Lost: White Rabbit Rewatch

March 28, 2023 7:28 PM - Season 1, Episode 5

Jack searches for his father.

S1E5: White Rabbit (Lostpedia | transcript): air date 20th October 2004 • writer Christian Taylor • director Kevin Hooks • day 6 on the island • Jack flashbacks

An eye opens • you should’ve stayed down • I didn’t try • a water shortage • I’m not deciding anything • flashback icecubes • you just don’t have what it takes • who appointed you our savior • dad? • you don’t get to say I can’t, not after what you did • it’s going to get ugly • who packs 400 knives? • time bomb of responsibility • you don’t scare me • a rat will always lead you to its hole • water has no value, Freckles • I’m not a leader / and yet they all treat you like one • finish what you started • dad’s dead • dad’s coffin • I need it to be over • dad’s coffin is EMPTY • JACK SMASH • Boone took the water • if we can’t live together, we’re going to die alone.

Emily St. James, AV Club: Lost (Classic): “White Rabbit”/“House Of The Rising Sun”
[spoiler-free until halfway through]

The drowning woman — Joanna — is always this mirage on the horizon, someone that Jack should be able to get to but someone he never quite can. She becomes the promise of everything he thinks he’s supposed to be, everything he believes himself capable of but constantly falls short of.

Jane Campbell, Eruditorum Press: Lost Exegesis (White Rabbit) — Part 1
[spoiler-free; continues in Part 2 which does have spoilers for future episodes]

From Jack’s perspective, “what it takes” is whatever’s necessary to succeed. He wasn’t able to save Mark Silverman, and he wasn’t able to save the drowning woman, Joanna; he doesn’t have what it takes. And when he fails, he takes it personally; he’s motivated by compassion, in large part, because when he fails, it hurts. But what his father is really getting at has nothing to do with skill. He’s talking about being able to laugh watching Carol Burnett at the end of a day of failure. What he’s talking about is the ability to let go. Letting go is what it takes. A lovely union of opposites.

Rewatch companion: THE STORM: A Lost Rewatch Podcast - S1, E5: "White Rabbit" with Kim Renfro

Joanna Robinson: “Christian’s being such a hypocrite here. He’s like, I can do all this stuff, and it doesn’t affect me. Swig, swig, swig on my Scotch. I’m fine. This is fine. I have what it takes. You don’t.”

Neil Miller: “We have no idea what ghost dad is. And that’s one of the things that I love about Lost, especially in this first season, is it can deliver a weird cliffhanger like that — like holy shit, that dead guy’s not there anymore — and then very quickly move on. It's such a fascinating thing to think of these episodes as like, they all have their own self-contained mysteries, but they all move the larger story forward. We’re in a real string here of episodes that are gonna do stuff like this, and it's so much fun.”

“This place is different. It's special. The others don't want to talk about it because it scares them. But we all know it. We all feel it.”

L O S T

posted by We had a deal, Kyle (2 comments total)

Currently streaming in the US on Hulu (subscription) and Freevee (free with ads); in the UK on Disney+; and available for purchase just about everywhere. I’m trying a three-per-week cadence this week so the next episode will post, let’s say, Thursday.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:28 PM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

It continues to strike me this rewatch how much this initial run of episodes are really all Locke episodes; Locke, having looked into the eye of the island last episode, becoming a shamanistic figure for guiding other characters towards acceptance.

They apparently knew they wanted Terry O'Quinn quite early on, and I think it shows in how sure-footed the writing of Locke is; they knew that O'Quinn could carry this character and deliver those lines in a way that they didn't yet for many of the other characters. Jack, maybe; Jack seems quite well written for Matthew Fox's range.

Boone being both the failed rescuer (even though he claimed to be a lifeguard in the pilot) and the water hoarder seems very much arbitrary? It always feels to me like they wrote Boone as a very specific "privileged white kid" archetype and then didn't really know what to do with him on the island, especially as Shannon's already filling that slot; and so here they're doing a bit of wheelspinning to keep him in the mix.

Anyway, though: this piece didn't fit well into the post above (too spoilery and waaaaaay too obnoxiously dude-bro-ey) but hoo yeah this:

Boone. Going through these episodes again, the most consistent refrain inside my head is “oh great here’s fucking Boone again.” On a show with roughly 500 cast members who all have at least one or two redeeming qualities, Boone is always somehow the worst. The only correct choice in the history of Boone was the casting of Ian Somerhalder, the only human on Earth who if you pointed to him and said his name was Boone Carlyle I’d be like “well, yeah, I see that.”

posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:33 PM on March 29, 2023 [1 favorite]