Lost Episode 5 "White Rabbit"

This could have been just a totally FREAKY episode... Jack is losing it hard (dehydrated, no sleep, maybe some PTSD), seeing things... or is he?

Show starts with a woman drowning, she's such a red shirt that wardrobe never even had to give her one.  If I was a full on Losty, it would be at this point that I'd go back and look for all instances of Joanna (the red shirt's name) but I doubt she's a red herring (just a red shirt).  But Jack doesn't save her... she disappears beneath the waves suggesting for the first time that Jack might not be God after all.

Remember the dude in the suit Jack saw a couple of times last episode?  Turns out it's his dead dad.  The reason Jack was on the plane is because his mom had sent him to Australia to find his dad, who'd gone off on some Mid-Life crisis adventure.  Unfortunately, while dad was living it up in Sydney, he had a heart attack and died.  Jack was flying home with his dad's body in the cargo hold when the plane crashed.

Jack's Dad's ghost leads Jack on a wild ghost chase through the jungle, where in a SECOND un-godlike instance, Jack has to be rescued by Locke!  After pulling him up over the side of a cliff, Locke has to give Jack a pep talk.  Gives us some mumbo-jumbo about the island... and the fact that he's looked into its face (the monster from the boar episode?).

Not sure where they're going with this, but I almost feel like they're setting up to move Locke into a leadership role... maybe he becomes the Troi to Jack's Picard.

OK, so the FREAKY part which ends up being not so freaky, is that Jack's Dad's ghost makes one last appearance (sort of, Jack hears the sounds of ice cubes clinking in a tumbler full of scotch).  Jack follows his dad back into the jungle until he comes across fresh drinking water!  Something that to lack of has been causing the people back on the beach some consternation over.  Jack also finds his Dad's coffin. And... it's... EMPTY!!!  ooooo-OOOOO-ooooo

I have a feeling that this is not the last we see of Dead Jack's Dad.  But I don't think he's alive... every time we see him the filmmakers do these Adam West & Burt Ward "Batman & Robin" sytle tilted camera shots, which leads me to believe that they want us to think that this is all in Jack's head.

Show ends with Jack giving a speech about teamwork which has one of those, "The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself" kind of reversals in it.  Something about working together or dying alone... what ev.  Take your shirt off again.

So we've learned a little more about Jack and his state of mind (Just lost his father, figuratively and quite literally) and his God status is a little threatened by the no-longer paralyzed Locke who's stepping up as a spiritually connected dude...