Lost Re-view: Raised by Another

The Claire-centric episode from the first season of Lost was one I remember really liking the first time around. I loved the whole spoooooooky vibe of the psychic who foresaw the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, and deliberately put Claire on it so she'd be forced to raised her unborn son herself. Kind of X-Filesy. Good stand-alone X-Files, not lame mythology-superplot X-Files.

But I have to say that the episode, while still fun, doesn't hold up that well on a second viewing. With so many of the episodes to this point grounded in a strong, emotional back story for a character, this story's emphasis on a Twilight Zone-ish twist rather than emotion makes it feel less evolved. (Though I confess, anyone whose life experience includes pregnancy or single parenthood might challenge me on just how emotional this hour really is.)

Perhaps ominiously, this episode was both written and directed by two people who would never work on Lost again. Writer (and consulting producer) Lynne E. Litt left the show halfway through the season. And the stories I've read about director Marita Grabiak, who had worked for J.J. Abrams before on Alias, basically say she was a stubborn force who clashed with executive producer Jack Bender, arguing endlessly to get her way in one particular scene. (She didn't.)

The scene in question is actually the very first one of the episode. It brings back the "eye close-up" motif, on Claire. But it's a misdirect; we're really inside a nightmare she's having about someone coming after her unborn baby. The director wanted to shoot this in black and white, for reasons I can't begin to understand. Maybe she was taking a cue from the moment in which Dream Locke looks up at Claire with one solid white eyeball and one solid black eyeball (a cool moment -- a callback to the stones found on the skeletons, and the backgammon metaphor of the pilot). Who knows?

There are other cool moments in the dream, though. Locke draws a card off a tarot deck, and it makes the sound of a knife being drawn from a sheath. He alludes to how "everyone pays the price now," for Claire shirking her responsibility. And then Claire wakes up with the most killer death shriek I've ever heard on television. This must have been filmed in one take; I can't imagine Emilie de Ravin had a voice afterwards.

On the Island, the story is primarily about Jack's concern that Claire will trigger an early labor due to anxiety, played against Claire's efforts to convince anyone that someone really is after her. A little time is spent on addressing why a woman in her third trimester was allowed to board a plane, as well as continuing the "at the caves vs. on the beach" argument (Shannon glibly and grimly refers to the former as "the rape caves").

Mainly though, it's a chance for Charlie and Claire to become closer. Not that she goes for it right away. Nervous because of her dreams, Claire pulls away at first. She recoils even more when Charlie lets slip during a moment of crisis: "If I can kick drugs, I can deliver a baby." But by the end of the episode, they really have forged a solid friendship.

In the wake of the possible attack on Claire, Hurley goes two-for-two in consecutive good ideas (following the golf course), deciding to take a census of who's who among the survivors. He asks a lot of the questions that we the viewers are asking: what do we really know about these people? Where are they from? Why were they on the plane? Not everyone may be who they say they are. His name isn't even really Hurley, he tells us -- it's Hugo Reyes. (Though he declines to explain the nickname. In fact, I believe he never does in the entire six seasons of Lost.)

Boone even gets a good idea in this episode too, suggesting that Hurley can save time by checking names to the flight manifest. Which, of course, packrat Sawyer has. This leads to another good moment for Hurley, who manages to sweet-talk Sawyer into giving it up without getting anything in return. "You sure know how to butter a man up, Stay-Puft." (Though I have to pause for half a second and wonder why Sawyer would give it up when his name isn't on the manifest. Well, it is, but it's "James Ford," right?)

In any case, all this investigation is leading up to the punchy reveal at the end of the hour -- that one of the "survivors" wasn't actually on the plane! So, in back to back episodes, we learn of other people already on the Island before our heroes. Unfortunately, in the case of "the first Other," Ethan, his reveal is hardly shocking. He was barely in the last episode, and comes off completely arch in this one. He's also the only non-regular character we see on the Island this hour. Gee... I wonder who might be out to get Claire?

I suppose it played out fine as it was. This story about the Others, Claire, and her baby was all far more elaborate than a quick reveal in this one episode. Still, I sort of wish that a few more episodes had been spent setting up Ethan before having him turn "traitor." (I suppose the mobisode helps in that regard -- assuming anyone anywhere actually watched it for the first time in chronological order.)

But really, the on-Island tale here is just kicking off a new story arc, introducing a plot that would spread over a few episodes. (Seasons, even.) What then can be mined from Claire's flashbacks?

Well first, there's the one and only look we get at baby Aaron's biological father, the indecisive starving artist Thomas. I confess, I had completely forgotten about this guy after six years. Not that he's memorable. First he tells Claire he wants to have the baby with her, and then he bails.

But not before having a big argument with Claire in which a bunch of quick tidbits about Claire's parents are dropped. We learn about Claire's "Daddy abandonment crap," of a father that used to sing "Catch a Falling Star" to her (before apparently walking out). That later turns out to be Jack's father. (Though I'd be truly shocked if the writers actually knew that at the time.)

Also mentioned is Claire's mother, who Claire thinks would "disown" her if she knew about her having a baby on her own. Thomas says that's basically already happened. Later on, when Claire's back story was fleshed out more in a future episode, we'd learn that her mother is in a coma and not expected to recover (though she does). So I suppose Claire worries about being disowned because she still harbors belief her mother will recover. Thomas says Claire has already been abandoned, because mother is gone and probably not coming back. I can just imagine discussion between the writers later on, trying to justify all this with the story they decided to tell later. I give them credit, I think -- if you massage the dialogue here a bit, it does fit.

But what doesn't fit so easily, even with stretching, is the strange tale of psychic Richard Malkin. When I was just watching this episode the first time around, I thought he was an interesting character in a compelling plot -- the psychic who foresaw the plane crash. But then he appeared in one of Eko's flashbacks in season two, and proclaimed himself a phony, a fraud.

I think this latter explanation is the one that show-runners Damon Lindelof and Carton Cuse would have us take as the gospel truth. Because after all the talk about how "special" Aaron (and Walt, for that matter) are, in the end they backpedaled from all of that. Malkin's assertion that he saw blurriness surrounding the baby, that he could not be "parented by anyone else, anyone other than you," that Claire's "goodness must be an influence in the development of this child..."

Yeah, maybe not so much. Because Kate ends up raising Aaron in the long run, right? Or are we talking about Aaron's upbringing after the events of Lost? Not that we'll ever know. Easier if you're Damon/Carlton -- aka "Darlton" -- to wave your hands and say "Malkin was full of crap. Aaron isn't special. End of that plot line."

The only trouble with that is that I find it impossible to explain Malkin's behavior in this episode if he is a fake. The first and second time he meets Claire, he gives her money back to her, taking nothing for the reading. In the third flashback, he gives her money. I suppose this behavior is consistent with some kind of "long con" like we saw Sawyer running. But what's the payoff? Claire has no money. Is Malkin running some elaborate baby-selling ring?

Plus, at the end of the episode, Malkin is insistent: not only does Claire have to go to Los Angeles, it has to be on this flight. I just don't see how else to read it. He's psychic. He knew what would happen. And I'd rather not just wash away that cool element of this episode anyway. So, I see only two options in explaining away Richard Malkin in the broader tapestry of Lost:

Option 1: He is a fraud... except that for whatever reason, with Claire, he had a real psychic episode. It scared the crap out of him so badly that he was willing to do whatever he thought he had to do to satisfy his unwanted vision.

Option 2: He is for real. The lie was when he told Eko he was a fraud. (Why would he do that? How about we table that question until later, when that episode comes along?) Maybe he's a little off, psychically speaking, about the overall importance of Aaron. Maybe when he was saying that the child can't be "raised by another," he meant can't be "raised by an Other." (Get it?!) Maybe he saw that adult Aaron would grow up to be Hitler or something without the influence of Claire -- influence which he did end up getting from age four or so on, at least. Whatever. Work it out for yourself. Or don't, if this issue doesn't matter to you.

In any case, the possible "demystification" of the spookiness of this episode detracted a bit from my opinion of it, watching it the second time around. I still rate it a B, which is pretty good -- but I think it dropped from one of my favorites of season one to an episode that may well end up near the bottom of the season one pack (just because the overall quality that first year was so high). Damn you, Richard Malkin!