Lost Favorites - Walkabout

Walkabout is my favorite episode of Lost, and while it lacks the structural
daring of The Constant, the epic scope of The Shape of Things to Come,
 or the insightful moral inquiry of One of Them, it more then makes up for it
 in it's devastating evocation of a life wasted and regained.
Walkabout was only the forth  episode it what then amounted to a entertaining
series which had it's share  of promise and a few great scenes like the JJ Abrams
directed pilot opening scene. But in Walkabout the creators revealed it's dramatic
ambitions to be far larger then those initial episodes would have led viewers to
believe.  While the show later managed to achieve  similar emotional gravitas as
 in the above mentioned works and others, none quite opened up the mystery and
potential of the island itself, or the possibility that all of it's current
 inhabitants were broken emotionally and in Lockes case physically.

It's the first John Locke episode, a character considered by many to be the series
finest (although Desmond and Ben have rights on that spot) one whose episodes would
 continue to portray a tragic spiral of missed moments and failed occasions(from
Lock down, The Man from Tallahassee to The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham to this
 season's The Substitute)  a life left unfulfilled even for the temporary reprieve
offered in those 4 months on the island. Locke is the shows most compelling symbol
of it's fate vs free will push and pull, and here the source of his own faith comes
not in the form of a pure WTF twist but a transcendent reveal of suffering,  grace
and the will to push forward to whatever destiny had laid out. while Terry O Quin
had certainly created an interesting character in those initial episodes, here he
gave great weight with each reveal as to his circumstance. Each flashback becomes
more devastating then the next, ending on inter-cutting of 3 moments in time where
director Jack Bender uses the Lost  flashback format to create scenes which chart
 the depths of human despair to the instance where a man and group decided to press
 on in the face of the unknown.

Of course an episode of Lost is ultimately as good as it's sub plots, and
the one involving the burning of  the plane wreckage complements the A story's
theme of rebirth/ starting over, the conversation with Rose and Jack which revolves
 largely around a characters need to be tied to her faith and not the grim realities
 and in a haunting touch Jack seeing the body of his deceased father Christian
 (although we don't know the significance for him at the time), all points which
underlying how far they may be from their real lives their damages
selves will always reflect the sad realities of who they were(and ultimately will be).

Walkabout in it's on island action charts the ambiguity of the mysterious
character of John Locke who is at once stoic and resourceful, yet other times
helpless and emotionally frustrated. When he comes face to face with the smoke
monster, Locke feels he has been graced with the true spirit  of the island and
in retrospect after the events of Season 5 this encounter becomes more sad  and
tragic. Locke was the islands greatest patsy, and the unknowing agent of what may turn
 out to be it's greatest threat, and while  throughout the series we had a powerful idea
 of how destructive his belief in his destiny could be, it was made compelling and
understandable  by this extraordinary glimpse into a middle aged man's temporary realization of self.