Lost and Found: White Rabbit and House of the Rising Sun

It's been a while since I had a chance to continue my rewatching of LOST, but I managed to get in two episodes lately.

White Rabbit:

• This is the episode that is probably most well known for Jack's "live together, die alone" speech; a speech that is quickly followed by the suggestion to move camp to the caves and the first of 2 camps on the island. What I was most struck by this episode was Jack's interaction with Boone. We've known for quite some time that Jack doesn't want to be the hero, but Boone really wants people to see him as a leader. If only he'd found that pen on the pilot a little faster...
  
• The real leader, in this episode, despite the fact that everyone dismisses him is Locke. The more I watch these early episodes, the more I see how intricately crafted Locke's character was from the beginning. It's not his "I've seen inside the eye of the island" that interests me as much as it is his awareness of his surroundings and ability to know what everyone needs in these early days. Charlie and detox, Walt and companionship, Sayid and the need to appear in control, etc.
  
• White Rabbits and Allusions: I remember that when I first watched this episode I had a brief moment of satisfaction when I saw the White Rabbit reference and thought "obviously, Jack is seeing his father because the island is some sort of (drug induced?) dream." When I watched it this morning, I was thinking about the broader series and the larger plot of Carroll's novel. Alice goes down the hole, her adventures take place there, and then she she awakes. Sawyer, however, is reading Watership Down in which nearly the entire novel focuses on life within rabbit holes/burrows and the mythology and folklore that grows around such developing civilizations. I like the way that both of these allusions set up the burrowing that will happen in coming episodes via the Dharma stations and the ways that fans have developed a culture for the people on the island.
  
• Lots of dolls at the bottom of ponds (Ophelia reference on steroids) are creepier than empty coffins or decaying bodies.
  

House of the Rising Sun:

• Honesty v. Deception: I'd never really thought about Sun and Charlie as being opposites before. Sun desperately wants to speak her mind and interact with everyone else, but chooses deception again and again. Even her plan to leave Jin in the airport is based on the deception of redecorating the house. At the same time we see Charlie trying to hide his drug issue that is even more obvious because of his honesty in every other aspect of his behavior. He tells Jack and Kate to stop "verbally copulating" which may be one of my new favorite lines.
• I'd forgotten that Jin and Michael had a rocky start. That makes me have a new appreciation for their later bomb defusing adventures.