LOST: THE REWATCH COLUMN: SEASON 4 EPISODES 12 & 13

There’s No Place Like Home, Parts I & 2 (S4, ep. 12 & 13)

With this column, Season 4 is officially behind us. We’re now in the home-stretch, about to jump into Season 5, weeks away from Season 6. This is a bitter-sweet feeling on at least two levels: First, writing these columns has been a blast. I’m going to miss doing this. Second, Lost is ending, and it’s a pretty singular beast. I’m going to miss it when it’s gone.

Two items before we launch into the Season finale festivities:

1) Chud.com has been incredibly gracious in hosting these columns, but I’m unsure what their columnist plans are for Season 6. I’ve asked whether they’d be interested in featuring my thoughts on the episodes as they air, but there are a few folks here who love the show, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted to reserve that right for themselves. I’ll let you know what the final decision is. Either way, you’ll still be able to read my ramblings on Back To The Island.

2) I’ve gotten some terrific feedback during this re-watch, and one of the questions I’m asked most involves whether or not I plan to collect any of this material in book-form. The answer is ‘sort of, if you’re interested.’ Once Season 6 ends, I’m considering releasing a self-published book on the major themes, philosophical touchstones, and literary/mythological/religious allusions of Lost. By necessity, some of the ideas in the book would be duplicative of these columns, but all of it would be newly written and expanded material, and it would involve ‘the full picture,’ including Season 6’s revelations and details. On the Back To The Island site I’m currently running a poll to determine whether there’s substantive interest in this idea. So far, the answer appears to be ‘yes, as long as it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.’ I invite you to cast your own vote HERE and let me know what you think. This isn’t the kind of thing one does for money – it’s the sort of thing I’d do because I enjoy the process, and because your responses have so far been so positive.

All of that now said, on with the show!

There’s No Place Like Home, Parts I (S4, ep. 12)

Jack: “They’ll think we’re in shock.”
Sun: “We are in shock, Jack.”

Thoughts:

• To a large extent, There’s No Place Like Home, Part I is something of a wheel-spinning episode, or, if you prefer, a ‘moving the pieces into place’ episode.

• Oceanic representative Karen Decker is played by Michelle Forbes, who was “Maryanne the Mad Maenad” on True Blood, and was also, to my surprise, the female lead in the movie Swimming With Sharks, a movie that I remember enjoying, but which is basically KevinSpacey-porn.

Ben: We’re going to a place called the Orchid, Hugo.
Hurley: And what’s that?
Ben: It’s a greenhouse.

• Ben, Locke and Hurley head to The Orchid, the latest and greatest Dharma Station, in order to follow Jacob’s orders and ‘move the Island.’ The Orchid is the home of the famed Frozen Donkey Wheel and generally-wiggy time travel anomalousness. What’s the significance of the Orchid being a ‘greenhouse’? I’m not sure, to be honest. Orchids are suspected to have ‘ancient origins,’ and to have co-existed, in one form or another, with dinosaurs. That longevity may be intended to tie in, in some way, with the Island. Certain kinds of Orchids (like the “Ghost Orchid,” featured in Susan Orleans’ book “The Orchid Thief,” which was made into the Charlie Kaufman film “Adaptation”) are also known for having extensive root systems – masses of roots culminating in small, beautiful flowers. This may have some bearing on the Island itself. We’ll talk more about the Island’s potential ‘root systems’ a little further on down the column.

Faraday: “We have to get off this island. Right now.”

• Why? Faraday and Charlotte have already disabled the Cyanide gas at The Tempest Station. What is the ‘secondary protocol,’ and why is Daniel so afraid of it? Is it the destruction of the Island? How are they planning on accomplishing that? Capturing Ben alive implies that Widmore wants to use him in some way. With the Island ‘torched,’ how would he do that?

• Jack and Kate run into Sawyer, Aaron and Miles on their way to The Orchid.  Apparently, they looked for her for a day without any luck. Where the heck did she go? The mystery of Claire is something I’m very much hoping that the show satisfactorily resolves. They’ve made a point to surround her with some truly wacky story-beats this season, and I hope that they pay off.

Sawyer: “What’s with you and getting off the Island? You’re like a damn broken record!”

• There’s the record/record player imagery again. As I’ve suggested before, Jack may literally be a broken record.

Great Sawyer Line: “Hold up! You don’t get to die alone.”

JACKFACE!

• Jack’s starting to lose his grip. He’s got that look on his face – the same look he had when he was stalking his ex-wife around playgrounds and generally behaving like the sort of guy you cross the street to avoid. Despite this, Sawyer cowboy’s up and follows him back to the beach, leaving Aaron in the care of Kate – where he’ll remain until the middle of Season 5.

• According to the woman who only just recently held a slew of Black-eyed, meat-statued orgies in Bon Temps, Louisiana: the Oceanic Six washed ashore on a small, uninhabited Island in the Sunda Islands in Indonesia, called “Membata.” The word “Membata-bata” is Indonesian for “to be in doubt” or “to be ambivalent.” Presumably, when you remove the “bata” from the word, you’re left with “doubt,” or “ambivalence,” which is a perfectly ironic name for a place the Oceanic 6 was supposed to have left behind.

• Note that they left “Membata” – which is listed on the map as ‘uncharted’ – on day 108 of the crash, a number that should be familiar to everyone by now. 

Why is that number potentially important? We know that the counter in the Swan Station needed to be reset every 108 minutes – put back to the beginning again. The act of leaving the Island ‘resets’ the lives of the Oceanic 6 in a similar fashion, allowing them still-another chance to remake themselves, which they do (to sometimes disastrous, sometimes heartwarming effect – but mostly disastrous). But, like the Swan Station, something is building within most of the 6. A growing unease, a sense of incompletion, a loss that’s consuming most of them. Like the Swan Station, they need to be reset again, or they risk exploding.

….That’s a strained metaphor. It’s late. Forgive me.

Anywho, the essential point is that ‘resets’ are important to Lost’s narrative on a number of levels, and if I’m right about the effects of the Jughead explosion, they’ll be important on a massive level in Season 6.

• Jack is asked by the press to talk about what he remembers from the crash itself, and Jack lies out the yin-yang. He says that he ‘remembers the impact,’ and that’s an interesting comment because as far as we’ve seen, there was no impact. Jack awoke in the pilot, already flat on his back in the jungle. The same thing happens to him when he returns to the Island – one moment he’s sitting on the plane and the next, he’s on the Island.

• Nadia and Sayid are reunited at last in this episode – something we the audience have been waiting for over the course of four seasons. I want to feel happiness at the sight of these two lovers being reunited at last, but I can’t, because I’ve already spent significant time with a post-Nadia Sayid. A kind of darkness hangs over everything in these episodes, knowing what we know about what’s to come. On the one hand, this makes everything both cathartic and ominous at the same time; while I’m pleased to see how the Oceanic 6 got off the Island, and that they survived, I already know what’s coming down the road for these characters, and I know it ain’t pleasant. As a result of this, there’s an overwhelming sense of fatalism running through Sayid and Nadia’s encounter, and most of this episode in general. That sense of fatalism is both thematically appropriate and refreshing for network television. On the other hand, it drains a certain amount of the tension from the proceedings. It’s a strange mixture that, for me, works better than not, but was a growing source of frustration for some during Season 5. We’ll talk about this mixture much more when we roll over into Season 5. 

Hurley: Well, if you could move the island whenever you wanted, why didn’t you just move it before the psychos with guns got here?
Ben: Because doing it is both dangerous and unpredictable. It’s a measure of last resort.
Hurley: Awesome.

No, Hurley. You’re awesome.

Ben’s comments here about the danger and unpredictability of moving the Island are intriguing. We’ll talk more about danger, unpredictability, and Orchids just a little further down, in Part II. 

Mr. Paik (Subtitled): “How could this happen?!”
Lowly-underling (Subtitled): “Whoever did it, sir, used five different banks.”

• Bravo, Sun. If I could pick one Season 5 thread that I wish had been followed more aggressively, it would be this one. Sun’s sudden power-grab is both in-character and genuinely surprising, and I’d have enjoyed seeing more of the character in a corporate setting, kicking ass and taking names.

It’s been argued that Sun’s Oceanic settlement could not have been large enough to seize control of Paik Industries. I don’t recall whether we ever learn the actual amount that each castaway received from the airline, but it’s made clear several times that the settlement was “substantial.”

Now, Lost is a television show, and as such, it takes liberties with facts at times. And while some liberty may have been taken here, Sun’s hostile takeover of Paik Industries is actually quasi-realistic when you take into account both the reality of what “controlling interest” in a company can consist of, as well as the possibility of minority shareholder veto power.

To own a controlling interest in a publically-traded corporation is to control that corporation. One can achieve a controlling interest simply by owning enough shares (this number varies) to ensure that no other stockholder(s) can oppose a motion successfully. Normally, this means controlling interest is just over 50%, but it can be less depending on how a company operates and how many shareholders actually vote.

Does Sun have enough money to buy that much stock? We don’t know. We do know that she went about buying the company’s stock in such a way as to avoid suspicion of a hostile takeover. Typically, an attempt by one entity to buy a controlling interest in a company can be defeated strategically. But using five different banks can function to obscure a buyer’s goal in amassing controlling interest.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Sun doesn’t have enough cash to hold a true controlling interest – could she still effectively take over Paik? Surprisingly, the answer is yes.

In company’s that require a super-majority of shareholders to vote for or against a motion, any company or individual who holds approximately 1/3 of those shares can operate with effective veto power, rendering the super-majority vulnerable to constant defeat.

So, long answer rendered short: Lost may be playing fast-and-loose with the details here, but it’s arguably got the big picture correct.

Sun (Subtitled): “You ruined my husband’s life. It is because of you we were on that plane. Two people are responsible for his death. You are one of them.”

• Ben is the other, right? Since Locke was the only one who saw Ben doom the freighter to explosive destruction, I’m assuming that he’ll tell her about Ben’s actions when he visits her in Season 5, but I can’t remember if that’s the case.

Mrs. Reyes: “Jesus Christ is not a weapon.”

• Maybe one of my favorite lines from the series. If I could, I’d make bumper stickers out of it. At the risk of sounding goofy, I think it’s an instance of something important and profound being hidden in a joke. I’m not sure if this line has any larger relevance to Lost (to make that determination, we need a LOT more info on the forces involved), but it sounds as if it should. And if it doesn’t? Well, the admonition that religion is not a weapon is a valuable one. 

• It’s an amusing character touch to have Hurley’s parents cluelessly throw him a tropical-island-themed welcome home party.

Hurley: “You fixed it.”
David: “Yeah. After the crash, I–I worked on it as a memorial to you. When I was fixing it up, it was almost like I was with ya.”

• I’ve written before about Lost’s panoply of terrible paters. With few exceptions, all of the dads we see on Lost are either terrible people, absent, or ineffectual. David starts out this way, but, like Michael, seems to reach for a kind of penitence as the show progresses. That’s nice to see, and it’s a real rarity. As for what it means that The Numbers appear on the cars odometer? I have no friggin’ clue.

Carole: “My daughter was on your plane, too. She was on flight 8-1-5. You were in the air for six hours, probably just a few rows from her and you never even knew she was your sister. She was one of the ones who died when your plane hit the water. Her name was… Claire.”

• Forget Jughead, what about this bomb that got dropped? More than anything, it seems as though the revelation of Jack and Claire’s parentage drives Jack into the arms of liquor and prescription pharmaceuticals. Weirdly, it’s the revelation that Jack is related to Aaron that seems to drive him away from the boy.

Michael: “I do not work for Ben. I’m trying to make up for what I did. I’m trying to help you out here. Translate what I said.”
Jin: “I understand.”

• There’s a sense of forgiveness to Michael’s encounters with Jin and Sun in this episode, and that forgiveness is gratifying to me. When Jin says “I understand,” I read that comment to refer not just to the fact that Jin is much better at understanding English, but that Jin understands Michael’s drive here. Also very sweet is the moment (in Part II) when Sun shares the news of her pregnancy with Michael.

• Richard and the Others show up again, back in their jungle-hillbilly togs for the first time in a while. All Richard is missing is the long hair. Why are they back in their tattered clothes? Maybe its meant to fool the people from the freighter, ala the way that the Others tried to fool the castaways. And maybe it’s symbolic of the Others’ return to a more nomadic way of living after moving away from the Dharma barracks.

Ben: “How many times do I have to tell you, John? I always have a plan.”

• Just what is that plan, really? On re-watch, it appears that Ben’s plan is either more nuanced than we’re privy to (always a possibility with our favorite bug-eyed Other), or is much more nonsensical than it should be. We’ll talk more about this in the second part of the column, coming up after the page-break!