Stranger In A Strange Land

What’s the matter dude? How bad could it have been? Exactly what have you done? From the looks of things, Jack has screwed things up so royally, his only purpose left in life is to try and find a way to die. Even that doesn't seem to be going so well. He's driving around oxy-co-zoned out of his head, guzzling booze and reading obituaries rather than watching the road. He is flying on planes, hoping they crash. He even gets as far as the ledge of a bridge but the poor guy can't even do something as simple as jump. His display causes a traffic accident, leaving people that must be fixed, and apparently, incredibly, there's one tiny place left in the melted jell-o of his brain that still responds to a thing that must be fixed. Only not everything is fixable, as we learn in the season finale. Jack is experiencing the ultimate nightmare of a control freak. Something has happened, something that is in the past, that is immutable and beyond his ability to fix. In between the end of our on island story and wherever poor crazy Jack is now, something horrific happened. Was Jack responsible for the horror? Could he have changed it had he been a different kind of man, a different kind of leader? A leader must make decisions. Decisions have consequences.
Whatever the consequences of Jack's decision were, in Jack's mind at least, he deserves to be killed for them. Taking a long step back, into the way this Reluctant Leader assumed control of this group, one is left to wonder. What made Jack the best choice to lead? He was a doctor, and that was a huge godsend to everyone, but doctors don't lead armies. Did the doctor pictured above lead his men? Remember how he used to say "Dam it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not an elephant trainer"? That guy knew his place. He had humility. He knew better than to project his superior intelligence and skills into some presumption of general superiority. But what we learned this episode - incredibly, given the golden light this character has been painted in up until this one pivotal episode - is that, as a Leader, reluctant or otherwise, Jack was a spectacular failure. A big problem was that there really were no other likely candidates for the position. The ideal choice may have been Sayid, a hardheaded soldier with a brilliant technical mind and a lion's heart. But in the aftermath of 9/11, it's easy to see how a group of mainly Westerners wouldn't have accepted an Iraqi to command them. (Which makes the fact that Jack ended up looking like Saddam Hussein's lost brother just a little more comical.) So Sayid was relegated to Sergeant and maybe that was the first mistake. Certainly this hip move with the Assassination by Ankle reminded us how deep Sayid's skill set really is, and hinted at what a bad ass leader he might have been. But...bygones must be bygones, as Jack now knows all too well.
Sawyer couldn't have been the leader, not that he'd ever have wanted to be. His psychic agony was all there in real time this episode. His head is still in the brig with Cooper's corpse, and when Kate finally showed enough compassion to ask him what had happened, all he could do was lash out at her, feign indifference though his torment, as always, is painted all over his expressive face. However unleader like Sawyer is, he does have one asset a leader needs, that Jack lacks. He doesn't bargain with the enemy. He knows they lie. So when he plugged Tom, there was one less problem that would ever need to be fixed. Here's one guy who could never have been the leader: Bernard! Seriously, dude, name, rank and serial number! At least make something up. But at least Bernard has enough McCoy in him to realize he's a dentist, not a Rambo. Juliet wasn't around to become the leader in the early days, though she has a lot of assets. She's as smart as Jack and a hell of a lot cooler under fire. Who knows what's being set up for Juliet? Have to wait and see, but clearly things are changing when it comes to Juliet's status in the story. It might have been a good move to woo the noble savage Rousseau a little more gently. As crazy as she appears, she knows the lay of the land. She's invested in the place and she knows how to handle Ben. In his way, Locke tried to be a kind of leader. A kind of crazy ass way that no sane person would follow. But Locke has entered some zone with access to secrets a leader might have found useful. When he was laying in the skeleton pit, it looked like his wound was glowing, almost healing as we watched. Then who should appear with some magical healing incantation but WAAAAAALT !!!! - fresh from the NBA draft apparently. (Jeez did he grow!) The point is that no one could have led these people in this mystical place. The Island is in charge of this story. There are a lot of people in the play, but none of them as beautiful or compelling or mysterious as the Island itself. Reminded of that this episode, one must hope that this story never strays too far from it's most fascinating and vital character, the Island.
Matthew Fox gave a bravura performance in this episode. I've heard it described as "balls to the wall" and even though I really prefer not to think of Matthew Fox's balls up against any walls (what is it with testicular metaphors anyway?), I have to admit it was spectacular. For a man whose main driving force in life has been competitive success - being better than his father, finishing medical school a year early, being recognized as a premier surgeon in one of medicine's most elite specialties - Failure is the most frightening of specters. Jack was so afraid, so ashamed of, so horrified by this failure, he had to hide his soul from even himself. Narcotics are the ultimate attempt to control reality and addiction is the ultimate punishment for that arrogance. The storytelling was masterful. As we witnessed Jack's utter disintegration we were flashed back to the moment on the island that this disintegration began. Jack is leading his people up to the signal tower. He doesn't clue in when Naomi flatters him as Moses and makes sure he knows only one way to use the phone. When Ben confronts him, and pleads with him not to call the rescuers, and blackmails him with death threats against his friends, Jack can't cope. He loses his cool, as Jack so often does. This is not the way great leaders react but Jack has failed as a leader...he just doesn't know it at that point. In all fairness, what could Jack have done differently? Jack was faced with three things: the known knows: Ben is a liar, the known unknowns: everything loony Locke says, and the unknown unknowns: Who is on the other end of that phone? A new character has entered the story. There's a gun on the table in the middle of the stage. We can see it now but we don't know yet why it's there. Whatever is coming to the Island is going to unleash a new hell on our Losties. All we have to go on are the clues we were given - they loaded all of them - in the two final scenes.

"I know exactly what I'm doing", says Jack. Ummm.....No, you don't, dude. This here seems to be your first mistake. "You are bringing people here that will kill every LIVING person on this island" says Ben. Who pray tell isn't a "living" person? "You're not supposed to do this", says Locke. There is no way in hell Jack is going to listen to Locke. He even sounds like a whiny schoolboy telling him "You're done keeping me on this island." But Locke does know something. Game Changed? The kicker here didn't kick all that hard, but it was cool. The final scene, where Kate steps out of her sweet ride looking all glam and synthetic, reads like a list of cryptic clues. I believe we are expected to talk about these all summer, so get out your notepads. "Why would I go to the funeral?" Who was in the coffin? Why did Jack care and Kate not? Is Kate just a hardhearted bitch? "I'm sick of lying." What lies is Jack telling? Did they fabricate a story about what really happened on the Island? Is that how Kate has escaped justice? Did some powerful syndicate swoop in and rescue them, installing Kate in a witness protection program to keep her yap shut? If so, why are they letting Jack barrel around L.A. driving drunk and babbling like a madman? "We made a mistake" We? Was Kate in on whatever decision Jack made that put him in this condition? Or is he just playing the addicts game of sharing the guilt? And of course - what mistake? They've got three years to explain this to us, but seeing how it has made such a total wreck of Jack, it had better be a doozy. "He'll be wondering where I am." Who is Kate's man? It’s more than likely not Sawyer, because that’s what we’re supposed to think. Of course maybe they are doing reverse reverse psychology. "We were not supposed to leave." How much must it kill Jack to fully realize Locke - friggin' Locke! - was right all along? "We have to go back." How? Does the Island have a fixed location now? Does he think he can fix something by going back? Were there people left behind? Things are never that straightforward on Lost. What a wonderful season of Lost this was and a very fitting finale. I don't think any games were changed all that much. I don't think too many minds were blown. But it was SOLID entertainment, two exciting hours worth, and Matthew Fox got the chance to redeem himself after a sleepwalk of a season. Showing Jack humbled and ruined gave layers to the character that three years of pompous posturing failed to even hint at. It will be fascinating to come back next year - in *sob* February - to see what painful pleasures they have in store for us.