The Big Picture
Lost is like a camera shot that's always pulling back, revealing a wider picture that changes what you thought originally. This means when you rewatch old episodes, it's fun to note how differently certain scenes play. (Though the big fear of Lost fans is the final picture will be a letdown after all the fascinating detail on the way.)
For instance, I just watched the season 5 opener "Because You Left," where we see Locke go through time flashes (after enjoying leadership of the Others for maybe a minute) and get shot by Ethan. Then he flashes and Richard comes through the jungle with a first aid kit, a compass and a lot of information--like Locke needs to get off the island and die.
The first time you see this scene, Richard seems in command (if a bit frantic). He knows what's what while Locke is completely confused. But when we return to this scene at the end of season 5, and discover what's behind it, we realize that Richard is just as confused and lost as Locke.
On the other hand, sometimes scenes seen a second time play odd--probably because the writers couldn't know everything coming and were just trying to make that particular hour as dramatic as possible within the constraints of the plot.
For instance, when I heard all the talk about Locke visiting the Oceanic 6, I envisioned a Locke that would be fearsome and powerful. Locke, who finally understands the mysteries of the island, suddenly appearing at will to the 6, giving them advice, and threatening them if they called him anything other than Jeremy Bentham. So I was quite surprised when we finally saw these meetings (and there didn't seem to be that many) in "The Life And Death Of Jeremey Bentham." There's Locke, confused as ever, not knowing what to do and hopeless at convincing the 6 of anything.
That's why I was impressed with this Terry O'Quinn interview. He also thought Locke's attempts to coax the 6 back to the island were pretty weak. So, as an actor, he justified it in a way that I as a viewer justified it. Locke was confused (in fact, if we can take Fake Locke's words on faith, the last thing he thought was "I don't understand") but really wasn't expecting to convince them. If anything, he was just saying goodbye. Because he knew what he really had to do. Die. Everything else was pointless.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
3 Comments:
O'Quinn and Emerson and most of the actors have to play their characters so you can take them two ways, since they themselves aren't ever sure if they can trust what they're saying. Look at Locke in season 5--he wasn't even playing himself.
So I was quite surprised when we finally saw these meetings (and there didn't seem to be that many) ....
Yeah, and they made a few continuity boo-boos here. When Jack and Kate meet at the airport, they have both read Locke's obituary and know about his death. Yet his obituary would have said "Jeremy Bentham", and when we (later) saw Locke meet each of them, he didn't even mention this code name. Besides, who could believe that Kate reads the daily newspaper cover to cover?
Also, Jack became distraught after Locke visited him, and began flying on airplanes hoping to crash. By the time of Locke's death he had been doing this for several weeks. That means that after contacting Jack -- his last attempt to persuade the folks to return to the island -- Locke sat around doing nothing for several weeks before deciding to hang himself. Which is sort of odd. (It also ties into the long argument on Lostpedia about whether the Ajira flight was in December 2007 or in early 2008.)
My brother pointed out that when Charles Widmore helped Locke, and Locke told him "I have to die", Charles disagreed. In this case, since "you have to die" came from Evillocke via Richard, does that mean that we should see the 2007 Charles as being on Jacob's side?
I've been willing to assume we didn't see everything about every meeting with Locke. Though the way the x emphasize using the name Jeremy Bentham, if it wasn't Locke who told them, then they must have remembered the importance of lying to the public.
BTW, some people actually blew up the news item that Jack reads in the finale to season 3 and sure enough, the article said "Jeremy Bentham."
I wasn't sure if Locke gave up entirely after contacting Jack, though dramatically, it's not hard to justify doing nothing, since he knew what he had to do, but it wasn't easy to decide to do it.
You might guess Widmore is on Evillocke's side, but it's also true that Widmore has no connection to the island, so may not know what to do.
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