Did Lost forget about Jack's addiction?
One of the biggest reveals of the Season 3 finale, one that I personally felt completely upended everything about what I thought would happen when they escaped the island, was that Jack would eventually fall into addiction.
Choosing to take the main character -- who up until this point had been as close to a perfect person as we'd been able to come by on this crazy magic island -- and give him not only a debilitating sense of remorse coming into season 4/5, but also an addiction to pills and alcohol that would throw his life completely out of whack was such an intriguing direction, and one that I looked forward to seeing play out in the "main" timeline in conjunction with him and the rest of the Oceanic Six trying to find their way back to the island.
But what has been immensely disappointing is how quickly the show moves past those developments in favor of slotting Jack right back into that hero archetype he's always fit so nicely into. There's no talk of withdrawal, no real talk of lasting consequences (ig he got suspended from the hospital, but that won't have any effect on him now that he's back on the island), and there's barely been any mention of Jack's addiction since he shaved his beard.
And if I hadn't known Lost to be capable of handling an addiction storyline with nuance, I probably wouldn't really notice this gaping hole, but I know that this show can do this right because we saw it play out over the entirety of the first 3 seasons with Charlie.
I'm a little less than halfway through season 5 rn (they literally just crashed again), so idk maybe all of this will be addressed in a more conclusive way going forward, but I sincerely doubt it. Imo it just demonstrates an unwillingness on the part of the production team to add some wrinkles to Jack's boy scout persona.
Maybe there was public pushback/outcry at the time and that's why this storyline was completely dropped, idk, but I would have really liked to have seen where it could have gone.
