Saturday, February 11, 2023

Lost Rewatch on VHS: Raised by Another

 

When it comes to Lost, there are many hills I am willing to die on. I’ll defend how much of the mysteries ending up being resolved, how even however you view the ending it was still a great series, that despite how messed up mythology series are in general, it still deserves to be considered one of the greatest shows of all time. But on some aspects, I am far more willing to be moved because I am aware of the series’ flaws. And perhaps one of the most telling ones becomes crystal clear the more often you watch it: that while most of the characters were brilliantly and fully developed, the female characters were always more short changed than the male ones. And by far the most obvious one of these is the character of Claire.

In part, this may be because in the first season the writers were never entirely certain how much they were going to use her after the Pilot: alone among the series regulars Emilie De Ravin’s name is left of the cast roster for nearly half the season, even before the conclusion of this episode. But even if you allow for that problem the fact remains that Claire’s character by far got shortchanged the most of all the characters in the first season and well past that. She received the fewest flashbacks of any character who made it to the third season, and after that never received an episode that was centered on her alone. In the back half of the series, she will essentially become increasingly neglected and end up disappearing for the entire fifth season, and when she does return in the final season there is almost no explanation given to where she has been and even then she is utilized almost entirely in regards to other characters who by this point are more important to the series beyond their connections to her. (Fans know what they are by this point, but for the purpose of the rewatch I will save the spoilers until they come due.)

And more frustratingly almost all the time we do see on the screen, it is because of her pregnancy and later her child. This itself ends up being a major flaw which in hindsight becomes excruciating from this episode on. From the moment Claire visits the psychic, it appears that the child Claire will give birth too is somehow very important and that she was put on this plane for the sole purpose of ending up on the island so he could be raised here. The idea of this storyline will be explored to an extent in the next two seasons, so it does seem like the writers were taking it seriously. But in the second half of the series, Claire’s child is irrelevant to the island storyline and in the final season doesn’t even appear at all. (I realize these are spoilers but for the sake of this column, I think it is necessary to explain the flaws in the concept.) In that sense it seems that everything we have seen about Claire’s pregnancy and child were fundamentally irrelevant to the overarching mystery of the series, which makes you really wonder what the point was of making it an issue at all. I will spend a lot of these articles explaining how some of the mysteries that fans never considered resolved are irrelevant to the enjoyment of Lost as a whole, but the argument about the storylines that end up derailed potentially strong character arcs as a result is one that has far more merit.

Which is maddening because you can see that particularly in episodes like this the character of Claire had so much potential. De Ravin is a great talent who even in her few moments she’s had to this point is very good at making the natural goodness of Claire shine through. By far Claire’s character is the most honest of almost all the ones we shall meet during the course of the series; she will always tell the truth about what happened in her life before she ended up on the plane, as she does when she tells Charlie just how she got her in the first place and realizes that she was manipulated. (Though I have to say, the character of the psychic is another one of the more frustrating mysteries that the series never chooses to resolve either.) Claire was one of the few characters who was truly an open book. Was that the reason the writers never used her to her potential? Because on a series where everyone was keeping secrets, being good and pure was a detriment?

And it’s not just the psychic that truly makes me believe there was more to it than Claire’s presence on the island. The scene in the attorney’s office when Claire is about to sign the contract and two different pens have no ink? It’s impossible to believe that wasn’t supposed to be more than just some sign to Claire; it always seemed like it was an acknowledgement to the audience that some other force was driving Claire to the island. The scene didn’t have to be there; we could have just as easily seen Claire standing outside the lawyer’s office and refuse to go in or getting cold feet. Why have that scene if it wasn’t supposed to have significance?

That said, we can’t exactly complain that ‘Raised by Another’ doesn’t pay off in other ways. For all the mess that we will have going forward, the fact that Claire’s due date is becoming closer is something that the series had to deal with and it is fitting that Jack, as the island doctor, has to be the one who’s worried about it the most. When Claire starts having bad dreams (and oddly, the dream she has may actually be prophetic depending on your interpretation of later events) and then begins to think she is being attacked, Jack has to act like it’s all in her head and be the good doctor.

It must also be said that this episode also demonstrates in addition to being ill-suited leader, his bedside manner leaves much to be desired. Jack’s approach when dealing with Claire is clumsy and acts exactly like someone who isn’t taking a mother’s fears into consideration. I don’t really blame Claire for storming off.

For the second straight episode, we get another example of how much better suited to the job Hurley would be than he thinks. He’s the one who has the idea for the census and to try and figure out who doesn’t belong. This is also the first time he has a direct interaction with Sawyer, and he does infinitely better than Jack ever has. Sawyer will deliver heaps of insults on Hurley over the first half of the series but perhaps because he has spent much of his life dealing with this kind of cruelty, they tend to roll off his back much easier than they do with anyone else on the series. It’s also worth noting that almost no one else will do with Sawyer for a long time, and tell him that to do the right thing is in his best interest. And it works. Sawyer doesn’t even put up an argument.

Perhaps one of the more significant stories is the budding relationship between Charlie and Claire. Charlie is clearly smitten by Claire already but because he does not want to overstep his boundaries, he is still trying to stay in the friend zone. That said, the two will always have a far more honest (though complicated) relationship during the series, and in it Charlie confides his darkest secret (by accident) and a more honest one (his belief in foresight, though I think his may be more guided by faith than the paranormal). In that sense, he is the perfect person to help Claire through her current crisis and a bond between them has fully formed.

Of course, because this is Lost, it is momentary. In the last minutes, Sayid returns to the caves, driven by pain and hysteria. Before Jack can do what he normally does and try to belay Sayid’s concerns, Hurley comes running back to the caves to tell him what he has just learned: that one of the people claiming to be a survivor was not on the plane. And in the last moment of the episode, Charlie and Claire come close to the caves and both come to a horrific realization: Claire now knows who her attacker was and Charlie has realized he put his trust in the wrong person at a critical moment. For the first time in the series, it is now clear that for all the threats that lurk in the jungle, there is also a human element. That threat will linger over the series until the very end.

I don’t know, and maybe we never will, if much of Claire’s character was designed for her to be reactive rather than active. But it will become clear very soon just how vital children are to this island. If this was the best way to make the threat real, perhaps the writers made the right choice this time. As we shall see, future decisions regarding her will not nearly be as well handled.

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