Lost Rewatch On VHS: Two for the Road

 

As I have written repeatedly throughout this part of my rewatch I have considered that given the introduction of the tail section survivors and how quickly they were eliminated as a factor in Lost, I have said that there had to be a larger explanation as to why they were all killed off so quickly. As I write this particular article recent events have shed light in a horrifying way as to a probable explanation.

In the June 2023 issue of Vanity Fair an ‘expose’ on Lost was published. I will not name the writer involved nor the book that this article is connected too. In recent years we have constantly heard horror stories of beloved television shows where either the writer or cast is part of a toxic culture in Hollywood and as I find this part of a continuing pattern in so much of today’s media coverage, I do not wish to give this author publicity. However, in this case, I believe there is truth to at least some of which this writer reveals.

Even a cursory examination of the characters who are casualties throughout the series reveals that an unusual percentage are either women or people of color as well as the fact that many of those  receive less developed story arcs that the white male characters. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation,  but it is hard to not look at this episode in particular, in which two major female characters, one of whom is Latino, are killed off by an African-American character who has been absent for more than half the season and who will in just a few episodes leave the series altogether, and not see that there is very likely truth in what this story reveals.  Most of the sources in this article are referred to under aliases, but one of the actors who is on the record is Harold Perrineau who was a vocal critic of what happened to Michael on the series immediately after he finally left the series at the end of Season 4.  I have no reason to doubt his word in this article and it gives credence to the reasons that both Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros were inexplicably killed off in this episode after so much energy was spent building them up throughout this season.

 I will admit when I read this article, it was a blow to me as a fan, though not as much as it has been to learn the truth about behind the scenes events at Buffy the Vampire Slayer or House of Cards.  I have always viewed this episode with a sense of dismay and I expected with this news to view with disgust. Instead, I found myself watching with regret. I don’t know whether Rodriguez or Watros ended up being fired by some of the toxic personalities behind the scenes or they resigned because they refused to be a part of it. Now however, I look at this episode and can only think: What a waste.

Because Rodriguez’s talent in particular is on full display in this episode, particularly in the flashbacks. Ana Lucia has returned to work and her mother has found the man who nearly killed her assassinated in the street.  Despite what has happened Teresa clearly wants to protect her daughter but Ana Lucia clearly does not want to be protected. She gives up her badge,

When we next see her she is a security guard at LAX and is having a drink in the airport bar when she runs across none other than Christian Shephard.  It’s not clear how much longer this is after Jack got him fired, but he’s clearly completely given into the bottle.  He strikes up a  conversation with Ana Lucia and on impulse asks her to come with him to provide ‘security’. It eventually becomes clear that the man he needs protection from is himself and he has no interest in being saved.

This is clear when he calls Ana Lucia at three in the morning after days of drinking, saying “It’s time.” He then has her drive him to the suburbs, gets out of the car and has a long, drunken and increasingly violent conversation with the occupant of the house. We’re not yet sure who this person is but we can clearly hear Christian say that “he wants to see his daughter” and that “he’s paying the mortgage on the house.”  The smarter viewers no doubt made the connection right away (I wasn’t one of them) but even I knew that this vindicated something Jack said about him being unfaithful.

In their last encounter Christian is even more drunk but he’s seeing things with the same clarity he showed Sawyer in ‘Outlaws’ (Sawyer even walks past him as he gets out of the car, though it’s not clear when exactly in his trip this is). He admits that he went to Sydney because Jack did him a favor and he repaid him by cutting him off. He came here on some wasted idea of trying to make things right with his daughter (and when we see just how he left things with her, Christian must really have been lost to think he could do that) and now he’s given up on that.  Sawyer essentially starts Christian to his path on drinking himself to death, but it’s pretty clear by the last time we see him that he’s already there and Sawyer was just the bar-mate who got him the rest of the way.

But Ana Lucia does seem to take the lesson to heart and she goes back to the airport. Does she subconsciously know that Christian is dead when she hears Jack ranting at the attendant? Perhaps. The scene where we see her where she confesses to her mother that she needs help is the most emotionally open we’ve seen her be so far on the series. I suspect that’s why when she sees Jack at the bar a little later she seems more happy than we see her for the rest of the series. When she tells Jack “the hard part’s over” she’s talking about herself. Of course, she doesn’t know the hard part is still to come.

One wonders if the original plan of the writer’s was for Ana Lucia to kill Henry at the end of this episode or, alternatively, if Henry was to disappear entirely from the show at this point. It’s certainly set up that way in the hatch. Because in a way, ‘Henry’s behavior is out of character for how he will be for much of the next season or so.  It’s not just his decision to try and kill Ana Lucia as much as his utterly sick and twisted behavior throughout.  He argues that Ana killed two people who were only trying to help her, and we’ve seen what happened in The Other 48 Days, that’s just not true. He’s angry at Locke when he attacks him to save Ana and when Ana has a gun pointed at him, he still seems determine to bait her into pulling the trigger, saying that Goodwin was making a case for her (that will be true) and that Goodwin wasn’t going to kill her (he wasn’t, but as we’ll say on Goodwin he’s not entirely unbiased). I can’t help think that despite everything we see Michael Emerson do throughout the series, more people might have lived if Ana had just killed him here.

But there are distractions. When Michael shows up at the end of the episode, Jack immediately begins to demonstrate the moronic leadership skills he has for much of Season 2.  First he wonders if the Others pushed Michael out and then immediately backs away to get Michael back. When Locke questions him on how much a coincidence it is that Michael just showed up when Jack and Kate were there, Jack immediately changes his position out of his decision to contradict Locke on everything. Then Michael tells his story, which even hearing it at the time sounded just too good to be true.  It contradicts what we saw him do and the gunfire we heard when he went after them as well as everything we knew he was doing on the computer. We know that Michael has no ability to track Others and the idea that after all this time the Others are old and half of them are women goes against everything we’ve seen and heard over all our encounters with them. The fact that they live in tents and have only two guns doesn’t sound believable, particularly given what Kate found in the medical station.

But Jack is not thinking things through at all, and at the end of the day that’s the real reason I think he goes to Locke with something as close to an apology as possible. He wants to get the guns back from Sawyer and this is as much of an excuse as anything. Note that when he goes to Sawyer, he doesn’t even bother to let him in on what’s happened which might actually convince to go along voluntarily. No, this is about showing that he’s the alpha in this camp, and putting a gun to Sawyer’s head because he can. Who knows how this would have ended had Ana Lucia not disarmed Sawyer?

Locke himself might have questioned it, but he’s distracted too. When he has his last conversation with Henry this season, it’s not about the button but why he wasn’t attacked. How much of the conversation is the truth is hard to know: it’s pretty clear Henry never came here to recruit Locke, but if he is speaking for the man in charge, that might have been on the agenda. Henry knows how important Locke is and he wants to try and con him the best he can. Events soon intervene and they won’t see each other again for nearly a season, but it’s clear the idea of being one of ‘the good ones’ is buried in Locke’s head. It’s hard not to think it wouldn’t be given everything he’s been through this season (and he still hasn’t hit rock bottom). Is this where the seed of Locke’s future path is planted?

As it is, he’s already going to have a lot of guilt on his conscience. Because he kept the secret of Henry’s attack on Ana Lucia, he has now set events into motion that will, inadvertently, lead to her and Libby’s death. The final scene is one of the darkest in the show’s history and would be even if we did not know the ugliness that was going on behind the scenes. That said, it’s still extremely well done. For most of it there is no score, and that’s the right call: as brilliant as Michael Giacchino’s music is, it would be a distraction from the obvious agony we are seeing on Ana’s face and the darkness on Michael’s. Both are clearly going through some internal struggle, though Ana’s is far more obvious.  Why is she in such pain? Because she doesn’t want to be a killer any more or because when the time has finally come where it could be useful, she no longer has it in her to do it? Perhaps that is why she hands the gun to Michael and tells him the combination without any real argument. Despite the torment going on within her, the bloodlust is still deep and she wants Henry dead even if it’s not by her hand.

So she gives Michael the gun. We can see the agony in his face as he says: “I’m sorry.” Ana’s last words are so banal: “For what?” and she dies with a look of utter surprise on her face.  Then Libby, who wanted to go on a date with Hurley and finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, is a victim of Michael’s immediate reaction. Then there is the last moments of the episode where Michael opens the door to the armory, he and Henry exchange a glance – and he shoots himself in the arm.

This is one of the bleakest moments in the show’s history because it permanently destroys Michael on the show and does major damage to Hurley. Libby’s death has always struck me as the most unnecessary in the series history and now that I know why I am even more appalled.  There’s something incredibly cruel about it not just in how casually she’s killed but that it happens just before her and Hurley’s first real date.  It almost makes you wish they’d never built up the relationship at all.

But I still mourn the loss of Ana Lucia the most. Rodriguez showed some tremendous range throughout her time on this series and this episode showed that her potential had barely been tapped. Now after nearly a season of building up a character who looked like she was going to be vital to the show going forward, the writers killed her off this bluntly.  The writers never quite forget her: she will be mentioned or appear in some fashion in every season the rest of the way, but she lingers more as a memory than the impact she had. What a waste.

VHS Rewatch: Among the commercials in this episode is an ad that seems out of place. It is a long commercial for The Hanso Foundation. I didn’t realize until years later that this was actually a plug for an on-line game that the showrunners would create to amuse the fans in the summer between Seasons 2 and 3. Did I miss anything?