Spoilers below!
This week on LOST, we learned more about Jacob, MIB, and the mysteries of the island. Read our discussion below and add your own thoughts and theories in the comments, just be sure not to include spoilers to the last 3.5 hours of LOST!
A lot happened in this episode! General thoughts and reactions?
CARA: I … actually thought this episode was pretty awful, all around. It answered little, was largely ridiculous, and contained some really bad writing — which surprised me, since for all of my other beefs with them Damon and Carlton are usually really good writers, and the scripts they personally write are usually the best. I am also just terribly confused about what actually happened, but not in a good/excited kind of way. I’ve seen mixed reactions, though, and the thing is that I really wanted to like it, in spite of my continued bitterness from last week. So I’m interested to see what everyone else thought.
SADY: About the fact that LOST gave us a “Mists of Avalon” spin-off episode? With a cave of magic light that explains everything/nothing? And a scary Bad Mommy who killed the Good Mommy oh PS also they can’t die or kill each other but DON’T ASK HOW MORGAINE LE JANNEY GAINS HER WITCHING POWERS! And also Jacob being revealed to be like the worst actor and enunciating everything like just the biggest man-baby on earth, and his brother Blergdrflagghn being a SIMILARLY bad actor who makes the most ridiculous EMOTION FACE! ever and and and… I wasn’t fond, basically, is my answer. NOT! FOND!
SALLY: I enjoyed the episode as I was watching it, though it got worse as it went on. By the time it ended, I thought I didn’t like it anymore, but looking back now, I did enjoy it. The pace was good, the writing wasn’t great, as you said, but I think we did got to know more about these two mysterious figures. It wasn’t as good as, say, the Richard episode, but it was certainly better than a lot of the other episodes this season. Maybe that’s what they’re hoping for? That we’re so let down by some of the other episodes that we’ll enjoy this one? I don’t know, but if so, it worked for me, because I wasn’t too upset about it.
JILL: I’m not sure if I love or hate LOST for giving us a third-to-last episode with NONE OF THE MAJOR CHARACTERS IN IT. The episode itself annoyed me, but I’m still deciding if I think that move was brilliant or infuriating.
CARA: I think it would have been brilliant if the episode itself was good. I also just need a place to say this, so I’m saying it here: the MIB not having a name thing is just utterly ridiculous, at this point. And their explanation for him not having a name is the fact that his birth mother didn’t think of one, because she didn’t know she was having twins? And no one ever thought to name this person for 40 years? Even though he was his mother’s favorite? Right. Well then.
JILL: He must have a name, we just haven’t learned it yet. The writers are maintaining the What’s His Name?! thing to make us all, I dunno, desperate to find out his name?
But the biggest shock of the episode for me was how stupid Jacob was! They worked so hard to make him seem wise and all-knowing in earlier episodes, and then we find out that he’s totally intellectually incurious, and kind of a dumbass. While MIB is all, “How did we get here? Where do people come from? Magnets: How do they work?” Jacob is just like, “I like yarn!”
SALLY: LMFAO!
LAUREN: GOD, Jacob is a whiny ass baby compared to MiB, who was easily the most sympathetic character last night — an interesting move considering how hard the production team worked to convince us that MiB is evil, all evil, through and through evil, evil to the core evil, would kill off our favorite characters last week evil. I really don’t care about some of the more detailed mysteries, like MiB’s name or who Adam and Eve were, so the explanations or lack thereof are whatever. What I want to know is how the island and all its unusual phenomena, like the electromagnetic and time bending qualities, fits into the bigger picture. I feel like these are the things that will ultimately tie the characters’ stories in with one another, but we still haven’t gotten a lot of explanation on any of the science-y questions.
SADY: Oh my GOD is Jacob ever a baby. I’m not sure if I was MEANT to laugh hilariously when he was all, “No it DOESN’T! You wanted it to be HIM! Get out of my MYSTICAL ISLAND CAVE OF MYSTICAL MAGICAL ENCHANTMENT, MOMMMMMMM, I just want to listen to my Enya records ALOOOONNE,” but… I did. I DID! I was unmoved throughout by Jacob.
This week, we’re introduced to Nameless Lady who kills Jacob and MIB’s mother and then raises them as her own. What’s up with this woman?
JILL: CJ CREGG!! I love love love Allison Janney. I kept expecting her to start yelling at her kids like she yelled at Toby. But that isn’t really what you’re asking, is it? I’m not sure we’re going to get an explanation of who she is or how she came to the island.
CARA: Replacing one mysterious character whose existence and powers are wholly unexplained with a different mysterious character whose existence and powers are wholly unexplained! Yay!
SALLY: Allison Janney is pretty damn awesome. I guess my big question once the episode was over (knowing that the chances of us encountering her or her story again are quite close to zero) was where her powers come from and how, if they aren’t actually her children, Jacob and MIB ended up with powers as well? MIB can see ghosts and apparently doesn’t die all that easily. We know Jacob becomes ageless or whatever, I’m guessing because of the special wine?
JILL: Mmm special wine. But yes, the mommy/daddy issues on this show are getting out of control. I kind of want to send the writers to group therapy.
LAUREN: Dude, I could make damn good use of magic wine at my house.
JILL: Me too! Give me the Special Wine and that awesome goat-head-baby and I’d be pretty set for life. Even better than cats!
SADY: So, question… how did she get the wine on the Island? Did she steal that from a doomed lady’s vagina, too? Or was there a whole, “also we have a mystical vineyard of enchantment and in that vineyard you will find life, death, rebirth, and some fine Bordeaux grapes” plot that I missed?
SALLY: At any rate, it was also annoying to see another woman who’s all “OMG BABY! I NEED BABY! MUST KILL MOTHER FOR BABY!” But, what else should we expect?
LAUREN: No kidding. When this series is over, we’re all going to get together and do a retrospective of LOST’s crimes against women. For real, ladies.
Anyway, I feel like questioning where CJ Cregg comes from is like challenging some other epistemological POV, like if God created everything, who created God? We don’t really need to know where CJ comes from or how she got her magic wine. All that matters is that she bestowed her whiny/evil kidnapped twin babies (Jesus, the cliches) with her powers, made up some rules so her precious beloveds couldn’t directly hurt one another, and then she messed her babies up in her own special way, a way that would inspire the longest, meanest Backgammon game OF ALL TIME that can only be concluded with the innate glory and humanity of JACK SHEPARD.
JILL: So I initially misread the beginning of that last sentence — “All that matters is that she bestowed her whiny/evil kidnapped twin babies (Jesus, the cliches)” — as “Jesus” and “the cliches” as being the names of those whiny/evil kidnapped twin babies. It… kind of works.
MIB made up rules to the game he and Jacob play together. MIB tells Jacob he’ll be able to create his own game one day and make up his own rules. Is that why all of the random rules of the island are in place?
LAUREN: I kind of don’t know where to go with this reveal. One of the fascinating things from the earlier episodes of this season were the musings on where all the rules come from, who is in power, and why. Now that we know, I’m all meh about it.
SALLY: I think it got lost amidst everything else going on in the episode, but I’m also disappointed that we’re meant to think the rules simply come from Jacob’s head, just cuz.
SADY: Actually, much that is irritating about this show can be explained by the fact that it’s just inane Jacob conducting some ridiculous game of Island Fear Factor. Because Jacob is a weiner. And he would do that. And then he would whine about it when you broke the rules, and go tell his mom. Ohhhh, waaaaaaaaaaaaiit….
We learn the island has a light that’s the “source/heart” of the island. If the light goes out, it also goes out around the world. If you enter the light, something worse than death happens. And the light must be protected by Jacob. Uh, thoughts?
CARA: Okay, as we cut to the commercial after the woman who has no name (LOST: Pointlessly refusing to name characters since 2009!) told Jacob and MIB that the light was something that was “inside every man … but they always want more” with the really bad CGI light shining all over the place, I turned to my husband. And I cupped my ear in my hand, and said to him, “Do you hear that? It’s quiet, but it’s like … a motorcycle, revving up! With a faint aaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy over top. Surely, I’m not the only one who hears that!”
Those are my thoughts. Also, that waiting to jump the shark until 3 episodes from the end of the show is pretty much the most rage-inducing thing you could do. No, LOST, I’m sorry. You need to give us something that is both more specific and less embarrassingly cliched than that.
SALLY: LMAO! Well, um, yeah.
I was confused about this whole light thing and in trying to work it into the rest of the series, got even more confused? I wonder if this light was always planned and I also wonder what on earth it has to do with the supposed system they created that works with the light and the water to get them off the island? Uh, what? And if MIB never got to finish it, then how in the hell does it end up existing?
JILL: Can I just point out that for a show as popular as LOST, they have the worst special effects EVER? I mean, I thought their submarine effects were bad, but the Special Light-Hole was a little too Ferngully even for me.
CARA: YES. YES YOU CAN POINT THAT OUT.
SADY: Oh, my god! And they had to have mystic flowers growing out of the mystic light cave and then Pocahontas is there and she is like, “can YOU paint with all the colors of the wind?” And this Mel-Gibson-voiced dude is like, “sorry, no.” And little birdies come out to help Sleeping Beauty with her chores and then… I’m sorry, I should stop, because nothing I came up with could be stupider than this plot development. You could literally have the Wizard of Oz hiding behind a curtain in the light cave and he’d turn out to be Bernard and he’d be like, “it was me all along, you guys!” And I would be like, “still not stupider! We got to the stupidest level we could, and we’re sticking to it!”
LAUREN: * throws up * Sorry, I got sick drinking out of the treacle-well. Excuse me while I turn into a sparking column of smoke.
JILL: The religion cliches are also getting tiresome. I mean, yay LOST for kind of twisting them a little bit, and making it so there is no good or evil? And for so explicitly tying “evil” to curiosity and science and reason — both clearly good things? But. So Jacob wasn’t the favorite, until he was, and I definitely felt much more sympathetic towards the one who is supposed to be “evil”-ish and I’m sure that was intentional, but the “there’s a little bit of the Light in all of us?” They should have just made Baby MIB bust into an inspiring rendition of This Little Light of Mine. That song is so cute when kids sing it. And it would have been about as insightful.
LAUREN: I rolled my eyes a little at this, but it also makes sense. We’ve got three situations now where someone was tricked into safe-guarding the island against his will. First Jacob, then Desmond (and presumably the Dharma folks before Desmond, and maybe more?), and now whomever gets revealed in the final hours of the episode.
And maybe I’m twelve, but did anyone else giggle when MiB’s body went down the drain of light like a big turd?
JILL: Maybe I’m twelve, but: Someone did call it a “light-hole,” right? Ahahaha.
Perhaps most importantly, we learn why MIB is evil: his mother ruins his chance of leaving the island and also tries to kill him, then Jacob pushes him into the light. The “worse than death” thing is that MIB becomes Smokey. How do you feel about MIB after learning this?
SALLY: So this kind of annoyed me. Because I approached the last season of LOST similarly to how I approached the last book in the HP series. To that end, I’ve been let down a lot because they just could have done everything so much better. There were times when I saw how some parts of the story have been planned since the very beginning, and that really made me happy. But one thing I loved about HP is that the characters who have both good and evil in them, or are evil because of circumstances, you pretty much know the whole time. Meanwhile, in LOST, we were supposed to be questioning MIB’s goodness this whole season. Then last week we learn, BAM! He’s EVIL! No question! And this week we learn that, actually, he wasn’t always this way and, in fact, he might not have been this way if it weren’t for his brother, and, in fact, all he really wants is to get off the island. Um… what? You can’t reveal that he’s pure evil three weeks before the show ends, then decide actually he’s not that bad two weeks before it ends. Why? Because that shit is ANNOYING! And not good storytelling!
CARA: I don’t even understand this. I feel kind of stupid for it, but it’s true. I don’t know what happened. MIB is dead. But he’s also Smokey? So is he really dead, only to be taken over by Smokey like Christian and Locke’s bodies were? Or is he actually Smokey, even though his body is there decaying in a cave? The latter makes more sense in terms of Smokey acting like Jacob’s brother throughout the rest of the show, but very little sense to me in terms of tying in with other LOST logic. Further! WHY did throwing MIB into the cave make him into Smokey, or release Smokey, or whatever? If you have to protect the light, and if the light is good, why did the light do something bad? What is the point of the smoke? I just don’t get it. Please, someone explain it to me if you do get it!
SALLY: So I, too, was confused at first but here’s what I think happened (though, of course, I don’t actually know, but it’s what I think). I feel like this is one of those “too much good is actually bad” or “so pure, it’s dangerous” things. Jacob didn’t know what would happen if he threw MIB into the light, but he knew he wouldn’t die and he knew it’d be really awful. I feel like maybe it worked to rid MIB’s body of his evil by creating this evil Smokey force. It somehow took MIB’s body and killed it (haven’t worked that part out yet), but now as Smokey, MIB can inhabit his old body temporarily, the way he inhabits Christian and Locke. So, like, Smokey is the evil part that resided inside of MIB, without all of the good. Or something.
Really, the only reason I came up with it this way is because of this whole reveal last week that MIB/Smokey is evil. Because if they’re now saying definitively that MIB is evil, then I assume it must be because of Smokey and the Smokiness of the island. Or something. Because it’s pretty damn clear now that he wasn’t actually this way always. (I still don’t think he really is, but what do I know…)
CARA: Well, this makes as much sense as anything else! I’m also working on a theory that nameless lady was Smokey before she died. That she told them not to go into the cave because she did, and that’s what happened to her. It would explain how she was able to kill all of those people, and why she was happy to be killed, in addition to why MIB/Smokey repeated her line about people coming, conquering, corrupting, and always ending the same.
SALLY: I like this theory of which you speak…
SADY: I am continually impressed by your ability to be a better writer than this show, Cara.
CARA: And I, Sady, by your ability to be more subtle than Jack’s cryface.
JILL: I interpreted “worse than death” as a kind of purgatory, going along with the Hell theme that they introduced in previous episodes. So MIB is basically in purgatory — dead, but worse than dead — and trying to escape. The island is literally his hell. I still don’t understand the smoke, though. Cara’s theory makes sense, but then why was it possible to kill Allison Janney? LOST I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU.
SALLY: Because he snuck up behind her and killed her with the magical knife?
CARA: Quite possibly! But I also think that the “it was the magic knife!” explanation has become the new “well of course those timelines don’t match up, because time travels differently on the island!” excuse.
JILL: Oh right, duh, magic knives! I ALWAYS forget about those.
Despite Nameless Lady confirming that MIB is a liar, it turns out he hasn’t lied as much as we thought. His mommy issues, his explanation about the wells/holes throughout the island, even his reason for getting off the island – all true. Could it be that he’s been telling the truth all along?
SALLY: Again, another thing that annoyed me. Although less so, I guess. I suppose the point of this is to make us rewatch all the episodes to figure out whether or not MIB has been lying or telling the truth this whole time. But the thing is, I’m so over this season, I am completely not motivated to do that! So while I would have been intrigued by this reveal if this season hadn’t been a disappointment, right now, it just pisses me off. I guess maybe I didn’t enjoy this episode as much as I thought I did… lol
LAUREN: Every truth has a slant though, you know? I like the thought that the truth, or the meaning of it all, is somewhere in the middle of these brothers’ stories. My frustration is similar to yours though, because I see what the writers and producers were going for, and yet so much is lost (ha) in the weak dialog and thin story lines. Also, Jacob a big ol’ baby? Ugh. MiB FTW.
JACOB: You wanted it to be HIM, Lauren! You always wanted it to be HIM! I’m going to run away to the circus on the other part of the Island and never come baaaaaaaaack.
Another reveal this week is Adam & Eve. Are you satisfied with the answer?
CARA: I am satisfied with the answer — it’s one of the few things about this episode that I’m satisfied with — though not satisfied about how they gave it to us. I thought that flashing back to Jack and Kate discovering the skeletons was corny and just really bad writing. Either trust the audience, or don’t, you know? Or do a stupid “previously on LOST” at the beginning. Either way, but this particular way was bad, and kind of put a damper on the moment for me. But the answer itself, yes, I’m satisfied.
SADY: I suppose they could have just done, like, a time lapse dissolve and literally SHOWED them turning into skeletons while everybody else buzzed around in fast motion. But other than that, I don’t think they could have been more literal or heavy-handed in demonstrating that THESE! ARE THE SKELETONS! FROM THE CAVE!
SALLY: Aside from treating us like morons and assuming we wouldn’t get the connection, I thought this was really interesting. I certainly didn’t see it coming and I’m still a bit confused about the timing of it all, but I was certainly satisfied with this.
There’s one episode left before the 2.5-hour series finale – do you have any expectations or hopes?
SALLY: I hope that the last 3.5 hours of LOST do not make me want to rip my hair out. I hope they wrote these last episodes before writing the rest of this season because they’ve clearly lost their juice. And I hope to remember some of the questions I wanted answered because I’ve forgotten them all.
CARA: Well the writers basically seem to be at the point of telling the fan base to go fuck themselves, so nah, no real expectations or hopes. If it turns out to be great, I’ll be thrilled, of course! It could potentially even redeem these past couple episodes, or basically the whole season! But if it doesn’t, I won’t be surprised, anymore. It’ll be what it’s going to be.
JILL: I hope that the Chosen One is neither Jack nor John. I hope it’s someone totally random, like Lapidus. Like how Allison Janney thought it would be MIB, but instead it was actually Jacob? (“It was always supposed to be you!” Aw, so maternal, Killer Mommy CJ Cregg!). Jacob could totally axe Jack and John and turn to Lapidus and be like, “It was always supposed to be you, so, have some wine” and Lapidus would just be like, cool. Best. Ending. Ever.