Examples of Jack Shephard Being an Asshole, Terrible Leader, and Genuinely Not that Awesome of a Person
1x08, Confidence Man: Jack supports Sayid torturing Sawyer with bamboo spikes to get him to “confess” to having Shannon’s asthma inhaler. This continues until Sawyer breaks free, fights with Sayid and winds up with an accidental serious stab wound to the arm, for which Jack never really apologizes for and sort of just awkwardly ignores or tries to justify it whenever Sawyer brings it up.
1x12, Whatever the Case May Be: Jack threatens to withhold Sawyer’s medication from him if he doesn’t give him the case of guns Kate and Sawyer had found.
1x15, Homecoming: Jack allows Claire – then heavily pregnant – to act as bait for the man who has already kidnapped her and attempted to hang and kill Charlie.
1x21, Do No Harm: Jack beats the crap out of Locke for “killing Boone” and needs to be pulled off of him by several others.
2x11, The Hunting Party: Jack bosses Kate around and pretty much treats her like shit, which encourages her to chase after them on their mission to rescue Michael, and winds up getting held at gunpoint, forcing the Losties to retreat from the Others. If he was less of a jackass, he could have 1. either let her come along in the first place or 2. explain he doesn’t want her to come because he worries about her and talk her into staying behind like a rational human being. His bad attitude/terrible leadership skills is part of the reason she almost gets killed.
2x17, Lockdown: Jack again threatens to withhold Sawyer’s antibiotics from him because the two are basically jealous of Kate’s affection for the other.
2x20, Two for the Road: Jack pulls a gun on Sawyer and demands he surrender the other guns Sawyer had conned everyone into giving him.
3x01, A Tale of Two Cities: It’s revealed in flashbacks that Jack becomes obsessed with his wife leaving him and starts to stalk her. When his father tells him to back off and let it go, he becomes convinced that he is the one Sarah was having an affair with and physically attacks him at an AA meeting, ending his sobriety and showing that Jack is at least partially to blame for his ongoing abuse of alcohol. Jack ends up in jail after the attack.
3x06, I Do: Jack threatens to kill Ben during surgery if the Others refuse to let Kate and Sawyer go. While this could be a really nice, brave thing to do, the Others (and especially Ben) are such unpredictable enemies with seemingly all powerful control of the Island and how stuff works there, he has no idea if they will or won’t call his bluff, and in doing so, he risks the lives of everyone he cares about back on the beach just to get Kate and Sawyer out for who knows how long. It does work out, but it could have done with some thinking.
3x09, Stranger in a Strange Land: In flashbacks, Jack gets super creepy and aggressively violent with Achara when she refuses to tattoo him, even though she’s explained why she’s unwilling to do so.
3x12, Par Avion & 3x13, The Man from Tallahassee: Jack has now apparently abandoned his plans of getting everyone else off the island so that he can get off himself, all because Kate “chose” Sawyer. Not cool, bro. (This plan goes to shit when Locke blows up the sub the Others were going to let Jack leave on.)
3x22, Through the Looking Glass Part One & 3x23, Through the Looking Glass Part Two: Jack kisses Juliet in front of Kate in the ongoing mess of the worst love triangle in the history of fiction, showing once again that he’s an asshole who can’t let anything go and is apparently happy to hurt the people he loves just because he’s feeling shitty. He also allows the Others to “kill” Jin, Bernard and Sayid (two of whom are married and one of whom has a pregnant wife) so that the other survivors can escape, and then beats the hell out of Ben afterwards because he’s angry about what he was forced into doing. He also says he’s planning on killing Ben once the rescue copter comes. IN THE FLASH FORWARDS, Jack has left the Island and has now basically become a drunk, drug addicted mess. He continues to work at the hospital while under the influence of both alcohol and prescription drugs (the very thing he got his father fired for, which led to his drinking himself to death in Australia, which led to Jack ending up on the Island in the first place), thus endangering the lives of his patients and pretty much anyone else who has the misfortune of running into him. It’s revealed that he’s succeeded in pushing Kate away and now wants to return to the Island after spending so much time wanting to get off of it.
4x01, The Beginning of the End: Jack tries to shoot Locke and then beats the crap out of him for stabbing Naomi. IN THE FLASH FORWARDS, it’s revealed that Jack has begun drinking heavily to help cope with the guilt of leaving everyone else behind on the Island. He also stubbornly refuses to interact with Kate while she raises Aaron because he feels angry, weird and bitter about her raising his nephew, thus denying them both something for basically no reason other than that he’s a stubborn asshole.
4x09, The Shape of Things to Come: Jack violently threatens Faraday, but has to pull back when his inflamed appendix causes him too much pain to continue.
4x10, Something Nice Back Home: IN THE FLASH FORWARDS, Jack lets his insecurity about his relationship with his father come between him and Kate, in that he’s basically incapable of being comfortable being a parent to Aaron. He also stops trusting Kate, demands she answer his questions about her seemingly odd behavior and once again tries to emotionally blackmail her about Aaron not actually being her son, just in time for Aaron to hear the whole thing.
4x14, There’s No Place Like Home Part Three: Jack’s stubbornness and inability to believe that the people on the freighter were there to help him basically gets a ton of the Oceanic survivors (most significantly Jin) killed. Everyone who was evacuated to the freighter except Sun, Kate, Aaron, Sayid, Hurley, Desmond and Jack are killed.
5x01, Because You Left: Off the island, Jack tells Ben that he’s going back to the island because he feels guilty about leaving his friends behind, but in a season six episode, he reveals his reasons for coming back are a lot more selfish. Namely, he wanted to return to the Island because he thought it would fix him because he felt broken back in the real world, and that had been his primary motivator in returning.
5x10, He’s Our You: Jack reluctantly has accepted Sawyer’s position as the new leader of the group, but still pretty much doesn’t actually accept it at all and almost blows their cover as new members of the DHARMA Initiative, putting the whole group at risk.
5x11, Whatever Happened, Happened: Jack refuses to help operate on a young Ben Linus because he’s “done trying to fix things”, despite this being a massive fucking lie as revealed in the season finale.
5x14, The Variable through 5x18, The Incident Part Two: Jack becomes convinced that they need to detonate the Jughead bomb to reset the timeline and stop Oceanic Flight 815 from ever crashing on the Island. Kate, Sawyer and Juliet are unconvinced that this is a good idea, citing that there’s a good chance everyone on the Island will get killed if they try to alter history and succeed. Jack ignores this, and his plan results in a shootout that gets Sayid shot (the wound proves to be fatal in season six), and after this so technically after his pullpoint but still, Jack and Sawyer once again dissolve into a violent fist fight and have to be separated. Jack is so determined to “be the hero” and “fix everything” that he’s putting hundreds of lives at risk on a hunch that might or might not work, and is pretty much unwilling to listen to anyone’s very logical suggestions about why this might turn out to be a fucking horrible idea. Sawyer also sees through his whole “this is our destiny to do this” bullshit and gets down to the fact that Jack is doing this for selfish reasons because he screwed up his relationship with Kate, which again is not a reason to risk the lives of other people who apparently don’t get a choice in the matter.
6x05, Lighthouse: This is after his pullpoint, but he smashes all the mirrors in Jacob's lighthouse in a spur of the moment angry temper tantrum that could have proved catastrophic if it hadn't been Jacob conning Jack into doing it in the first place.
REVISIONS PART ONE
1x08, Confidence Man: Jack supports Sayid torturing Sawyer with bamboo spikes to get him to “confess” to having Shannon’s asthma inhaler. This continues until Sawyer breaks free, fights with Sayid and winds up with an accidental serious stab wound to the arm, for which Jack never really apologizes for and sort of just awkwardly ignores or tries to justify it whenever Sawyer brings it up.
1x12, Whatever the Case May Be: Jack threatens to withhold Sawyer’s medication from him if he doesn’t give him the case of guns Kate and Sawyer had found.
1x15, Homecoming: Jack allows Claire – then heavily pregnant – to act as bait for the man who has already kidnapped her and attempted to hang and kill Charlie.
1x21, Do No Harm: Jack beats the crap out of Locke for “killing Boone” and needs to be pulled off of him by several others.
2x11, The Hunting Party: Jack bosses Kate around and pretty much treats her like shit, which encourages her to chase after them on their mission to rescue Michael, and winds up getting held at gunpoint, forcing the Losties to retreat from the Others. If he was less of a jackass, he could have 1. either let her come along in the first place or 2. explain he doesn’t want her to come because he worries about her and talk her into staying behind like a rational human being. His bad attitude/terrible leadership skills is part of the reason she almost gets killed.
2x17, Lockdown: Jack again threatens to withhold Sawyer’s antibiotics from him because the two are basically jealous of Kate’s affection for the other.
2x20, Two for the Road: Jack pulls a gun on Sawyer and demands he surrender the other guns Sawyer had conned everyone into giving him.
3x01, A Tale of Two Cities: It’s revealed in flashbacks that Jack becomes obsessed with his wife leaving him and starts to stalk her. When his father tells him to back off and let it go, he becomes convinced that he is the one Sarah was having an affair with and physically attacks him at an AA meeting, ending his sobriety and showing that Jack is at least partially to blame for his ongoing abuse of alcohol. Jack ends up in jail after the attack.
3x06, I Do: Jack threatens to kill Ben during surgery if the Others refuse to let Kate and Sawyer go. While this could be a really nice, brave thing to do, the Others (and especially Ben) are such unpredictable enemies with seemingly all powerful control of the Island and how stuff works there, he has no idea if they will or won’t call his bluff, and in doing so, he risks the lives of everyone he cares about back on the beach just to get Kate and Sawyer out for who knows how long. It does work out, but it could have done with some thinking.
3x09, Stranger in a Strange Land: In flashbacks, Jack gets super creepy and aggressively violent with Achara when she refuses to tattoo him, even though she’s explained why she’s unwilling to do so.
3x12, Par Avion & 3x13, The Man from Tallahassee: Jack has now apparently abandoned his plans of getting everyone else off the island so that he can get off himself, all because Kate “chose” Sawyer. Not cool, bro. (This plan goes to shit when Locke blows up the sub the Others were going to let Jack leave on.)
3x22, Through the Looking Glass Part One & 3x23, Through the Looking Glass Part Two: Jack kisses Juliet in front of Kate in the ongoing mess of the worst love triangle in the history of fiction, showing once again that he’s an asshole who can’t let anything go and is apparently happy to hurt the people he loves just because he’s feeling shitty. He also allows the Others to “kill” Jin, Bernard and Sayid (two of whom are married and one of whom has a pregnant wife) so that the other survivors can escape, and then beats the hell out of Ben afterwards because he’s angry about what he was forced into doing. He also says he’s planning on killing Ben once the rescue copter comes. IN THE FLASH FORWARDS, Jack has left the Island and has now basically become a drunk, drug addicted mess. He continues to work at the hospital while under the influence of both alcohol and prescription drugs (the very thing he got his father fired for, which led to his drinking himself to death in Australia, which led to Jack ending up on the Island in the first place), thus endangering the lives of his patients and pretty much anyone else who has the misfortune of running into him. It’s revealed that he’s succeeded in pushing Kate away and now wants to return to the Island after spending so much time wanting to get off of it.
4x01, The Beginning of the End: Jack tries to shoot Locke and then beats the crap out of him for stabbing Naomi. IN THE FLASH FORWARDS, it’s revealed that Jack has begun drinking heavily to help cope with the guilt of leaving everyone else behind on the Island. He also stubbornly refuses to interact with Kate while she raises Aaron because he feels angry, weird and bitter about her raising his nephew, thus denying them both something for basically no reason other than that he’s a stubborn asshole.
4x09, The Shape of Things to Come: Jack violently threatens Faraday, but has to pull back when his inflamed appendix causes him too much pain to continue.
4x10, Something Nice Back Home: IN THE FLASH FORWARDS, Jack lets his insecurity about his relationship with his father come between him and Kate, in that he’s basically incapable of being comfortable being a parent to Aaron. He also stops trusting Kate, demands she answer his questions about her seemingly odd behavior and once again tries to emotionally blackmail her about Aaron not actually being her son, just in time for Aaron to hear the whole thing.
4x14, There’s No Place Like Home Part Three: Jack’s stubbornness and inability to believe that the people on the freighter were there to help him basically gets a ton of the Oceanic survivors (most significantly Jin) killed. Everyone who was evacuated to the freighter except Sun, Kate, Aaron, Sayid, Hurley, Desmond and Jack are killed.
5x01, Because You Left: Off the island, Jack tells Ben that he’s going back to the island because he feels guilty about leaving his friends behind, but in a season six episode, he reveals his reasons for coming back are a lot more selfish. Namely, he wanted to return to the Island because he thought it would fix him because he felt broken back in the real world, and that had been his primary motivator in returning.
5x10, He’s Our You: Jack reluctantly has accepted Sawyer’s position as the new leader of the group, but still pretty much doesn’t actually accept it at all and almost blows their cover as new members of the DHARMA Initiative, putting the whole group at risk.
5x11, Whatever Happened, Happened: Jack refuses to help operate on a young Ben Linus because he’s “done trying to fix things”, despite this being a massive fucking lie as revealed in the season finale.
5x14, The Variable through 5x18, The Incident Part Two: Jack becomes convinced that they need to detonate the Jughead bomb to reset the timeline and stop Oceanic Flight 815 from ever crashing on the Island. Kate, Sawyer and Juliet are unconvinced that this is a good idea, citing that there’s a good chance everyone on the Island will get killed if they try to alter history and succeed. Jack ignores this, and his plan results in a shootout that gets Sayid shot (the wound proves to be fatal in season six), and after this so technically after his pullpoint but still, Jack and Sawyer once again dissolve into a violent fist fight and have to be separated. Jack is so determined to “be the hero” and “fix everything” that he’s putting hundreds of lives at risk on a hunch that might or might not work, and is pretty much unwilling to listen to anyone’s very logical suggestions about why this might turn out to be a fucking horrible idea. Sawyer also sees through his whole “this is our destiny to do this” bullshit and gets down to the fact that Jack is doing this for selfish reasons because he screwed up his relationship with Kate, which again is not a reason to risk the lives of other people who apparently don’t get a choice in the matter.
6x05, Lighthouse: This is after his pullpoint, but he smashes all the mirrors in Jacob's lighthouse in a spur of the moment angry temper tantrum that could have proved catastrophic if it hadn't been Jacob conning Jack into doing it in the first place.