LOST 6.5 – "Lighthouse"

WRITERS: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof
DIRECTOR: Jack Bender
GUEST STARS: Dylan Minnette, Veronica Hamel, Mark Pellegrino, Hiroyuki Sanada & Dayo Ade

[SPOILERS] The fifth episode offered another heady array of answers, in the shape of strong nods and important discoveries made by the characters. While this should be a good thing, the problem rests with the manner in which answers are being made known. In seasons past, the characters were either oblivious to the bigger picture mystery (which we, the audience, could see coming together), or struggling to make sense of what's going on and making incremental headway. It was compelling, fun and fascinating to watch. But so far this season we've had characters being led around by the mystical ghost of Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), who's one of those deities that won't explain things outright, but will instead show people pieces of the puzzle and hope they'll come to understand. Thing is, I preferred it when Lost didn't have supernatural characters like Jacob, or his "enemy", to lean on and things were being revealed in a more natural way...

X-Timeline '04: Jack & David

This week, the divergent timeline focused on Jack (Matthew Fox), whom we come to learn is a father of a young teenage boy called David (Dylan Minnette) in this reality. Naturally, in keeping with Lost's theme of characters having "daddy issues", David only sees his father once a month and their relationship is oddly distant. It turned out that David was keeping a secret from his father; the fact he's secretly continued his childhood interest in music and has thus become a very talented pianist. David never told his father about this because he feared being a disappointment, but Jack eventually had a breakthrough with his son when he made is clear he'll always be proud of his boy, no matter what. So, it seems that Jack's avoided being a "bad father" in this reality, which I assume is significant because the flashsideways we've seen so far have involved characters helping each other (Kate with Claire's pregnancy, Hurley with Locke's job), or otherwise succeeding in ways they never did in the original timeline.

The Island '07: Jin, Claire & Justin

The most dramatically "pure" subplot involved catching up with Claire (Emilie de Ravin), who over the course of three years has evolved into a rifle-wielding survivalist and scourge of the Others. Here, she frees her old friend Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) from a man-trap he accidentally got his leg stuck in, and takes him back to her wooden hut to recoveer, along with an Other called Justin (Dayo Ade) to interrogate over the whereabouts of her baby. It seems that Claire blames the Others for the loss of Aaron (having assumedly forgotten the circumstances of how she abandoned him in the jungle and wandered off in season 3), and Jin slowly begins to realize just how crazy Claire's become. The baby substitute made from an animal carcass in a cradle was a good tipoff.

The Island '07: Jack, Hurley & The Lighthouse

A large piece of mythology was thrown on our laps in this final storyline, where Hurley (Jorge Garcia) was instructed by Jacob to take Jake and leave The Temple via a secret tunnel to ensure that someone finds their way to the Island by signalling them using an ancient lighthouse. At the top of the lighthouse, Jack and Hurley discovered a firebowl in the centre or a wheel marked with names and numbers, apparently denoting people who've been summoned to the Island in the past. Hurley's under instructions to turn the wheel to the heading of 108 to signal a new visitor, but when Jack notices that positioning the wheel at his own number projects an image of his childhood home in the lighthouse's mirrors, he took umbrage at the notion of someone having snooped on his life and smashes the mirrors to pieces. Later, we come to learn from Jacob that even that setback was part of his plan, as a way to push Jack into discovering his role on the Island.

In Summation

I definitely enjoyed "Lighthouse", but I'm still getting a peculiar feeling that the way answers are being revealed just isn't very satisfying. I hope the writers find a way to take the onus off Jacob as a "guiding force" and have the characters regain a more proactive role in their lives again. Hurley even made light of the fact they were essentially walking through the jungle on a mission neither of them quite understood, and I'm just not as engaged when that's the case. I'd rather they have a definite goal to achieve, or act on their own beliefs and theories, but I get the impression we're still at an early stage where pieces are being aligned (Jacob on damage control duties, the fake-Locke "recruting" people.) Speaking of whom, I wonder if Jin be recruited alongside Sawyer and Claire?

Still, I enjoyed spotting episode's nods to Alice In Wonderland (it's David's favourite book, a stone rabbit hid a door key), its allusions to Virginia Woolfe's "To The Lighthouse" (which dealt with the problems of perception, amongst other things), and it was fun to revisit the caves from season 1 (where Hurley, as audience proxy, issued a popular fan-theory to explain the "Adam & Eve" skeletons inside, that we can certainly now denounce as incorrect.) And for all my complaints at the minutae, it's always inherently exciting when you discover new buildings in Lost and the interior of the Lighthouse certainly helped develop our understand of how Jacob (or his followers) are able to summon people to the Island. All we need to know now is why, and how long this process has been going on for.

Questions, Questions, Questions!

-- Why does Claire consider Fake-Locke her "friend"?

-- Why is Claire so against Kate?

-- So, did Jacob want someone to be called to the Island, or not?

-- What is Jack's purpose on the Island?

-- Who built the Lighthouse, when, and did Jacob use it to summon candidates?

-- Why doesn't X-Jack remember details from his life such as his appendectomy?

-- Who is David's mother? Another familiar character -- perhaps Juliet?

26 FEBRUARY 2010: SKY (HD), 9PM