Lost in the "Lost" Universe

LOST

I have to admit, writing this post seems a bit daunting, not just because it's in response to your last post, which covered a lot of territory, but also just because it's about Lost, a show that could have a whole library's worth of analyses and theories written about it.

Oh yeah, and SPOILER ALERT. Duh, this is Lost we're talking about after all, people.

When I said that "The Incident" could've been called "WTF?" it's because that episode seems to have changed the rules of the Lost game in a lot of ways. Right out the gate, we not only meet Jacob for the first time—and I have to admit, I wouldn't in a million years have guessed that the mysterious figure behind the Island's doings would be one of Jackie Treehorn's goons (the non-"Chinaman") and the bumbling hitman from Mulholland Drive—but also his mysterious, previously unknown counterpart; and two hours later Jacob was dead (maybe), and we discover that Locke is dead for good after all (maybe), his place taken for the last several episodes by that counterpart.

(As for the new guy's name, I like "Loophole," though I've been kinda partial to "Esau" myself, i.e., a counterpart and rival of Jacob. Other names I've heard are Samuel (from the casting call), the Man in Black (often shortened to MiB, despite its Smithian connotations), Smokey (i.e., the Smoke Monster), the Adversary, the Rival, the Nemesis, etc.)

I agree, though, that despite the changes and surprises, "The Incident" is nevertheless consistent with the themes we've seen running through the show from the beginning, especially the "Man of Science, Man of Faith" one you pointed out. As you said, it applies not only to the Jack-vs.-Locke conflict but also to the other conflicts around which the storyline centers. Indeed, Lost is characterized by several conflicts revealed over the course of the show, each with a wider scope than the previous ones. From the first episode there's been the conflict between Jack and Locke regarding the survivors' role on the Island (or whether they have one at all). Starting in the first season, the Island-wide conflict between the survivors and the Others arose. Although at first the Others simply seemed to be driven by hostility to outsiders—the American soldiers who brought Jughead, the DHARMA Initiative, the Oceanic 815 survivors—they're clearly operating according to a deeper worldview than just territoriality; as you noted, when Michael asked Ben at the end of the second season, "Who are you people?" Ben answered, "We're the good guys." The Others seem to be Men of Faith—which helps to explain Locke's on-again-off-again relationship with them—holding a deep belief in the Island and in Jacob, despite seeing very little firsthand; as we just found out, even Ben got his instructions from Jacob secondhand through Richard. The survivors, on the other hand, in general seem more like Men of Science, following Jack's leadership and making their first priority leaving the Island, not exploring its mysteries. (A notable exception to this would be Boone, who started following Locke's lead back in the first season; look what happened to him.)

After three seasons of seeing the show's conflict as an on-Island struggle between the survivors and the Others, in the fourth season the circle expanded again to a conflict between Ben and Widmore, being fought both on and off the Island—and, as we saw recently, fought for many years. To continue the science-vs.-faith dichotomy, I think you're right that Ben is the Man of Faith in this conflict and Widmore—a successful businessman with one foot in the outside world even while he was leading the Others—the Man of Science. And I'll point out that their conflict, like the one between Jacob and Loophole, is circumscribed by as-yet-unclear rules, which seem to preclude killing each other directly.

Finally, with "The Incident," the circle of conflict expanded yet again to the relationship between Jacob and Loophole, apparently two long-lived beings who can summon outsiders to the Island (Loophole to Jacob: "You brought them [the ship] here.") and take others' forms (definitely Locke, maybe Christian Shephard and others), over hundreds of years. How does their conflict translate to the science-vs.-faith theme? Though we only have one brief conversation to go on, at this point I'd argue that Loophole is the Man of Science, in that he thinks he knows what will happen when outsiders arrive based on what's happened in the past ("It always ends the same."), while Jacob seems a bit more of a Man of Faith with his more philosophical view. On the other hand it could be the opposite: Loophole seems to have a deterministic attitude, one perhaps in line with the predestination and "destiny" associated with Men of Faith like Locke, and is opposed to bringing outsiders to the Island, like Ben and the Others. I don't think the fact that Jacob visits certain of the Oceanic 815 survivors is necessarily conclusive one way or the other, since he visits both Man of Science Jack and Man of Faith Locke. Honestly, I couldn't say with much conviction that one of these guys or the other is on the side of science or faith, of free will or predestination, much less of good or evil (despite their trying really hard to make Loophole seem like the evil one, with his black shirt and urge to kill). This show's upset our ideas of "good guys" and "bad guys" too many times already for that: The Others have gone from the evil incarnate who kidnapped Claire and Walt to the defenders of the Island from the likes of Widmore (maybe); the freighter's civilian passengers (Faraday, Miles, Charlotte, Lapidus) have gone from potential antagonists (remember how quick Miles was to pull a gun on Jack and Kate after he arrived, or how Faraday did his best to tell them as little as possible?) to just part of the gang.

So Loophole can assume the form of other people, apparently so long as those people are already dead—assuming your and Mallory's theories are right and Christian (dead) and Smokey (in the form of Eko's brother Yemi and Alex, both dead) are vessels/embodiments/avatars of Loophole as well as Locke. I hadn't noticed this before, but none of those four were buried, so I think that's pretty significant. (And what does this mean for the "Charlie" that Hurley's been seeing? Charlie's body's still down in the Looking Glass Station, unburied; on the other hand, Hurley also plays chess at the mental hospital with Eko, who was buried.) I think there's a very strong case for "Christian" and Smokey actually being Loophole, but if that's so, it opens a huge can of worms with respect to what we've seen so far. If that's the case, then Loophole wanted the Island moved, and by Locke, not by Ben. Was this to transport Locke off the Island, so he could take his place? (If he just needed Locke to die, there were plenty of opportunities for that on the Island.) Was the time-skipping that resulted from Ben's turning the wheel unintended, or does it fit into Loophole's or Jacob's respective plans? Does Ben know so little about what's going on that he'd take orders from Jacob's enemy (even in Alex's form)? What does it mean that Ben apparently can "summon" Smokey (though with varying degrees of success)? What does it mean that Smokey took the form of Yemi, and then killed Eko? (A theory I've heard was that Loophole was seeing if Eko would be suitable for the role he ended up using Locke for—both men had strong spiritual sides, a sense of mission, and potential as leaders—but found Eko not easy enough to manipulate—remember that Eko realized that it wasn't really Yemi. Eko's last words to Locke, "You're next," weren't directed to the whole group (as I'd assumed), but to Locke in particular; Loophole would try him next as a candidate for his plans.) What does it mean that "Christian" appeared to Michael right before the freighter exploded? Given Widmore's apparent eagerness to help Locke in his quest to bring the Oceanic Six back to the Island, what's his relation to either Jacob or Loophole? Loophole seemed opposed to outsiders coming to the Island, so why did he, as "Locke," have Richard tell the real Locke to bring the Oceanic Six back, and possibly, as "Christian," later tell Locke the same thing in person and help him to turn the wheel? And how does the DHARMA Initiative, Men of Science par excellence, fit into all this? On the one hand, they might have been another instance of Jacob's bring outsiders to the Island to "prove [Loophole] wrong"; on the other, they were practically at war with the Jacob-loving Hostiles/Others.

Of course, there's a lot more to Lost than just the mythology. A great thing about the show is that, though it's very much about themes and ideas, the characters aren't just ciphers for those ideas. They're real, full-blooded men and women, not just archetypes. This last season in particular has been a great one in terms of character development. Jack's evolution, first glipsed in the flashforwards in the third-season finale, from convinced Man of Science to Man of Faith is complete; his visit from "Jeremy Bentham" planted the seeds of doubt, the old Jack destroyed himself with booze, pills, and despair, and the new Jack gradually grew from a passive faith in the Island and "destiny" (seen when he refused to help little Ben after Sayid shot him, believing events would just take their course without his involvement—which, of course, they did) to an active faith, dedicated to detonating Jughead, preventing the Incident (though I think Miles hit the nail on the head with his comment about that), and erasing the last three years of their lives. Whether his new direction will prove more successful than his previous one—which brought the mercenaries, sent the Island skipping through time, and was eventually seen by Jack himself as a mistake—remains for next season.

No less remarkable has been Sawyer's transformation from the ne'er-do-well black sheep of Oceanic 815 to the responsible, trusted head of DHARMA security and Juliet's old man. We saw just how far he's come when he basically told Jack, and with a lot of justification, that he's a better leader than Jack ever was, patient where Jack was rash and open to compromise where Jack was stubborn. Juliet's always been interesting too, given her ambiguous relation to the Island's various factions; her membership in the Others was always halfhearted, and she first joined the survivors as a double agent, justifiably distrusted by the rest. It was wonderful seeing these two great characters together in '70s Dharmaville, though it's a shame that we only got to see a few episodes' worth of their three-year relationship, since I found it much more interesting and enjoyable than just about any other romance we've seen on the show. There wasn't a whole lot of melodrama, they were both really comfortable and natural with each other; in that respect, it was a lot like Bernard and Rose's autumn romance. The Sayid-Shannon and Hurley-Libby romances back in the second season seemed doomed from the start; Jin and Sun's relationship always had some drama or another popping up (He's a jerk! She secretly knows English! Is the baby his or not?). And Charlie and Claire's relationship always kinda seemed more platonic than romantic; maybe it's because she's been either a mom or a mom-to-be since they met, so romance wasn't her first priority. The Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle—becoming a rectangle with the addition of Juliet in the third season—never seemed very healthy for any of them, a fact further illustrated the last couple seasons with Jack and Kate's failed off-Island relationship and the contrast with Sawyer and Juliet's stable, grown-up relationship in Dharmaville.

One more thing about Jack: I agree that the flashback about his "counting to five" technique was a pretty significant perspective on him, and I think it'll color my view of his actions in the prior seasons when I get around to rewatching the show from the beginning (as I surely will someday). In addition to his self-doubt, something that really struck me about that scene was that Jack gets angry at his dad for embarrassing him in front of his team during the surgery. In reality, it was Jack who embarrassed himself by first making a potentially fatal mistake and then getting too flustered to fix it himself; he should've thanked his dad for helping him to save the patient's life instead of yelling at him. It seemed to show that he was more concerned with looking like a leader than with actually achieving a positive outcome. That scene and the one in Dharmaville in which Sawyer tells him how he sucked as leader of the survivors highlight Jack's weakness and the damage that weakness has caused: He thinks leadership means always being in control, always being right, and always taking action, even when he doesn't really know what to do.

Whew, two long posts and we've mostly just been talking about one episode. What a show! As for the fifth season overall, I think the main question is what role the time travelling will end up playing in the overall scheme of things. Was it an accident, or has Jacob or Loophole been planning it all along? It couldn't have been a diversion—it leads to the Incident, Ben's becoming an Other, and "Locke's" becoming their leader—but it still seems pretty left-field. (I keep track of the seasons with a sort of mneumonic: the first season was, well, the first season, laying the foundation; the second was the Hatch season; the third was the Others season; and the fourth was the freighter season. I'll always think of the fifth as the time travel season.) A criticism I've heard is that the last two seasons have been too plot-driven, and not character-driven enough (this coming after a lot of people complained that the second and third seasons didn't have enough plot and were "spinning their wheels"). Though there's been a lot of great character material, I sorta see where they're coming from. I ascribe it partly to the shorter seasons (damn your eyes, underpaid screenwriters!), the fact that the creators know that the show's days are numbered (they found that out during the third season, right?), and the show's ever-broadening scope, which I think makes a greater focus on plot and mythology inevitable. As annoying as some of those episodes were where nothing really seemed to happen, they gave the show a chance to breathe. Also, looking back, a lot of those episodes weren't as devoid of mythology as they seemed at the time; for instance, "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," in which everyone does nothing but dick around for an hour, is the first appearance of Roger Linus (or at least what's left of him). That's one reason why I'm looking forward to rewatching the whole thing from the beginning.

There's a lot more than can be said, as you know, but I think I'll cut myself off here and await your response. One last thing: A small role in "The Incident" was played by a Reedie! Sonya Masinovsky played "Russian nurse" in the flashback in which Jacob visited the bandaged-up Ilana at the hospital, and even got a couple lines (though they were unintelligible to a non-Russophone like myself). I didn't know her at Reed or anything, but I knew I recognized her from somewhere when I saw her. Pretty cool. We Reedies really get around.