Introduction
Those of you who have read both my
Anniversary of Landmark TV episodes as well as by Back to the Island series
will know pretty much what's coming from these articles. In the weeks and
months to come as the 20th anniversary of some of the most
groundbreaking episodes of Lost occurred, I will be writing personal
reviews of them.
Those of you who have read my Back to the
Island series know that I have commonly used two source materials for my books:
Nikki Stafford's Finding Lost Series and Back to the Island by Emily St. James
and Noel Murray. I'm also going to use a third source – a book I've been
working on myself during my most recent rewatch of Lost which someday I hope to
publish and that you may see individual reviews from at this column of the
entire series, not just the great ones.
As with The X-Files and Homicide this is
one of those series that I have a great personal connection with, even more
than some of the show I rave about here. And because like those other two
series Lost was just as groundbreaking – though more controversial at times and
particularly as behind the scenes revelations have come out – it deserves to be
looked at more in depth. I've already dealt with that in several of my other
articles in 'Back to the Island'; I think now's the time to look how it looked
back to back.
For the record you can officially consider
my review of the Season 2 Premiere as retconned into part of this new series. I
will try to keep as close to when the episodes originally aired as possible
though my readers will know I'm not a pedant for dates.
The Other 48
Days
Consider the Lost fan in November of
2005.
The previous week you spent an episode with
Shannon, a character who was never a fan favorite. You learned her backstory
and you began to feel sympathy for her. You watched as Walt constantly
reappeared to her during that episode and you wonder "WTF?" (the
frequent utterance of the Lost fan. She tries to convince Sayid, who
she's just hooked up with the first time, to believe her – and then he sees
Walt.
While this was going on Michael, Jin and
Sawyer were making their way back with the Tail section survivors and Sawyer
who had been worsening each new episode collapsed from an infection. Ana Lucia
had become more and more impatient and Michael had finally asked her:
"What happened to you people?" and we got a horrifying idea: The
Others. They had gone into the jungle and while they were carrying Sawyer up a
large mountainous terrain Cindy, an Oceanic attendant who'd given a drink to
Jack and had been a background member of the Tailies had disappeared. There one
minute, gone the next. You hear whispers in the jungle, then considered the
sign of the Others, and everybody panics.
Then in the last minute you hear a gun go
off and Shannon falls over with a bloody hole in her stomach. She dies in Sayid's arms and before we even
have time to process this, we see Ana holding a gun. Cut to black. Talk about a
cliffhanger.
Now imagine you tune into the episode next
week and see one that resolves none of what you saw the week before and instead
decides to spend an entire episode telling the backstory of the Tail section
survivors focusing primarily on a character who the fans had spent four weeks
bitching about in chatrooms before she killed of one of the original
cast members.
A little context. The Golden Age of TV was
officially in full swing but these kinds of tricks were not done in the world
of serialized dramas: certainly not on The Sopranos, The Wire or Deadwood. Six Feet Under had done some twisted
things with the format but considering each episode starting with a corpse of
the week it was acceptable (and America was still reeling from the
unforgettable series finale) 24 was all about forward momentum and The
Shield with one exception never looked backward. Even when series chose to flashback it was
always done in context with some kind of larger event (The West Wing looked
at how the Bartlet team came together during an assassination attempt on the
President's life) At this juncture the only shows that did things this radical
with the format were genre shows, most significantly Battlestar
Galactica (and indeed, there's a similar sense of paranoia going through
much of this episode pretty close to us trying to figure out who's a Cylon and
who's human). Other shows would take on this approach in the years and decades
to come, running the gamut from This is Us to Mr. Robot but in
2005, particularly for a network drama, it was almost unheard of.
'The Other 48 Days' is significant because it
represents the writers decision to take what the viewer has come to consider
the traditional structure of Lost and turn it on its head. From this
point on Darlton will do this at least once or twice a season for the rest of
the series and on almost every occasion, create some of the high points of Lost
as a show as well as some of the greatest moments in TV history.
The opening
gives us an indication of exactly what we’re in for: we see a quiet, serene
beach – and then there’s one splash, then a louder one and we increasingly
become aware of more and noises until a huge piece of wreckage blocks out the
screen. Then we see the subtitle Day 1. Now we get a look at the crash of
Oceanic 815 from a completely different perspective, and it's significant that
the person we see it through is Ana Lucia.
This episode
has always been classified by the show as being ‘The Tailies’ and that may be
so, but from start to finish it is a showcase for Michelle Rodriguez as Ana
Lucia. Her performance in this episode stands out as one of the great ones in
the entire roster of the cast, as she goes through a range of emotion that some
of the best members of the cast will give during the series run.
It’s clear
from the fact that the episode chooses to start from Ana Lucia’s perspective
that she is being set up as a parallel to Jack. Like him, she has a take charge
attitude from the start, trying to take care of the children (Zach and Emma are
significant as they, along with Walt, are the only children that survive the
crash), taking care of and literally saving another. I think the children are
in the tail section for a critical reason: they symbolize innocence in a way
that we have not seen in any of the survivors on the beach, save for Walt, and
since there are no parents, the camp more or less unites to take care of their
well-being first. They are significant to Ana Lucia in this regard.
The events
that go on throughout the episode are clearly detailed to deliver direct
parallels to what we’ve already seen on the show in similar episodes. The major
reason is to show, in a sense, just how much worse the Tail sections survivors
have it then the Losties. There’s no food, no water, there’s no doctor and no
medicine so the injured succumb from their injuries quicker, and it's just as
clear early on any hope of rescue is
futile.
The major
difference between what is going on between the Tail section survivors is that
they clearly have no idea that there is something – strange – about the island.
The monster for whatever reason never seems to visit them, and they never see
the trees falling and being wrecked. However, the Tail section survivors
wouldn’t be able to deal with it they could because of the ‘other’ major
critical difference.
The Tailies
become aware of the Others a full two weeks before the survivors on the beach
even suspect that they might not be alone. For reasons that the show never
chooses to make clear, the Tailies are attacked far more directly than the
Losties are during this same period. This causes a healthy sense of fear into a
camp that has every reason to be panicked already.
Then two weeks
later, everything goes to hell as the Others what will be there most direct
attempt to attack the survivors of Oceanic 815 until the end of Season 3. It is
at that point we see something that the full significance of won’t be made
clear of for a while: ‘the lists.’ In
this case, it is an actual list with the names of the people who have been
taken, and perhaps most horribly the two children are among them.
It’s worth
noting the taking of the children is what more or less changes Ana Lucia
irrevocably. The first night when she discovers what has happened, this hits
her hard. She tries to argue to take everybody of the beach, but when Nathan
and Cindy tell her very clearly this is their best chance of being rescued, she
backs off. She’s clearly reeling from this, but during the next two weeks she
seems to be maintaining a front: she’s still joking with Goodwin, and when
Nathan disappears she’s upset but doesn’t get angry. Once the kids are gone,
she basically loses any veneer of any civilization. When she attacks one of the
Others she has to be pulled off a dead body. She may have been okay with Eko’s
vow of silence before; now it infuriates her. From this point on, she basically
becomes a paranoid dictator. She keeps pushing everybody to move and only stops
when someone challenges her. She only agrees with Nathan because she no longer
trusts him and is clearly planning to interrogate him.
She isn’t
helped by the fact that most of her few remaining followers don’t raise
objections. Libby is already beginning to sound delusional, Cindy seems just as
sure Nathan wasn’t on the plane, and Bernard puts up a minor argument and then
backs down. Eko is the only one who defies her; it's clear he’s been feeding
Nathan against Ana Lucia’s orders but he doesn’t object beyond that. Only
Goodwin puts up an argument, and as we immediately learn, it's based on his own
self-preservation.
After Goodwin
kills Nathan (and disposes of his body somehow) everyone goes on the move
again, only now Ana Lucia has turned her focus on Goodwin. Then they find the
Arrow (and they are very clear it’s a bunker, not a hatch) and they find a
radio. Goodwin clearly intends to destroy it and then Ana Lucia follows him.
The scene
between the two is superb: Goodwin clearly knows that Ana Lucia suspects him
but seems just as determined to push her. Ana Lucia’s questioning is slow and
easy, much in the same way Sayid interrogated Locke after Boone’s death.
Finally Ana Lucia asks a question that Goodwin chooses not to answer and
instead tells her what she wants to her. He clearly has every intention of
killing Ana Lucia – he knows when he tells her that they’re giving the kids ‘a
better life’ it is the exact button to push. That Goodwin ends up on the wrong
side of a stick comes as a shock to him.
As exceptional
as her descent into paranoia is, Rodriguez’s work after Goodwin’s death is
equally remarkable. She returns utterly drained and just tells them: “We’re
safe now.” Two weeks later, we finally hear the distress call that Boone made
before the Beechcraft collapsed and we see that what Boone saw as a message of
hope, Ana Lucia viewed as just another deception. The way she simply says:
‘This is our life now” is almost as heartbreaking as when we see her burst into
tears on her own the next scene.
Adewale
Akinnouye-Agbaje spends most of the episode not saying a single word and rarely
showing an expression on his face, so it's actually surprising that his work is
so revealing to his character. This is the first time since we’ve met him that
we’ve begun to think that Eko might actually be a man of faith. After helping
the survivors, he takes the children to Cindy and tells her “there is something
I must do.’ He then offers prayers over the bodies and as we later learn, helps
bury the dead. When Bernard comes to him on the first night, wanting to know if
Rose is alive, Eko announces that he will pray for her.
This is
keeping with the idea that Eko is fundamentally gentle despite the savagery
we’ve seen him capable of, and it's not until the night of the attack when we
see him standing over the two men he’s killed that we realize there is as much
darkness as there is Ana Lucia. Unlike her, however, he thinks that this is a flaw in his character
and he spends the next forty days taking a vow of silence which he clearly sees
as penance for his sins. It is fitting than he breaks his vow in front of Ana
Lucia; he knows that she needs comfort from someone and she will never ask for
it. Ana Lucia is only willing to seem vulnerable in front of Eko.
In her review
of the episode Emily St. James, while raving about it, argues that this episode
more or less explains why the Tailies never gelled with the cast: in a sense in
this episode they've been living in a completely different genre then
the one we've spent the last season and a bit with on the other side of the
island. She's not altogether wrong. For much of the first season of Lost we're
still not entirely certain what kind of show we're watching. It could be a
straight drama, could be fantasy, could be some kind of romance, could be
sci-fi. (It's not until at least Season 4 that Lost finally starts to
acknowledge it is a sci-fi drama.) 'The Other 48 Days' by contrast makes it
clear almost from 'Day 1' that it's basically horror and that's a very
difficult mood to maintain.
It works
incredibly well in the episode to be sure as we realize there's a human monster
among the Tailies who is the living breathing manifestation of the terror they
are facing. Full credit to Brett Cullen for digging in hard to his naturally
oily and reprehensible nature in this episode. (Flashbacks will argue that he
was a more human character then he was at the time.)
But when Ana
manages to kill the 'monster', there's no closure of catharsis because she
knows all too well that it means nothing.
When Goodwin died they lost any chance of finding the rest of their
people and they're still stuck on an island with no hope of escape and an
outside force that she knows could come back at any time. The scene with Eko is
sad because she sees no end to this other than death.
You get the
feeling when Jin ends up washing up on shore this gives her a reason to go
forward: there's another threat to face, something she can lash out against. In
hindsight her behavior in the previous episodes makes more sense: she's spent
the last six weeks in Hell and she's conditioned to doubt any potential help as
salvation. The survivors of the raft to her are a threat even when she believes
their story.
All of the
actions in this episode have the effect of retconning the paranoia we've seen
from Ana in the previous four episodes and making Rodriguez's already superb
work throughout Season 2 even better on repeated viewings. And in another sense it sets up a theme that
will become a constant the longer Lost continues: the parallels between
so many of the survivors and each new group. One can never forget Locke's
immortal words in the Pilot: "Two players, two sides. One is light, one is
dark." And we can forget them when we look at what's happening on the
other side of the island – and its clear everyone is going through an even
darker period then those on the beach.
In hindsight
the parallels between Ana Lucia and Jack in the Pilot are even more direct.
Both she and Jack save a crash survivor with CPR in the opening minutes of the
episode and both are given moments of private heroics with a recurring
character. Jack saves Rose's life at the beginning of the Pilot; at the same
time on the other side of the island Ana is saving her husband. We will learn
in the next episode Ana was a cop and there are times watching this episode
that you can't help but wonder if it might have been more useful for someone in
law enforcement to have been guiding those on the beach then someone who had a
medical degree. That Ana is harsh throughout isn't necessarily a failing
considering that by this point we already know Jack's incredible lack of
bedside manner.
It's telling
that while both Jack and Ana Lucia will both snap whenever someone questions
their leadership it's always been far easier to have sympathy for Ana's
reactions. When Jack has chosen to snap at anyone it has always been out of a
kind of self-righteous indignation in which he believes he is entitled to
supreme power even though so many of his decisions even at this point are
questionable. By contrast whenever Ana
does its anger built out of a very justifiable combination of paranoia and
terror that have been driving her and her incredibly shrinking group of
survivors with each passing day.
Eko is also
clearly being set up as a parallel to Locke and his silence is almost a welcome
change from 'the man of faith' on the other side of island. When Locke expresses his faith on the island
it has a tendency to freak out some of his survivors even before he started
calling Boone 'the sacrifice the island demanded'. Eko is a priest but not a preacher and when
he commits an act of violence on his first night he spends the next forty days
doing penance. Critically his silence disturbs Ana as much as Locke's
proselytizing does Jack: the message is that whatever form belief takes it will
not be given respect by science – or in this case, rage.
Because by
necessity the number of Tailies begin to shrink from the start the rest of the
parallels between those on the beach are negligible. Bernard is of course
Rose's husband and Ethan and Goodwin are the Others sent into the survivors who
meet tragic ends. It's worth noting that while Ethan clearly has a mandate, we
will eventually learn that while Goodwin was effectively doing a better job we
never know why he stayed in. It's later argued that he was making a case to
have Ana Lucia join them but that's not what we see in the episode (and
considering who tells us it's almost certainly a lie)
A larger
question that the show never answers is why did the Others take so many people
from the tail section as opposed to the ones on the Beach? By the end of this
season it will be clear to the viewer that the Others primary interest has
always been those on the beach first and foremost. By next season its clear
that the Tail Section survivors who were abducted have fully assimilated to
'Otherdom' but in terms of the series endgame they never seem to have mattered.
(Then again, it's not clear how much the Others may have mattered to the
endgame but this is not the time or place for that.)
What makes all
of this of some interest is that when Goodwin confesses to Ana he makes it
clear that Nathan 'was not a good person'. This will effectively set up the dynamic the
Others take during this season and is stated outright: they are clear that they
consider themselves 'the good guys' and that they view the Oceanics as
villains, even though everything they have done is strictly to survive or
defensive. As a larger argument I never
felt it had much muster but in the context of this episode and what's happened
in Season 2, it makes a larger sense.
The moment
they washed up on the beach the first words out of Jin's mouth, over and over
were Others. (We see this scene again just before the final minute when we
begin to flash in images bits from the last four episodes very quickly.) We
spent the last four episodes wondering just why the Tail section survivors were
basically so ragged, cold and aggressive to our friends and there were some
people who wondered if maybe Ana was lying and the people here tore each other
apart. This episode proves this was not the case and why they became this way.
It also
explains why they had such a hard time gelling with the original cast: they're
from a different show then the one we watched the previous season and some
viewers were inclined to view them as adversaries. (I never did but given the
reaction to Rodriguez in particular at the time I was in a minority.) And I
suspect that comes to the reason this episode is titled The Other 48
Days.
The Others are
the ones who did a number on this group and made them who they are. And in turn
it will be very difficult for the rest of the camp to see them as anything but
outsiders. As we'll hear later this season 'Other' is a relative term and which
side you are depends on whose trying to kill you at any given moment. Alliances
are built far more on who your common enemy is that personal connections. We've
learned that through much of Season 1 and as we're reminded in the final moment
of this episode Sayid has every reason to think Ana is the enemy. He'll only
forgive her when they find another one.
The Tailies
may be gone pretty much by the time Season 3 is over but this episode is
critical for many reasons. The dynamic of Us versus Them was under the surface
of Season 1 but now we realize just how real it is. The rest of Season 2 will
begin to define who 'THEY' are and how dangerous they can be. This episode will always hang over every time
the Others try to convince the Losties they're the good guys.
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