Lost Rewatch On VHS: Follow The Leader

 

VHS Notes: Not much in the way of previews for movies we haven’t seen, save for a DVD preview of the release of one of the Underworld films. We do get some more interesting previews for episodes of TV to come. The most interesting is the third season finale of Brothers & Sisters, which involved the final episode of Balthazar Getty as a regular. The more interesting preview is for the 100^th episode of Grey’s Anatomy which we are led to believe will give the wedding of Meredith and McDreamy but actually was the marriage of Alex and a still deathly ill Izzie Stevens

 

Before we begin, this is the third and last episode of Season Five where Finding Lost and Lostipedia disagree as to who this episode is centered around. Nikki Stafford ranks this episode as ‘Everyone’ whereas Lostipedia lists it as Richard-centric. I think the latter is more likely correct than the former, partially because almost every time the episode cuts from the present to the past, we focus on Richard first. And in the larger context of the episode, Richard being at the center makes more sense.

This is also the third and last episode of Season Five that takes place entirely on the island.

 

Follow the Leader is exactly what Nikki Stafford thinks the episode is about: leaders and followers. This has been an underlying theme of Lost since the Pilot but its rarely been more focused then it is in this episode as we are looking both in the present in the past, in the Others and in Dharma, who is taking the reigns of leadership and who is willing to follow them. It’s for that reason I think that this episode is Richard-centric.

As we have followed all of the time jumps over Season Five, we have been reminded of Daniel’s discussion of our need for a constant. And if there has been a constant throughout the jumps, it’s Richard. It’s now clear that Richard has been on the island for a very long time and yet somehow he looks exactly the same now as he did in 1954. But while Richard has clearly been on the island longer than all of the Others, we’re still not sure of his role. In Season 3, he seemed to be Ben’s inferior and then we learned he’d been on the island when the Dharma Initiative was there. In Cabin Fever, we saw that he’d been following John Locke since he was born (and now we know that it’s because Locke told him too). He’s always seemed calm and unperturbed through everything that happens.

Then when Eloise shot Dan at the end of last week’s episode (we see it play out again) he’s clearly unsettled. It’s also clear that Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking have a role in leadership on the island (we’re not sure who is in charge now) and while he told an underling that he didn’t answer to them when it came to heal a young Ben Linus, when Eloise gives orders in this episode he follows them, albeit unwillingly.. In the present, when he and Locke are reunited, it’s clear that not only does he not know where Locke has been for three years, he has no idea what the time jumps have involved. And while he doesn’t agree when Locke says he wants to see Jacob, Locke reminds him he’s the leader and Richard decides to go along with it. So who is Richard?

We get our first clear picture from Ben at the beginning of the episode. He tells Sun that he’s ‘a kind of advisor and that he’s held that job for a long time.” It’s also clear that Richard is the only person on the island who has any access to Jacob, certainly he’s the only person who knows where he is. This explains a lot, including why Richard doesn’t age. If Jacob is the god of the island, he’s been here for even longer than Richard and in order to make his job permanent, he needs an advisor who’s immortal. (The writers may be giving us a subtle hint as to how Richard got here when we see him in the present. He’s building a ship in a bottle and it’s pretty clear the ship is the Black Rock.)

In both 1977 and 2007, Richard has to deal with disruptions to the island and we can’t tell yet which one might be the more dangerous. What is clear is that Jack has decided to accept that the idea of his destiny is to follow through with what Dan said he was here to do and detonate a hydrogen bomb so that Oceanic 815 never crashes and none of the last three years ever happen.

Before we get to how this breaks down., it’s rare that moral arithmetic can be equated with actual arithmetic. When Oceanic 815 crashed, 324 passengers were onboard. At this point, we are down to Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid (who we finally are reunited with) and Jin in 1977. In the present, Locke and Sun are the only ones left. It’s possible that Claire and Rose and Bernard are still alive but the show hasn’t told us yet. If Jack is right, all 324 of those passengers live. That would seem to be a moral good. Of course, even if he’s right that bomb if it goes off will probably kill all the Others on the island as well as the Dharma Initiative. By the time episode ends all ‘non-essential personnel’ are on the sub but Jack doesn’t know that.

But as we know even when Jack tries to argue the moral high ground, he’s still self-righteous and he still wants to ‘fix things’. When he tells Kate all this misery will be behind us, he’s not talking about all of the people who died in the last three years but all the suffering he personally has been through. Jack’s life was pretty horrible before the crash, but it got exponentially worse afterward. On the island he had to watch patient after patient die without adequate supplies, watch people he’d come to think were friends die because of his decisions and have his way of thinking challenged by Ben Linus and John Locke over and over. He then spent the next three years lying about it, watching as a wedge came between him and the rest of the Oceanic 6, got engaged to Kate but then destroyed it, and became an alcoholic, drug addicted, suicidal mess who was willing to come back to the island he’d been so desperate to leave without returning. Even the possibility that the bomb might kill him is preferable to the existence he has now.

Kate takes a lot of abuse in this episode for her behavior, but it is worth remembering that if the plane lands in LA, she’s headed to prison probably for the rest of her life. She is the only person who managed to build a happy life for herself and came back to the island for an unselfish reason, none of which Jack seems to care about. She has the moral high ground here.

It's worth noting, though, that she undoes a lot if it with pure stupidity. Once she and Jack are in the hands of the Others, she does nothing to help Daniel before he’s about to get shot or after. Once she’s being kept at gunpoint, and its her best interest to go along with Jack’s story, she’s remarkably stubborn. That she thinks she can just walk away from the Others and not get shot is ridiculous considering everything she’s been through with them, past and present. And that she really thinks she can talk Jack out of something when he sets his mind to it means she truly forgotten what it was like to be around Jack before. She’s lucky she only got thrown on the sub at the end of the episode: she should have gotten killed a million times over.

No one who comes with Jack on his dive into the bomb is a willing follower. Richard is only going along with this because Eloise ordered him, it’s clear he doubts every step of the way. Eloise is willing to go along with Jack because she’s been offered the chance to save her son, something that Jack can’t promise is true. And the fact that Sayid is willing to follow Jack honestly says more about him then his belief in the mission. Sayid by this point has even less to lose than Jack does by trying this, but when he says: “At worst, this will put us all out of our misery” we know he’s not joking about it. The last three years have been more of a nightmare for Sayid then they have been for Jack and there’s nothing for him in civilization. Maybe Nadia will be waiting for him if this works but as we remember back when this started, he had his doubts whether Nadia was waiting for him in Los Angeles. There’s a part of Sayid who believes oblivion is better than he deserves, and unfortunately for him things are going to get even worse.

Sawyer and Juliet are in the middle of being beaten up by Radzinsky who, in keeping with his paranoid nature, turns on people he’s known for three years. We’ve known there was a megalomaniac in Radzinsky from the moment we first met him and now he’s using ‘Lafleur’s’ betrayal as an excuse to do what he’s wanted all along. He seizes power from Horace and when Chang comes in to tell him that the island is in danger, he makes it very clear he doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself. He wants two things: to eradicate the Others and to get his precious Swan done. The only reason he’s willing to give Sawyer and Juliet a ticket off the island is so that he can realize both his goals. Nikki said she was kind of glad Radzinsky would blow his head off in the future; I wish he’d done it before.

As for the rest of the group Miles is finally beginning to realize that ‘whatever happened, happened’ isn’t going to fly any more or maybe he just realizes how dour the situation. When his father confronts him, Jin and Hurley he decides that he has to try and keep his group alive and that means getting as many lives of the island as possible. It’s not clear if he was going to try and board the sub himself when he sees Sawyer and Juliet about to board but at this point he seems to have less faith in Sawyer than Hurley does. (And that’s really weird.)

In 2007 the leadership dynamics have clearly changed. I’m pretty sure Ben was planning to resume his old spot when all this began in Namaste but now that Locke’s back, he’s unnerved in a way we haven’t seen him before. From the way Richard talks to Locke and ignores Ben, he knows his time is over for good.

What’s fascinating in the scenes between Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn is that now we see how clearly the dynamics have been reversed. When Locke asked Ben to join him and Richard, Locke is doing this for the sole purpose of showing him that he is now in communion with the island in a way Ben never was. Emerson is magnificent in a way we’ve never seen before as he’s astonished by what he is seeing.

To be fair, so are we. Somehow the island has dropped Locke right back on the island just in time (pun intended) for him to give Richard instructions on the second flash we saw in the season premier. The scene plays out basically the way we saw it before but now we realize the man who told Richard what Locke had to do...was Locke. It seems that Locke is here to close the loop that began when Richard gave Locke the compass back then; he has to make sure everything happens according to plan. But it’s worth noting this stuns not only Ben, but Richard. He clearly is stunned when Locke tells him he did die.

O’Quinn is just as brilliant. As Richard says, he seems different. And he is. Locke has a sense of purpose and certainty that we never saw the previous four seasons. He seems to have the answers not just about what’s going to happen and where things are on the island, but also certain secrets. When he tells Ben that he knows he’s never actually seen Jacob, Ben is so gob-smacked that he doesn’t even bother to deny it. This is a man to whom lying is second nature but when Locke says he knows this, Ben is struck dumb.

Locke then takes control of the situation that the old Locke never had when everyone returns to the camp. It’s clear he’s trying to use mob rule instead of the appearance of democracy, but he’s also using psychology. We all knew when Ben was in charge, he claimed that he was the only person to talk to Jacob and that no one else had ever seen him. It’s clear now that Richard has been filling the breach for the last, who knows how long, and years of frustration by the Others are finally summoned by Locke. We’ve got the feeling that though no one liked Ben when he was in charge, they were willing to listen to him because he was Jacob’s mouthpiece. We’ll never know what happened to them in the last three years, but they’ve clearly been waiting for a leader to tell them what to do. Now that they are told that they can finally see the man behind the curtain, Locke manages to manipulate both them and Richard into taking him to see Jacob.

It's worth noting while this is going on we’re getting hints that Locke is not as benevolent as he seems. He lies to Sun outright when he says Jacob can get them back to their people something Richard didn’t tell him and which may not be possible. He’s been refusing to be docile the way the old Locke was. We suspect when he begins to bring everyone there that his motives are not altruistic – but we’re as shocked as Ben is when he tells him that the only reason he wants to find Jacob is so that he can kill him.

I remember how shocking this was at the time and the only motive I could come up with then was simple. Locke had always thought his destiny was the island and he wanted to serve it. His death had brought him back wrong and now he had twisted his motives so that he could kill Jacob and take his place as the Chosen One. I was only half right.

The teasers for the season finale tells us of violence that is to come but they do a perfect job of hiding the real secret of what the season finale will be – the biggest game changer since Through the Looking Glass.