LOST - Episode 5 Column

[lenafan]

LOST ? Episode 5
?What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason??
By Lenafan

This week we are focusing on Jack, the so-far reluctant hero. Our story opens with a boy on the ground and another pummeled by a larger boy. One boy stands over a young Jack, daring him to get up and if he does, he?ll get the same. However, he does get up and the scene closes.

Then next, we see and hear someone in trouble in the ocean. Jack throws off his jacket and jumps into the surf. He finally finds the swimmer, who is Boone, in trouble and brings him back to shore, but as he does, Boone tells him there was someone else. Jack turns and he hears someone else screaming for help, further out. What to do? The ongoing dilemma in Jack?s life has been the choices he has to make. He chooses to finish bringing Boone back to shore. By the time he gets him there, the other, a member of the survivors is gone, pulled out to sea by a riptide, and no doubt drowned.

Jack is walking on the sand when Kate joins him. Suddenly, he sees a man in the water and asks her if she sees him too. She does not but then he hasn?t slept much either.

Meanwhile Walt is cleaning his teeth as Sun showed him. His father is surprised when he tells him that it was she. Then Sun and her husband, Jin, are speaking (with sub-titles, thank you very much) and she tells him that she doesn?t think anyone is coming. He says he will tell her what to do. Shannon who wants repellent approaches Sawyer. He is willing to sell her for $5000 cash or something else. She throws the canister back at him and stalks away. Elsewhere Kate is busy sorting clothes and Claire sits down to help. They talk.

Hurley and Charlie have rounded up all the water and they approach Jack to take charge. Jack refuses and the scene shifts to when he is a little boy. It?s just after the fight. His father is evidently a surgeon. He relates how he had a case where he operated on a young boy, but even though he eventually lost him, he was able to come home free some emotional attachment to the patient. He tells Jack that he doesn?t have what it takes to be a hero. Hell there?s another father (or mother) who emotionally batters their child. He returns to the present and finds the two men still after him to take charge. They take the case into the tent, still after him.

Jack again refuses and runs into the jungle. Where he sees someone?the man. Running hard he catches up and the man turns to show himself to be his father turns back to the jungle. It was interesting to note the camera was tilted slightly to give the figure a little off center look.

Pausing in his chase, Jack remembers back just a few days ago, being asked by his mother to find his father and bring him back. He refuses, telling her to get one of his friends, but she tells him his father has no more friends. It seems the Chief Surgeon wanders off occasionally. Jack wants to know where he is this time and his mother tells him he is in Australia. (A small note, probably for future reference?his mother says he can?t refuse not after what he (Jack) did.)

Meanwhile back in camp, Kate and Sayid tell Locke that Jack has disappeared into the jungle. In addition, that someone has stolen the water. Improbably, he tells them he knows where to look. However, he warns them it?s going to get ugly when the survivors find out all the water is gone.

The scene shifts immediately to the interior where Jack looks LOST, blundering in one direction after another. He pauses and reflects on the hunt in Australia for his father. At the hotel, the manager tells him he better check with the police. Jack starts running hard, chasing the figure that stays just ahead of him and shades of Alias?he?s like Alice chasing the White Rabbit. His father disappears as the rabbit did. Jack plunges into his own rabbit hole, this time it?s over a cliff. He saves himself by clinging to a vine.

However, as the next Act begins, he starts to slip. Then, suddenly, a hand reaches for him. Hooray, Locke to the rescue. He pulls him back and Jack starts to laugh.

Back at the beach, things are getting touchy. Charley gives Claire a half cup of water, which is all he can give her. Claire wants to know when they are going to be rescued.
The Korean couple has water. Jin points to Sawyer as his source. Sayid tells Kate to wait as ?a rat will always lead you to it?s hole.? Kate and Sayid follow Sawyer to his ?stash?, and accuse him. She knocks him down (tough woman) and they tussle. He says he has no water and doesn?t when they search. He tosses Kate the US Marshal?s badge, naming her the Sheriff.

Locke is collecting water from leaves and Jack watches as they talk. Locke poses the question, which is the title of this column. This, I think, will be the essence of the show. Are these people interconnected to each other by Fate, previously ordained by some unknown reason not yet revealed. Locke tells Jack he looked into ?the eye of this island and what I saw was beautiful.? Jack wants to go with him to find the water, but Locke tells Jack that he needs to finish his quest, because a leader can?t lead until he knows where he is going.

It?s late and Jack is sitting by a fire (had matches in his pocket?) He has just remembered that he had found his father in a morgue, dead from a heart attack. He begins to cry. This is a good thing. He needs the closure. Suddenly he hears a strange noise. Taking a burning log from the fire to use as a torch he moves through the jungle and finds a waterfall. Moving cautiously forward he sees luggage and part of the plane. Among the items is a coffin. His father?s. He remembers the hard time he had getting it aboard the same flight, but evidently he did. Jack approaches the coffin, opens it, and finds the body gone. He finds some object on the ground and smashes the coffin to pieces.

Back on the beach there is a fight. Boone tried to give Claire three bottles of water. He stole the water. Jack interrupts them. Taking a leadership role, he tells all of them that they better start figuring things out. It?s been six days and no one has found them. Since most of them are strangers, they need to start acting together as a team or else they will die alone. Minutes later, Jack is sitting with Kate and tells her his father had died.

COMMENTS
There is definitely someone else on the island, or else I was hallucinating. When Jack was at the fire near the end, we heard a noise and in the background for the briefest moment, there appeared to be someone running. Now either it?s part of the storyline OR one of the production crew. I?m hoping for the former.

DISCUSS:
What do you suppose Jack did that was so awful his mother could ?blackmail? him to find his father?

We LOST one survivor here, a woman who by all rights should not have been on the plane. She was scuba diving in Cairns and caught an infection. She had to go home early. Is this the plan?knock off the people who survived but were on the plane by accident? What do you think?

Do you think our main characters are interconnected in some way not yet revealed?

[Boyscout4747]

ooh i dunno about if characters know each other, but that would be cool!!

[lenafan]

Boyscout4747 Posted on Oct 21 2004, 07:27 PM

ooh i dunno about if characters know each other, but that would be cool!!

I didn't mean they knew each other, but somehow are connected. Let's watch and see what happens down the line. ;)

[Quey]

Lenafan, as always, you do a superb job of summing up episodes!

That is an interesting thought, however, that maybe all of these survivors are inter-connected. It wouldn't surprise me if JJ chose to go that route. I'm not sure if you meant to imply this, or if it just popped into my head BUT -- if you're correct, and they are all connected somehow . . . Is it for that reason that they all ended up on this island? Did some unknown Fate draw them there?

Just me musing.

[lenafan]

Quey posted:

That is an interesting thought, however, that maybe all of these survivors are inter-connected. It wouldn't surprise me if JJ chose to go that route. I'm not sure if you meant to imply this, or if it just popped into my head BUT -- if you're correct, and they are all connected somehow . . . Is it for that reason that they all ended up on this island? Did some unknown Fate draw them there?

The connection can be tenuous: ie when Jack was at the airline terminal demanding his father's coffin be put on board, did you notice Jin, the Korean man standing behind him?
As the season progresses, I think we'll 'stumble' on the large, small or infinite connections.
Locke supposedly was bound to a wheelchair. He regains the use of his legs when the plane crashes. How strange is that? --unless we learn WHAT put him into the wheelchair. Was it psychological? or was it pathological? Was it Jack who put him there...or now this is a possibility...Jack's father, who was also a surgeon?
See what I mean, interconnected.

:boat:

[Quey]

Yes, I see what you mean. I saw Jin behind the doctor and honestly I didn't think much of it at the time. I like the possibility (alright, maybe I don't like it but it's intriguing) that Jack's put Locke in the wheel chair.

I really want to know what it was that Jack did which was so betraying or hurtful to his parents. All I can guess was that he rebelled against his father in some way, but that rebellion cost his father something. He doesn't seem like he's capable of doing anything really wicked.

[lenafan]

I don't believe Jack did anything wicked, but something happened.
Just as I don't believe Kate did anything wicked...but is involved somehow in an incident that sent her on the run and being caught, brought back in handcuffs to face what...
Something we don't know, but I'm sure JJ will prime us little by little.
:boat:

[Quey]

Oh, I didn't meant to imply that he did anything "bad". I was just thinking that whatever he did was seen as a betrayal to his parents. But, that's just speculation.

[lenafan]

Quey Posted on Oct 27 2004, 03:18 PM

Oh, I didn't meant to imply that he did anything "bad". I was just thinking that whatever he did was seen as a betrayal to his parents. But, that's just speculation.

Speculation is all we do--hoping we hit the proverbial nail on the head once in awhile and that's about the highest odds we get with anything JJ writes.
:boat:

[Quey]

Yes, but isn't it fun?!