'Lost': My recap for 'Across the Sea' is live
This episode of "Lost" broke my usual recapping mojo. I often attack these puppies in a familiar way, using a format based on The Numbers as both an organizational tool as well as a way to stand out among the recap crowd. But "Across the Sea" defied the usual ways of doing things around here, just as the episode itself defied the usual ways in which an episode of "Lost" works. While I'm all for defying convention, I am unhappy to say this experiment left me a little cold.
Read my full recap for the rundown on my immediate take on the episode. I liked its ideas, if not its execution, on the whole. There's a fantastic amount of insinuation that can be drawn from it, which in turn made the end's anvilicious and frankly insulting editing all the more crass and un-"Lost" like. These recaps are not the final word on the episode: not only can you comment there and ask your burning questions below (replete with a throaty yell of "SALLLVVVEEEEE" in honor of the Latin-speaking ladies at the episode's outset), but I'll be returning later in the week with "Course Corrections" and a podcast with a returning guest. Until then, the floor is yours.
Photo credit: ABC
Worst episode ever. I can't believe that with only a couple hours left, they are wasting time on the whole Jacob & no-name mythology. This does not bode well for us getting any kinds of real answers.
Worst episode ever. I can't believe that with only a couple hours left, they are wasting time on the whole Jacob & no-name mythology. This does not bode well for us getting any kinds of real answers.
I think it worked. It wasn't perfect, but Mark Pellegrino, Titus Welliver and Allison Janney sold it for me.
The Cave of Light: Honestly, I've been expecting a reveal like this since the beginning of the season, because I'm pretty sure that the finale will involve the Light going out, thereby extinguishing the Island's power and marking an end to this "era" of humanity, a blend of Lord of the Rings' Elves going into the West and 2001: A Space Odyssey's monoliths.
MiB/Smoke Monster: I'm so glad you clarified what seemed to have happened here, because when I watched the ep, I thought the reveal was something more akin to Jacob's brother and the Monster being two different entities. But yeah, it's much better/more sensible that MiB's "mind" is now made manifest as the Smoke Monster, while his body is simply dead.
Voldemum as a Smoke Monster? Hmmm... It never occured to me, but yeah, it makes more sense than a regular person wreaking that kind of havoc and destruction.
On the whole, this episode gives more implications than it does concrete answers, which is just classic Lost. Off the top of my head, there's the Donkey Wheel: MiB *started* building it, but then it was destroyed by Voldemum, so at some point he either started building it again himself or he got others to do it for him... but if he got it rebuilt, why hasn't he used it to try and leave? Does it not work for him now that he's Smokey? (yeah, I'm totally falling into Voldemum's trap, aren't I?)
And then there's one more thing. Jacob has left the Island. He could do it, and come back. Did *HE* rebuild the Donkey Wheel and use it to leave and come back?
I feel like I still don't understand the rules. I feel like I still don't understand why MiB can't leave, though I'm quickly starting to theorise. And I feel like I STILL don't understand (and this one's important) why killing the Candidates is so important to MiB's plan. Maybe the Donkey Wheel won't work unless they're all dead? ...I dunno, in a bad way, and I feel like this is something that "Across the Sea" should've addressed.
Yes I enjoyed the episode. Pellegrino? Welliver? Janney? All solid, all worth tuning in for.
Oh dear. Not a good ep. Not really. Jacob sounded like a child even when he was grown.
BTW, young MIB should totally be nicknamed Lil' Smokey. Just saying.
@Jesse, a rite of passage for 13yo boys is they become men. "Lil Smokey" choose to grow up and be a man by leaving, Jacob did not. That is why he sounded like a child he was a 43yo mamma's boy.
I am 100% positive this episode will play a lot better the second time through, and only get better the more we watch it. I think the reason so many people are down in it is because it didn't deliver what we expected it to deliver... but it did deliver some things, things we *did* want to know. So the second time you watch the ep, you won't have those expectations, and without them, it'll all play better.
Mind you, I think Lost in general plays a lot better if you stop expecting certain things from it.
(Triple-dipping? Yeah...)
Rereading my first post, the thing I seem to have become very fixated on is the Donkey Wheel. Ryan, you've talked on Twitter and in the recap about why this ep is where it is in the season, and others have questioned why show this stuff at all. I think we need it because it tells us something important about the Donkey Wheel: the MiB started building it because he believed he could use it to escape the Island. And we *know* that it works. So I'm thinking that the Donkey Wheel will play into the final hours somethin' fierce.
And a fourth thing. Ab Aeterno was all about "we have to keep the darkness contained". Across The Sea was all about "we have to protect the Light". So, which is it? Or is it both? Was Jacob lying to Richard about the cork-in-the-bottle to convince him that MiB wasn't the guy to listen to, or will there genuinely be bad consequences to letting him leave?
Despite a lot of little things that bothered me (see below), I was pretty much with the episode until the "Adam and Eve" ending -- which both has a strong "ewe!" factor as well as seemingly implausible given the age estimate of the corpses and clothing by Jack (I think) when they were discovered.
It seems like Darlton is doing their best to end each episode with a real kick in the teeth (groin?) to the hardcore fans -- last week the death of Jin and Sun, this week finding out that Adam and Eve were actually TMIB and her psycho adoptive mother!
I haven't read the recap and comments yet -- just about to -- but first I just had to get down my initial thoughts before I could even concentrate. I hope Ryan and others were bothered by the same things I was, including not only the above but:
1) Every episode we get a thinly-disguised lecture from Darlton about how we should not want answers, but should just rest and accept things (and "be happy to be alive"), while at the same time these pro-peace lecturers feel free to bash the head in or otherwise kill any human because they are so bad and constantly destroy;
2) The fact that we still don't know TMIB's name;
3) We don't know if the reason Cladia (the psycho adoptive mother) was able to wipe out all those people and fill the well because she is actually a smoke monster (which may explain why she's so psycho too).
That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but I know there are more. Anyway, I'm going to go read the recap and comments now that I've cleared my head a bit -- and then tomorrow hopefully get caught up on the entire week's essays and comments... for some reason this week I just never felt like thinking more about last week's episode, even though until the ending I rather liked it.
I think it's because starting sometime Wednesday I got this overwhelming feeling of dread that the only way they cold justify killing Jin and Sun is if within the next two weeks EVERYONE is killed -- in both timelines! I have no reason to believe this, but I really got that overwhelming feeling -- and tonight didn't shake me of it. I'm hoping after I read tonight's recap and all of Ryan's essays of the last week (and everyone's comments) that I'll be able to shake this sense of impending doom. Okay, onto the recap...
Wow! Just read the above mini-essay and comments, and I'm glad to see others (including Ryan) were bothered by a lot of things too.
The main thing I forgot to mention above was how I was bothered by Jacob not being more skeptical of his "mother" wanting him to drink that potion (and "be like her", whatever that means -- another good question), since he knows she killed his real mother.
Similarly, I was surprised TMIB let down his guard when he knew she had killed his real mother and really, really didn't want him to leave the island. Yes, the bond to a mother is strong, even an adoptive pyscho one, but he hadn't seen her in thirty years.
The bottom line is mainly what this episode did was shift the questions from Jacob and TMIB to their adoptive mother, since we now know that she, not them, is (apparently) the "original" human on the island (to have contact with "the force" and be beholden to it I mean).
Okay, onto the recap for real!