I'm bringing "Something Nice Cabin Fever" Back

Lostaways-

So I realize its been a couple of weeks since the last JL's Pants post, and for those of you who have been upset by the fact it's taken me this long to disseminate my thoughts....oops.

Two episodes back was a Jack-centric flash-forward tale entitled Something Nice Back Home. This past week's was called Cabin Fever and via back story followed our boy Locke's life from birth to sweaty existence on a creepy, magical island. For the sake of time and sanity I will be focusing at first on a few key points from SNBH and then sink deeper in to Cabin Fever parsing.

Few noteworthy events, thoughts, and theories from two weeks ago:

-Rose pointed out that Jack got sick (which is similar to Ben getting sick). This may be the island's attempt to teach both leaders of their respective packs a lesson. Right when each group needed their leader, Ben got a tumor and Jack had appendicitis. Rose reminding us that people dont get sick on the island, they get better was too much of a clue for it not to have some broader significance. Both men are in need of correction in certain moral and character-trait flaw areas.

-When Jack heard the smoke alarm go off, he came out and saw his daddio sitting in the waiting room on a couch. I feel like the hint of using a smoke alarm is pointing to the Smoke Monster being responsible for making dead people appear not only on the island, but in this case (and possibly Charlie showing up at Hurley's mental institution), off the island as well.

-Jack seems to be getting past many of his issues in the future (this episode, in case you didnt put it together, is after the trial scenes we saw in Kate's flash-forward earlier this season) but then cant handle things when someone (Charlie via Hurley) tells him he shouldn't raise Aaron. Thats the last thing a guy with self-esteem and self-worth issues needs to hear. Compound that with the fact he obviously has issues with even looking at Aaron who reminds him of the sister he most certainly learns about before getting off the island. I think Jack makes the call to leave Claire behind (if she's not already dead...more on that later) and it eats him up inside every time he looks at the little blonde-haired tyke now that he and Kate made it off safe.

-Jack is reading Alice in Wonderland to Aaron near the start of the episode. The obvious and numerous allusions and connections between LOST and Lewis Carrol's classic could fill up two blogs. Something interesting I found related to Alice lore is the poem called The Jabberwocky which is about a brave soul (as opposed to an old soul, of which I know two that live in the Ukrainian Village) who ventures out in to a mysterious wooded area (jungle) to slay a mysterious, black, smokey monster. Read it and love it.




-Have to mention the Millennium Falcon/Star Wars reference...Jack steps on a toy figurine of the legendary space ship. Are they trying to tell us that Jack is really Han Solo, or, due to the fact that he steps on it and says "S of a B" is that an homage to the fact that those who care to know see similarities between Sawyer's character and the smuggler who stole Princess Leia's heart? Sawyer is still the thorn in Jack's side and the tension between those three lovers is palpable even off the island. The person Kate was talking to on the phone was Sawyer's ex-girl Cassidy who is the mother of his daughter Clementine. Kate promised Sawyer to go and help both ladies, and Kate was laughing on the phone with her when Jack walked in because the Kate and Cassidy met last season in Kate's back-story when Cassidy helped her find her mom. Trust me on this one.
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Okay, so enough about Something Nice Back Home.....on to the Locke-centric masterpiece Cabin Fever, which, as Doc Jensen on Entertainment Weekly's website said, was for the hardcore LOST fan. (Reid his first paragraph to hear why he believes that to be so)




Obviously Locke is my favorite character (ever), and so any chance we get to see what makes this complicated man tick is going to scratch me right where I itch. We find out that Locke's mom gave premature birth to the boy wonder after being hit by a bar as she ran out of the house on her way to a date with, presumably, the father of baby John. Names are important in this show, and just like John the Baptist's father insisting the boy be named as such, Locke's madre yelled after he baby boy, "Call him John....His name is John." Locke is a miraculous story on the island, and it appears he has been his whole life. Instead of embracing the reality of who he is and the gifts/talents he's been given, Locke has consistently run away from his destiny. But destiny has come-a-calling time after time after time for JL.




First when he was born and still in the hospital when Richard Alpert appears outside the window of his room. Five years later, while in foster care (after his mother rejected him, or didn't want him, or, perhaps, was told not to raise him....hmm), Locke is re-visited by the Ageless Wonder Alpert yet again. This time under the guise that he has a school for gifted chilren....that is on an island where if you don't get Dharma-ed, purged, or Smokey Monstered, you won't be able to leave anyway because some short bug-eyed freak has the only keys to a rickety old submarine that allegedly shuttles folks too and fro real world and LOST Time (Mittelos). The objects Alpert lays out for Locke to choose between can be seen here for review. Little Locke is playing Backgammon (Walt-like) and drew some bizzare, disturbing pic of stick-figure dude getting smothered by a black cloud of smoke.




As far as the objects go, Locke ends up passing over the compass and vile full of sand in favor of the weapon he wants to be the thing that he would own out of all the choices. Even at age 5 Locke wanted to be a super-hero. It's like he's always known that he is special but no one else does. And even when people do recognize his abilities and like him for being him (i.e. Alpert and his high school science teacher and Helen, the ex he fell from grace with because he couldn't let his dad go) Locke then messes things up himself some how. Alpert, as he's showing the items to Locke, asks him "Which one is already yours?" This ritual is apparently very similar to how the next Buddha is chosen each time. The child participating either knows the right thing to pick or he doesnt. It seemed as if Locke knew, even at 5 years old, that he shouldnt pick the knife, but he wanted it. It made me think of the episode from Season 3 when Locke loses his voice and goes in to a sweat-shack with some narcotics to commune with the island. In that episode's (Further Instructions) flash-back Locke talks with Eddie (the undercover cop) about being a farmer or hunter and even the cop knew John was a farmer. Locke is a lover, not a fighter...but he's a fighter too, so dont get any ideas.




Moving further along, Locke's high school teacher tells him Alpert wants him to come to summer camp at Mittelos Bioscience's labs near Portland. He refuses and utters his catch phrase, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" If only poor Locke could've embrace who he is meant to be earlier in life...The next flash-back is Locke rehabilitating his limp legs when who should appear but Matthew Abbadon, our friendly Widmore recruiter and Hurley stalker. He pushes Locke symbolically and literally to the edge of the stairs and then offers him a challenge to go and try a Walkabout in Australia. It's as if Abbadon, who we assume worked for Widmore at the time, is one of these guides along the way that are prompting different eventual Lostaways toward their destination on the island. (Think: Desmond's old lady telling him not to marry Penny)





Side note: "Australia is the key to the game," is what Hurley (one of the special ones) said in Ben's episode when the boys were playing Risk in Othersville. Rose and Bernard were told that Australia held one of the special places on earth that could heal people when they went to that weird healer dude in the outback. Obviously everyone on the plane was in Australia as well, for various reasons. (More on Australia next week, but think about it and if you have any good theories before then, let me know.)






In present island time, Locke, Hurley, and Linus travel through the jungle to find Jacob's cabin and along the way my boy Horace Goodspeed makes an appearance to Locke. He tells Locke that they've been waiting for him for a long time. I think Locke has obviously been being groomed since the earliest age for his task/place on the island, but like Alpert says to little Ben when in his backstory he runs in to the woods and meets Alpert for the first time, Locke had to choose it for himself. He had the "goods", but had to choose to use them voluntarily. Same with Ben, who has apparently fallen from graces with Jacob and the island. When the trio finally finds the cabin, Locke goes in and finds Christian Shepard and Claire. They tell John to "move the island."







Thoughts, theories, ramblings from Cabin Fever:




-Claire is dead, dying when her house blew up in Othersville. She can be seen and even touched, but so could Yemi when Eko saw him, or the black stallion when Kate saw it, etc. The island is trying to get Aaron off the island for some reason and Claire was a sacrifice the island demanded because she had broken the rule the psychic had given her back in season one and let Charlie help raise Aaron (who paid with his own life).




-Widmore has agents leading people to the island, just as Ben does. They are jockeying for position over who will control the island, like they told us, and Locke is the chosen one. Ben knows this and wanted to off Locke and keep control because he knows if Locke gets his rightful position of power on the island, Widmore will be able to gain control. They are competing for information and influence in and among the Lostaways before, on, and after the island.




-Or...I've heard a few people say now that maybe Ben is Locke's dad. He is the mysterious lover of Emily Locke. They never show us who the father is and Anthony Cooper might really have just been a con-man. He can time-travel, went back, knocked up Emily, and now has been waiting for his son to come to him. Just like Ben put the island before his other daughter, Alex, and let her die (Which was so sad, wasn't it)....he didnt hesitate shooting his son in the kidney and leaving him for dead in the Purge Pit. Or....Widmore is Locke's dad and that is why he sent his guy, Abbadon, to check in on Locke as Ben sent his guy, Alpert, in as well. Again, the competition thing between Ben and Charles.






Okay, I seriously can't write any more, and you likely do not want to read any more (if you've made it thus far to begin with). For more fun facts and analysis, check out the lostpedia links I've put here or read Doc Jensen's excellent columns at EW.





Good day to you,



JL's Baby Booties