Fire + Water: Family Matters

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

Air date: Wednesday, January 25, 2006

A Soulful Spike Society Review by Sara

www.soulfulspike.com

Fire + Water: Family Matters

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Matthew 3: 16-17

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Matthew 3: 11-12

Let’s face it: even at this early point in the show’s run, the religious symbolism in Lost is a dissertation just waiting for an eager grad student—and at the rate these theology-themed episodes keep falling into my part of the review rotation, I may very well end up being the one to write it.

In all honesty, it’s hard not to see “Fire + Water” as a companion piece to “The 23^rd Psalm”; both contain a ton of Christian imagery, both center around two brothers, and both feature Hurley and Libby taking steps toward a potential romantic relationship. However, I’d describe Eko’s relationship with his religion as prosaic; his faith is completely of a piece with the man, woven in and around his personality and thought processes like the warp and weft of a tapestry. In Charlie’s case, though, I’d say his belief is more… exterior. Christian rites and iconography were unquestionably a formative influence on Charlie, and I’ve no doubt he could recite the rosary or rattle off the Beatitudes with the best of them. But what I think Charlie has never realized is that such knowledge is ultimately superficial: he mistakes familiarity for faith, ritual for reverence. And it’s exactly that disconnect between doing something and being something which, in my opinion, lies at the root of all the wrong turns his life has taken.

So while it’s impossible to ignore how “Fire + Water” began on an image of Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, closed with Eko describing that very event to Claire, and featured a vision of Charlie’s in which he saw a living replica of most of the same painting, I don’t believe putting either the John the Baptist/Jesus dynamic or the intricacies of the rite of baptism under a microscope will enhance anyone’s understanding of the episode—at least I know my research into those very subjects didn’t alter mine. What’s important is the impulse that prompted Charlie’s visions; the religious imagery was simply the way his mind chose to express it.

Speaking of those visions, I still have one question: where the hell did all that come from? Because while I’m no expert on how heroin addicts behave, I honestly don’t think Charlie had started using again. Remember, it’s been over a month since he last got high, while it had only been a few days since he was introduced to the Marys and what they contained. So I have to think his reaction to being on the drug again would have made it very obvious to everyone around him that he was on something. Granted, he was acting pretty weird—just not, in my opinion, “junkie on a high” weird.

Which again leaves us with the question: if it wasn’t because of the drugs, then why did he start having such odd visions? The first explanation I came up with boils down to this: on an island that had Jack chasing his dead father, Eko seeing flashes of his past in what appeared to be sentient smoke, Shannon getting messages from a dripping wet and backward speaking Walt, and Kate and Sawyer checking out a black horse, is it really too hard to imagine that Charlie’s dreams got some sort of boost courtesy of whatever forces are at work in their jungle wonderland?

Or perhaps there’s an entirely different force at work. I’ve seen and read enough mysteries to know that when you’re trying to figure out who committed a particular crime, start with finding out who had the most to gain. So, consider this: who’s been hanging around the sidelines, always ready and available to help Claire should she happen to ask? Who watched Charlie implore Claire to listen to him with an enigmatic—but not entirely displeased—expression on his face? Who stepped forward on the beach to take back Aaron and hand him over to Claire? Who has a stronger relationship with Claire now that he did when the episode began? The answer to all these questions is, of course, Locke. Now, consider one final question: who once secretly slipped a fellow castaway a drug—a hallucinogenic drug—to help further his own ends? Yup. Talk about things that make you go hmmm...

Meanwhile, getting back to the main subject of our episode, I’d say if there’s one thing that’s been consistent throughout the glimpses we’ve had into Charlie’s past, it’s the importance of family to him. In “The Moth” we watched as his brother played the family card so Charlie would continue with the band, ultimately leading Charlie down the very path he’d feared. In “Homecoming” Charlie tried to work his way into a wealthy family so he could steal their valuables, only to develop a genuine desire to make that new relationship work. And in “Fire + Ice” we witnessed Charlie’s attempt to keep his family from falling apart in both the past and the present, only to see him fail on both fronts. We also found out why taking care of his family was so very important to Charlie; when your mother tells you that “someday you’re going to us out of here—all of us” when you haven’t even hit double-digit birthdays yet, you’re going to end up with an overdeveloped sense of family responsibility.

Recreating the timeline from what we learned in this episode, Charlie’s intense interest in Claire and her pregnancy makes a lot of sense. We were already aware of why Charlie was on flight 815; he’d just visited Liam in Sydney as part of an unsuccessful attempt to get him to rejoin the band. Now we also know the extent to which Liam screwed his brother over: he got Charlie to go on tour, broke the promise he’d made to end things if Charlie felt they were getting out of control, and sold Charlie’s most prized possession to facilitate his own fresh start—abandoning Charlie and their attempt to restart their careers in the process. Not that Liam wasn’t right to want to get clean and be a good father to his daughter, but in the process he took away everything that meant anything to Charlie—his music and his family—in one fell swoop.

So it’s little wonder that on the island Charlie tried to do the exact same thing when he got clean, namely start over with a new family. Between the disintegration of his relationship with Liam and his long-standing belief that he had to take care of those he loved, it makes perfect sense that he’d see forming a family unit with Claire as the perfect way to make a fresh start. However, I think what Charlie never fully grasped is that being part of a family isn’t about filling a particular role. He thought that by helping Claire, watching Aaron, or cutting shirts into nappies he was being the man of the household. But he wasn’t forging the kind of emotional connections that make for a real family; he just wanted the sense of family that acting like a father gave him. And the saddest part of all is that I suspect Charlie still doesn’t even realize there’s a difference, even after Claire bluntly reminded him “there was no before” when it comes to their relationship. Instead, as is typical for both Charlie the man and Charlie the user, the possibility that he himself may have been at fault didn’t even cross his mind—instead he simply focused on how he felt he was being displaced from his new family just as surely as he was from his old, and what he could do to stop it. Or, to phrase things another way, what he could do to save it.

Yet once again, he failed. And in doing so, took a dubious place of honor among the castaways: of all the survivors whose stories we’ve followed, Charlie seems to be the only one who isn’t moving forward in some respect. Everyone else who’s faced some sort of personal demon has been the better for it, sometimes in the smallest of ways. Charlie, however, appears to be retreating inward—if in “The Moth” Charlie’s decision to put his hood down signified that he’d emerged from his cocoon, then pulling it back up can only imply he’s also pulling away. As are, for the moment, most of his fellow survivors. Whether the island will let him get away with it... that’s a whole different story altogether.

Meanwhile, we also saw a little progress on the developing relationship between Hurley and Libby. I have to say, I got a huge kick out of Sawyer’s role in the progression of their relationship from glances and waves into an actual conversation, and it’s really nice to see someone taking a romantic interest in our favorite multi-millionaire. However... (and you just knew there was a “however” coming) Libby’s answer to Hurley’s “don’t I know you” query was a masterful bit of misdirection, not to mention the accompanying visual distraction she then provided. I just wonder how long it’ll be before Hurley says to himself: “Dude. You crashed with the middle of the plane. She crashed with the tail section. So how is it that you stepped on her foot on the way to your seat, seeing as how she was supposedly further back in the plane than you?” ‘Cause I know I’d certainly like to hear the answer to that one.

Other random musings I didn’t feel clever enough to work into the above paragraphs:

Anyone remember when Charlie told Jack: “Trust him? No offense, mate, but if there was one person on this island I would put my absolute faith in to save us all, it would be John Locke.” How quickly things change, huh?

For those of you playing the home game, in Charlie’s dream recreation Claire and Charlie’s mother stood in for the angels in the original painting—think he idealizes women at all? If anyone’s interested in a better look at the painting itself, you can take a look here.

Interesting how Sawyer drew Kate’s attention to how much time Jack and Ana had been spending together—not to mention his amusement at her reaction. More of his self-destructive tendencies coming through?

Speaking of Jack and AL, I enjoyed their chat about Jack’s love life—or lack thereof. I think the writers are being very smart as they work on getting us to warm up to her character, just giving us little tidbits here and there to help humanize her.

The last time we saw LATE on Charlie’s fingers was when he and Claire were kidnapped, with Charlie leaving the letters along their trail like so many breadcrumbs. A reminder of the last time he wasn’t able to save someone, perhaps?

I’m not sure I want to consider why it was that in Charlie’s dream the sound of a plane crashing was followed by the dove’s appearance, emblematic of the presence of the Holy Spirit at Christ’s baptism—especially if it was the drug plane he “saw” going down (folks with high-def televisions could actually see the falling plane on the left side of their screen). But I do find it amusing that despite the way things turned out for Charlie, in the end he did accomplish what he was trying to do—Aaron was indeed baptized.

Oh, and if anyone was wondering exactly what Charlie was trying to do when he took Aaron, I discovered an interesting little tidbit during my research: when necessity demands it, anyone can baptize another human being. As long as whoever is doing the baptizing says the right words while pouring water on the person and, more important, intends for what they’re doing to be a baptism, then as far as the church is concerned it was one. Meaning that whether or not Eko is a “real” priest, what he did for both Aaron and Claire was a real baptism—and that Charlie could indeed have “saved” Aaron by performing the ritual himself.

And finally, we do have one more little tidbit to puzzle over: the episode name. The water aspect was quite clear; in fact, I think I still have a few bruises from being hit over the head with it. But other than the fire Charlie starts as his distraction, I don’t remember fire playing a particularly crucial role in the episode. I suppose it’s worth noting that “fire” is a slang word for injecting heroin, and that—as indicated in the passage I quoted above—fire can also be used to cleanse. Otherwise, for all I know it could be meant to indicate how steamed Charlie was with Locke. In other words, I got nothin’.

Ultimately, I’d have to say right now this episode isn’t among my favorite Lost hours of the year, although even mediocre Lost is far superior to 90% of what’s gracing our t.v. screens these days. I’m hoping that “Fire + Ice” ends up being one of what I like to call the “grand scheme” episodes: those that don’t stand alone very well, but still play a pivotal role in the overall arc of the season’s storylines. And I’ll be curious to see how long Charlie’s ostracized from the others, not to mention what their treatment of him indicates about the group dynamic overall—was their reaction symptomatic of a larger issue, or merely an expression of their support for Claire? Most of all, I’m hoping that someday we’ll see Charlie be present in his own life instead of just playing the role du jour—be it family savior, rock god, junkie or surrogate dad. But until he starts making real connections with people, interacting as the person he is instead of who he thinks they want him to be, he’ll remain the island’s version of Tantalus—always striving for a life that remains just beyond his reach.

Author’s note: My review wouldn’t be complete without my saying thanks to Karen—she helped get my brain kicked back into gear when I was floundering around trying to get this thing written. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and ideas—I appreciated it more than I can say.

______________________________________________

Please join in the discussion of this review at the Soulful Spike Society Message Board. Go there NOW!

If you enjoyed this review and are reading it from outside the Soulful Spike Society website (www.soulfulspike.com), then click the logo below to access the S3 in a new window. There you will find more great reviews, analyses, fanfiction and a link to our marvelous message board.