Here’s the thing about origin stories: they’re never going to fully satisfy one’s need to know everything. Origins — true beginnings — simply don’t exist. There’s always something that came before, always the question “How?” looping back, over and over, until finally you get to a shrug and the unknowable.

The Mother says as much to Jacob and He Who Has Yet to Be Smokey: You came from me, I came from my mother, she came from hers, and so on and so on. Every question I answer will lead to another question. [Audience: Gee, ya think?]

But . . . she’s NOT their biological mother. She’s LYING to them. From the beginning, she’s lying to them. How do we know that anything she says to them is the truth? She could be making all of it up. And really — we don’t know how she came to the island and we don’t know how long she’s been there, but isn’t it possible that these were stories she told herself to make sense of her life, stuck on this place without any chance of getting off? I mean, wouldn’t you? If you knew you were going to be there for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you make up a story to make your fate seem a little less helpless, a little more noble, a little more Grand? I’m not helpless, I am protecting the world!

I may be alone in this, but I love that the Man in Black has no name. That he is, ultimately, Unknowable. And since the Mother is also unnamed, I’m starting to wonder whether the Man in Black is actually the Mother’s true successor. What if the Mother was, in fact, the First Smoke Monster? And she was playing the brothers against each other from the very beginning, immediately after they were born? She wanted Boy Smokey to find the game. SHE took Claudia’s form and led him to the truth. And — the Man in Black kills her before she has a chance to say anything to him (this has been mentioned before — Dogen tells Sayid he has to strike Fake Locke before he has the chance to speak, or the opportunity is lost). And maybe, in setting Jacob up as the island’s protector, she’s ensured that this game between light and dark will continue for an extremely long time. Centuries, even. Also: at one point she tells the boys the same exact thing that the Man in Black says to Jacob in the finale of Season 5: “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.”

It was clear, wasn’t it, that what we watched unfold last night took place a long, long time ago? Way before the statue. (See, now I wanna know who built the statue, and whether it was to Jacob’s own specifications. Is Tawaret supposed to be some homage to his two mothers?) Claudia and The Mother speak to each other in Latin, at least I think it’s Latin. It makes sense that it would be Latin, since we know that’s the language of the Others — Jacob’s people.

And speaking of the Others, here’s another theory: Smokey brought the DHARMA Initiative to the island. I don’t know how, but it was established that he’s attracted to the people who know things, who can manipulate the island’s special properties, and help him get off the island. Help him rebuild the donkey wheel. And then it would make sense that Jacob’s people would want the DHARMA folks annihilated, just as that first group of villagers was.

What I don’t get: So — the Man in Black is actually dead. I do like the implication now that that scene at the beginning of the Season 5 finale was a conversation between Jacob and a ghost. But I don’t understand why he’s still trying to get off the island. What’s the point? Just to prove that he can? How is it possible that Jacob can leave, after the Mother told him he couldn’t, not ever?

What I did not like — what I actually hate with a passion, now that I’ve had some time to think about it — was the WHOLLY UNNECESSARY flash to Jack and Kate and Locke in the caves, discovering “Adam and Eve.” C’mon. I know it was a long time ago, but still. Did you think we would not recognize the caves? The game pieces? That we would not remember that Lindelof and Cuse promised we’d find out who those people were? And the cuts back and forth from “House of the Rising Sun” looked sloppy (one minute Jack’s shirtless, the next his shirt is on, because the cuts were made from different moments in the original episode) and completely detracted from the emotional moment wherein Jacob says goodbye to his family, and you can still see on his face, “Mom always did like you best.” If I’d been in charge of this, I might’ve agreed to a fade from that scene to those from “House of the Rising Sun,” just in case people out there weren’t seeing the connection, but the back and forth did not work for me at all. Still — when Jack and Kate find the corpses in the cave, Jack says that the decomp is what you’d expect after 20-30 years, and now we know that he’s missing a few zeros at the end of those numbers.

I am sure that this episode will be polarizing. I bet a lot of you just HATED it, just as a lot of you totally dug it. I totally dug it, even though I think it was flawed. I liked that it keeps the question of morality and good/evil afloat, because this is something the show has always done. I liked that it showed us who Jacob and the Man in Black were as people, before they became these . . . well, deities. I liked that it implied certain answers to long-standing questions. I loved the explanation for how the Man in Black became the Smoke Monster (really, out of all the questions, that one’s pretty key). I LOVED Allison Janney and thought she did a wonderful job as the prototype for all the crazy moms that followed (and honestly, when a show has Allison Janney on it, how bad can it be?).

But I’m not entirely sure that all this backstory needed a separate episode, though I will admit that I am impressed by how bold a move that was, and ultimately there might be a good reason for taking this sharp left turn with only three and a half hours of storytelling left. In its execution, however, this episode leaves a lot to be desired. In moving from character drama to myth, much of the dialogue became clunky and heavy, and all the people on Twitter that made references to the Star Wars prequels aren’t half wrong. It’s especially hard to avoid them when the light at the center of the island is referred to as “The Force.” I mean, REALLY?

There’s a lot that I haven’t mentioned, but I’m at 1200 words here and it’s time to move on to the rest of my day. So what did you think, and what questions do you have?

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I’m just jumping right in. I mostly liked this episode, though I grow increasingly tired of the way our group comes together and splits up, comes together and splits up, and all anybody ever seems to do is wander around the island. It’s a wonder they ever got off the island in the first place.

Island timeline

* I knew this would be a decent episode from the opening scene between Jack and Smokey, in which Jack asks an indirect question (“Who else have you looked like?”) and Smokey says, essentially, “You wanna rephrase that into something a bit less circuitous?” So Jack asks, “Have you looked like my dad” and Smokey says, “Yep.” And he did it so that Jack would find water, so that they could leave the island — even though at the time moving to the cave felt like everyone was giving up on the idea of rescue and settling in. I’m still hung up on the moment just before the freighter blows up and Christian Shephard appears to Michael and says “You can go now.” If Smokey can’t leave the island, then how’d he get to the freighter, well out of island range? How’d he appear in LA? Smokey could be lying (shocker) but that then leaves the question of how Ghost-Christian exists — what did he do on the island that makes it not possible for him to move on? (The theory that Christian has been to the island before has been floating around for a while, I think.)

* Then Smokey tells Jack that he can’t leave without everybody and Jack fails to ask why. Maybe because he suspects that it’s BS, or that leaving the island would be bad? He tells Sawyer as much on the boat. Not sure how I feel about that confrontation.

* Hurley’s “You can always bring people back from the dark side” was this episode’s obligatory Star Wars reference, but I’ll give it a pass because I think we’re all hoping that it’s true.

* I liked this exchange better:

Claire: What’s going on?
Hurley: People trying to kill us again.

* Zoe shows up (ugh) and threatens Smokey if he doesn’t return Desmond. Two things:

1) Like grenades or whatever are going to stop Smokey? They should know better. Though perhaps what they’re threatening him with is killing the people he’s with, which, if he’s telling the truth about needing everyone to get off the island, then he would want to protect them until at least then.

2) Why doesn’t he respond with “Yeah, well, you took something of ours” — meaning Jin?

* Another blip of logic: Smokey tells Sawyer to get the boat, Sawyer asks why they all don’t go for it together, Smokey answers that a bigger group moves slower. Like two people make a difference. That was dumb.

* Speaking of Jin, so he and Sun are finally back together. And even though they’d been separated for-freaking-ever, I didn’t think that this reunion packed the same emotional wallop as the one from Season 2 — even though it pops Sun’s voice back and her first word is “Jin.” (I mean, that did get to me, as anivilicious as it was. I am a sap. You know this). But they both knew that the other was alive, whereas back in S2 Sun wasn’t sure if Jin had gone down with the raft. Also, the S2 reunion was just after they’d reestablished their love for each other, so the emotional stakes were super high. Plus you had Rose and Bernard reuniting right next to them. Alls I know is, I got more teared up by Ben comforting Locke in the ambulance.

* The confrontation between Sayid and Desmond was also anti-climactic. Sayid hesitates, like all supervillains hesitate when they’re pointing a gun or death ray at a potential victim, because instead of doing the job they’d rather talk about their feelings. Even though Sayid’s a zombie and no longer has feelings. (“The woman I love”? Oh, Sayid. Like you know what that is anymore.) Desmond’s question to Sayid, though, “What will you tell her you did,” made me think of Michael’s guilt over what he did to get off the island. And I think it’s pretty clear that Sayid did not kill Desmond. Does this mean he’s been swayed from the dark side? Did he leave Des down the well or did he help him out of it?

Sideways timeline

I think things are coming together nicely.

* Sun’s gunshot wound allows her to see the other timeline, so she recognizes Locke — but considering how freaked out she is by this, I’m guessing she sees him as Smokey? Either that or she’s weirded out by the bizarre coincidence.

* And speaking of Locke: If we assume that his accident caused him to see the real timeline, then do we interpret his giving Helen’s name as more than providing his emergency contact person? If he saw the real timeline then he would know that he and Helen don’t make it — which gives Locke a motive for keeping the sideways timeline intact. Interesting that we don’t see his flashes, so we still don’t know whether he sees himself as Smokey or if he sees nothing because he’s dead in the real timeline. Or if he sees both of these things — that he died, and that Smokey took over his body.

* Ford and Straum’s takedown of Sayid was pretty awesome. It’s surprising to me how little I care for this character now. Not sure if it’s because he’s a zombie on the island or if it’s because of the writing or the acting. I’m thinking it’s not so much about the acting because Naveen Andrews has always been good. He can’t help it if he gets crap lines and then his one direction note is “be devoid of emotion.”

* What also surprises me? How much I like Jack this season. Leaving aside that he’s about to operate on Locke specifically, he’s about to operate on someone with a several spinal injury and an obliterated dural sac (callback to the very first episode!), and he’s all, “I got this.”

* And we knew he’d be the one to operate on Locke, but I liked that it actually happened. People are congregating at the hospital. Plot! Moving forward! (I wonder if something will Go Wrong and Locke will die on the operating table? Course correction?)

* Ilana is the lawyer in charge of Christian Shephard’s will. Though it did feel a little like the writers said, “What cast member can we just plug into this role?” I did like how this led to Jack and Claire meeting properly. Did Desmond know? Is he hoping that this will create the jolt for Claire?

* About Claire: in “What Kate Does,” Claire’s named the baby Aaron and, while she’s not ready for him to be born, I was left with the sense that she would try to keep him. But now she’s approaching an adoption service. Make up your mind, Claire.

* On the island, though, I got the sense that she was also getting pulled back from the dark side by going with Sawyer and Kate, even though she knows that Smokey is gonna be pissed. But, you know, Kate makes a big show of disarming Claire before she gets on the boat, yet when they arrive on the other island Claire’s got her shotgun again. I guess safety in armed numbers? But still.

* Which brings me to the end of the episode, which felt less like a cliffhanger and more like a placeholder. We’ve got Sawyer’s group held at gunpoint by Widmore’s group and Zoe (ugh) telling Sawyer that there is no more deal. Even though they were all then instructed to get on their knees, supposedly to prepare for execution, my only reaction to this is “Whatever.” I would bet money that I’d have a different reaction had it been Widmore himself giving the orders. Alan Dale’s simply a much better actor. MUCH BETTER.

* And finally, Smokey’s “you’re with me now” felt like neither the truth nor a threat.

So, yeah. Decent episode, but nothing happened that really blew my mind.

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Today’s post filler comes from Milton’s Areopagitica, which was written in 1644 in support of “the liberty of unlicensed printing” — in other words, against censorship or book banning. I quote it for reasons which should become clear.

When God gave [Man] reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing . . . Wherefore did he create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue? They are not skilful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin . . .

Suppose we could expel sin by this means [i.e., censorship]; look how much we thus expel of virtue: for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence of God, who, though he command us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before us, even to a profuseness, all desirable things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety. Why should we then affect a rigor contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by abridging or scanting those means which books freely permitted are, both to the trial of virtue and the exercise of truth?

I was of two minds watching this episode: one, it was exactly the sort of answer-driven, mythology-heavy episode we’ve been expecting and patiently (or not) waiting for; two, it didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t already know or strongly suspect. On one hand, Nestor Carbonell was wonderful and heartbreaking to watch — the brief scenes between Richard and Isabella were more than sufficient to make me believe in their eternal love, like on a Desmond + Penny level. On the other hand, the pacing of the script was a little uneven and while Richard’s backstory was interesting, we didn’t need so much time spent on it. The Black Rock scenes went on for far too long.

I do think we were treated to some depth, however, and I don’t see anything wrong with confirmations and clarifications. I think when we say “WE WANT ANSWERS” we mean “WE WANT SHOCKING REVEALS” and that’s not necessarily what this show does when it delves into the backstories of the characters.

We find out that Ilana was tasked with protecting the six candidates — which I think had already been discussed or hinted at before. I have more questions about that, and I’m curious to know whether the concept of candidates for replacing Jacob didn’t occur to him until the events of this episode transpired — that is, once he knew that the Man in Black had found a way to kill him, thereby creating the need for someone new to keep the cork in in the bottle.

We find out that Richard came from Tenerife in the Canary Islands and, like so many of the other people on the island, is responsible (however accidentally) for taking another person’s life. And, like so many of the other people on the island, feels responsible for the death of a loved one. We find out that, as we’d pretty much known already, Richard came to the island as a slave on the Black Rock — but a convict slave, which is an interesting touch.

If Jacob and the Man in Black are playing this game of how corruptible humans are, then why does the Man in Black kill so many of the castaways on the ship? Wouldn’t he want to keep them around to see if he can bring them to his side and prove his point? Unless one of the rules they have is that they can only play with the people Jacob decides to bring, and this time it was just Richard.

I was not expecting the Man in Black to show up first and release Richard from the chains, but of course it makes perfect sense — and it was a nice callback to Fake Locke’s words to Richard after Jacob’s death: “Good to see you out of those chains” woudl be the one thing Fake Locke could say to Richard that would tell Richard who he was really dealing with. The one defense I can see of the drawn-out scenes of Richard in chains is that by the time the Main in Black finally shows up, Richard is completely broken and at his most vulnerable, ready to agree to anything just to be freed. He’s the perfect candidate for corruption.

And we get a reiteration of the Man in Black’s desire to escape, which can only be done once Jacob is dead (soooooo why hasn’t he left yet? Does he need to get rid of all the candidates as well?). The Man in Black tells Richard exactly what Dogen tells Sayid back in “Sundown” — that he has to strike first; if “the devil” speaks first then it is already too late. (I believe, but am not sure and do not have the time to check right now, that it was the same knife as well.)

I was not expecting Jacob to be so forceful and hardcore in defending himself against Richard’s murder attempt. Might this be the first time that an attempt had been made on his life, and he wasn’t expecting it, whereas he could see it coming with Ben (even though he didn’t think Ben would actually go through with it) because perhaps there had been many more attempts in the interim?

We know now that Richard is like a priest of Jacob, an intermediary, whose purpose is to guide people into choosing the right path. And he is immortal because he asked to be. That was a nice touch, his asking for immortality not because he wanted whatever power comes with it, but because he didn’t want to go to hell. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought that Richard was going to die at the end, when Isabella tells him that he has suffered enough. What I also found interesting was the way Richard’s backstory throws the other episodes he’s figured in this season into relief, particularly his waffling between these two sides. He tells Sawyer not to trust a thing Fake Locke says, that Fake Locke wants to kill everyone, but at the same time he is tetherless and once again vulnerable and wanting to latch on to the only other entity he’s known since he arrived on the island.

Jacob explains to Richard what, again, we pretty much knew already from last season’s finale — that Jacob and the Man in Black hold different ideas about people and are playing a metaphysical game with everyone who comes to the island (and even though we knew, I still liked Jacob saying it explicitly — the same way I already knew that Claire is Jack’s sister and Cooper was the Sawyer from Sawyer’s childhood but still liked that moment of revelation in the show, liked watching the characters process the information). The Man in Black believes that people are easily corruptible because it’s in their very natures, while Jacob . . . well, Jacob doesn’t necessarily disagree that it is in people’s nature to sin, but he clearly believes that people will generally choose good over evil. This again recalls Areopagitica: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary . . . That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue.” And that’s why Jacob doesn’t intervene in people’s choices once they get to the island — they need to have full knowledge of what they’re about to choose, in order to make their choices. The Man in Black will tempt them with promises of being with their loved ones again (which, if they believe in any sort of an afterlife, will happen, only they’ll be really dead) or with other primal desires, while Jacob stands back and trusts that they know in their heart of hearts what is right.

And maybe, ultimately, that is his only plan: to guide people towards the good. Over and over again. To keep the cork in the wine bottle. And so the Richard from a couple episodes ago, the Richard who wanted to put an end to his immortality because he didn’t think he had any of the answers and now believed that his whole life was meaningless, that Richard is kind of like us Losties, railing against the show for not giving us small complicated details when the big picture is really pretty simple and clear.

However.

Jacob is the one who brings them to the island pretty much against their will. I’m having a hard time with that right now.

I also think we only got half the story last night, because I’m still curious about Alvar Hanso and DHARMA and the island’s physics-defying properties. We got the faith story last night — now it’s time for the science story.

My favorite moments of this episode:

– Richard’s crazed “Bitch, PLEASE” giggle when Ilana asks him what they’re supposed to do next.

– Hurley’s translation of “magnificent” to “awesome.”

– The Man in Black smashing the wine bottle. It was a little heavy-handed to be sure, but it did call back to the “loophole” he and Jacob mention at the end of last season. The cork doesn’t matter if the whole bottle breaks.

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Whee hoo! Sorry for the delay, but I didn’t want to post this until all the blog transfer stuff got sorted. Don’t get too attached to the way it looks — I just wanted something other than the default generic blog theme. And with that, here’s this week’s episode nutshellified:

Well. That was some fucked up shit. G’night everybody!

(Kidding. Obvs.)

Dork observation: This season’s episodes have been repeating Season 1 in terms of who each episode centers around, they’ve both gone from Jack to Kate to Locke to Jack. Tuesday’s episode should have focused on Sun, then, but instead it focused on Sayid. And yet! S1E5 was called “House of the RISING Sun,” while S6E5 is called “SunDOWN.” Neato!

“Sundown” had the first Sideways world installment that didn’t feel as though it forced connections between people (yes, I noted the passing glance between Sayid and Jack, but at least Jack wasn’t the attending physician on his brother’s case). Keamy was the last person I would’ve expected to see back, but it made absolute random sense that he’d be the shark who’d loaned Sayid’s brother money. And that it was Jin locked up in the meat locker also made total sense — Keamy was the one who was going to get the watch from Mr. Paik. I think he’s wearing it, too. (I didn’t get to watch the previews for next week — does it look like it will focus on Sun? That would be nice, because what the hell happened to her when Jin was taken away?)

I was weirded out not that Nadia was married (the minute I saw the flowers in Sayid’s hand I knew that’s what would happen) but that she married Sayid’s brother, even though Sayid still loves her. The whole “I don’t deserve you” business was so Victorian romance literature, too, and I’m not sure I liked it. Also, remember that Sayid’s brother is the one their father berated and belittled for not killing a chicken. Then Sayid had stepped up and killed the chicken for his brother, so it stands to reason that his brother would turn to Sayid for help of the killing kind again.

I don’t think it much matters at this point, but was Sayid’s trip really to translate contracts for an oil company? Or is that a cover for what he was doing in the original timeline — which was to help the CIA capture his former friend-turned-terrorist. It was Nadia that the CIA dangled in front of Sayid as bait for helping them. But in this timeline he’s clearly been in contact with her already, so maybe the terrorist aspect doesn’t exist in the sideways world. (Doesn’t explain why he carries her photo around with him, unless it’s to always remind him that he’s not worthy. Sideways Sayid = Sydney Carton.)

Also, if you’re going to introduce a boomerang in Act One, you’re going to have to have it break a vase in Act Three.

On the island . . . DAMN. Two main things:

1. How many times in the last five seasons has Sayid either directly stated or implied that he was already dead? Something dark has been growing inside of him for a long time, I’d say from the time he tortured Sawyer.

2. Why is it that Sayid always has to prove himself through violence?

The initial fight between Sayid and Dogen was pretty fierce, but I was taken out of the moment when Dogen sees the baseball fall off the table. Like it’s his Rosebud or something. And when Sayid asks Dogen point blank why Dogen didn’t kill him then, Dogen responds indirectly with the story of how/why he’s on the island. I didn’t much care for that. And besides, I thought Dogen didn’t kill Sayid then because he’s not able to kill candidates any more than Smokey.

Do you think that Dogen knew Sayid wouldn’t be able to kill Smokey, or was Sayid not able to do it because Smokey managed to speak first? Was Dogen hoping that Smokey would kill Sayid instead? Because that makes no sense, as Dogen must know that Smokey’s not able to kill the candidates (or is that something that I made up?), and it’s an awfully big risk for Dogen to send out a man who will be easily corrupted because his scale tipped the wrong way. And when Sayid actually kills Dogen and Lennon (shades of Michael killing Ana Lucia and then Libby), in the miracle pool of healing where he had actually died as well, it was like Sayid had found a new source of strength. And he was so scary looking. The look he gives Ben? shudder.

And now because Dogen is dead, Smokey can enter the temple (I’m not sure why he can’t before, why Dogen’s breath somehow makes the ash work as protection). We see Smokey wreak the same sort of disaster that he did at Jacob’s place, only on a larger scale. Alana and Frank and Sun and Ben showed up out of nowhere (I missed you guys!) and I really thought that Sayid was going to kill Ben. Again. (“Why! Won’t! You! Die!”)

But everyone got out of the temple — we don’t see Ben actually leave though, which makes me wonder in a fuzzy sort of way — and Kate goes with Claire and Sayid and is TOTALLY PERPLEXED/creeped out when she sees Not-Locke. It would appear as though Smokey is perplexed as well, but I don’t think he’s going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Definitely curious to see what’s going to happen there.

“Catch a Falling Star” was never creepier.

So in terms of advancing the plot, this was a good episode. At least we got to see Frank and Sun et al, even if for a short time. Is Jin still at Claire’s camp? And where is Sawyer?

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