Lost Rewatch: Special

 

Of course by far the characters who got the most short shrift by the writers of Lost turned out to be Michael and Walt. Unlike many of the others who did, however, this was most likely due to how the series ended up unfolding. The writers knew that casting a child actor is always tricky on any television show, and originally they intended to factor it in by having a time jump between Season 1 and Season 2, probably of several months. By the time they reached the end of Season 1, however, they were aware that this was going to fit in with the overarching plans for the series, and realized that Malcolm David Kelley was going to have to be written out of the show.  That probably wasn’t the only reason for one aspect of the season finale but it certainly was the reason that Walt more or less became persona non grata from that point, effectively only returning for guest spots after Season 2. For that reason Michael had to get written out of the series as well – and that part they handled extremely badly.

As frustrating as the end results were, by this point in the series you could have been forgiven for wanting Michael to have been the character who met a speedy end instead.  Up until this point, Michael has been one of the most inconsistent characters of the series, clearly trying to be a good father but doing one of the worst jobs imaginable.  He has reacted horribly to half the characters on the series, and he’s already developed the unflattering characteristic of holding grudges against characters he doesn’t like. It’s very clear he is jealous of Locke’s hold over his son, and ‘Special’ shows him at his worst,  trying to beat up Boone, threatening to kill Locke when he thinks he still has a hold on him, and acting like the worst kind of father when Walt is defiant towards him. A part of me genuinely wonders if one of the reasons behind his decision to build a raft is not so much to try and find rescue but to get his son away from Locke.  (You get a certain idea that this pettiness was always part of his character in the flashback when he tells Walt that Brian wants Walt to have Vincent. As we’ll see though, it’s kind of hard not to think Bryan has it coming.)

However, when we see Michael’s flashbacks in this episode, we realize why Michael has been acting this way on the island, not just towards Walt but in a way towards Locke. Michael feels this way because of the tremendous guilt because Susan took Walt away to another country from him at a young age, basically bribed him from having any contact with Walt so she could marry up and has essentially spent her entire life making sure that Walt doesn’t even know that Michael cared about him after that point.  We’ll later learn that Michael understandably had doubts about what was being essentially forced upon him by Bryan, and there’s a decent chance that he’s feeling guilty about that part of it as well.  Michael’s single minded focus on ‘saving’ his son will become so overwhelming in the next season that it will essentially drain anything else about his character we might have once liked. But when we considered why he has that focus, its worth remembering that he might be carrying guilt from that too.

Based on what we learn from Michael’s flashbacks and what we see through Walt’s we do get a clear sense that Walt himself is the clearest example of the kind of bad parenting that, as we’ll soon see, was a key factor behind almost every other character we meet who ends up on the island. The only person who probably cared for him unabashedly in his life was Michael, who fought to get his son back, is understandably angry that Bryan is essentially abandoning him, and still makes himself out to be the bad guy when he comes to take custody of Walt in Sydney. Susan Porter clearly believes being a good mother stops at being able to provide him with a good lifestyle and nothing else: Walt has already moved three times he turns two and Walt himself tells you that Sydney was far from the last place they ended up living at. Whether Bryan ever wanted kids we never know for sure (there is a possibility that he might be creeped out by what we see at the end of Walt’s flashback) but I don’t think even a lifetime of similar incidents would have bothered him as much as it did if he truly loved Walt like a son. The fact that he seems fine just throwing him away when he visits Michael clearly calls that into question. When Locke tells Michael that he’s lived through more at ten then most people do in a lifetime, it’s not a throwaway line (though compared to some of the childhoods we learn about going forward, it’s par for the course on the island.)

And Walt clearly is special which the writers, who have been hinting at throughout the season, finally state directly. While I don’t think the polar bear’s appearance is something that Walt himself caused, there have been enough weird things going on around Walt so far that it is obvious that he does seem to have some kind of psychic powers to do with the island. Locke’s clearly picked up on this by now, and I kind of get the reasoning why Walt is drawn to him. Michael has spent most of the time on the island, ordering Walt around and basically being the worst kind of helicopter parent. Locke, by contrast, has always treated Walt as a grown-up, never talks down to him, and may very well see him as someone whose potential needs to be realized. It’s interesting to compare how both men react to him in this episode in the early parts of it: Locke is trying to help protect him from the dangers he knows are out there; Michael wants to get him away from them. Both reactions have merit and even nearly twenty years later, I still don’t know whose decision was the right one.

But let’s not kid ourselves: no matter what the reason, Michael’s decision to build the raft is the right one for the survivors. Even at this point in the series, its pretty clear that the majority of the survivors are preparing to dig in for the long hall, and that even Sayid’s plan to find the radio tower is in stasis right now. When Michael gives an idea that might actually help, it is frustrating that two of the key leaders on the island instantly start arguing against it and that Shannon’s decision to say she ‘might help’ seems born out of a pettiness to bait Boone than it is to actually get rescued. (Many people will assist in the raft’s construction, but we never see Shannon do so until the season finale.) The fact that he chooses to do so does give the camp a path forward for the rest of the season, and its hard to imagine anyone else on the show having the motivation to get them rescued.

Mind you, it’s not that Rousseau’s map isn’t revealing some things. For much of the episode, Sayid is puzzling over a note on the map called ‘The Black Rock’ but is still inclined to think of it as nonsense. When Charlie shows up near the end of the episode and tells them that Claire has written in her diary about ‘dreaming about the Black Rock’ it establishes a key part of the island mythology that will end up being one of the more successful overarching storylines of the entire series.  We do learn that this isn’t a delusion, we eventually do learn about why it is important to the island (and most importantly not merely to Rousseau) and while the mystery will take most of the series to resolve, its presence will be critical to Lost  until it is.

That said, it is annoying that in a sense the connection to Claire dreaming about it is never referred to directly again on the show from this point forward. We’ve already seen she may be having prophetic dreams, but we never hear anything about the Black Rock for the rest of the series in relation to Claire. (Then again, perhaps considering Claire’s role in the final season, maybe it was preparing her for that. Never thought of it before.) Even if that is the case, it really seems like a heavy-handed way of reminded the audience that ‘no, we haven’t forgotten about Claire after all,” though given the fact that no one seems to have been looking for her the last two episodes and the only reason she is found at all is when Boone and Locke are looking for a lost dog you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone on the island has.

Well, that’s not true. Charlie clearly is. We may not see him climbing the walls in the last three episodes demanding why no one is searching for Claire, but unlike the rest of the camp we can understand why. He is clearly still processing the trauma of not only being nearly killed but discarded by Ethan because they ‘only wanted Claire.’  He spends the episodes looking for Claire’s stuff and eventually her diary no doubt because he feels this is in part penance and in part because, he too, is beginning to think she’s dead. Kate shows optimism about it before she leaves him, but Charlie doesn’t return it. That may be the reason (after wonderful comic byplay) he ends up reading Claire’s diary: he truly thinks he may never see someone he has already begun to care about again.

And then Claire does show up at the end. The writers may never have truly figured out what to do with her long term, but they had decided that Claire was important to the series for the immediate future and maybe longer. Her presence will ignite a series of action that will ripple throughout the remainder of the first season and quite a bit beyond.