Lost: Cabin Fever
Locke Searches For Jacob’s Cabin and Talks to a Dead Guy
Photo Courtesy of ABC.com
*SPOILER WARNING*
May 9th, 2008 - Lost, at its best, answers an old question and then promptly poses a few new ones. Last night’s episode posed some new questions, but didn’t give us much new information, and it made for an overall frustrating experience.
Let’s first examine Locke’s flashback. Seeing his mother give birth to him was, in this reviewer’s opinion, one of the most pointless flashbacks we’ve ever seen on the show. “Name him John!” Oh, so THAT’S how John got his first name! That’s been bugging me since season one! Alright, enough sarcasm. The presence of Richard Alpert off the Island and monitoring Locke’s progress was a nice twist. The sense that Locke (as well as our other Losties) were destined to come to the Island is nothing new, but the lengths to which Alpert went to monitor Locke brings to light larger questions: Was he destined to be the Island’s savior from birth? Why was he unworthy for the Island at a young age? What is the significance of him choosing the knife over the Book of Law? Was the Island this involved in bringing more of our characters to the Island? And what’s Abaddon got to do with everything?
But as intriguing as these questions are, they don’t detract from the uselessness of the rest of the flashbacks. Do we really need to learn the origins of his catch phrase “Don’t tell me what I can’t do?” Or what first gave him the idea of a walkabout, when we know that it will take him a long time as an office drone before he finally acts on it?
Locke, Ben, and Hurley’s journey through the jungle to find Jacob’s cabin was slightly more interesting, but the quest for Horace’s corpse and his map seemed sort of, well, silly to me. The Island can communicate to people through strange dreams, but we knew that already. Ben admits that he wasn’t the mastermind of the Purge and that he wasn’t always the leader of the Others, but we knew that already. Destiny exists on the Island, and it can be a “fickle bitch,” but we knew that already. This wasn’t the first time that information has been retread on the show, but in this episode it felt like these things were being treated as big revelations, when they really were far from it. The scene in Jacob’s cabin, on the other hand, was intriguing, and I wished it was longer. Is Christian now visible to anyone? Is he a ghost, the smoke monster, Jacob, Christain brought back to life, or something else? Why did Claire look so stoned? Why shouldn’t Locke tell anyone that he saw her there? And more importantly, how the hell do you move an Island?
Meanwhile, on the Kahana, Keamy is back and he is pissed off. He tries to kill Michael, but the Island won’t let him die. (But we already knew that. Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Captain Gault seems to have not been given all of the information about the nature of their mission, and Keamy is hell bent on moving on to Phase Two of the plan – torching the Island. There was a Dharma logo in that binder he was looking through, so does that mean that Widmore really is the man behind the D.I.? Gault, apparently not one of the bad guys, wants to help Sayid and Desmond rescue their friends, but unfortunately he lets Keamy get the better of him, reducing the number of friendly faces on the freighter by one. (Two, if you count the doctor.)
It was great how Sayid decided to go back for his friends while Desmond refused to ever set foot on the Island again, but wasn’t he supposed to be hiding? He was just sitting on the steps, watching, when Keamy started killing crew members for sport. That’s the best hiding spot you could find, Des? And if Sayid is traveling on the same specific bearing as Frank and the helicopter, wouldn’t Keamy spot him in the boat below? Kudos to Frank for (at least trying to) stand up to Keamy, and for being bold enough to throw the 815’ers at the beach a sat phone. But did Jack misinterpret the message; that they are supposed to follow the other signal, when in fact they should be avoiding it at all costs?
Overall, this wasn’t a terrible episode, but it certainly wasn’t the greatest either. The flashbacks/flashforwards were not as chuck full of information as they typically are, and most of what happened with Locke on the Island felt like a waste of time. With all of the character-driven goodness we got last week, it was a shame to go back to having new questions jammed down our throats, with old information handed to us as though it were a great reveal. The 3 hour, two-week season finale begins next week, and hopefully the show will go out on a stronger note.
Alan’s Score: 5.7 out of 10
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