Lost Rewatch: The Man From Tallahassee

 

This episode, of course, would have a place in Lost lore for finally revealing how John Locke ended up in a wheelchair. (The previous week’s promo had assured us as much.) But that is far from the only reason The Man From Tallahassee is one of the masterpieces of Season 3.

For one thing, it is a near certainty that this is the episode that would earn Terry O’Quinn an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama in 2007.  It would have been hard to argue that there is an episode this year that shows O’Quinn to the full range of his emotion: the flashbacks alone would seem to have guaranteed him a win. But the more times you rewatch the episode (this at least the seventh time I’ve done so since it first aired) the more you realize that there are layers that even the most devoted viewer may have spotted at the time.

The flashbacks shows that Locke is now at what he thinks will be the worst part of his life: he has no woman in his life, he has no friends and is suffering from severe depression. The melancholy in him is so great that he tells the bureaucrat in the initial flashback that he sees no need to even go to therapy any more, even though he does not believe his condition is ‘temporary’.  We see him pushing a TV dinner on a tray with the TV on and not really watching it when Peter Talbot shows up at his door, asking questions he does not want to answer. (It wasn’t until at least the third time I watched the show again that Patrick J. Adams’ presence in the role seemed to matter at all: it was only at that point that Suits was something resembling a success.)

The flashbacks show, just like all of Locke’s flashbacks, how he keeps making the wrong choice. When Peter tells him his suspicions of Anthony Cooper – which Locke knows better than anyone are justified – rather than tell him the truth, he hides what he knows. He then decides to confront Cooper and demand he leave Mrs. Talbot, which he has to know is a bad move. People questioned why Locke believed Cooper, considering his track record. I think its clear despite everything the man has done to him, there is a part of him that genuinely wants to believe there’s something redeemable about him. Then the police show up on his doorstep and tell him that Peter is dead.  Again he is faced with the decision to tell the cops what he knows, and again, fatally, he decides to confront Cooper. Cooper takes the opportunity to con him one last time – and this time Locke is pushed out an eight-story window.

The common thought at the time of this episode and beyond was that when Locke goes into see Ben, John still hasn’t realized that Ben is just as much a con man and manipulator as his father is.  Now it’s very clear at the end of the episode Ben needed to this happened and that he wanted John to do this. But each time I watch these scenes, I’m still never convinced of it. I’m not necessarily saying John has the upper hand, but I’m not sure he’s being used.

To be clear, the scenes between Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn will be the source of some of Lost greatest moments: we saw as much in the interactions between ‘Benry’ and Locke in the hatch. At that point, it was very clear Ben was capable of manipulating Locke. In Season 3, that doesn’t make Locke particularly special: we’ve already seen him manipulate Kate, Jack and Sawyer when they were on Hydra Island, it’s pretty clear he’s been manipulating Juliet for a while,  and we’ve already seen how good he was at bringing out the worst in Sayid. (Interestingly while Sayid comes to the barracks with Kate and Locke, he never lays eyes on Ben once: this will be the only season the two never so much as see each other.) So the obvious conclusion is, even with a gun to his head, Ben has John right where he wants him.

The thing is, when you look at the episode it’s clear Ben has John right where he needs him, and I think John knows it throughout their scenes in Ben’s bedroom. Hearing John’s dialogue throughout, its clear Locke is holding Ben with contempt. This is also a clear sign that something in Locke has changed: when Alex walks in the room, John puts a gun to her head without hesitation, even though he does not yet know of their relationship. This is also the first time we’ve seen without question that while Alex may not be Ben’s daughter, he clearly loves her like one. Even if he thinks he is in control of the situation, he does not want Alex to become collateral damage. Every time the three are in the room, Ben clearly wants to get her out of harm’s way; his remark that his daughter currently hates him is a jibe directed out of protection. Throw in the fact that while she’s getting the pack, he keeps looking at pictures of her when she was younger, and we know he has her best interests at heart.

It's also worth noting that while Ben is trying to persuade John to do what we wants, there’s never any indication that Locke believes a word that comes out of his mouth. He mocks the idea of the ‘magic box’, he snickers at the idea of this hurting Ben’s reputation with his people, and he views Ben’s behavior as leader of the Others with nothing short of contempt. And it’s worth noting that Locke clearly knows that he has a card in his hand that he didn’t before.  When Ben tells him how hard it was for him to be in the hatch and express his amazement at the fact that Locke was walking when he had no right too, I think he’s telling the truth.  And Locke immediately pounces on that fact. Ben is still in a wheelchair a week after being operated on. Locke also asks the question Ben has to have been asking himself: if on an island where people recover from injuries so quickly, how did he, a person who has lived on the island his ‘whole life’ develop a fatal tumor on his spine.  Every time Ben tries to poke at Locke’s weak spots, John deflects, and when Ben tries to ask why John is angry, Locke’s rage is very real. He calls Ben a fraud and a cheat; that he’s taking the island for granted.  When Ben asks how he possibly can know more about the island than him, Locke has a perfect rejoinder: “Because you’re in a wheelchair and I’m not.”

The general consensus at the time was that even when Alex told him that her father manipulated people, he didn’t wake up and realize he was being used. That actually brings me to a question that has never been answered to anyone’s satisfaction: did Locke actually blow up the submarine? We see him go into the submarine to be sure, but we never see him plant the C4. The next time we see him, he is soaking wet, which would make no sense if he planted the C4 in the sub. While we see an explosion, to be sure, we don’t see anything that looks like wreckage. In the Lost Encyclopedia, the writers actually state that it was never confirmed the sub was destroyed. The only proof we seem to have is that we never see the sub in the present again, but since this is Lost that means very little. (And in keeping with the show, once the sub has been ‘killed’, we actually see it a lot more.) Indeed, the only reason a major storyline for the back half of the show makes any sense at all is if the submarine still exists.

And I question whether Locke really thought he was being used even then: he makes it very clear that if he’d wanted to, the C4 could have been removed from the pack well before Ryan gave it to the Alex. Consider the exchange between them in the last scene. Locke says: “you wanted it to happen.” Ben says: John made his dreams come true.” Neither one says the sub has been destroyed.

Now consider Ben’s actions after John leaves and Jack and Juliet enter. He seemed almost warm in his attitude with Locke; he is clipped and cold here. He tells Jack he will let his friends go ‘once you leave the island.’  Ben’s hold over the Others has been tottering for a while, and he clearly needs a power play to do so.  He clearly has a play in mind to get what he wants from the camp and in order to do so, he needs Juliet back in his corner. The only way he can make this work is for it to appear like she has no choice. We’re never entirely sure what Juliet knows and when she knows but the next two episodes will demonstrate that she is clearly capable of being as duplicitous as Ben when it comes to getting what she needs. She may not like playing the villain but she’s willing to do it. (If there is a flaw in her character, it’s that from this point on we will only see the two of them together in flashbacks or indeed with the rest of the Others from this point on.)

Ben also very clearly needs to keep manipulating Locke. He does know that John is special and that he needs to keep him nearby. It’s not clear if he’s doing so to necessitate his healing or because he wants to keep a very clear threat to him at his side, but he does know that he has to convince Locke to stay. That’s clearly why ‘The Man From Tallahassee’ factors into this. Locke spends the entire episode not believing anything Ben says. But when he sees his father tied up in a locked room, it’s the first time he thinks maybe there’s something to it.

The episode also shows, in smaller doses, the blindness of other characters. Ever since Kate and Sawyer fled Hydra Island, Kate has been determined to rescue Jack, and won’t listen to an argument against it. In the last two episodes, she’s increasingly refused to accept that Locke might be a threat to her rescue mission and when she sees Jack galivanting with the Others and shaking hands with Ben, she denies the evidence of her eyes. Even when Kate goes into Jack’s ‘home’ and he doesn’t look the least bit happy to see her, she still sticks to the idea that Jack needs to be rescued.

Now I fully admit in the scene between the two of them it does look like Jack seems to have defected himself. But when Jack points out that he told Kate not to come back, the best defense she can offer is: “I didn’t think you meant it.” That he was willing to sacrifice his freedom for hers should have registered for Kate but it’s pretty clear that she was fundamentally driven by her guilt for sleeping with Sawyer. She doesn’t yet know that Jack saw the aftermath (she will soon) but as we see now, this is Kate’s fatal flaw. As often as she runs away, she keeps coming back for the ones she cares about, and its always disastrous. The consequences are just as painful here as they have been in her flashbacks.

Sayid doesn’t really factor much in this episode – except in a way that demonstrates his ability to interrogate. When Alex shows up to get Locke’s pack, Ryan Pryce (who we’ve heard about before but until this episode haven’t seen) is guarding Sayid. In three lines Sayid tells Alex he knows who she is, that he met her mother and that the Others have been lying to her.  Maybe this his way of vengeance against Ben: by now he knows that Alex is with the Others and that Ben is raising her as his daughter. What better way to hurt him by placing the seeds of doubt about everything she believed about her life? Of course, he might just as easily be doing this for Danielle, who clearly could not come to the camp to face her daughter. (The expression on Rousseau’s face when she sees Alex for the first time is one of the best moments in Mira Furlan’s entire career on Lost.)

That brings me to one last moment. Locke walks away from the sub just as Jack and Juliet are being guided to it. Though we don’t know it, this is one of only two scenes between Jack and Locke in the entirety of Season Three. Jack has not seen Locke since the attempt to rescue Michael, has not had a conversation with him since John and Eko went out to the jungle to trail Henry.  The only exchange is not friendly: “What are you doing here, John?” A moment later, it appears the sub blows up. When we next see John, he is handcuffed to a pipe and he’s clearly been beaten. It might well have been the brutal Pryce who did it, but just as many people suspected Jack could easily have been the one to do it; the Others would have had no problem letting him do their dirty work.

 Perhaps that is the real reason that Locke chose to make it look like he blew up the submarine, even if he didn’t. Locke may not believe a word Ben says, but unlike his fellow survivors, he alone believes the island is not something to escape from. Ben will talk in a later episode of John needed to make an ‘offering’, and I’d argue by this action, he has made it. He has now permanently severed any relationships he had with his fellow survivors; from this point on, those who ally with him will do so reluctantly and never completely trusting him. After this episode Locke fundamentally disappears for much of the rest of the season, and this is clearly done deliberately. When asked if he is with the Others, Jack says: “I’m not with anyone.” By doing what he does at the end of the episode, Locke has essentially assured that he will never truly be with anyone again.

The next episode is ubiquitous to the entire series. However, recent events have made me decide that I think that it is far more important to a larger context.

 

VHS Note: In commercial we see a promo for the DVD release of Children of Men an underappreciated film at the time now considered one of the classics of the era. We also see a promo for Grey’s Anatomy talking about the George-Izzie hookup – which I think even Shonda Rhimes wishes she had never done.