Lost Re-view: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

More than any Lost episode I've re-watched so far, my opinion of this episode has changed dramatically since seeing it the first time around. There were a lot of factors muscling in on this hour the first time around that didn't weigh in all these years later.

This was the first episode to "repeat" a character in the flashbacks. Jack had already had an episode, and now just six episodes later, here he was getting another one. At the time, this really disappointed me. There were still characters who hadn't been delved into at all -- Michael and Walt, Shannon and Boone, and most importantly/annoyingly of all, Hurley. Why "waste" more time on Jack?

Of course, when you've seen all of Lost, you have all the answers about those other characters. You also have an understanding of how important Jack is to the narrative of Lost. If you had to argue that Lost was somehow one person's story (not that I would), that one person would be Jack. There could be no one more deserving of the "first second flashback."

The other albatross around the neck of this episode, the first time around, was the climactic scene where Charlie is found hanged in the jungle by Ethan, ostensibly dead. Well, actually dead, I suppose; Jack manages to revive him. I'll get back around to discussing the scene itself a bit later. Right now, I want to just focus on the context in which this scene -- and episode -- originally aired.

Lost had been running for around three months at this point. My recollection is that there was a lot of talk in entertainment media about the level of actual danger on the show. Sure, there were polar bears, monsters, a crazy jungle lady, and more... but the argument was that none of the characters were ever really in danger, because you knew as a TV viewer that none of them were actually going to die.

Foolishly, in my opinion, the show's creators decided to engage on this point. "We mean business," they'd say in interviews. "There is danger. We could kill a character at any time. In fact, I think we're going to before the end of the season." And thus began an unfortunate sort of "shell game" that existed outside the actual narrative of Lost, not actually helping the storytelling itself, in my opinion.

So along comes this episode, where we find dead Charlie hanging from a tree. And with Dominic Monaghan and Matthew Fox as the only two actors on the show who were widely known at this point in time, my reaction to this scene had nothing to do with the actual drama or emotion of it. I simply thought, "yeah right, as if they would ever kill Charlie on this show." (Yes, I see the irony.) Even as the scene played out uncomfortably long and it seemed like maybe Charlie really was dead, I think I just wouldn't let the emotion in. I didn't want to be "taken" by the writers trying to pull a fast one on me. Which they were here, though I think that's beside the point. The point is that when you actually know the whole tale of Lost, and you're not trying to be "more clever than the writers" as you watch this episode, you can relax and simply enjoy it for what it is.

So what is it?

Well, it's the fastest-starting episode of Lost since the pilot, for one thing. No quiet introspection. No close-ups of eyes. Things start in full panic in the wake of the last episode. Where's Claire?! Where's Charlie?! Where's Ethan?! Jack wants to charge off to the rescue, and is soon clashing with Locke. Locke blames himself for hunting with Ethan but not seeing him for who he truly was, yet he still wants wants to return to the caves first. He wants to recruit more help for the search, and he wants Jack to stay behind so that the group's doctor is kept out of harm's way. "Be the doctor, let me be the hunter," he says. Not that Jack is about to give up.

The two do find more help from Kate and Boone. For Boone, this is the beginning of his forging a strong bond with Locke. (I suppose you could say it's the beginning of the end for him.) Locke admires Boone's determination in this episode, even as he dazzles with his tracking skills and his ability to predict the beginning of a rain storm. (And revel in it.)

Boone reveals his work for a subsidiary of his mother's business. Locke tells Boone the truth about his job at a box company before coming to the Island -- though Boone doesn't believe it. The two trade banter, including a humorous exchange about the fates of red-shirt crewmen on Star Trek. (To Locke, Kirk "sounds like a piss-poor captain.")

And of course, the episode culminates in the two of them first discovering The Hatch. I use capitalization because this was capital-Important, the only thing about Lost anyone seemed to be talking about from this episode's December air date all the way until next September's season two premiere in which we finally got to see inside. (Nine months? Holy crap!)

Locke gets more offers to help, from Walt (who wants to use Vincent to track) and Michael, but gives them the "oh, that's nice dear" treatment. This sends Michael on another one of his pissy rage fits, though I really don't understand why. The last thing I remember between Locke and Michael, Locke had brought Vincent back, but was happy to let Michael take the credit for doing it. What's up with Michael that that's suddenly all gone sour? In any case, this irrational anger makes us like Michael still less. But it does prompt Walt to defend Locke to his father, making us like him a little more.

Also a mark in Walt's plus column is a fun scene where he plays backgammon with Hurley, and displays an uncanny ability to call he dice rolls he needs. Hurley says that no one is that lucky, making me wonder briefly if the writers hadn't decided yet that his back story was that he'd won the lottery. But then as Hurley walks off and Walt complains "you owe me $20,000," the tossed off "you'll get it" makes me certain that they actually did.

Walt's kind of a busy little bee this episode, because he also has a great scene with Sawyer. In discussing Ethan's absence from the flight manifest, Sawyer suggests "maybe he lied about his name." Walt zings him without realizing: "It's stupid to lie about your name." He then talks of the possibility of others (or Others) on the Island, which Sawyer shoots down as the product an active imagination, ironically laying out the real facts of the entire scenario: that someone from a group of natives snuck into camp to kidnap a pregnant lady.

But the real meat of the episode is the Jack storyline. He's beating himself up over not believing Claire when she said someone was trying to get her. It's a bit of a stretch, but he's equating this "failure to do the right thing" to the flashback we see, in which he also failed to do the right thing. We see firsthand in this hour how powerful a motivator guilt is for Jack.

Jack's first flashback episode had a casually tossed away line about the falling out between father and son, that Jack had somehow done something to his father. Here we get to see exactly what that was. His father had performed a surgery while under the influence of alcohol. (And not for the first time.) An avoidable mistake had cost the patient her life, even though Jack showed up to make a futile effort to save her.

The "right thing" would have been to reveal his father's condition immediately, but it takes the full episode, and a series of very emotional flashbacks before that happens. We see Christian try all sorts of tactics from bargaining to intimidation to apologies, even trotting out "I was only hard on you so you'd be great," before Jack finally sees what he must do. The straw that breaks the camel's back is when he hears the woman who died in surgery was pregnant. Jack tells the hospital what his father did, and we've already basically seen how that ends up for Christian a short while later. I do have to ask though, was Jack really doing this because it was the "right thing?" Or was the larger part of him doing it just to get back at his Dad? You might want to think the former of the noble protagonist, but the title of the episode makes me suspect more the latter.

Ultimately, the big moment of the episode happens on the Island, and it's the scene I talked of earlier: finding Charlie hanging dead in the trees, strung up by Ethan. Jack fights to revive him, and it's a powerful scene. It's set up by the opening flashback in which Jack failed to save a life. It's brutal and violent, with Jack pounding away at Charlie's chest time after time. It's photographed perfectly, punctuated with a brilliant wide shot in which Jack, Kate, and the lifeless Charlie are all insect-tiny in the frame. Michael Giacchino plays the emotion for everything it's worth in his score. Kate walks away in tears, giving up, and even knowing the outcome, I believe her.

In short, without all that "will they kill someone" crap from the real world intruding on the drama, this might be the most emotional scene yet in Lost. I completely failed to appreciate this the first time around, but applaud it this time. It's a triumph for the actors, a triumph for writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (whose previous effort was House of the Rising Sun), and a triumph for first time Lost director Stephen Williams (who would go on to be a regular director for the show through the fifth season).

Still, despite wonderful scenes, the episode is held back a bit for being essentially incomplete. The on-Island story doesn't resolve, with Charlie rescued but Claire still missing at the end of the episode. And though we maybe didn't know it the first time around, the flashback story is somewhat incomplete as well, between the further information we'd get on Jack and his father and the later revelations about how and why Christian got from this moment of disgrace to his final fate in Australia.

But overall, this is really just a solid episode of Lost. I rate it an A-.