LOST: White Rabbit

I've decided to do something a bit different in the reviewing of further Lost episodes, mostly because by now the show has fully immersed itself into the flashback/island format. I'll simply be splitting up each of these reviews into two parts: the events that take place on the island, and the events that take place in flashbacks. The format will stay the same, although I'll be able to draw greater conclusions from looking at the flashback and island stories side by side, and hopefully unveil some things I missed the first time around.

Flashback:

This portion of the episode, in itself, contains two stories. The first one involves Jack as a kid. He is threatened by school bullies, but his father offers little consolation for trying to stand up against them for the sake of his friend. In fact, he does the exact opposite. His father, Christian Shepard, tells young Jack that he can do the difficult job of a surgeon because he "has what it takes." He has the ability to make decisions that determine whether a patient lives or dies, and claims that Jack ultimately does not.

"I know this airport gets crowded, but I really don't think you need that many escalators."

Despite this, it's clear that Jack cares for his father anyway. Years later as an adult, he travels to Australia to retrieve Christian, who died from alcohol poisoning(that is, severe levels of alcohol in his blood, not his drink being poisoned). He argues to get his coffin on the plane, so that he can take Christian's body back home and bury it.

Although we know what Jack was doing in Australia, the question this part raises is what caused him to argue for his father's proper burial in the first place. We will see on the island that this flashback works well for the episode, and it's certainly written well because of how well the kid and adult roles tie together, so I think this part was successful. Whether or not Jack's character appeals to you at this point, there's still a lot to ponder.

Island:

On the island, we see Jack's uncertainty with his leadership abilities be reinforced with "visions" of his father, being unable to save a woman from drowning, and some of the people in the group questioning his decisions. At various points throughout the episode he runs off chasing a "white rabbit", or sight that he's not even sure is real, and once nearly gets thrown off the edge of a cliff before Locke steps in to save him.

It's also noteworthy to point out the first time references to Alice in Wonderland. Obviously the title is a glaring one, but other instances include Sawyer reading the actual book(Not sure, but it at least it has a rabbit on the cover), Locke calling Jack's "hallucination" a "white rabbit", and Jack almost falling off a cliff while following the white rabbit. And we will see many more instances of these, especially in Jack's episodes.

Unfortunately, Jack couldn't see that his father was just trying to do his business

I really enjoyed the conversation between Jack and Locke in the middle of the jungle. It's the establishment of the "man of science, man of faith" debate that goes back and forth throughout the series, with Jack trying to explain away the sightings of his father as a hallucination, and Locke countering by saying things like "we all know that this island is special." I'm getting pretty deep here, but I think that almost falling off the cliff was sort of a halfway "wake-up call" for Jack. Synonymous with almost falling down the rabbit hole, he realized that something bigger was going on, but didn't want to deal with that at the moment. He needed to stop chasing white rabbits and memories of his father in order to deal with the rest of the Losties and the freshwater caves that they had just discovered. This mini revelation culminated in his speech at the end, where he finally let his leadership qualities shine through; "If we can't live together, we're going to die alone."


This might sound like I'm trying to analyze what happened to Jack's character in this episode, but that's only because there wasn't much to criticize. The episode's effectiveness may come down to your feelings about Jack or the way he's acted, but for me this episode has stood the test of time well even with a somewhat weak B plot about the water shortage.

Score: 8

Best Quote: "If we can't live together, we're going to die alone."

Best Moment: The conversation between Jack and Locke.

WTF Moment: Jack almost falling off the cliff.