LOST - 6x15 "Across The Sea" - Episode Review
Mother’s little helper
Plot summary: The story behind Jacob and the Man in Black is revealed.
Written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. Directed by Tucker Gates.
"Every question I answer will simply lead to another question."
So there it is. There are no answers, only a never-ending loop of cause and effect spiraling backwards into insanity and beyond. If “Across The Sea”, LOST’s self-proclaimed big mythology infodump, is to be the final word on what makes Jacob and The Unnamed Brother so mad at each other, on what makes the Island worth protecting, and on why we should give a damn about all this in the first place, then what are we to do with the fact that the very process of withholding information is the answer? That had Mother simply told her favorite son the whole truth and nothing but to begin with, then all of this (and I mean ALL of it) could have been avoided in the first place. But that wasn’t their, or our, destiny to follow.
This was a difficult episode to process, insofar that it both worked and didn’t work for me. Once again, I went back and revisited the Jacob/MiB material from earlier this season, to see if the pieces fit pretty well, which they did. I was particularly taken with Fake Locke’s assertion to Alpert that he’d “never had kept him in the dark” (as opposed to Jacob) back in “The Substitute.” Knowing what we know now, it’s a statement that carries greater dramatic impact in hindsight - which is exactly why it was somewhat frustrating coming this late in the game. Sure, this information could have placed earlier, but we don’t quite know yet if it should have been.
Look, by now we all know how LOST operates, narratively speaking, both backwards and forwards, and that its selective dissemination of vital information is usually revealed bits at a time, each new level peeling back another vital layer. I’m fine with that, and throughout the seasons have found many of those reveals as clear highpoints of the series. But using this same approach with only two episodes left, combined with the overall pacing issues the show’s exhibited in its week-to-week broadcast (as opposed to how the whole thing might play as a marathon, which is how last season grew better in my estimation), one begins to read it as both clever meta-commentary and just plain dicking-around-the-audience.
Personally, it’s tough not to compare the nuts and bolts construction and placement of “Across The Sea” to similar such infodumps into two of my other favorite mythology-heavy texts, namely DEATHLY HALLOWS’s “The Prince’s Tale” and BATTLESTAR’s “No Exit”; but by doing so, I can see the potential flaw in LOST’s plan (of course this opinion could retroactively change when the finale airs a week from today). In particular, “The Prince’s Tale” (the third from the last chapter) was brilliantly placed and delivered exposition, as it revealed the long awaited backstory on a critical character only after said “villain” had met his demise, and in the process, it allowed both reader and protagonist to experience the exact same emotional journey, while effortlessly transitioning the plot into its final twists and turns. Because the conflict between Jacob and the MiB was introduced so late in the series (but was unerringly foreshadowed since Season One), it lacked a certain weight it could have carried had it placed earlier in the season or even the series. And while we certainly got to know more about Jacob and MiB (and their motivations) than ever before, this experience wasn’t even close to the mind-melting shock of simply listening to Final Cylon (and others) unleash a seemingly never-ending cascade of secrets in “No Exit” (the fifth of the back half’s ten episodes, technically the opening chapter in the final act of the series).
But that’s an unfortunate (and creator-expected) byproduct of literalizing “the good force that resides in all men that needs to be protected” (**and as we get farther away from it, I see that the manner in which Starbuck’s final scene on BATTLESTAR transpired was the exact right creative decision**). There’s no getting around the fact that the glowy cave was cheesy, even for a show that’s had a giant frozen donkey wheel, purple flashes of light in the sky, and countless other moments of “wtf”-ery.
I can mostly overlook LOST’s Cave of Wonders because of some of the stronger elements in the show; a great, sympathy-invoking performance by Titus Wellever (especially considering the lengths LOST went out of its way to set up his total villainy last week), and the usual assortment of twisty character based reveals (MiB’s was the favored Candidate, the naiveté of Jacob, the ongoing nebulous agendas of the dead and the Island itself). I found it amusingly ironic that after all the daddy issues running like wildfire through the show’s characters, that it’s mommy ones that fuel the main two puppet masters, but I didn’t I find it mildly misogynistic, unlike the Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan).
Ultimately, “Across The Sea” ’s attempts to humanize a supposedly “mythic” struggle provided the (expected) result of polarizing the audience while giving them what they’d been clamoring for at the same time (and yes it had a ton of subtle setups for the final installments). Those of us who have remained among the faithful (a group seemingly smaller and more doubting by the day) keep saying “wait till the end, when all will be understood.” That so many metaphorically side with the nameless Man in Black, and are fueled with their own rage and frustration towards LOST’s own two “Mother”s and their consistent refusal to come clean is maddeningly brilliant in its own way. We’re on the same emotional journey as they are.
I suppose the real question is: How badly do you want to get off this Island?
Other notes:
• Hrm, this review was almost entirely focused on the external reaction, and not a summary of what actually happened. Funny how that turned out. DarkUFO’s Vozzek69 had a brilliant recap of the episode in which several interpretations/theories were thrown out that might as well be gospel. Be sure to check it out here.
• No problems with Allison Janney’s casting, as far as I’m concerned, any WEST WING alumni is gold.
• Since MiB broke Mom’s magical jug that sealed Jacob’s transition from Candidate to Protector in “Ab Aeterno,” what’s Jack’s rite of passage going to be?
• Mother willingly died by the dagger Dogan told Sayid to use on Locke. Was that rule of the game Jacob set up, or a pre-existing one? And once a new transition of power is made, is that the when the previous Protector can be finally killed?
• Another “Ab Aeterno” thought: If the island is a cork holding the evil in place, and the good light transformed MiB into Smokey, does that mean the good force (Smokey itself) is now corrupt? Or maybe it just changed into a different form of energy?
• The chances that Desmond’s gonna be taking a ride into the Glowy Cave just got real high. I’m pretty sure that’s why Widmore was testing out the HULK device on him in “Happily Ever After”
• So that was Little Jacob (and little MiB) that’s been haunting Fake Locke all season. More instances of the dead hanging around, stuck in limbo until the scales are balanced (remember that the original MiB is dead, and Smokey is, well, whatever he is that also occasionally takes the form of its host). Once again, I must ask whether or not the Dead serve their own agendas (the fact that the boy’s murdered biological mother is the one who initially encourages MiB to leave may be a sign that’s might be the case),
• The Adam and Eve flashback: mega gratuitous for us hardcore fans, even though it sought to remind us of the parallels between the Candidates then and now. Sometimes less is indeed more.
Episode Grade: B-