LOST: BACK TO THE ISLAND: SEASON 6 EPISODE 10

The Package (S6, ep. 10)

Jack: “Do you trust me?”

Communion. On a show as steeped in religious symbolism as Lost is, we might be tempted to look at that word and think of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, instructing his disciples that this was his blood, and this was his body, and given the time I could probably give you some cock-eyed summary of how it applies to Lost’s sacrificial “God” figure, his enemy, and their various followers. But that’s not why the word interests me as it’s applied to this week’s sturdy, intriguing character-centric episode.

The word communion comes to us courtesy of Latin, the language that named last week’s episode, that contains Jacob’s riddle, and that all of the Island’s Others are required to learn. While it’s often associated with Chistian ritual, the Latin word has “infected” a host of other English words, all of which are present in The Package: Community, Communication. Remember that hippie-dippie pot farm where Classic Locke spent some happy time during one of Season 3’s flashbacks? It was a Commune, which, in the original sense of the word, simply means a local community with a local government which promotes local interests (think of Richard’s Others, and the castaways’ beach camp) and also means “to be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity, as with one’s surroundings,” as when one “communes” with Nature (See: John Locke on the Island).

In its on-Island segments, The Package focused directly on both these things – drawing attention to the ways in which communication (or more often the serious lack thereof) is improved or cut off, the ways in which it flows or stutters. It showed us how the community of the Jacob-loyal castaways can offer a hope that the Man in Black’s jungle-individualism doesn’t offer. For all of their flaws (and oh, Ben’s flaws…), this group has come together to form a kind of protective circle – giving murderer and healer alike the chance to add themselves to the growing ring; expanding with a slow sureness that mirrors the ways in which Anti-Locke’s group is splintering, the ways in which it is divided. Jack told his fellow castaways that they’d need to learn to live together or they’d die alone. From my perspective, the beach group seems to have embraced the first portion of that advice, while Anti-Locke’s group seems resigned to the second.

Thoughts:

• I’m a fan of the way the episode begins in night-vision, disorienting from the start. It brings up the theme of hidden observers – a thread that’s run through this entire series like a paranoid through Congress. I’ve written at length about the ways in which the Swan/Pearl/Island resemble the philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. The Swan Station people were observed in secret by the Pearl Station folks, who were in turn observed by still-other people. The Others kept watch over Jack, Kate and Sawyer through remote cameras. The tail-enders spied on Michael, Jin and Sawyer by sending Ana Lucia into their midst. The castaways have been observed by Jacob and/or the MiB.

• Some folks have accused me of thinking about things like this more than the writers of the show have. They’re probably right. But I’m not pointing this stuff out in an effort to prove that Lost is ultimately some uber-intentional, intricate construct meticulously crafted by Merry Elves, or to prove that I’m edumacated. I’m pointing out this stuff because it’s there. Writers have patterns, themes, crutches and flaws that carry through the body of their work both intended and unintended. John Irving’s books tend to have bears and wrestlers. Ayn Rand’s got S&M and self-destruction. I can’t imagine that Lost’s writers are different. As we go along, I’m stopping to point this stuff out. Some of it is, I think, pretty dead-on. Some of it is undeniably speculation. It’s up to you to decide if it’s relevant or bunkum/hooey/hokum/BS/crap. That’s part of the fun, no? And on a related note, as usual, I’m sure that I’ve missed things throughout this episode. Please point these out in the comments. They are always read and appreciated.

• Sawyer’s offer of cocoa mirrors Charlie’s invisible peanut butter from Season 1. Thankfully, we don’t have to watch Sawyer lustily miming the sipping of cocoa. Charlie’s “invisible peanut butter” shtick remains one of my least favorite moments in Lost.

Anti-Locke: “…the only way we can leave the Island is if all the names that haven’t been crossed off go together.”

• Apparently, all of Jacob’s candidates need to accompany Anti-Locke as he leaves the Island. Do we believe this? I believe that he needs all of the candidates, but I don’t know that I believe he intends to take them with him – at least, not as they are now. More on this below.

“Perhaps the best-known and most influential argument for the possibility of zombies comes from Robert Kirk’s article “Sentience and Behavior” (Kirk 1974). Here Kirk appeals to a fictional character—Dan—who gradually turns into a zombie. The first part of this transformation is that Dan loses his capacity to feel pain. When he cuts himself he senses nothing in the injured area. This is odd in itself, but Dan notices something stranger still. Despite the lack of phenomenal pain when he injures himself, he finds himself saying “Ouch!” and otherwise acting just as he always did when he hurt himself. He winces, swears, grasps the hurt part of his body, and so on. He finds this fact bewildering and cannot explain why he acts as he does despite his lack of pain sensations. He goes to the doctor who performs a battery of tests but can find nothing wrong; his brain is perfectly normal. Gradually the same thing happens to all of Dan’s other senses until he is lacking phenomenal awareness altogether. At each stage of his decline he initially expresses dismay, both at the loss of his conscious awareness and at his perceptual abilities, though every time he adapts and his dismay fades with time. Some months after his last sense is altered Dan once again seems perfectly normal. The most plausible explanation for this change, according to Kirk, is that Dan has become a zombie. If we can consistently imagine Dan losing one sense while retaining the associated perceptual abilities, there is no obstacle to expanding the hypothesis about the limited case to include all of Dan’s senses. Thus, zombies are possible.”  – Neil Campbell, “Zombies, Zimboes, and Epiphenomenalism”

Sayid: “I don’t feel anything.”
Anti-Locke: “Excuse me?”
Sayid: “Anger. Happiness. Pain. I don’t feel it anymore.”
Anti-Locke: “Maybe that’s best, Sayid. It’ll help you get through what’s coming.”

• In the column for What Kate Does I talked about Sayid’s Pet Semetary-style return from the grave and about how Hurley’s question to him (“you’re not a zombie, right?”) might have been dead on. Sayid “feels nothing.” He seems hollowed out. Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure, but it’s not just pleasure that Sayid is missing. His symptoms are like an extreme form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, with all the emotional numbness that’s associated with it. That kind of disconnectedness is often reported in cancer patients, and the darkness that’s supposed to have spread within Sayid sounds much like a metaphorical cancer.

Something very much worth considering, and which I’ve been waiting to talk about until the show gave us more to go on, is the notion of “zombies” in the philosophical sense. In philosophy, “zombies” are hypothetical people who are identical to “normal” people in “all physical respects but have no conscious experience.” These theoretical zombies look like normal people, act like normal people, but are dead inside when it comes to their own consciousness – and consciousness is a major theme in Lost. The idea of awakening, of discovering good being, of becoming “conscious” permeates Lost in every season.

Philosophical zombies, were they to exist, would not  experience emotion the way that you or I would. Nor would they experience physical pain like you or I do (and remember how Dogen “branded” Sayid in the Temple, seeming to test his tolerance for/experience of pain). The “simplified” reasoning for this according to its proponents is that consciousness allows us to experience things like happiness and pain, and without it, we’re hollow. The quote I slapped up above gives an example of this process, and in its broad strokes it highly resembles what we’ve seen happening to Sayid. For all my blather though, we’re no closer to knowing what’s up with this “infection” (although I think, at the risk of sounding full of myself, that I might be on the right track with this general idea). That’s getting aggravating.

• Anti-Locke’s words here imply that he’s going to be asking/telling Sayid to shed a lot of blood in the near future. Will Sayid fight his fellow castaways – maybe even kill them? He’d need to be numb in order to do that.

• I like that Jin sees straight through Anti-Locke and wants nothing to do with him. And I like that Jin again questions why Sawyer is following this “thing.” Sawyer again denies that he’s following anybody – but is that really the truth? At what point do your long-cons turn you into the thing that you despise (remember that James Ford became “Sawyer” out of a desire to punish someone who’d done his family wrong)? At some point, you have to choose your side.

• Once Anti-Locke leaves the camp, Widmore’s team of Insurance Salesmen jump out of the bushes and tranquilize his entire group of recruits, bagging and tagging Jin to take with them. Why don’t they take Sawyer as well? Has his decision to join up with Anti-Locke, no matter how duplicitous, removed his name from candidacy?

Great Miles Line: “Unless Alpert’s covered in bacon grease, I’m not sure Hurley can track anything.”
Better Frank Response: “Hey. Don’t talk about bacon.”

Jack: “I remember when you first planted this here. Feels like a hundred years ago.”

• Sun returns to the garden she’d started in Season 1, and I have to say that I’m enjoying the “nostalgia tour,” as we re-visit locations like this one. Jack seems to be opening up to the possibility of faith in Jacob, while Sun wants nothing to do with any of it. Some folks continue to have problems with Sun and Jin’s perpetual separation, but I continue to view it as one of the most human and understandable of motivations on the show. 

• I love Yunjin Kim’s performance in this episode. There’s a quality of playfulness to her that we haven’t gotten to see much of during Sun’s character arc, and it shows this Ignorant American why she became a star in her native South Korea, as well as why Lost was so interested in her to begin with. It’s a pleasure to watch her act. 

• Lost gets a little naughty in The Package (which, given the title, seems entirely appropriate), giving us several lingering shots of Ms. Paik’s chest. Not that I’m complaining, but it was kind of distrac–

Uhh…What was I saying? Oh. Right. Not that I’m complaining, but it was kind of distracting, the way the show cut back, over and aga –

I’m actually having difficulty concentrating here. It’s like being caught in Room 23 reading short subliminal messages between flashes of Sun’s bra: “Everything Makes Sense….” “You Will Stop Wondering About the Damned Hurley Bird…..” “We are the causes of our own….”

“….Breasts?”

This is easily the second-most blatant example of pandering to the men of the audience (the first being Nikki’s Expose introduction, of course, with “Kate in her underwear in the surf” running a close third – your rankings may vary). All kidding aside, I liked that this episode gave Sun the chance to be sexy. She’s so often called on to be restrained and/or pained that it was a breast of fresh air to watch her flirt in Korean.

Sun: “I don’t believe you. You killed those people at the Temple.”
Anti-Locke: “Those people were confused. They were lied to. I didn’t want to hurt them. Any one of them could have chosen to come with me. And I’m giving you that choice, Sun, right now. I would never make you do anything against your will. I’m asking you. Please. Come with me. Jin’s waiting.”

• Anti-Locke’s methods continue to bring up the themes of community and communion that run through this episode. In all of his interactions with the castaways (and Ben), the Man in Black offers them something that will separate them from their group. In all of his “temptations,” the MiB approaches his potential recruit while they are alone. As I’ve written before, the Island offers people hope and the possibility of a fresh start through communion with their fellow man and the Island itself, but it also offers each person to option to vanish into the jungle, into isolation, into solipsism and despair. Where the offer to join Jack’s group seems to result in a kind of quiet communal strength (albeit an enormously fragile strength), the offer to join Anti-Locke’s group seems to lead to madness, a loss of “consciousness” and/or conscience. Just why is it that the Man in Black needs these people to come with him? I’m almost certain that it’s not to join him on the plane flight out of there. More on this below.

• Sun and Jin’s off-Island story is suitably twisty and surprising. They aren’t married, but they are secret lovers. Sun still wants to run away, but now it’s with Jin, and not from Jin. The fact that she isn’t trying to escape him means that she’s never attempted to learn English (at least as far as we know), and this in turn suggests that she never met with the son of the Hotel magnate who served as her extramarital recreation in her flashbacks. Sun implies that she’s pregnant during her off-Island scene with Jin, which I imagine means that he wouldn’t have potentially impregnated her, and this means…..well, what does that mean? Remember that Jin was, for all purposes, sterile before they came to the Island. Are Jin’s swimmers just friskier in the off-Island “universe”? Is there another guy we don’t know about?

MORE OBSESSIVELY-COMPOSED NONSENSE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!