Lost – “Something Nice Back Home”

“Something Nice Back Home”

May 1st, 2008

Welcome to May, folks, and welcome to yet another new episode of Lost. If the trend continues, this week has the potential to upend last week’s momentum: if there’s ever a way to stop plot development in its tracks, the past has shown that Jack and Kate episodes are the most effective. So, when we flashforward to a time when Kate and Jack are in angsty situations, there are signs that we might be in the wrong territory.

But then, things got interesting: it wasn’t a Jack story at all. You start to realize that although Jack is the window into our flashforward and this episode, this isn’t about him: it’s about people haunted by their past, and haunted by its impact on their lives. Where is home for these people, when all of them are struggling to reconcile their new lives with haunting flashbacks from their past?

There’s a lot of questions this episode, and while they might not be as game-changing as last week they remain dramatically strong and certainly important to developing these characters as we march towards a finale.

WARNING: Spoilers, so don’t be clicking until you’ve watched it, or until you’ve decided to turn to the dark side.

Although our biases against Jack and Kate stories might warn us against the flashforward being important, this time around Jack hit the nail on the head: haunting is a big element of this episode, and this is a story of Jack being haunted by a ghost of his dead father. We, of course, draw an immediate connection to Jacob, the spectre of his father who Hurley saw in the cabin at the beginning of the season.

Now, the rest of the storyline is a bit cheesy: Jack reading a book to Aaron, Jack proposing to Kate, etc. That’s all fine, these are two good actors acting well, but the really interesting thing is the idea that Charlie coming to Hurley way back in the premiere was building to something. Charlie giving Jack a message that “You are not the one to raise him” from beyond the grave, or beyond the island at least, implies that (Much as the Island would not allow Michael to die) it will not allow these people to deviate from its plan.

Now, of course, we’re starting to figure out just where things sit: for example, this seems to be the leadup to Jack’s disintegration, his frantic search for the island and his meeting with Kate at the airport. This is his attempt at being normal, here, and the Island doesn’t want it to happen – even though his visions of Christian aren’t nearly as fully-realized as Charlie was to Hurley, it has the desired effect: he decides to try to control his issues with drugs, and begins to struggle to contain every ounce of paranoia tearing him up inside about Kate, about life, about everything.

It’s a strong look for Jack, one that makes this flashforward a lot more interesting than any of his flashbacks. It was also a storyline that wasn’t about Jack, but about what is happening to him: how it reflects on Hurley, and more importantly how it reflects on the people currently on the island. Because, the episode also reminded us that there’s someone else on the island who can see dead people, for a living even. Miles’ returning to the narrative is integral, for it opens us up to a whole new question too often left unaddressed.

Miles is traveling with Claire and Sawyer, which seems an odd threesome at first. However, it makes sense: Sawyer is there for muscle (Like when the victims of the Smoke Monster’s attack were rushing back to their helicopter), Miles is there to remind us of the ghosts which haunt his own mind and the minds of our characters in present and future, and Claire is there to remind us she remains an important part of this series. At no point was this more clear when, suddenly, she wakes to Aaron being cradled in Christian Shephard’s arms.

It’s one of those scenes that, when the show doesn’t immediately return to it, you get extremely frustrated: is it the explosion that has caused her to start seeing things? He is her father, as she says, and this reminds us that Jack is technically taking care of his half-nephew in the flashforward – it also reminds us that she is now the third character to spot the elusive Dr. Shephard on the island. We’ve seen many ghosts, but Claire’s seems the most puzzling: why now? And why does she leave her baby behind to depart with her father, likely resulting in Aaron becoming part of the Six without his mother? It also means that we have no assurance, should this be our castaways’ last glimpse of Claire, that they have proof she is dead; this opens up all sorts of doors.

The storyline included some nice humour from Miles and Sawyer, and also makes us wonder whether Miles being able to see Christian is a sign of his ghostly nature or of his actual physical presence – that is one question we don’t get an answer to, as this is only one plot on the island.

Channeling House seems an odd choice, but Jack’s mystery illness does seem to be fairly fortuitous – Juliet, of course, figures out that its his Appendix after about two seconds, but it still creates a strange sense of mystery and drama that seems…over-emphasized? We know Jack is human, so we don’t really need to place him in mortal peril (that we know he will overcome) to understand his importance to this particular mission. But, that would imply that this storyline is, actually, about Jack – rather, it is about the rest of the people and their own reactions, just like the flashforward.

On a more direct level, I love Rose’s reaction: this is an island that is supposed to heal people, so why in this moment of need is Jack getting a life-threatening illness? It’s an interesting question that is only briefly raised, but one that I think we’re all asking: is illness something that, on the island, certainly takes on an ominous tone when we consider the death of pregnant women and the mysterious virus that apparently afflicted the people on Rousseau’s trip (And that Dharma was so paranoid about for those in the Hatch, although that could all have been nothing but a ruse).

It also spurns off a nice side story that returns Jin and Sun, along with an all-important dissection of Dan and Charlotte, back to the narrative after an absence: there is great value to their characters, all four of them, and it was intriguing to see Daniel’s continued neuroses compared to Charlotte’s hidden worldliness. Her knowing Korean doesn’t change the game, but it is our first signal into her role in all of this: Ben’s trip to Tunisia last week more or less confirms that her role might not become clear until later in our tale. I loved her comment “Add it to the list, Daniel” to Faraday’s umpteenth ponderance (“Where does all this power come from?”), and I do hope that we get more from her soon.

The other major story was the romantic tie-in for Jack and Kate, smartly downplayed in comparison to recent weeks. Kate being part of the surgery was all to allow for the Juliet/Kate moment where Juliet tells Kate that there’s only room in Jack’s heart for one love, and her name is not Juliet. Really, it was all about studying these two people who, as we saw in the flashforward, are only going to destroy each other in the end.

And yet, it’s with the ghosts that we are left: pondering how it is, precisely, that these specters exist in the future, and how they have driven Claire away from Aaron. I don’t particularly think that “home” is so welcoming as these people think it is, because as we have seen there’s a hell of a lot more turmoil there. And, if that turmoil can make Jackflashes this entertaining, I’m a huge fan.

Cultural Observations

• So Kate made a promise to Sawyer on the island, and as part of that she was doing something for him that caused Jack to be suspicious. There’s a lot of questions raised on this front, and I have to wonder what part of his sordid life was in question here. Apparently we are to learn how these folks get off the island by the end of the season, so I’m thinking we’ll see the conversation then (Although it’s possible that could only be in flashforwards, and there is much time left on the island).
• There’s great comic potential to be found in the Sawyer/Miles pairing, so sticking them with an infant smells of gold at this point. I’m not sure if I prefer them to seeing more of Locke/Ben/Hurley, but for the sake of levity I think it was a good call.
• We still, also, have to solve the riddle of the fountain of youth known as Richard Alpert, a thought I only had during this hour due to a reminder of Rousseau’s death and her eventual point of arrival – I think that Carbonnel is coming back this season, so I wait with baited breath.