With Jane away for a few days, I've been watching whole lot of television. With the warning that this post contains Lost spoilers if you haven't seen the episode aired last Wednesday here in the U.S. (titled "Something Nice Back Home"), one of the questions that I have is why the show's creators seem to be establishing Jack Shepard as the iconic leader figure in what seem to be the final moments before rescue, when leadership on the show has always been fluid -- emergent, even.

When Jack falls ill with appendicitis in the last episode, he's consumed with the idea that he's going to fail the survivors in the hour that they need him most. Even taking into consideration Matthew Fox's appropriately rugged good looks, it's always seemed strange that Jack has been held up so often as the key to survival for the island's habitants. We've seen a number of characters actually function as decision makers or influencers (Sawyer, Locke, Kate, Sayid, Ben, Juliet, Hurley, etc.) and I think its fair to say that just as often a new tent is set up and attacks are launched because the group, or some segment of the group, coalesces around a strategy.

I'm particularly intrigued by this idea of leadership on Lost because how groups manage to survive in a relatively confined and often hostile space is to me one of the more compelling themes of the series. Having the good-looking doctor serve as the "great man" of the island makes the whole business less interesting, I think. We know Jack is one of the Oceanic Six (though I'm entirely confused as to what that even means when we have a supposedly dead Charlie appearing to Hurley, etc.) My bet? Jack's rendered entirely weak during the whole get-off-of-the-island process, which leads to some of them indeed making it off and ensuring that Jack's miserable as a result. Emergent leadership emerges victorious.