A Case of the.... Lost - Episode 6-15

“I only picked one name.”

C’mon woman, make a game day decision!

So anybody who complains about how these characters never provide any concrete answers when they’re directly asked questions, I present to you the scene in which Jacob and Smokey were blindfolded and walked through the jungle by their mother. After the onslaught of questions they rattled off, I can’t say that I particularly blame anybody for deflecting questions just to get the other person to shut up. Yikes.

Overall I really enjoyed this episode, because I do think it provided some insight into the mythos that carries this series – even if we don’t immediately recognize it – but there was something a little….unfulfilling about it. I considered putting this column to rest for the night, because it just seemed too negative, and I thought that unfairly characterized the episode. I really did like it, but it just felt like my review was tearing the episode apart. But I decided that I didn’t want to delay posting the column, especially since we’re so close to the end of the series, so I’m going to kick this thing off with what I enjoyed, and then touch upon the stuff that was questionable, for lack of a better word. Hopefully that’ll more accurately display my feelings on the episode.

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First things first, my eyes were absolutely fixated on the television screen. For an episode that lacked the explosiveness that we’d seen in recent weeks, I found myself completely engaged. And truth be told, we got some wonderful tidbits of information as well. I suppose the big reveal occurred the first moments of the episode, which is that Jacob and Smokey are brothers (many predicted this as a possibility). We got confirmation on a matter that most people had assumed, which is that the blond child haunting the Locke Ness Monster is a young Jacob. And we finally discovered the identities of the island’s Adam and Eve – and no, it’s not Rose and Bernard.

I have to say, though, that I found the clips from season one, in which Jack and Kate discovered the island’s Adam and Eve, intercut into the revelation of the identities of said skeletons, a little uncharacteristic. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and I thought it really worked. Lost just doesn’t typically spell things out for its audience. But this was most certainly a fun, unexpected, and satisfying resolution to one of Lost’s greatest mysteries.

We also learned that the Man in Black is quite possibly the brains behind the donkey wheel, which both moves the island and transports the pusher off of the island (and into the near future).

And you have to figure that the writers were deliberately vague with the timeline. Yes, you might be able to speculate based on the attire of the other people on the island (I was disappointed to see them all killed – I was hoping we’d learn that this was the birth of the Others), but for the most part we’re pretty clueless about when Jacob and the Baby in Black first arrived on the island. Was it before or after the giant statue?

It was also nice to see such a vulnerable, insecure side of Jacob. He has been so confident and, arguably, emotionless since we met him at the end of last season, so it was really enjoyable to see that this god-like figure was once very human. Right down to the very basic inadequacies we all struggle with.

The conclusion of last week’s episode made it easy to root against Smokey. At the end of this episode, I find it easy to root for Jacob.

Now, to the stuff that made me scratch or shake my head. I usually roll my eyes at viewers who complain that even more questions were asked when certain answers were provided, but I can’t help but feel that way following this episode. And with just a couple more episodes left before the series ends forever, that frustration holds a little extra weight.

I mean, I have enough faith in the show that I can allow them some leeway. I’m fairly certain they’ll explain what “the island” is, at least to the extent that we’ll understand why people come there “by accident” and what, exactly, that golden light is. But there’s just a lot I didn’t quite get. It feels like a lot was said, rather than shown and properly explained.

For example, there’s the restriction that mandates that Jacob and the Man in Black cannot harm each other. All that was said was that their mother “made it this way.” Was it a rule that she scared into them that they bought into simply because they were too naïve to question it? Or is there is a supernatural aspect to it, where these two do not possess the capability to severely hurt each other? I mean, there were at least two instances in which Jacob did physically assault his brother, and there didn’t seem to be any real repercussions. In fact, a fair argument could be made that Jacob successfully murdered his brother (his head hit the rock when he was thrown into the water).

As a side note, some people might be a little confused by how the Man in Black died, yet he continued to appear on the island, for quite some time, following his “death.” My interpretation is that his physical body had died, but he continues to live on as the Smoke Monster, who is of course able to manifest himself as those who have died (such as, oddly enough, himself). Or maybe everybody already figured that, and I just wasted a paragraph of space.

I also don’t quite get what makes the Man in Black so special. Again, his mother repeatedly called him such, but there was never any explanation behind what made him so. And for that matter, he didn’t seem to do anything astonishingly special either. Conversely, Jacob seemed decidedly normal, yet the Jacob we know and have become somewhat familiar with exhibits tremendous abilities. Is that what happened when he drank the wine with his mother?

I just don’t want to see “because I’m special” become the new “a wizard did it.”

I suspect we may come to learn more about this in the proceeding two episodes, but how does the Man in Black know that he must kill Jacob and all of his candidates in order to escape the island? His mother seemed so desperate to stop him, yet if this “I’m alive so you can’t leave” rule exists, why wouldn’t they simply leave him alone, since he wouldn’t even be allowed to leave?

Perhaps this episode was merely a way to show us that the island existed long before Jacob, and that Jacob is really no different than Jack or any of the other candidates. He was just a possible successor, as was his brother, who ultimately got the nod, maybe for no reason other than circumstance. Maybe people like Jacob, his mother, Jacob, and the others are mere notches on the bedpost of the island.

But as I noted in my last Revisited column, I hope the story of Lost ends with the conclusion of that cycle, instead of the continuation of it.