Lost Rewatch on VHS: The Brig

 

The episode title is fitting in more ways then one. On a ship like the Black Rock, the brig is the equivalent of a prison. Locke spends the episode leading Sawyer there because he was Sawyer to free both of them from the man who has been holding them in emotional prisons their entire lives. At the end of the episode both men are free of that prison but we already know that on the island, freedom is an illusion.

John Locke has been hard to pin down throughout Season 3. For the first third of the episode, free from Jack’s presence he seems capable of taking on the role of leadership the other man would never let anyone have, and as I indicated he did a fairly better job. Then he, Kate and Sayid went on a mission to free Jack from the Others but the closer they got, the clearer it was that Locke was on his own path. Then as Sawyer put it “he went on his blow up everything that could get us rescued mission’ and the last time anyone saw him, it seemed like he had been indoctrinated. When he shows up in front of Sawyer in the opening of the episode and tells him that ‘he’s infiltrated the Others’,  we know better even before we start seeing the flashbacks.

I’m not sure the first time I saw the episode if I ever truly believed John had abduced Ben. Perhaps part of me hoped it was the case but it didn’t seem to be John’s style. I’ve rewatched the episode so many times over the years it’s impossible to remember a time I didn’t believe that he’d taken Cooper prisoner, and I have to say even hearing the explanation he gives Sawyer it just doesn’t sound that way. So let’s ask ourselves some questions that are now clear.

It's obvious that Ben had Cooper brought to the island.  I don’t know when or how he managed to arrange for Cooper’s accident and abduction, but he clearly knew that he and Locke were going to meet again. I don’t believe he knew that John would come across the island to rescue Jack but it’s just as possible he’d planted enough seeds of doubt in Locke’s head when he was Henry that Locke would come on his own. Cooper was clearly brought as some kind of leverage, though the idea of the ‘magic box’ metaphor was clumsy. (He discards it in this episode.)

Perhaps he truly thought that he needed John in order to completely heal, as he tells him in one of the flashbacks. But there’s clearly another reason. John told Ben the reason he had more of a communion with the island then him was: “Because you’re in a wheelchair and I’m not.” As we see in one of the most critical scenes in the series so far, he’s not the only person to have this same opinion.

Up until this point we have considered Richard Alpert just another Other. He’s clearly a trusted associate of Ben’s, considering that he allows him to go to and from the island with impunity, but we have no reason to think he’s anything more than that. Then Richard has his first conversation with John and his attitude is not that of even a frustrated subordinate. We have known Ben’s leadership is fragile all season but this is the first time anyone has even suggested that Locke is being considered as a replacement.;  We get a sense of it in an earlier flashback when Locke is setting up a tent and all the Others are looking at him with something close to worship. When Richard tells John that he is ‘very special’ those are the words John has been waiting for his whole life. Richard tells him outright that Ben set John up to kill his father to humiliate him in front of the camp. That humiliation is very harsh in John’s memory: when Sawyer holds a knife to his throat and asks why he doesn’t kill Ben himself, he shouts: “Because I can’t!” He’s lying about who but not himself.

One of the theories that was floating around the world of Lost was that there was a possibility that the real reason Locke chose Sawyer to kill Cooper was in order to get revenge on him for humiliating him in front of the camp to take the guns back in The Long Con. I’m not entirely certain I buy this theory but it is worth remembering that just three days earlier Ben basically did the exact same thing to Locke in front of the Others, so that memory might be fresh in his mind. That said, I think Locke chose Sawyer because he had read the file he’d been given by Richard and knew exactly what Cooper had done to Sawyer. 

I’m also relatively certain by this point there weren’t a lot of people Locke could have recruited if he’d used the same story. Kate, Sayid and Jack at this point have no reason to ever trust him again, Hurley and Claire aren’t the killing type  he barely has talked to Jin and Sun throughout the entire series, and while Juliet clearly might want to kill Ben, she has absolutely no reason to help Locke do anything. The only people who might still trust him at this point are Desmond and Charlie, and right now they’re kind of distracted.  So he gambled that Sawyer’s hatred of Ben would be enough to get him to follow Locke into the jungle. Even then, it was a gamble that barely paid off: Sawyer spends much of his trek steaming at John and more curious as to what the Others know about him then actually killing Ben.  Sawyer has to know that there’s a trap involved but by the time he ends up at the Black Rock, it’s too late to turn back.

This is the first time we’ve actually been to the Black Rock since the big trek in Exodus and it’s the first time Sawyer’s seen it at all. This may not be another case of failure to share information; by the time the trek to the Black Rock took place Sawyer was on the raft trying to get everyone rescued and in the aftermath of not only the raft blowing up but the opening of the hatch, I’m pretty sure no one’s thought of the ship in a while. That said, yet again we get another concrete example of nobody on the island asking questions: Sawyer doesn’t even ask why the ships in the middle of the island. (To be fair, whatever John has theorized about the ship being there is COMPLETELY inaccurate.)

Then Locke, well, locks Sawyer in the brig with Anthony Cooper. Josh Holloway almost certainly submitted this episode for Emmy consideration; even more than Every Man for Himself, it demonstrates his capabilities as an actor. The decision of the Emmys to ignore Holloway is one of their graver oversights (though to be fair, there was a lot of strong competition during this era, not the least from the cast of Lost itself) and his performance more than demonstrates it here. The scene with Cooper is incredible as he tries to puzzle  out who the hell this man is, is baffled when he learns that he’s Locke’s father and that he threw him out a window, becomes increasingly perplexed when he learns that he and all the survivors are dead (I’ll get to that in a minute) and then hears the word ‘con.’

Now I’m well aware that millions of people had figured out as early as Orientation that Cooper was the original ‘Sawyer’. Speaking for myself when I finally heard Cooper say that one of his handles was ‘Tom Sawyer’, I was as stunned as Sawyer was. (I’ll admit to being surprised that Sawyer’s letter had managed to survive intact the last three seasons, including you know, his spending much of the start of Season 2 in the ocean, but I’ll let that go.) Holloway then proceeds to let the scene he’s spent thirty years hoping would happen in his head finally play out. Except that Cooper doesn’t go along. Even allowing the theory that he is dead; he is utterly repentant of whatever sins that he has committed.  He justifies throwing his son out of an apartment window by saying: “He was becoming a nuisance” berates Sawyer’s mother and shows no repentance for any of the cons he’s done.  Part of me really admires Sawyer for holding out as long as he did before throttling him to death with the chains – which honestly, is still far better than Cooper deserved.

And I do feel a huge amount of pity for Sawyer when he realizes his thirty year mission and finds himself completely empty. That said, what he did realistically think was going to happen when he gave the real Sawyer his letter? He went to Sydney with every intention of killing the man who he believed had ruined his life. He was repentant when he found out he killed the wrong man, to be sure but even on the island he still couldn’t get rid of the letter. He even took it with him on the raft that might very well have led to his dying.  There was no way Anthony Cooper would have ever given him what he wanted but its never been clear what exactly Sawyer wanted. I honestly think the reason he killed Cooper was because he’d finally found him and it wasn’t as satisfying as he thought it would be. He will spend the next several days trying to overcome the trauma of what he has done but it is going to take a lot of outside factors to move him forward.

One of those outside factors is, of course, back at the beach. By now the distrust of Jack has reached a furor: none of the people who brought Naomi back truly think they can trust him with this information. Hurley then goes to the next most trustworthy source – Sayid.  Sayid listens to the story of Naomi Dorrit with a certain amount of skepticism. This skepticism, as we shall see, is justified but in Sayid’s case he clearly believes that Naomi is one of them. It is only when he sees the satellite phone that he believes that there might be a possibility of rescue. In what is his typical form of compartmentalizing when Hurley brings up the fact that the wreckage of Oceanic 815 has been found with no survivors, all he does is say “One problem at a time.”

There are, to be sure, another bunch of problems to come. Kate has not exactly done a lot to endear herself to the fans in Season 3 (I can understand why many would openly hate her at least during this season) and she really doesn’t do her character any favors in this episode. She is told by Sayid what they have found and specifically not to tell Jack. What does she do? You guessed it.

Jack, to be fair, does himself even fewer ones. It was bad enough watching him be self-righteous so much of the time, but when he tells Kate point blank that anything she can say to him, she can say in front of Juliet, this is the kind of thing that would set anybody off. Kate unfurls just how much nobody trusts him any more and that his decision to listen to Juliet has made him completely unreliable. When he takes the news of their rescue by asking: “why didn’t anybody tell me?” I’m kind of astonished Kate doesn’t punch him. And to put the cherry on top when Juliet tells Jack: “We should tell her”, his reaction is ‘not yet.’ Maybe its better if Jack didn’t know about the possibility of rescue; we shall find out in the next couple of episodes that’s actually not his top priority any more.

But at the end of the episode we’re still not sure of Locke’s priorities. Before he heads back to find the Others, he tells Sawyer that Juliet is a mole. Indeed, almost buried under everything is that we now know Ben’s plans – the Others are planning to infiltrate the camp and kidnap all the pregnant women. Ben assures John no one will get hurt, but John justifiably doesn’t believe him. The last act he does is give Sawyer proof of this, thus helping his old people but betraying the ones he wants to join. He is never blamed for this (and to be fair, we’ll soon find out that Juliet has intended to betray him anyway) but it’s yet another example of how John is forever intending to never be part of any group. He tells Sawyer at the end of the episode that ‘he’s on his own journey’ and he clearly is. Season 3 has demonstrated John is going to follow his destiny and will do anything to anyone to get there.

The last shot of the episode is Locke putting the body of his father on his back. There is a huge irony to this. For his entire life John has been carrying the burden of his father. Now as he puts the physical burden of it, we see the emotional one has been lifted for good.  But the fact that he had no problem putting the burden of killing his father on someone else and that he is willing to betray his new people and never look back on his old demonstrates that Locke may be special but that may not be a good thing.

VHS Notes: Among the previews that we see in this episode is one for a two-hour episode of Grey’s Anatomy. This will be the backdoor pilot for Private Practice, a much maligned spinoff that is my favorite Shonda Rhimes series. We also see previews for Georgia Rule, a disastrous film that was part of Jane Fonda’s gradual return to public entertainment after her divorce from Ted Turner.

The previews for next week’s episode of Lost are vague but do show shots of the Dharma Initiative, the conversations with Jack and the climactic scene of ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’. It ends with Ben telling Locke about what happens when they open the door and everything changes. The series is again telling the truth.