Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Incorporeal Cabin Fever

Preface
Wow. I doubt many Lost fans will disagree with me when I say that Cabin Fever was a great exemplar of the show as a whole, an amalgam of the various aspects of Lost that make it so great. Basically, that consists of three things:

1. Action and Adventure in the Island’s mysterious wilderness.

2. Revelations concerning the overarching mythology.

3. Further development of beloved characters

In my opinion, there have actually been four of these “exemplar” episodes in this season so far. Other than Cabin Fever, I would include Confirmed Dead, which introduced us to the Freighter Four with on-Island tension and pre-Island intrigue; The Constant, which unraveled the Island’s time-traveling capabilities, introduced a new environment for the show (the Kahana) and deepened the relationship between Desmond and Penny; and The Shape of Things to Come, which solidified Benjamin Linus as a globe-trotting ambiguous Hero and further developed the mythology of the Smoke Monster and the Island’s time-traveling powers.

After four great episodes, two of which have come in just the last three weeks, can the three-part finale top what we’ve already seen? I certainly hope so.

The Birth of a Hero

John Locke’s story is one of the most archetypal, and this episode gave us some of the early chapters we were missing, beginning with Locke’s birth. First of all, let’s note some eerie similarities between Baby Locke and Baby Ben. Both were born prematurely. Both were born to young women named Emily L (Locke and Linus). And finally, both births were witnessed by someone from the Island. In Ben’s case, it was Horace Goodspeed and his wife Olivia (who both figured into this week’s episode, nonetheless). In John’s case, it was my favorite Other, Richard Alpert.

Alpert’s appearance in the hospital was baffling. We knew he was near-immortal, but how did the man get off the Island in 1956, decades before the arrival of the Dharma Initiative and its technology? And how could Richard have known John was special five minutes out of the birth canal? I’m guessing that the answer lies in time travel, and that the Richard we saw at Locke’s birth was really from the future (though ostensibly still from our past, 2008-wise).

Still…what makes John special? Once he crashed on the Island, his chosen-ness became apparent when his paralyzed legs were healed by the Island. But before then, what would make him attractive to the Others? My guess is that present-day Richard Alpert, disillusioned with Ben’s leadership, traveled back to John’s past and tried to get him to the Island earlier, so as to install him as Island-Protector instead of Ben. Perhaps after meeting Locke last season, Richard realizes that he made a mistake in choosing Ben.

“Which of these objects already belong to you?”

This was my favorite scene. It parallels the way a new Dalai Lama is found when the previous Dalai dies. The Panchen Lama searches for a child born around the same time as the previous Dalai’s death, and presents the child with a variety of objects. Some of the objects belonged to the previous Dalai. If the child chooses the correct objects, it is a sign that he is actually a reincarnation of the previous Dalai.

This certainly appears to be the reason Richard is testing Locke. The question is who the previous leader was. Jacob? Interestingly, Toddler-Locke chooses two of the correct objects,a vial of some kind of mineral, perhaps sand or ash from the Island, and a compass. But he chooses a knife incorrectly. My guess? Toddler-Locke just wanted the knife because he liked it. He echoes this sentiment as a teenager, claiming not be interested in science, but instead in “manly things” like boxing and sports.

(For those interested, the other objects that Locke did not pick were an old comic book, a Book of Laws, and a baseball glove. My guess is that the knife, the glove, and the comic book were diversions that Richard brought, thinking that most kids would pick those to keep them. Locke was supposed to pick the Book of Laws (some weird cult book that the Others follow?), in fact he looks at it for a second, but then he picks the knife because he's drawn to it. Locke as an adult ends up being quite the knife expert, if you remember...)

So what are we as Lost fans supposed to gather from this scene? That Locke is a reincarnation of Jacob, or some other previous leader of the Others? The show certainly seems to be telling us that there is an Electromagnetic basis to human consciousness that survives physical death (more on that later). Whatever consciousness inhabits Locke’s mind, it appears to remember a certain smokey entity from one of its past lives…

“You need to go on a Walkabout”

(Doesn't Abbadon look like a velociraptor from Jurassic Park in that shot?)

In the break between Seasons 2 and 3, I came up with a theory that all of the passengers of 815 where subtly manipulated by outside forces into getting onto the plane so that they could be used on the Island. Thank you, Matthew Abbadon. It looks like Abbadon convinced John to go on his Walkabout, which put him in Sydney, which put him on 815. Could ALL of the characters have been manipulated this way? I always thought that Jack’s ex-wife Sarah looked like she was being blackmailed to leave him, for example.

My biggest question is what side is Abbadon on in this colossal chess match? When we saw him recruit Naomi and the Freighter Four, I assumed he was with Widmore. But why would Widmore want Locke on the Island? After all, Locke is apparently going to “move the Island” and hide it from Widmore (remember Ben’s statement in his flash-forward to Widmore? “You’ll never find it…”)

Perhaps Abbadon is part of a third party. Not the Others/Ben. Not Dharma/Widmore. Perhaps he represents a group of incredibly powerful people, some kind of “temporal stewards”, who are attempting to manipulate events in the present so as to create a certain outcome. Other members of this group? Mrs. Hawking, the old lady who told Desmond it was his “destiny” to leave Penny and go to the Island. Brother Campbell, who told Desmond his path lay elsewhere. Perhaps Ben and Widmore are both trying to change the future in their own way. They are tired of the universe being “course corrected” by these temporal stewards. They want a different outcome.

For some reason, when Ben warned Locke that destiny is a “fickle bitch,” it sounded very personal. As if he wasn’t talking about Fate, but about an actual woman. Like Mrs. Hawking…

“I died twelve years ago”

Well it turned out that Horace Goodspeed’s appearance was just an Island-induced dream sent to John in his sleep. I must admit, I was a little disappointed that the Mysterious Cabin was just a getaway house that Horace built for his wife Olivia. However, the writers have assured us that Horace and Olivia are a big part of Season 5 and the overall mythology. Still, I thought this cabin jumped around in space and time. Why would it be where the map said it was? And why didn’t Ben’s ring of ash keep it in place to begin with?

The weirdest part was the way that tree kept coming back up off the ground after Horace felled it. Did you notice that? Horace chopped it down, but then Locke looked up, and there it was again. Horace started over. Some kind of time loop was involved. My guess is that the Island used a real event in its own “memory,” one of Horace chopping down a tree decades ago, and dropped it into John’s sleeping consciousness, adding the part where Horace tells John to find him. Think like the Island for a second. You want to tell Locke that a map to the cabin is in Horace’s dead body’s shirt pocket. How would you do it?

“I can speak on his behalf”

This was the weirdest scene of the night. Maybe of the whole show. I just don’t know what to make of it. Christian Shepherd, as the producers have told us over and over again, is “one hundred percent dead.” His body crashed on the Island along with the plane, but when Jack found the coffin, it was empty. Does this mean that the Christian we saw in the Cabin is the body of the dead Christian inhabited by someone else’s consciousness? And what about Claire? She looked extremely creepy, as though she was privy to some kind of knowledge that we weren’t. She didn’t look like CLAIRE.

The only thing I can come up with (and I don’t even like it), is that perhaps the bodies of Christian Shepherd and Claire (who apparently died when Keamy’s RPG hit her house) have been reclaimed by disembodied consciousnesses on the Island. Perhaps by Horace and Olivia Goodspeed. Perhaps that’s all Jacob is…a disembodied consciousness that, like other people who die on the Island, survived physical death thanks to the Island’s crazy EM field.

I don’t like this explanation. It’s too supernatural. I don’t want my precious Lost Island to be riddled with ghosts, disembodied spirits, or reanimated corpses. It doesn’t fit the show. Hopefully something else is going on. Perhaps everything that Locke saw in the cabin was a manifestation of the Smoke Monster. I might like that better. All I know is that everything I thought I knew about the Island went poof during that scene in the cabin with Dead Jack-Daddy and Maybe-Dead Claire speaking to John “on behalf of” Jacob. I sincerely hope I don’t look back on that scene as the moment when Lost Jumped the Shark…

“He wants us to move the Island.”

My guess? Locke will use the Orchid Station to transport the entire Island through space, and perhaps time. What will that mean for the future of the show, though? Once the Oceanic 6 leave, will the rest of the survivors be transported to the North Pole circa 2910 B.C.? (The Dharma logo above has been seen twice. Once on Ben's stolen parka in Tunisia after he teleported there, and once on Keamy's file from Widmore regarding where Ben was likely to go in a last-ditch scenario. I'm guessing it's the logo for the Orchid, which we'll hopefully see soon.)

Stray Observations:

While Ben seems to be giving up his role as chosen one, I think he’s still manipulating the crap out of Locke.

I really, really hope Claire isn’t dead, and not just because she’s so darn cute.

I was disappointed that all of this anticipation over finding Jacob’s cabin ended in Jack’s dad “speaking on his behalf.” Just show us Jacob. Why wouldn’t Locke demand to see the Man himself? Why would he trust Christian Shepherd (a man he’s never met), and a strange version of Claire who looks like she’s on drugs? Me no sense make of ‘deece.

Why does Keamy have a heart monitor attached to a guitar tuner wrapped around his arm?

Tomorrow…

I retell the bizarre dream I had last night featuring the Island, Ben, Locke, Alex, a gunfight, a chase, and a new Dharma Station. I’m not kidding. At all.

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