Lost - All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues [Jack]

It has been important for Lost to elaborate the complexities of Jack’s relationship [or lack thereof] with his complicated father, at one point in his career a master surgeon, reputable and renowned. While the finer points had yet to be revealed, we did know that Jack’s father had boozed himself to oblivion, and that Father Great made it a mission to emasculate his promising, up-and-coming son. While Jack was trying to “stop a leak” [arterial mistake causing excessive blood loss] caused by his inebriated pops in the OR, a patient dies due to the “error”. Jack is left to either implicate his father for the error caused by too much drink at lunch or lie so that he can escape his own negligence. In fact pop has put together a report on what happened, conveniently leaving out the error, chalking it all up to severe injury prior to arrival in the OR. But Jack’s crisis of conscience won’t allow him to just brush this error aside…the patient was also pregnant. In doing the right thing, Jack pretty much costs his father his career and medical license. But Jack had to weigh in what might happen in the future if his father was allowed to operate under the influence again. That blood would be somewhat on his hands. To be of duty to your fellow man—the Hippocratic Oath—when tending to their health and well-being, Jack had to consider the ethics of it all. Seeing father belittle son in the OR only to try and coddle him later to save his own hide really speaks to the nature of such a brittle, fragile relationship. Matthew Fox is really damn good in “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues”. While Party of Five perhaps gave him the opportunity to cut his teeth, Lost certainly afforded him the great chance to show you how he went off the milk and to the meat as an actor. The anguish of having to rat out his father to the medical board—the sheer gravity, weight and pain just renting this young man in two—and wrought with guilt for not believing Claire when she told him of the near assault at night while sleeping, Jack is under a great deal of emotional turmoil. Since becoming stranded on the island, Jack has been given very little precious time to mourn for his father, relax and exhale, or even enjoy the lush environs he currently inhabits. He has been up against it right from the get-go, occasioned to the sit-down with Kate to peer out into the waves. To carry the burden of a father’s loss and never being able to make him proud, this is the inner ache Jack must drag about with him. When can poor Jack just be free? Can’t he just unpack the anchor?

So you see the back story involving the OR, Jack, and the father ruined by his own damning vice. Further understanding the torrent of ache and distress undermining Jack, with Kate as his guide (she surprises Locke with a spotted trail, as they learn of two different trails while searching for Claire and Charlie), they eventually locate Charlie, lynched on a large tree, blindfolded. Not breathing (and how long Charlie was hanging by his neck is undetermined), Charlie appears to be dead. Jack won’t give up, though, pounding on his chest with continued mouth-to-mouth. As Kate (who cut him down after ascending up the tree) turns away in tears, feeling helpless, Jack simply won’t accept what appeared to be out of his control, persisting in pounding on Charlie’s chest until he resuscitated. Charlie doesn’t know much, but he does inform Jack that there is more than just Ethan…but where Claire is, Charlie doesn’t know.

Jack is once again the hero. Kate once again sees him save the day. The two of them once again persevere another scare. But what lies ahead could not be so easy to defy.