As
some of you who might have read my other articles on this series are aware I
came to the island a little late. I didn't
watch the first season when it debuted (mostly because I was more committed to
Season 4 of J.J. Abrams's other masterpiece Alias) and missed its
original run. However back then I was still committed to the idea of watching a
series over the summer in reruns. And in 2005 ABC was more than willing to
indulge those of us who missed the series the first time around.
My
memories about my initial viewing of Season 1 are somewhat hazy after so
many rewatches. I know that I officially committed to the series after seeing the
final two minutes of 'Walkabout' which I consider one of the greatest moments in
the history of 21st century television. I know I was never as
impatient as some viewers were initially with the Sun-Jin relationship and that
I loved Kate but I was never as committed to love triangle around her. I don't
remember initially seeing the stories of Sayid that made just how important
Nadia was important to him but that I was immediately drawn in to Naveen
Andrews's portrayal of him. And I loved Hurley but I sure as hell wasn't
committed to just how often the numbers were coming up before we knew they were
important to him and the entire series.
What
I do know is that I very quickly realized the caliber of every aspect of the
series and by the time the Emmys aired that September I was advocating for Lost
to win Best Drama hands down. This was a big commitment on my part: though
I still wasn't really committing to TV criticism or even following the Emmys as
I would be just a few years later, I was still very much of devoted fan of the
shows that were nominated. The last three years I'd wanted 24 to win
Best Drama and Season 4 was far and away its best season since it debuted. In May 24 was the only show I was
willing to accept as Best Drama; by September I'd completely come around to the
island.
So
I was over the moon when Lost had an absolutely superb day at the Emmys
that year, winning six of the eleven awards it was nominated for. I wasn't
thrilled that Terry O'Quinn lost to William Shatner for Best Supporting Actor
in a Drama (the Emmys would make up for it two years later) and I was slightly
disappointed the now iconic Pilot beat 'Walkabout' for Best Dramatic Teleplay.
But otherwise I walked away basically thrilled with the winners and couldn't
wait for Season 2 to debut in just a few weeks' time.
Now
because I spent no more time in fan chatrooms for TV then than I do now, I had
no idea how disappointed so many people were with the final minutes of
'Exodus'. Indeed I didn't learn about this apparent backlash until Alan
Sepinwall wrote about Lost in The Revolution Was Televised. Apparently
a vocal community was annoyed that, after spending most of the season trying to
get the mysterious hatch open, the season had ended with it being opened – but not
going inside. That Darlton had never
planned to go into the Hatch until the second season did little to abate the furor.
It's
possible if I watched the first season with everyone else instead of seeing it
in reruns during the summer I might have had a similar sense of disappointment.
I doubt it because even at 26 I knew the rules of television better than fans
of Lost did. I also thought, mainly because of my devotion to The
X-Files, that the writers had not overplayed their hands as someone who had
witness far too many impossible cliffhangers over the years. Trust me once
you've been told that Mulder committed suicide and Scully's cancer has become
terminal while at the same time knowing a blockbuster movie has been greenlit
for the following summer, well, I'm kind of amazed anyone still had faith in Chris
Carter after that.
Exodus
has been far more clever and as I've written in previous article, was basically
following the structure of how Lost was going to go forward. The writers
knew even then that the viewer cared more about the human element then the
mystery and they had really doubled down on it in that episode. I had enough
confidence to know that when Season 2 my faith would be rewarded.
I
didn't know what I was going to get.
In
Back to the Island Noel Murray devotes an entire chapter to 'Man of
Science, Man of Faith' the second season premiere of Lost. (Appropriately
the chapter is titled 'Down The Hatch'. I'll let him set the scene:
"Ask
just about any Lost fan to cite some of the show's most memorable moments – the
ones that made their spines tingle, made them lean forward and made them head
to the internet as soon as the credits rolled – and nearly everyone's list will
include Season 2's cold open…It's one of the cleverest and most surprising few
minutes of TV from the 2000s: watching a man wake up, tap a few keys on a computer
keyboard, put on Cass Elliot's 'Make Your Own Kind of Music', make a smoothie and do some exercise. We don't
know where we are. We don't know when we are.
But
then we hear a boom, and after the man's barracks stop shaking, we get our
first sense we're somewhere related to the Island. In a series of quick cuts,
we then see flashes of images that don't yet have much meaning: the Dharma
Initiative logo, a medical case filled with inoculations, an armory. So it will
go throughout the episode. At various times in an around the hatch – aka the
Swan Station – we see a QUARANTINE sign, a key drawn towards a wall that seems
magnetized, a mural featuring words and drawings related to parts of the Island
mythology we had yet to encounter. It was as though Lindelof & Cuse (who
wrote the episode) were provided viewers with a map from the opening pages of
an epic fantasy novel – you see it all, even if you don't yet know what 'it all'
is or means."
In
hindsight the opening teaser of the Season 2 premiere bears a striking parallel
to (of all things) the opening teasers of every season of The Wire. In
Simon's show we find ourselves in a section of Baltimore we haven't been in and
the characters talk about things that provide, in a way the viewer doesn't yet
know, the mission statement for the season. With the opening teaser of Season 2
– and indeed every season right up until the last one – the opening minutes hint
to the viewer, visually or in audio, what the season is going to be dealing
with. Many of them misdirect us to think we're not on the island when we are
but if we're paying attention (and we Lost
fans were already doing that) we
will quickly realize what the season's going to be about.
And Murray isn't kidding about how this is among
the most surprising opening minutes of TV of the 2000s. In all the years of
watching shows in that decade there are only two openers of a season that
compare to it. The first minutes of Damages,
which show a blood-soaked women
staggering out of a skyscraper, ending up in a police station and demanding an
attorney and of course the opening of 'Seven Thirty Seven' of Season 2 of Breaking Bad which in a way would take the gauntlet of bizarre
openings that Lost
lay down and throw it so far out of
sight I seriously doubt any other series not made by Vince
Gilligan will ever be able to match it from this point on.
On the surface we're beginning to see the ramping
up of the conflict that will become the central theme of the show Jack vs.
Locke. The episode is no doubt is named to refer to the terms that Locke
himself had delivered during what of the most important conversations in the Season
1 finale. In it Locke had told Jack yet again 'that everything happened for a
reason and said that the hatch was their destiny." Jack told Locke:
"I don't believe in destiny." Locke gives one of the most famous lines
of those he will throughout the rest of the show: "Yes you do, Jack. You
just don't know it yet."
Immediately after this Jack goes to Kate and tells
her that after this: "We're going to have a Locke problem' and asks for
her support. It's telling that even with the benefit of hindsight I completely
understand and endorse Jack's position. In Locke's obsession to get the hatch
open Boone died and Locke has just called him cavalierly "the sacrifice
the island demanded" He's spent most of the first season lying to
everybody else on the island about the hatch and why he and Boone disappeared
all this time, would have continued to deny it had Sayid not confronted him on
it, seems to have used the threat of 'The Others' as an excuse to get the hatch
open (something he essentially seems to acknowledge once its done) and when
Hurley shouted a warning as to how dangerous it would be, nevertheless lit a
fuse to blow it open. (He basically ignores Hurley's position on this as well.)
In the leadup and indeed most of the season opening O'Quinn plays Locke as a
man who is very much unhinged.
What's fascinating is that the Jack/Locke conflict
spells out for the first time just how ill-suited either man is for leadership
of the survivors. The rest of the camp spent all of Exodus certain the Others
were coming, as Hurley puts it in this very episode, to eat us all. While Jack
and the A-Team were at the hatch and the raft was set sail, most of them have
been understandably panicked: Sayid and Charlie had to chase down Rousseau for
stealing Claire's baby (who they got back just a few minutes ago by the clocks
on this episode) Sun is terrified about what happened to her husband (and we
know but she doesn't that she has every right to be) and Shannon has just seen
a soaking wet Walt who's saying something neither she nor the viewers can
comprehend. Everyone's terrified and looking for leadership.
And what does our man of science give us? None of
that. He basically overlooks the fact that one of their own died while they were
looking for dynamite, tells them that they have no way to protect themselves
against the Others except four guns and offers lip service to the idea they'll
be okay. Meanwhile Locke immediately disobeys Jack's orders and says that he's
not going to wait until dawn to go into the hatch. "I'm tired of waiting,"
he says. Jack is fine letting him go on his own but the moment Kate decides to
follow him, he immediately hurries into the jungle after her, despite Hurley's
protests.
This is a
reversal of what is already becoming a tired joke on Lost: every time Jack goes into the woods, Kate will follow
him despite him telling her not to. But it also shows for the first time in
self-righteous detail just how unwilling Jack is willing to let his leadership
be challenged by anyone. He's not interesting in saving Locke or Kate (who we
very quickly see are in great danger even if we don't yet know what it is) as
his obsessed desire to 'fix things' above all else. And by this point we know
Jack needs to prove that he's right and everyone else is wrong.
This becomes blindingly clear at the climax of
episode inside the hatch. He sees Locke essentially with a gun to his head and is warned repeatedly to
move. While this is going on he is told numerous times that if he doesn't move
Locke will be killed. Jack takes this opportunity to mock Locke for his faith,
even as this man with a Scottish accent (yes I'll get there) asks him if wants
Locke to die. In a sense Darlton is telling us something that will not become
clear for another two seasons: Jack wants Locke dead and he wants Locke to know
that's he wrong before he dies. Perhaps he's still struggling with that 'first
do no harm part of his oath'
The episode, like all episodes during the first
three seasons of Lost,
is paralleled with a flashback
centered on one character and its Jack. Jack-centric episodes will quickly
become very tiresome because even by Season 1, it was pretty clear there was
little to be mined from Jack's backstory. But for once both the backstory and
the events on the island have a perfect mirror. We see a younger Jack at a
critical moment in his life when he first meets Sarah (Julie Bowen). We already
know that Sarah came into his ER paralyzed, Jack promised that he would fix her,
the two of them got married (more out of Jack's obligation then devotion) and
we're pretty sure it ended in divorce. (The second Jack episode will confirm
this.) In theory this flashback has nothing new to tell us and should be a
waste of time. In practice, it tells us more about Jack then we usually get.
We learn that Jack said he was going to perform an
operation that might let her walk again but we see that Jack actually told her
that it wasn't going to work. During this period Christian Shephard makes it
clear that he didn't have much bedside manner to him and delivers something
we're not using to hearing from a man the viewer thinks is the millstone around
Jack's neck. "Even if there's a ninety-nine percent possibility that
they're utterly, hopelessly screwed, folks are much more inclined to hear that
one percent chance that things are going to be okay." When Jack says
that's nothing more than false hope. Christian says: "Yes, but it's still hope."
Jack performs the surgery but he has no reason to
think it works. He goes on a late night run through a stadium and while he's there
he sees a stranger running. Jack hurts his ankle doing so and while he does the
stranger offers to help him. This is our first real glimpse at Desmond, who will
eventually become one of the most important characters in lost. We just don't know it yet.
Desmond tells Jack he's training for a race around
the world and asks him kindly: "Why are you running like the devil's
chasing you?" Jack opens up in a
way we've never seen him before and says that he made a promise to a girl he
couldn't keep. Desmond nods and says: "What if you did?" Jack says:
"That would take a miracle." Desmond repeats it. He runs off, saying
what will become one of the show's catchphrases: "See in you another life,
yeah?"
Jack doesn't believe him and when he comes back to Sarah
afterwards, he tells the surgery has failed. She has to tell him: "How
come I can wiggle my toes?" Even then Jack has to physically see this to
believe it. This doesn't explain yet why he isn't more willing to believe in
faith the way Locke does but it does show the kind of blinders Jack has: at
some level he's not convinced science can do the job either.
And its at the end of the episode the writers play
their greatest trick. See, throughout that extraordinary opening minutes we
never got anything close to a good look at the man in the hatch. The episode
opened on his eye and we saw his body throughout but we've never gotten a look
at his face. We still don't when Locke gets the gun. Finally the man says:
"Move or I'll blow his damn head off, brutha!"
And both Jack and the viewer stops in their tracks.
Because we've heard that exact word before. And then a split second later we
see that the man in the Dharma jump suit is none other than Desmond. Just as
Jack says: "You?" we cut to black.
Here's how Murray sums up what we've seen:
Now…is it reasonable to expect
that Jack would recognize a person he spent about five minutes with many years
ago? Maybe not. But that's not the point of this episode. The point is that as
much as Jack had liked to write off all the Island woo-woo as coincidence, at
the end of this episode, he's face-to-face with a walking, talking example of
something well beyond coincidence."
To be clear Jack was going to spend the next two
seasons doing everything in his power to deny there was anything but coincidence and science involved in what
was happening on the island. This was, frankly, one of the more unattractive aspects
of his character that made it hard to like him. But the viewer could no longer deny
it, even when the show very cleverly didn't put it front and center as it would
for the majority of the series' run.
That may have been the genius of Lost, particularly in its second season. Much of the
action on the island would essentially deal with the Hatch, the button and the
Dharma Initiative which basically leaned into the idea that everything
happening on the island had a scientific explanation to it. But the flashbacks
told a different story, one that wasn't directly being pointed out but that
those of us who paid attention were following along with. Increasingly these
flashbacks would give indications that everyone who got on Oceanic 815 had
something in common with another passenger on the plane that they were
completely unaware of. And while some of
them would be blatantly obvious the overwhelming majority were so subtle unless
you were paying attention you could miss them. (For the record I was one such
viewer and missed the overwhelming majority of them in Season 2. It was only
through other publications – USA Today would write about them the day after
each episode and Nikki Stafford would lovingly catalogue them in Finding Lost that I spotted them.)
One of those typical 'blink if you miss it' moments in this
episode. We're told the other driver of the hit-and-run that Sarah was in was
Adam Rutherford. The question every viewer (including Stafford) asked
afterwards was: "That's Shannon's last name. Is he related to her?"
And sure enough just a few episodes later we were told yes it was Shannon's
father. (Because we're so busy dealing with that you might have missed that
Jack is walking by as she's being told this.)
For reasons I never comprehended then or now, the
second season of Lost
came in for harsh criticism from the
fanbase compared to the first. (It basically continued through much of the
third season when some fans began to run out of patience.) I was never one of
those people. As Murray puts it in the final paragraph of his review:
Season Two's premiere had
effectively issued a declaration. Yes, the Island is magical, in ways neither
the characters nor the viewers could ever imagine. The surprises were just
going to keep coming.
I answered the call. I was going to keep watching
no matter what. I had faith that the writers knew what they were doing.
Sometimes that faith might be misguided but I knew that the journey would be
nothing like I'd seen on TV before. In that sense Lost made me believe
in miracles even if the character at the center of the episode didn't. (Yet.)
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