Boone & Claire

Today's pairing is two original main cast Losties (well, technically one was listed as a guest star in the Pilot, but she's considered a Season 1 main cast member) who really didn't have a lot of interactions until one big episode, where they became big symbolic counterpoints to each other: Boone Carlyle and Claire Littleton. As two of the original Losties who were among the young, cute group, early speculation would have had a point in guessing that they might eventually have been written as having some sort of romantic geometry going on (Boone would have been a nice counterpoint to Charlie), but Boone was more interested in his (step) sister, and that big bald stud, John Locke. Also, Claire's Aussie accent doesn't wrap around "Boone" quite as well as "Cholly."

Boone and Claire are both on the beach following the crash of Flight 815, but Boone is too busy running around asking for pens (for Rose) to apply any of his supposed lifeguard medical emergency expertise to Claire, so the job of helping her falls to the even less capable hands of Hurley. Given his knack at bungling things, though, if Boone had been watching out for Claire in those early moments, she probably would have gotten smooshed by something, or blown up, thus making sure she'd forever stay a guest star.

The next time Boone and Claire interact a little is when she organizes the memorial for the dead passengers, along with Hurley. Soon after, Boone gave Claire one of the bottle waters he had stolen. Again, this is a case of Boone trying to help, but bungling it and making things worse. Yay Boone.

Boone's next couple of connections to Claire all involve that whole Ethan thing. He volunteers to help look for Claire when she and Charlie are abducted, and not long into the wild, Locke suggests that he and Boone split up from Jack and Kate, which started Boone's road to being Locke's little lapdog, as they stumbled upon the Hatch later that night. It was while on one of their little adventures in the jungle (looking for Vincent) that Boone and Locke came upon Claire, after she escaped from Ethan and the Staff station. What a coincidence that Vincent basically led them right to her. Or rather, that totally wasn't a coincidence, I'd say. Claire's return led the Losties to "circle the wagons", and Boone volunteered in his best intentional way, but like the goof that he was, he fell asleep, and was awoken by the trap closest to him, suggesting that Ethan probably walked right by him after killing Steve*.

And then, (nearly) finally, the story lines of Boone and Claire came together in "Do No Harm", following Boone's fall in Yemi's Beechcraft, and Locke dropping him off with Jack. The Beechcraft would also have later impact on Claire's life, when Charlie (with help from Sayid) discovered the wonders of breaking Virgin Mary statues. As Boone laid there by the caves, dying, baby Aaron decided that would be a great day to make his entrance, since it would nicely keep the Island's population balanced (not counting the dozens of people who died in the next couple of months, following). Because Boone required Jack's attention, the good doctor was not able to attend to Claire's birthing, which allowed Kate, but more hilariously, Jin and Charlie, to all have much larger roles in Aaron's birth than they probably would have otherwise. And then Boone died.

Boone and Claire were destined to have one more scene together, sort of. After the Swan station blew up, crazy old Locke decided to build a sweat lodge and ingest some of that psychedelic paste he had put on Boone's head. Boone appeared as a vision, and took Locke back to the Oceanic terminal in Sydney, and said that someone there needed Locke's help (it was Eko). The first people Locke sees are Charlie, Claire and Aaron, who seem like a perfectly happy little family. Boone says, "Not them. They'll be fine... for a while." Which, of course, was a reference to Charlie dying later in that season.

Curiously, the story may not be totally over for Boone and Claire. Like everyone who dies on the Island, Boone switched from being a Lostie to being a Ghostie. And the Ghosties seem to be connected to Jacob's cabin, and that's where Claire was last seen on the Island, and then she herself became a vision to Kate, warning her not to bring "him" back to the Island (which probably meant Aaron, but she might have meant Locke). Anyway, since they are both in that sort of ghostie state, it seems possible that maybe Boone and Claire might actually end up seeing each other, some day. If Ghosties can fall into peril, needing an incompetent hero type to bungle his way through a rescue.

*Dude, that was Scott.

Alex & Sawyer

This entry marks the first (of what will surely be many) pairing that someone, somewhere, out there has seen fit to address via the wonderful world of "slash fanfic", which for those new to the term, is fiction written by fans where they imagine romance (or more) between two characters on a TV show, usually between characters who don't actually have such a relationship, officially. I was actually a bit surprised that I couldn't find any slash fic for Locke and Sun, and inversely surprised that there *is* slash fic for today's Losties: James "Sawyer" Ford and Alexandra "Alex" Linus-Rousseau.

Sawyer needs no introduction, but Alex, perhaps does. Born on the Island to everyone's favorite crazy French chick, Danielle Rousseau, soon after her birth, Benjamin Linus and the Others abducted baby Alex, and Ben raised her as his daughter, apparently quite lovingly and fairly middle class. Alex grew up in something approximating a normal world, and sat around her backyard on tranquil nights with her boyfriend, Karl, making up silly names for stars. But as Alex and Karl hit their teen years and hormones kicked in, Ben became extremely proprietal about Alex, and the possibility that she might die from carrying a little Karl, Jr. , and so he threw Karl in a cage.

Alex and Sawyer first met at the end of season 2, when Jack, Kate and Sawyer were taken hostage by the Others at the Pala Ferry. Alex took bondage duties over Kate, but that's the staging for a whole other "Tales of Two Losties" entry that I'm not doing today. Sawyer ended up in that cage opposite Karl, which then became Kate's cage, after Karl tried to escape, landing himself in Room 23. A few days later, while Kate and Sawyer were doing their whole break rocking thing at the quarry/runway, Alex tried to stage a little ambush, attacking the assorted Others with a slingshot, which would earn her a Sawyer nickname of Slingshot Sally. Other Sawyerisms for Alex include Sheena (of the Jungle), Underdog and Lollipop. Alex warned Kate that she shouldn't trust the Others, as they were going to "kill your boyfriend just like they killed mine." Ah, Alex thought Kate and Sawyer were officially girlfriend and boyfriend. How cute. If she only knew.

The next day, while her dad was just, you know, having major spinal surgery, Alex helped Kate and Sawyer escape, with the agreement that they would help her rescue Karl as well. Using the old "Wookie Prisoner" gag (with Sawyer being the Wookie), the trio made their way into the building that Room 23 is in, and found Karl totally all zonked out. Curiously, Sawyer was also momentarily entranced, although Alex and Kate seemed not fazed at all. Was there something about the brain washing movie that was especially tuned against males, or was Sawyer easily entranced because he had actually already been to Room 23? Ah, yet another mystery, probably never to be officially addressed. Alas. Anyway, Alex sent Karl off with Kate and Sawyer, and she stayed behind to face the consequences of her big adventure.

The following occurred in what was probably the worst episode of season 3, "Stranger in a Strange Land", so you are excused if you didn't get to the end to see this, but back on the main island, Sawyer and Karl had a little male bonding session, during which Karl talked about his relationship with Alex. But... that's all meat for the eventual Karl/Sawyer entry, so I won't get into details. Sawyer tells Karl that if he loves Alex so much, he should go back and rescue her, but Karl says that if he goes back, they'll kill him for sure this time. And then go play some touch football on the Quad.

The Alex/Sawyer story more or less ends here. Alex, Karl and Rousseau eventually join the Losties, and go with Locke's group (with Sawyer) in season 4, and they all live in a kind of domestic bliss in New Otherton for a while, but there isn't really any Alex/Sawyer interaction. Until... Keamy blows Alex's brains out in "The Shape of Things to Come." Sawyer is there as Ben sees Alex die, and since he and Ben are not exactly best buddies, his reaction to it is that he argues that since Keamy's Krew are obviously bad asses, that's all the more reason to turn Ben over to them. Which, of course, they don't. It would have been nice to see a little remorse from Sawyer about the death of the girl who probably saved his life, but hey, season 4 was short, fast, and the story telling was sometimes a bit... economical.

Locke & Sun

For my first post in this new blog series, I've picked two Losties who have been main cast members from the beginning, are still on the show, and yet, are almost mysteriously disconnected: John Locke and Sun-Hwa Kwon.

LOST does a great job of finding ways to bring each of the 15+ main cast members together, sometimes even though the two seem so unrelated. That brilliant writing is what inspired me to start this blog. They do this through the various "A-Team missions" that take Losties out into the jungle, or through little dramas on the beach, or through philosophical debates and struggles, or just moments of comic relief.

Locke and Sun, however, are curiously detached from each other. One big reason is that Locke is very much a "mission" character, and Sun herself has gone on very few of these missions, and when she did, they didn't involve Locke. Some of Sun's rare adventures include going with Jin and Sayid on the sailboat to check out the Others, and going to the Staff station with Juliet to check on her baby. No Locke involved with any of those.

Throughout the show's first four seasons, it's a challenge even to find a scene where Locke and Sun are in the same shot together, much less having any interaction. In season 2, in "...and Found" (Jin/Sun-centric), we find the only scene that Locke and Sun share. Sun is tearing up her garden, looking for her lost wedding ring, and Locke drops in for a chat. Locke remarks that sometimes he wishes he had a garden to rip apart, and Sun notes that she doesn't think she's ever seen him angry. Locke says that he used to get angry and frustrated any more, but now he's not LOST. Sun asks how he did that, and Locke replies, "Same way anything lost gets found, I stopped looking." End scene.

And that is pretty much it for direct interaction between Locke and Sun. In the season 1 finale, there is however a very interesting bit of dialogue between Sun, Shannon and Claire that suggests in the big scheme, she has something in common with Locke, when she asks Shannon if they are all on the Island because they're being punished, and Shannon asks who would be punishing them. Sun's response is "Fate", which obviously is a red flag keyword in the John Locke glossary.

And yet, when the biggest division of Losties finally happens in the season 4 premiere, Sun (and Jin) doesn't follow Locke, she stays with Jack's camp. Sun does question the situation, talking to Jack about Locke in "Eggtown", she wonders why, if Locke was wrong about the Freighter Folk, why Kate went with Locke. Touche, Jack!

In the flash forwards, we learn that Jack and her father are the two men that Sun blames for Jin's (supposed) death, but we don't know at that point what she thinks of John Locke. Under the name of Jeremy Bentham, Locke dies while in Los Angeles, delivering his message to Jack, Hurley (and probably Kate), but we don't know if he had gotten to Korea yet to talk to Sun. So, we have no idea what form their future relationship might be: friendly or adversarial.

LOST is two thirds through its story arc as of this writing, but I've got to think that the current lack of interaction is just a set up for Locke/Sun storytelling yet to come. In Island time, Sun is obviously no longer there, but in the future story line, I suspect we will eventually see some sort of interaction between Locke and Sun (via a flashback that shows "Jeremy Bentham" contacting her before he came to Los Angeles, most likely). Whether Sun is pro or anti Locke, I can't guess, but I suspect that like Hurley and Locke, she may have since come to regret siding with Jack.

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Footnote: Curiously, in an interview about halfway through season 4, Yunjin Kim revealed that if she had her pick of which character she'd like to play, she chose... JOHN LOCKE. Provided she was Caucasian and Male, of course.

Welcome to Tales of Two Losties !

Welcome to my new blog, Tale of Two Losties !

The goal of ToTL will be to publish essays on an interesting subject that I think is currently missing in the big world of LOST fandom: discussing the relationships of the dozens of characters, through the course of the show.

From romantic "ships" to philosophical pairings to friendships, I will eventually attempt to cover every possible connection that each major character (and some not so major) has to every other character. As a new blog, I will be starting with some of the "smaller" relationships, and over time work my way up to the biggies, but in a way I think you'll find that some of the stranger pairings actually offer up some of the most interesting things worth discussing. But don't worry, shippers, eventually I'll get to your favorite geometric shapes too.

Through Tales of Two Losties, I'll be presenting a history of the relationship to date (as of this writing, the end of season 4), pointing out important scenes and dialogue, and also attempt to forecast where they might be going in seasons 5 and 6. Then, in the future, as seasons 5 and 6 air, I will also eventually go back in some cases, to update them with the new information we find out.

It's a huge project, as I've already identified 200+ such relationships that seem ripe for discussion, but that just makes it seem all the more worth discussing.

I look forward to seeing what visitors to the blog think of each pairing of Losties !