Rewatching LOST: 1.14 “Special”

While Charlie wrestles with the prospect of reading Claire’s diary, Michael engages in a battle of wills against his son Walt, ultimately leading to both of them falling into mortal danger.

• Michael searches the jungle for Walt when he disappears from the caves. Walt is out with Locke and Boone, learning to throw knives. He doesn’t do well at first, but when Locke instructs him to concentrate and see his target in his mind’s eye, he nails it dead on. Michael finds them and sends Walt back to the caves before launching into an angry tired against Locke, accusing him of playing Walt against him. Things come to blows when Boone steps in and tries to protect Locke. Locke sternly tells Michael what he’s observed of Walt, explaining that Walt “should be allowed to reach his potential,” because he’s “different.”
• That night, Sun asks Michael if he’s okay while he sits and watches Walt sleep. He talks about missing Walt’s entire childhood, and declares that Walt can’t be allowed to grow up here, on the island.
• Sayid and Shannon report to Jack about their progress interpreting Danielle’s maps. Sayid believed at first that Danielle was trying to determine the exact location of the island, but when he overlaid the maps on top of one another, he realized she was mapping a location on the island — possibly the transmitter sending out her distress call. Michael finds them discussing the island’s mysteries and, his frustrations with the island’s dangers building, he suggests they concentrate less on figuring out the island and more on getting off of it. He announces a plan to build a raft. When the other three are less than enthusiastic about his chances of succeeding, he tells them he’s doing it with or without help from anyone else.
• Walt reads from his Spanish comic book again — the same one he found in “Pilot, Part 2.” And again, his attention is drawn to the picture of the polar bear. Michael finds him and recruits his help in building the raft. Later, the two of them locate a pile of wreckage in the jungle and start sorting through it for useable materials. Walt spots Boone and Locke on their way back to the caves, and breaks away to follow them. There, Locke sends Walt away, saying that he intends to abide by Michael’s intentions and keep his distance, and that Walt needs to show his father respect. But Michael finds the two of them talking and is livid that both of them appear to have disregarded his wishes. Michael threatens to kill Locke if he catches him with Walt again, and after Locke walks away, Walt rants that Michael doesn’t even care about him, having shown up in his life only after Walt’s mom died. Michael throws Walt’s comic book into a fire and orders Walt to stay put at the caves.
• Charlie goes on a hunt for Claire’s bags, which he finds on the beach because Kate retrieved them from the caves and brought there. Charlie tells her he’s looking for Claire’s diary, to prevent anyone from reading it. But it isn’t with her things. As they suspect, Sawyer has it, and after Sawyer taunts Charlie about its contents, Charlie hits him and takes the diary from him. Later, back at the caves, Charlie reneges on his stated intentions of not reading Claire’s diary, unable to contain his curiosity.
• When Locke and Boone return to the caves from one of their “hunts” in the jungle, Shannon confronts her brother again about their mysterious lack of boar. She tries to goad him, but finds that he’s unresponsive to her usual charms — thanks to the events of the last episode (“Hearts and Minds”).
• Hurley reports to Michael that Walt’s disappeared from the caves, despite Michael’s stringent instructions not to go anywhere. Michael immediately confronts Locke, but Walt isn’t there, and Locke tells him the truth about trying to respect Michael’s wishes and stay away from Walt. Michael’s surprised, but accepts Locke’s offer to help search for Walt.
• Out alone in the jungle with his dog Vincent, Walt is tracked and chased by something that turns out to be a polar bear. Walt takes shelter inside a thick cluster of trees, and Locke and Michael find him there with the polar bear trying violently to get in. Michael and Locke make a daring rescue, and Michael manages to injure the bear with one of Locke’s knives. The bear runs away into the jungle, and Michael and Walt are reunited, and Michael and Locke manage to come to an amicable understanding, as well.
• Late that night, Michael gives Walt the wooden box full of his letters and cards, and the two of them finally manage to make a father/son connection, beginning the foundations of a real relationship.
• That same night, Charlie reads through Claire’s diary, and comes to a page where she’d written about how much she liked Charlie for being sweet and making her feel safe. But then he’s alarmed at what he reads next, and goes to show Jack and Sayid, who are still poring over Danielle’s maps. The passage talks about a weird dream Claire had repeatedly on the island, where she was at a black rock and couldn’t get away from it. Sayid recognizes the phrase “black rock” as something Danielle said to him, and wonders if it could be the location Danielle was drawing on her map. Charlie takes it a step further, suggesting that it could be where Claire was taken.
• Vincent ran off again during the polar bear attack on Walt, so Locke and Boone go out into the jungle at night to search for him, Locke again using his homemade dog whistle. But they attract something else instead: Claire, who comes stumbling through the foliage, still pregnant, and completely disoriented.

• Before Walt was born, Michael was an artist living with his pregnant girlfriend, Susan Lloyd. She was a law student still in school, so Michael made plans to temporarily work in construction until she graduated. But Susan refused to marry him repeatedly, despite his desire to do so. Sometime into Walt’s first year, Susan announced to Michael that she’d received a job offer from a law firm in Amsterdam, and she’d accepted. Citing the “problems” the two of them had had in recent months, she said she still loved him but it was her dream to work in international law. Michael, meanwhile, was out of work with the construction business slowing down, so since the two of them weren’t married and she was the only one with steady income, Susan knew she had the upper hand where Walt was concerned. Deeply in love with his son, Michael was devastated. When Walt was 21 months old, Michael called overseas to Susan and learned that she was seeing someone — the same man who gave her the job in Amsterdam, Brian Porter. Furious, Michael told her he was coming to Amsterdam to get Walt, but was promptly hit by a car after hanging up the pay phone. Three months later, in the hospital, Michael was visited by Susan, who explained that she heard about his accident from a friend. To Michael’s disappointment, she didn’t bring Walt on the trip. Michael was looking at a year of physical therapy ahead, after which he was expected to make a full recovery. Susan told him she was going to take care of all of Michael’s medical bills — and that she and Brian were getting married. The two of them were moving to Italy to take over a new branch of their law firm, and Brian wanted to adopt Walt. Many years later, when Walt was the age we know him at on the island, he moved with his mother and adopted father to Australia — once again, prompted by their work in international law. As Susan showed her first signs of illness, Walt asked for help with his homework, studying a local variety of bird. But when neither of his parents responded to his repeated requests for help, a bird suddenly slammed into a nearby window and was killed. Brian was alarmed to note that it was the very same kind of bird that Walt was studying. The day after Susan died, which was only a week after the incident with the bird, Brian traveled to the U.S. to visit Michael. He explained that Susan had a blood disorder, and died suddenly. Brian revealed that he only adopted Walt because Susan wanted him to, and now he wanted to give Walt to Michael. Michael protested angrily at Brian’s selfishness, but Brian explained that “sometimes when [Walt] is around… things happen. He’s different somehow.” Brian provided plane tickets to allow Michael to go to Australia and retrieve Walt, so he agreed. In Australia, Michael was greeted by Walt’s nanny, who gave him a wooden box containing every letter Michael had ever written to his son — letters Walt had never been given by his parents. When he and Walt finally came face-to-face after so many years apart, Walt had no idea who he was, and didn’t want to leave his home with a man he considered a stranger. Michael lied to Walt about Brian, saying that Brian wanted to keep Walt but that Michael had custody and he was going to take Walt home with him.
• Walt is named after his grandfather, Michael’s dad.

• Walt spent most of his life away from Michael and knew almost nothing of his real dad. He was returned to Michael’s custody upon the sudden death of his mother.
  Question: Why do Michael and Walt not get along? 1.02
• Michael’s small wooden box contains every letter he’d ever written to Walt in the years they were apart. Those letters were kept from Walt by his mother.
  Question: What’s inside Michael’s small wooden box? 1.13

• What does Danielle’s map point to on the island?
• How exactly is Walt “different somehow”? Does he, as it appears, subconsciously cause things to happen?
• Did Walt subconsciously cause the polar bear to attack him?

• “Special” is the first Michael-centric episode of the series.
• This is the seventh episode of the series to begin with a close-up on a single eye opening.
• Sheesh, it’s no wonder Boone was the first character to get killed off the show — it seems like he got beaten up in just about every episode prior to his death! He’d been hit by so many characters (Michael can be added to the list thanks to this ep) that the writers were practically telegraphing it to us that his days were numbered.
• Susan Lloyd is just a great big jerk. I think the writers did what they could to try and make her selfish motivations at least understandable, with one “unintended circumstance” after another, but Harold Perrineau’s performance was just too emotional and sympathetic. Michael was such a heartbroken father, powerless to prevent the son he adored from being taken away, and there’s just no relatable way of making the person responsible for that tragedy come across as someone we’re willing to care about. That last reveal that she’d kept Michael’s letters from Walt was the final nail in the coffin. Goodbye, selfish Susan. Good riddance!
• It’s nice to get to see Dominic Monaghan stretch his comedic muscles a bit after all the dark things Charlie’s been through the last few weeks. It’s worth noting that the amusing scene where he wrestles with whether or not to read Claire’s diary was shown as a single take.
• I still wonder why we’ve never been given any kind of closure or explanation on the issue of Walt’s special nature. As Season 6 approaches, it feels as though the writers just lost interest in this plot thread, and there’s no indication that it will ever be resolved.

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