Season Two: Episodes 3 – 6
Welcome back to Re-Watch Week Number Eight! This week we will be reviewing Season Two’s Orientation, Everybody Hates Hugo, … and Found, and Abandoned. As always, I’m focusing my attention on John Locke and noting anything else that piques my curiosity or interest.
Looking at Locke:
These four episodes take place on days 45 through 48 on the island. We are still caught up in the standoff inside the Swan Station between Jack and Desmond with Kate in the air vent above them and Locke at gun point. We saw this scene from Jack’s perspective in Man of Science, Man of Faith and Locke’s perspective in Adrift and again here in Orientation. I find it interesting to note that Locke has a flashback about his group therapy session in the midst of this confrontation. Usually when a flashback appears, there is some action, or conversation that triggers a flashback event. However, in this scene in which Locke has a gun pointed to his head while Desmond threatens to shoot him unless Jack drops his weapon, there is no correlation to the events happening to this flashback of John Locke in his group therapy class. Regardless, the flashbacks of Locke in the episode Orientation allow us to see exactly what kind of psyche he has and why he is the perfect candidate for the Man In Black’s machinations. In these flashbacks, we are privy to the knowledge that John Locke has been unable to move forward emotionally since Anthony Cooper conned him out of his kidney. He is emotionally stuck in cement and cannot find outside help or inside strength to get past what his father has done. If that was the extent of his behavior issues, I would have understandably been empathetic to his situation and been attracted to his character. But John Locke shows us more than just an unwillingness to let go. He is simply pathological. In the group therapy sessions he mocks and trivializes other people’s struggles and feelings and believes his situation to be more noteworthy. He gives nothing emotionally towards his relationship with Helen and leaves her constantly to go stake out his father’s compound. And despite Anthony Cooper coming out to his car and telling him to get over it, bug off, and don’t come back, John goes back for more. I’m not a clinical psychologist, but you don’t have to be one to recognize that Locke is emotionally crippled, narcissistic, weak of character, and completely unable to make choices. He himself admits that to Helen, the night she launches his keys over Cooper’s electric fence. John Locke is mentally frozen in time, like an eight year old, unwilling to see the forest through the trees and change his life. And that inability to CHANGE, to take a risk and move in a different direction is what makes John THE PERFECT candidate for the Man In Black. Unfortunately for the MIB, however, it makes trying to get John Locke down the path he needs him to be that much harder. For John has sunken his teeth into the Swan Station being his Destiny hook, line and sinker, and try as he might, the MIB cannot get his loophole off this fishing line. Desmond, of course, feeds this fire, by asking Locke “Are you him?” and forcing John to enter the numbers in the computer. John is completely and utterly fascinated and intrigued with the station and it’s blinking lights and old technology. When the standoff ends with a bullet in the countdown computer and Desmond dashing around looking for parts to prevent imminent catastrophe, John has already bought in to the Swan as some big, big, thing. Of course he’s there to save the world. After all, he is Special. Destiny would not bring him all this way for a con! So like a Las Vegas gambler with nothing to lose and hope in his heart, John Locke pushes all his chips into the center of the table and declares, “ALL IN”.
Jack Shephard, on the other hand, is more practical and more doubting of the situation. He thinks the Swan Station is a complete hoax, even after watching the Orientation video. The world will blow up in 45 minutes? Hah! And he’s right! Let’s take our own “time out” and really think about this! Would one person, a man who Jack himself saw running stairs in preparation for an around the world boat race, be ENTIRELY responsible for the lives and welfare of everyone on the planet? Would the powers-that-be in designing this “saving the world” technology not have at least upgraded their antiquated computer system at least ONCE in twenty years? Would they not have designed an automated key entry system instead of relying on a human soul to be alert and focused every hour and forty-four minutes? Would they leave a computer illiterate ALONE without any communication from the outside world? Would they really attempt to scare the people responsible for saving the planet with words like “quarantine” stamped large on outdoor exits? And would they really have the best candidate for this job be someone who, as soon as the computer stops working correctly, immediately packs their bags and runs for the hills? It’s clearly obvious to any critically thinking person that there are serious flaws in what Desmond is saying. And the Orientation video certainly does not add any weight to the argument either. It doesn’t mention saving the world or the consequences of not pushing the button. It simply says that ‘the future of the project is in your hands’ and that thanks are given by ‘the DeGroots, Alvar Hanso, and the Dharma Initiative’. Call me crazy, but saving the world is slightly more than a project, wouldn’t you agree? And where are the international organizations that, too, would have a very vested interest in this operation? Sorry, folks, but it just doesn’t pass the smell test. And Jack Shephard knows it. But he’s down in the Swan Station with Mr. I’ve-Got-A-Destiny, who buys the entire kitten-caboodle without question. Locke’s blind faith, his inability to let go of things, and his life in a bubble of narcissism are road blocks that prevent him from seeing the reality of situations. He spent months sitting in his VW Bug outside his father’s compound after Cooper told him go get lost. He lost Helen because he could not let go. And now, in this hatch, he AGAIN refuses to budge. This is his Destiny, damn it!
What I find so unappealing about John Locke’s character is not in his focus. Or in his stubbornness. It’s in his weakness. When the computer shorts the entire electric system in the station and Desmond makes a run for the door, Locke begins to squirm. After Kate leaves for Sayid, the all purpose technology, electrical, and nuclear deactivating dude on the island and Jack walks away wanting nothing to do with this farce, Locke is left alone. And you see him for what he really is: a scared, weak, pitiful man. He doesn’t know what to do! He stumbles around, bumps into tables, knocks stuff onto the floor and starts yelling to the heavens. There is no composure. The man who calmly told Jack that Desmond would ‘fix it’ is now looking like a chicken with his head cut off! “This wasn’t supposed to happen…. Why is this happening like this?… What am I supposed to do!”, he screams to no one. You wonder why John Locke, of all the people that have come to the island for hundreds of years, is the MIB’s loophole? It’s because his convictions and principles are WEIGHTLESS. George Patton once said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” John Locke wouldn’t know the word tough if it kissed him smack on the lips and bought him breakfast. He is a weak, unanchored, childish man who has to be lead by the nose and petted like a scared puppy. Which is why, after Sayid fixes the computer and the countdown is almost at zero, that he doesn’t have the conviction to push the button. He stares at but cannot push it. It’s no different than when he got Kate to go down the hatch hours earlier. He couldn’t go down the hatch first, he needed someone to lead the way. And now he can’t push the button first, he needs Jack to lead the way. He cannot make decisions or choices. Someone has to do that for him. And once Jack, who we’ve seen allows for the possibility of outside forces, pushes the button, Locke goes back into his calm, composed, persona. “I’ll take the first shift”, he peacefully remarks.
