Lost Episode 3.19: "The Brig"
Original Airdate: May 2nd, 2007

From the start, I have been an unabashed fan of John Locke.

Is it his slightly swarthy baldness? The "just folks" drawl that disguised a cunning and crazy brain? The way his eyes would twinkle when he pushed those numbers into the computer?

No, it was always his position in the island’s character mix that appealed to me--where Jack is the man of action and logic, Locke is the flip side of the coin, the one who quickly becomes more interested in the island itself and its myriad mysteries than he does in his fellow characters, any hope of rescue, or in some cases, human life itself.

John Locke is a man of infinite patience and bottomless faith, the guy who actually buys into the whole notion that if you don’t enter a random set of digits into a random old computer, the whole world may blow up. He’s the one fascinated by the hatch, the monster, the Others--whatever you’ve got for sale, he’ll at least take a glance at, if not buy it outright.

In a sense, he’s seemed to function as almost a stand-in for the audience, or at least how the writers would like the audience to behave. They have asked us to exercise John Locke’s faith in buying into their story, even as many began to apply Jack’s sharp reason to events and demanded more answers.

Now Locke has come around himself, and seems to have reached a breaking point of sorts--he is ready for answers himself. He is ready to have mysteries explained, even if he does not like the answers. And it is exciting that he is the one who will get these answers because he is the one character on the island best equipped to handle them, no matter how strange or unexpected they may be.

In "The Brig," we witness John Locke’s final battle with the elements holding him back from awareness--at least, that’s what he thinks, and maybe we think it, too. He definitely abandons his fellow castaways for good, turning instead to the Others and whatever answers he will get from Ben.

To get those answers, Locke must kill his own father, brought to the island by unknown means. Ben explains it as the "magic box," but claims Locke is actually the one who put his dad in the box in the first place through some mystical subconscious intent. Locke’s dad has another theory--that he died in a car crash in Tallahassee, and he’s now in hell.

Locke can’t bring himself to kill his dad, so instead of tromping back to camp and hanging out some more with the little people, he concocts a scheme to get Sawyer to kill his dad. Turns out Locke’s dad is the guy who drove Sawyer’s parents into their murder-suicide. It’s a bit of a leap, as all of the show’s random interconnected relationships seem to be, but it has a nice payoff in Sawyer’s reaction and the interplay between him and Locke’s evil dad.

Ultimately, Sawyer strangles Locke’s dad, and Locke leaves Sawyer behind for good, but not without a parting revelation--Sawyer now knows that Juliet has been in league with the Others from the start, and has evidence to prove it. I’m guessing it’s that jolt that will power the plot through the rest of this third season.

This episode of Lost brings with it some questions, but unlike past wonderments, these questions seem to have more meat, and sit more closely inside the characters and their motivations. Perhaps what I wonder most of all is this: Will Locke gain true awareness from Ben and the Others, or is this just more of Ben manipulating events for some as-yet-unknown purpose? That’s the thought that hovers above so much of this season, which for me is a big part of why I’m finding myself reinvesting in this show again--not just the thought of answers, but the thought of these answers coming from one of television’s most wormy guys, with every answer potentially being another lie in a string of lies.

What can I say? I’m a fan of the unreliable character--it’s why The Great Gatsby is my favorite book, because all of the action is refracted through the eyes of Nick Carraway, who is inevitably biased and is missing whole pieces of the story.

Here we have a potential scenario where every revelation carries a sinister double or even triple meaning. For example, we have just learned that the world at large believes that Oceanic Flight 815 crashed in the ocean, leaving behind no survivors. On one level, this could be a hint to the island’s ultimate secret--maybe Locke’s dad is right, and it’s basically hell itself.

Or maybe the wreck and the bodies were a plant by the Dharma Initiative or other interests who want to experiment on the castaways, meaning it’s better if the world believes them dead.

Or maybe the person revealing this information--the mysterious woman who seemed to parachute from the sky--is herself an Other, with orders from Ben to mislead the castaways toward his own sinister purposes.

So this was pretty much an ideal episode for me, since it featured Locke, who I love, and Ben, who I love to hate. The show’s two most fascinating characters, sparring and scheming, until Locke relents and produces the dead body of his father as his first step onto the island’s only certain path toward answers...and his final step away from the man and the life of his past.

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"The Brig"

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.