Television Review: White Rabbit (Lost, S1X05, 2004)

White Rabbit (S01E05)

Airdate: October 20th 2004

Written by: Christian Taylor
Directed by: Kevin Hooks

Running Time: 42 minutes

When a television series begins with the explosive, paradigm-shifting confidence of Lost’s pilot, it creates an almost impossible standard to maintain. Every subsequent episode is therefore scrutinised not just on its own merits, but as a barometer of potential decline. This phenomenon afflicted White Rabbit, the series’ fifth episode, from the outset. Ironically, this very instalment—which feels like a palpable step down in narrative thrust from the relentless mysteries of the first four hours—was directly responsible for securing the show’s long-term future, convincing ABC to order a full season. Judged purely on its own terms, it is a very good, often compelling hour of television. Yet, when placed in the immediate shadow of the monumental Walkabout, it cannot help but feel like a deceleration, a conscious shift from mythos to meandering character study before the series had fully established its mythic footing.

The plot, concerning the collective plight of the survivors, moves with glacial slowness. The central crisis is a surprisingly mundane (for this island) shortage of fresh water. This scarcity breeds a claustrophobic atmosphere of paranoia, with accusations of theft and hoarding flying, primarily directed at the gleefully cynical Sawyer. His delight in tormenting his accusers by proving his innocence is a highlight of the episode’s first act. The resolution, however, is tellingly soft. The true culprit is Boone, but his motive is altruistic—hoarding water for the most vulnerable, like the fainting, pregnant Claire. The conflict is then entirely deflated by a deus ex machina: Jack’s off-screen discovery of a freshwater spring. This narrative shortcut undermines the tension it spent so long building, suggesting the writers were less interested in the survival thriller and more in using the water shortage as a backdrop for introspection.

That introspection is entirely Jack-centric, and here the episode finds its strength. Jack’s journey into the jungle, chasing hallucinatory visions of a man in a suit—the titular ‘white rabbit’—serves as the engine for an extensive flashback structure. We see the roots of his ‘fixer’ complex seeded in childhood, where an attempt to play hero for a bullied friend earns him a beating and a crushing paternal verdict from his father, Dr. Christian Shephard (John Terry): “You don’t have what it takes.” This formative trauma explains everything about the adult Jack: his relentless drive, his profound fear of failure, and his pathological reluctance to accept the leadership role thrust upon him. The flashbacks culminate in a powerful, mournful sequence in Australia, where Jack, sent by his mother (Veronica Hamel) to retrieve his disgraced, alcoholic father, finds him already dead. The heartbreak and guilt that lead to Jack’s argument over transporting the coffin aboard Oceanic Flight 815 are rendered with genuine pathos.

This history directly informs his actions on the island. His apparent hesitation is a terror of failing again. This is crystallised in the opening sequence where he must choose between saving a drowning woman or Boone, who got into trouble trying to save her himself. His strategic choice to save Boone first results in the woman’s death—a failure that haunts him and mirrors his perceived failure with his father. His jungle quest, therefore, becomes a pilgrimage into his own trauma, chasing the ghost of the man who told him he wasn’t a leader. His conversation with Locke—who posits that the visions could be hallucinations from stress or that the island might be “special”—is a beautifully written moment of quiet philosophy. The discovery of the water source alongside his father’s coffin allows for a cathartic, violent release as he smashes the inexplicably empty casket, symbolically destroying the weight of paternal expectation. His subsequent speech to the survivors, urging them to “live together, or die alone” and act as if rescue is not coming, is the episode’s earned climax. It is the moment Jack Shephard finally accepts the mantle he has spent a lifetime fearing.

Yet, for all this competent character work, White Rabbit suffers in comparison to what came before. Directed by the capable Kevin Hooks, it lacks the visceral punch and profound twist of Walkabout. Writer Christian Taylor delivers excellent dialogue, particularly between Jack and Locke, but the episode opts for conventional, linear character exposition over groundbreaking revelation. The protagonist has a crisis and an epiphany; the structure is satisfying but unsurprising. Furthermore, the episode introduces a concerning narrative convenience: the disposable survivor. The drowned woman, killed off-screen, establishes a precedent that the large cast includes unnamed characters who can be conveniently culled to raise stakes without affecting core relationships—a tool the series would sometimes overuse.

Most jarring is a moment of pure televisual cliché. Jack, tumbling down a hill towards a cliff edge only to be saved at the last second by Locke’s timely grab, feels like a hackneyed trope imported from a lesser, more physically perilous adventure series. In a show that had, to this point, felt bracingly original, it stands out as a lazy contrivance.

White Rabbit is the episode that saved Lost, yet it feels like a retreat from the boldness that made Lost need saving. It is a finely crafted piece of character psychology that nevertheless slows the serialised momentum to a crawl. It provides essential depth to Jack Shephard while indulging in a survival-story cliché. It is, in essence, a very good episode that suffers from following a great one, proving that on an island of wonders, even solid competence can feel, for a moment, like a disappointment.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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