Across the SeaWARNING: Heavy Exposition Work Ahead!
This one? Eh. I'll take it for what it was: Backstory and exposition. We need it, they have to give it, so here it is. I had very little emotional connection with any of the characters, but I did love the last 10 or 15 minutes.
This is what I think went down:
Mother is one in a long line of Island protectors. I think her years (decades? centuries?) of isolation on the Island have made her a little crackers, as well as a bit homicidal. She sees the opportunity for recruiting candidates for the replacement position when a pregnant woman washes ashore. So, after the babies are born, she kills her and raises the twins herself, Jacob and the one with no name, who I will continue to call MIB. She shows them a stream leading into a cave filled with a golden light, telling them that is what they need to protect, but they can never enter it. Whoever did would suffer a fate worse than death. "Mother" favors MIB, possibly because he seems to be the brighter of the two, but his intelligence/inquisitiveness/thirst for knowledge will eventually lead him away from her and Jacob.
30 years later, and MIB is thisclose to getting off the Island for good when Mother ruins everything - destroys his donkey wheel contraption and murders all of his "people". Afterward, Mother annoints Jacob as her successor, letting him drink from the cup of everlasting life. When MIB discovers what Mother has done, stabs her with his special dagger and kills her. Then Jacob in a fit of rage beats MIB and tosses him into the golden cave where I believe his soul is ripped from his body and released in the form of the Smoke Monster (pure rage?). Right? Sounds downright Shakepearean, doesn't it? Or maybe Biblical is a better description.
And if I'm looking at this screencap correctly, the light has gone out of the cave. So Jacob had the job for what? A few hours before he destroyed the source of all life or whatever that light is supposed to be? The Island seems to be the source of all life, right? Or maybe just the soul?Anyhoo, Jacob finds MIB's dead body, which he brings back to the cave and places next to Mother's body, placing with them the small pouch with the black and white stones. Adam and Eve explained. The origin of the Others, where the statue came from? Not explained.
Does all of that sound about right?
Some random thoughts:
- I did think it was interesting that MIB was the one who was supposed to have the job, and that he was 'special' like Hurley, with the ability to see dead people. Jacob, on the other hand, seemed more than just naive - he actually seemed a bit dim. Jacob also seemed to be the one with the violent tendencies, almost beating his brother to death those two times. MIB not only seemed more on the ball, he possessed a cynicism and world-weariness even as a boy.
- Here are a few things that I did not like about the episode (and they were kind of big things): 1) I thought that Allison Janney, who I usually love, was miscast. Her affect was too flat; 2) I thought the dialogue was very clunky, and suffered from the fact that MIB had no name; and 3) You're telling me that these ancient people understood the electromagnetic powers of the Island/its light and figured out that if you build some kind of contraption, hook it up to the light and install a donkey wheel, that you can turn that donkey wheel and get off the Island? Maybe end up in Tunisia somewhere? Come on. I would rather have not had that answer!
- The writers have said that they knew all along who Adam and Eve were - thus implying that they pretty much had the story mapped out in their heads from the beginning - and we would have proof of that when we found out who they were. Just the identity of the man and woman, though, wouldn't have been enough to convince me that they knew from the beginning - they could make any scenario work at this point, e.g. Rose and Bernard, or Jack and Kate - and pretend that they knew it was going to be them all along. It's the black and white stones in the pouch that Jacob places with his Mother and MIB and that Jack and Kate found with Adam and Eve way back in season 1 that leave me convinced that they really did know how things would end when they started.
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3 comments:
I also thought the episode was just meh. For all the build up, I didn't think it answered a lot of questions. Maybe in retrospect once the series is done (painful to type that) things will be more obvious. I was so looking forward to this ep and the Richard Alpert ep and found them both to be lacking.
You make a good point about the stones found with Adam & Eve. Doc Jensen made a good point about the knife. When MIB killed his mother, it was the same knife Dogen gave Sayid to kill FLocke. And mother said nothing before she was stabbed, and "nothing" after she was stabbed. I hope it makes more sense to me later. lol
I think this episode will fare better upon reflection AFTER the finale, when I think we will see the themes that were brought up in Across the Sea played out amongst the remaining characters.
Alan Sepinwall interviewed Lindelof and Cuse yesterday afternoon (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/exclusive-interview-lost-producers-damon-lindelof-and-carlton-cuse-talk-across-the-sea), right when the internet was all up in arms over the episode, and while they come off a bit defensive here and there - and I don't blame them for being so - I was really happy to read this:
CC: ...This thing is a big mythological download. Our belief is that the real resolution of the show and the one that matters is what happens to these characters (Jack, Sawyer, Locke, Kate, Hurley, etc.). We've felt a desire to provide the audience with Jacob and the Man in Black's origin story and make it not the last episode of the show for a very good reason. The show is going to focus on these characters. That's what we believe is more important and that's what we believe the audience wants to see. This all worked the way we wanted to. We planned it out so we could do a big mythological download episode at this point so that it would allow us to have the end of the show be more character-centric. That's the way we chose to tell our story.
I hope to rewatch the whole season 6 after the finale and hope to have a better understanding of it all. I am so hopeful that the finale won't disappoint. I think getting the Richard and Jacob stories out of the way for the main characters to star in the finale is a good idea.
I don't think I'll get to Happy Town until Lost is over!
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