For instance, he wants to cheat on his wife but he backtracks last minute because he gets scared the moment the possibility becomes real. He still gets his punishment as his wife is also cheating on him and eventually leaves him.

Or when Tom tells him in S2 that there will be consequences if he crosses the imaginary line he's drawing on the island. Jack is ready to cross it and he's for real so the Others have to resort to show him a kidnapped Kate to make him change his mind. It doesn't matter anyway because eventually he will be imprisoned by the very Others and Ben himself will cross that line.

Or when he doesn't want to perform surgery on Ben but ultimately gives in because Kate begs him to do it otherwise the Others will kill Sawyer.

Or when Locke tells him he wouldn't shoot him but Jack shoots his shot which turns up blank.

Or when everybody wants him to be their leader but they don't want to follow his leadership so the things he does as a leader either backfire or are done in vain because people be off in the jungle doing their thing anyway.

Or when he wants to get people off the island, the very thing they've all been trying to do for the past 4 seasons, right? Well, turns out he was wrong, narrative now says they weren't supposed to leave but they did and now it's his fault. So he's now understandably going off the rails but people, also understandably, keep him at a distance because of his behavior.

He's like a character who's forced to do Good As Understood by the Narrative and he gets punished when he doesn't want to, however, even when he does Good As Understood by the Narrative (and it's a very shifting Good since tables turn and keep on turning in every season) he also gets punished because he's not aware that now the Good As Understood by the Narrative is not the same as it was one season ago.

i love the "man of science vs man of faith" theme. love it love it LOVE IT. Jack and John's relationship is one of the best things to have ever graced tv screens.

however, if i may add, it's also very important to me the "man who doesn't have faith in himself vs man who believes he's special" sub-theme.

John starts off as a character who was on a wheelchair and was determined to go on his walkabout. Some might call it delusional but, using the show's lenses, he actually showed an extraordinary faith in himself.

Jack, on the other hand, starts off as a torn man, a man who did the right thing and it wreaked havoc on his family. His guilt is eating him alive from the inside out as he's literally carrying his dead father's body to LA, a body that he NEEDS to bury ("I need to bury him").

self-doubt vs self-assurance: self-doubt is the foundation of Jack's tunnel vision; self-assurance is what makes John says that Boone was a sacrifice the island demanded.

they're both problematic in their extremities.

but the narrative sides with John because we the audience see that he was in a wheelchair and he's not anymore. So we know, even if we may disagree with this methods, that he has indeed a valid reason to believe he's onto something.

Jack Shephard + slut era

#whore behavior

“Our last kitchen conversation was interrupted by Jack Crawford. I'd like to pick up where we left off.”