Back To The Island: Why Jack Vs. Locke Worked Better In Theory Than Execution

 

In the Season 5 volume of Finding Lost, Nikki Stafford identified the three major character conflicts that at various points she thinks define the show: Jack versus Locke, Ben Linus versus Charles Widmore and Jacob versus The Man In Black.

These conflicts seem to have grown more out of necessity than planning on the part of the writers. They figured out early in the series run that a character named Jacob was ultimately going to be responsible for everyone being brought to the island but they wouldn’t mention his name until Season 3 and we wouldn’t see him in the flesh until the finale of Season 5, at which point we also saw the Man in Black. Lost never explained the nature of that conflict until the final season when Jacob was dead.

All things considered all three conflicts worked more as a philosophical construct then what we saw on the screen and it didn’t help that the writers had a habit of abandoned one in favor of another when it suited them. Jack versus Locke essentially played out during much of the first two seasons and then was moved to the background in Season 3 (the two characters only share three minutes of screen time during the whole season, all in two episodes.) Both Ben and Widmore are introduced in Season 2, but Widmore’s relationship to the island isn’t revealed in Season 4 and much of what we see plays in flashbacks in Season 5 at which point the series had moved on to Jacob versus the Man in Black.

I will deal with the flaws of all three conflicts as well as their strengths during the shows run and I think the best place to start is with Jack versus Locke. I also feel compelled to add my personal commentary as a viewer, which after multiple rewatches I feel confident to talk about.

And from my perspective the Jack vs. Locke conflict was one of the weakest stories the show tried to do. I understand the rationale for it: Jack is set up as the Man of Science and Locke as the Man of Faith. That works as an ideological construct and from a philosophical standpoint its one almost every genre show tries during its run. (In Lindelof’s follow-up series The Leftovers, it was executed far better by having Matt, a priest trying to deal with faith in the world after an apocalypse and eventually ending up bottoming out and somehow finding redemption.)

In practice Darlton dropped the ball on this early on in many ways. The biggest one was one of the most maddening problems with the entire series: the unwillingness of any of the characters to share their backstories with their fellow survivors. Because of the flashback structure the viewer knew all of the secrets of the characters on Lost. But the survivors spent basically the entire series never telling their backstories to each other on the island or possibly even after they left. Even the most devoted fan of Lost became frustrated by why the character never chose to share information until it was absolutely necessary – not just about themselves but the island.

The series also failed because it was clear from the start why Locke became the island’s disciple from day one. ‘Walkabout’ ranks as one of the great episodes not only of Lost (both Terry O’Quinn and the episode itself were nominated for Emmys) but of television and that is because of the revelation of the final two minutes. For much of the first two seasons of Lost we completely get Locke’s behavior even when it seems irrational. Unlike everyone else who lost something in this crash, Locke has been given something back: the ability to walk. The viewer now gets confirmation that there is something incredible about this island and even when we have issues with some of the things Locke does early on, it’s completely understandable.

Jack, by contrast, suffers from the start for other reasons. Because he’s the first character we meet, we make the assumption that he will be the lead. Lost is truly an ensemble show far more than so many other shows of this period (save The Wire) but because it’s a network drama in 2004 Jack has that added pressure of being the lead character.

And immediately after the Pilot the writers do everything they can to make him difficult to like. Jack is self-righteous, holds unreasonable grudges, takes responsibility for things that really aren’t his fault, and holds everyone to a standard he doesn’t have to meet. He doesn’t want to be the leader (and the show will go out of its way to illustrate from the start how horrible he is at the job) but once he gets the position, he tends to take on the mantle of an authoritarian. Whenever he’s given rational advice – not just from Locke, but anybody – he ignores it and does what he intends to do.

This problem also is overly present in the flashback structure for the first three seasons for both characters: Locke’s are always more interesting and Jack’s very quickly become tiresome and many of them are considered the creative low points of Lost. (Stranger in a Strange Land was so horrible that its only purpose seemed to convince ABC that the writers needed to concentrate on ending the series.) Both Locke and Jack have a horrible father figure in their lives but where Anthony Cooper is a monster with no soul, Christian’s only crime seems during this period was that he couldn’t tell his son he loved him when they were together (something he had no problem doing to other characters) The flashbacks explain why Locke is so desperate for the island to be his salvation as well as why he’s so easily manipulated by other people and reveal aspects of his backstory that the viewer needs to understand. All Jack’s flashbacks ever do is show the kind of scenes that wouldn’t be out of place on another medical drama. Locke is clearly different in each flashback as compared to the island; Jack is pretty much unchanged.

This isn’t entirely fair to Matthew Fox who in the second half of Lost would up his game considerably and demonstrate incredible talent as the show progressed. But the fact remains trying to set up the Jack and Locke conflict as a vital one to the series was never going to work because almost from the start Jack had the attitude of a wet blanket while Locke seemed to have the attitude of the explorer. And the idea of trying to form a central conflict was also a failure because even when it was at its peak during the first two seasons, all of the survivors were mostly on Jack’s side when it came to approaching the island – they all essentially took a pragmatic view rather than try to embrace the wonder.

To be clear many of the characters had their own issues on the ideology whether it was destiny or free will. Most of the characters who believed in destiny were characters where religion or spirituality was important to them. These included Charlie, Claire  and Rose in Season 1, Desmond and Eko in Season 2 and in a different sense Daniel Faraday starting in Season 4. (Interestingly Sayid, despite being a devout Muslim even on the island, comes down more on the side of free will for reasons I’ll explore in a separate article.) Characters who were believed in free will included Kate, Ana Lucia, Juliet, Michael, Bernard and Sayid. Hurley and Sawyer end up spending most of the series on either side of the divide and Jin and Sun seem to have faith in each other more than anything else.

But when it comes to the action on the island almost everybody ends up following Jack. In large part this is because they are interesting in surviving and he is the rational choice for the first half of the series. But the other side is during his entire tenure on the island, Locke is fundamentally on his own as his character. During the first two seasons he is a part of the leadership and is considered essential. When Jack, along with Kate and Sawyer, end up being captured by the Others at the end of Season 2, he takes up a role of leadership for the first half of Season 3. But by and large, he seems more interested in his own agenda then being part of the group and as a result with each season fewer and fewer people trust him.

In Season 4, the biggest divide on Lost yet ends up when half the survivors go with Jack in order to be rescued and half go with Locke because he says they’re a threat. But Locke’s really not interested in protecting anyone who comes with him rather then trying to figure out how to protect the island, and by this point has become so single-minded in that focus that he doesn’t bother to hide that his leadership isn’t democratic to those who came with him. He’s still making the same mistakes, trusting the wrong people, and as a result of his leadership almost everyone who comes with him ends up dead.

Those who defend Locke – and they’re still in the majority even now – will argue that at the end of the day John was right about everything about the island. And to be sure every big decision about the island – the button in Season 2, whether the people on the freighter were to be trusted in Season 3, leaving the island in Season 4 – Locke was right and Jack was wrong. But what that proves to me is that this is a flaw of the breakdown between Jack and Locke’s relationship and that was entirely on Jack’s part.

The moment when Jack and Locke’s relationship is broken beyond repair comes in Do No Harm. At this point Boone has been injured in a horrible fall and Locke brings him to Jack to work on him. He then walks away back to the hatch. Jack spends the next twelve hours trying to save Boone’s life, even though it’s clear to all the observers that this is impossible. During this period it becomes clear that Locke lied about how Boone was injured and Jack argues that this led to him using the wrong form of treatment. By that argument Locke murdered Boone.

But after twenty-four hours Jack seems more interested in finding Locke rather then resting or even burying Boone. Jack holds Boone’s death against Locke and the fact that John later calls Boone ‘the sacrifice the island demanded’ basically permanently puts them at loggerheads for the rest of their time on the island. It’s a rational response; Locke does sound like the leader of a cult in so much of his conversation with Jack as they’re about to open the hatch.

The real problem is not so much the death of Boone but the fact that Jack seems more determined to spend Season 2 belittling John at every opportunity. From the moment he enters the hatch he seems absolutely determined to prove that Locke is wrong about everything and that he’s a complete idiot for believing in something. Season 2 is where most of their conflict plays out and it grows tiresome almost from the start.

Again the reason why is more on Jack than Locke. Locke spends the entire season going through what amounts to a crisis of his faith. He’s spent all of Season 1 trying to get the hatch open because he believed his destiny was inside. His narrow vision on that hatch was so great that he didn’t even bother to look for a front door, which the moment Kate asks about it Desmond immediately shows a very big one.

In a way this sums up Locke’s behavior on the island better than anything else that happens during the series: he almost literally can’t see the forest for the trees. He was more concerned about what the hatch meant to him than what would be inside it (his only answer when asked was “Hope.”) When he gets inside and finds what seems to be a 1970s bachelor pad with a computer and a button that needs to be pressed every 108 minutes, he immediately shouts to heavens: “What am I supposed to do?!”

Jack chooses to berate both Locke and Desmond. Desmond’s appearance is actually more notable because the two of them met briefly when Jack was still a doctor. (I will deal with this but in a later article.) Jack recognizes Desmond but he tries to hide it from Locke. When he runs after Desmond, it’s not to get him to explain but to berate him for believing in something he considers nonsense. When Desmond tells Jack he remembers him, Jack tries to deny it and it breaks him in a way we haven’t seen. Perhaps Jack spends so much of the next season scoffing at the hatch is because he’s trying to ignore what it means that Desmond is on the island and has been for years.

Locke spends much of Season 2 with his faith ebbing and Jack seems to delight in it. It becomes a lot harder to like Jack during the middle of Season 2 as he seems to spend every scene in the hatch demeaning and bullying John. Much of Locke’s attitude is rational and practical but Jack remains obstinate as ever even though he is clearly proceeding without a plan. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated when ‘Henry Gale’ shows up.

Jack takes the position that the fact that they have an Other in the hatch must remain a secret from the other survivors. This means that no one else but he and Locke can guard him. This is a plan that can’t work long-term and when Locke rationally points this out Jack says: “Well, we don’t have a long-term plan for the button, but we still keep pushing it.” This is not an answer and Jack knows it; he just wants to push John’s sore spot. And it works because John immediately shuts down – and starts taking the side of Henry. It’s only due to the actions of outside parties that the truth comes out at all.

I can understand why so many people hated Jack’s character during the first half of the series; particularly in Season 2 he shows again his worst parts of his nature and lashes out at anyone who defies him. When he goes chasing after Michael in Season 2, he tells Kate not to come and when she gets caught he holds it against her for his stubbornness. Sawyer sees his weak spot and uses it to steal the guns from him. When Henry shows up, he objects to Sayid torturing him because he thinks he’s innocent and then spends the next few episodes convinced he’s a threat. And by the end of the season when Michael shows up and spins a story about the Others he wants to get them so badly he doesn’t bother to stop and think – and ends up getting his friends into a trap.

I do understand why the Jack and Locke dynamic was set-up: the idea of a Man of Science versus Man of Faith was necessary for Lost to work. But in execution we only saw the worst parts of it when it came to Jack and Locke. Locke spent the entire series believing that his faith in the island was the right one and that meant ignoring everyone else’s wishes around him. Jack believed just as strongly in a rational approach but time and again that rational approach meant ignoring the evidence of what he knew and being guided by his own thinking. This played out most obviously when the island disappeared at the end of Season 4 and Jack refused to acknowledge that Locke had moved it – even though he saw it happen.

And if the end result is just as disastrous and bloody no matter what side you followed, I’m not sure using them as an argument played out well. Both of them were, at the end of the day, completely unqualified for their roles as leadership but their belief systems refused to let them try to coexist. And as a result of that, many people suffered and died while this conflict was at its core. I won’t deny it ended up making its point in the second half of the series but by that point Locke himself was dead and Jack had spent a horrible journey getting to where he should have been.

I do think if the show had only been about the Jack vs. Locke dynamic it would have never lasted as long as it did. Fortunately by the time the third season began it had introduced another player and he would make Lost sing.

In the next article in this series I’ll deal with Ben versus Locke, one of the great joys in the history of both Lost and television.