyer never killed Duckett. The possibilities are endless. These changes will highlight how the destinies of each character have always been hopelessly intertwined with the Island, which will once again prove that it really is a special place.
Or not. The opposite side of that coin could be that the Island had no impact on the destinies of these characters at all. They will meet the same fate whether they had landed safely at LAX or had crashed on the Island. This could be a cool way to tie together the on-Island and LAX timelines, and tip the scales more toward the “fate” side of the “fate vs. free will” debate.
The events surrounding Sawyer are what put this idea in my head. "LAX" Sawyer appears to be the same sarcastic, angry conman that we saw in the first few seasons of flashbacks. He's spiteful, and lives by the code of "every man for himself". On the Island, we saw him move past those issues, but I fear that Juliet's death - and what Sawyer sees as Jack's responsibility for that death - might send him right back to the angry place he was pre-crash. Maybe he ends up angry and alone in each timeline. So Season 6 would be tracking how, like Sawyer, each character ultimately came to meet the same fate whether they crashed on the Island or not. Maybe Jack finds peace of mind and moves past his daddy issues in both cases. Or Kate actually learns how to settle down and be happy. I think that would be a pretty interesting story to see play out.
Most likely, I think this season will end up as a mix of both. Some characters will end up the same in both versions of the timeline. Others will end up in entirely different places, in both positive and negative ways, based on whether they went to the Island or not. Maybe Sayid will find nothing but damnation on the Island, but will live happily ever after with Nadia after landing in LAX. Kate could settle down and live a comfortable, stationary life on the Island, but live out the rest of her days stateside running for the law. Lost never likes to give definitive answers on the big questions like “science vs. faith” or “fate vs. free will”, and I don’t see them treading in that water now either.
No matter what, it’s sure to be a great final season of Lost. I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Until next week…
I'll set the stage - It's Wednesday morning. I was out late the night before at the election night party, didn't get home until after eleven. I wanted to enjoy this premiere - the last premiere - as much as possible, so I didn't want to entertain even the slightest chance that I'd be struggling to stay awake at any point in the episode. So I slept on and off for about 6 hours, woke up at 6:30, worked out, showered up, waited for the P’s to go to work, and finally settled onto the couch with a smoothie, my jug of water, and a protein bar, prepared to have my world thoroughly rocked.
And rocked it was. Let's start on the Island, and then work our way through the alternate timeline (I'll call that the "LAX" group).
As a result of the Jughead explosion, the folks who were stuck in 1977 were sent forward in time to their rightful place in 2007, joining Richard, Ben, and the rest of the passengers of Ajira 316. I wasn’t happy to see Juliet die, but after she blew up the bomb last year, I kind of assumed she was a goner anyway. And her death led to what will certainly be an intriguing conflict this season between Sawyer and Jack. Just like the good old days! Last year, during “The Incident”, I was happy to see Sawyer beat the crap out of Jack during their jungle brawl. Jack’s Jughead plan was pure craziness, and he really had that beat down coming to him. But this Jack knows what he did was wrong, and clearly feels horrible about it. It doesn’t seem like the usual Jack guilt either; he’s actually empathetic toward Sawyer and sad to see Juliet die, rather than the typical pain over the blow to his ego that marked his character the past couple seasons. A sign of growth, perhaps?
With Jack busy avoiding Sawyer, Hurley took center stage in the quest to save Sayid. As Sayid lay dying next to the Dharma van, Hurley was approached by Ghost Jacob, who told him he needed to take Sayid and the guitar case to the Temple in order to save his life. After a few minutes of uncertainty, Hurley sprung into action (as much as Hurley can “spring” into anything), saying he knew a way to fix Sayid. He wasn’t letting anyone stand in his way, either, especially Jack. It reminded me of another premiere, “The Beginning of the End”, when Hurley defiantly told Jack, “I’m not listening to you! I’m listening to Charlie,” as the group had to decide whether or not to trust the freighter people. Hurley has always been willing to go the extra mile to help his friends, and it’s nice to see him showing some guts once again.
As for our big cliffhanger, I’m of the opinion that we’re not dealing with possession by the Man in Black or Jacob, but that it really is Sayid, resurrected. First, the MIB was too busy hauling Richard into the jungle to slip into Sayid like that. And second, we have only seen the MIB impersonate dead people, never inhabit their corpses. So I’m throwing that out. As for Jacob, I apply the same reasoning as for the MIB – we’ve never seen him do such a thing. It would make some sense, I suppose, since he was the one who told Hurley to get Sayid to the Temple, but other than that, it’s a pretty flimsy hypothesis.
The interesting themes surrounding Sayid this episode were that of salvation and damnation. As he slid closer to death’s door, he wondered aloud about what would happen to him after he passed, lamenting all the people he’d tortured, those he murdered. He said he deserved whatever horrible fate befell him. There would be no redemption for Sayid Jarrah. But then, once he got to the Temple’s healing pool, we got hit with a truckload of Christ-like imagery. With the healing pool acting like a baptism, these new Others carried Sayid from the pool and laid him down on the cloth, his arms extended to the sides, as if nailed to a cross. The resurrection also points in an obvious direction. So maybe there is hope for poor Sayid. But does he deserve it? I’m not so sure. He has had his chances to stop all the torturing and the murder, but time and again he goes back to it – with Sawyer, with Ben, with Widmore’s assassins. It’s what he his. He’s a killer. And no baptism will change that about him. (As always, I reserve the right to completely change this opinion after a few more episodes. Who knows, maybe this resurrection will change everything.)
At the statue, we get our first “answer” of the season – the Man in Black is the Smoke Monster! And they gave it to us in an awesome way: after ripping apart Bram and his henchman as Smokey, he returns in Fake Locke form and casually says to Ben, “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” That’s gold, Jerry, gold!
The MIB sure has a swagger about him, doesn’t he? He’s projects a tremendous amount of confidence, and seems to be in complete control of every situation. He really seems to think he’s done the right thing by killing Jacob, because there was a theme of freedom and release about the things he said to Jacob’s followers– first telling Bram and the “bodyguards” they were free, then telling Richard it was good to see him without his chains. I take this to mean that the MIB subscribes to the “every man for himself” approach. He doesn’t recognize that, while these people might have been serving Jacob, they were doing so willingly because they wanted to be apart of something good and meaningful. The MIB sees any sort of service as nothing but imprisonment, assuming such people must have been manipulated the way he manipulated Locke all these years to serve “the Island”. If there was any doubt before that the MIB was the bad guy, it has been removed.
While we’re hanging around the statue, I’d just like to say that I’m having trouble watching the Benjamin Linus of the past two seasons. He’s completely emasculated. The cunning and manipulative leader is gone, replaced by a weak and pathetic pawn. He used to be eight moves ahead of everyone else, setting up long cons, getting his way at every turn, always in command of the situation and acting effectively and decisively to respond to any impending crisis. Now, he’s sitting on the beach with this woe-is-me attitude that makes him no better than Roger Workman. Season 3 Ben would smack the shit out of this guy. I don’t think we will ever see old Ben again, but I hope he gets a little bit of that edge back this season.
Now, on to the LAX group. There’s not a ton of story going on with these people yet. Rather, scoping for interactions that differ between this timeline and the original has become the most compelling aspect of it. I loved the scene where Boone and Locke have a little heat to heart, with Locke (I think) lying about being headed home after finishing a walkabout. Maybe the best line of the episode was Boone telling Locke, “This thing goes down, I’m sticking with you.” Just like the story where Kramer falls down in mud, ruining the very pants he was going to return, that’s perfect irony!
There were plenty of other brain-tingling moments with the LAX group – Jack saving Charlie and Charlie’s response afterward that he “Should’a let that happen man”, Kate escaping from the marshal with help from Sawyer and barging into a taxi already occupied by Claire, security detaining Jin as Sun sat back and watched – all of which were very entertaining. But maybe best of all was the scene between Jack and Locke, where both seemed to offer the other the hope they needed to get through a tough time – Jack with his missing father, John with his irreversible paralysis. That one capped off with another great line, with Jack telling Locke, “Nothing is irreversible.” It’s great just seeing these two acting cordially toward each other. I can’t wait to see more of them. If somehow Jack finds a way to fix Locke’s paralysis, I don’t think I’m going to be able to control myself. I’m already getting the tissues ready.
I'll admit, I was skeptical about the prospects of a reset. I did not at all like the idea of wiping away 5-seasons-worth of action and character development. But the format they’ve chosen has the opposite effect. By juxtaposing the "real" timeline against a world without the Island, they have taken the traditional "flashback/flash-forward" dynamic in a new and very exciting direction. It illuminates different aspects of the characters in a remarkably fresh way, especially considering we're going on the sixth season of the show and thought we knew everything there is to know about these people. Not only does it reinforce how "lost" each of these people were before coming to the Island, it highlights how far (or in some cases, not far) they have come as human beings. I absolutely love it.
Notably, it pushes the Island to the forefront, almost like another character. This LAX group has experienced life as if the Island never existed, and after the brief glimpses we've taken into this alternative world, we can already see a couple obvious differences. For one, Boone is returning to Los Angeles without Shannon. For another, Hurley now considers himself the luckiest guy in the world. And maybe most glaring, Desmond is on the freaking plane! I'm positive other differences will come to light soon as well. Maybe Sun can't speak English. Or Jin can. Or Sawyer never killed Duckett. The possibilities are endless. These changes will highlight how the destinies of each character have always been hopelessly intertwined with the Island, which will once again prove that it really is a special place.
Or not. The opposite side of that coin could be that the Island had no impact on the destinies of these characters at all. They will meet the same fate whether they had landed safely at LAX or had crashed on the Island. This could be a cool way to tie together the on-Island and LAX timelines, and tip the scales more toward the “fate” side of the “fate vs. free will” debate.
The events surrounding Sawyer are what put this idea in my head. "LAX" Sawyer appears to be the same sarcastic, angry conman that we saw in the first few seasons of flashbacks. He's spiteful, and lives by the code of "every man for himself". On the Island, we saw him move past those issues, but I fear that Juliet's death - and what Sawyer sees as Jack's responsibility for that death - might send him right back to the angry place he was pre-crash. Maybe he ends up angry and alone in each timeline. So Season 6 would be tracking how, like Sawyer, each character ultimately came to meet the same fate whether they crashed on the Island or not. Maybe Jack finds peace of mind and moves past his daddy issues in both cases. Or Kate actually learns how to settle down and be happy. I think that would be a pretty interesting story to see play out.
Most likely, I think this season will end up as a mix of both. Some characters will end up the same in both versions of the timeline. Others will end up in entirely different places, in both positive and negative ways, based on whether they went to the Island or not. Maybe Sayid will find nothing but damnation on the Island, but will live happily ever after with Nadia after landing in LAX. Kate could settle down and live a comfortable, stationary life on the Island, but live out the rest of her days stateside running for the law. Lost never likes to give definitive answers on the big questions like “science vs. faith” or “fate vs. free will”, and I don’t see them treading in that water now either.
No matter what, it’s sure to be a great final season of Lost. I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Until next week…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)