Rewatching LOST: 1.05 “White Rabbit”

Jack‘s de facto leadership of the survivors finally catches up with him in the form of exhaustion and images of his father on the island — which may or may not be hallucinations. Meanwhile, we learn what Jack was doing in Australia before the crash of Oceanic 815.

• Charlie spots a survivor named Joanna swimming too far out in the ocean, and tells Jack. Jack swims out to find her, and comes across Boone instead, who went after her but is now unable to keep swimming. Jack’s forced to take Boone all the way back to the beach before returning to the water to try and retrieve the drowning woman. He’s ultimately unsuccessful at reaching the woman before she drowns, and Boone later blames himself. Jake also blames himself, though unlike Boone, he’s exhausted and suffering from lack of sleep, because everyone keeps coming to him whenever there’s a problem. The next problem to come up is a shortage of drinkable water. Jack grows weary of the leadership position he’s been thrust into, and when Boone comes to him, angry and questioning why Jack didn’t leave him in the water to go save Joanna, Jack has no patience for the young man’s guilt.
• Jack spots the suited man again, who we learn is his father, this time standing partly in the ocean. A few hours later, Jack spots him again in the jungle, but this time he takes off running through the camp to chase after his dad. He comes face-to-face with his father, and is stunned to his core. But he keeps up the pursuit, following his father deeper and deeper into the jungle. At one point, he nearly catches him, but instead winds up dangling from a cliff after taking a nasty tumble down a hill. Locke comes to his rescue, pulling him back up over the edge. Later, Locke offers Jack advice on being the leader the others need him to be. Jack admits to chasing someone through the jungle who isn’t really there, but Locke suggests that the island is special, and everything that’s happening on the island is happening for a reason. Locke tells Jack that he looked into the eye of the island, and what he saw was beautiful. He leaves Jack alone to finish what he’s started.
• Late at night, Jack spots his father one last time and follows him into a cave, where there’s a small waterfall flowing with fresh water. Nearby, he finds cargo from the plane that wound up here during the crash — including the coffin his father was in, on the plane. Jack opens the coffin only to find it empty. His father’s body is gone. Tired and angry, Jack destroys the coffin in a cathartic fit of rage.
• Sun and Jin argue over how best to address their status — or lack thereof — among the survivors. Sun wants to try harder to communicate and integrate into the group, but Jin doesn’t think they need anyone’s help.
• Shannon asks Sawyer for bug repellent to keep off sand fleas, which have begun biting her skin. But when he flirts with her after she asks what he wants in return, she returns the bug spray without using it.
• Claire passes out from heat exhaustion, but when the others try to get her some needed water, they find that the remaining stores have been stolen. Locke volunteers to go into the jungle to look for a fresh water supply, while Kate and Sayid stay behind at camp to try and maintain order. Later, Sun and Jin offer a bottle of water to Claire, leading Kate and Sayid to Sawyer as their source. Kate follows him into the jungle to a private stash he’s buried, but there’s no water in it. Sawyer traded Jin the last of his water for a fish. He doesn’t have the water supply. He tosses Kate Marshall Mars’ badge as she leaves, calling her “the new sheriff in town.”
• Claire and Charlie grow closer as he cares for her while the others search for the water supply.
• That night, Boone turns up at Claire’s side with the missing water stores. Charlie catches him in the act and identifies him the thief who stole the last of the water. Boone tries explaining to everyone that he did it because Jack was gone and no one was there to ensure the water was kept safe. He had to wait for the right moment to offer some to Claire because he knew no one would understand why he took the water. As Charlie and Boone are about to get into a fight, Jack returns to camp and breaks it up. He makes an impassioned speech about how rescue has not come after nearly a week, and it’s time that the survivors start working together to try to create a life for themselves here rather than keep waiting to be rescued. “If we can’t live together, we’re going to die alone,” he proclaims. The remaining water stores are split among the survivors, with Jack promising to take a group for more at the caves, at first light. During a quiet moment alone, Jack reveals to Kate that his father died in Sydney just days before the crash.

• Charlie either doesn’t know how to swim, or was too frightened by the situation to admit that he does.
• Joanna, the woman who died in the ocean, wasn’t supposed to be on Oceanic 815. She got an ear infection after diving in Australia, was grounded for two days, and wound up on Oceanic 815 by happenstance.
• There are now only 46 survivors.
• Kate is a Gemini, putting her birthday between May 22nd and June 21st.
• Claire believes in astrology.
• Jack’s father, Christian Shephard, is the man he’s been seeing on the island. He was a surgeon like Jack, and Chief of Surgery to boot. He was also an alcoholic.
• As a young boy, Jack was beaten up at school while trying to defend a friend from bullies. His father chided him that evening for wanting to be a hero too much, for caring about others instead of compartmentalizing his feelings, a trait his father believed was necessary for anyone who makes tough decisions.
• Not long before the crash of Oceanic 815, Jack’s father took off to Australia on a sudden trip. Jack’s mother asked him to go get his father and bring him back, but Jack refused at first because of something that happened between them two months prior. But his mother wouldn’t hear of it, blaming Jack for something he did that caused the rift between them. She used his guilt of that incident to coax him into retrieving his father from Australia. This is how Jack wound up on Oceanic 815.
• In Australia, Jack discovered that his father died from a heart attack, brought on by his severe alcoholism. He identified the body in the morgue. At the Australia airport, Jack pleaded with a woman at the check-in counter to accept his father’s coffin and body onto the plane. She refused at first because Jack was lacking the proper paperwork, but after his emotional appeal, she finally relented and allowed it.

• The man Jack chased was his deceased father, Christian Shephard.
  Question: Who is the suited man Jack spotted and tried to chase? 1.04

• Who or what exactly is Christian Shephard on the island, when he is known to be dead?
• Why was Christian in Australia when he died?
• What happened between Jack and Christian that drove a wedge between them two months ago, and ultimately caused Christian to run off to Australia?
  Answered in 1.11.
• Where is Christian’s body? Why wasn’t it in the coffin?

• “White Rabbit” is the first Jack-centric episode of the series.
• This is the third episode of the series to begin with a close-up on a single eye opening.
• This is the first episode where a main character interacts on the island with someone who is dead. In this case, it was Jack and his deceased father.
• Joanna is the second among the original 48 survivors of Oceanic 815′s midsection to die. The first was U.S. Marshall Edward Mars.
• Last episode, we saw Sawyer’s first act of kindness on the island. It was the first sign we were given that he’s not uncaring, that there’s more beneath his gruff exterior than one might suspect. In “White Rabbit,” when he tried negotiating with Shannon for her bug spray, I got the feeling that he intended to just give it to her — until she brought out the attitude, at which point he decided to have some fun teasing her.

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