Walkabout by Sam

This is the first in a long chain of incredible Locke-centric episodes. Remember how much I was ragging on the first three episodes? Yea, that's not going to happen with this one. Terry O'Quinn's portrayal of John Locke completely restored my faith in this show.

Hopefully we'll find a way to upload our podcasts soon, because a lot of what we say in the moment I can't remember now. Also, I know other shit happens in this episode (transceiver/Jack's smokemonsterdad/etc) but I'm not interested in that. Locke is life.

Only in the last season, when we were watching the flash-sideways, did I start to consider that the flashbacks people were having impacted their island lives. It's so evident in this episode! Right after his dick-manager tells him that he can't go on his walkabout, Locke is laying in the grass listening to Michael wail about his leg wound. Locke gets up and hunts the shit out of the boar because no one, not even L'oreal Kate, tells Locke that he can't do it. She can walk Michael back on her own, thanks.

It becomes standard, but this is our first glimpse into the sorry life of pre-island Locke. He's of the nerdy RPG sort, comfortable in his cubicle but committed to the idea that he's meant for more. His manager? Way to tell a man in a wheel chair that he's not capable of overcoming anything. What an asshole. It should've been him that got hit by that meteor, not poor Tricia Tanaka. Anyways, Locke is a shell of person before he crashes on the island. His loneliness leads him to a really dark, sad place. How awful that his believing someone would want to go to Australia with him is a delusion. Anyone who watches this episode and fails to connect to that part of Locke? I don't wanna know 'em.

In this show, there's a trend of capable, walking men looking at a guy in a wheelchair and telling him he can't do shit. Locke goes to Australia without his phone companion and gets told again: You can't do this.

He can't do this? This is his destiny. He's supposed to do this.

He's supposed to do this. An orderly in a later episode plants the seed that this walkabout is what he needs to do. Locke goes there and is brutalized for his physical ailments and his plane crashes. Who is that guy? The orderly guy that eventually becomes Locke's cab driver? A creepy and less-invested version of Desmond? A friend of Jacob and Richard? It starts to become a little too convoluted if I consider it for too long. But I'm starting to trust my instincts. Locke really was pushed out of a building, forced into a wheelchair, denied his walkabout and given a second chance at walking about with all the other survivors. When Locke is strangled by Ben, that is when he dies. His first and only death that is ever shown to us. I'm going the man-of-faith route this time.

Man-of-science-ly, there is plane wreckage. Our final image is physical evidence that somebody's plane crashed. Like all of their physical baggage, Locke and company get to leave their emotional wreckage on that damn island. From what I can recall, when they all have their moment of dawning in the flash sideways, they don't remember anything that didn't happen on the island. Locke doesn't see himself being denied his walkabout. On the island, in his natural life, he walked about and that was what he remembered and that's what helps HIM let go. I maintain that the show opening and closing on Jack's eye doesn't change the third-person perspective this show has. We have to have a central character to help us cement what's happening in a show like this. They picked Jack, probably out of convenience. Good-looking, leadery doctor. Of course he's the one you start with! But he isn't the point of the show. His eye is the one we open on, but it isn't the only one. It's a story-telling device. And I'd argue that no one is more important than the next person, even the screaming Shannons. I don't consider every person in my life to be this stepping stone to greater spiritual knowledge. They're people. Their pasts matter. Their presents matter. And just like I don't live my life like I'm the one who matters most, I don't like considering a story where only Jack matters. Jack's a survivor, just like the rest of them are. They're all on the last half of their walkabout, trying to sort through their internal messes before they get to the end of the line.

Out of everyone who crashes, Locke is the first, the most ready to drop his baggage on the beach and get to gettin. Yes, he has the occasional "woe is me" moment. But for the most part? He brings the people boar. He is willing to accept this reality because he recognizes what an opportunity it is. Everyone else is so hung up on being rescued they don't see that they're being offered a chance at the kind of rescuing they really need. If they hadn't crashed on the island? I don't think they would've ended up in that church together. They would've mattered to different people, lived different lives...being the bad ass that he is, Locke seems to know that before anyone else.

Locke is also the first person so far to survive a personal encounter with the smoke monster. His face right before that happens doesn't exactly mesh with his declaration later on that what he saw was "beautiful." What does that bastard smoke show my darling Locke? Whatever it is, it convinces him that he's on the right path, doing the right things, being the man of faith and that that's what matters. Yes, that ends up screwing corporeal Locke. Sure, that's gotta be kind of shaming and embarrassing for the man considering his history of being conned and used by everyone he trusts. But I don't think that Jacob's brother, Sir Smoke, will ever get to any space where he'll have a shot at entering that church. Locke still wins.

I love Locke episodes. Much like he does for the survivors on the show, he helps bring me back to a place where I believe that all of this has a meaning and a purpose. Even though the final scenes were romantic and pretty, I still think it's really clinical to dismiss everything we've been shown like it doesn't matter if it happened or not. It matters.