Sayid wants to be good, but boy can he be so bad.
I’m standing and looking out my window now, hardly watching the TV turned on beside me. The gray ceiling of Chicago winter feels exceptionally oppressive this evening. It reflects the sallow glow of street lamps, turning dirty piles of snow into diseased scoops of yellow-orange sherbet. [Ed. note: There is no such thing as "sherbert." I have unwittingly added an extra "r" to sherbet for more than twenty years without correction. I now stand corrected.] The fifth episode has finished, the earth has rotated another handful of degrees, the world outside my window is still frozen, and somewhere, in some fictional time-space, on some godforsaken island, an army has amassed in support of Zombie John.
I don’t have much detail to share on tonight’s episode. My heart wasn’t in it. The hour kicked off with Sayid’s forgettable L.A. subplot, spoiling an already soul-dampening dinner. I ate with my hands and sullenly chewed my way through a pile of cold chicken parts and cheese slices, perking up slightly as I finished the plate to watch as Island Sayid and Stony-face battled to the death. Stony-face decided to forego the final blow and instead told Sayid to leave the compound, just as you might tell a mangy dog to get on, scram, and don’t ever come back, ya here? The scene and the dinner were equally disappointing.
My spirits continued to flag as the episode wore on. I checked the clock twice and stood to stare out across the city, the sky choked with cloud, the TV playing on and filling the room with strained string instruments. Kate returned to the temple, Claire was banished to a pit, Zombie John convinced Sayid to do his dirty work. The gamut of emotion, the rise and fall of a character’s arc in a short, two-minute span: Stony-face shares the story of his life with Sayid by the pool; a crescendo of music, a palpable tenderness, and without another word Sayid yanks Stony under the water and drowns him. Stony-face’s hippie sidekick rushes to the pool in time to get his throat slit by Sayid. It’s a hopeless finish for a pair of short-lived characters.
The winter grows long, the mysteries deepen, and my thoughts drift to Sawyer. Sawyer, where’d you go? You and Zombie John made a pact, remember? But you haven’t reappeared. I wonder if you aren’t off doing what any sensible man might do when faced with the oppression of winter or the loneliness of island life. I bet you’re back at your house, sipping from your whiskey bottle, waiting for the world to end.
I turn away from the window and turn off the TV. I think I’ll have a little sip from that bottle myself.
Posted on March 3rd, 2010
A quarter of the way through this dense thicket of mystery and my addled brain can hardly stand the shock. The rapid plot line hopping—the dizzying cast from one time or place unto another—is taking its toll. I hardly have a moment to process a particular scene’s dynamics, to look around and get my bearings, to admire the lush green of a jungle fern or the architectural details of an L.A. office building before I am rushed on to the next edit, where there’s a good chance that I may find myself in an entirely different time and space and reconnecting with a different set of characters. Perhaps this is the storytellers’ intent: to recreate the nauseating effects of time travel for the anxious viewers at home. If so, congratulations—it’s working.
Drawing Lines
There are lines being drawn out there in the jungle. Zombie Jacob and Zombie John, foraging for pawns. Darkness and light, the kindest of eyes and the coldest of stares, each gathering recruits for some unspoken event. Zombie Jacob spent the episode shuttling Hugo and Jack through the jungle and out to a lighthouse on the other side of the island. He gave Hugo (lovable, bumbling Hugo) the courage to lead Jack out of the temple grounds and deep into the jungle. They encountered an inhaler, a pile of skeletons, and the shattered remains of a coffin that once belonged to Jack’s dad. “I did that,” said Jack, looking down at the coffin parts. And then they moved on.
Victim of the Press Gang
At the lighthouse, Jack’s temper rises to a fever pitch when he sees an image of his childhood home in the lighthouse’s reflecting glass. “Jacob was watching! He’s always been watching! Why?!” Hugo doesn’t have the answer, and so Jack smashes the glass and they leave the lighthouse. Zombie Jacob reappears soon after and tells Hugo that it all went according to plan, and thanks him for being his willing pawn. The two of them, Jack and Hugo, are now recruited, and the rest of the group back at the temple will probably be killed by an anonymous “bad person” that is soon to arrive on The Island. It is too late to save them. Hugo wipes blue ink from his forehead and sighs with the despair of a man who has been press-ganged.
That Way Madness Lies
Elsewhere in the jungle, Claire has gone mad. Jin, who we last saw detained by a bear trap, is extracted by Claire and taken back to her camp, where it soon becomes clear that three years alone in the bush has a way of eating at the mind. Look, a bassinet! And inside, an animal skull and furs shaped to look like a small child! She wants her baby back, and she is absolutely not making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Chili’s Restaurant chain. She makes this point particularly clear by swinging an axe into The Expendable Character Who Everyone Thought Was Already Dead. Jin shudders and takes nervous sips from his water bottle. Zombie John, who no doubt has a nose for madness, sniffs Claire out. He has recruited her along with Sawyer and the pair of Zombies now stand at two apiece. If this unspoken future event (the one for which they are recruiting) is going to be a test of wills and killer instinct, Zombie John has clearly made the better alliance. Sawyer, with his rugged good looks and his fuck it sensibilities, and Claire, with her skull-baby creations and her willingness to stick an axe in a man’s stomach, would surely crush the likes of Hugo (lovable, bumbling Hugo) and Jack, who is obviously struggling his way through some kind of Daddy Dearest complex. The results should be interesting.
Posted on February 24th, 2010
No earthly man could ever hold a stare like Zombie John.
Zombie John is on a mission. I can see it in his eyes, those fearless eyes, and they don’t betray a thing. They are nothing like Zombie Jacob’s eyes; no kindness, no empathy. Zombie John is a man of darker origins. He has answers, he’s said as much, but damned if he’ll share them with anyone he can’t trust. What he needs then is a confidant of sorts, a pawn to play, and so he coils up into smoke and plunges back into the jungle in search of Sawyer.
Sawyer, to his credit, has done the wisest thing and gone off to drink himself to death. Who can blame him? He’s stuck on some godforsaken island, stranded in space-time and struggling with the loss of the woman he loved. He’s a broken man, and no one suffering the same fate can say they wouldn’t want to watch the world wither away through a lens clouded with whiskey. And so there he sits, holed up in his house on the lake with his lips wrapped around a bottle and The Stooges playing on in the background. This is how his world will end. As the light dims and the alcohol-induced hallucinations mix with waking dreams, Zombie John shuffles into the room and takes Sawyer by surprise:
Sawyer
What ghost is this? Doth mine eyes deceive? You are not John Locke, for he is dead and you are fearless. Come, drink with me, stranger! Let me pour thee a juice glass of Wild Turkey, and let us rest awhile until Death comes knocking at the door.
Sawyer doesn’t actually say those things; most of it is implied. Instead, he changes course and decides to follow Zombie John back out into the jungle after he is promised answers (and after he pulls on some pants).
There are few things in this world more dangerous than a man who is both drunk and unafraid of death, and as Sawyer stumbles along behind Zombie John it’s clear that he’s reached the fuck it stage of sensitivity. He and Zombie John both see the vision of a boy running ahead of them in the foliage, but Sawyer brushes it off without much thought. Richard, who was clubbed and beaten and left behind by Zombie John in an earlier scene, emerges from the trees to tell Sawyer that Zombie John is, in fact, a zombie, and that he can’t be trusted. Sawyer fairly ignores this advice and continues on, but he pulls a gun on Zombie John for good measure. Zombie John stares back with those fearless eyes, tells him that he’s just an old trapped soul looking for release, and Sawyer gives him a fuck it shrug before soldiering on.
They soon arrive at a cliff and climb down to a cave, at the mouth of which sits a scale with two rocks: one black, one white. The scale is balanced, static; no more black than white. Zombie John steps toward the scale and hefts the white rock in his hand. He turns to the sea and casts it out into the great beyond as the scale, now free of its weight, tips affirmatively to black. A contemplative stillness descends, Sawyer is ushered into the cave, and Zombie John’s torch reveals the scrawled names of Island survivors written there by Zombie Jacob. Zombie Jacob, the man who brought all of them to The Island. Zombie Jacob, the man who touched their lives and weaved this terrible web, the man who wants one of them to become his permanent replacement there on The Island.
I only want one thing, Zombie John tells Sawyer, and that’s to get off The Island. Sawyer pauses, considers, and gives him the fuck it shrug: Let’s do it.
The iris is opening, my friends! There are mysteries unraveling before our very eyes, emerging from darkness unto the light. A cave scratched with names and numbers, an unholy alliance formed, an unbalanced scale. Something unsavory is afoot!
Posted on February 18th, 2010
The air outside is thick with snow and Chicago’s streets are layered with frosty berms of powdery white. Inside, the air is thick with tension. Sawyer is asking Kate about the Temple guards—”How many of them did you see?”—and it’s clear that he’s contemplating his odds. “I’m going to bust out of here,” he says, and he sets his teeth. A minute later he makes good on that promise, and thus begins another rousing episode of Lost’s last season!
Sawyer (or James, as Kate affectionately refers to him) is a rugged drifter with little apparent allegiance to the rest of his island companions. The stringy hair and squinty eyes convey a sense of paranoia and distrust, and I’m sure he smells faintly of booze and petulance when standing nearby. He is the prototypical Lone Wolf, and he barely gives the rest of the group so much as a nod before walking back out into the jungle after wresting the gun from a Temple guard:
Hugo
Wait. Sawyer. Please. You could take us all with you! You have a gun now! Look! These guards are intimidated by your good looks and piercing stare!
Sawyer
Forget it. I’m a loner Hugo, a rebel. See you guys in the great beyond. Peace!
Kate
Take me with you, Sawyer.
Sawyer
Back off, Kate. I need to do this alone. There’s a ring I need to find in a house in the jungle, and I need to throw that ring in the lake.
Stony-face
You have to stay. If you leave, the mysterious reason we’ve been keeping you here will be ruined.
Sawyer
Good luck with that. I’m out.
The look on Stony-face’s face said it all: Thanks to the self-interest of Sawyer, they were all doomed (for unspoken reasons). Resigned to his powerlessness, Stony-face allows Kate and Jin to set off as a search party to track down Sawyer. They soon split ways (naturally), and the rest of the episode rolls on into a series of space-time flips between L.A. Kate and Island Kate. My narrative studies might be leading me a little astray, but I’m pretty sure that L.A. Kate and Island Kate are one and the same person, existing in parallel worlds or at different points along the space-time continuum. It’s still a mystery, but what I know for certain is that L.A. Kate is a murderess on the run who’s hampered by a heart of gold.
And her patience! My god, the store of patience this woman has for the pregnant blonde she unintentionally takes hostage and whisks away in a stolen taxi. The pregnant blonde turns out to be Claire, a character who apparently has some attachment to Island Kate, and she is positively helpless. She arrived from Australia scared, insecure, and alone, and she soon finds herself kicked from the cab when L.A. Kate suddenly remembers that she is, in fact, on the run from the law. Claire is left stranded at a bus stop while L.A. Kate drives to a tire shop and has her handcuffs graciously cut from her wrists by a helpful law-snubbing shop mechanic. And then, a twist: Kate’s heart of gold grows heavy at the sight of Claire’s baby clothes, and she soon returns to pick up the pregnant Claire and shuttle her to an adoptive family’s home—the baby, you see, is meant to be given to an American couple.
But then! A second twist: the adoptive American couple is no longer together! The lawless murderer and her pregnant companion arrive at the home to find an apologetic woman who effectively says:
Potential Mother
So, my husband left me a few days ago? And I neglected to call you before you flew to America? And I’m sorry, it’s a bummer, but I guess I don’t really want your baby anymore? I feel bad, I do. I’m a bad person.
To which Claire responds by immediately going into labor. Claire and Kate wave goodbye and speed on to the hospital in the stolen cab.
Enough action for a snowbound evening in Chicago? Well think again, because I haven’t even covered the torture session, a martial arts-enhanced Heimlich maneuver, and Jin caught in a bear trap. Shots ring out, Claire appears on a ridge, and the episode ends with her back on The Island. The world of Lost is nothing if not bewildering.
Posted on February 10th, 2010
