Dec 24 2008
Daddy issues on crack, and untangling Jack’s flash forward story
In the “Course of the Future” bonus feature, Damon Lindelof, one of the producer/writers, describes the flash forwards. He says that they think of the flash fowards
“… as being flashbacks on crack. Jack used to be a doctor with sort of daddy issues before, now he’s a doctor again, but the daddy issues are on crack.”
In the flashbacks shown in the feature in chronological order, we see Jack speaking at his father’s funeral, meeting Claire’s mother, going to see Hurley, testifying at Kate’s trial, not wanting to see Aaron, then changing his mind and moving in with Kate and Aaron, going to see Hurley again … and then the story turns spooky (I mean spooky even by LOST standards):
Jack is in the hospital, climbing on a counter to shut off a beeping smoke alarm, when he hears a voice call his name. It’s his father, sitting on a couch at the end of the corridor! The vision, if that’s what it is, disappears when another doctor comes into the room. But Jack is shaken, and he asks the doctor to write him a prescription for something to help him sleep – and that’s the beginning of Jack’s slide down into decrepitude.
He drinks, he swallows pills, he fights with Kate, who is doing some unspecified favor for Sawyer. He moves out. Next time we see him, he’s got the big bushy beard — and this is where we came in, at the end of Season 3 — and he’s on an airplane, hoping it will crash. He learns Jeremy Bentham has died. He’s about to jump off a bridge when he hears the cries of car crash victims calling for help. He goes to “Bentham’s” funeral. And then there’s another spooky daddy-issues-on-crack scene:
Jack is in the hospital, being grilled by a fellow doctor, who asks him how much he had to drink. Jack replies,
“I tell you what. You do this. You get my father down here. Get him down here right now, and if I’m drunker than he is, you can fire me.”
What does this mean? When I first saw this scene, I was mystified. And this is the one scene where seeing it as part of a linear sequence didn’t help make things any clearer. I still have all the same questions. Is Jack being sarcastic? Or does he really think his father is upstairs? If so, IS his father upstairs? Is Christian now un-dead? Or is Jack deluded?
The flash forwards continue with Jack begging Kate to see him. They meet outside the airport fence. Then Jack returns to the funeral parlor, opens the coffin, and gets a surprise visit from Ben who tells him they all have to go back together. During this scene, the camera coyly stays away from the inside of the coffin, but it finally lets us have a peek – and that’s when we see Locke.
And that’s it. The last scene in the flash-forward bonus feature turns out to be the same as the last scene in the finale of Season 4. Now we know that’s the furthest point in the future we have seen so far.
