Many people watching "One of Them," were struck by the appearance of the U.S. spook (named "Joe Inman" by IMDB) in Sayid's flashback (not Kate's step-dad, but the other guy). Many -- including myself -- wondered if he was the leader of the Others, the man known variously as "Mr. Friendly," "The Bearded Man," "Zeke" and "Captain Gorton."
He wasn't. (He was, in fact, the beautifully creepy Clancy Brown, of the dearly departed Carnivale.) But it sure looked like we were meant to think about him that way. The first shot featuring him lingered on the back of his neck -- a cinematic convention often intended to convey that the identity of the neck's owner is bound to be significant.
All this reminded me of a point I had already been considering. It seems to me there is a theme of imperfect twinning -- resemblances that are close enough to remind, and perhaps deliberately intended as such, but not perfect. In "The Long Con," we got our first glimpse of the LOST product-placement-extravaganza Bad Twin.
Maybe this isn't your typical "evil twin" reference, but rather a reference to imperfect twinning -- duplicates who fall short of the mark. (Interestingly, cloning experiments on cats produced two cats who were genetically identical but did not look alike.) The twins aren't necessarily morally bad -- they're "bad" copies -- in the sense that they are not perfect recreations of their originals.
Here are just a couple of the visual examples, as I see them:
Although I am using "bad" without value judgment above, there are also elements of moral and intellectual bad-twinning on LOST. Many of the family/formative relations we've seen on LOST have also been imperfect, reversed or even opposed reflections. Charlie and Liam, Eko and his brother (did he have a name?), Kate and Wayne, Jack and Christian, Jin and Mr. Paik (maybe), Sayid and his "hero" father (expect more on this to come), Sawyer and "the real Sawyer," and Wayne and Sawyer.
(As an aside, I now believe Wayne is the real Sawyer. And maybe James Ford's biological father as well. And Frank Sawyer anagrams to Wayne... Frarks. OK, maybe this needs work.)
Direct mirrors and mirror imagery show up in almost every episode. Strangely, when I thought about this, I couldn't remember a single appearance, but there are dozens. I find it curious actually that I couldn't remember any -- even when I saw one rewatching and episode not an hour ago.
Imperfect duplicates -- "Bad Twins" -- and broken symmetry go hand in hand, I think. Locke's missing kidney, his black and white eyes in Claire's dream, Sawyer's makeshift reading glasses, Marvin Candle's missing arm, the Australian woman's missing foot, etc.
Is the Island itself a bad reflection? An imperfect mirror in which the outer world is reflected in distorted fashion? Or does the Island reflect its inhabitants? Reflecting their lives, recreating their crisis moments over and over again... Even plucking the thoughts from their brains and reflecting them in external form. Or, alternatively, as I argued
here, the castaways are the mirrors -- imperfectly reflecting the Island's stimuli as distorted or unreal memories, memories loaded with interconnections that stem from impurities like the warped shapes in a funhouse mirror....
What is the "bad" in "Bad Twin"? As described above, or something else? Our castaways are pretty f---ing bad on their own rights. Do they
have evil twins, or are
they the evil twins?
Thoughts?
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However, I'm also lost without Lost-Media, so I'll wait for the film at 11...
Linear Mode
