And so it went that during a late night at the hospital, Jack was lured by the bleatings of a malfunctioning fire alarm to the lobby, where his father was waiting. ''Jack,'' he said sharply, causing his son to almost jump out of his tattooed skin. Actually, it played more like the instinctive flinch of a battered dog, reacting to his master's raised hand. Christian quickly vanished after that, but it was enough to make an impact on Jack. He asked a colleague for some anti-anxiety meds, then went home and washed the pills down with beer. Jack's transformation into a pill-popping, booze-guzzling, airplane-crash-yearning, bridge-jumping-wannabe grizzly bear had begun.
Sealing the deal was his mounting paranoia that Kate was pulling a Sarah and stepping out on him. And as it turned out, Kate did have another man on her mind: Apparently, she had been secretly fulfilling a promise she made to Sawyer before leaving the Island. (My guess: The shaggy con man asked her to look in on Clementine, the daughter he had with con gal Cassidy.) Furious over learning he was still competing with Sawyer for Kate's mind, heart, and time, Jack raged: ''I'm the one who saved you!'' Does he actually love this woman, or does he view her as some reward for being a good boy? Connecting that back to Jack's statements to his fellow castaways earlier in this episode (''I've gotten us this far. I said I was gonna get us off the Island, all of us. I promised that I would '') and even further to the hurtful, defining comments of his father in ''White Rabbit'' (''Don't play the hero, Jack. You don't have what it takes''), and what you have is one really complicated guy whose savior complex not only is an expression of his damage but gets in the way of his own redemption. Jack might be a good man, but he's a control freak (see: insisting on observing and guiding his own surgery) who hates himself and will sabotage any chance at happiness that he gets (see: driving Kate away). For Jack, there will never be ''something nice back home'' — both literally and spiritually — until he gets over himself.
Early in the episode, a perplexed Rose made the observation that the Island is a place ''where people get better,'' not worse, which raises a question: Why did the Island allow Jack to get sick? If this question is indeed relevant — if the Island is truly a place that giveth and taketh away both sickness and health like some almighty, all-knowing God — my answer is this: The Island is punishing Jack for failing to learn the fundamental lessons it has been trying to teach him all along. The lesson? Let go of the past; stop trying to play the hero; cultivate the capacity to trust. I think Locke was dead wrong when he pushed Jack to become castaway commander in chief in ''White Rabbit,'' because it set him on a course that put him in profound conflict with what the Island wanted Jack to learn. Maybe that's why the Island is calling him back in the flash-forward future — to complete the finishing-school education that he flunked the first time.
NEXT: What about Juliet? And Claire? And Jin? And the Sox?
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