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Lost: Walkabout

Locke: "This is my destiny. Don't tell me what I can't do!"

This episode was the best one so far. I didn't see the end coming, even with the fairly broad hints, such as the opening scene after the crash with Locke staring at his own wiggling toe, and the wheelchair without an owner that was seen here and in the previous episode.

Locke (Terry O'Quinn) has been something of an enigma up until this point; it was impossible to guess what was going on with him. Why was he just sitting there all the time, looking stunned? Was he good? Evil? Insane? I even thought he might be a child molester; I was creeped out by the way he talked to Walt about secrets, but then was relieved when he managed to save Walt's dog, which gave Locke big points in my book.

And now, what happened to Locke has just become a huge part of the continuing story. We learned about Locke's life as a game player in a dead end job, that his only relationship was with a woman he paid $89.95 an hour to talk with. We learned that he was paralyzed from the waist down four years ago, which suggested it was the result of an accident. It is impossible for a crash landing to cure paralysis. Which leaves the Island. Somehow, the Island did it. (The scene at the end where Locke stood up gave me chills.) Like Kate, Locke is better off because of the plane crash – even more so than Kate, because Locke is living out his fantasy, fulfilling what he thinks is his destiny.


Sayid was looking for the transceiver's power source and, indirectly, the French woman survivor. No luck so far. Was it coincidence that Scary Monster deliberately began rustling the trees when Kate was trying to put up the antenna? And an even bigger question: Did Locke actually see the Scary Monster? If he did, why did he lie about it?

Character bits:

Claire and Hurley seem to have bonded; they were sleeping close to each other when the boars arrived.

Shannon's fishy maneuver on Charlie labeled her as a master manipulator. ("I hate to break it to you, but the ocean is not going to take your gold card.")

Randy, Locke's boss, reminded me of the boss in Office Space.

Jack comes from a family of doctors. And he was uncomfortable with Claire's "memorial service."

Bits and pieces:

— It is now day four, and episode four.

— The food supply became an issue for the first time, and the rampaging boars and speared fish were a convenient solution. Although I can't imagine that Locke will be able to bring a boar down regularly enough to feed forty-seven people and a dog.

— The issue of decomposing bodies was addressed. Fire was certainly the best solution from a wild animal standpoint as well as for sterilization.

— The woods were referred to as the "magic forest" and the "heart of darkness."

— Charlie's stash is almost gone. Uh oh.

— Who did Jack see in the trees? It looked like a white man in a suit.

Quotes:

Jack: "We don't have time to sort out everybody's God."

Sawyer: "And you gave him his knife back?"
Jack: "Well, if you've got a better idea..."
Sawyer: "Better than three of you wandering into the magic forest to bag a hunk o' ham with nothing but a little bitty hunting knife? Hell, no. It's the best idea I ever heard."

Boone: "What are you going to eat?"
Shannon: "Ocean's full of fish."
Boone: "Hate to break it to you, the ocean is not going to take your gold card."

Jack: "I'm sorry, but everyone who was in the rear of the plane is gone."
Rose: "They're probably thinking the same thing about us."

Four out of four polar bears,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

7 comments:

  1. Wow! Amazing episode of television. I was so enthralled by it that I watched it twice. John Locke is a fascinating character and, I assume, we will learn how much he is like his namesake in episodes to come so I will refrain from my academic rant at this time. What struck me, however, was that no one else on the island seems to know (at least yet) that he was in a wheelchair. Did no-one notice him at the airport?

    In addition to the Locke story, what struck me in this episode was that we have three potential male leaders in the group and, at this point, I could see Kate (the obvious leading lady) becoming involved with any of the three of them.

    The first is Sayid, who seems to be the one to have stepped up the most so far. Yet, in this episode, he played a much more minor role.

    Sawyer (the anti-hero) who the more I watch, the more I like. I just love the way he talks and the fact that he is incapable of calling anyone by his or her proper name. I was moved by his giving Claire some of the things he had looted from the plane. I also giggled at the fact that, at the beginning, his flashlight was bigger was Jack's. Not sure what we are meant to make of that, but all kinds of things popped into my head.

    The most interesting of the three is Jack. He seems to be the most obvious leader, yet he is so reluctant to take on that role. We see both Claire and Booth come to him and ask him to do something. He refuses Claire and he nearly refuses Boone, but his nature won't allow him to let Rose sit on her own. I loved the shot at the end where he is sitting off on his own, an echo of Rose whom he has now brought back into the fold.

    On a final note, I had never heard of Norman Croucher, so I looked him up. In the Wikipedia listing of him, there is a very funny line: "In an early episode of the American TV series Lost, John Locke incorrectly identifies Croucher as having climbed Mt Everest, a feat later accomplished by New Zealand mountaineer and double amputee Mark Inglis." Oh well, the point was made.

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  2. I've always been disturbed/amused by the way that they deal with the cannibalism issue here by cooking a boar for dinner shortly after cooking a bunch of human bodies in the fuselage.

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  3. Great episode,moving ending. Here we have a clue that the creepy island is something more. John Locke captures the audience.

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  4. Are these reviews written after the fact or is it the first time you've seen them?

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  5. I believe "Walkabout" was when I started reviewing Lost. After that, I wrote every review directly after the episode aired. Why?

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  6. Rewatch comment: I remember originally this was the episode that truly made me realize we were about to embark on a journey with this show unlike anything I’d seen prior. Watching it now, the clues were, as Billie notes in her review, very broad. My son picked up on it and while he didn’t figure out before the reveal, he wasn’t all that surprised.

    I’m enjoying his reactions— he’s very reserved but he’s already creating the same kinds of theories with me as to what’s going on that we did all those years ago. Remember the water cooler talks at work? The group chats? For me, we had a work Lost lunch group that met after each episode to talk about the show. What other show does/did that?

    Does this episode hold up all these years later? For me, not quite…the flashbacks were a little ‘thin’ in the re-watch. They laid out some threads of the type of person John Locke was before the island, but I realize now that this episode gets better AFTER you watch further. One of the wonderful things about this show really is that they layers built over multiple seasons make our memories of these first episodes more powerful.

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  7. DreadPirate, When Buffy was airing, I used to go in to work on Wednesday and talk to two other Buffy fans about what had happened in Tuesday night's episode. So I know what you mean about Lost lunches. I miss it.

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