My freshmen year of college, Earnest and I were the only two guys in our dorm intrigued by the plane-wrecked previews for a new show called LOST. We assumed that it would be a one year soiree that essentially posed as an extended version of Castaway with chicks replacing the infallibility of Wilson. We made a weekly ritual of bowing to the smoke monster and discussing the potential secrets that lay deep within Locke's nemesis, the hatch. The hopeful season finale had a handful of the survivors setting off on a luxury homemade raft and ended with a rogue ship of Others "taking the boy." The lack of closure forced Earnest and me back into a piddling life of calzones, Halo, and late night viewings of And1 mixtapes. To boot, the RIAA decided to throw the kitchen sink at college pirates that summer and nabbed seven perpetrators at Tufts. Well before the Oceanic 6, I had been infamously tagged on campus as one of the Subpoenaed 7. A summer of "grueling" labor on the golf course stymied any snowballing interest I would have concentrated on the LOST mysteries, and come season 2 I was out.
Two days before Texas and Alabama met in the national championship game this year I saw a preview for the sixth and final season of LOST that featured the re-edification of the plane from Oceanic flight 815. The feebly crackling embers of LOST pontification that still swirled in my soul were suddenly struck with a donkey punch of wind and kindling. I grabbed my housemate's copy of season 2 and vowed to plow through the missing four seasons with the vigor of Makhtar spanking it to a 100 hour long montage of Aurora Snow's greatest gulps. Once the hatch opened, my mind was instantly illuminated with that omnipresent white light. My life became Requiem for an Island, and I was an ass2ass scene short of shit getting freaky. I'd wake up in the middle of the night to Jacob's whispers, Hurley flooded my dreams asking for putting advice, and I constantly kept a box of tissues nearby anticipating the oncoming deluge of nosebleeds. By the time Juliet was surviving 200 foot freefalls and knocking out nukes I was immersed in a LOST trance similar to the conscience duality Desmond faced in his early stages on Widmore's ship. I did what any Farraday follower would and opened my notebook to find this little ditty scribed there: Brett Favre is my constant. Finally it all made sense.
There's a well-documented history on this blog of my feelings towards Favre and his return, but unfortunately the Island delivers no reparations for past misdeeds. Favre's role in my LOST quest is more apparent now than ever. Brett Favre is Charlie Pace. Let's look beyond their identical perma-scruff and gina tingling accents (or just the opposite) and focus on what defines their twin identities, fate.
This is no time for smiles dude
It takes no stretch of imagination to see that both of our characters' journeys to the Island revolve around addiction and hardship. Charlie, an indie rockstar, was abandoned by his bandmate brother only after his brother had hooked Charlie on heroin and pawned away his beloved piano. As his brother Liam recovered in Australia, Charlie decided to visit with a plea to reform the band. He was swiftly dismissed and forced to purchase a ticket on the doomed Oceanic flight. Favre battled his own vicodin addiction during his early MVP years and came very close to abandoning his wife and young daughter at the time. Instead he became reinvigorated by his wife and daughter's love and began to imbue the country with his kid-like passion, stealing away John Wayne's crown as America's preeminent gunslinger. After all of their adulation from the super bowl ring, the media served as Favre's conduit to the Island, thrusting him onto a pedestal unaffected by criticism. He truly stood alone.
There's no logical explanation for why the Island affects people the way that it does (until season 6 I hope) but there is empirical evidence that supports the theory that the Island isn't pure evil. Both Favre and Charlie were bearers of good fortune through the reversed plights of their loved ones. Charlie's crush, Claire, beat the odds of maternal death when she successfully delivered her baby boy Aaron. Likewise, Favre's wife won a bout with breast cancer, eventually becoming a figurehead for cancer research. All of these parallel circumstances still don't characterize our two players' destinies; they came to the Island to die.
Charlie first encounters Desmond back in Scotland when he's playing Wonderwall outside of Widmore's office, but since this occurs in the past Charlie has yet to actually meet Desmond and their interaction is trivial. This deja vu power follows Desmond back to the Island and enables him to sporadically go Miss Cleo on fools. It's this clairvoyance that ultimately leads to Desmond saving Charlie from lightning, preventing him from drowning, and getting a tribal arrow to the gullet. Charlie becomes aware of his fate, and finally decides to accept it knowing that it will facilitate the rescuing of other people. He's sent on a mission to an underwater aquastation to disable a jammer that is blocking radio transmission signals from leaving the Island. With the help of the Beach Boy's Good Vibrations he's successful in dismantling the jammer and basically sacrifices himself but not before delivering the message to Desmond "Not Penny's Boat."
Now here's the fucking creepy part, Favre's story is the same thing. He first meets an NFL general manager when he's taken 33rd overall by the Atlanta Falcons, but almost every single casual fan doesn't remember this because it's pre-Island Brett. If Favre's sojourn to the Island begins after the fame from his super bowl win then it's pretty clear that Favre's fate was to build expectations then crush his fans with painstaking losses. All these losses came attached to symbolic last throw interceptions that mirrored Charlie's forecasted deaths. It's incredible that the final throw Favre made for his last three franchises has been an interception in a game with huge implications (super bowl birth, playoff birth, super bowl birth). Similar to Charlie, Favre has been protected, his Desmond coming in the form of desperate NFL GMs. Unfortunately, it can't be said whether or not Favre has had his "aquastation moment" yet, but predicting that his final message will read "No Super Bowl" is just too easy.
Yea, we get it Brett
