Season 1, Episode 19:
Deus Ex Machina
"Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs."
Written by Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof.
Directed by Robert Mandel.
"I've done everything you wanted me to do. So WHY did you do this TO ME!!!"
— John Locke
In flashbacks, John Locke is visited for the first time as an adult by his mother, who tells him he is "special". He tracks down his father, Anthony Cooper. The two quickly strike up a friendly relationship. When Locke discovers that Cooper needs a kidney transplant, he offers to be his donor. After the surgery, Cooper abandons Locke, and Locke is left despondent that his father has conned him.
On the Island, Sawyer suffers from strange headaches, with Jack eventually determining that he needs glasses. Meanwhile, Locke and Boone continue to struggle to open the Hatch. Guided by a vision from one of Locke's dreams, they find a beechcraft that crashed on the Island, perched at the top of a cliff. With Locke's legs starting to fail him, Boone climbs up to the beechcraft, and discovers that it belonged to a group of drug smugglers. Boone tries to use the beechcraft's radio to contact the outside world. He hears an unidentified voice on the other end, but the beechcraft falls from the cliff with him still inside, and he is severely injured. Locke carries him back to Jack, but runs off without explaining what happened. At the Hatch, Locke pounds on the door in frustration, and is shocked when a light comes out of the window.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Sawyer declines Jack's offer of medical tests by quipping "my insurance ran out," which makes Jack laugh and compliment him on the joke.
- All for Nothing: Locke and Boone's trek to find the Beechcraft yields nothing that can help open the Hatch, and it ends with Boone being badly injured when the plane falls with him inside of it. That said, Boone does manage to make radio contact with an unknown party, suggesting that some good may somehow come of all this.
- Bait-and-Switch: Locke gets hit by a car while looking for his mother in the parking lot of the toy store he works at and is momentarily stunned, implying that this is how he ended up in a wheelchair. A few seconds later, he gets back up and is fine.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Anthony Cooper pretends to be a kindly father to Locke for just long enough to con him into giving him his kidney, then ditches him.
- Black Comedy: When Boone asks where the rosary Locke found in the jungle came from, Locke dislodges a corpse from up in a tree, quipping "him".
- Continuity Nod: When Locke describes his dream vision to Boone, Boone asks if Locke's been taking the same paste he used to make Boone see Shannon get eaten in "Hearts and Minds".
- Creepy Monotone: Boone uses one of these in Locke's vision, repeating the phrase "Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs" over and over.
- Determinator: Despite the strength in his legs failing, Locke is determined to reach the Beechcraft, and, after Boone's injury, carries him all the way to the caves for treatment.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Locke has a vision of Boone covered in blood during his dream. By the end of the episode, Boone looks exactly like the vision after his fall.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite taking part in Cooper's scheme to get a kidney from Locke, Locke's mother shows up while he's in the hospital to explain what happened and apologize for her part in it, and she's visibly saddened by Locke's heartache over Cooper's betrayal.
- Foil: Cooper's relationship with Locke is contrasted against Locke's relationship with Boone; both Cooper and Locke served as mentors and father figures to a younger man, teaching the younger man to hunt and earning their trust, as well as asking them to do something dangerous (Locke undergoing a kidney transplant, Boone climbing up to investigate the Beechcraft). However, Cooper was only using Locke to get a kidney and save his own life, then unceremoniously abandoned him, whereas Locke himself genuinely cares about Boone, and is devastated over his injury. The contrast is driven home by Locke calling Boone "son" just before a flashback where Cooper called Locke the same thing.
- Foreshadowing:
- In the first flashback, Locke demonstrates the game Mouse Trap to a young boy, foreshadowing the trap he's about to walk into.
- Locke hires a private detective to investigate his mother and find his father. When asked for the information he collected on Anthony Cooper, the detective warns Locke that he's done this enough times to know this doesn't end well.
- Freudian Excuse: Boone's childhood included an incident where he, angry at his mother working all day, would torment his nanny by calling her up the stairs to his room over and over again until she slipped and broke her neck; Boone obviously still feels guilty about it as he recounts the story to Locke, and it's implied that this guilt is part of what motivates Boone's desire to be a hero.
- Heroic BSoD: Locke goes into one after Boone's fall, but is snapped out of it by the light turning on in the Hatch.
- Hypocritical Humor: Jack jokes about "doctor-patient confidentiality" after allowing Kate to sit in on every question he asked Sawyer to figure out the cause of his headaches.
- I Have This Friend: Kate approaches Jack and asks what he'd think if someone was having headaches every day. Jack sees through it and asks who she's really talking about, forcing her to admit she's concerned about Sawyer.
- Internal Reveal: Boone is the first of the survivors to learn that Locke was paralyzed before the crash.
- Mathematician's Answer: Sawyer mentions that his uncle died of a brain tumor and asks if tumors run in the family. Jack asks what kind of tumor it was, and Sawyer, either not knowing or not caring, replies "The type that kills you."
- Oh, Crap!: Locke when he realizes he didn't notice the large piece of shrapnel in his leg, and then when he finds he's losing sensation in them. The gift that the Island gave him is being taken back.
- Parental Betrayal: Cooper builds a father-son relationship with Locke just to scam him out of a kidney to save his own life.
- Pet the Dog: Sawyer takes a moment to thank Sun for trying to help him with his headaches and even compliments her garden.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Cooper's security guard Eddie is complicit in his conning of Locke, but is otherwise a perfectly friendly guy. He even apologizes to Locke afterwards and seems to feel genuinely guilty about it.
- Rage Against the Heavens: With Boone badly injured and his destiny seeming to go nowhere, Locke despondently screams at the Island itself over what has happened.Locke: I have done everything you have wanted me to do, so, why did you do this TO ME?! WHY?!
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Boone is at death's door, and Locke pounds on the Hatch door, despondent that what he thought was his destiny has lead to this. However, the light turning on in the Hatch gives him renewed hope that there is a purpose to the work he's done.
- Rewatch Bonus: In the flashbacks, Locke walks in on Cooper receiving dialysis treatments, apparently having mixed up the meeting time. On a rewatch, it's clear that Cooper gave him an earlier time so that he would see the treatment and start to get the idea of donating his kidney.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: The private investigator Locke hired to research his parents warns him that his father may not know he even exists, and that it may not turn out the way Locke hopes. He's right that Locke seeking his father out wouldn't end well, but it turns out to be because Cooper knows exactly who Locke is and is trying to scam him out of a kidney.
- Shout-Out: Hurley compares the sight of Sawyer in glasses to a "steamrolled Harry Potter".
- Stealth Hi/Bye: After carrying Boone to the caves, Locke manages to slip away without anyone noticing.
- Tantrum Throwing: After his trebuchet fails to so much as scratch the Hatch, Locke kicks it angrily, yelling "this was supposed to work!".
- Troll:
- Jack takes advantage of Sawyer needing medical advice about his headaches to ask him a bunch of irrelevant embarrassing questions about his sex life, before revealing that he needs glasses.
- Later, Jack tells Sawyer that he has hyperopia in a grave tone, making it sound like it's a serious illness, before telling him he's simply farsighted once Sawyer has no clue what it is.
- Truly Single Parent: Locke's mother Emily claims he didn't have a father, and was "immaculately conceived", but later admits she made this up to convince him to seek out his father while making him think it was his own idea, as part of Cooper's con.
- Trust Password: Locke convinces Boone that his vision was more than a dream by telling him what Boone said about Theresa in his dream. Boone says that Theresa was his childhood nanny who broke her neck when she tripped on the stairs, which Locke couldn't possibly have known about.
- The Unreveal: Boone asks why Locke was in a wheelchair, but Locke writes off the question as unimportant.
- The Voiceless: Sayid appears only once, when he solders a pair of glasses for Sawyer, but doesn't speak.
- Wham Episode: Boone is mortally wounded after hearing a transmission from someone claiming to be from another group of survivors of the crash, and Locke sees a light inside the Hatch.
- Wham Line: When Boone uses the beechcraft's radio to try to contact a rescue party.Boone: We're survivors of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815.Man: We're the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815.
- Wham Shot: As Locke despondently wails at the Hatch, a light suddenly shines out from the window.
- Yank the Dog's Chain:
- In the flashbacks, Locke thinks he's found a loving father figure for the first time in his life, but ends up getting conned out of his kidney.
- After having regained the ability to walk when the plane crashed, Locke starts to lose the use of his legs again, and doesn't understand why the Island is taking its gift back.
- Locke thinks he's being sent a sign on how to open the Hatch when he gets a vision of the beechcraft, but it turns out to be nothing more than a drug smugglers' plane and climbing into it results in Boone being mortally injured.
