I Am DB

HAPPINESS IS JUST AN ILLUSION
Jack’s illness, which first manifested itself in last week’s episode – or, yesterday, in island-time – worsened…today. Though he was reluctant to admit it, he agreed with Juliet’s diagnosis that his appendix was inflamed and needed to be removed before it burst and he got dead.

Of course, we know that Jack’s life wasn’t in real danger, since we’ve seen him alive and…well, maybe not well…but certainly alive in the future. And the flash-forward seen in this episode gave a glimpse of how Jack would begin to slide down the slope o’ self-destruction at which he had bottomed-out in the season three finale. But this look ahead started off pleasantly enough – Future Jack is living with Kate, their island-flirtations finally grown to fruition. And living with Kate means living with Aaron. Previously, this seemed like something Jack was unable to do, but now he has settled into it. Maybe. Kate calls him a natural when she observes him reading Aaron a bedtime story (Alice in Wonderland), but Jack may not be as convinced.

Though Jack is playing house with Kate and Aaron and all seems well, we can already see cracks around the edges. At the medical office where he works, he escorts out a woman who will be operated on the following day…and catches a glimpse of his father getting up from a couch in the lobby and following the woman out the door…almost like the Grim Reaper might follow someone whose time has come. Before he can fully register what he sees, a colleague calls for him. And even before he can see to that, he’s notified of an urgent phone call.

VISITORS
The phone call is from a doctor treating Hurley at the mental institution where he is still living. Jack goes to visit him, and finds the big guy is refusing to take his medication, convinced that he and the rest of the Oceanic Six are actually dead. They never made it off the island, he says, and even points to Jack’s fairy-tale ending with Kate as evidence that they’re in heaven. Hurley goes on to tell Jack that Charlie visits him regularly, and that Charlie has a message for Jack, which Hurley has written down so as not to forget: “You’re not supposed to raise him, Jack.” Hurley then asks if that warning makes any sense, and if Jack thinks the message refers to Aaron. Jack says no, it doesn’t make any sense…but his behavior tells a different story. Upon hearing the message, he stands up in what seems an expression of nervous agitation, as if Charlie’s warning touches a nerve to which Jack is keenly sensitive, or confirms a feeling he already has. For no matter how much he wants to live the good life with Kate, the fact is that he has not made peace with the Aaron situation…and everything it represents. Maybe the warning just plays on generally ambiguous feelings about his new role as father-figure. But it seems to strike a more specific chord, one with which Jack has been wrestling. Hurley also warns Jack that Charlie said someone would be coming to visit him soon too. Is Charlie referring to Christian Shephard, who does appear again briefly in Jack’s office a few night’s later?

Meanwhile, Jack and Hurley are not the only ones receiving seemingly spectral visitations. Christian also appears to his other child, Claire. She, Sawyer and Miles have been making their way back to the beach through the jungle, and during the night she wakes up to find that Aaron is not by her side, but is being held by Christian near the campfire. “Dad?” she asks. It’s probably just me, but I thought Christian looked a little different than usual in that moment. Maybe it was just the angle he was shown at, or perhaps it was just poorly photographed and too quickly edited, but he didn’t look like he normally does. I only bring it up because I wonder if he was supposed to look different. Remember the first episode of this season, when Hurley saw a silhouetted figure in Jacob’s cabin? A figure who seemed to be Christian Shephard?  Whoever (or whatever) Jacob is, could he be taking on the form of certain other individuals, and not succeeding in making that form 100% accurate? I’m probably reading way too much into this, but Christian, Jacob, fireside ghosts…it might all tie together.

Anyway, Sawyer wakes up the next morning and is informed by Miles that Claire wandered off into the jungle in the middle of the night. Sawyer chides him for letting her go alone, but Miles says she wasn’t alone. Whoever she was with, she called “Dad.” Getting this news from Miles is tricky, given his ghost-sensing skills. Did he only hear Claire saying “Dad” and therefore assume that she was with somebody? Or did he actually see Christian with his own eyes? And even if he did, would Sawyer have seen him too had he been awake? Sure, Sawyer sees the occasional phantom horse, but Miles’ gift is more pronounced (as evidenced by his grisly discovery of Rousseau and Karl’s hastily buried bodies). Miles is the island’s own Haley Joel Osment…except Chinese. And not prepubescent.  So the question remains: how real was Christian? Sawyer finds no trace of him or Claire in the jungle. Just Aaron, abandoned near a tree.

BACK OFF, MAN…I’M A SCIENTIST
Getting back to Jack’s island life, Juliet makes preparations to remove Jack’s appendix. She sends Sun and Jin to the Dharma medical hatch known as The Staff, where they need to acquire medical supplies that Juliet has listed out. Faraday volunteers to accompany them, with Charlotte, to help find the right tools. His idea doesn’t go over well, seeing as everyone has had it with the freighter duo’s deceit. Even Charlotte is content to play the role of adversary that everyone has cast her and Daniel in, but he chastises her for letting her bad attitude feed everyone’s mistrust. He assures them all that he doesn’t know what is going on with the freighter, and that he and Charlotte are scientists who just want to help. (This sentiment also comes across when Miles finds Karl and Rousseau. Sawyer asks him if his buddies are responsible for the murders, to which Miles sincerely replies, “They’re not my buddies, man. I didn’t sign up for this.”)

Faraday has struck me as a decent guy from the beginning, and I believe that he does want to help. But his admission in the previous episode that his team has not come to take the survivors off the island makes me wonder what exactly they have come for, and what they were told about the possibility of finding 815 survivors on the island. We know that Daniel, Charlotte, Miles and Frank were chosen by Matthew Abbadon for a specific purpose, but what do they each know about that purpose? What were they told their mission was? What were they led to believe about the freighter and the mission of its other passengers, like Keamy?

One of my favorite moments of the episode comes when Jin approaches Charlotte, after seeing her face react to bits of Korean conversation he shared with Sun, and tries to engage her in his native tongue. She plays dumb, until he threatens to break Daniel’s fingers one at a time. Once she gives up the ruse, he tells her that when the chopper returns to the beach, she has to get Sun off the island. He knows that Sun and the baby are in danger, and he is determined to get her safety…even if he can’t accompany her.

UNDER THE KNIFE
Jack tells Juliet that he wants to be awake for the operation, talking her through it with the help of Kate holding a mirror. Juliet says she has plenty of experience with appendectomies, but he insists. He also insists that Kate hold the mirror after Juliet suggests that Bernard would be a wiser choice, given his medical experience. But Jack, almost like a petulant child, adamantly replies, “No, I want it to be Kate.”

Jack’s plan doesn’t work out so well, as his pained reaction to the incisions prompts Juliet to order Kate from the tent have Bernard knock Jack out with chloroform. The operation goes well, and when Kate returns to check on him, Juliet tells her that Jack kissed her a few days earlier. She says that while she enjoyed it, she knows that Jack’s true feelings are not for her, but for Kate. It’s a nice gesture on Juliet’s part, and when Kate leaves a moment later, Juliet tells Jack that she knows he is awake, which he is indeed. Did he hear what she told Kate? She looked sad when she acknowledged, in not so many words, that her feelings for Jack are unrequited, and the moment left me wondering again where Juliet will land when rescue comes.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE
Getting back to the future, Jack’s seams continued the early stages of unraveling after his unsettling visit to Hurley. Although he asks Kate to marry him a few days later, he seems to do so despite the instinct that playing daddy to Aaron is not something he can commit to, no matter how much he may want to be with Kate. His unease leads him to ask a colleague to write him a prescription for some pills to help with stress and lack of sleep.

Things then get uglier when he catches Kate in a lie and she tells him that she was doing a favor for Sawyer – one that she can’t elaborate on. Jack can’t believe that even now he still has to vie with Sawyer for her attention. He asks why she won’t tell him what the favor is, and she says that Sawyer wouldn’t want her to. “But he’s not here, is he?” Jack says. “No. No, he made his choice. He chose to stay. I’m the one who came back. I’m the one who’s here.” Even though his anger is somewhat justified, it’s still hard to watch Jack acting suspicious and accusatory toward Kate. It makes him seem weak somehow, in a situation where we want to see him at his best. The fact that he’s drinking more than just a nightcap doesn’t help. Kate tells him that he needs to work out whatever problems he’s having if he’s going to be around her son. And then his true feelings come out. “Your son? You’re not even related to him!” Jack yells, unaware that Aaron is standing in the hallway. His choice of words is interesting, seeing as he is related to Aaron…even if he doesn’t know it yet. He doesn’t say “That isn’t your son!” or “You’re not even his real mother!” The wording draws a pointed yet indirect contrast between him and Kate and their connection to Claire’s offspring.

Of course, the real mystery spawned in this scene concerns the favor Kate is doing for Sawyer. My guess is that it has something to do with Sawyer’s daughter. Remember Cassidy, the woman he conned, who later informed him – while he was in prison – that he had fathered her child? If you remember Cassidy, you may remember that she and Kate once had a chance meeting, back in Kate’s fugitive days, and helped each other out. Cassidy made it possible for Kate to briefly visit her mother. Now, whatever Kate is doing behind Jack’s back, I think it may involve Cassidy and her/Sawyer’s daughter.

I like seeing how, depending on the circumstance, Jack and Kate have each showed a certain ease with what I call the Oceanic Lie. For example, when Jack testified at Kate’s trial, he readily perjured himself with the story of only eight people surviving the crash, Kate saving them from drowning, etc. She was clearly not comfortable with his testimony, interrupting it to say that she did not want him to continue. Afterwards, she told him that she’d heard him repeat the story so many times that she worried he might have started to believe it. Yet when it comes to Aaron, Kate fully embraces the lie, showing a strong commitment to her role as Aaron’s mother (repeatedly and protectively referring to him as “my son”). For Jack, the Aaron aspect of the Oceanic Lie is a much more difficult part for him to go along with.

LOOSE ENDS
While walking through the jungle, Sawyer asks Claire how she’s feeling. She says, “At least I’m not seeing things anymore.” This line should probably have been it removed, as it references a deleted scene from the previous episode. I don’t know what happened in the missing scene; only that Claire had some kind of vision. Could it have been another appearance by her father? Something else that would have shed a clue as to what’s coming for her? Oh well; we’ll have to watch it in the deleted scenes when season four comes out on DVD (December 9th. Reserve your copy on Amazon now!)

Also, it seems the Smoke Monster didn’t do as much damage as last week’s episode led us to believe. Keamy and his team made a brief appearance in this episode, looking haggard for sure, but still kicking. I wonder how the Smoke Monster decides when to kill somebody (Mr. Eko, the 815 pilot) and when to just mess with them something awful (Keamy’s team, Juliet and Kate, Locke).

FINAL THOUGHTS
Like the Juliet flashback episode earlier in the season, this was a quieter installment with some good, small revelations and hints of things to come. Things should pick up again in the next chapter, as the search for Jacob resumes.

Oh, and once again I must give a nod to Jorge Garcia’s fine work in this episode. Hurley may usually be the happy-go-lucky castaway, but Garcia always manages to find the depth and the soul that lurks beneath the surface, and when he’s given opportunities like this to express more complex emotions, he never fails to deliver. His scene with Jack was terrific.

Tonight’s Episode: Cabin Fever