Missing Pieces Episode 10: Jack, Meet Ethan. Ethan? Jack.

Finally, after a few sub-bar weeks of "Missing Pieces," the series returns to compelling form in this week's installment, "Jack, Meet Ethan. Ethan? Jack." Luckily, the episode is less clunky the title, I assure you.

Ethan Rom has always been one of those figures on Lost that commands the interest of the viewer. Maybe this is because he's appeared more times on the show after being killed than while he was nominally alive. Gotta love those flashbacks. William Mapother sure as heck does. Point is: whenever he's onscreen, there's generally a feeling that something incredibly important is about to occur. It's approximately the opposite of what one feels whenever Bernard's onscreen.

So let's see what latest piece of the puzzle Ethan can offer us, shall we?

Synopsis

Jack, replete with two fresh wounds across his left cheek, is on the beach searching through duffel bags. Looks like we're in Season 1, people. A voice off-screen calls for Dr. Shepard, and wearing a Wisconsin sweatshirt, it's Ethan Rom. Turns out Ethan knows the good doctor is looking for medicine, and it just so happens than Ethan found a whole truckload of it out in the jungle. As Scooby-Doo might say, "Ruh row."

Ethan seems impressed by Jack's insight that the survivors won't leave the Island soon, calling him "smart," but plays the conversation just this side of "I know something you don't know." Since it's Ethan, however, it's still incredibly creepy. Ethan knows Jack is wondering if he'll have to deliver Claire's baby on the Island. Jack says it's good to know he's not alone, to which Ethan replies, "You're definitely not alone," and all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Jack seems happy to know he'll have an assistant come birthing time, at which point Ethan starts to look like me when I realize According to Jim is still on the airwaves. Jack apologizes, realizing he's said something wrong. Ethan confides that his wife died during childbirth, and their unborn child died as well. Awkward. Awkward. Ethan then smiles his crooked smile, says he hopes he's wrong, and that the rescue boats will arrive soon. Aaaaand scene.

Thematic Resonance

As with anything said by the Others, one must take Ethan's story with a silo of salt. Now, did his wife and unborn child actually die during childbirth? When we first see Ethan in action, we see him in surgery with Juliet as an Other named Sabine is going through the same maternity issues as all other pregnant women on the Island. Could that have been his wife? Did his wife die earlier on the Island? Or did all of this happen before his recruitment to the Others by Benjamin?

All we truly know about Ethan was that he was a gifted surgeon, which makes it some ways all the more ridiculous that Ben would send him to infiltrate the Lostaways. After all, having just learned of a spinal tumor, I would think he'd want to keep his main man Ethan close by. That being said, Ethan was sent to look for two specific types of people: pregnant women and skilled surgeons. Ethan could have easily identified the former, but the latter would have probably been the work of Mikhail. Ethan could not accurately assess surgery skill, but what he COULD assess was personality.

Indeed, when Ethan calls Jack "smart" in this mobisode, it almost sounds as if he's making a mental note to transcribe to Ben at the next drop. (Oh, like those meds in the jungle didn't come from the Others. Please.) Ethan's serving Ben's whims as he psychologically profiles Jack, in order to allow Ben to figure out the optimal way to coerce him into performing surgery on his tumor.

But while Ethan serves one master, he also serves his own when it comes to Claire. And the revelation in this mobisode might go a lot way towards explaining the schism within the Others that fractures throughout Season 3.

Overall Importance to "Missing Pieces"

One might rightfully ask the question: once the Others discovered that childbirth was a death sentence, why on earth did they continue to try? Under what circumstances would they continually submit themselves to this inevitability? Under what mandate could such a vicious circle continue?

For instance, let's assume for a moment that Ethan's telling the truth about his wife and unborn child. Suppose that woman and child suffered the same fate as Sabine and her child. Doesn't that make Ethan's involvement in Sabine's death that much more profound and disturbing? He would have to willingly participate in a society in which such risk is somehow considered acceptable. Noble, even. To willingly embrace such a facet of existence would take some severe conditioning. Conditioning that may in fact be implanted via Room 23.

But such implanting can't completely subsume the human capacity for empathy, and at some point, Ethan and other Others must have realized that Ben's obsession with fertility, played out with the Others as guinea pigs, simply could not hold. For some, such as Richard, it stood in defiance of the magnificence of the Island. For those such as Ethan, it emotionally broke them to the point of near insanity.

Remember the way in which he treats Claire during the episode "Maternity Ward." His dealings with her are paternal, and more often than not downright nice. One might rightfully point out that Ethan planned to literally rip Aaron from Claire's body without her knowledge, but remember that Tom points out that Ethan is acting in defiance of Jacob's orders. This implies that Ethan's actions as a whole are in defiance of Jacob, and thus in defiance of Ben. Is the Caesarean in fact an attempt to SAVE both Claire and the baby, or at least the baby? If so, Ethan's trauma over the constant theatre of death surrounding childbirth could have led him to take drastic actions with Claire in order to preserve at least one life, at least once. Ethan tells Claire that the Others are "good people," but that doesn't imply that their social order is in any way just.

Now, as far as the nature of the society that would encourage women to volunteer themselves to die in order to fulfill the Others' societal impulse towards progeny, I think I've already covered that in this blog. If you need a refresher, by all means, check it out. But the reasoning behind such a sadistic society has yet to be revealed, and may be one of the keys to understanding Lost as a whole. Hopefully, Season 4 will shed a little light on this mystery.

What did you think of this week's mobisode? Do you believe Ethan's story? Who has the greater baggage: The Others and their lost children, or the Lostaways and their awful daddies?

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude.