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.