Lost Rewind - "The Moth"

Episode Review: You know, when this episode started, I groaned a little on the inside. In my mind, I remembered Charlie-centric episodes as always being some of the worst of the first few seasons of Lost (a thinking I stand by all the way up to the beautiful “Greatest Hits”, actually) – but in re-watching it, this episode isn’t half bad. Rather than being a simple “rock star with a drug habit”, it actually had a nice “circle of life” twist to it, with Charlie starting as the “clean brother”, Liam starting as the “druggie”, and then the two swapping roles over the course of the flashback. Even better, the on-Island action showed Charlie growing, taking a stand and attempting to kick the habit, brining the storyline full circle.

Like so many other characters, this one flashback seemingly told Charlie’s full backstory. Unfortunately, unlike the other characters on Lost, this really was all that there was worth telling about Charlie’s pre-Island life. Combined with his slipping back into drugs (which may have been realistic, but didn’t do a lot plot-wise), Charlie seemed to enter a rut after this episode. But for this one week, he’s the center of a pretty solid story of redemption.


Deeper Meaning Explanation: Another straightforward deeper meaning this week, with Locke spelling it out for the viewer. He shows Charlie a moth struggling to escape its cocoon, and explains that if he helped the moth escape, it would die because it wouldn’t be strong enough to survive. Likewise, if Locke were to take Charlie’s drugs away from him forcefully, he wouldn’t be strong enough to kick the habit. Instead, Locke makes Charlie ask for the drugs three times, giving him the free will to choose. Charlie is a moth.

Furthermore, the moth appears multiple times in this episode, eventually serving as a “hero”, leading Charlie out of the caves, which saves Jack. Similarly, Charlie – who always seemed to be worthless and “in the way” during the first few episodes of Season One – finally has his chance to be a hero. Moth Power!

Original Thoughts:

Original Deeper Meaning Guess: Moths are usually drawn towards light, which ultimately burns them (a la a "bug zapper"). I believe that tonight’s episode centers around Charlie (aka the Band Guy, the Druggie Guy, or the Hobbit Guy - not Charlie from Party of Five! His name on the show is Jack J ) Metaphorically, Charlie is a moth drawn to the light, which I think is fame and / or drugs. However, much like our flying insect friends, it ultimately will burn him and bring him down. This episode should give us insight into Charlie’s former fame and fall from grace, perhaps caused by the drug addiction to whatever that stuff in the baggie is (I apologize for not being "hip" to the drug culture).

• Pretty close, but it’s also pretty embarrassingly simplistic. It’s funny how much crazier the Deeper Meaning Guesses have gotten over the years. I also enjoy the reference to the confusion during the early days of Lost about characters’ names and the Party of Five reference. Before you mock me for knowing and loving it, I present to you the following – Party of Five featured both Jennifer Love Hewitt and Neve Campbell in their glory days. Enough said.

Original Episode Preview: Tonight’s episode has some sort of avalanche occur in the cave and Jack is buried in it. Will Jack die? Will this force everyone to move back to the beach? Is this the island warning them to stay away from that cave?

• Interesting thought about the “warning” of the Island about the caves, but it looks like that never panned out. Instead, the Survivors naturally and logically moved away from them with the discovery of the Swan Hatch.

New Thoughts

Kate. Two weeks in a row where I’m puzzled by Kate. She claims to pity Sawyer since he has no one to go back to off the Island. Yet she has less than no one, and is also on the run from the law. Likewise, when the big “split” occurs between the Cavers and the Beachers, Kate stays on the Beach, holding out hope for wanting to be rescued. Is she just going overboard with trying to keep up her alibi, or did the writers originally intend for her to actually have someone waiting for her back in the rest of the world?

Fate. I loved Sayid’s matter of fact logic in this episode when talking about the plane crash. When Kate comments on how lucky they were to survive, he replies “No one is lucky enough to have survived that crash”. It’s true. But as we’ve learned, there really wasn’t anything “magical” to the fact that our Survivors survived… it was the result of an accident by Desmond not pushing the 108 button. In the end, the only real explanation is fate.

Locke. Speaking of Sayid, this episode also featured the beginning of one of the most drawn out and least satisfying mysteries thus far on the show, when Sayid is knocked out while trying to triangulate the distress signal. We learn much later (38 whopping episodes – during “The Greater Good”) that Locke was the one responsible, with him giving a fairly lame excuse that trying to find something that said “it killed them, it killed them all” didn’t seem like a good idea.

Rather, it’s pretty clear that Locke was on Team Island from the start, ever since his encounter with Smokey in the third episode, and the number one mission of Team Island is to keep our Survivors from getting off the Island. Although they didn’t have any smart phone at this point, finding the radio tower would mean they could turn off the signal, opening up the possibility for outside communication (little do they know about the Looking Glass, but we digress).

More importantly, this storyline represents one of my big fears for Lost – this was something that could have been revealed much sooner, but was dragged out (for reasons unknown) to the point where the audience had totally stopped thinking about or caring about it. When the storyline was finally wrapped up, it didn’t have much power behind it. I just hope that other dangling storylines (like the skeletons in the caves) aren’t explained in a similar awkward way. There needs to be a reason to re-visit them, to refresh the audience’s memory, and then a logical explanation for their resolution.

There would be nothing worse than the final season of Lost featuring a number of these “quick and dirty” storyline wrap ups. I’m not saying I think it’s going to happen – just that’s it’s a potential danger.

Okay - that's all for this one.

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