Lost: Ab Aeterno
All of God’s children have daddy issues.
Well, here’s Lost’s character arc template writ large in one big fable: man lives a brutish life, is enslaved by the pursuit of a thing he loves, grapples with forces larger than himself, and lamely hobbles around afterwards in search of salvation. Poor Richard Alpert.
I’ve said it before: the show’s been spinning an angry thematic thread lately about religion and the ways it muddles with a person’s head. Richard nurses an ache for God, the largest father figure of all, and I doubt he would have begged Jacob for eternal life if he wasn’t terrified of dying and going to Hell with a lack of absolution for his sins. It’s not a coincidence that Jacob’s offer of continued life for abject servitude isn’t wildly different from that of Richard’s slavers. And years upon years of dutiful service hasn’t eased his mind or made him understand his place in the world any better than the faith-filled Locke did when he was choked to death.
Devotion to a powerful force outside of yourself always falls into that weird binary where you can only hop on board the belief or reject it absolutely while running in the opposite direction. Each and every one of us, even if we decide to be hardcore athiests, has to figure out where we stand in relation to the idea of an ultimate supernatural string-puller. There’s no side-stepping or sideways-universing away from making these sorts of choices. In that way, society’s been rigged from the start to force an answer from all of us… and both Jacob and The Man in Black seem content to exploit that aspect of everyone’s personality.
So the Island is a cork, keeping a Pandora’s Box full of evils from spilling out and infecting the entire world? When the Man in Black shatters the bottle completely instead of simply popping out the cork… that’s probably a bad sign what might happen if he gets himself free of the Island. If this thing ends like The Stand, though, I’m gonna get pissed.
Anyway:
• I think part of the reason I find the Man in Black (in his different humanoid forms) so creepy is that his leitmotif is pretty much the Emperor’s theme from the Star Wars movies.
• Interesting to see that, since inching his way towards salvation a couple episodes back, we’ve only seen Ben speaking verifiable truth.
• That last scene between Richard and Hurley was great, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie “Ghost” and that scene where Whoopi Goldberg TECHNICALLY has lesbian sex with Demi Moore in the guise of Patrick Swayze and it made me want to throw up all over myself.
• So I guess Jacob whipped up a supernatural storm that sucked the Black Rock onto the Island? I seem to remember it being pretty sunny outside when he and his nemesis first spot the ship.
• The world’s already got a fair share of evil. If the Man in Black gets out, is it just a matter of tipping the balance heavily in one direction?
Comments
Holy crap do I love your Lost reviews.
But yeah, this was the episode I’ve been waiting all season for. Not the Richard episode, per se, but the episode that made it feel like the show actually was going somewhere. Somewhere interesting, no less.
I took the bottle shattering a bit differently than you, I think. The island is the cork, certainly, so I can only guess that the bottle is Jacob, the thing the man in black wishes to smash. You get the impression the Richard story was the first time the Man in Black tried to kill Jacob.
I was also thinking, “So, is Hurley kissing Richard’s cheek right now?”
My question is, did Hurley make up that last bit to save them? Or did Richard’s wife actually say something about them all going to hell?
This was a great episode. And explained some big things, namely Richard’s lack of aging, the old slave ship origins, and also pretty much laid out the Jacob/Smokey dynamic.
I’d say at this point the only big thing left to explain is the time travel/parallel universe stuff and how that relates to it all.
Awesome episode, the first time in a really long time that I have been able to say that. A couple of things though:
1. The ship broke the statue? That seems more than a little far-fetched, especially if we are to believe that Jacob whipped up the storm to bring it there. If he can control the weather he certainly can control where the ship would land and ensure that it didn’t destroy his sanctuary, right? Is there something deeper being said with this, or was it just a sloppy way of answering an old question?
2. How does a slave ship en route to the New World from the Canary Islands end up near a mysterious island in the South Pacific?
Jay said:
2. How does a slave ship en route to the New World from the Canary Islands end up near a mysterious island in the South Pacific?
The same way a drug plane from Nigeria ends up there. Or a passenger plane from Australia that started heading in the wrong direction.
1) The ship we saw back in the last episode of Season 5 could have been something other than the Black Rock.
2) The island moves, so who knows, maybe it was off the coast of Africa back in the 1800s when the episode took place.
3) And we have already seen what happens when something on the island gets to the real world with Hurley and the numbers and how the evil needs to be contained.
There seems to be significance to the statue shattering on a spiritual level, as this seems to be the first time that Jacob takes in interest in directly tinkering in the affairs of the people that serve his interests (even if it’s only through an intermediary like Richard)… maybe the start of the “Others” as we know them altogether. Jacob on the beach is violent and aggressive and, after recruiting Richard, sinks into the more familiar serene mode. Sorta like Old Testament God softening into the New Testament God.
The show established that the Island has a tendency to blink about the temperate band of the globe of its own volition. That’s why the Dharma Initiative built the Lamp Post Station, so they can pinpoint potential locations where the Island may appear.
Evan: that’s an awesome point about the numbers being just one tiny facet of the darkness that can leak forth from the Island.
Nestor Carbonell did a really kick-ass job with his acting in this episode. He sustained decline into pitiable, despairing hopelessness without grating on our nerves, which is delicate work for a character that’s never done much beyond stand around for several seasons.
If the closing shot to this epic series is anything other than Nestor Carbonell emerging from the jungle in full Batmanuel costume right before the show cuts to the final credits, I am going to be seriously disappointed.
So far this season, I was beginning to think it was too religious-heavy. Despite all the other seasons with their dichotomy of fate vs. free will, this season was beginning to feel almost pro-theism. But now I see with this excellent episode, that’s more about the individual and how he/she deals with the thought of a god.
I still haven’t single a single episode of the live-action Tick. I really want to.
It was actually pretty unnecessary overall. I mean the writing was good and very similar but there was just no reason for it to be live action. It added nothing. Not horrible, but you’re also not missing anything in particular.