Lost: Don't Hold Your Breath

The Man in Black is willing to say or do anything to convince someone to kill Jacob. And he was desperate to leave the Island in 1867, when he'd already been there for a long time! What if the meddling in the universe is not from Jacob, but from the Smoke Monster's long attempt to find the loophole? That could place the divergence between the sideways and the original timeline way back in 19th century, and possibly explain some of the sideways differences we've seen. Anyway, we finally got our long awaited flashback for Richard Alpert!


Who is Richard Alpert? We've been waiting for years to learn the answer to that question. Did this episode really give us many answers? He was living on a Canary Island off Spain in 1867, and he worked in the fields. His wife fell ill, and he accidentally killed a doctor. Then he spent the next 140 years working for Jacob, doing...well we never get to that. In fact, this episode was much like the rest of season six - it gave Nestor Carbonell a chance to act his heart out, but gave viewers little in the way of plot development. It seems really strange to me that after five years of stories, rather than present us with a natural climax, the producers of Lost feel that they have so much character building left to do. We saw how Richard got his "job" but not what his job was really like.

What was it like for Richard, trying to bring people together from multiple countries and time periods to work on the Island? And the whole time, Richard would be trying to counteract the lies and manipulation of the Man in Black. What did Jacob have them doing for all that time? In theory, there were waves and waves of people arriving between 1867 and 2007, and Richard welcomed them in (if they didn't get killed by Smokey first). Who were those people? What did they all do? Oh, that's right, they were suddenly written off in batches, first in the massacre at the end of season three, and then during the Monster's attack on the Temple. None of those people matter at all to the writers.

What the hell was Richard doing on the Island for 140 years that he never learned a single thing from Jacob? He believes they're dead and in hell? It made no sense to say that to Jack, and was just another silly writer's trick. Alpert clearly said to Jacob in the flashback "Absolve me for my sins, so I don't go to hell." I guess that was meant to be a nod to fans, but the result is that they put a bunch of nonsense into a main character's mouth. Meanwhile, the producers are telling us they're making "character driven" stories. I'd rather have seen what the Others have been up to this whole damn time, than spend the whole season treading water with these "might-have-been" stories.

And what on earth is going on with the narrative structure? Is Richard flashing sideways? Is this his real past or the sideways past? After a season of stories about alterna-characters, are we supposed to suddenly read Richard's episode as a traditional flashback? Well, yes obviously. But you see why this presents a narrative problem, and in my opinion, one more reason why the flash sideways just doesn't work.


The writers also got caught with some major time discontinuity. We learned in "The Constant" that the Black Rock was lost following its departure in 1845, which has always presented a problem - how did they get dynamite, which was patented in 1867? The ship's ledger naming Magnus Hanso as captain was found in 1852, and subsequently purchased by Charles Widmore at auction. And now we have Richard boarding the ship and traveling to the Island...in the year 1867!

Plus, when we first saw Jacob and the Man in Black in the season five finale, we were shown a ship on the horizon and the statue remained intact. (Many fans theorized that ship was in fact the Black Rock.) Sitting on the beach, MiB says one day he's going to find the loophole to kill Jacob. In "Ab Aeterno", after the Black Rock destroys the Statue, Jacob is surprised to learn that MiB sent Ricardo to kill him. MiB later tells Jacob, as though for the first time, that he plans to kill him. Whoops! Are we to assume that the bizarre time currents surrounding the Island (the ones that made Daniel's test rocket arrive 31 minutes late) somehow changed night to day, and calm seas to a tsunami?

Finally, in this episode we see the Black Rock destroy the statue and land far inland - I call bullshit! Isn't this supposed to be a scifi show? They've got a long way to go. I would have preferred to see that the Island suddenly appeared underneath the Black Rock at some point due to being moved by the Frozen Wheel or something.


Well, our conflict continues to vaguely take shape. Jacob has been keeping the Man in Black on the Island for some time (To make a point? To win a bet?) and in the second half of the 19th century, MiB could take no more. He took advantage of Jacob's latest recruit, and sent him off in search of "the devil". Richard didn't go empty handed though, he had the same knife and instructions that were presented to Sayid by Dogen. So, why was the leader of the Temple giving someone the same knife and instructions that belong to the Man in Black? It didn't seem like Dogen really expected that to work on the Smoke Monster, so maybe he was just hoping Sayid would end up dead. With Dogen floating face down in the broken Spring of Life, I guess it will be hard to answer that question.

But it is certainly the same knife. It's a roman pugio - the same weapon used by the conspirators who stabbed Julius Caesar to death. This model was the type used by Roman soldiers in the early 1st century AD. When the Monster says he's been on the Island "a long time" is that what he means? Did the Man in Black once serve the Roman legions?


This episode didn't bring us much closer to an understanding of the Man in Black. We still have no explanation as to why he turns into a Smoke Monster and kills arrivals on the Island. Was he brought here like Jacob's other recruits, and if so, what makes him different? To hear him talk about it, the Man in Black is Jacob's prisoner, begging to be let go. But Jacob's side of the story is that, "An old friend grew tired of my company". Anyway, I did catch one detail that brought me some good old fashioned Lost joy. I think we saw the Man in Black take on another of his forms when he appears as a boar.

Richard has been trapped inside the Black Rock for sometime when he wakes and finds a boar is rooting in the corpses. He startles it, and as the boar runs out of the ship Richard drops the nail he is using to free himself. Then, the Smoke Monster appears first as Richard's wife Isabella, then as his Man in Black form. He says he will free Richard, as long as Richard will help him in return. That Smoke Monster is quite a con artist - and he once took on the "best liar" the Man in Black has ever seen.

In season one, a huge bit of Lost mythology was introduced - the whispers. In "Outlaws" Sawyer wakes to find a boar in his tent, ravaging his belongings much like the boar in the Black Rock. When he gives chase, he hears the whispers for the first time, and the voice of a dead man saying, "It'll come back around." See, Sawyer was in Australia looking for the Real Sawyer who conned his parents. He gets a tip that it's a guy named Frank Duckett, so James tracks him down and shoots him. However, when James starts reading his "Dear Mr. Sawyer" letter, Duckett looks up confused and says, "Who?" The dying words of the innocent man were, "It'll come back around."

Now Sawyer is hearing things, and dwelling on his past, but he's determined to get that damn boar. He and Kate track it through the jungle, and make camp for the night. Sawyer dreams of the night his parents died, a scared boy hiding under the bed. But instead of his father, the boar enters the room and you can hear the whisper "It'll come back around". When Sawyer wakes, they discover "the boar" came in the night and destroyed Sawyer's stuff - but left Kate's untouched. When he finally catches the boar, James' memory of killing Frank Duckett in Australia makes him pause. Did this decision save his life? Was that boar one second away from transforming into a giant cloud of smoke and turning Sawyer to a pulp? I think so. (Though I must note that in reviewing for this article, I noticed that Richard and MiB are just as likely eating that boar in a later scene, as though it left the ship and ran right into an angry Smoke Monster. But hey! Like I said, it brings me joy.)


I did like Jacob's conversation with Richard in this episode. I thought it was cool, informative, and metaphorical. Jacob is playing a grand game of good vs. evil, favoring free will as the path. But, "he can be very...convincing" as the Man in Black tells Richard. The Island is a cork holding in "darkness" otherwise known as "malevolence", "evil" or "hell" and if it gets out, it will "spread." I thought it was cool how this calls back to the Swan Hatch, which was another metaphorical cork holding back great power. Are those things directly related, or only thematically? Interesting too, that the same words were used to describe what has taken over Sayid and Claire.

It does seem now like the Man in Black is not just any old villain, but may be ready to unleash the very evils of hell on the world, just out of selfishness. He'll do anything to escape this sentence on the Island. But I don't think he dreams of a world overrun by demons, with him as some mad emperor. He's just a poor Roman centurion who wants to get off this damn crazy Island, come hell or high water. Is he really a "bad guy" or just an innocent pawn driven to his wit's end? And what was meant by that last shot of Flocke at the end? Were we supposed to think that he was watching Hurley and Richard this whole time? And if so, does that mean it wasn't Isabella speaking to Hurley at all, but rather another trick by the Mib?

As things turn into a sloppy mess here at the end, it's very frustrating. Time spent theorizing or pondering the meanings of Lost feels wasted. In the end, it seems no deeper than it was at the beginning: Love/Death, Fate/Free Will, Faith, and Redemption. What about those things? Oh, you know, they exist.

As Lost draws to an end, I'm not feeling "climax". It's like the show hasn't grown up, or figured out what it wants to say about all these weighty themes. All we can say for sure it that it will end Sunday, May 23. Don't hold your breath!

Next week is "The Package" and Jin was detained with a package in LA X. I'd guess we finally find out what Jin & Sun have been up to in the sideways. Are they married? Sun was using her maiden name in LA X. And Jin's package originally contained a gold watch - the same one Keamy was wearing in Sundown. What's their place in this whole crazy scheme?