Lost: Season 1: Episode 19: Deus Ex Machnia

Released: 2005
Directed by: Jack Bender

This week, while spending the focus on sound and music and how it affects the narrative I tried to look at films that this happened but really, the best example is in TV. While that may seem a little odd since most TV shows use original music, a show like Lost is not in that catagory.

Let me start off by explaining the premise of Lost and the premise of episode 19, "Deus ex machnia". Lost is about, or at least in the first season of the show, is about 48 survivors of flight 815 that crashes onto a mysterious island. The show really focuses on 14 chracters out of the 48 including one of it's main characters, John Locke. Locke has a mysterious connection to the island as he had been paralyzed to a wheel chair for 4 years until the plane crashed on the island and he was magically able to walk again. For that reason, Locke feels as if he's destined to have come to the island and that everything happens for a reason. Locke, who has history as a tracker, enlists the help of a young 20 something Boone Carlyle when they find a hatch in the jungle. Locke becomes obsessed with finding out exactly what's inside and is also convinced that he's destined to get inside of it because he believes whatever is inside of the hatch will help him in his journey on the island.

When episode 19 begins, Boone becomes frustrated with Locke's ongoing attempts to open a hatch door that just won't open. Locke has a dream about him and Boone trying to open the hatch again when Locke's mother points to the sky to see a smaller freighter plane crashing to the island and a bloodied Boone repeating "Theresa falls up the staris, Theresa falls down the stairs." Convinced this is the island telling him how to open the hatch, Locke decides to find the plane with Boone (who comes along after Locke tells him of what Boone was saying in the dream and in fact it is something that happened when Boone was a child). However, Locke injures himself and for the first time since he came to the island, Locke has trouble walking. When they finally do get to the plane, Boone climbs up to a cliff and gets in to see it's nothing but statues of Mary with drugs hidden inside. The plane then tips over and crashes to the ground. Locke drags a bloodied Boone out. While all this is happening, we get flashbacks of Locke before he was paralyzed. He meets his real mother for the first time who directs him to his father. His dad cons Locke into giving him a kidney and then dissapears. As the episode ends, Locke brings Boone back to the island doctor, jack, and then runs off to the hatch. This coincides with Locke yelling behind his father's gate for him to come out and face him just as he learns that he has been conned. Locke pounds on the hatch door yelling at it saying he did everything he was told to do and wants to know why this isn't working when a light comes from the hatch window, giving Locke one last ray of hope that this is still his destiny.

The music on Lost is unlike most TV shows. Instead of using synthsizers or orignial music, Lost uses a symphony conducted by Michael Giacchino. All 14 characters have their own theme including Locke which is featured a lot in this episode. One really great element to the music of lost is the music themes of the dream Locke has. There's a very eery tone to it that goes great with the images of the plane crashing and a bloodied Boone repeating the same sentence over and over again. There's also a lighthearted tone to some of the music in the interactions between Boone and Locke. The two have a father/son relationship the grows throughout the season and really comes together well in this episode before Boone meets his doom. While Boone is climbing up the cliff we have a musical tone of danger. Boone could fall off any minute and while it's easy for us to see this visually, the music just enlarages it. When Boone reveals to Locke that all there is in the plane is heroin, we hear this tone of defeat. As if everyhting Locke had been going through was for nothing. There is also a tone of tragedy when Locke pulls Boone out of the plane. Not as if he's dead (Boone is alive and stays alive until the end of the next episode when he becomes the first main character casualty of the show) but as if he's going to. The greatest musical achievment of thsi episode is when we go back and forth between Locke showing up at his father's gate and banging on the hatch door at the end. The only words that I can describe the tone of this music is powerful. Terry O'Quinn portrays John Locke (and was awarded with an emmy for best supporting actor a year ago) and his facial expressions while at his father's gate is priceless. It is the face of a man who has been ripped of something. He trusted his father and this is what he gets for it. That along with him crying/yelling at the hatch door along with the powerful uplifting music really makes this scene stand out not only in the episode or the season, but really the series. Then the music suddenly fades away and as the light from the hatch flashes upward we have sort of an echoing tone of hope possibly restored. Lost's music is really an important part of the show and it shows very well in this episode.

-Christopher Bergeris