I would usually hate to reduce a criticism of a show to the age old Internet complaint, “The writers just said ‘Fuck you’ to their audience,” but that’s exactly what happened in “Across the Sea.”
The writer’s intentions with the episode couldn’t have been any clearer: we don’t owe you any answers. Early in the episode, Jacob’s mother says, “Why ask any questions when it’s just going to lead to another one?” Well, as MIB points out, the questions keep coming because you always answer the first ones evasively.
The episode’s central message was that the son who believed her claims about the island and the world out of nothing besides misguided and misplaced faith was “good” while the son who was inquisitive and needed direct, non-evasive answers to his questions about the nature of the world he lived in was evil. Could the parallel between the “Mother” and the Writers, Jacob and MIB to the audience at home be any clearer?
Hugely frustrating. This is probably the worst season of Lost, and this was definitely the worst episode of the entire series.
HRose
6482
Join the smoke monster faction!
And to make it worse:
DL: What our intention was is that there is a repeating vicious cycle that seems to happen on this island, where people come to the island, they try to figure out what makes the island work, and the closer they came leads them to their own inevitable demise.
CC: Like Icarus
DL: The more curious you become about why the island has its properties, inevitably the protector of the island feels the need to engage in some form of mass genocide.
So beware, if you continue to pretend answers the writers will feel forced to initiate mass genocide.
HRose
6483
Btw, it’s Evangelion all over again. With the last episode hate mail will start to pile up and then they’ll decide to make two movies and rewrite the ending.
And ironically it all comes down to parental issues. Evangelion!
I don’t quite buy that, because what I took from this episode is that the MiB wasn’t evil at all. It makes more sense to label them as passive vs. active than it does good vs. evil.
walTer
6485
Late in but just watched it last nite.
I liked the episode …but I am fine what they gave us since they are NOT going to give us all the answers. They already said they aren’t answering them all the questions- hell even unMom said so.
Since I know that is all we are probably going to get from the writers, I gotta go with it.
As far as unMom being smokey…one thing…I swear at some point in the episode where unMom was on camera that we heard smokey’s noise. It was short and pretty much in the background but I really thought I heard it.
I was reading Aristotle’s Poetics today, and this passage (among others) made me wish the Lost writers had done the same:
I’m a little surprised by all the hate for this episode, one where I thought we got a ton of answers, mixed with the usual Lost interplay of character study and murky morality.
I really think that the mother’s actions were supposed to be somewhat repellant, the MiB largely sympathetic, and Jacob as a bit of a fool for unwittingly following the mother’s plans to ‘free’ herself right down to a tee.
We learned who Adam and Eve were, the genesis and fairly justifiable motivations of the smoke monster, that whoever protects the ‘light’ seems to be able to set certain rules governing its stewardship, and were given the mother/Jacob/pseudo-religious view of what Chang described as the “Negatively charged exotic matter that creates a kind of Casimir effect”, the force at the heart of the island’s properties.
I liked seeing this spiritual/scientific dichotomy at play even way back when, with the MiB’s approach to the light in conjunction with the villagers very much reflecting DHARMA’s efforts years later, and yeah, leading to another genocide. It also seems likely now that Ben’s DHARMA purge was indeed Jacob-directed, while I always figured that just had to be the work of a more malevolent force. Which Jacob may have to be, from time to time.
In spite of last weeks’ efforts to brand Smoke-Locke as the clear adversary, I don’t think the writers were demanding us to see the events this week through that same lens… morally speaking.
Oh, and I think the mother was also a smoke monster, hence her seemingly intimate knowledge of what happens when you enter the light. Explains how she could single-handedly raze a village and fill in a well. Plus the MiB was able to kill her in the same manner (before she could speak) and apparently with the same implement that Dogen prescribed for Sayid against Smoke-Locke. She was both monster and guardian, and the twins were her ticket out of bonded servitude.
They just never should have given the impression they were going to conclude any of the island’s mysteries anyways, and hung the tension on that nonexistent peg.
The great failing was in having no proper explanation for why the fuck the people were doing what they were doing.
Jazar
6489
I hate how every Lost episode has to be rated by how many questions it answers. The best episodes of Lost have nothing to do with resolving the mystery.
The impression that I got from Allison Janey’s (seriously - why were they creaming their jeans over getting her again?) initial reaction to surprise second baby was “Oh shit.” I believe that the problem here may be that Jacob is SUPPOSED to be part smoke monster, but he isn’t, because his brother took that half, so now the destructive power of Magical Glowing Cork is divorced from the creative power and given form by virtue of the fact that it received a passive and available body.
Essentially, I kind of wonder whether there hasn’t been a transporter accident and the only thing missing is The Lockeness Monster’s goatee.
I happened to be getting ready for work when Evangeline Lilly was on The View, and I’m not sure if it was a misstep but when she was asked about the final episode, she said even she didn’t know much because she doesn’t appear in the final scenes.
So there’s hope for that.
What’s kinda cool is that Welliver played one of the four horseman, War, in Supernatural (the first one Sam and Dean take out), and Mark Pellegrino (Jacob) has a continual recurring role on the show as Lucifer.
I actually really like both actors.
JeffL
6493
This does not bode well for the ending of the show - from the interview with the showrunners:
"If we tried to please all the people all the time, it’s an impossible task. We loved “The Sopranos” ending. It was actually shocking to us the next morning when people were going, “It’s a cop-out.”’ We’re looking at it as the best, most poetic thing that we’ve ever seen on television, and other people were calling it a cop-out, and we got into these very impassioned arguments about it. The fact that he could make a creative choice like that that would create that sort of debate, I’m sure it wasn’t his intention to create a debate. He was just doing what he wanted to do - what he felt was right for his show. We’re doing the same. "
And one of those dweebs’ twitter says something like, “Wait, being polarizing is a BAD thing?”
ah-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAaaaaaa!
I’m beyond being disappointed with the way Lost is looking, and I am now actively looking forward to the total train-wreck that will be the finale.
jason
6498
You know that joke people have been saying about how they know how Lost will end and then they say, “Like this!” … those people may be more right than they know.
JD
6499
Once the series is over, I’ll be taking a look at the first third of this thread again. Oh what a fun read that will be. “The smoke thing has to be nanites or something!”
Yeah.
I just wish they had shut up way back instead of talking about how there will be a scientific explanation for what’s going on on the island. Yeah, we figured that the smoke or Richard would be somewhat difficult to explain, but hey, up until late season 5 you still had all the elements such as time travel and the like. People simply touching others to grant immortality? Not so much.
And as I said before, I’m not really happy with the pacing. So much time to actually answer questions was wasted, and then they needed to rush all that in the last 6 - 8 episodes. “Across the Sea” felt like it could have used at least another 30 minutes to at least show how he encounters his brother in smoke-form for the first time. (The cave exit certainly doesn’t count.) Or to establish why there’s some special ash Smokey apparently cannot get past.
That said, regardless of how everything ends, Lost had some really awesome episodes. And I’ll miss the Locke/Linus banter.
