"You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past." - Bruce Springsteen.
So mad props to actor Titus Welliver, he playing the Man in Black in our most recent installment of Lost. His frustration, his rage and ultimately his hurt at the dang unfairness of it all, it really swung for the fences.
"Across the Sea" is going to be a polarizing episode. It didn't actually give us a lot of meat to chew on and instead went all mystical/magical/ill defined. And CJ from 'West Wing' left us with just as many new questions - these unfortunately will never be answered - as answers about what the heck at the end of the day is going on. And even a Lost apologist like me who even like the Nikki and Paolo episode, I'm mixed on what we were given.
It would've been nice to get a better sense of what exactly the Jacob vs Smoke Monster conflict actually boils down to. Presumably Smokey is some kind of primal evil. But is protecting the island the same as keeping Smokey on island?
So Smoke Locke wants off the island because that's what was motivating Man in Black when the smoke monster imprinted on him. Also hardwired into Smoke Monster from Man in Black is apparently the dislike of humanity, seeing them as venal and corrupted.
And apparently Jacob is immortal because he drank from the same hooch that Allison Janey's character did at some point seemingly looong ago. But how did she kill off those people on the other side of the island, Man in Black's cohorts?
And why isn't Smoke Monster now wanting to stay on the island, since that also was Locke's desire?
And finally I was a little annoyed at the season 1 flashback spoon feeding me the reminder about the Adam and Eve skeletons. THat's been one of the pleasures of the show, someone not giving exposition explaining everything to me. And yes I realize that seems to contradict what I was just carping about in terms of not having the Jacobian conflict better spelled out. Bite me.
Your thoughts?
2 comments:
Things I learned on this week’s LOST:
Jacob always wears white, even after birth. Like Kal-El’s baby blanket, his mother must’ve sewn a lifetime worth of clothes out of that one piece of cloth.
His brother, Toddler In Black, always wear black, which, of course, makes him either bad or Johnny Cash.
Their adoptive mother is a murdering psychopath, which is about what one can expect from somebody who loom blankets day after day after day.
Everybody wears a universal language translator, like on Star Trek. No matter what indescribable language somebody speaks, it eventually sounds like English. Korean, Spanish, French, Hurley … it doesn’t matter.
LOSTIES like pulled pork, but who doesn’t?
There is a magical, delicate tunnel with a bright, warm light that I’m sure somebody, somewhere will equate with lady bits, which would confirm that the entire island is some sort of mysterious place, which as we all know - it is.
Man In Black committed matricide, which is not the same as recycling old bedding.
Speaking of the magical tunnel, Man In Black drifted into it after his beat-down at the hands of Jacob for killing Mother. He then emerged as a column of black smoke! Has anyone else seen this thing on LOST before? This was new to me. Next they’ll be telling me there’s a secret lab buried underground or a statue of a giant foot on the beach.
Finally, I have no idea in what year all of this occurred, because there are no cars with tail fins or too-big cell phones to use as convenient time references. I’m guessing it was during the Crusades because the evil LOSTIES were dressed like a turkey leg vendor at the Renaissance Festival. We did flash ahead to what appeared to be the first season of LOST, because Jack had his buzz cut and Kate was wearing make-up and Locke was still Locke. That was lame. When they found dead Man in Black and dead Mother, still all fleshy and firm and not looking the worse for wear after being dead for Lord knows how long, they also found the white and black stones, which prompted Kate to whip out her jewelers loupe and declare them hers. “These will make a fine set of earrings!” she said.
First Daneman, mad props for the Boss reference.
Second, I am very much conflicted by this episode. Parts of it seemed to give us the answers. Parts of it only provided more questions and parts of it seemed plagued by lazy story telling. It was if as the writers were saying "you people wanted answers! Well, here they are smartiepantses!"
I thought the acting was well done, but Allison Janney's appearance ultimately leaves us wondering "How the hell did she get there, and how do all these ancient Romans get half way across the Pacific?" We know that she's good at bashing people's heads in. But we already knew that from when she caused Josh Lyman to bleed to death in season three of the West Wing by impaling him on some White House crown moulding. And when she rammed Michael Cera's head through the front of an oven in Juneau. Or maybe I just fantasized about that.
And the light. What is it? Is it a gift from God? A naturally occuring thing? Is Alison janney an angel sent to protect it?
How fucking long are Ben and Miles and Richard going to run through the forest? they've been running for three weeks, they've got to be damn tired now.
This is either going to come together masterfully or spin wildly out of control and bomb. There will be no middle ground.
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