A few weeks ago, I wrote a little thing about how daddy issues are pretty much at the center of ‘Lost.’ Jack, Locke, Ben, Sawyer—just about everyone on the show has been fucked up by his father.
Except, we know as of Tuesday night, Smokey Locke, the crazy creature who seems to be evil incarnate (but possibly is not—cuz who knows?!?!). In a mysterious monologue delivered to a frowny Kate, he revealed that his mom was crazy, and if she hadn’t been, or if she’d dealt with it better, he might not now be a creature that can turn into a pillar of black smoke and smite enemies at will.
Is this a recurrence of Momism, the 1950s media trope in which overmothering was supposedly producing a generation of wusses, Communists, and possible homosexuals? Or was this just an acknowledgment that we all of us have—pace Philip Larkin—bad parents? And, if so, that those of us with daddy issues are the good guys, while mom-wrecked kids wind up evil? Sure, I can live with that. It’s just TV, after all.
That was the message I got out of it too