a) the script and the acting felt awkward, especially the beginning before Jacob and MiB grew up - I can't blame them in a way, how to tell this sort of epic nature of the whole show in 42 minutes, but maybe it was just a bad idea to tell this part of the story this way.
Couldn't agree more. From a series that has given us some amazing acting in characters of Ben and Locke (just for starters), the two kids and the insane "mom" were incredibly weak. And while I understand them speaking in English for the sake of the viewing audience, they ended up sounding like they were from Toledo lol. Even when they spoke Latin, it came off as incredibly fake. They should have hired an actress who could have spoken with an accent a little less banal than the one they hired.
b) Jacob's predecessor is just some semi-insane woman who steals babies, murders their mother and refuses to offer any good explanation for anything. Honestly, we really know little more than we did before about the nature of the island and it seems that any hope of this being answered is gone.
Agree there, too.
c) the heart of the island is just a pool of light, and we weren't really told in any meaningful way what it is
- life, death, or whatever, that's so bloody ambiguous it would have been better not to have been told about it. Its also just plain silly, IMHO.
Also agree here. I would have preferred not being shown the light peeking out through the rocks and the glow from the cave, etc, etc. When I saw the cave for the first time I literally said out loud "Well, this looks stupid" lol.
d) Jacob killed his brother, or condemned him to a fate worse than death (I'm not even sure) simply because he wanted to leave the island. No reason given by Jacob's "mother" as to why she won't let him leave. I think its a huge mistake not to detail this.
Actually, Jacob killed his brother because his brother killed their mother. And because Jacob apparently has one hell of a temper lol. And I assumed that the "mother" wouldn't let them leave because she needed them there to be the next island protectors, and thought that convincing them that nothing else outside of the island existed would make keeping them there easier.
e) The frozen donkey wheel is just some sort of device no-name MiB wants to couple to the light source to allow him to leave the island. Why the light or the donkey wheel would let him do that or work in that way, totally unexplained. How he figured that out or why he thought that? Totally unexplained.
Yeah, that NEEDED an explanation other than the incredibly generic explanation of "These guys found areas on the island where metal acts different...so they dug holes, saw the light, and now want to make a teleportation device from it." What, was the ship that wrecked full of physicists or something?
f) Jacob's "mom" destroys the village of the pre-Others, and destroys MiB's tunnel to the light source. Meaning the frozen donkey wheel was buried before it was completed. So how did it get completed?
g) If the "pre-Others" are so evil and bad or what not, and the island needs protecting from them, why did "mom" wait 30+ years to kill them?
Agree with both, again. My only response would be that "mom" actually did not do all of that, and that she summoned Somkie like Ben did a few seasons ago.
h) The "rules" between Jacob and MiB are simply that they can't kill each other, for no other reason that "mom" "made it that way". Why did mom make it that way, and don't we deserve a better explanation than that? Yeesh.
Yeah, I'm guessing that mom "made it" so that they couldn't
hurt each other by making them both candidates. But when Jacob's brother joined the tribe of crash survivors, he lost his "candidate" status, and thus the rules between him and Jacob were no longer valid. So in my eyes, "mom" didn't actually do anything herself to make it so that they can't hurt each other, but she knew that making them both candidates to take her place would cause that to happen. Or something. I don't know lol.
i) Did MiB really become the smoke monster, or did (as someone posted in another thread) Jacob release the bad energy under the island by throwing MiB's unconcious body in there? Therefore smokey is not really Jacob's brother?
I believe it's the latter, especially after the talk MiB had with Jack:
JACK: Look just like him.
LOCKE: Does it bother you?
JACK: No, what bothers me is I don't have any idea what the hell you are.
LOCKE: Sure you do.
[Jack kneels.]
JACK: Why John Locke?
LOCKE: Because he was stupid enough to believe that he'd been brought here for a reason. Because he pursued that belief until it got him killed. And because you were kind enough to bring his body back here in a nice wooden box.
JACK: He had to be dead before you could look like him.LOCKE: That's right.
j) The "flashbacks" to Jack, Kate and Locke in the cave felt like Darlton manifesting a need to rub it in to the audience that "hey, we knew what we were doing all along, see?" What, the audience wouldn't have gotten the significance of Jacob burying "mom" and MiB in the cave with the black and white stones unless they shoved a flashback in our face? Worse, the whole idea that this proved anything in terms of who knew what, when, feels like a stretch. I know Darlton have admitted that specifics were not known that early, and that while they had some ideas, it didn't really get detailed out until after season 1, but even beyond that, they could have had anyone be buried in those caves and said they knew it all along, didn't have to be "mom" and MiB.
Agree here, too lol. The flashback to Jack and Kate in the cave was completely unnecessary, and actually made the moment a little less potent. It's weird, because many times the show offers next to zilch in the way of solid, dependable answers to things...and then here they go overboard beating us over the head to announce "SEE THAT? THAT'S ADAM AND EVE, FOLKS! DID YOU CATCH THAT? HUH? DID YOU?" lol...
k) there were interviews with Darlton after the Candidate how they were bragging like "ok, after tonight no one should have any doubt that MiB is freaking evil". After "Across The Sea", they did a 180 - they make Jacob seem like little more than a unloved, naive jerk who kills his brother in a rage, and MiB comes off as almost sympathetic in this episode. MiB is pissed off at "mom" for all the right reasons, wants to explore the world and learn more than just what he can see on the Island and what "mom" tells him. Meanwhile, Jacob is too blinded by his mother and his lack of worldly experience to see things as they really are. Which makes little sense because he's intelligent enough to feel "mom" loves him less than his brother. Its Jacob who ought to have animosity towards "mom" a lot more than MiB.
Good point, and I didn't like how they said "Locke's motives become clearer" as a teaser for this episode. You mean all he REALLY wants to do is take a vacation? lol...What, if he
does leave the island is MiB gonna show up in Disneyland wearing a Goofy cap and riding the Pirates Of The Carribean ride? He just wants to have a 2nd chance at a childhood his crazy mother denied him?
Both Jacob and Widmore have given the intense impression that MiB leaving the island spells incredible doom for the entire human race. It would have been nice if we got a peek into this flashback episode as to why that is.