Episode 4 - The Substitute
14 September 2010
Review
Present: “Locke” asks Richard to join him but he refuses. “Locke” finds Sawyer and offers to tell him why he is on the island. He leads him to a cave where he shows him the names of several of his friends, connected to numbers. He explains that they are all candidates to take over Jacob’s role as the island’s protector. He says that he wants to get off the island and Sawyer agrees to help him. Ilana, Ben, Sun and Frank take Locke’s corpse and bury him at the survivors beach camp.
Flashback: John Locke arrives home from the airport to be greeted by Helen, they are planning their wedding. He returns to work and is fired for using his company trip to go on his walkabout. He bumps into Hurley in the parking lot and gets offered a chance to find new work. At Hurley’s temp agency he speaks to Rose who sets him up as a substitute teacher. At school he meets a fellow teacher Ben Linus. At home he tells Helen that miracles don’t happen and he hopes she isn’t waiting around for his back to get fixed. She says she isn’t.
The Good: First thing to talk about has to be the numbers. Introduced with seemingly huge significance (118) their part in the story appeared to have dwindled until now. They represent the names of six of our survivors who are apparently candidates to take over Jacob’s role as protector of the island. Even if that isn’t the whole story it is still a big revelation to see what the numbers are connected to.
Terry O’Quinn had another marvellous episode (see Best Moment) playing two different characters. He genuinely managed to draw a distinct line between Locke and the Man in Black. The air of confidence he gave to the Man in Black really stood out from his typically idiosyncratic and thoroughly believable performance as Locke.
Locke’s life in the flash sideways had a lot of the same “happy ending” elements which Claire’s did. He lives with Helen and seems to have found genuine happiness with her. Although his frustration over his handicap is ever present, he seems to be able to cope with it much better now that he has her. He laughs off lying prostrate on his front lawn and swiftly stops yelling at Hurley in exchange for some understanding. Thanks to Hurley he lands on his feet when it comes to a job, becoming a teacher, such a contrast from the jobs we have seen him have previously. And wasn’t that a heart warming choice? Throughout season one he was the teacher. He took Boone under his wing, he helped free Charlie from drugs, he gave sage advice to Paulo, he gave Sayid a compass and he built Claire a crib. Now he has perhaps accepted that he may not be the quarterback but he can help others realise their potential.
As with Claire there was considerable happy irony in those he ran into. Hurley seems genuinely changed; he too possessed an air of confidence that we have never seen him have before. The luck really seems to have blessed him as Locke’s car breaks down before it can scratch Hurley’s hummer. Then we have Rose telling Locke what he can’t do at the temp agency. Rather like their last significant conversation (219) she uses her own illness to defeat his sense of self pity and set him back on his way. It was interesting to see that Rose off the island was perhaps even more positive, upbeat and life affirming than she was on it. Finally of course the man who was born to rant about coffee filters, Ben Linus, is a fellow teacher. Surely this is not the end of their interaction. If this flash sideways is delivering cosmic justice to those who landed on the island then how is Ben going to be treated?
I thought Sawyer was in a suitable state and behaved believably throughout his interaction with the MIB. As he has hit emotional rock bottom, just travelled through time and had a few drinks I don’t have any problem with him not asking thorough questions of MIB. He does ask at each new stage of their interaction exactly who MIB is and each time the MIB dangles another carrot in front of him to keep him following. I particularly liked thee exchange after MIB chased the blonde boy through the jungle. Sawyer had acknowledged that he could see the boy and when MIB returned he said “what kid?” To which Sawyer squinted and said “Right...” I liked it because Sawyer was at a point of resignation, he didn’t care if this guy was going to lie to his face, he just wanted answers that mattered to him.
Richard showing absolute terror over MIB was good to see. We haven’t really seen emotion out of Richard before so this drove home what he believes he is dealing with. Ben mourning for John Locke was also interesting. In his eulogy he praises Locke’s faith and his goodness. It would seem it’s finally dawning on Ben that his actions weren’t for the greater good. That he did kill off good people, perhaps in service of the wrong person and he is starting to regret it. Seeing the smoke monster tour the island was a nice visual and explained how he knew where to find his next recruit. Frank really did have a good line with “Weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.” Randy Nations is back for more continuity fun and is still a jerk.
The Bad: We all watch TV for different reasons and bond with characters in different ways. For me, Lost at its best presented a character’s emotional journey and made it so obvious what they felt that you as a viewer felt for them. I complained in season five that once we lost episodes focussing exclusively on one character, that emotional journey was going to get confused. I understand that not everyone feels that way. It’s also hard to criticise a show directly for not making you feel things. But what I will say is that Lost has done such a good job creating a mystery out of its story that I felt confused when I think they intended me to relate to the characters.
It felt odd that the man on the island who we were focussed on was the Man in Black. At this stage he still appears to be the villain of the piece and so to show us things from his perspective made things more morally uncertain. He showed apparent compassion for Richard for having been kept in the dark by Jacob about the candidates. He then drew on Sawyer’s empathy, claiming that he was once a man with feelings. A man who was trapped and just wanted to go home. He then made the case that Sawyer had been manipulated to come to the island to serve Jacob. Implying that all Sawyer’s suffering and heart break was not Sawyer’s choices gone wrong but Jacob’s fault.
Now of course if you see him as the villain then these are clearly lies. The other way to look at this situation is that he (as he claims Jacob did) is approaching Sawyer at a vulnerable time and manipulating him to further his own goal of getting “home.” Certainly he doesn’t go into great detail in a way that might convince viewers that he is telling the truth. And you only have to look at Locke’s dead body and Richard’s battered face to see some of his methods at work. But because Lost so regularly makes fools of those who try to predict where their stories are going, I felt reluctant to buy into either explanation. I found myself unsure as to how to feel for Sawyer despite my belief and all the evidence that Jacob is the good guy and MIB was playing the devil whispering half truths and equivocations. Certainly the island being sunk at the bottom of the ocean feels like something it needed protection from. Feeling confused did not fill me with any great emotion with this episode or where the story is going. That’s not to say it was bad television at all. If the producers were trying to provoke that uncertainty then they succeeded and it certainly will keep me watching.
But I found a similar confusion in Locke’s story. I don’t know if this is where Locke is going to end up and if this is where his story ends. I don’t know whether to accept his place in the world and his proximity to Ben Linus as cosmic justice or a set up for a plot development down the road. If these flash sideways are meant to give us some emotional closure on each character then I didn’t feel it. Yes I can see that Helen has been good for him, she has helped him get past his anger and find real happiness. But I didn’t feel it because I was too busy wondering whether that was what it all meant or if something else was going on.
At times like these I wonder if it’s merely my issue and I am inflexibly holding Lost to a narrative structure that I enjoy and placing these claims in “The Bad” section is somehow hypocritical or small minded. But all I can write is how the episode made me feel and what it achieved. And while it achieved a great many things and presented no illogical or implausible developments it left me feeling disappointed. I wasn’t on those journeys with Locke, Sawyer or the MIB. I was a spectator being suspicious of them all.
The only actual complaint I had about the episode was the walk from the four toed statue to the survivor’s camp. We saw Sayid needed to take a boat trip to reach it (223) so it seems implausible they would have walked such a distance just to bury Locke. But that is very far from a big deal and the distances walked on the island have probably been very inconsistent for a long time.
The Unknown: I could have placed much of the episode in here.
If we are to believe what MIB said about the numbers in the cave and what they mean then it raises loads of questions. If he was lying it raises even more. But assuming it was the truth then what makes someone a candidate? Why do they get assigned a number? Is it Jin or Sun or both? Who wrote the names there and how did they know the names? Did Jacob know that he would need a replacement at a specific time? There seemed to be only room for the names which remained. Did he have till he finished weaving that tapestry to live (517)? Jacob clearly knew some of this was going to happen considering Ilana was informed about some of it. Why isn’t Kate’s name on the wall?
Some theories suggested that the flashbacks to Jacob touching the survivors might not have happened in the past where they appeared. But here it is strongly implied that those incidents did take place in the original timeline that we saw them in. Was Jacob nudging the survivors to get on flight 815 or something else? Why did Jacob never tell Richard about the candidates? Ilana collects some ash from the fire, how does that ash connect to the ash used to ward off the smoke monster? How does Ilana know so much, including about Jin and Sun? Why or how is MIB now stuck as Locke and unable to change his appearance?
Who is the boy with blood on his hands? What are the rules? Is there an authority above Jacob and the MIB? Why can Sawyer see him?
Did the Ben in the flash sideways ever go to the island? We know the sunken island had the Dharma Initiative barracks on it. So should we assume Ben never arrived or left it while still a child or even left it at a later date but before it sank? Was he still “changed” by his healing at the Temple in this reality?
Helen mentions Locke’s Dad as an important wedding guest. Does that mean Anthony Cooper? Did he not push Locke out of a building in this reality? In which case how did Locke break his back?
It just occurred to me, are there still people on Hydra island from the Ajeera flight? The fortune teller from Tricia Tanaka is Dead (310) is working in the temp agency. Is there any significance to that? Locke’s alarm clock sounded like the warning sound in the hatch, is that a coincidence?
Best Moment: Understandably suspicious after Richard’s warnings Sawyer pulls a gun on the MIB and asks “What are you?” MIB gives an eloquent response about how he is trapped and finishes by telling Sawyer he is so close to finding out why he is on the island. He says it all with such confidence and a knowing smile. The camera focuses in on both men’s faces to give you as close a taste to their emotional states as possible. O’Quinn ends up pulling a facial expression I haven’t seen from him before, almost a smirk but more a supremely confident smile from the side of his mouth. He really didn’t look like John Locke anymore. Impressive acting and filming all round to create that moment.
The Bottom Line: It’s a really strong episode on so many levels except one. Lost has reinvented itself so well and so many times that I don’t know what to feel. I want to feel happy for Locke and sad for Sawyer but I don’t. I can see it but I don’t feel it. I found this review very hard to write and this score hard to give.
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