Lost Re-view: White Rabbit

Lost's third episode after the pilot focused on Jack's back story. It was written by Christian Taylor, a staff writer who left the show partway through season one. (In fact, this was his only official writing credit on Lost.) The episode broke some new ground for the show in several ways.

This was the first time an episode of the show began in a flashback. (But it did start with yet another close-up on an eye, this time that of a young schoolboy Jack.) I'm not sure there was an intentional statement on character being made in that, but it is a contrast it to the previous episodes about Kate and Locke. It seems to me to say that where those two have already turned over a new leaf, and who they are now is far more important than who they were before the Island, Jack is still rooted very much in the past.

This is also the first time that any character's flashbacks looked not just at the person's adult life, but went back to childhood. In fact, there are just as many flashback scenes featuring "young Jack" as "old Jack." And this makes sense too, because Jack is still carrying the weight of a lifetime of being told he's not good enough by his father, and of being pushed into fixing problems by his mother. (She's the one that sends him to Australia to retrieve his father.) Jack's character would remain true to this upbringing for essentially the entire run of the show, but here in particular it shows why he's so reluctant to accept any mantle of leadership that the other survivors would thrust upon him.

Even Locke is ready to appoint Jack the leader. The two have a meaningful discussion after Locke saves Jack's life (more on that a bit later), and despite Locke's clear skills, he knows that being a leader isn't as much about who knows the most as it is about who inspires others to follow. For his part, Jack repeats the drone that's been beaten into him all his life: "I'll fail. I don't have what it takes." He definitely wants to help, but he doesn't think he's good enough, and certainly doesn't want anyone asking him what to do.

Of course, Jack is even more clearly dogged by the criticisms of his father at this point in time, as it was in this episode that we learned his father had just died. Jack hadn't even been able to have the funeral service before crashing on the Island. As Locke said to Walt just a few episodes earlier: he's "having a bad month."

Which brings up an interesting connection I'd never consciously made before. Walt and Jack are two characters who'd both lost a parent immediately before arriving on the Island. And Walt clearly had no problems befriending an adult -- even by this point in the story, he'd started to bond with Locke, and a bit with Sun (who wasn't even speaking his language). It's interesting to me that the writers never would put Walt and Jack together when the two had such a similar background.

But enough of the past. There was plenty going on in the "present" in this episode too. The episode begins with a previously unknown castaway named Joanna getting caught in a riptide and drowning at sea, despite Boone and Jack's efforts to save her. For Jack, the failure gives him more to beat himself up about, accelerating him down his path of self-doubt, and setting up the episode well for him. Yet it kicks off an interesting subplot for Boone as well.

Boone swims partway out to rescue this Joanna, then ends up needing rescuing himself. He's emasculated right out of the gate, particularly when you recall that in the pilot he said that he was a lifeguard. Other survivors are settling into their "roles," and he doesn't really have one. The role he thinks he should have is being usurped by Jack. And so he steals what's left of the group's water to horde and dispense out as he thinks best.

Boone wasn't around for Jack's "blank slate" speech a few episodes earlier, but it's clear that he sees this situation as a way to start over too. No one in his life has ever really taken him seriously, least of all Shannon, but he wants to start fresh here. And being young and impulsive as he is, it seems he thinks that wanting to lead should be enough of a qualification to make him the leader. A tough day for Boone.

Several important character pairings were developed further in this episode. Hurley and Charlie are buddied up again, this time in the simple act of looking to Jack for leadership. Charlie and Claire get a lot closer too, when he takes it upon himself to care for her after she collapses of dehydration on the beach.

Then of course, there's the pairing of Jack and Locke, the two men who would come to define the "science vs. faith" conflict on the show. It's fascinating to see the relationship begin here, because it begins with Locke telling Jack straight out that he's not a man of faith. At least, he says that he was a very practical man before arriving on the Island. Of course, we know of the miraculous healing that has happened to Locke, and it's understandable how that could bring out a sudden "conversion."

Jack confides that he's chasing someone on the Island who can't really be there. (Leaving out who it is.) Locke is willing to believe that this might not be a hallucination at all, and makes the very prophetic supposition: "What if everything that happened here happened for a reason?" Much, much later in the show, when we'd learn about the guiding hand of Jacob that picked out all these people to be here on the Island, we'd see that's exactly the case.

Locke also says he's looked into "the eye of the Island," and that what he saw was "beautiful." One must assume he's referring to his encounter with the Smoke Monster in the previous episode. It's an interesting reaction. Later, we'd learn that assuming Smokey doesn't just kill you outright, you see images from your past inside the smoke. If this is what Locke saw too, then it's clear he viewed this as a purging experience. He has a lot of bad things in his past, from being swindled by his father, put in a wheelchair by him, losing his love Helen, and finding constant frustration and humiliation ever since. To be shown all of that and then to call it "beautiful?" Well, the only interpretation I have for that is that Locke now considers that part of his life over. He's moved on, and Smokey's vision helped him compartmentalize all that and cast it off.

Speaking of Smokey, this is the first time we really see him adopting a dead man's form (for more than a few frames, at a distance). Why the different approach with Jack as opposed to Locke? I think you could interpret it a couple different ways.

One, you could assume that like a siren calling a ship onto the rocks, Smokey was just looking to get Jack killed. We know that the "rules" say he can't do it directly, but indirectly? During the chase "Christian" leads Jack on, Jack takes a running plunge off a cliff, barely catches himself, and would have died if Locke hadn't shown up to save him.

Two, you could draw inferences from the discussion Jacob and the Man in Black have later about a person's nature. (Well, technically, they have the discussion much earlier. Details.) We're basically told late in the series that bringing people to the Island wasn't always about looking for a "candidate" to replace Jacob. It was first part of an ongoing game between the two brothers to examine whether people were fundamentally pure or corruptible. Take a self-doubting man with deep Daddy issues, as Jack is, and run around pretending to be his dead Dad? That could simply be Smokey's idea of "fun," trying to get to Jack and prove his side of the argument. (He doesn't do this to the equally father-tormented Locke because his father is still alive, and Smokey can only take the form of dead people.)

But I think a third scenario the most likely. The Man in Black is playing a very long term game. He knows who all the candidates are, and he knows he has to get them all killed. While they're all still weak and disoriented, one good strategy for that is "divide and conquer." He leads Jack to the cave in the hopes that exactly what does happen will happen -- that the survivors will fight over whether to move to the cave or remain on the beach, and that this will drive a wedge between them.

If you want to get a little more mystical with it -- and Lost is nothing if not mystical -- then you might also consider that there are places of power and significance all over the Island. Not just the Source that Jacob is tasked with protecting, but places like the mostly-destroyed statue in which Jacob resides, the temple with its healing waters, and the lighthouse. Similarly, you could assume that some places on the Island are imbued with strong negative energy, and what place could be darker than the very spot where Smokey killed Mother thousands of years before? If there's any place on the Island where just the bad mojo in the air could work to corrupt a person, I'd believe the cave could be it.

Naturally, this is all stretching backward to make things fit. The simple truth about why the cave was created at this point in the life of the show? The production needed a recurring location where indoor filming could take place, so they wouldn't have to be out on location so much. (I know... how fun is that?)

There are a few other small moments of interest in this episode. Actor John Terry appears as Christian Shephard for the first of 19 episodes. (I'm sure he never imagined when he landed the role here that it would become such a regular gig.) Sawyer is established as a bookworm for the first time, as we see him lounging on the beach reading Watership Down. Claire tells Kate she's interested in astrology. (I think this was laying track to get to her upcoming flashback episode, where we find out she went to a fortune teller for advice about her unborn child.) Michael Giacchino introduces a new musical theme that would often recur to underscore moments about "life and death." Jack caps a speech with a line that would resonate in future episodes, even leading to the title of one: "If we can't live together, we're gonna die alone."

And Charlie says he can't swim. Wait, huh? We later saw that he learned as a child, and he even claims to have won a championship. Not to mention the whole heroic act of swimming down to the Looking Glass station at the end of season three. I guess that means he was lying here. Lying about being able to swim when someone else was drowning in the ocean. Hmmm. Let's say he'd just taken a hit from his heroin stash off-screen two minutes earlier and quietly move along.

In all, I'd call White Rabbit a good episode, though I do feel like the writers were already doing a pretty good job of showing us who Jack was just through his behavior on the Island, even before we got to see these flashbacks. I'd rate the episode a B.