Lost Re-view: House of the Rising Sun

When watching Lost the first time around, I remember making the assumption that an early episode was surely going to have flashbacks centered on Charlie. Jack, Kate, and Charlie were the main characters focused on in the pilot. Actor Dominic Monaghan was (besides Matthew Fox) really the only actor on the show that most people would recognize from somewhere else. (The Lord of the Rings trilogy.) And this episode opened up with a "previously on Lost" that spent a whole minute walking us through everything we'd seen so far about Charlie's drug addiction. "Okay, here we go," I thought.

And then what? An episode centered on Sun? Huh? But the thing is, I actually really liked the episode.

From little snippets I've read here and there over the years, I get the impression that most people were indifferent at best to the Sun/Jin storyline on the show. And while I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I looked forward to Sun/Jin episodes, I found I always enjoyed them when they came along. They just had a really sweet-but-tragic history (and, we now know, a sweet-but-tragic ending to their tale). The heart was always strong in a Sun/Jin episode, and I always found that to make for a satisfying hour of television.

This first Sun episode set the course for that. It was written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a writer who was on the show throughout the first two seasons. The director, however, obviously didn't work out as far as the producers were concerned -- it's someone who never worked again on the show. Whatever conflicts may have arisen there, they stayed behind the scenes. I didn't really perceive any departure from the norm while watching this episode again.

It opens with a tight close-up on Sun's eye, of course; the writers had decided they really liked that device, and were perhaps starting to overuse it. (They'd also latched onto the closing musical montage. As in the last episode, Hurley's Walkman concludes the hour.)

The on-Island story focuses on Jin throwing a hissy fit because Michael has found Sun's father's watch in the wreckage and just started wearing it. This may be a vehicle for Sun's flashbacks, but this aspect of the story is actually far more revealing of Jin and Michael's characters.

For his part, Jin makes absolutely no effort to try to communicate with Michael and explain the problem. He just hauls off and football-tackles/sucker-punches Michael while he's hanging out in the surf. (Fantastic stunt, by the way. It looks damn painful.) Knowing his full back story now, we can see that Jin is so conditioned by working for Sun's father that kicking some ass is his first (and only) instinct. And if he's thinking of it consciously at all, he probably figures that doing something manly like that is the way to show Sun he loves her.

Michael isn't much on the high ground either. We don't really need his back story to understand his reaction -- he tells us right in this episode. He assumes it's racially motivated hatred, and starts ranting and raving about that. Only when Walt innocently questions him about what he's been saying does he pull up short. (And strange that it doesn't even occur to Michael that Jin's anger might have something to do with Michael seeing Sun topless just a few episodes earlier!) Not only does this reaction tell us something of Michael's character, but it's just an interesting thread to see on a television show: a story about racism that features two non-Caucasian characters as the focal points.

It's interesting to pit Jin and Michael against one another, because at this point in the show, they might be the least likable characters on it. (Though Shannon is a strong contender.) Do I root for the neglectful and emotionally abusive husband or the absentee father who has not just chip on his shoulder, but all of Nestle's Toll House? Do I feel sorry for Jin when Sayid handcuffs him to airplane wreckage and leaves him out all day in the scorching sun? (Poor Jin would have that handcuff on his wrist for more than a season after this.) Do I feel bad for Michael that he was attacked for really no provocation at all? It really makes you think. (Although in retrospect, I feel that Michael remains a giant tool for his entire run on the show, where Jin fully redeems himself.) Of course by the end of the season, Michael and Jin will become "raft buddies" and work out their differences.

For more insight on Sun, you have to turn to the flashbacks in this episode. They take us back to when she and Jin were a young couple in love, and it's almost jarring to see it after the episodes so far, in which Jin seems so cold. Sun really loves Jin in the flashbacks, and to see the man he is there, you don't have to ask why.

Then Jin asks Sun's father's permission to marry, and goes to work for the man. You can tell from Sun's reaction that she knows this is a bad idea, even though she doesn't come out and say so. She knows that her father will poison the things she loves about Jin, though I suspect even she didn't realize just how much. The picture was incomplete for us here the first time around. We only get Sun's reaction to go on; we don't even see her father this episode, much less get to really see what a bad man he truly is.

The flashbacks cover a period of several years. (With a very clever writing device of a puppy turning into a dog to tell us this without having to state it in dialogue.) Jin does go "dark side." He even seems to resent Sun more than her father for this turn of events. Is this because she knew and didn't warn him strongly enough? Or does it just seem he resents her more because again, we're not actually meeting the father here?

So Sun plans an escape and learns English. (Incidentally, this is teased well by having a friend refer to her "lessons" in the flashback just prior to revealing it on the Island.) I was surprised the first time around, for sure. Thinking about it in retrospect, I appreciate it even more as a clever bit of story construction. In the long run, after her secret got out, it made Jin dependent on her to get by, where he would have wanted the situation completely reversed. "Fish out of water" is always good narrative turf.

The last flashback has Sun there in the airport in Sydney. (Incidentally, it's set up to be the same flashback we saw of Jack in the previous episode. Last time, we saw only Jin standing in the background. This time, the camera pans to reveal Sun too.) It's the most powerful emotional beat in the episode, where Jin shows his tender and caring side again for just a brief moment. We see he's not beyond redemption, and see why Sun doesn't carry through on her plan to leave him. It's a great story arc.

So why all the set-up with Charlie in the re-cap? Because most of the on-Island drama this episode revolves around him. His addiction is so bad this episode that Jack only has to say the word "drugs" (in reference to medicine that might be found in people's luggage), and he needs to head out for a fix.

This week, Locke catches wise to what's going on with Charlie. I remember the first time around thinking that at some point, Charlie's drugs would run out, and there would be a reckoning. Instead, this episode makes the stronger dramatic choice and has Charlie agree to give what's left of his stash to Locke. Rather than have Charlie's supply simply run out, it's much better to put a character between him and the drugs, and that's where Locke fits in this episode.

Still, the way Locke goes about it is fairly weird. He tells Charlie that the Island itself wants the "sacrifice" of the drugs, to in turn reward Charlie with the return of his guitar. Locke is understandably a big believer in the spiritual nature of the Island, since it restored his ability to walk. And yet to foist all of this stuff on the Island as an entity seems like mumbo-jumbo. The truth, we learn, is that Locke has already located Charlie's guitar in the wreckage, and he plans to reveal it himself just as soon as Charlie hands over the stash. Locke acts like the Monster itself led him out into the jungle and said "look! guitar!", when the truth seems mundane to me. There's plenty of weirdness afoot on the Island without imbuing it with more.

What's interesting is why Locke latches on to Charlie to be his first recruit into the Island mysticism. You'd think he'd have had more of a go at Jack last episode, what with Jack actually seeing things that might not be there. But I think that Jack didn't appear to be as "broken" to Locke. Locke really thinks of the man he was before the Island as another person, and sees himself now as transformed. So he looks for someone in need of a clear transformation to be his first Island convert. That's Charlie, who needs to pull out of addiction.

And maybe there's just a tiny, tiny element of being star-struck too. After all, Locke reveals to us that he actually recognizes Charlie as the bass player from Drive Shaft, and knows both their albums. Man, Locke must be way into music. I know I for one can't think of too many bands where I'd recognize one of the musicians other than the lead singer if I saw the person in a completely different context.

The episode's other big plot line involves Jack trying to convince people to move to the cave he's discovered. Hand in hand with this plot is a lot of pushing Jack and Kate together as a couple -- there's a lot of flirting between them this episode (which Charlie calls "verbally copulating"). Kate asks Jack point blank in one scene if he's checking her out. She asks him about his tattoos. (Did the writers actually have it in their heads to tell a story about those tattoos some day, or were they just trying to acknowledge that they weren't covering up the ones that actor Matthew Fox really has?) There's another scene where Kate and Jack both strip off their clothes gratuitously after being chased by really fake looking CG bees. Even Hurley gets a little high-school-gossip-like and excited over this possible romantic pairing. (A little odd, given that he was so worried about her criminal history a few episodes earlier.)

But of course, the point of pushing Jack and Kate together is so that it lands more dramatically at the end of the episode when Jack relocates to the caves but Kate refuses to go with him. And it's not the only separation between them in the episode either. When Kate asks Jack how he found the caves, he evasively answers "luck" rather than reveal anything of the truth. When Jack comes to Kate at the end of the episode and now wants to know what crime she committed, she brushes him off and says "you had your chance to know."

Jack also clashes with Sayid this episode. Following Jack's experience seeing his father, he's changed. Before, he was all short term, wanting to squander any and all medicine they had on hand to save the dying marshal. Now he wants to dig in for the long term by relocating to the cave.

Sayid, however, want's nothing to do with that. "I'm not going to admit defeat," he says. With full knowledge of the character, we know he's got to be thinking of Nadia. Sayid has a very important reason to get to off the Island, and so he can't even entertain the notion of doing anything other than staying on the beach to keep looking for rescue. He even goes so far as to recruit people to stay on the beach like it's a cause. And you can go one by one through all the characters and consider what it says about them that they choose the beach or the cave. (Well... most of the characters, anyway. This is actually the first episode that doesn't feature the entire cast, with Shannon and Boone having no dialogue, and Claire not appearing at all.)

One more beat is worthy of mention: this is the episode where the skeletons are discovered in the cave. We wouldn't learn who they are until we were about as close to the end of the series as this episode is to the beginning. (In fact, that later episode would include a clip from this one to remind us.) Instead, Locke dubs them the "Adam and Eve" skeletons, introducing some religious imagery to underscore the faith elements that would be so important in the series.

I'm pretty sure the writers didn't know this was Mother and the Man in Black's mortal remains either, or else they probably wouldn't have had Jack talk about them appearing to be at least "40 or 50 years old." (Heh.) But they were clever enough to place the bag there, containing one white bead and one black bead. It connected later on with the story of Jacob and the Man in Black. But even here, just a few episodes in, it was a nice callback to Locke's backgammon speech from the pilot.

I'd actually say that all these scattered on-Island plot threads made for the weakest Island story of any episode so far. But the powerful Sun/Jin flashback story really brought the episode back to higher ground. I'd call it a B+ overall.

Ah, but before I close, I have to take a detour for another one of the "Missing Pieces" mobisodes. (The last one for about half the season.) Taking place during the events of House of the Rising Sun is a scene dubbed "Arzt and Crafts." The self-important teacher Arzt, who we'd meet at the end of season one, inserts himself into the cave vs. beach argument of this episode, going to Hurley, Michael, Sun, and Jin, and trying to encourage them to relocate. He recants comedically at the end, when we hear the noises of the Monster off in the jungle.

There are two problems with the mobisode. One is that it provides nothing new or worthwhile to the Lost narrative. We already know that Arzt is a buffoon. If you really like watching that, then I suppose it's fun to get one more scene showing it. I found it redundant.

Secondly, not to become a continuity tyrant, but when you watch House of the Rising Sun fresh, and then immediately watch Arzt and Crafts, you can't help but notice that the mobisode doesn't fit. In the actual Lost episode, Jin is handcuffed to the wreckage, then Sayid approaches Michael about not going to the cave, then Jin is released. Here in this scene, Michael acts like he hasn't heard anything about the cave, and yet there sits Jin with the handcuff on his wrist.

And why are Jin and Michael sitting so close to each other here anyway? They've just had a massive disagreement and still aren't cooled down about it. Not only does Michael tolerate Jin's presence in this scene, he actually jumps in and defends Jin and Sun when Arzt starts shouting at them (as if that would make them understand English).

Watching this mobisode at the actual point in time it's intended to occur, you realize that the only character it really treats correctly is Arzt. And even then, it only serves to remind the audience one more time, "isn't Arzt such a goober?" This is another mobisode to be skipped.