“Failure is not an option…If you feel the need to vomit up there, just swallow it.” - Kitty Farmer, Donnie Darko

by Teresa Jusino

And the award for earliest flashback on Lost goes to….John Locke!  In this week’s episode, we not only went all the way back to when he was a premature baby and his teenage mother gave him up for adoption, but we also discovered that John’s inherent interest in large knives, as well as his ties to the island, go back much further that we might have suspected.

The episode opens with 16-year-old Emily getting ready for a date.  After an argument with her mother about whether she should be dating her much older boyfriend, she runs out into the street and gets hit by a car.  At the hospital, she informs the doctors that she’s pregnant, and when her child is delivered prematurely and is taken away in an incubator, she yells after them to make sure his name is John.  The episode then flits between John’s life before the island (his early childhood, his rehab after being paralyzed), where he unknowingly interacted with key figures from the island like Richard Alpert (who continues to look exactly the same age, despite seeing John Locke for the first time as a baby!) and Matthew Abbadon (who is “more than just an orderly”); Locke, Ben and Hurley’s search for Jacob’s cabin; and the freighter, where Crazy Keamy reveals that Widmore’s plan is to have them torch the island, which is not what the rest of the crew agreed to, and Sayid makes a deal with the captain to take the freighter’s raft and begin ferrying people off the island.

Locke episodes are always good episodes.  He’s one of the most fascinating and complex characters on Lost, and any examination of his life and times is always an opportunity for insight into the island and great storytelling.  Fascinating, too, is the fact that his ties to the island began as soon as he was born, giving an eerie new meaning to what he thinks of as his “destiny.”

STUPID THEORY:  Alpert appears at the hospital as soon as Locke is born, and both Emily and her mother seem to not only know him, but not be too pleased to see him.  Is he Locke’s father?!  Is he the man “twice Emily’s age”?  Was Locke conceived on purpose to serve the island?

One of the best scenes in this episode is when Alpert visits 5-year-old Locke in his foster home, where he is playing backgammon.  He sees that John has drawn a picture that looks very much like the smoke monster killing someone.  Saying he’s from a school for gifted children that is considering admitting John, he removes several objects from his bag: a worn baseball mitt, an old book, a vial filled with sand, a vintage comic book, a compass, and a large, old knife.  He asks John to choose which one “already belongs to him.”  John chooses the knife, and this choice seems to disappoint and agitate Alpert.  He hastily puts all the items back in the bag telling John that he was wrong, that John isn’t ready for the special school after all, and storms out.  Intriguing stuff. Watching Locke and Ben together has been a highlight of the past couple of episodes.  On a show where the original conflict was set up between Locke and Jack, we now see that it is actually Locke and Ben that are two sides of the same coin.  I went back and looked at the synopsis for the Season 3 episode, “The Man Behind the Curtain”, where Ben’s childhood is prominently featured, and I noticed some striking similarities between the two men:

** both of their mothers are named Emily

** both owe something to Horace Goodspeed – Horace picked up Ben’s parents shortly after his mother gave birth to him; in this episode, the ghost of Horace guides Locke to the cabin

** both were approached for “recruitment” by Alpert

And then of course there are the obvious parallels on the island.  Both men had a stint in a wheelchair.  Ben used to be the one Jacob favored, but once Locke arrived, Jacob’s focus has shifted.  John is now the favored son, and Ben is not just a little bit jealous.  Of course, there are also the biblical implications.  Benjamin, in the Bible, is one of Jacob’s sons, whose mother, Rachel, dies in childbirth  John the Baptist was born to a mother way past child birthing years, yet managed to be born healthy and grow up to fulfill a grand destiny.  I’m very interested to see how these two characters continue to travel together and where they end up.

Also, kudos to Michael Emerson and Jorge Garcia for enacting one of the best moments in television history!  Hurley and Ben share an Apollo chocolate bar.  Ben looked at that candy bar more longingly than he ever looked at Juliet.  Heh.

And Claire is in the cabin?!  Without Aaron?!  Totally just chillin’ with her dad?!  I don’t know when they decided to make her badass, but I like it!

This episode gave us a lot of food for thought, and was an extremely satisfying hour of television.  Now how the hell is Locke going to MOVE THE ISLAND?!

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TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so.  She is currently playing a lead role in Stone Soup Theater Arts’ latest original play, “The Ghost Dancers”, by Adam Hunault.  As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. Also, she has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan. Yes, she knows he’s married.