This week, things were different in X world. Last week Kate X and Claire X sharing a taxi felt forced, the crying wife was a bit ridiculous (seriously, how could she not call Claire before she flew from freaking Australia?) and the baby coming at precisely that moment was just too much. But Locke's scene in the parking lot with the wheelchair lift and Hurley X's stupid yellow hummer was natural and fun (though I'm wondering how Hugo got out the door in the first place!). You have to give a lot of credit to Terry O'Quinn - he's been providing some masterful acting.
Speaking about his role last year in season five he said, "At the beginning of Season 5, I went to the director, Jack Bender, and said, “I’m just going to assume that I’m Locke and I’m indestructible,” and he said, “Good, go with that.” That was easy to play. It just made me kind of smarmy. I’m not sure exactly how to overlay this new person on Locke. It’s a little bit more confusing."
And this week he brought motivation, pathos and a sense of meaning to the sideways universe, after it was so dull last week. Maybe I just went along with it because it was so nice to see Locke X happy. I enjoyed seeing him smile at his string of bad luck on the lawn, and it's nice he's getting married to Helen this time. Plus it sounds like he's having a good relationship with his father, and inviting him to the wedding (so I wonder how he got in that chair?) It was also nice to see Rose help him deal with his expectations, and find him a job providing structure and guidance for young people. Just the right job for John, if he had never ended up on the Island.
But what are we to make of this sideways universe? At first, it seems like it doesn't really have any meaning - just a series of what ifs. That seems crazy to pull for the last season though! It must have some meaning. After what Flocke told Sawyer this week, it seems the sideways universe may be a time line free of Jacob's meddling - how these people's lives were really meant to turn out. A theory I'm starting to like more deals with time loops - the Losties are caught in a loop of time, and much like the Buddhist concept of Nirvana, they need to get off this wheel to find peace. The Losties keep trying and trying to fix things and escape this eternal loop, and that's why Jack has the cut on the plane - this is an iteration of the time loop that's "later" than now.
I'm really not sure, but let's get to the really good stuff. There's a whole new "John Locke" on the loose!
It's so cool to see the Smoke Monster stalking confidently across the Island. The MonsterView camera was fun, and gave a great sense of power. Maybe the Monster really was trapped in the Cabin before, because his power and range seem greatly expanded. But then again, it seems he may have a new limitation. The Monster has seemed to appear as Christian Shephard, Mr. Eko's brother Yemi, Ben's daughter Alex, and maybe various other animals and visions (Kate's horse? The Hurley Bird? Vincent?) Now Ilana tells Ben that the Man In Black is "stuck" in John Locke's form. If that's true, why now? Was it the death of Jacob? Did Jacob's nemesis break a big rule by kicking him into the fire? Does Ilana simply assume this is the case, since Ben told her it was the Monster who killed Jacob? And what does it mean that it was Ben who really stabbed Jacob?
Speaking of Ilana, it seemed really out of character to find her under the Statue weeping loudly in a corner. It would have been better if Ben had come around a pillar to find her, and she just wiped away a tear. She's been too tough up to this point to suddenly crumble, and she pulls it together too quickly after this.
As for the Smoke Monster's various forms - every previous time the body he used disappeared. Eko went to find his brother Yemi but the corpse was gone. And when Jack finally tracked his father's coffin to the caves, it was empty. This time, Jacob's people have the body. I wonder what it means to bury a body on the island as the Losties do, while the Others send their dead out to sea in a burning pyre. I'm starting to think that was a random detail a writer threw in, and they won't ever come back to it. We'll see.
There was some really great stuff at John's funeral. Ben's eulogy was amazing. "John Locke was...a believer. He was a man of faith, he was...a much better man than I will ever be." Ben is still wrestling with his feelings of inferiority and betrayal, after all he gave to the Island. And LOL line of the night when Lapidus turned and said to no one in particular, "This is the weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to!"
It seems like John Locke may truly be dead - he found his final resting place on Boone Hill with the other 815 passengers like Shannon, Nikki and Paulo, and he was crossed off The List. Last year before the finale, Terry O'Quinn ventured this guess about Locke's fate, "I think, unfortunately, I think it’s ended for Locke. I don’t know how it’s going to end for this other guy. I’m sad. I miss John Locke, poor guy. He was a pawn.” I'm sad to say I have to agree with him. John was always a pawn in someone else's scheme, and this was just the biggest con of all. I do still have a theory that the Island can provide eternal life of some sort, so maybe we'll see John Locke again. And it's possible we're seeing a bit of him still alive somewhere in the Smoke Monster. Why did he yell John's catch phrase, "Don't tell me what I can't do!"
Fake Locke has a lot of confidence and things seem to be going his way, but last night we saw the first crack in his armor. Flocke had visions of a young boy, first with arms out covered in blood (Cain & Abel anyone? "How could you do this to me brother?!?") and then he appears again seeming more solid and running through the jungle. It was interesting that Richard couldn't see the boy while Sawyer saw him just fine.
There are rules in this confrontation that Jacob and his Nemesis must adhere to. Rules established by someone (maybe the Island?) I think Jacob and MiB are both trapped here by some greater power. Have we just seen that higher power appear as a teenage boy? The boy could be Aaron, exerting his special powers from another time line. Or he could be a new form of Jacob appearing to tell MiB he can't kill one of the candidates. Or it could be the Island itself, telling MiB he broke the rules by killing Jacob.
I really think the boy is Jacob reincarnated. Flocke has been working for years on this whole plan, but his reaction at seeing the boy suggests it's not going quite how he expected - Is that Jacob over in those bushes?!? It is weird that Richard wouldn't see Jacob, but Sawyer is a candidate who was touched by Jacob so it makes sense he would see him. Sawyer seeing the boy also came as a surprise to Flocke though, and I think there's still a possibility that he is some other power we haven't seen yet, likely a manifestation of the Island itself.
The Man in Black revealed to Sawyer that he is "trapped" on the Island, and I think Jacob was too. They are both serving some higher authority with the power to grant eternal life and heal fatal wounds. MiB says Jacob is searching for a replacement, but that the Island doesn't even need to be protected. It made me immediately think of Desmond's question from season two, "Are you him?" Jacob's predicament neatly mirrors Desmond's - fulfilling a duty to save the world, trapped in a sense and hoping every day for his replacement to come, so he could finally go home. But is he really even making a difference? Did he need to press the button, and does Jacob really need to defend the Island?
The Man in Black seems to be a master manipulator. He promises knowledge and answers, like he's the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. At this point many Lost fans are probably with me crying, "Give me the apple!"
Sawyer is certainly interested enough to risk his life climbing down that cliff. And boy, he sure sobered up fast, huh?
(Quick aside - did you catch the record Sawyer was listening to at the Barracks? Iggy and the Stooges "Search and Destroy" featuring some on point lyrics:
I'm a street walking cheetah
with a heart full of napalm
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys
Honey gotta help me please
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby detonates for me)
The sequence with Sawyer hanging on the cliffside and falling with the ladder was a bit much for me. It seemed a little bit like meaningless action just for the sake of tension. But, I have to admit, if he were able to plan those events, saving Sawyer by pulling him onto the ladder would be a great way for Flocke to win Sawyer's trust. Flocke did get Sawyer down to the cave, and a lot of people think it was Jacob's. I feel like Jacob's list is probably kept back at the Temple, and this is really Smokey's cave where he keeps his own copy of Jacob's list. He grabbed the chalk and crossed John's name off himself.
The big question is, why no Kate Austen on the list? It's impossible to answer that question at this point. We know that in season three John Locke was invited to join the Others, and he made a case for Kate to join as well. But when they told John "What Kate Did" he realized she was not a good person, and could never join them. Maybe that disqualified her, and her name was just off in a corner. I tend to think it's because the writers simply didn't see Kate as a legitimate candidate - they haven't done a good job writing her character and I wonder if they're just bad at writing women? It's possible that Lost is such a penis club that it didn't even cross anyone's mind to add Kate to the list. Or maybe her real purpose is to guide the lives of Jack and Sawyer, so one of them would be in the position to become Jacob's successor. The good news is that we won't have to wait very long for answers!
Finally, I usually don't like Lost reviews with long winded passages about philosophy (Doc Jensen, I'm looking at you) but this week I saw one I really like. Someone suggested that Flocke's cliffside cave might relate to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. It's a story about people who see an illusion and believe it is the real world, and how ideas are more important than what our senses tell us.
Imagine a cave full of prisoners who have been bound their entire lives unable to move. All they can see are shadows on the wall cast by people passing behind them unseen, and the only sound they hear is the echoes of the passing. As far as the prisoners would know, the shadows and echoes are all that exists. Now, imagine you freed one prisoner and showed him that people walk by and cast the shadows. He couldn't couldn't name them and wouldn't even recognize them as fellow people. The shadows are still more real.
"Suppose further," Socrates says, "that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be distressed and unable to see?"
But Socrates says that eventually the man would get used to life on the surface, and see the light. Now, imagine that he goes back to visit the prisoners in the cave. "Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? "Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up?"
Maybe the Man in Black is like the man removed from the from the cave. He's had his eyes opened, and he only wants to do the same for the others - starting with Sawyer.
Next week's episode is "The Lighthouse". Season one featured a two hour pilot with multiple flashbacks, followed by Kate-centric and Locke-centric episodes. If things continue on that formula, we should see a Jack episode next week. Get ready for daddy issues and fixing things!
One of my questions about this episode, is: Are we to assume that MiB has never been able to leave the island? If so, how come Jacob can/could? He had to leave to visit all the candidates, some as children, some as adults. So he must have been able to leave multiple times over at least a 20-year span. I had an idea that maybe in this "game" or whatever the rules apply to, Jacob has the privilege of leaving the island, where MiB has the ability to change form. So, they each have a separate (but equal?) advantage/power.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in regards to the ladder on the cliff scene, I agree that it was a tedious action scene which I thought was to point out that Fake Locke could have let Sawyer die, but didn't, proving Richard wrong when he told Sawyer he would stop at nothing to kill him. Maybe Richard is wrong, or maybe MiB is just waiting to do it later. Either way, that scene could have been much shorter. I find myself thinking this a lot since there are so many commercial breaks. We need every second of show we can get to solve this giant puzzle!
Oh! Also, I'm surprised at all the people on blogs and podcasts who assume that Jacob=white=good, and Mib=black=bad. Isn't the black-white cliche waaaaaaaay too easy? This show is much smarter than that. I, for one, am still totally unsure of who is good/bad or if it is even an issue. I did find it interesting that Fake Locke told Sawyer that Jacob probably visited him during a time when he was miserable and vulnerable. I think he even said, "at your worst." Isn't that exactly what HE just did to Sawyer? Come on Sawyer, you should have been smart enough to point that out, yourself!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you April - it's all too convenient for Man in Black=bad guy and Man in White=good guy. Clearly, both Jacob and his Nemesis are willing to manipulate anyone to get what they want (just look at poor John Locke & Ben Linus).
ReplyDeleteI really would be all for the idea that there's no good/bad just shades of gray. But they've gone to such lengths to establish the idea of two sides, like they're building to this massive battle of good vs. evil. I do fully expect a twist about 3/4 into the season though - anyone who keeps saying "we're the good guys" probably isn't.
I must say though, Lost has done a remarkable job of portraying everyone with nuances, from Sayid the torturer with a heart of gold, to Ben the ruthless leader of the Others who really thinks he's doing the right thing. Are there genuinely evil characters on Lost?
Very nice point about Flocke saving Sawyer there, in defiance of Richard's comment. And about MiB never leaving the Island while Jacob does have that power. But what to make of Locke's comment that he first saw the "monster" as a white light, "and it was beautiful"? Does Jacob have another form? Or is there another power on the Island we have yet to see? Or just a dangling mystery we'll never learn the truth about?
Finally, I'm hoping Sawyer is running a long con on Flocke just to get answers. I do love pissed-off Sawyer, but I'm hoping he hasn't abandoned all reason. For the character arc to really work for me, Sawyer has to have learned something from these past three years. I don't want him to just revert to the selfish con man who drives everyone away because he secretly feels fragile.
I'm really worried that Lost is going to be one huge let down. Many fans feel like they need to be using every second of the show to answer mysteries, but they're really taking their time. I feel like we may never know the truth of things like The Hurley Bird, the Other's funeral pyres, the "Sheriff" of the Others who they killed off screen in season three. There are so many things. Plus, does the Man in Black really resemble the Smoke Monster as portrayed in seasons one & two? Hard to reconcile.