Week 11: Teamwork & Networks
Lost
I have always been a fan of Lost. After watching the pilot over, I realized all the teamwork that was needed to survive. This episode was crazy and very unorganized. After being in the plane crash the people were just running around the beach not knowing what to do. I think Jack takes the leadership role in order to get some organization on the island. In the beginning of the episode Jack sees a man stuck under a piece if the plane. He calls over three other men to help him get the man out. When the man is out Jack tells the others to help him to safe place away from the plane. Next, Jack hears a pregnant woman screaming so he goes to help her. After he calms her down he tells another man to look after her, so he can go help another woman. A guy is giving a woman CPR but it is not working. Jack takes over and is able to resuscitate her. When Jack feels like he has done everything he could on the beach he goes to a place alone to tend to his own wounds. This is what makes Jack a great team member because he knows how important it is to help the other members of a team. When Jack needs help with his own wounds, he relies on Kate to stitch him up. All of these conflicts that they faced shows that everyone needed someone else’s help at one point even Jack. Another conflict they face is trying to find the transceiver to send a distressed call. Jack, Kate, and Charlie decide to go in the forest to find the front of the plane. When they find the plane they find out that the co-pilot is still alive. They find the transceiver but discover that it’s not working. While in the plane the hear a weird noise coming from some kind of animal. The animal then kills the co-pilot so Jack, Kate, and Charlie take the transceiver and run back toward the beach. When they fail to get the transceiver to work, Jack still chooses to take it back to the beach. This shows that Jack is not giving up on the group and still has hope. As they are running back to the beach Charlie falls and Jack runs back to help him up. Jack showed great teamwork there by going back to help and Charlie owes him his life for it. The episode ends with Jack, Kate, and Charlie heading back to the rest of the group on the beach. I think the two biggest conflicts that the group faces at this point is how to get off the island and what type of creature is in the forest. It is important that a group all has the same goal, which is to get off the island. Now the group has the transceiver to send a call for help, they just need to work together to get it to work. The creature or creatures on the island affects the group as long as they are still stuck there. At some point they will have to come together and figure out a way to deal with the threat.
This episode of Lost and the Mann Gulch firefighters are similar in the environment that they are in. The people in Lost are disorganized because they’ve just been in a plane crash and the firefighters are disorganized because they lost their leadership and tools. Jack seems like a better leader than Wagner was for the firefighters. Although we can’t really compare the leadership roles in depth because that was one short part of the Lost story. I think Jack relates to the firefighters because he is a surgeon without his tools. The firefighters felt helpless without their leader and tools. They were forced to figure out a solution as people in a major crisis. With all of this disorganization I think these two groups operate more like networks. Networks are groups of people communicate often and are less structured than teams. The people in Lost don’t know their roles yet and are still acting frantic. When or if the group in Lost get organized then they can act more like an actual team. We have already seen acts of teamwork in the first episode, so we can guess that they can will be an organized team.
Can you think of another situation like this?
