13
« on: May 12, 2010, 03:49:24 AM »
I gotta say, this episode was not very good, and since it was (apparently) such a key episode in the series, that gave us (non)-answers to a lot of questions, and probably the only answer's we're getting, man... its not a happy time to be a Lost fan, IMHO...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Anyhow, sorry for the long rant. I am a huge Lost fan, just very unhappy with this episode. We'll see how it goes, but I fear this is sadly the episode where Lost might have jumped the Dharma Shark for real. Here's hoping I'm wrong and that the last two episodes are better. I'll still be watching, we've come too far now not to.
Show Posts
