LOST Discoveries

LOST:

The 23^rd Psalm

Created by: Jeffery Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof

Air date: Wednesday, January 11^th, 2006

The 23rd Psalm: The Shadow of the Valley of Death

by Sara

A Soulful Spike Society Review

www.soulfulspike.com

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:

for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest

my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

I think most of us who watch Lost suspected that Eko’s backstory, when it came, would be an interesting one, but... damn. While not quite at the same level as “Walkabout” and its jaw-dropping twist concerning Locke’s past, “The 23rd Psalm” still managed to both meet our expectations and completely upend them at the same time. ‘Cause I don’t know about anyone else, but when I idly considered what Eko did in his former life, “Nigerian criminal warlord” wasn’t on my list. Hell, it wasn’t even on the same continent as my list. And as if that weren’t enough, we also got our first serious look at... well, I’m still not sure what the black smoke was: an island defense system? The result of a Dharma Initiative/Hanso Foundation experiment? Some weird heroin flashback shared by Eko and Charlie? The second cousin twice-removed of the water probe from The Abyss? Oh, and let’s not forget a wealth of allusions both Biblical and musical that had me Googling and trolling the web for hours.

And I haven’t even gotten to Michael’s virtual chat with… someone, sparkage between a Tailie and one of our gang, Charlie’s collection of junk, or the haircut that revved up fanfic engines across the country.

In other words, this may end up being the reviewing equivalent of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, except with Virgin Marys instead of madeleines. Although I suspect it’ll be Bloody Marys I’m most interested in by the time I’m done sorting through it all...

Clearly the man of this particular hour was the increasingly intriguing Mister Eko. And as I watched his past unfold over the course of the hour, the word that kept coming to mind was “symmetry.” We learned that in his former life Eko once brutally slit the throats of two men in cold blood (and in one swipe, no less) with nary a sign of remorse, already knowing that on the island the deaths of two other men at his hands caused Eko to take a 40 day vow of silence in penance—even though he’d acted in self-defense. While Eko once attempted to get rid of the heroin he’d purchased for the benefit of others, here we see him willingly hand some of the very same drug stash over to a man he has to know is an addict. And, in perhaps the most interesting bit of symmetry, as the show began we saw a single gunshot change the trajectories of two lives—Eko became part of Nigeria’s dark underworld, Yemi a priest striving to bring others into the light, while at the end of the flashback another gunshot irrevocably altered their paths yet again, consigning Yemi to darkness and setting Eko on the road to becoming a priest.

Over the past season and a half we’ve seen characters like Locke, Sun and Jin, and Shannon view their presence on the island as a second chance, a fresh start on lives that somehow went astray. But so far none seem to have embraced this concept as intensely and completely as Eko; it’s almost as if when he came out of the ocean he’d been re-baptized, ready to embrace and live by his faith once more. As evidence of Eko’s conversion experience, we need look no further than what Charlie so delightfully christened the Jesus Stick, which I’ve color-coded for your convenience:

Going around the horn, in orange at the top we have Psalm 144, which reads in part: “Send thine hand from above; rid me, and deliver me out of great waters” and asks God to save the psalmist from those who speak and act falsely that he and his people may be happy and prosperous. In dark blue, Revelation 5:3—“And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.” A reference to the Bible Eko found and what it contained, perhaps? In green, we have TI4, a vague notation to say the least. However, chapter 4 of each of Paul’s letters to Timothy discusses what is expected of a priest in both words and deeds.

The yellow circle encloses Titus 3, another of Paul’s letters in which he again advises a friend as to how to be a good spiritual leader and what to look for in appointing elders; chapter 3 in particular notes that after a rough start for mankind “… the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared/Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;/Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour” (more water imagery, along with a mention of a martyr. Hmm…). Light blue is, you guessed it, another of Paul’s letters, and with it more advice about living as a good Christian, in part by not doing evil and instead loving others. Purple gives us a single word: hateth. As you might expect, a search of the King James Bible (which, from his recitation at the end of the episode, appears to be the version Eko is familiar with) garners a few hits for the word, the most intriguing coming from Psalm 11:5—“The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

And finally, our red-circle notation: the 23^rd psalm. I have to think it a coincidence—not fate—that one of the best-known psalms in the Bible happens to share a number with Hurley’s cursed sextet, but it’s a coincidence that might leave even the most agnostic writer thanking a higher power. Almost anyone who’s ever been to a funeral service from any of the Christian denominations has heard and/or recited it in its entirety, yet the psalm’s words and imagery go much deeper than the reassurance that a loved one is being cared for in Heaven. The 23rd psalm is about how the psalmist, because of his journey through the valley of death, has come to a fuller understanding of the nature of his relationship with God. It’s not about God as paternal figure, telling him what’s right and wrong, but about God as a source of support and strength, sustaining the psalmist through both good and ill. Talk about your metaphor-rich environment.

Bringing us to the black smoke. For as intriguing as what Eko saw in the smoke was (more on that in a moment), it’s what he said afterward that was the most telling: “I was not afraid of it.” Here he was, looking at a greatest hits version of the sins of his blood-soaked past... and yet he had no fear. Is this because Eko has come to terms with who he once was? Because he had faith that God was with him? Or perhaps it’s both—after all, it’s not like those two options are mutually exclusive. Or, to take it one step further, perhaps what we’re suppose to take away from Eko’s encounter with the smoke is that both those concepts boil down to the same thing—acceptance of our own humanity, with all the limitations and flaws that come with it.

As for the smoke itself, the benevolent person or persons at http://lost.cubit.net/pics/2x10/ posted a bunch of screencaps which reveal a parade of images from Eko’s past flashing in and out of view within the smoke’s depths: the church, Yemi, the man Eko killed, his brother’s death, and, at the very end, the crucifix hanging above the altar of Yemi’s church. There’s also a single image of a more recent vintage: Eko himself as he walked out of the ocean after the crash. What’s intriguing, however, is that this image was the only one which appeared in the smoke upside-down. Symbolic much?

Meanwhile, I think it’s safe to say that whatever the smoke is, it ain’t natural. Understatement of the year, right? Yet I don’t think it necessarily tracks that the smoke is supernatural either. There was a definite repetitive mechanical sound which grew in strength in the moments up to its explosion onto the scene, one that reminded me a bit of the noise you hear when a roller coaster starts up and the cars are being pulled up the tracks. Upon a repeat viewing I noticed that the moment that noise is first heard, all of the ambient sounds of the jungle cease—it is that silence, the kind of stillness that accompanies the entry of a predator into a given environment, which puts Eko on his guard. And it’s worth noting that one of the Hanso Foundation’s projects, in addition to the Dharma Initiative, is in electromagnetic research—an energy Jossverse viewers once saw at work when Illyria created a spark that produced... wait for it... a memory. Intriguing, no?

Accompanying Eko on his journey was Charlie, the only other character whose background (as best we know) featured religion as part of his upbringing. And if what we saw is any indication, Charlie’s path is taking him downward just as steadily as Eko’s is bringing him back into the light: the episode begins with Eko bonding with Claire, and ends with Claire kicking Charlie out of her life; Eko burns the plane and its contents, ready to let the past be the past and move on from his sins, while Charlie’s clearly not ready to embrace the second chance the island has given him, holding onto his addiction with everything he’s got; Eko spoke nothing but the truth to Charlie the entire journey even as Charlie lied both to Eko and to himself at every turn.

Oh, and since virtually nothing on this show is accidental, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the Kinks song Charlie serenaded Jin and the fish with was “He’s Evil.” The lyrics he sang? Worth checking out, to say the least:

He's got wit he's got charm.

But when he gets rough he'll break your arm.

He's got taste, manners and grace,

But when he gets tough he'll slit your face.

He'll buy you jewels, expensive clothes,

Then his mind'll go and he'll bust your nose.

He's a joker and a clown

But he'll pervert you and drag you down.

He comes on smooth, cool and kind,

But he wants your body not your mind,

He is just the devil in disguise.

He will drag you down and he will make you cry,

And once you're in there will be no getting out.

Add it all up, and I’d say it’s looking like our Charlie has some seriously dark times in his not-too distant future.

What’s that? There’s still more ground to cover? Okay, fine...

• Although Jack, the survivors’ reluctant shepherd, assures Michael that Walt is a priority and they’ll be putting together a rescue party soon it seems pretty clear that Michael ain’t waiting. You know that as soon as he has any indication as to where Walt might be, he’s outta there and taking the dressing-slaying gun with him.

• Sharp-eyed readers will immediately notice a slight discrepancy between my review’s subtitle and the text of the psalm itself as it appears in the King James Bible. The interesting thing is that my subtitle is also a direct quote of how both Eko and Charlie recite the line as they stand over Yemi’s funeral pyre. In other words, they both said the psalm wrong in the exact same way. But really, are any of us surprised that it was the shadow that was in the forefront of both men’s minds, given Eko’s tête a fumée in an island valley earlier in the day? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

• Just wanted to be sure to mention how amazing I thought the acting was across the board, with the tour de force performance turned in by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje leading the way. He had to make us believe the same man who so gently cradled Ana Lucia as she cried was once one of the most feared men in Nigeria—and he pulled it off without a hitch. I hope he doesn’t get forgotten come next year’s Emmy nominations.

• Speaking of our resident cop, I can’t help but wonder Ana Lucia would feel to know she broke down in the arms of a criminal. Methinks she might not take it too well. But it was nice to see someone from the front section reaching out to her, and even better that it was Jin, who’d borne witness to her terrible mistake. You could tell Ana was truly surprised by and grateful of the gesture, with all that it implied, and I for one got a nice warm fuzzy from the entire scene.

• Speaking of warm fuzzies, how cute was the Libby/Hurley moment? Not to mention that there was some definitely sparkage happening in that brief exchange of glances.

• And speaking of sparkage (man, I’m cranking with the segues today...), we can’t forget The Haircut, which is nothing else was a welcome bit of comic relief in a very angst-heavy hour. Sawyer’s disgruntled “Don’t even say it” when even Michael expressed gladness over Sawyer’s recovery was absolutely priceless. Although it makes me a bit nervous as to what our resident self-destructo boy might do to erase all the goodwill he’s accumulated...

• One of the lines that caused all manner of bells and whistles to go off in my head was when Eko told Yemi “I understand that you live in a world where righteousness and evil sit very far apart. But that is not the real world,” a statement which is easily one of the show’s most prevalent themes: Kate’s murder of an abusive husband, Jack and Sayid torturing Sawyer for medicine, Jin beating a man to a pulp to save his life, Sayid’s betrayal of a friend, Ana’s execution of her child’s killer, Sawyer’s murder of an innocent man in his search for vengeance, and Eko’s act of sacrifice to spare his brother are but a few examples of how very blurry that particular line can be.

• A question that keeps popping up throughout Eko and Yemi’s conversations stems directly from this particular sort of gray area—are some sins truly unforgivable? We know Kate’s mother apparently never forgave her daughter for killing her husband, I suspect Sawyer has yet to forgive himself for his unwitting act of murder much as Jack still wrestles with having started his father’s final downward spiral, and Eko pleaded “forgive me” as he cradled his brother’s corpse and wept. Who knows—perhaps the search for forgiveness is why everyone is on the island to begin with.

• Brotherhood was another recurring theme throughout the hour: we had Eko and his brother, of course, Eko’s tale of Moses and Aaron, and Charlie blaming his brother for Charlie’s addiction to heroin (a recitation during which, fans of My Name is Earl should know, my brother said “Don’t you judge me.”) Not that I have anywhere to go with that observation—just wanted to point it out.

• The smoke vs. the monster. I think it’s safe to say that a bunch of black smoke is not what left the pilot looking like he’d been through a meat grinder, raising the question of exactly how much weird sh-...stuff there is on that damn island. Are there a series of defense systems, or does whatever’s clanking around out there take on different forms for each person—say a black horse for one person, shadowy smoke for someone with the 23^rd psalm on the brain? Did Locke see the same thing Eko did, and if so why didn’t Eko come out of the experience all epiphanied and inscrutable? And why, oh why, did I ever think that finally seeing said defense system in the flesh—so to speak—would result in anything but more questions? Must have been high on Double-Stufs...

• Finally (yes, the end is in sight), a fun bit of trivia: Cynthia Watros, who plays Libby, was the female lead on the sitcom Titus—one of the Biblical books cited on Eko’s Jesus Stick.

All in all, I think I can safely describe “The 23^rd Psalm” as one of the most layered, intriguing, and surprising episodes of the season thus far. The writing, the acting, the execution, the soundtrack (or lack thereof), everything was clicking on all cylinders for me from start to finish. We had a backstory that didn’t just highlight one character but illuminated themes running throughout the character’s lives, revelations (the black smoke, the truth about Charlie’s statue) that both answered and raised questions, plenty o’ setups for future storylines (Michael’s search for Walt, Charlie’s addiction, Libby and Hurley, Ana’s slow integration into the group), and a brief moment reminding us that no, Kate still doesn’t know which guy she likes better. Add in fodder for all the Locke/Michael fanfic out there (Locke teaching Michael how to shoot a big gun? Hel-LO?), and you’ve got yourself a prime piece of television viewing. If this is what we get in January, I can’t wait to see what sweeps has in store. But I’m more certain than ever that I’m gonna love the ride.

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