I can understand people who disagree with my taste in some things, but the people who scorn Lost boggle my mind. It is intricately plotted, imaginitive in its scope, and very well acted, If I went to my grave having created something remotely as good, I'd die happy.
Thursday's episode, which I was able to view for the first time yesterday on ABC.com, continues a string of solid episodes that make this fourth season seem like an apology for the last. It even did one thing I never thought possilbe: it made John Locke seem interesting to me.
The show opens in the late '50's when a teenage Emily Locke is struck by a car.
In the hospital her injuries for her to give birth to a premature baby she names 'John'. The nurses are proud to point out John overcomes pneumonia, infections, etc in the hospital, revealing an odd if not necessarily unnatural ability to recover his health.
Born out of wedlock, the father is identified only by a passing comment by Emily's mother that he is 'twice her (Emily's) age'.
To me this comment is a revelation, as the man known as Anthony Cooper, long considered John's father, doesn't fit the description. Even if Emily is 15 when the events happen and her Mother exaggerates the man's age, that would still put him, converseravtively, at 25 to 30 at the time. Cooper is not a 75 to 80 year old man when he is killed by Sawyer.
And then the funky stuff begins to show up. In the hospital Richard Alpert shows up, looking not a day younger than he does fifty years later when he recruits Juliet for the Others.
Twice more he shows up in John's young life. At a foster family's house he poses as a recruiter for a school for 'gifted' children, and lays out six items in front of John. He asks him which items belong to him - not which items he would like, but which items belong to him already.
From the items John chooses a vial of granules and a compass, and leans towards choosing a 'Book of Laws', a holy book of the Bahá'í Faith. At the last second he skips the book and chooses a knife, a decision that angers Richard and leads to him storming out of the house.
I am no expert, but my understanding is that the Bahá'í Faith preaches that it is a unifying force that will unite the worlds religions and inaugurate a time of peace and justice. Its founder claimed to be the next step in the scriptural line of messengers that runs from Abraham to Jesus to Mohammed, and so on.
Richard next enters his life via a high school science teacher, who mentions that John is being recruited by a laboratory in Portland (where Juliet was told she'd work, remember?). John, a victim of bullies, erupts when his teacher suggests he embrace science rather than pining for an athletic life that will never be his.
The crippled adult John is then treated to a sermon of sorts from an orderly, who is none other than Matthew Abanddon. Abanddon encourages him to take an Australian walkabout, the very one that will lead to his flight on 815, and then says John will one day 'owe him one'.
On the island John is treated to a dream. In it a Dharma employee named Horace is building a cabin, the cabin. Horace mentions he's been dead 12 years (thereby placing the Purge at ~1992) and that John needs to find him to find Jacob's cabin.
John journeys to the pit of the Dharma dead, where he uncovers Horace's body and pulls a map from his pocket.
On their way to the cabin Ben discounts John's attempts to pin the Purge on him, saying it wasn't his decision. He also bemoans the fact that the island has abandoned him and chosen Locke as its guardian, and warns Locke that being 'chosen' has its own price.
They find the cabin and Locke enters alone. Inside he find Christian Sheppard, Jack's deceased Dad, who says he is not Jacob but authorized to speak for him. With him is Claire (told ya she was dead folks). John emerges with a solution as to how to save the island.
"He wants us to move the island."
* * *
On the freighter Michael's duplicity is discovered and he is tortured. Keamy tries to kill him several times but is prevented by a faulty gun - or is it the island?, and then loads the chopper with enough military supplies to 'burn' the island, and dons what appears to be a detonator on his arm. The ships captain tries to stop him and is killed, and Keamy slices the throat of the Doctor and throws him overboard to convince Frank to pilot the chopper against his wishes.
Meanwhile the captain had allowed Sayid to escape back to the island on a life raft, but Desmond chose to stay behind and wait for Penny.
As the inbound chopper passes the beach camp Frank tosses out his satellite phone, which appears to be tracking the helicopter, which Jack interprets as a sign to follow the chopper.
* * * *
Ok, here's my take:
1. John is obviously 'chosen' and has been since birth, but in the larger view of things it would appear the island guided 815 to its doom, at least to some degree. Therefore, when you also consider that it also was able to 'protect' Michael back in the States, the force behind the island is very powerful, very far reaching, and not bound by what we would consider purely ethical criteria.
2. Time is vastly distorted on the island. The doctor's corpse washed ashore a day or more before he was killed, and Richard is perpetually young. Yet Ben appears to have grown to adulthood on the island in the conventional number of years, as had his daughter.
3. The Sheppard family have some special status on the isle, as they all seem to have been drawn there and now two (deceased) members are representing Jacob.
4. Who is Jacob? Who is the 'leader' of the Others Ben spoke of? Is it Jacob?
5. Are Matthew and Richard on the same 'team' or acting in opposition?
6. Who is John's true father? Is it Jacob, or perhaps Charles Widmore, who may have his own secret history of time distortion?
7. How the heck do you 'move' an island?
8. Why is the island still protecting Michael, but allowed him to remain in captivity while the seek and destroy mission took off?
9. I take the items Richard displayed to indicate the inner workings of the subjects mind, like a 3 D Rorschach test. Obviously John failed, but it was because he sabotaged himself. I think he wanted to select the Book of Laws, but he yearns for a life of physical power as he does right up until the current day, and thus picked up the knife.
10. Claire's put on some weight this season, especially in the face. Or am I crazy? Is she pregnant in real-life? Could that be a reason to 'write her out' of the show at this point?
11. When Emily ran out of the hospital room, saying she 'couldn't do this' (hold John) your first inclination is to say it's a teenage Mom who can't deal with her mistake. But what if it goes deeper than that, and she cannot accept that she is involved in a larger plot? She could be a non-virgin Mary of sorts, a 'host' for a Chosen one. That could be a lot to handle.
12. To account for the three episodes lost to the writer's strike, ABC is adding one hour to each of the final two seasons and one to this fourth year.
