Sea. 1, Ep. 14: Special

For a number of reasons, I've been eager to review this episode ever since I began the Rewatch a couple of weeks ago. Firstly, I only remember having seen this episode once before. I had spun through each of the first season's installments at least twice, but for some reason I think I only watched this one during my initial introduction to the series. Maybe I passed it over because I had written Walt and Michael off for the most part, but that leads me to another reason why I've been looking forward to documenting "Special." I want to know why the writers created all the hype around Walt and his "special" qualities only to remove him from the show, for all intents and purposes, during the second season. I understand that Malcom David Kelley, who portrays Walt, was on the precipice of puberty and that his real-life growth wasn't going to mesh with the timeline established on the show. I'm sure the writers were cognizant of this, too. So why did they devote a whole episode to emphasizing how unique Walt is if they didn't plan to flesh it out further? Is there going to be some sort of payoff for Walt fans in the cataclysmic sixth season? And will the litany of questions about this show ever cease?

But what of the episode itself, you ask? Okay. Let me get to it.

On the island, Michael searches for Walt. He's furious to find that his son is once again hanging out with the mysterious John Locke. Walt's learning how to throw knives like a circus pro, but Michael ain't havin' it. Locke tries to stick up for the boy, telling Michael that he should treat his son like an adult because the plane crash and the subsequent survival has given him a whole host of life experience. He also stresses that Walt is "different" somehow, the episode's first reference to Walt's vague powers.

Stewing over his confrontation with Locke, Michael declares that he will build a raft and try to sail away from the island. He feels that everyone has become too complacent and that no one's attempting to get back to their regular lives. He baldly tells Walt that he wants to control their destiny. It's another mention of that oft repeated concept.

Troubles continue for Michael, though, as he gets Walt to help him assemble materials for a raft. Walt wanders off under the pretense of procuring water, but Michael later finds him chumming around again with Locke (even though Locke is admonishing the boy to respect his father's wishes and stay away from him). The ensuing fight causes Walt to storm off. Michael needs to search for his son, and Locke assists him. It's a good thing he does, because Walt has run afoul of another one of the island's polar bears, and Michael and Locke need to work together to rescue the lad. Ultimately, they do, and everything is peachy keen and hunky dory after that.

The flashbacks in "Special" shed light on the reasons for the turbulent relationship between Michael and Walt. Just when you think that Michael is somewhat of an obnoxious, overbearing father, you get to see his side of the story and realize that Walt's mother treated him very unfairly. The witch even intercepted all of Michael's correspondence to his son. Walt had been living with his lawyer mother and lawyer step-father in Australia when she suddenly took ill and passed away. With Walt's mother removed from the equation, Walt's step-father wanted nothing to do with the young boy. He laid it all on Michael and essentially said that Walt weirded him out. A livid and reluctant Michael did the noble thing and flew to Sydney to take custody of his biological son. And we all know what happened on their return flight over the Pacific.

Other notes:

• I had forgotten that Michael nearly suffered the same fate as Sayid's beloved Nadia. After learning on the phone half a world away that Susan was with another man, an angered Michael recklessly storms into the street and his hit by an oncoming car. Was this Jacob's will? Or Jacob's adversary's will? If it was Michael's destiny to end up on the island with Walt, then it makes sense that he would survive this accident. We also see in the fourth season that Michael couldn't even kill himself when he drove a speeding car into a wall because Tom tells him that he still has business with the island. This wouldn't be an earth-shattering revelation. I'm just noting the coincidence of two characters being hit by cars in busy streets.


• Walt's powers are further scene in a flashback episode involving his mother and step-father. Droning on about birds he's learning about in school and angered that Susan and Brian are ignoring what he's saying, he shouts at them. In the same moment, a bird crashes into one of the room's windows and plummets to the ground, apparently dead. As the camera switches from the dead bird to Walt's book and zooms in, we see that the bird featured on the open page is the same one that just pulled a kamikaze into the window. So this means that Walt can will creatures toward him if given the proper motivation? We don't know for certain. Again, it appears to be a vague power and one that still has yet to be addressed by the show.

The final scene of the episode neatly presents a segue to the succeeding one as a bewildered Claire stumbles out of the jungle and greets Locke and Boone. Boy, howdy. At this point in the first season, things're gettin' good.

So, as usual, we've recapped an entertaining episode. I still have that bone to pick with the writers and their emphasis of Walt's unique abilities, though. I'm hoping that I've forgotten some of Walt's more specific talents and that further progress into the Rewatch will jerk the rusty chain that's attached to the lightbulb in my head.

Sea. 1, Ep. 6: House of the Rising Sun

As you can probably surmise from the title of today's episode, "House of the Rising Sun" focuses on Sun and, by extension, Jin. While some fans may be quick to dismiss this episode (I get the feeling that most people don't have a whole lot of interest invested in Jin and Sun, but I may be off target with that assumption), I think it serves as an example of another one of the show's many strengths: the devotion to developing a wide array of realistically complex characters. The episodes following the pilot gave us a healthy dose of Jack, Kate, and Locke, but "House of the Rising Sun" takes some of the focus off of those select few and reminds us that there are a lot of other people who survived the plane crash.

Up until this point, we haven't seen much of the Korean couple, but we have gleaned that Jin is a domineering husband, and Sun is his meek and subservient wife. Neither of them appear to speak any English, but toward the tail-end of the episode we learn about Sun's impressive bilingual skills which she has effectively hidden from everyone else, including Jin.

Okay. On to the events of the episode.

After the camera opens up on Sun's eye, we're treated to a morning scene on the beach where everyone's preparing for another day of survivin'. Things are sunny and serene 'til Jin comes out of nowhere and goes all Ronnie Lott on Michael. Jin wrestles him into the surf and punches his lights out, and he only stops when Sayid and Sawyer intervene and pull the two apart. In light of the attack, Sayid cuffs Jin to a piece of the wreckage on the beach. Jin is unable to defend himself or explain his actions, so the others ask Michael why he thinks he was attacked. He claims that he wasn't doing anything, and that may be true, but the audience most likely remembers how Michael stumbled across the topless Sun as she was washing up in a previous episode. Did Jin get wind of this somehow? Oh, it's very, very saucy. Actually, by the end of the episode we learn that Jin attacked Michael because of a wristwatch. Michael found it somewhere on the island and claimed it as his own. Unbeknownst to him, it belonged to Sun's father, and it was entrusted to Jin. According to Sun, being in possession of it was a "question of honor" for Jin. So it turned out to be one big cross-cultural misunderstanding. Not so saucy.

Elsewhere on the island, Jack, Kate, Charlie and Locke have gone to the caves to get a supply of drinking water. Charlie steps out momentarily for a taste of Sweet Lady H and stumbles upon a beehive. The others try to help him escape the danger, but Charlie panics and stirs up the whole nest. They all flee in different directions. Jack and Kate return to the caves and inadvertently find two old skeletons. One of the skeletons has a pouch around its neck, and Jack takes it off and inspects what's inside: A WHITE STONE AND A BLACK STONE. Ah, yes

. The classic theme established in the pilot episode reemerges here, though the significance is probably lost on us for the time being. Jack can't determine how the two died (though he does say that it looks like they've been dead for 40 or 50 years), but the good doctor is familiar enough with anatomy to know that one of them was a male and the other was a female. Locke dubs them the island's "very own Adam and Eve."

After reviewing this scene, we'd be remiss if we didn't venture some sort of guess as to who was laid to rest in the caves. After learning in the fifth season that Rose and Bernard of 1977 were living happily on their own in the jungle, I think they became the leading candidates to become 2004's skeletons. I would accept that, except that it wouldn't fit the timeframe (at most, they would've been dead less than 30 years) and we still have the mystery of the black and white stones. They might just be mere symbolism, but it could just as well be a plot device that the writers placed there so that at a later date we'd be able to figure out the skeletons' identities. I'm leading toward the latter, and I'll tell you why: in looking at what others have said about the skeletons, I came across a link to a 2007 Entertainment Weekly interview with Lost masterminds Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. When asked directly about the importance of the skeletons in the caves, here's what they said:

What is the meaning or significance of the two skeletons that Jack and Kate found in the cave of season 1?
CUSE: The answer to that question goes to the nature of the timeline of the island. We don't want to say too much about it, but there are a couple Easter eggs embedded in [the Feb. 7 episode], one of which is an anagram that actually sheds some light on the skeletons and hints at a larger mythological mystery that will start to unfold later in the season. 
LINDELOF: There were certain things we knew from the very beginning. Independent of ever knowing when the end was going to be, we knew what it was going to be, and we wanted to start setting it up as early as season 1, or else people would think that we were making it up as we were going along. So the skeletons are the living — or, I guess, slowly decomposing — proof of that. When all is said and done, people are going to point to the skeletons and say, ''That is proof that from the very beginning, they always knew that they were going to do this.''

That interview can be found in its entirety here. But that's kinda cool. It sounds like they've known who the skeletons will be all along. When I first watched this episode, I figured that the skeletons were just there so we'd know that others have been on the island. Maybe they'll turn out to be Sun and Jin? I mean, they are the focus of this episode. It'd make sense...I guess. But I guess we can look forward to yet another moment of connectivity somewhere in the sixth season. In the meantime, we should find that February 7th episode (I'm not sure which one it is--I'll have to look it up) and scour it for an anagram!

Running alongside this excitement in the caves is the bulk of the episode, which concerns itself with a brief history of Jin and Sun's relationship. We see that originally Jin seemed like a nice enough guy. It appears that he loved Sun so much that he obsequiously took a demanding and dangerous position in her father's company so that he could earn his father-in-law-to-be's marriage blessing. But the new job was the beginning of the end. The relationship became so turbulent that Sun hatched a plan to ditch Jin when they were supposed to fly together to the United States. She would lay low until everyone thought her dead, and she would be rid of both her father and Jin. But the scheme falls apart at the airport when Sun is visibly torn about what to do. Sitting on the proverbial fence, she looks over at Jin, who's smiling warmly. He's wielding a flower he's purchased for her, to boot. This apparently melts her heart, and she decides not to leave him after all. Instead of making a break for it, she boards a flight destined to crash on some bizarre island. Good choice, Sun. No, really. Good one. I guess the moral of the story is: true love conquers all, and then you board a flight and survive a horrific electromagnetic event that breaks your plane apart like a dry twig. Or something like that.

One final note concerns Charlie and Locke. It's in this episode that Charlie begins his detox from heroin addiction. Locke learns about Charlie's habit and tactfully approaches him in a one-on-one situation. Then he starts talkin' that destiny and faith stuff again, which we'll soon come to know as trademark John Locke. He says that he's certain that Charlie's guitar will show up. In fact, he knows exactly where it is, but doesn't reveal the location 'til Charlie hands over his baggie of drugs. Charlie does it, and is delighted to see that his guitar made it through the crash in one piece. I know of at least two people (won't mention names) who don't like Locke, and I can see how they might not like his approach in these scenes where he's being a bit forceful with Charlie. But, c'mon! He has good intentions! He just wants to see Charlie off the junk! There. That's all I'll say on the matter.

And the episode comes to a close as Hurley listens to Willie Nelson ask, "are you sure that this is where you want to be?" Judging by the downtrodden looks on Jack and Kate's faces, I'd say no, Willie. No, it's not.

Thanks for reading!