Lost: The Last Recruit
The castaways are scheming to float away on a boat. Jack and Sawyer are at loggerheads. Sayid stumbles over a tripwire and gets taken hostage. The remaining Others leadership is hiding in the Dharma barracks. Desmond is trapped in an underground shaft that seems to fascinate Locke.
Very Season One of them. Looks like destiny’s just one big wheel, one that always rolls around to the same place again at the end.
No new episode this week, so I’m posting what I never got around to posting last week.
The only thing holding our castaway/candidates together at this point is their ability to empathize with others. The Man in Black is content to toss aside the whole “live together, die alone” ethos and micromanage his troops, peeling individuals off from the group and sending them on little quests and admonishing them if their feelings get in the way. This creature is counting on them to care solely for their own self-interest and will likely ignore their various emotional connections at his own peril… after all, no man is an island, right?
I keep banging this drum, but I can’t help myself: the lonely, pathetic character arc of John Locke is one of my single favorite things this show has pulled off. Watching Desmond scoop up alternate-world candidates with creepy ease just underscores how Locke’s donkey-wheel victory lap was an unrelenting sack of failure. I’m thinking Jack finished assuming the mantle of leadership in defense of the Island the minute the Man in Black spat on John Locke’s legacy. Even if you had disagreements with someone, it’s hard to not feel swayed when you see them played for a cosmic fool and get repeatedly kicked in the teeth by the universe. Same with Kate, for Claire.
Stuff:
• The Man in Black reveals that he assumed the guise of Jack’s dead father, claiming it was done to guide the castaways towards their freedom. I’ve noticed that some people seem disappointed by the simple explanation, but it’s important that this news is disappointing to Jack as well. All the world-expanding possibility suggested by your father returning from the dead to interact with you crumbles once you discover it’s just some selfish slithering man pulling your strings.
• Much as I love The Fahey, that one-liner when Sun gets her voice back is pure textbook cornball. And it was nice to see Jin & Sun reunite, but it was a poorly blocked scene: I spent the whole time wondering if the sonic fence was gonna fry their brainjuice.
• Unless that DOES happen to them at some point later down the road and it’s just some foreshadowing.
• That pained, yearning look on Sawyer’s face when he sees Sun & Jin reunite is probably the best part of the scene. He’d be easily tainted by the promise of Juliet being returned to him.
• Theory on the Man in Black: He came to the Island long, long, long ago and accidentally created a time paradox. Attempting to free himself from the unique bubble of the Island will cause the universe to hit a course-correcting reset button to the point of the paradox, basically wiping away the last several millennia of human history. Jacob brings candidates to the Island to prove to the Man in Black that the progress of mankind is worth preserving, that we’ve lifted ourselves far above our brutish and primitive roots. But have we?
Comments
Yes yes, I think reading this later tonight will be an adequate substitute.
“And it was nice to see Jin & Sun reunite, but it was a poorly blocked scene: I spent the whole time wondering if the sonic fence was gonna fry their brainjuice.”
I was thinking the same, damn thing. And was a bit disappointed when it didn’t happen, but I got over it. Glad they are back for now but still something that Alta-Keamy said ‘Some people are just not meant to be together’ will hold true for one of them.