Some fun news in advance of the finale: the Jimmy Kimmel special following the finale, “Aloha To Lost,” is going to feature three alternate endings to Lost.They’re billing them as actual alternative endings, like any three of them could have happened, but I’m assuming these were all filmed so that the final storyline couldn’t be leaked, just like a couple of years ago when they filmed several people in what turned out to be Locke’s casket. Also, Ack has some great ideas for a Lost finale party, lots of which I’ve used before and more of which I’ll be using this time around. I’d better get to work — May 23rd is really, really soon!
On a rewatch of “The Candidate,” I also noticed that Claire X told Jack X that she had never met her father, Christian. In the original timeline, she met him when he showed up to pay for her mother’s private care after the car accident Claire caused — so it seems that one of the differences in this timeline might be that Claire’s mom was never in that accident.
And finally, I read something really interesting this week that helped me put my finger on what, exactly, bugged me about the way Sayid died. Damon and Carlton have been trying to say that, by sacrificing himself to save others, Sayid finally managed to redeem himself. Two problems with that: first, Sayid was a zombie — dude was dead for two hours! How’s that supposed to work? But secondly, Sayid didn’t need to be redeemed to us. We already knew that he was a really, really good guy. If you get to pick five items to take to a deserted island, one of them should be Sayid. The person who didn’t know that was Sayid himself — and that’s why his story needed closure. Not so that we would see him in a different light, but so that he would see himself the way everyone else already does.
I honestly think they are currently skipping “Previously, on Lost . . . ” because they need those 30 seconds to try to wrap this thing up in the next 4.5 hours. Yeah: four point five hours.
Allison Janney! Amazing! She’s been great almost as long as Terry O’Quinn (she used to be adorable in NYS Lottery commercials, of which my mother and I have, for some reason, extremely vivid memories). Oh, and of course Jacob and Flocke are twins. So original! Which one do you think is the evil one? And why would the Enemy go around telling people that he used to just be a normal man with a life until he came to the Island? That sounds like, um, BS, and I’m so glad that we only had 19 hours of Lost this season and got to spend a bunch of them thinking, for absolutely no discernible reason, that Flocke got trapped on the Island. At least we definitely understand why he tells people that he had a crazy mother.
So in just a few minutes, Lost has turned into a combination of Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Blue Lagoon. With a dash of immortality. That’s totally what I expected to happen! And then a little bit later, you have some magic goodness that everybody wants to have and some badness that can’t be left off the Island, so now there’s a dash of A Wrinkle In Time thrown in. Hey, didn’t this show used to be about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and their relationships and growth as human beings? No, just me?
And is the idea that Allison Janney really NEVER gave the second baby a name? Or were they just going crazy nutso out of their way to keep from saying it? Because, you know, whatever this name is, I don’t see how it could possibly be good enough to justify jumping through all these hoops.
OK, so crazy Allison Janney went to a magical glowing stream and . . . made it so that Jacob and the Enemy can never hurt each other and never need to worry about death? Hey, dear Lost: If the question is “How did they get their power? How did they become immortal?” then “Because of MAGIC” isn’t an answer. Sorry, there’s a little bit of this light inside every man? It’s “the source”? You go too close to the light and it turns you into a monster made of smoke? Wouldn’t it be just as easy to tell us nothing, which is basically the same thing as invoking magic? We’re not actually gaining anything when that is the kind of information we’re getting — what’s the difference between not knowing something and being told the thing is unknowable? What’s the difference between, “There’s a donkey wheel stuck at the bottom of a well, and turning it harnesses the Island’s special properties and makes you time travel,” which we’ve known for years, and “There’s a donkey wheel stuck at the bottom of a well because The Enemy somehow figured out with his ‘clever’ ancient buddies that putting it there would allow him to take over the Island’s power and escape by mixing the water and the light,” which we only learned tonight? How is that progress? Can you not see how those are the same thing? And what, Widmore is trying to take over the Island — just like everyone else has — so that he can get at, um, the most beautiful light anyone has ever seen? Naturally! Tesseract!
Best line on Lost, ever: “I have no idea because you wouldn’t tell me.” Yeah, I wonder how that would feel. Hammiest line on Lost, ever: “Please. Take the cup and drink.” Yup. They went there. They also seem to be setting things up for us to be convinced that, uh, science is evil, and it may shock you but that’s not a message I can get behind: Flocke wants to leave the Island “just because” there’s a whole world to explore out there, and his friends who are also interested in doing that are ‘bad’ and not like CJ Cregg and her folks. If you think about it, you can connect this line of thinking to a lot of what’s been happening lately, and I find it interesting that what used to be a sci-fi show with lots of time travel seems to be going down this road. Battlestar Galactica, anyone?
So how did Allison Janney kill all those people and fill in that well all by her lonesome? Was she supposed to be Smokey, thus the ability to wipe out a village, and that’s how she knew that going into the tunnel meant a fate worse than death? Or was it more that she was in the role of protecting the Island, knew that eternal life was a raw deal, and was pretty jazzed to dump that job on Jacob and then thank the other twin for killing her? And also, why did she randomly love Kid Who’s Not Jacob more than Jacob? I get what that accomplishes in the story, but, you know, how do you motivate that? And if Allison Janney only told Jacob and Not Jacob what we saw her tell them, and then she died, how does Jacob know any of the other junk that, by 2007, he seems to know? How did she know any of this jazz? And if the kids were already immortal, as she implied when she told them they didn’t need to worry about death, what exactly is so much “worse than death” about being turned into Smoke? I mean, if you are already trapped on an Island and are already not going to be able to die, what’s so much worse about spending some of that time in the form of smoke? And how does the Enemy end up back in that body, running around the Island, harassing Richard and wanting to kill Jacob?
Oh, and don’t even try to tell me that Allison Janney and Jacob’s Dead Brother were always supposed to be Adam and Eve (right, that’s why Jack said that the bodies had been there for about 50 years — because they’d actually been there, undisturbed and undeteriorated, for hundreds). I was born at night, but not last night. And they even showed us a little clip of Jack and Kate finding them in the caves 6 years ago, because apparently NOW all of the sudden Lost isn’t expecting us to have paid even the tiniest bit of attention. Hey, Lost: I saw the Dharma logo on that shark. You’re not impressing me. And I was also around when you promised that the reveal of Adam and Eve would convince me that you’d had this idea in mind the whole time. Really? How is this supposed to convince me of that?
This reminded me a lot of the Richard episode: yes, we got backstory, but not the part of the backstory that we needed for everything to make sense. In Richard’s case, yes, we needed to know how he ended up working for Jacob, but also what his life traveling on and off the Island was like, and what his actual function was, and how much he knew at any given time. In this case, yes, we needed to know the Jacob and Twin origin story, and how one ended up a Smoke Monster, but we also needed to know what being the Smoke Monster meant to him, and how this turned into an epic struggle of destiny versus free will, and how Jacob relates to a Man in Black who looks like his brother even though he knows he killed his brother and laid him to rest, and why leaving the Island needs to happen in a certain way, and why the rules are the rules. That’s the heart of what we needed to learn tonight. And were the Enemy’s people the original Others? Did anyone come before them? Who is more responsible for the Island we know today — their influence, or Jacob’s? Why couldn’t we have learned some of what they knew about the Island, given that they seem to have learned and earned it rather than having it handed to them on a platter by a nutjob?
Honestly, I went into this with the goal of not coming off as crazed and bitter as last week. But then . . . this happened. I give up! Seriously, think about EVERYTHING that has been significant for 6 years. Think about what you always thought were the “big mysteries” behind Lost. Did any of those have anything to do with the ash, or time travel, or the difference between destiny and free will, or whether it’s better to be a man of science or a man of faith, or who is good and who is “bad”, or how you end up on “the list” that the Others keep, or the whispers, or dead people appearing in the woods (remember Harper? I thought I was the only one who did until last weekend, and that’s a ‘clue’ that went NOWHERE), or the protective power of the temple, or who the guy was who said “Help me” to Locke in Jacob’s cabin that time, or the sickness, or why women can’t give birth, or why Aaron couldn’t be raised by another, or why Walt seemed to be so special at first but not later, or why the Others branded Juliet, or why Dharma originally came to the Island, or who settled it originally, or why the giant foot statue has four toes, or what the Island’s power is, or even what “You’re special” means in the context of the show (which came up tonight, so 1 point to Across the Sea), or what “Lift it up” means, or what Locke saw way back when he said he looked into the heart of the Island and “it was beautiful”, or why he was drawing pictures of the Smoke Monster when he was just a little boy and Richard came to interview him? Probably. Did any of those have anything to do with finding out that CJ Cregg used to know lots about the Island and that there is a magical glowing cave of magic that is magical and somehow explains everything? I’m guessing no.
And while we are getting some ‘answers,’ I suppose, it does seem that the writers are answering our questions in a very literal way. “How does Jacob know about the Island’s power?” can be answered, “His mother told him,” but that only answers the letter of the question, not the spirit — the writers know full well that what we actually meant was, “How could anyone understand the Island’s power?”
There are a couple of things I’m NOT going to complain about, though! How thrilling for you! Anyway, lots of blogs and forums this morning are wondering how CJ Cregg and The Boys’ Actual Mom “learned English” or “switched to English” all of the sudden in that opening scene. Just to clear that up: they didn’t. The writers just had the actors switch over to English so that we didn’t have to read subtitles for an entire episode, and they did it with a flourish of music which is pretty much the ‘accepted’ way to make that kind of move on television. All indications are that this episode takes place 2,000 years ago: that wasn’t English-as-a-clue, it was just a convenience for us as viewers.
I also think it’s supercool that the boys were playing an ancient game, the rules of which we actually don’t know.
Also, they did a really good job, at least, of demonstrating that both Jacob and Jacob’s Dead Brother (I’m really struggling with nicknames this week — somebody’s gotta do Sawyer’s job these days) are sympathetic characters and both came from a reasonable place. Of course Jacob attacked his Evil Twin — Evil Twin killed their mother. Of course Evil Twin killed CJ Cregg — she torched his village. At least now I can continue being convinced that neither of them is “the good guy.” That’s the silver lining, maybe? Is that a stretch?
There’s so much more I could say, about unreliable narrators, about how sometimes leaving something a mystery is actually more informative than a nonsensical answer, and how sometimes these nonsensical answers actually undermine some things that we previously thought were really cool, about how I never thought I’d miss Jack, but I’ll leave all that as an exercise for the reader.
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