Wednesday, March 24, 2010

ESAU'S COMING -- BETTER HIDE YOUR HEART, GIRL: There is a part of me that is completely on board with this season's principal Lost arc -- the one that happens on the island and doesn't depend upon hit-or-miss flash-sidewayses. That part of me liked this episode, which, on its own, was well-constructed. It's a nice sensation, the feeling that, after all these seasons of purported exposition, one can look at the same story through a different set of eyes and wonder, to paraphrase and edit a post-prime Aretha, precisely who's zooming whom? When Ben and his cohorts said, so many seasons ago, "we're the good guys," and when Widmore's freighter people and the Ajira guerillas made similar claims, they were making assertions that neither the Oceanic passengers nor the viewers can completely evaluate. In fact (spoilers ahead):

Until Hurley started channeling Isabella, you could have looked at events in this episode as Richard did, unsure of whether to trust voluble, insistent Smokey or dismissive, aloof Jacob. Other than their coloring, what makes one good and the other evil? They agree that Jacob has imprisoned Smokey, and occasionally brings innocent people to the island, just to show Smokey that they can't be tempted into failure, whereupon Smokey immediately tempts them into failure. From a purely objective vantage point, it's easy to see how one could make Jacob, not Smokey, the bad guy. I find that an endlessly interesting conundrum, one that (along with a good job by Nestor Carbonell) made the first 40 minutes of this show pretty darn interesting, and I was sorry to see Hurley resolve it so easily.

That resolution also troubles me for how it mucks up what we've already seen. If Jacob has been using Richard to help people avoid Smokey, why has Richard at times been subordinate to others like Ben (I understand now why he would defer to Locke, a candidate, though I'm not sure that deference quite jibes with the existence of other candidates)? What was the point of all of the Others-vs-castaways drama in Seasons 2 and 3? Why would Widmore (presumably a Jacobite himself, though on the other side of a schism with Ben and Richard) send a bunch of people to kill everybody and blow up the island? I'm not one of those people who wants every riddle answered, but generally I like my big picture not to erase all of the little pictures I collected along the way.

29 comments:

  1. So, basically, Jacob and Esau are Randolph and Mortimer Duke?

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  2. Carmichael Harold7:15 AM

    I'm not sure the big picture erases all of the little pictures.  I can imagine that Widmore, who may have once been/thought himself a candidate, would get pretty angry/fallen angel-y once he was kicked out (we saw it happen to Ben in The Incident, and we saw it happen to Richard this episode).  As for the Others-vs-castaways drama, that could be understood as Ben wanting the island for himself (which is why Richard lost faith in him and turned to Locke).

    Although, I may feel charitable towards this episode as it came somewhat close to my pre-season guess (in the ALOTT5MA pool) that the island was like the Garden of Eden.  My thought was that it was a place where people were tempted by evil, and the god-like figure wanted them to choose to stay, uncorrupted, of their own free will.  Of course, this isn't exactly what seems to be happening, and the big tree didn't seem to have any apples on it.

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  3. Carmichael Harold7:17 AM

    By the way, we are expected to believe that the wooden ship destroyed the big stone statue, but itself remained mostly intact?  Is that the answer to the age-old mystery of why, exactly, paper beats rock?

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  4. So, here's my big picture question:

    There seem to be two things going on with the Island:

    1.  It's the home of a morality play between two beings with non-human powers, possibly having something to do with Egyptian mythology; and
    2.  The Island itself has weird powers and energy sources -- it skips through time and has portals to the world as we know it, it cures disease, women can't get pregnant, The Incident, etc.

    How are these two phenomena related, if at all?

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  5. So the island is on the Hellmouth?  If that means Nathan Fillion is showing up to take out one of Jack's eyes in the next episode or two, I am all aboard.

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  6. Carmichael Harold9:05 AM

    I guess we can imagine that the Island is, basically, a designed jail (or proving ground of sorts) for the MiB, and to be an effective jail, it would need to be hard to find so random strangers or allies of the MiB didn't show up to try and break him out.   That would explain the moving around.  The portals to the real world may be there so that Jacob himself isn't necessarily a true prisoner as well. 

    Also, Smokey seems to have some sort of electrical thing going on, and so perhaps the electro-mangetism uncovered in The Incident was, basically, what kept him in (similar to the sonic fence).  DI shouldn't have been trying to get at the source of the electrical magnetism, as it could destroy what protects the world from Snokey (hence the Others issues with DI, and the rule requiring them to stay contained in certain areas).

    It may be the case, that Juliet setting off the bomb (in one time line) destroyed the jail mechanism, which caused the Island to sink and freed MiB on an unsuspecting World.  In which case, the sideways timeline may have a Twilight Zone-type ending (the world is ruled by Titus Welliver), or, Juliet's sacrifice for those she loved finally taught the MiB the lesson that Jacob had been trying to teach him from the beginning and he is no longer red wine. . . or something.

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  7. Anonymous9:21 AM

    I like the idea that the godlike figure would want people to choose to stay, uncorrupted, of their own free will. However, if that were the case, wouldn't Rose and Bernard have already done that? If I wanted someone to replace me on that island I would certainly choose those two happy folks in love who could care less about all the mess going on around them.

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  8. Carmichael Harold9:25 AM

    That's a good point. . . Hmm, maybe they were corrupted. . . maybe they ate Vincent.  Or, maybe the fact that they basically opted out rather than choosing the Island made them unqualified.  Or maybe they weren't conventionally attractive enough.

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  9. bill.9:50 AM

    So Jacob brings all these people to the island and they become The Others. But the Dharma iniative finds the island and can come and go as they please. Then The Others kill the Dharma folk, take over all their facilities and pretend to be Dharma -- including leaving Desmond in the hatch, continued food drops, and recruiting people for the island instead of just waiting for Jacob to maroon a few more. But when Jacob does his Jacob thing and crashes a plane bringing more people, the Ben-led Others freak out.

    Also the Widmore faction proves that apparently anyone can find the island, so why did Illana and her crew have to arrive by the mysteriously crashed plane route?

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  10. On Isaac's question re: Richard's deference to Ben, haven't there been implications that until Oceanic 815 came along, Ben was himself a candidate?

    Isaac, I share (and have since last season's finale) your concern about the use of the Big Story to render much of the smaller stories moot.  I'd like to think they'll all be sewn together nicely, but I've lost much faith in that happening.

    Also, I'm sure someone has said this somewhere, but does this episode open up the possibility that "Adam and Eve" are, in fact, Adam and Eve (somehow preserved by the Island's odd status in space/time)?

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  11. Carmichael Harold10:27 AM

    Russ, is your concern that the big story will render the actions of the castaways meaningless because it's really a battle between gods (which, if memory serves, parallels your concern about the time travel plot removing free will fromt he equation), or is it that the big story will be poorly retconned, and leave too many inexplicable inconsistencies?   Personally, I'm not so concerned about the first point, but am concerned about the second (which, I think, is why my personal goal this morning seems to be finding justifications for what we've seen, as once I believe the thread is lost, I'll stop enjoying the show as much as I have been).

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  12. Andrew10:55 AM

    At this point, all that I know is that we can't distinguish what might be shadows on the cave wall from people walking around in the world. I know that I don't know enough to understand what the Island is, whether Jacob/Smokey are good or evil, or what the relationship is between them, the Widmore faction, the Others, the Candidates, and Shadow of the Statute people. And how much eyeliner Richard brought with him from Tenerife. 

    I enjoyed this episode because it felt so different from the rest of Lost -- not just season 6, but the show as a whole. Not only did we get a week off form trying to figure out why the alternate universe is and how it differs from the original timeline, but we also got a week off from much significant on-Island action. Aside from framing the story at the beginning and end, this entire episode was a flashback. Or is it fair to call it a flashback when it didn't intercut between the "present" and the past? This was just a straight-up Richard Alpert story that involved no other castmembers for most of the episode. Oh, and it was largely in Spanish with subtitles. More than the extended time we spent with Jacob and Smokey the Welliver, this episode was so fresh and different not in the bits of layers it revealed about the Island, but that the method of storytelling was so unexpected for Lost. 

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  13. Watchman12:36 PM

    I was struck by the fact that Jacob wore gloves when he visited Ilana in the hospital.  Whatever their relationship is and whatever it is he wants her to do, he didn't touch her.  She is doing his bidding, but she belongs in a different class than Richard.

    And for the minor quibble section.  They kept talking about Richard being there for "a very long time."  Somehow 140 years isn't what I had pictured.  After all if the Others spoke Latin...I wanted him to have a better story than that.  The episode overall worked pretty well, but I wanted more for the character than they gave him.

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  14. My concern is more along the lines of the second option:  All that came before can be explained away by the "well, the gods were playing their game, and the humans were pawns, so THAT's why X or Y happened."  Why did all the castaways cross paths before?  Because Jacob willed it.  What's the nature of the conflicts between the Hostiles/Others/DHARMA/Widmore/Linus?  They're all playing out the fundamental battle between Jacob and Esau.  Etc.  I guess it potentially devalues all the previous mysteries.  Of course, it doesn't HAVE TO -- they could play this out in a way that situates the smaller conflicts in the context of the larger one and make it all make sense without the retcon.  But they're running out of time.

    I don't know whether I've said this here before, but I would have been much more satisfied with this season if they had abandoned the present-day on-island stuff, shifted it all to the sideways/reset universe, but done so in a way that the characters continued to play out the battles (figuring out, of course, that something was amiss in time).  The degree of difficulty would have been huge, but I think that could have been much more impressive if they made it work.   

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  15. Is anyone here fairly knowledgeable about Paradise Lost?  We've had a lot of "Lost texts," but last night certainly made that feel like it might be Ur-Text.

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  16. Carmichael Harold12:52 PM

    I see what you're saying.  If the weird coincidences (Hey, It's That Guy I'm Going To Meet In 5 Years) come down to Jacob's will, it won't bother me as I've mostly veiwed them as a piece of the paranoid/conspiratorial style rather than plot substance, and I can't imagine what a satisfying answer would look like. 

    As for whether all the underlying battles are really playing out the central battle, I agree that it could be problematic (if it really is identical turtles all the way up), but it doesn't have to be, particularly if the lower leveled battles are offshoots rather than reenactments of the main battle.  In other words, I can see MiB and Widmore lining up on the same side, but for different reasons, and that would be ok.

    Comletely off topic, I'm kind of amused (as pointed out somewhere else I can't remember) that Richard's bad father was really a bad Father who sold him into slavery.

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  17. Carmichael Harold12:52 PM

    <span>I see what you're saying.  If the weird coincidences (Hey, It's That Guy I'm Going To Meet In 5 Years) come down to Jacob's will, it won't bother me as I've mostly veiwed them as a piece of the paranoid/conspiratorial style rather than plot substance, and I can't imagine what a satisfying answer would look like.   
     
    As for whether all the underlying battles are really playing out the central battle, I agree that it could be problematic (if it really is identical turtles all the way up), but it doesn't have to be, particularly if the lower leveled battles are offshoots rather than reenactments of the main battle.  In other words, I can see MiB and Widmore lining up on the same side, but for different reasons, and that would be ok.  
     
    Completely off topic, I'm kind of amused (as pointed out somewhere else I can't remember) that Richard's bad father was really a bad Father who sold him into slavery.</span>

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  18. <span>Oh, I'd be *thrilled* if the smaller conflicts are playing out the larger conflicts.  What would bother me would be if they don't also exist on their own terms -- i.e., if they're reduced to the larger conflict and just swept under the rug, as it were, rather than receiving the respect they deserve (i.e., that we deserve them to be afforded) in their own right.</span>

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  19. Carmichael Harold1:26 PM

    Oh, I see.  Huh.  It hadn't occurred to me that that would happen, but, yes, that would frustrate me as well, as those stories deserve an ending, or at least to be satisfactorially tied (rather than just absorbed) into the larger conflict.

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  20. isaac_spaceman1:30 PM

    At the same time, the priest thought, doctrinally, that Richard's only salvation would have to come through penance, which he couldn't do before his execution.  So, assuming the bad priest believed what he was saying, he was giving Richard a chance for salvation.  Richard had just told him the day before that he would do anything.  Both Richard and the priest knew that the penance had to be horrible.  Once you've made the call that the only way to save Richard's soul from hell is to subject him to an inhuman ordeal, does it really matter that you take a few coins for the parish in the process? 

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  21. Jenn.5:13 PM

    I feel like I watched a different show from a lot of other people (here and at various blogs and such across the internetz), as I did not really like this episode.  Maybe I had overly built-up expectations, but I just kind of felt meh about the whole thing.

    In theory, I'm interested in this concept that these two battling demigods keep bringing folks over to this place to see if they will pick good or evil.  It raises the question:  Did Kate manage to pick good by trying to do right by Claire and Aaron?  In embracing his Machiavellian side to help his friends, did Sawyer pick good or evil?  Do things balance out?  If killing someone on the island prevents salvation, could any good that Sawyer does be outweighed by killing the "real" Sawyer?  And what does good or evil mean---I don't know that there is any sign that Jack did anything truly evil in "real life" versus "island time," so does choosing to be good mean learning to respect his father as the Commandments demand?  Etc.

    And yet, I just felt like the whole thing dragged.  Maybe not enough of our core people involved.  I don't know.

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  22. calliekl8:16 PM

    I noticed the glove thing too! I couldn't tell, was he wearing them the second time he went to visit her?

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  23. calliekl8:25 PM

    I had 2 things- 1, the Richard story dragged. He could have monologued during the part when he was on the ship about why he was there, and I don't think we would have been any worse off. I really didn't care about the rest of it. The one interesting part for me (since this is all very Biblical feeling) was when Jacob proved to Richard he was still alive by drowning him... it felt ver baptismal to me.

    2- I don't know if this has been discussed before, but my guess is that since the island is at the bottom of the ocean in the SideLife, then the metaphorical cork has been removed from the bottle- will the point be to return it? Or to see what happens when it is removed?

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  24. isaac_spaceman9:02 PM

    If that's how you do baptisms, I don't want to go to your church. 

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  25. calliekl10:11 PM

    Isn't that how everyone does baptisms? Apparently that's how you get baptized into the church of Jacob.

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  26. I just tried to convince my students that Adam makes a reference to zombies in Book 10 of Paradise Lost, but in my defense spring break starts today. I haven't watched Tuesday's episode, yet, but I'll keep it in mind when I do.

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  27. Charles Carmicheal12:38 AM

    Like the epi but I'm now interested how one becomes the Man in Black. How do you take on the cloak of evil?

    Also would have like to have seen how Richard operated, what information was passed from Jacob to the Others via Richard. I'd guess jacob was pretty ambiguous, and Richard modified the message a bit and Ben then took the message as to be interpreted. I feel less and less sorry  for Ben and his actions since it seems obvious that he was in an information fog.
    Richard has much more of these events laid at his feet, especially concerning Ben

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  28. Watchman1:24 AM

    It echoed the attempt to revive Sayid as well I thought

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  29. Emily6:08 PM

    Did anyone else think Hurley was lying at the end? It seemed like the part about Isabella wanting Richard to keep MiB from leaving was a Jacob thing, not an Isabella thing. Hurley looked like he was lying & just hoping Richard wouldn't notice. Richard wouldn't listen to Jacob anymore, but he might listen to Isabella.

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