Rewatching LOST: 1.04 "Walkabout"

John Locke takes center stage in the classic, brilliantly-written and acted “Walkabout,” where we first learn about what makes the enigmatic “wilderness man” man tick.

• Vincent goes berserk in the night, waking everyone up, in reaction to a trio of wild boars that have invaded the camp. Later, Jack notes that the boars were trying to feed off of the dead bodies in the plane’s downed fuselage, and the survivors are going to have to burn the bodies in order to keep them from being eaten. He suggests it be done the following night at sundown, in case any search parties at sea or in the air might see the fire.
• Sayid busies himself the next day trying to rig the transceiver along with three homemade antennae to try and triangulate the source of the French woman’s signal. Kate volunteers to help him.
• When the survivors realize they’ve eaten all of the food from the plane, Locke steps in and suggests they hunt the boars for food. He’s located his own collection of hunting knives, which he checked onto the plane. Kate decides to go along, but her real motive is to place one of Sayid’s antennae. Michael also goes on the hunt, after asking Sun to watch Walt for him. Hours into the hunt, Michael gets hurt, but Locke refuses to give up the hunt, so Kate takes Michael back to camp without him.
• While on their way back to camp, Kate and Michael stop so she can climb a tree to attach the antenna Sayid gave her. While she’s in the tree, the two of them hear the monster moving nearby in the jungle, and she sees trees being moved around by it. She drops the antenna when she’s startled at the monster’s sounds (she later returns it to Sayid with an apology, and he vows to try to rebuild it). Not far away, Locke encounters the monster head-on, seeing it (though we do not) and being seen by it.
• Despite hunting alone, and his encounter with the monster, Locke succeeds in killing one of the younger boars, and returns to camp with it. Michael later congratulates Locke for his success, and asks if Locke managed to see the monster. Locke lies and says he didn’t.
• Some of the survivors want to hold a memorial service for those who died in the crash, and Claire asks Jack to do it, but he refuses. So Claire decides to do it herself. She and a group of survivors sort through the personal belongings from the plane to try and find out more about the ones who died, and how best to commemorate them (even Sawyer contributes, handing over some personal items he found while scavenging alone). That night, as the fuselage burns, Claire tells everything they were able to find out about the dead airplane passengers; mostly this info is comprised of insignificant details, because that’s all the information they could find.
• During her search, Claire turns up a small envelope with Sayid’s name on it, which she returns to him. It contains several photos of a woman that he looks at with great affection.
• Boone and Shannon argue about her unwillingness to help everyone else salvage the useful materials from the plane and forage for food. When he asserts that she couldn’t even catch a fish for herself, she proves him wrong by flirting with Charlie to coax him into catching a fish for her. (The two of them bond over their mutual lack of fishing skills.) When Charlie is finally successful and returns to Shannon with a fish, Boone informs him that Shannon used him. As the others gather for the memorial service, he retreats to a private place and takes some of his Heroine.
• Rose sits by herself on the beach for hours on end, refusing food or drink. At Boone’s suggestion, Jack talks to her. She’s missing her husband, Bernard, but refuses to entertain any notions that he might be dead. She won’t allow Bernard to be mentioned among the crash victims.
• After his chat with Rose, Jack twice spots a man in a suit and white shoes standing in the distance, alone on the edge of the jungle. The sight rattles him greatly, and the second time he attempts to chase the man. He later refuses to attend the memorial service, instead sitting alone on the beach near the water, lost in his own thoughts.

• There is a herd of wild boars on the island.
• Burying the dead on the island is not a good idea, according to Jack. The herd of boars will dig them up and eat them.
• There is a source of electricity somewhere on the island. It’s powering the French woman’s recorded S.O.S. transmission.
• Like most of the survivors, Sayid is anxious to get off of the island.
• Locke is a skilled hunter.
• Locke’s circumstances for being in Australia have been revealed: he was attempting to go on an authentic “walkabout” in the Outback, an experience he described as “a journey of spiritual renewal.” He was an office worker in a cubicle, where he enjoyed playing role-playing games as a form of escape. He’d been carrying on a “relationship” with a woman named Helen, who was really a party line listener that he paid to talk to. He tried to get her to come to Australia with him, believing that he was more than a client to her, but she refused and broke off contact with him. When he got to Australia, the company that he booked his “Outback adventure” with refused to take him on the trip — because he was in a wheelchair, and had been for four years. Despite this, Locke maintained his belief it was his destiny to go on the trip, but the Australian company didn’t budge. He was left with no choice but to fly back to L.A., on Oceanic 815.
• Kate is a vegetarian.
• Kate is agile and experienced at climbing things, such as the tree she quickly scaled in this episode.
• Michael only gained custody of Walt about one week ago, after Walt’s mother passed away. She lived in Sydney at the time.
• Hurley was taught to fish by his father. They would sometimes fish together off of the Santa Monica pier.
• Rose always held onto her husband’s wedding ring when the two of them flew, because Bernard’s fingers would swell up onboard airplanes. She still wears his ring on a chain around her neck. She also believes he’s still alive, even though he was in the missing tail section of the plane when it went down.
• Jack became a doctor because it is, as he put it, “a family business.”
• Sun has some proficiency at gardening.
• Locke has become the first person among the survivors to actually see the monster.

• For Locke, the island represents everything he’s been looking for his whole life. A sense of purpose, an adventure, a calling. And the island has somehow healed the paralysis that kept him confined to a wheel chair for four years.
  Question: Why is Locke so happy to be on stranded on this island when everyone else is desperate for rescue? 1.01
• Locke’s “miracle” was that he regained the use of his legs after crashing on the island.
  Question: What’s the supposed miracle that happened to Locke? 1.03

• Why is Sayid so eager to get off of the island? Is he trying to get back to the woman in the photos?
• Who is the suited man Jack spotted and tried to chase?
  Answered in 1.05.
• Why was he wearing a suit, and white shoes?
• How did Locke lose the use of his legs four years ago?
• How did Locke suddenly regain the use of his legs on the island?

• “Walkabout” is the first Locke-centric episode of the series.
• This is the second episode to begin with a close-up on a single eye opening.
• This is the first episode where the word “monster” is used to describe the thing in the jungle.
• There were several threes scattered throughout this episode. There were three boars that attacked the camp in the first scene. Sayid creates three antennae for his triangulation device. Three people — Locke, Kate, and Michael — go into the woods to hunt boar.
• This was also an episode where we learned a lot about various skills that the survivors possess. Locke is good at hunting, Kate’s a climber, Hurley can fish (though not very well without a pole and bait), Sun’s a gardener. Shannon can get men to do what she wants by using her charms — I suppose that qualifies as a skill, too.
• What I remember most about this episode, the first time it aired, is my reaction to the contrasting shots of Locke in his wheelchair, and Locke on the beach, waking up after the crash with full use of his legs. The music was also beautifully done in that moment, underscoring Locke’s transcendent experience at discovering he could walk again. My jaw on the floor while watching that moment play out, I distinctly remember thinking, “This just became my favorite TV show.” The episode was oh-so-clever at making sure Locke was sitting down in all of his flashbacks, but never showing his wheelchair until that final moment. The whole thing struck me as a caliber of wildly imaginative storytelling that’s all-too-rarely seen on network television.

Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 1 cast promotional image and Oceanic Airlines logo: American Broadcasting Company.