Join me and fellow conspiracy theorists Rajan Khanna and Bridget McGovern for this week’s Lost discussion as we follow Hurley and Jack on another jaunt through the Jungle of Daddy Issues. Spoilers abound!
Theresa: I got very excited when I thought this would be a Hurley-centric episode, but, alas, we’re back on Jack. The Hurley/Miles geek lovefest will have to wait. Jack’s actually grown on me after a waning interest around season 2. I liked broken, bearded flashforward Jack. Being on the Island turns him back into a kinda whiny control freak, but when Jacob told Hurley that Jack needs to find out why he’s on the Island himself makes me anticipate the day Jack can get over his approval-seeking hero complex and become a real leader. I think Jack can have a great resolution this season, if played right.
Still wish he didn’t smash the lighthouse mirrors though. Jerk move! I wanted to see other castaways’ special mirror images. At least Hurley – c’mon, he was standing right there! I’m enjoying the way the numbers are being tied into the last season.
Now that we’re flashing sideways, seeing Jack with a kid and a semblance of uneasy happiness, I wonder if the people on the Island will have to choose between the two realities and which one to make completely true. These Earth-2 lives are lies. Their memories are false. We still don’t know what the Earth-2 people are about yet, really. Only Jack seems to realize something is amiss. When will these characters start making connections and what will be motivating them then? I don’t want the Island and everything that happened to those people to stay buried underwater. I’m rooting for the characters that survived the plane crash and had to work for redemption. (Except for Kate. She still sucks.)
Bridget: I really could have used a less Jack-centric episode this week; I understand that he’s Extremely Important (seriously, guys—we get it), but he’s just not that compelling a character, and his shtick has worn pretty thin. It’s nice to see him working out his issues and reconnecting with his son (thereby saving the world from another generation’s worth of insufferable, Shephard brand “I was never good enough for my father” moping), although it didn’t really answer very many questions. So he’s got an emo, Chopin-playing son—did we really need to spend half an episode on resolving Jack’s daddy issues at this point in the game?
Back on the Island, Hurley’s Indiana Jones and Obi Wan references go a long way toward mitigating Jack’s tortured pouting. Hurley’s become such a perfect stand-in for the Lost fanbase that I keep expecting him to bust through the fourth wall like the Kool-Aid Man one of these days and just start winking at the camera. In fact, I would have actually preferred that to watching him deal with Jack’s hissy fits—Island Jack is basically a big, boring drama queen trapped in the body of a Ken doll (he even has Ken doll hair—check out that part gouged into his skull! But I digress.)
The lighthouse fascinated me (it was so Myst)—plus, more names! I noticed that “Linus” at 117 and “Rousseau” at 20 were both crossed out; like Theresa, I would have liked to see it used as more than a setpiece for another of Jack’s temper tantrums. Clearly, it’s all part of Jacob’s master plan; was it just me, or does his relationship with Hurley seem like a repetition of the role Richard Alpert seemed to play on the Island until recently? He’s acting directly through Hurley to manipulate others, but without revealing his larger design.
Meanwhile, how creepy is axe-wielding, baby-crazy Feral Claire? She has a terrifying, Tim Burton-looking skull-baby in a crib, in case you guys missed it: that’s grade-A crazy right there. But it’s interesting to note the distinction she draws between “my dad” and “my friend.” She knows that Smoky Locke isn’t really John, but believes that her father was genuinely present; what does that tell us about Christian Shephard’s appearances on the Island? Also, did anyone else want Jin to tell her that a dingo ate her baby, or was that just me? Maybe Hurley will get around to it next week.
Rajan: I have to say that after last week’s episode I was a little disappointed with this week’s episode. Part of that was the focus on bland angsty Jack, but I think it was more that after an episode where we finally started getting answers, we were back to treading water for a week. As Bridget said, if the message was “Jack is important”, then we got it. Seasons ago. The lighthouse, or rather what was in the lighthouse, was the only real revelation of the episode. The rest seemed to be mining the past, Jack reliving his glory days of whininess, and the Earth-2 sideways jaunt that I agree seemed to take too long for what it was.
Still, the Crazy Claire parts were interesting. And Kate went away when told. And some interesting questions were raised. Who is the mother of Jack’s kid, do we think? Anyone we know? What IS really up with Christian Shephard – as Bridget mentioned he wasn’t the same as “Smoky Locke” or Smocke as I will now call him. And he did disappear from the coffin as we were reminded. Will we ever see Desmond again? And should we still trust Jacob given all his manipulations?
I expect that next week Crazy Claire, Smocke and Jin will bust back into the Temple and all hell will break loose. And we may discover what’s up with milquetoast Sayid. And maybe Dogen will bust out some serious fighting moves. Hopefully with a samurai sword. I just hope that with so few episodes left before the end, that they start running wild with the revelations. Because a couple more episodes like this and we’re going to be verging on BSG territory.
Theresa DeLucci is a graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Chizine. She is fully supportive of a Miles/Hurley spinoff show.
Rajan Khanna is a graduate of the 2008 Clarion West Writers Workshop and his fiction has appeared in Shimmer Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn with his two cats, Chloe and Muppet.
Bridget McGovern is a lit nerd, a film geek, and a complete pop culture junkie. She enjoys David Bowie, roller coasters, and The Annotated Alice more than anyone probably should.
