Lost: Season 6, Episode 14 Review: The Candidate

The Candidate

Original Airdate: May 4, 2010

Writer: Elizabeth Sarnoff and Jim Galasso

Director: Jack Bender

It just got real.

They had to establish the high stakes for these final episodes, and they do so by wiping out three major characters who have been with the show since the Pilot, leaving only 10 survivors of 815 are still alive or unknown status, and only half will play any significant role in the finale.  If anyone was still in denial over this being the end going in, any trace of that has been sunken faster than that submarine, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

One of the most complicated relationships of the series has been between Jack and Locke.  They butted heads through most of the first four seasons, but after Jack left and Locke died, Jack reevaluated how he felt about John’s beliefs, sending him on he journey that leads him to embrace being a man of faith.  It’s a relationship that has worked far better than the triangle, which the writers seem to have given up on after fans kept saying how little they cared.  So it makes sense for them to share a centric episode as 815 Jack takes up Locke’s mantle while LA X Jack tries to fix Locke.

LA X Jack discovers that Locke’s original injury can possibly be reversed.  He goes to some extreme lengths to find out more, from stopping by Bernard’s dentist office and the rest home Cooper is living in, despite Helen’s wishes to the contrary.  The unstoppable force of Jack collides with the immovable object of Locke, who doesn’t want any operation because he feels guilty over the plane crash that paralyzed him and made his father a vegetable.  This spot on the timeline means that Cooper’s kidney con in the 90s never happened, as well as Locke’s defenestration.  LA X Locke’s desire for punishment mirrors 815 Jack’s various ways of beating himself up over his failures and while Jack is ready to accept many of those, Locke isn’t ready.

LA X Jack takes a step in the right direction by inviting Claire to stay with him.  I can’t imagine that’s an easy thing to do to accept the secret love child of your father into your life like she’s always been family, but seeing what Locke is putting himself through because he can’t let go and his father’s fate are Jack’s cautionary tales.

He also gets a few more “Hey you were on the plane too” from Claire and Bernard.  How is it that all the people who were on 815 remember the flight number a week after the flight?  I’ve only flown a few times and that was over a decade ago, but I don’t think that information would stay with most people beyond the terminal.

815 Jack faces “being with” Johnny as they prepare to take Sawyer and co. from Widmore’s custody, in the polar bear cages that Kate forgot how to escape from.  Although Jack is helping out with the rescue plans of everyone else, he remains adamant about refusing to leave the Island to the point of defiantly saying “John Locke told me I needed to stay” before shoving Johnny in the water.  Considering this episode’s development of Johnny character, he may have used that and waited long enough to draw out Widmore’s goons so they would shoot someone, making Jack betray his wishes to stay on the island for the sake of a friend.

The big part of the 815 timeline story is to reveal Johnny’s motivations and further showcase his ability as a master manipulator.  Finding the C4 on the plane bought him some goodwill, so much so that he tells them what he’s going to do to them and they don’t figure it out until it’s too late.  Obviously he took into account Sawyer’s ability to lie and want to split without him and took that into consideration with the homemade bomb.

Jack’s belief that the bomb wouldn’t kill them was probably right: Johnny couldn’t kill the Candidates directly, but he knew a thing or two about loopholes.  Tampering with the bomb takes it off his hands much like him handing Ben a knife allowed Ben to kill Jacob with it.  Unfortunately Sawyer has come into Jack’s former role, not trusting Jack to let the bomb timer go to zero.

Knowing the bomb would go off, Sayid runs off with the bomb as far as he can before it detonated.  Following “Sundown”, a lot of people thought Johnny “claimed” Sayid and was no longer the character we knew.  He stumbled through the rest of the season, saying he didn’t feel anything.  Then came the moment in “The Last Recruit” where he was tasked with dispatching Desmond, held in that not so deep well.  When it came to pulling the trigger, Desmond asked him if he could look his love in the eye after telling her what he did to bring her back.  Of course, Sayid didn’t pull the trigger (despite that cool, misleading trailer), and that ties into when they were on the Kahana and heard Michael’s similar story about how his deal backfired and cost him everything.  Sparing Desmond and later informing Jack of it before taking the bomb away from them is his redemption.  It wasn’t a grand sacrifice, but perhaps that makes it nobler.

No sooner do we say goodbye to Sayid then we get the heart crushing moment of the episode, the deaths of Sun & Jin.  After being apart for so long, fans wanted these two to have a happy ending (I even said so in a review posted 30 minutes before the episode aired.  Man, I need to be more punctual for the next show I review).  Killing them both makes these stakes real: people we’ve been following for years are gone, and now no one (except Hurley) is safe.

However, I agree with the major qualm with this otherwise heartbreaking scene: Jin not leaving the sub and deciding to die with Sun.  That’s pretty rough to orphan the daughter you have never met knowingly.  They say Ji Yeon is with Sun’s mother, but do we really want Ji Yeon raised in the culture her mobster grandfather lives in?  Not having your parents is tough enough, but that makes it even worse.  Maybe if Ji Yeon were a grown up it would be easier, but she’s still a toddler.  Did they do this confirm Sun was the Kwon candidate since Jin basically killed himself by staying behind?

Of the many deaths, the door getting revenge on Frank (the cage door he kicked earlier in the episode was this door’s father!) is an even less dignified exit than Ilana.  At least she’s confirmed dead.  Despite being a situation where he’s unlikely to survive, the producers haven’t acknowledged his death as they did Sayid, Sun & Jin’s.  Granted Frank hasn’t been around since the beginning, but could this lack of concern for his fate be symptomatic of how he is one of these characters like Ilana, Miles and I would now count Claire who the writers haven’t utilized well this season.

The four surviving members reach the shore, devastated both emotionally and physically.  It really hits home when Hurley breaks down.  The only one not sobbing is unconscious.  As said at the start, it just got real: some major cards were revealed and several key players didn’t make it to the end, and on top of that, we have Johnny leaving the bewildered and perpetually abandoned Claire to “finish what he started”.  Although the actual finale is 2 ½ hours long, like some people (like Battleship Pretension/Previously On... host David Bax) have said, it feels like it’s already here.

Overall Score: 9/10