LOST: BACK TO THE ISLAND: SEASON 6, EPISODE 4

The Substitute (S6, ep. 4)

“The land is dried up, and cannot be restored until the coming of the Grail Knight, who in other texts is called ‘He Who Frees The Waters.’”  – The Grail Tradition

Anti-Locke: “You can accept the job, become the ‘new Jacob,’ and protect the Island.
Sawyer: “Protect it from what?”
Anti-Locke: “From nothing, James. That’s the joke. There’s nothing to protect it from. It’s just a damned Island.”

Number 6: “I am not a number! I am a free man!”

A Preamble and a Terrible Joke:

An existential nihilist and an existential humanist walk into a bar. They’ve both had long days, and as they’re nursing a few stiff drinks, the humanist asks the nihilist if he knows any good jokes. “LIFE is a joke,” snarls the nihilist. The humanist bursts out laughing and responds: “That’s hilarious.”

In Lost’s Season 5 finale, we’re introduced to Jacob and the Man in Black – two men of mystery who appear to hold opposing viewpoints on mankind’s ability to change. The Man in Black appears to be a kind of cynic – the nihilist in the bad joke above. Whatever Jacob’s “game” is, the MiB is tired of it. “It always ends the same,” he tells Jacob. “They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt…”

Jacob’s response colors him as the potential humanist in the bar. “It only ends once,” he says. “Everything that happens before that is just…progress.”

Lost has always been a show about perspective – about how new information can change or re-color old information, about the shifting beliefs, attitudes and prejudices of differing people, and how those people view the world view the world and each other. Jacob and the MiB’s conversation reinforced that constant (no pun intended). It offered up for us two opposing philosophical viewpoints based on the same events. For the MiB, new Island arrivals seem to simply confirm what he already knows: these people have already lost the “Great Game” that Jacob seems to be playing. It’s meaningless, because it always ends the same way. But Jacob’s response suggests that, even if the Man in Black is right, that shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. Tonight’s episode, “The Substitute,” quietly revisited that conversation and asked us, the audience, what we believe.

Jean Paul Sartre is a philosopher and novelist Lost has referenced many times over the course of the show. I’ve written about him before, and you can read some of those musings here. Concepts of existentialism, of “Others” and “Othering” infuse Lost’s narrative on a number of levels, and Jacob and the MiB’s conversation can be taken, in a sense, as a literalization of existential nihilism and existential humanism. What the heck am I talking about? And why is this relevant to tonight’s episode? Bear with me:

Among other things, Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” rejected Emanuel Kant’s belief that there are two “levels” of existence: the world that we perceive, and a “higher” reality beyond that, where the “true” meaning/being of things exists. If you know anything about Plato, this line of thinking might remind you of the idea of “Forms.” If you took Philosophy 101 in college it might remind you of Plato’s “cave” analogy. No clue what I’m talking about? No worries. Take Kate’s horse as an example. From Plato’s perspective, when Kate sees her horse in the jungle, she is seeing a kind of “shadow on a wall.” What she perceives as a horse is only one possible variation on the larger idea, or “Form,” of “Horse.” This one is black, but other horses are not. This one is X height. Other horses are Y height. That sort of thing.

For Plato, Kate’s horse is not “true” reality. It is one horse, which cannot and does not contain all the possible characteristics of every horse. It is a “shadow” of the true “Form” or idea of the Horse. Kant’s idea of reality is similar. There is the world we see and a “higher” world containing larger Forms. The greatest of these Forms might be called “God.”

Sartre thought Plato and Kant were smoking something funny. To his thinking, there was no “higher” reality, and he was profoundly skeptical about the notion of “God” or mankind’s potential reunion with a “higher” plane. His ideas were revolutionary among the sort of people who like thinking about this stuff, and like many revolutionary ideas, more than a few people considered them dangerous and nihilistic.

Heading back to the bar for a moment: from the existential nihilist’s point of view, existence (or some aspect of it) is meaningless. And, if one is inclined to a ‘darker’ perspective of the world, Sartre’s philosophy offers an affirmation to the nihilist. Life IS meaningless. There is no inherent purpose to existence. There is no higher “God.” What we see is what we get.

That darker perspective lines up nicely with the espoused views of Mr. Man in Black, Island Smoke Monster. Nothing changes. People are broken. This is meaningless. Or in other words: “It’s just an Island, James.”

But Sartre (much to my personal pleasure) refuses to let the “dark side” prevail. Existentialism, as Sartre famously argued, is a humanism. Sartre argues that life may be meaningless, but that this fact should not depress us – it should liberate us. Knowing that we exist in-and-of ourselves, without a predetermined destiny or “higher purpose,” can free us from what we think we are, what we believe ourselves to be, what we believe we are destined for. It allows us to clean our slates, to effect a “Tabula Rasa” (the title of one of Lost’s episodes). In the words of Aldous Huxley, author of “Island” and “Brave New World” (the Pala Ferry derives it’s name from Huxley’s “Island”), it opens us up to the possibility of achieving “good being.” As Joss Whedon put it: “If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.”

And that, more or less, has been my impression of Jacob’s philosophical position – a kind of existential humanism. Jacob doesn’t deny the Man in Black’s point during their conversation. He simply amends it. And this is not dissimilar to the way in which Sartre “amends” the concept of existentialism. Life may be meaningless, he says, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating some meaning for yourself. We’ve seen Jacob put emphasis on the importance of individual choice a number of times and, assuming that all of that wasn’t a big dog n’ pony show, that emphasis aligns him with the idea of humans as variables – ‘free radicals’ able to decide their own fates within a larger existentially-uncaring system.

Sartre believed that an embrace of existentialism would free us from the need for God, for the “dualism” (or “mirroring,” one might say) of “hidden worlds,” of unseen players pulling strings behind the scenes. That most of Lost’s story has revolved around puppetmasters pulling strings is an irony that should probably be regarded as intended, and it leads directly into the most obvious questions posed by tonight’s episode (see? Relevance!):

Is Jacob is “good”? Is Jacob “necessary”? Is Jacob “meaningful”? Is the Island “just” an Island? And because this is Lost, and Lost likes its allegories as much as it likes its pulpy adventure, that question is also larger than Jacob. What Lost is also arguably asking here: Is “God”/faith “good”? “Necessary”? “Meaningful”?

The Man in Black, aka, Anti-Locke, certainly doesn’t think so. Like the real Mikhail Bakunin suggested (namesake of Lost’s eye-patched Other), Anti-Locke destroyed “God” in order to achieve his freedom. According to Anti-Locke, there is nothing special about the Island – it’s just an Island, one that has served as a focal point of misery for the people who have been ‘drawn’ to it. It can exist on its own, without any of the people on it. Metaphorically: why choose to believe in God? To believe in anything you can’t demand answers from? Why not just accept meaninglessness? That’s a damn good question if we’re honest with one another, and it’s one that Lost has wrestled with from the beginning.

Thoughts:

• The Substitute is one of those episode names that’s clever on multiple levels. Off-Island Locke is a Substitute teacher, off-Island Locke’s life is a Substitute for the life we’ve watched him live, the “candidates” that Jacob has selected are Substitutes for his position, Sawyer is a Substitute for Richard as Anti-Locke’s first recruit, and Locke is a Substitute for the MiB’s true form.

• Like Season 1’s fourth episode, “Walkabout,” Season 6’s fourth episode focuses on the character of John Locke, Island “believer.” Locke’s off-Island storyline seems to lend more credence to the “Second Snake” theory, but the Man In Black’s comments during this episode have got me wondering about my pet theory (no pun intended). More on this below.

Helen: “What do you say we just get my parents, and your dad, and do it “shotgun-style” in Vegas.”

• Off-Island, Locke and Helen are living together, and Locke has apparently managed to propose marriage without flaking out and losing the love of his life to his obsession with a terrible father. And speaking of terrible fathers – does Locke have one anymore? Helen suggests that they bring Locke’s father to Vegas for a shotgun-style wedding, something that you don’t ordinarily do when that same man is responsible for stealing his son’s kidney and pushing him out of an 8th story window.

• Check out the photo of Locke’s father hanging in his cubicle. Have Locke and Anthony Cooper made a genuine connection off-Island? Is Anthony Cooper even a con man in this “universe”? If not, then things haven’t simply changed for Locke. They’ve significantly changed for Sawyer as well. Locke’s shown standing in the above-phot, implying that he lost his legs at around the same time in this “universe.” Was Cooper involved somehow, even if only as a witness/involved party like, say, a car accident?

• The “Evil Dead cam” used to show Smokey’s POV is fantastic.

• I complain about Lost’s shoddy effects on a fairly regular basis, but credit where credit is due: that shot of Smokey reflected through the window is nicely done.

• In his post-Juliet depression, Sawyer’s cranking up the punk rock, yo. He’s got The Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” blaring away as he funnels whiskey straight to his (noticeably-rounder) tummy. Search and Destroy was recorded in 1973, and lines like “Im a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb” have a nice resonance, given that Sawyer’s current state is a direct result of the attempted Jughead detonation.

• After hitting Richard in the throat, knocking him out and hauling our favorite Immortal Other into the jungle, Anti-Locke apparently trussed the poor guy up and suspended him above the ground in a canvas “cocoon.” This is too elaborate and weird to go unremarked on. Either Lost’s writers just thought it’d look cool, or they’re giving us information/a hint about Richard and the MiB. On one level, Richard’s temporary cell resembles the Moth cocoon that Locke showed Charlie back in Season 1. Maybe we’re simply meant to register the visual reference. And maybe there’s more to it. Here’s where I get wonky: we’ve seen Anti-Locke carefully placing shoes on his feet before stepping back onto the main Island. We’ve seen that the Others tend to go barefoot. And we’ve seen characters like Sawyer walking around barefoot for no real discernable reason a number of times before. Does physical contact with the Island play a part in its mysteries? Did Locke suspend Richard to remove that contact?

• The Incredible Perma-Douche, Randy Nations, makes his off-Island reappearance as Locke’s manager. This is the same position that Randy held “previously” in Locke’s life. Nothing else to say here. I just wanted to write “Incredible Perma-Douche.” Mission accomplished. Twice. 

Richard: “What do you want?”
Anti-Locke: “What I’ve always wanted – for you to come with me.”

• We learn that the Man in Black took Locke’s form to get access to Jacob – something that we’d already figured out a while ago. But we also learn that the MiB did this because Locke “was a candidate.” This implies (to me at any rate) that it wasn’t John Locke who was “special” – it was all of the castaways that were identified by Jacob. Stepping back to take a look at the larger picture, then: It appears that Jacob selected some of the castaways as “candidates,” and this selection is responsible in part for drawing them to the Island, or is a result of “future knowledge” on Jacob’s part (meaning that Jacob is already aware that these people will come to the Island, thanks to the unique time-properties of the Island). It also appears that, within the context of this “drawing” (of the six, instead of the three, for those of us who’ve been noticing the show’s possible Dark Tower references/indebtedness), the Man in Black “tested” some of these candidates before settling on Locke as his Substitute. Once Locke was chosen, the Man in Black then proceeded to effect a loop in time that would make Locke stand out from the rest of the “candidates,” and that would raise the attention of Richard. Does that make sense?

Anti-Locke: “Didn’t Jacob tell you any of this?”
Richard (amusingly dazed): “Anyawhat?”
Locke: “Richard, I’m sorry. You mean you’ve been doing everything he told you all this time – and he never said why? I would never have done that to you.”

• Anti-Locke and Richard’s conversation confirms that Richard isn’t privy to what’s really going on with regard to Jacob’s plans. He has some of the puzzle, but not all of it. Anti-Locke, Dogen, Lennon and Ilana are aware to some extent of the “candidates” question. Heck, even Bram seemed to be in on that nugget. Richard doesn’t appear to have a clue.

• Again, Anti-Locke’s line of patter revolves around revelation. He claims that he’ll share everything he knows with Richard. Later, he’ll show Sawyer the “why” behind his arrival on the Island. The Man in Black appears to be a force for brutal freedom in this episode, and that appearance begins to raise serious questions about him, especially on a thematic level. Suddenly it’s Jacob who’s begun to look like the “bad guy” in this Great Island Game. Much more on this below.

• On an Island teeming with creepy apparitions the image of a young boy with blood on his hands, posed in a way that recalls Christ’s stigmata, ranks up there with the creepiest of them. The appearance of the boy (who calls to mind a young Jacob, an older Aaron, and JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, all at once) seems to spook Anti-Locke, who goes running off after the eerie kid. Let’s slow things down: (1) Anti-Locke/MiB sees “ghosts” too. We know that Anti-Locke claims to be a man in this episode – does this mean he is also ‘special’ like Hurley and (apparently now) Sawyer? (2) This “ghost” appears to confirm that not all of the apparitions on/off the Island have been MiB-related. (3) If the boy is Jacob, why is he not shown as a grown man, the way that he appeared to Hurley?

• Why doesn’t Anti-Locke kill Richard? That’s what I’d expect an “evil” sentient column of Locke-resembling smoke to do, since Richard won’t join the Crusade. Is it because he can’t, thanks to “The Rules”? Is it because he isn’t really a killer? Does “young Jacob” appear at that moment in order to spook Anti-Locke out of killing him?

• Ilana’s mourning the death of Jacob in an unusually personal way. I’m left wondering whether they were lovers or friends once, or whether Ilana was simply emotionally dedicated to the mysterious cause. It’s my hope that one of these final episodes will give us an actual flashback look at the past life of Ilana – not because I’m especially fascinated by her, but because I suspect it would give us a huge chunk of the overall puzzle, and would do so by showing it to us and not through exposition.

• Ben’s character is in an odd place as of this episode. His role as potentially-evil Island puppetmaster has been usurped, and he seems at a loss. In a sense, Ben’s slate has been wiped clean. He’s now free to do anything, to be anyone. It’s interesting, then, that he tells Ilana that Anti-Locke killed Jacob. He chooses to lie and protect himself instead of owning the truth. Given that Ilana is aware of the “candidates,” it makes me wonder whether she’s also aware of the rules. If so, does she know that the MiB can’t kill Jacob? And has she just been alerted to Ben’s potential danger?

• Ilana takes some of the ash from Jacob’s fire after learning that Jacob had burned inside of it. Obviously, this brings to mind the ash that seems to hold the Smoke Monster at bay. Is that what the “ash” around the cabin and the Temple is, at least in part? Human ashes? Creepy, but a neat possibility.

Ilana: “He’s recruiting.”

• Unlike Jacob, whose recruitment program makes Rube Goldberg look like a minimalist, Anti-Locke appears to prefer the direct approach. Once again this seems like the more natural, more open point of view. It’s the point of view of some fans of the show. Stop tip-toeing around the answers and just ANSWER them already. At the same time, his openness makes me wary. The Anti-Locke-as-satan analogy has been drawn a bunch of times, and satan’s often characterized as a being who lies with the truth.

Why is Anti-Locke recruiting? And how many people does he need? Maybe just one. If Anti-Locke’s goal is to breach the Temple (and given how the Temple’s been fortified, it seems to me that it’s at least part of the goal) then he’ll need someone to sweep up all that pesky ash.

• Depressed Sawyer knows how to pour a drink.

• Is it just me, or does it look like Anti-Locke is tasting liquor for the first time?

• Josh Holloway’s got a nice Nicholson-in-the-Shining vibe during his initial conversation with the MiB. Maybe it’s just me, but I got a kind of “Dark Knights of the Round Table” vibe from Anti-Locke’s effort to recruit Richard and Sawyer tonight. Some Grail legends make reference to an “Anti-Grail King,” a dark mirror-image of the Fisher King who’s mission it is to create the “Wasteland,” and whose abilities are received thanks to an act of self-castration (yikes!). I’m reaching, but it seems to me that we may discover that the MiB initially “imprisoned” himself, which is a kind of figurative castration. Along these lines, Sawyer’s recruitment makes him a kind of Lancelot to the MiB’s Anti-Grail King. Lancelot, as you may recall, was the title of the Walker Percy novel that was discussed back in Season 2. The fact that the Temple contains a life-giving spring (a “Cauldron of Rebirth,” one might say) makes this parallel seem even stronger. If you’ll indulge me for a moment:

In some medieval Grail myths, there are two Kings – one called “the Wounded King” (guy by the name of Pellam) and one actually called “the Fisher King” (guy by the name of Pelles, because, hey, let’s make these names as confusingly similar as possible).

Want to hear about some interesting Lost parallels? Okay! We’ve seen that Jacob is a “fisher of men,” and in some versions of the legend, Pelles the Wounded King is said to have engineered the birth of the knight who will one day find the Grail and heal the land. Sound a little like the ways in which Jacob has engineered the lives of the castaways? Interestingly, Pellam the Fisher King is typically portrayed as being grievously wounded – either in the groin or in the legs. Locke’s leglessness in the off-Island universe, and in his pre-Island life, mirrors this wound. Also interesting: when Pelles is initially wounded, that act in turn affects the fertility of his land. This has a direct and obvious parallel with the fertility issues on the Island.

Will Anti-Locke’s escape from the Island make it a kind of “Wasteland”? Is that why we’ve seen it on the ocean floor? And what does this say about my Second Snake theory? It says I’m full of it, essentially, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me.

MORE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!