Lost Rewatch on VHS: Homecoming

 

Watching the recording gave a sense of the changing of the guard on ABC and on television at the time. One of the promos was for the final three episodes of NYPD Blue, one of the most controversial – and culturally significant – series of all time, both for the network, the era, and the creators. It would be Steven Bochco’s last major popular success, and by now co-creator David Milch was in the middle of writing Deadwood, one of the other great series of the new Golden Age that would end up being nominated for Best Drama that year alongside Lost.

The promos for this episode were something of a misnomer, saying: “Someone will not survive.” This was technically true, but basically a lie as the castaway who dies is essentially a background character. (There was some controversy at the time about his identity, but this was a mystery the series never chose to reveal and honestly it’s basically irrelevant, so I won’t go into here.) However, it’s the fact of his killing that significantly changes the state of play on the island and it’s why he’s killed that is important.

A crisis on the island will not always bring out the best in the survivors, and almost always things end up going horribly wrong. The return of Claire and almost everything that follows in this episode is the first real example of a major crisis we’ve seen, and it more or less follows a model that the series will handle for much of the rest of its run when it comes to leadership.

It's particularly significant for being one of the few times that Jack and Locke are not only basically working in alignment but listening to each other. When Claire returns with amnesia, Sayid is initially suspicious of what has happened (though as it turns out, he is clearly wrong in this example) and does not begin to mobilize until Ethan returns and threatens the camp through Charlie to return Claire with nothing but death in his wake. Facing the threat, Jack and Locke play off each other well – Locke agrees with Jack’s plan to tell everybody, Jack acquiesces to Locke’s plan to try and keep the camp safe, even if that means going against his personal desire. It's also worth noting that Jack seems to have improved his bedside manner from before: he treats Claire cautiously, is completely understanding of her problem and handles it with kid gloves. Even when he initially rejects Kate’s suggestion to put the guns in play,  there’s less self-righteousness involved than the genuine fear of someone getting shot.

When the crisis worsens after Scott is murdered by Ethan, Jack takes Locke aside and again asks him to track Ethan. Locke’s reaction seems cold but is again perfectly rational based on exactly what has happened and what he knows at the time. Jack realizes that these are desperate times and that means taking these kinds of measures.

It is interesting to note how both Jack and Sawyer regard Kate in the crisis to come. Jack comes to Sawyer with the extra gun ahead of Kate, even though he has no problem digging Kate in the meantime. By contrast, when Sawyer has an extra gun, he has no problem giving it to Kate. Hard not to be on Team Sawyer on this one. Also when the climax of the episode takes place, Jack (perhaps understandably given how their previous encounter ended) takes a certain amount of extra vengeance in beating Ethan to a pulp. Sawyer seems almost admiring of Jack for the first time and acts like the rational lawman when Ethan puts up a threat.

But the episode is centered around Charlie for a reason. Indeed, given the nature of what’s happening on the island it would have to be. Charlie has been bearing both the most physical and psychological trauma from Claire’s abduction, and now that his hopes have been realized, it’s the start of another nightmare. Claire has no memory of anything before getting on the plane (and it must be so heart-breaking for everyone to try and explain to her why no one’s rescued them) which means she doesn’t remember anything about her and Charlie’s bond. When the survivors begin to question her return, Charlie becomes protective and ends up running smack into Ethan. Ethan really doesn’t have to threaten Charlie physically; he’s already carrying enough emotional guilt to remember what’s happening. But Charlie’s instincts, which we already know are not the best, lead him to hide the truth from Claire about the danger the camp is in because of Ethan’s threat. When she learns the truth (and seriously, Shannon has to have the high ground here?) she is justifiably upset and that just makes Charlie’s overprotective instincts worse.

You’d think Jack and Locke would know better than to just turn Charlie away and hope he’ll hide, but to be fair, considering the danger they all know is coming they have that right. Unfortunately, it will speak to a larger pattern that is beginning to develop among what will be referred to by the fans as ‘the A team’ particularly in regard to Charlie. At the end of the day most of them do not respect him and whatever he might bring to the table, which considering that at this point Charlie has already saved Jack’s life and has gone out on more than  a few dangerous treks across the jungle with Sayid and Kate, says more about them then it does about Charlie. It has nothing to do with his addiction, which right now only Jack and Locke know about and have basically kept a secret. Perhaps this lack of respect is part of what will lead Charlie down a darker path in Season 2.

Like almost everybody we will meet on this series, Charlie is weak in many ways. But his manifestation of this weakness is to compensate by being overprotective. This is clear in the flashback that transpires. Charlie is trying to find a mark in Lucy because he is trying to rob her blind to get his next fix. But when he has a conversation with Lucy and her father, he is just as honest as he is to Liam when we see his brother in the throes of his addiction. Charlie wants to change and find a way forward, which is admirable and realistic. Unfortunately, he has come to that realization at the wrong time. The irony is under other circumstances, Lucy might have been the person to put him on the right path, but because he met her when he did and how he did, it is inevitable that it will end in disaster. No doubt he went back to Tommy after this having learned the wrong lesson.

It probably isn’t a shock that Ethan ends up dead at the end in a hail of bullets, but it is surprising Charlie is the one who pulls the trigger. Based on what we will later end up learning about the Others, Charlie is no doubt correct that Ethan would never have told them anything, no matter what Sayid did. And based on how the last confrontation between them ended, Charlie is no doubt right when he said he got what was coming to him. In what will become a pattern for this series, we will eventually learn far more about Ethan now that he is dead then when we was alive, though how much of this is accurate will remain obscure. Even when we see him later on, we will never be sure how much of what we know is true or another lie.

The threat of Ethan is gone but not the mystery of where he came from and what he wanted. For the remainder of the first half of the series, the Others will loom as much a threat as whatever it is out there in the jungle. It is the start in what will be a slow war where both sides fundamentally believe they are in the right. Our perceptions of them will fluctuate the more we learn about them, but its worth noting that the basic question about them is never truly answered. If the Others really believe that they are on in the right, why do they seem to perceive survivors of a plane crash struggling for food and drink as a fundamental threat to their way of life? And if they truly believe that their actions are right, why do they never feel like they have to justify them or even apologize for them? If this place is beautiful, as Locke believes, why does it always seem to bring out the monsters in everyone who lives there?