First of all, I have to give props to Doc Artz and everyone behind organizing this Lost ReWatch.  I’ve always set out to watch the previous seasons again, and have never made it past these first four episodes.  Now, with having a structured episode “assignment” each week, an article to go along with it, and organizing a podcast for discussion of these episodes, I might just make it to episode 5!  That being said, it just proves how awesome these first four episodes are and how fanatics like all of us can go back and visit the Genesis of this excellent show.  There were moments this week where I still felt myself sitting on the edge of my seat, watching with awe and wonder at the horrific scenes of the plane crash, watching the leadership among the survivors develop, and cringing at some of the decisions that needed to be made even in the early stages of the first 48 hours on the island.  For me, had I been a survivor of the Oceanic Flight 815 on this unusual island, I would not have thought twice about staying out of the jungle after that first night’s evidence of another life form, nor would I have been one of the brave to scavenger through the fuselage graveyard looking for anything that could be used for living on the beach before being rescued.  Needless to say, I was surprised at my own overabundance of emotion through these episodes, having sat through them many times before.

The opening scene of Jack waking up in the jungle, briefly noticing a yellow lab looking at him as he regained consciousness, and emerging from the jungle disoriented only to find mad, mad chaos is probably the best created and filmed sequence that TV has ever aired.  That first five minutes begs the viewers to ask the same question that is still being asked:  Where are they?  Some things that really stood out for me, knowing what we know through Season 5, were not huge revelations, but key in understanding the characters that fell from the sky and into our obsession with Lost.  Had I not rewatched, I wouldn’t have remembered that Jack knows a little bit about planes and flying because he had taken a few piloting classes.  It may not be anything of significance now, but it may be something to keep in mind.  We also begin to see the Lost “foot fetish” with seeing a shoe hanging from a tree in the opening, Kate needing a better pair of shoes for their first “A-mission” into the jungle, and, later, when we find out that John Locke woke up without shoes on after the crash.

Other things that stood out for me really made me think about character and storyline advancement.  When this show first aired in 2004, I actually hated Jin.  I was seriously hoping that he would be killed by that mysterious monster lurking in the jungle.  At times I tried to compensate for his controling nature towards Sun by saying to myself that he was just trying to do the right things to keep them alive, or that he was thinking of others by fishing off the shore of the island, but I couldn’t ever get past his treatment of Sun.  Knowing now what I didn’t know then, it makes perfect sense that he didn’t want Sun’s top button of her blouse undone or her hanging around with other men.  The same is true for my perception of Sun in that I viewed her as meek and obedient, when she was probably playing more the part of “indentured servant” for her crimes against her marriage.  She knew that she wasn’t deserving of Jin’s devotion to her.

The storyline of the show, for me during this rewatch, really started to take shape when I witnessed two events:  Claire eating the fish that Jin gave her and John telling Walt about backgammon.  Let’s start with the backgammon reference first, which we’ve usually associated with games and the black/white theme, but now holds special significance given what we’ve witnessed with the closing of Season 5.  John gives us the ancient date of (roughly) 3000 BC by saying that archeological digs have unearthed games sets in ancient Mesopotamia that were 5000 years old.  Mesopotamia is considered the Cradle of Life (interesting reference in itself given that Locke will be making a cradle for Aaron later this season) and represents the Genesis of human civilization according to historians.  During the time of 3000 BC, the First Dynasty is ruling over Ancient Egypt, Stonehenge is in its beginnings, and the Epic of Gilgamesh on his journey leading to Dilmun (also call “the land of the living”) is being established.  Reading about Gilgamesh, I’m back to thinking of Jacob and the opening scene of the Season 5 finale.  During that scene, we see Jacob sustaining his own life by eating a fish caught in the shallow waters off of the island.  Over one hundred years later, when our Losties arrive, we see Jin providing that same life-sustaining nourishment to Claire, who then feels her baby kick again for the first time since arriving on the island.  Coincidence?

In the third hour of Season 1, Tabula Rasa, we are given our first official character-centric, flashback episode, which in this case, focuses on Kate.  The flashback story foreshadows the survivors’ dilema with figuring out who the U.S. Marshal was escorting to Los Angeles from Sydney, Australia.  In this small chunk of Kate’s backstory, we see how she came to meet Ray Mullen, the man who eventually betrayed her by turning her over to Edward Mars, the marshal, for $23,000.  It is not revealed in this episode why Kate is a fugitive or how she came to be in Australia, but we are shown a “mirror image”, if you will, of the characteristics of a criminal by her being more the hero than the villain.  Ironically enough, Sawyer suspects that it is Sayid who is the captured individual when that is the part he will end up playing on the Ajira flight that will bring him back to the island.

The title, Tabula Rasa, was a theme throughout this episode.  The latin translation is “blank slate”, as is apparent by the fact that Kate tried to start a new life on Ray Mullen’s farm and will again, twice actually, on this island.  Ray even goes on to say as much to Kate, stating that “everyone deserves a fresh start”, which is also said by Jack near the end of the episode.  Scientifically, however, there is an actual term “Tabula Rasa” which theorizes that a person is born “blank” and gains their knowledge from experience and perception, and pertains to the “nurture” side of the “nature vs. nurture” debate.  Reading this definition sets the stage for the reason behind the showing of every flashback we’re given.  Throughout the show, the flashbacks have almost always foreshadowed how present-time events will play out for the character during their centric episode.  The foundation for this “rule of thumb” in Lost was set with this episode in the way Kate tried to show compassion for the marshal by finding a way to spare him pain and suffering the same way she tried to save Ray Mullen, despite the fact that she could have gotten away and left the man who betrayed her to die in the burning vehicle.

Besides the reveal of Kate being the fugitive and learning a piece of her backstory, we also see a few other storylines developing.  We learn that Hurley is afraid of fugitives and blood, and Sayid, Kate, Charlie, Shannon, Boone, and Sawyer are on their way to higher ground in an attempt at reaching a signal with the transceiver taken from the cockpit of the plane.  For those of you that know me from the podcasting world, you’ll know that Kate isn’t my favorite character, but when rewatching this particular episode, I realized that I was only focusing that hatred on Kate in present seasons because Shannon is no longer with us to directed it at.  By the end of this episode, I found myself being extremely grateful that her character was no longer a part of the story, but at the same time I felt myself missing the whole “Danielle Rousseau” angle.  As Sayid picks up a signal, the group hears Danielle’s distress signal, which begins the notion that someone else has been stranded on this island.  And to add to the mystery of the island as a whole, Sawyer has to save the group from a ferocious polar bear.

To me, though, in hindsight, the most intriguing aspect of this rewatch is the character, John Locke.  In just a few short days on the island, during the chaos of the aftermath of a plane crash, he acts silly with an orange smile, plays leisurely games like he was at Club Med, becomes friends with Walt like he was part of the Big Brothers organization, and whittles a dog whistle like he was some sort of dog whisperer.  If I knew then what I know now, I might see this as the writers trying establish a man-of-all-trades persona to enlarge the element of surprise with the big reveal at the end of Walkabout, but I also had another feeling that we were seeing that “specialness” and unselfish nature that will lead to him being chosen as a leader for The Others, especially when he put all of that work and time into making a dog whistle to find Vincent just to give Michael a chance at connecting with Walt when Vincent was found.

The final episode in this group to rewatch was Walkabout, a John-centric episode.  The flashback provides us with a brief look at John’s life before the Oceanic flight brought him to the island, and gives us the first view of many “tests of faith” that John has had to endure, but it raises many questions about John’s personality that, I think, have been overlooked due to his strengths since arriving on the island.  There are still so many mysteries about John’s life that have been unanswered, and seeing this episode reminded me of them.

We see John working for the box company and playing a strategic military game with a co-worker during lunch.  He is bullied by his boss, Randy, harassed about the fact that he wants go on a walkabout.  Although the co-worker is being supportive and positive, it is overlooked because of Randy’s lack of confidence in Locke’s ability to go, but he isn’t the only one that tries to defeat Locke’s attitude towards the walkabout.  Later, John is on the phone with a woman named Helen while he is sitting, legs outstretched, on a bed.  There is a machine of some sort on the table next to him as he talks to Helen.  They seem as if they’re close friends, until John tells her about the walkabout and that he bought a ticket for her as well.  It’s at this moment that we realize that this woman isn’t an acquaintance, but a phone call-girl that has only gotten to know him through his $90/hour phone calls to her.  After he arrives at the walkabout organization, he is told he cannot go “in his condition” and that he would be given a plane ticket back home.  As Locke protests, we see that he is, in fact, in a wheelchair.

John told Randy that, “a Walkabout is a journey of spiritual renewal, where one derives strength from the earth. And becomes inseparable from it.”  This is very similar to the conversation that Locke had with Matthew Abaddon after his paralyzing fall.  Abaddon, playing the role of John’s orderly, said, “It’s a journey of self-discovery. You go out into the Australian Outback with nothing more than a knife and your wits.”, and went on to say, “I went on my walkabout convinced I was one thing, but I came back another. I found out what I was made of, who I was…………..When you’re ready, Mr. Locke… you’ll listen to what I’m saying. And then when you and me run into each other again… you’ll owe me one.”

From Wikipedia:  “Walkabout refers to a rite of passage where male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months.  In this practice they would trace the paths, or “songlines”, that their people’s ceremonial ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.  Songlines, also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians, are an ancient cultural concept, meme and motif perpetuated through oral lore and singing and other storytelling modalites such as dance and painting. Songlines are an intricate series of song cycles that identify landmarks and subtle tracking mechanisms for navigation. Each songline has a particular direction or vector, and walking the wrong way along a songline may be sacreligious act, as at, for example, climbing up Uluru when the correct direction is down. For the Aborigine all land is sacred and alive. Their ancestors gave life in singing, gave them life through song, and dwell in the land still. The songs must be continually sung to keep the land “alive”. In singing they preserve the land/story/dreaming of their ancestors, and recreate it in their oneness of past, present and future.  Australia’s indigenous peoples conceive of all things beginning with the Dreaming or (in some Indigenous languages) Altjeringa (also called the Dreamtime), a ‘once upon a time’ time out of time where archetypal ancestral totemic spirit-beings formed the World. These shapeshifting spirits embodied forms of animals, plants, people, natural phenomena and/or inanimate objects and their existence is revealed by their formative journeying and the signs they deposited through the landscape. Their dreaming and journeying trails are the songlines.”

The episode deals with many “walkabouts”, the obvious one being John’s on his quest to find boar by tracking their scoring marks on trees and uprooting of vegetation.  When he succeeds in being the hunter that Randy told him he’d never be, he emerges from the jungle with boar to feed the group–which we see again in Season 5 when returns to the island and finds Richard and The Others.  Shannon is given the challenge of being able to catch her own fish as she “hunts” down the perfect person to manipulate into catching one for her.  Charlie, being the manipulee, actually seems to enjoy his fishing challenge, while establishing his new-found friendship with Hurley, and Rose turns her spiritual journey inward as she fasts by the ocean, reflecting on Bernard, his safety, and looking forward to his return to her.  Jack, being a man that is used to restoring life, is faced with the challenge of respecting the dead.  His “walkabout” deals with humanizing the dead bodies in the fuselage, which he seems reluctant to do until the conversation on the beach with Rose.  A tid-bit that I picked up on when rewatching this episode was something said by Jack when deciding what to do with the bodies.  I originally thought that John was the first to say this line, but realized this week that Jack pleaded his case in the cremation of the bodies by stating the bodies wouldn’t stay buried on the island for long (speaking about the boars digging them up for food).  It was interesting, actually, to hear him say that specifically about the dead bodies and then see his dead father several times throughout the episode.

Next week, the episode line-up for the rewatch includes:

White Rabbit
House of the Rising Sun
The Moth
Confidence Man

And don’t miss the new Lostaholics ReWatch Lost Podcast Sunday nights at 9pm/Eastern at Talkshoe.

~Nancy Drew

Jun 07th by Nancy Drew