Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A | 1374 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Live Alone; Die Together
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 16 | Aired on 2009.05.13
Island; 2007: Sawyer sits, Jack reluctantly joins him and Sawyer tells Jack the sad story of his childhood and the death of his parents. Jack says, "I'm sorry." Wistfully, Sawyer says, "Yeah." Then he adds, "That was a year ago." Jack's not following, so Sawyer says, "Right now, it's July, 1977, which means that happened last year. So I could have hopped on a sub, gone back to the states, walked right in my house and stopped my daddy from killing anybody." Jack asks why he didn't. Sawyer says, "Because Jack, what's done is done." When Jack says it didn't have to be that way, Sawyer asks Jack what he screwed up so badly the first time around that he's willing to set off a nuke to start over. Jack says three years ago, Locke told him everything was happening for a reason. He drank the Kool-Aid; he served destiny. Sawyer doesn't speak destiny and he wants to know what Jack's real motive is. "What do you want, Jack?" Jack says, "I had her. I had her, and I lost her." When Sawyer realizes Jack's talking about Kate he says, "Well damn, Doc, she's standing right on the other side of those trees. You want her back? Just go and ask her." Jack says it's too late and rises to leave, telling Sawyer his five minutes are up. Sawyer reminds Jack that if the psychotic Jack Daniels plan works, he and Kate won't even know one another and she'll be on her way to the big house. Thank you, Sawyer. I've been saying that for what feels like weeks. Jack's all, "If it was meant to be, it was meant to be." And so...I need a new paragraph for this mini-rant.
See, here's the thing. I don't speak destiny, either. Now, I'm a religious person myself -- a "true believer" if you will, although I get along just fine with science too. And I'm just not so married to any concept of predestination that denies we have free will. That's because we have FREE WILL. I mean, maybe I'll put a comma here, and an exclamation point here! and a semi-colon here; and there; and I realize now I'm setting myself up for an editor with a sense of humor, so please control yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. My point, Jack, is that free will was Daniel's whole point when he told you that you could be a variable rather than a constant, Jack. And so okay Jack, you're buying into the be-a-variable plan, but you're doing so with all this blather about destiny. If you're destined to be a variable how are you not a constant? It seems to me that if you were really destiny's bitch like you've deluded yourself into thinking you are, you wouldn't do anything -- at least not anything hard or challenging, because if something was meant to be, it would just be. Right Jack? Argggh. You're making me crazy here. And don't get me started on you laying this all at the feet of your love for Kate. I don't doubt your feelings, mind you, but you had all these other reasons -- decent ones even, like wanting to save all the lives of the people who have died since Oceanic 815 crashed on Craphole. Perhaps that should have been the argument you presented to Sawyer.