Just some stupid thing that I noticed and felt like posting...

Dominic Monaghan ("Charlie") played a guy named Jack in a movie "Insomniac's Nightmare", and Matthew Fox ("Jack") played a guy named Charlie in Party of Five.

And that's all I've got, other than Lost is totally owning me. I don't watch TV very much, and I showed up a little late to this party, but now I've got caught up on all the previous episodes and I'm definately going to be watching all the future ones. It's good to see this show isn't going to get uncermoniously dumped at midseason.

man, if that picture were just a little bigger... the rock is just to jack's right...

I think Jack decided not to be a doctor after he finished medical school or sometime during a residency program. That's what he did to piss his mom/dad off. All those years of schooling that they paid for went to waste.

I'm sorry to admit that this caused me confusion on a couple of occaisions this season. I have always refered to Matthew Fox as Charlie since his Party of Five stint (Haunted, for you wise-asses that are asking what has Charlie done since Party of Five!) Said in kind of a sympathetic voice as in..."Charlie, how could your life get any worse?!"

I think you may have confused the point even more by bringing Jack the Hobbit into this.

I could believe that -- not wanting to turn into his father.

That is the most logical explanation in these 20 pages of posts.

I was surprised that no one had even mentioned the possibility.

He had to at least go through some residency, unless he was lying when he told that story about cutting open that girl's spinal column. Maybe that was what caused him to quit though. Maybe after that he decided he "didn't have what it takes" and decided to quit.

that also fits in with the "clean slate" idea. he is starting over with this new group of people, as they perceive him to be a "real" doctor.

I think his father saw Jack helping a little old lady across the street and took off, distraught that his son didn't Have What It Takes.

The tone of the mom seemed accusatory. Like Jack actively DID something to drive the father away.

IMHO, it was something along the lines of reporting something about his father which got him fired and his medical license revoked.

Transcript of Jack's conversation with his mom:

----------------------
Jack: "Let one of his friends [bring him back]."
Mom: "He doesn't have friends anymore. Why do you think that is? <pause> He was right about you."
Jack: "Right about what?"
Mom: "You don't understand the pressure that he's under..."
Jack: "I understand pressure."
Mom: "Jack, please... you know how he gets. He doesn't... he won't take care of himself. You have to go after him."
Jack: "I'm sorry... I can't."
Mom: "I can't? You don't get to say 'I can't.' Not after what you did! You bring your father home, Jack!"
Jack: "Where is he?"
Mom: "Australia."
----------------------

If the backstory was just that Jack quit med school/doctoring, I don't know why it would result in Jack's dad not having friends anymore. Add that to

- the mom talking about Jack's dad being under "pressure" and that Jack doesn't understand
- how he won't "take care of himself"
- his dad's incident in the bar in Australia
- how no car rental agency in Sydney would rent him a car "in his condition"
- the fact that the coroner said that Jack's dad had a blood alcohol level that, for a man of his size, would have brought on myocardial infarction

It leads me to think that Jack's dad had a condition that endangered his patients, and Jack reported him. What sort of condition, though?



This is what was in the nightstand drawer in Jack's dad's hotel room. We can't really see the names of the drugs on the bottles scattered all over his room, but you can see on the left a box clearly labeled "hydralazine."

From poking around online very briefly, it seems like you take hydralazine for hypertension, after heart valve replacement, and in the treatment of congestive heart failure. There is also a warning regarding drinking alcohol when you're on hydralazine, saying that it can make the side effects of hydralazine worse (uh oh!). What are the side effects of hydralazine?


This is what was on the table in the hotel room when Jack picked up his dad's wallet. You can see what looks (to me) like a blood pressure cuff on the left. I think his dad knew that he had a condition, and he was trying to monitor himself.

My hypothesis:

Jack's dad already likes having drinks at night... he's not necessarily an alcoholic, but he has drinks. He gets old, he has heart problems, and ends up having heart surgery. He gets back on his feet, recuperates, and his colleagues welcome him back to his practice. He's on medication for his heart, such as hydralazine, but he doesn't stop drinking. The medication plus the alcohol starts giving him side effects that affect his ability to practice medicine. Perhaps he starts prescribing other medicines for himself to counteract the side effects... maybe that's what all the pill bottles are for in his hotel room. It helps him cope with the side effects for a little while, but he keeps getting worse. Jack notices, confronts him, Jack's dad tells him to screw off because "he's fine," and Jack reports him. Jack's dad loses his practice and his friends in the business. He can't face his family. All he has left is the bottle and his meds, and he spirals down the drain with them.

I feel so simple and stupid. Thanks, Static.

And while I'm on a roll, I just want to highlight parts of Jack's conversation with the airline woman near the end of the episode:

Jack: "What do you mean you won't put it on the plane?"
Jack: "... In sixteen hours I need to land at LAX and I need that coffin to clear customs..."
Jack: "...I need that hearse to take me and that coffin to a cemetary..."
Jack: "I need to bury my father."

Notice in the first three quotes... "it," "that coffin," "that coffin"... I'm not totally willing to give up on Jack putting an empty coffin on the plane and burying it back home. I know, he says that he needs to "bury my father." What about this:

We're assuming that after Jack sees his dad in the morgue, within the next few days he hops on the plane with the coffin to take his father home. What if it's not that simple? Maybe Jack, after seeing his dad in the morgue, blames himself for his dad's death, and then he starts drinking himself silly. He farts around in Australia, drunk off his ass, and the morgue disposes of his dad's body because they couldn't get a hold of Jack (not sure if that would really happen, but roll with it for a second). Jack eventually comes to his senses, realizes that he needs to go back to the US, have a funeral for his father (even if it's symbolic), and move the hell on. He's bringing home a coffin because he either really wants to get it over with as fast as possible... airport to hearse to cemetary, non-stop... and/or he can't tell his mom that he couldn't bring his dad home. Heck, if this time lapse thing is correct, maybe his mom isn't even alive anymore.

After having rewatched the episode, I am more convinced than ever that the father was indeed in the coffin. Jack, to me at any rate, used the words coffin and father interchangeably. It was apparent that he needed to get his father's body back home and buried.

I also don't agree with the time lapse theory. I believe events transpired in the time we were led to believe they happened. Interesting nonetheless.

You forgot to include the response by the airline woman at the ticket counter to Jack's first quote (that Dr_Evil referenced in an earlier post) .

"I'm sorry, Mr. Shepherd but our policy is that the body must have the proper documentation. There is just no latitude."

It would seem that it was Jack's intention to have the body transported with him on the plane. Whether or not the airline followed through with his wishes could be debated though.

What Toq said, it was clear that the problem wasnt with shipping an empty coffin but the body in it.

I completely agree with Toq and Pharoh, especially given that there's absolutely no evidence that Jack wanted to be in Australia one second longer than necessary, and it's pretty impossible to believe that the coroner would just "dispose of the body" just because they had trouble tracking Jack down (they might call the police, MAYBE, who would then use Jack's credit card to track him down.... but again, no evidence that he was dinking around in Sydney).

The obvious impression is that Jack and his dad were never close, and even less so by the time he died. He might've just meant "it" in terms of "the body". I also think that if his mom was able to get him to go to Australia in the first place, there's no evidence he would lie to her to THAT degree... also, a funeral home here would be handling the funeral, and I don't think they'd agree to bury an empty coffin and SAY there's a body in it (I've been told that's against the law).

^^ really? What about missing persons cases for those that want closure?

I think they will leave us hanging on this one. As for Jack it is over with, no need to discuss again. So I doubt we will find out.

Umm, not the same thing, is it? Missing person cases, the next of kin KNOWS the body isn't in the coffin. Jack isn't the next of kin, his MOM is. The funeral director can't just lie to the next of kin and tell her the body's in the coffin when it's not, and the funeral director woud KNOW the body wasn't in the coffin (I just checked with a lawyer, the funeral director receiving the body signs for it, he would HAVE to check it to make sure it's embalmed, etc, before burying it). I know from personal experience that if you fly a body even from one state to another, you have to have a local licensed funeral director handle the burial (because the funeral director/home licensing requirements vary from state to state), which means if it flies from Australia to the U.S., a funeral home here would have to receive the coffin, verify the body was in it, and if it's not, they'd have to notify the next of kin. I don't know what the laws are in Australia (about releasing the body to a son instead of the wife), but the laws here are clear, and there's no way a funeral home would be willing to break several to allow Jack to conduct a mock funeral. His mom would have to know, and she'd never allow it.

Wow, I'm not sure now if we are discussing the show 'Lost' or real life!

Chris

Well, both! People are saying "Oh, that's not realistic", and I'm saying the explanation I suggested (that the body WAS in the coffin) is more realistic than other suggestions.

Besides, doesn't "art imitate life"?

I wonder why Jack wasn't freaked out at the end of the show when he was with Kate and Kate asked him something like where was he all day. Jack confessed his dad had died in Sydney but if his Dad was supposed to be in the coffin but now was not, wouldn't that have been a big enough problem for Jack to freak out and discuss with Kate?

I was trying to remember other things that led me to believe Jack finding his father's coffin empty was exactly what he expected. That's one of them. He's frantic the entire episode, but when he opens his father's coffin to find it empty, afterwards he's calm again. What makes more sense?

1. He's calm because he opened the coffin where he thought he'd find his father's body, but didn't find anything.

2. He's calm because he opened the coffin where he knew his father's body wouldn't be, and sure enough, no body.

To me, 2 makes more sense.

or...
3. He's calm because he doesn't know how to project shock as an actually talented actor might.

Seriously, I keep thinking he's going to start showing a range of emotions, but I think of all the character's he's sometimes too distant.

Anyways, you could be reading calm where it's actually "I can't process this or explain it" shock.