Jacob: “Drink this.”
Jack: “How long am I going to have to do this job?”
Jacob: “As long as you can.”

• This entire scene gave me chills. There’s a subtle sense of sacrifice to the scene. Jack’s willingness to step up and make that sacrifice moved me. Now the questions become: was that sacrifice worth making? Will Jack’s new status make him Target Number 1 for Anti-Locke and Caliba – err, Ben? Will Jack die before the end of this show, now that his ascendancy is complete? And will we see the world through Jack’s new eyes? Because I am DYING to get a little more about what, exactly, being “like Jacob” means. Based on this episode, as I’d said above, I’d guess that part of it involves Island Omniscience – which could be dramatized incredibly, or with incredibly cheesy CGI. I’m hoping, really hoping, for the former.

• They cut to Sawyer right after the ceremony. Why is that?

Maybe it’s because, as I (and many, many other people, I’m sure) suggested, Jack isn’t truly meant to protect the Light. Maybe it’s because he’s assumed this responsibility without yet understanding that the job isn’t necessary. I’m not saying that realization will happen, but it’s certainly a very real possibility, given how much time is left on the clock here and given the show’s obsession with freedom and choice. Having that realization would make a lot of sense from the show’s Existential-yet-spiritual point of view. To invoke O’Connor again:

“When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be Lost.” – Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

By hiding the Light on the Island, making it a literal “resident” in a certain type of tropical life, discoverable and accessible to a few, it may be that the Island’s guardians are actually hurting mankind’s spiritual awareness/growth and development. What’s nice about the open-ended nature of this at this point is that I’d honestly be happy with either story choice. Both the decision to protect the Light and the decision to free it are defensible decisions, so long as they’re dramatized effectively. Speaking for myself, it’s my hope that if the Light is deemed worthy of eternal protection that the end of the show in some way involves/glances toward the idea of Jack “recruiting” all of his Castaway friends to form a community of (mostly) trusted guardians. It’d sum up so much about the show. A final shot showcasing all of the Island’s Castaways standing on the beach awaiting the arrival of some new group of people would be stirring and profound. We’ll see what happens!

• If I have an issue with this episode it’s that I can’t imagine Jack wouldn’t bring Desmond up to Jacob. Maybe that’s something they’re withholding until the finale, but given the seriousness of the situation you’d think that Jack would feel compelled to tell Jacob that Anti-Locke wants his Scottish buddy planted and pushing up daisies. I mean, if they want to stop him that is. I’m pretty good about suspension of disbelief but this was one of those moments where suspension was overcome by gravity.

For some people, something like this acts as a complete story-killer. It seems to actively, personally infuriate them. I do not understand this. I mean, sure, enough of them and suddenly you’re looking at a show that’s too full of holes to present a proper picture. But I’m one of those (maybe deluded, depending on what email I’ve received that day) people for whom this show has worked like gangbusters. If there are holes to be found (and there are, and we’ll be debating how well the writers filled those holes for a long time after Lost has exited the airwaves, taking its nefarious, opiate-esque hold over me with it) they aren’t holes that ruin the show for me.

Desmond: “I think it’s time to leave.”

I quite loved the scene between Desmond, Sayid and Kate in the van. Sayid is dryly funny and Desmond’s weirdo certainty is so, so fun to watch. When the van stops, and Ana Lucia pops up, along with Hurley (who’s apparently received something like a total-information-awareness download, since he now remembers Ana Lucia as well as Libby) I grinned like a cat with a canary. Do I wish that they’d thrown Desmond into the mix earlier in the season? Heck yes.

Hurley: “She’s not coming with us?”
Desmond: “Nah, she’s not ready yet.”

• Desmond’s comment reinforces the idea that the chosen Castaways are going to be making some kind of “Karmic” leap – in some way confronting and/or reconciling with their Other selves – and that some people aren’t ready to make that leap. It makes perfect sense that Ana Lucia (a totally underrated character on the show, as I discovered when I rewatched) wouldn’t be ready. She was far too tied in to her issues to “let go” while she was on the Island, and the off-Island version of her presumably “reflects” that fact.

• What’s going to happen now? Well, I think that Juliet and Sawyer will get their coffee date in the finale, meaning that, scientifically-speaking, the Jughead reset DID work, just like Juliet claimed. It’s my unsubstantiated theory that the Jughead event set off a chain reaction that allowed the Castaways on the Island to get to a point where they could “reset” their original reality and re-live their lives without Island interference – with a Tabula Rasa, to use the title of a past episode. Think of it like them traveling back to Dharma in the 70’s, except that instead of going back to an earlier point in their pre-established timeline, they create a new timeline where they are free of Island Determinism but still beholden to their own flaws. This is why, for instance, Nadia is alive in the Sideways universe, but still not with Sayid. Sayid’s choices kept them apart. See my Second Snake theory for more explication on this nonsense. If you want science-grounded reasoning for my whacko ideas check out the concept of Quantum Worlds. It’s complicated, but entirely ‘fact-based’ (as far as theoretical physics go at any rate), and provides a fascinating potential explanation for the Sideways world. It’ll also be interesting to you on a general intellectual level. One of the reasons that I so enjoy the show is that its set up to accommodate both a “spiritual” perspective and a “scientific” perspective, and through its characters illustrates how easily those lines can blur.

And I like what the existence of potential “Quantum Worlds” says about our fates, about mortality. If “Quantum Worlds” exist, then we’re in a sense “immortal,” because the past, present and future are co-existent, and because there are countless ‘possible (theoretical) worlds’ out there where we’ve made every conceivable decision we’re capable of making. I find it enormously comforting to imagine that at this moment my deceased loved ones are living out their lives in happiness in another version of our world. And that’s a perfect example of the overlap between science and faith – the wish for another place where we hope/know that our loved ones are safe and well.

• I love that Desmond gives Kate a nice dress to wear, coming off like Quantum James Bond.

• Apparently, saving Desmond from death has worked out in the MiB’s favor. And apparently, someone gave Desmond a hand out of there. Was it Sayid? Claire? Miles?

• Anti-Locke confirms that Desmond is Jacob’s failsafe, and that in turn sorta confirms my whacky theory from a while back about Desmond being a “Secret Candidate.” Only, it’s apparently not Candidacy he’s scheduled for. What is it that Desmond is going to help the Man in Black to do? What will the Island’s Smoke Monster promise/threaten him with?

Anti-Locke: “I’m going to destroy the Island.”

• As I see it, when Anti-Locke says that he wants to destroy “the Island,” what he REALLY means is that he wants to extinguish its “heart.” Given what we’ve learned that makes the most sense to me.

Thinking back to the beginning of the season it seems natural to worry that the off-Island universe is the result of Anti-Locke’s successful attempt at doing just that. After all, how else would you sink an entire “magical” Island? But at this point I still don’t love the idea that the off-Island universe is an aberration that must be destroyed (That may change if that’s the tact the show ends up taking, since more often than not I find myself warming to the stuff on this show that I think I’m going to dislike), so I’m going to suggest a possible alternative which in part revolves around the stuff I discussed just above, and which I’ve been circling in one way or another since the start of my Rewatch last year.

It may be that the sunken Island we’ve seen isn’t the result of the Island having been destroyed by the Man in Black – that it’s instead the result of the Castaways realizing that in order to protect the “Light” and achieve the progress that Jacob is hoping for they need to free it, allowing it to “let go” in the same way that they’ve been struggling to let go of their personal issues and problems since the show began. Doing this might result in the creation of a “Sideways world,” a kind of “Karmic” second-chance world where they are not controlled by Island deities, but are instead free to make all of their own decisions, for better and for worse. The Light will have left the Island, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Light is gone/extinguished.

If all of that is waaaay too metaphysical and wonky for you (and I wouldn’t blame you), look at it this way: When Locke and Jack met this season at baggage claim and talked about the airline losing Christian’s coffin, Locke told Jack that they hadn’t lost his father, they’d just lost his body. Maybe what we’ve seen at the beginning of the season is an image of the Island’s dead body. It’s “heart” has left, but that doesn’t mean that it’s been Lost.

• With The End approaching this seems as good a place as any to say thanks to everyone who’s dropped me a note/email/PM about these columns, and for your ridiculously kind words. Spending four to eight hours a week writing a column on a television show has somehow connected me to a terrifically-kind group of people. Lost’s audience is wonderfully diverse, in age and geography, in occupation and outlook and belief. You are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, Agnostic and Atheist. You are young (get off my lawn!) and old (get off my lawn!) and everything that life offers in between. You are filmmakers, writers, lawyers, librarians, students, teachers, accountants, engineers, mechanics and retail salespeople, and (knowing Chud’s readership) you probably have a few rogue geneticists and sentient cephalopods among you. It’s been a privilege hearing from all of you, and you’ve enriched my experience watching the show more than you’re probably aware. I started this on a lark and it’s become a blast, sometimes a surreal one. It’s my understanding that there is at least one actual class, with actual students, led by an actual teacher, who’ve referred to my ramblings in their discussions(!). This does not bode well for our educational system.

The column for The End will post next week, at the end of the week. Two and a half hours of television is a lot to write up, so it’ll come in installments. The first will publish Friday. The second will go up Monday. Like the last two Harry Potter adaptations, with less special effects/Alan Rickman, but far more verbosity/Rupert Grint.

*****

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Ben: “He doesn’t get to save his daughter.”

• In an episode with no shortage of great lines/scenes, this is right up there. It’s chilling. My question to all of you: Did Ben shoot Widmore purely out of anger and vengeance? Or did he shoot Widmore to prevent him from telling Anti-Locke more than a sentence or two about Desmond’s apparent “Failsafe” status? Anti-Locke announces that he knows everything he needed to know, but I’m not convinced of that. What do you think? Did Widmore tell Anti-Locke everything? Or did Ben cut him off? Does Widmore even understand the “whole” plan?  Or is this playing into what Jacob is hoping will happen? Whatever his motives, I’m thrilled that they’ve kept Ben’s essential unknowability in play, and in play convincingly, this far into the show’s end-game.

That said, I’m fairly certain that Ben’s committed himself to a suicide mission here. He’s gotten his vengeance on Widmore, and now he knows that Anti-Locke has no intention of leaving him the Island. It’s a great place to have moved this character to – a place of awareness of the possibility of forgiveness and Tabula Rasa, and of simultaneous awareness that such a thing for such a man as he is difficult/impossible to accept.

Kate: “I want to know why. I want to know that Sun and Jin and Sayid didn’t die for nothing.”
Jacob: “Come and sit down and I’ll tell you what they died for.”

• Some of the back-and-forth between the Castaways and Jacob comes across as a little on the nose for me, but I suspect that’s because I’ve been working on the idea of Jacob-as-metaphorical-deity for some time now. I suspect that there are vast swathes of people who haven’t made that overt connection yet, and for them, this kind of dialogue is probably exactly what’s needed. Either way, despite the fact that the Castaways literally sat around while someone explained things to them I found this pivotal moment of exposition very satisfying.

• The funniest moment of this episode? For me it’s the laughter that’s shared between Jack and Locke right after Locke enters Jack’s office. It’s awkward in the best way, and feels incredibly natural.

Locke: “I think I’m ready to get out of this chair.”

• What a great line. Locke takes his own leap of faith, connecting the dots between the string of coincidences that have been dogging the Castaways and making the decision to let Jack help him. His words here are stirring in the best sense of that word. I cannot wait to see what happens with this storyline.

Jacob: “I didn’t pluck any of you out of a happy existence. You were all flawed. I chose you because you were like me – you were all alone, you were all looking for something that you couldn’t find out there. I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.”

• Isn’t that what this show has been saying from day one? It’s certainly what I’ve been saying about these characters from day one, and what many of you have been saying/thinking as well. Jacob’s reasoning feels entirely appropriate, and very satisfying to me. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best answer, and Jacob’s answer cuts straight to the heart of the reason for why we watch this show to begin with (most of us at any rate) – because we’re invested in these characters, first and foremost.

So now we know. We know why these people were brought to this Island, and we’ve heard Jacob’s justifications for doing so. Some of you don’t seem to be buying it. And that’s good, I think. I think a story as narratively and morally knotty as Lost demands you scrutinize the hidden motivations of its characters, and I think that featuring a human-sized version of a god (which is what Jacob has been, thematically, metaphorically, and in some senses, literally, throughout the show) who interferes with the totality of people’s free will naturally invites twice the scrutiny.

That’s as it should be. When a show is asking you to simultaneously consider both the straightforward implications of Jacob’s decision to interfere as well as the larger thematic implications of a “god” interfering with humanity (something made all-but-explicit through the rather pointed dialogue directed at Jacob – especially Sawyer’s line about suffering) then it hasn’t done its job as smart, adult entertainment unless it leaves you in a gray area. If you’re not asking yourself the same question that Sawyer asks (namely, what gives Jacob the “right” to interfere) then you’re not thinking about the thorny mixture of free will and Determinism that Jacob is ultimately peddling here.

And this is exactly what the show seems to want you to ask. Is this “right”? Is this “good being”? Sawyer is absolutely correct to question the “right” of Jacob to do what he does. It’s right and good to question, because these questions matter on a scale that extends far beyond a television show about Smoke Monsters and Mystic Islands. What gives a government the “right” to go to war? What gives “God” the right to care about us/watch over us/create us/mess around with us at all? What gives Science the leeway to change our lives in ways that we don’t necessarily want, or need? What gives ANY authority “the right”? What should our response be to Deterministic systems that provide some choices while maintaining an overall-illusionary sense of Ultimate Choice?

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: In a sense, Jacob’s choice of these people as Candidates ensured that they would be “invited” to the Island. But (and here’s where things get intriguing, and why I love this show) it’s also true that each of these Candidates, living and dead, have only themselves to blame for Jacob’s choice. Because, for all of the discomfort about Jacob’s right or lack thereof, it’s the very fact of each of these characters and their fundamental, near-total pre-Island unhappiness that resulted in their being chosen. Didn’t they all have choices they were capable of making leading up to their arrival which would have made them happier, more content, and thus, ineligible for Candidacy? At what point should they concede that none of them would be on the Island at all had they lived their pre-Island lives in ways that gave them purpose and meaning and contentment? That’s what Jacob told the Candidates last night – he picked them because they needed the Island as much as it needed them. And he’s inarguably right about that as far as I’m concerned. How would Sawyer’s life have ended, had he NOT crash-landed on the Island? It would have ended badly, in all likelihood – with our favorite con man bleeding out in an alley, or locked in jail again, or pursuing Cooper ‘til they were both dead, literally and/or figuratively.

And then there’s the question of “goodness” and of what it truly means to be “good.”

“Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliché or a smoothing down that will soften their real look.” – Flannery O’Connor

If Jacob truly is on the side of the righteous, then this quote acts as an answer to Sawyer and Kate’s questions. Sometimes good isn’t “good.” Sometimes people who act for a “good” are awful individuals, or use awful methods to accomplish their goals. As O’Connor observes, we’re enured to that kind of awfulness when it’s related to something we can call “evil,” but we’re curiously uninterested/afraid of considering the full spectrum of what a “good” act/person can be.

After all, sometimes you have to make difficult, even horrific, decisions in order to accomplish what you hope to be a “good” end. War is one evident and suitable example. Even “good” wars aren’t good. If Jacob is simply a man, and ultimately indefinable as “good” or “evil” then that’s right to me on a lot of levels. It also seems right to me to dramatize the fact that sometimes people have no choice but in how they decide to confront what they are faced with. Some fates are unavoidable. Some burdens can’t be refused.

Put another, nerdier, way: Why is it that people seem to have such enormous trouble with the notion that Jacob may have “good” intentions, yet no apparent trouble at all with the following:

Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all those who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.”

• I love that Jacob crossed Kate’s name off because she became a mother. It’s so simple and makes so much sense, both on a character level and on a larger thematic level. The crossing out of her name wasn’t about some test she failed, or some unexplained metaphysical transformation. It was about her personal choices – about her making the choice to become a mother, and Jacob’s respect for that choice. Once that choice was made Jacob crossed her name off preemptively, but he also tells her that the choice is still hers if she wants it. That’s kind of beautiful, in my opinion, regardless of what you think of Jacob’s choices.

Jacob: “You must do what I couldn’t – what I wasn’t able to do.”
Jack: “You want us to kill him. Is that even possible?”
Great Jacob Line: “I hope so, because he is certainly going to try and kill you.”

• Here’s another instance where you might argue that Jacob is pushing these characters around and telling them where to go or what to do. But I’d disagree, because this episode makes a careful point of having Kate and Jack agree at the start of the hour that they need to kill Locke. Their free will and Jacob’s apparent needs match up. The choices that are offered to the Castaways aren’t easy choices. They are “Lady or the Tiger”-esque in their apparent mortal importance and in their veiled quality. I like that a lot. 

Jack: “This is why I’m here. This is what I’m supposed to do.”
Jacob: “Is that a question, Jack?”

• In all my theorizing and rambling I’d never considered the idea that the passing of Jacob’s torch would happen at this point. I’d taken it entirely for granted that this would be something featured in the finale. Seeing it here has cleared the figurative decks of my expectations. At this point, at least in my loco cabesa, anything can happen. Jack can die, protecting the Island/his friends, and the torch can be passed again. Jack can die having been duped, and be avenged by his friends. Jack can live, and protect the Island/his friends while retaining the title of protector. Jack can potentially appoint all of his Castaway buddies as fellow protectors, making a community of the position that Jacob held in solitude. Or Jack and the Castaways can make a choice to safeguard the Light in other ways, or choose to somehow release it from the Island, mirroring the ways that they themselves have struggled like Moths to be free.

It’s all possible. And that makes me very, very happy as a viewer.

• Jacob tells Jack that the heart of the Island isn’t far from the field he landed in when he first crashed on the Island. This tells us something fascinating about Jacob – he’s potentially “Island Omniscient.” After all, Jacob wasn’t physically present when Jack landed on the Island. So how does he know that it’s where Jack first touched down?

• We also get confirmation that only the guardian can find the Light. Keeping with the themes of higher consciousness, Jack’s “sight” is apparently augmented by participating in Jacob’s ritual, allowing him to find The Source. You could say (and, hey! I’m saying it!) that Jack’s consciousness has been expanded – that he’s “awakened” to something new/unique/powerful.

A LITTLE MORE LESS CONVERSATION, A LITTLE MORE ACTION, RIGHT AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!

Ben: “Who the hell are you?”
Widmore: “She’s with me. Hello, Benjamin. May I come in?”

• How great is it to see these two old enemies in the same room again at last? We learn that it was indeed Widmore who rigged Ajira with explosives, and that following his Season Four assault on the Island Widmore was approached by Jacob, who apparently leveled with him and convinced him to give up his seemingly-genuinely-selfish pursuit of the Island in order to help Jacob save it. If this is the entirety of the truth it makes me wish we’d seen that scene and it makes me long for the alternate universe 22 episode version of this season, but I’m content with the vertigo we experience as an audience having Widmore suddenly, openly explain that, hey, he’s decided that he’s working for the “good” guys now and if Ben doesn’t like it he can stuff it. It explains why it is that Miles is told he’s playing for the “wrong team” when he’s picked up by the Shadow of the Statue people (because Widmore apparently didn’t have Jacob’s interests in mind at all when he sent the Freighter, a confirmation that I appreciate, since it preserves Widmore’s earlier selfishness and means I can continue to freely hate him the next time I revisit the series) and it makes Widmore seem consistently-dickish, even when acting in what we presume to be the Island’s best interests.

• Since we’re talking Ben and Widmore, what of their “rules”? Can we assume that they’d set up a kind of “gentlemen’s agreement” wherein they promised not to drag their respective daughters into their conflict? No we can’t, because the “rules” also seem to have included a prohibition against Ben killing Widmore. Can we assume, as I’d suggested before, that Jacob’s rules extended somehow to them both, in that they were both leader of the Others at one point? Are the Others maybe prohibited from harming one another without the consent of the larger group (see: the meeting to decide Juliet’s fate)? I dunno. Slot this question up above with the others. It’s in the “I wish I understood more” category, but not in the “this pisses me off” category. Just so you know.

• How did Widmore return to the Island? Jacob invited him. That’s a heck of a lot simpler than the answer I’d concocted – something involving tracking beacons and/or knowledge of wormholes in space/time. I like that. I also like how this mirrors Jacob’s entry rules for the Foot House he inhabited. Who could enter that place? Only the people that Jacob had invited. Even Jacob’s cabin (a structure that now more than ever I believe I’d pegged semi-correctly in one of my Too Much Information columns – Jacob’s former home, abandoned once the Man in Black’s attacks grew too dangerous to stay there. You can read this stuff by clicking this link.

• If Ben hadn’t already wanted to kill Widmore for the death of Alex I’m pretty sure being told that he’d been overlooked by Jacob in favor of Widmore would have done the trick.

• Back off-Island Ben gets his moment of reflection in the Doctor’s office, and it’s clear that he’s shaken by what he’s seen. Notice that his injuries mirror the injuries that Desmond gave him in Season 5. He’s got an arm in a sling, and his face looks remarkably similar to the way it did back then.

• If you’d indulge me for a moment: It’s possible to look at Ben’s flashes of “enlightenment” (all of these flashes, really – but especially Ben’s) as a literal confrontation with his Other – a representation of concepts I brought up during Ben’s first episodes. He’s literally witnessed a mirror image of himself thanks to Desmond’s Fists of Destiny, and that act highly resembles the wordy Philosophical concept I mentioned directly above. It also brings up again the notion of “good being,” something explored in Aldous Huxley’s novel “The Island,” which was itself the source of the name for Lost’s “Pala Ferry.” You can read a little about Good Being by clicking here.

Ben: “The man told me that he wasn’t trying to hurt you. He was trying to get you to let go. And for some reason I believed him. Do you have any idea what he was talking about, Mr. Locke? Does that mean something to you?”

• The doors of perception are starting to open wide, to paraphrase another bit of Aldous Huxley. Locke receives another nudge, this one from Ben, but there’s no “enlightenment” for him. Not yet.

• Giachinno’s score in this episode is not to be underrated. Great stuff that really compliments the scenes.

• We return to off-Island Sawyer and Miles. Miles is prepping for a Museum benefit concert – presumably the same concert David will be playing at. Charlotte will be there, as will Desmond, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Jack, Pierre Chang, potentially Dogen and his son, and presumably Sawyer and Jack’s mysterious ex-wife. Everyone seems to agree that she’s going to be Juliet. That seems like the right choice to me. But knowing Lost, Jack’s ex-wife will turn out to be the woman who’s father he operated on back in Season Two, and Juliet will be there for some other reason altogether, or outside the Museum totally, where she and Sawyer can conveniently run into each other and go grab a cup of coffee.

Basically what I’m saying is, if Juliet and Sawyer don’t get that cup of coffee they’re going to tick a loooooooooooot of people off.

Anyway, the point is this: a lot of Castaways are going to be at that benefit. Will whatever Desmond’s plan is culminate there? I’m not sure. On the one hand, that seems like the safe bet. On the other hand, I have a craaaaazy theory. Want to hear it? Here it goes!

Earlier in the episode, Desmond tells Jack that Christian’s coffin will be arriving at LAX “by the end of the day.” That means, presumably, that he wants Jack back at LAX. This could be because it’s the only way to effectively facepunch him, but that seems a little much. After all, if Desmond’s got his cosmic mojo going he ought to be able to make a beeline for Jack’s hospital and facepunch him there. Telling Jack that the coffin arrives “by the end of the day” sets up something of a conflict for Jack – he’s meant to be at David’s concert, but he’s also got a coffin waiting for him with a pretty stinky dad inside. Is the point of this to keep Jack away from the concert? To delay him? To make him confront the figurative (and maybe the literal) “ghost” of his father before he can truly be “ready” to join Des? Or is it something else altogether? Does Desmond want Jack back at LAX because that’s where the planes are?

Is that potentially the plan? Is he gathering these people in order to take a flight? Will Des and his buddies (who’ve now split up, seemingly on separate missions) be swinging by David’s (and Charlie’s?) concert, picking up more strays before heading to the airport and trying to get everyone onboard Oceanic 815 or some other Pacific-bound aircraft? Do they need to choose to take that trip in order to accomplish whatever it is that Desmond is trying to accomplish?

Something to chew on ‘til Sunday. I’m probably way off, but this is quite literally my last chance to be this kind of way off. So I’m taking it.

• Desmond turns himself in to the police and gains access to Kate and Sayid, which seems to please him enormously. I love Cosmic Desmond, and could easily watch a spinoff featuring him going around punching people for a “higher purpose.”

Sawyer: “The bomb on the sub…you said he couldn’t kill us.”
Jack: “I’ve been wrong before.”
Sawyer: “I killed them. Didn’t I.”
Jack: “No. He killed them.”

• Where Sawyer continues to cling to his guilt, Jack has truly let go here. Previously, he’d have blamed the both of them for failing to save everyone. Mostly, he would have blamed himself. But here he puts the blame for the deaths of Jin, Sun, Sayid and Frank squarely where it belongs: at the feet of the Man in Black.

• It’s much subtler, but this mini-scene works for me as an echo of Ben and Ilana’s moving scene in Dr. Linus. Both Sawyer and Ben are in despair, and both are given quiet absolution in a moment of great need. It’s really nicely done.

Young Jacob: “Give me the ashes.”

• As they make their way to the Well, Hurley spots the ghost of kid Jacob, who grabs his own ashes and makes a run for it. I admit to confusion over this. Why does Jacob appear as a child at one moment, and then as an adult the next moment? Well, here’s one explanation:

It could be that, because the Island sits at the “center” of space/time, and because the Island’s protector is empowered, seemingly by the Island, that Jacob’s ghost is similarly unhinged in time. And yet, whenever Jacob usually speaks to Hurley (including tonight) he appears as an adult. Who knows what that’s about. Cool iconography though.

• Hurley’s question is a good one – where has Jacob been? Much as I want to trust in his ultimate plan here I’m suspicious of Jacob’s potential hidden motivations, and of how little he knew about what he was getting into when he took this job – something that’s largely echoed in Jack’s assumption of Jacob’s mantle. I like that Lost forces me to question my faith in the Island’s “protector” and in doing so causes me to examine the beliefs that I happen to hold. Can you make a spiritual show that’s also caustically critical of and suspicious of religion? I believe that you can, and that Lost can be seen as just that show. And yet I’m also reminded again of Flannery O’Connor (it’s theme week on Back to the Island!), who once wrote:

“Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them.”

No wonder Jacob seemed so intrigued by O’Connor’s writing. What that means for the Castaways at this point is anybody’s guess.

Jacob: “You should get your friends. We’re very close to the end, Hugo.”

• Meta!

• Burning his own ashes appears to give Jacob some momentary solidity. He becomes like Anti-Locke in his ability to interact with others and with the Island around him. Unlike

• Anti-Locke docks, and sends Ben, Widmore, and Co. scurrying. Miles takes off for the woods, carrying a walkie talkie that I assume will come in handy on Sunday night. Widmore and Zoe duck into the secret room, Ben stays inside, and Richard goes outside to “talk” to a Smoke Monster.

Richard: “I’m gonna talk to him. I know this man. All he wants is for me to join him, and if I can get him to leave with me, maybe that’ll give the rest of you a chance.”

• Uh, yeah. That doesn’t work out too good. I hope this isn’t how the writers chose to sweep the character off the board permanently. I would like some kind of closure on the character, personally, although I realize that all these hoity-toity O’Connor quotes have sort of made the opposite argument for me.

• And let’s look at the MiB’s change in temper around him for a minute. Can we assume that the Man in Black was attempting to groom Richard as his first-choice assassin/Other turncoat during the beginning of the season? Because that’s the only reason I can see for not doing something like this to Richard right away. Now that the Others have been dismantled, and two more of the remaining Candidates have been killed, does that signal the end of Ricardus’ usefulness?

Anti-Locke: “I need you to kill some people for me, Ben.”
Ben: “And…why would I do that?”
Anti-Locke: “Because once I leave this Island, you can have it all to yourself.”

• I love the scene between Anti-Locke and Ben on the porch. You can see that Ben is visibly afraid of him, and you can understand why Ben takes the course of action that he does. At the slightest hint of uncooperativeness, Anti-Locke can end him. But as long as Ben plays along he’ll remain alive, giving him time, depending on your outlook, to find a way to save his own skin or to save them all. Or both. That’s assuming, of course, that Ben hasn’t just flipped back to the dark side. I mean, that’s a possibility, but it’s not nearly as interesting to me. If Ben is now attempting to con Anti-Locke then it’s essentially a suicide mission from this point forward. Ben has to know this, and I find that dilemma/dynamic really interesting.

Ben and Ilana’s scene together was too powerful for me as a viewer to want to see Ben hastily retreat back from that potential redemption, but I also like the fact that we’re watching a flawed man try, in his flawed way, to go out in a way that has meaning and possible hope.

Besides which, Anti-Locke offers Ben the Island here only to tell him at the episode’s end that he’s going to destroy the Island. So it isn’t as though Ben’s operating under any illusions from here on out.

But for all of that, Ben still gives up Widmore and Zoe at the drop of a nonexistent-hat. You can argue that this was an ultimate “good,” because had Ben lied Anti-Locke would’ve immediately killed him, then found Zoe and Widmore anyway and killed them also. But you can also argue that Ben has wanted Widmore dead for a very long time, and that this is pure revenge on his part.

• Notice that the scene between Widmore, Anti-Locke and Ben perfectly mirrors the scene between Jacob, Anti-Locke and Ben at the end of Season 5. In both episodes, Ben leads Anti-Locke into a secure, hidden chamber. In both, Anti-Locke confronts an apparent “champion” of the Island. In both, Ben kills the Island’s self-proclaimed protector. In Season 5, the killing takes place in a location specific to Jacob – the statue’s foot. In this episode, the killing takes place in a location specific to the Smoke Monster – the summoning chamber.

• Rousseau! It is beyond bizarre to see her looking like a modern woman, and not a half-feral, twitchy-eyed survivalist. It’s also weirdly fantastic. The idea of Ben, Rousseau and Alex potentially becoming a family feels curiously right to me.

• We learn that Alex’s father died when she was two – later on in her off-Island life than in her on-Island life.

• The smile on Ben’s face when he’s told that he’s the closest thing to a father she’s ever had is heartbreaking in the best way.

As we’ve learned over and over again, the MiB’s word is worth its weight in nothing at all. And yet Widmore folds like a bad hand as soon as Anti-Locke invokes Penny’s name. What a wuss.

MORE LOST GOODNESS AFTER LE PAGE BREAK!

What They Died For (S6, ep. 16)

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” – Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

Locke “Maybe this is happening for a reason. Maybe…you’re supposed to fix me.”

Six years ago, out walking across town with my then-girlfriend now-Lovely-Wife, we came across an enormous bus stop ad for a new show on ABC. “I saw a commercial for this,” she said as I peered skeptically at the poster. “It looks like something you’d like.” I’ve never told her this (hi, honey!) but I was unconvinced. The guy from Party of Five? A TV show about people stuck on a desert island? How interesting could that possibly be?

That questions been answered many times over for me over the course of Lost’s six year run, and What They Died For serves as yet-another example of the show’s wide-armed ambition and capacity to weld Deep Thoughts with pulp fiction. In many ways, it represents the culmination of much of what Lost has been saying since the beginning. It’s an hour of television that plumbs the depths of characters that have been admirably explored and shaded in appropriate grays, that makes explicit some of its larger themes, that celebrates the kind of “What the hey, let’s toss a polar bear in there” mentality that made the show so weirdly distinctive to begin with, and does it all of this with an economy, a narrative propulsion, and a sure, steady hand with the rather steep emotional hills contained herein.

Here is Communion made literal, sacrifice made willingly. Here, with 2 ½ hours left to go, is Jack’s fateful choice made. We all knew (or suspected) it was coming, that Jack would take this step. In the end, the decision and what followed felt spare and quiet – a foregone conclusion rendered poetic by its unavoidability and its silences. This is a point (not the point) that the whole show has been building toward – a point wherein, depending on your point of view, Jack’s need to fix things either transcends it’s often-petty, daddy-issue-driven origins or succumbs completely to them.

Because, here’s the thing – there’s TWO AND A HALF HOURS LEFT TO GO (had I mentioned that?). What They Died For knocked away what are arguably the most pressing pieces of character mythology and left us with a feature film’s worth of story to go. What the heck happens now? And how do we reconcile the fact of Jacob’s involvement in the lives of the Castaways (to whatever extent, since that’s still entirely ambiguous) with the notion that this is a “good” guy who is doing the “right” thing by having Jack take over for him?

Well, there’s always the possibility that we can’t. There’s the possibility, with one (giant-sized) episode left to go, that Jacob is wrong. We may discover that the Light doesn’t need a guardian, or that it needs to be guarded in a much different way. We may discover that Jacob was wrong to want to guard the Light – wrong about doing whatever it took, including mass murder, in order to ensure its safety and continued life.

Or we may discover that the cost is worth the reward. We may discover that, ultimately, protecting the Light is necessary, and that sometimes horrific acts and the constraint of free will are tools used by people motivated by an ultimate good, and that this kind of morally gray area is reality; that sometimes good people do bad things for good reasons, and vice versa.

When we first watched Jacob flitting around interacting with the Castaways in Season Five, he was engrossed in the book “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” by Flannery O’Connor. More than ever this book seems like a hyper-deliberative choice. Some of O’Connor’s favorite subjects were the cost of redemption, the flawed nature of “good,” the violence that comes before and after moments of grace, and the fundamental, existential lack of truth in this world.

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.” – Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

I’ll be quoting O’Connor throughout this piece, potentially helping to illustrate what may be the show’s philosophical/ethical “justifications” for Jacob’s actions, and potentially just finding an excuse to run some wonderful quotes with serious applicability to Lost. 

Despite this, the column overall is surprisingly light on references to Apocryphal works, dead Philosophers and the rest of my usual topics. The writers dropped the heavy stuff in a few places, but overall this felt far more geared toward emotion and character work than cute allusions. I enjoyed that about this episode, frankly. As we reach The End I find myself just wanting to give myself over to the experience of this episode and meet it on its own terms. I consider that success.

What They Died For allows Jacob to answer the question of why the Candidates are there, and may even serve as a prophecy for what’s to come – letting us know ahead of time what it is that some of these still-kicking people have chosen to die for. But it seems to me that Jacob’s answer to question that Kate poses isn’t the whole answer, or even the real answer at all. The real answer to the question of what these Castaways have died for is in Sawyer’s eyes as he gazes out to sea in silent sorrow and watches an orange life jacket wash its way to the shore.

Charlie, Michael, Sayid, Jin and Sun. These characters ultimately chose how their lives would end. None of them chose their fate for the sake of the Island, or the Light, or Jacob. What They Died For is much simpler than that.

They died for each other.

Thoughts:

• Jack gains consciousness off-Island in the literal fashion – by waking up. On-Island Jack will also gain consciousness in this hour, but on an entirely different level altogether.

• Post-sleep, Jack’s neck wound has reappeared, and it looks worse. More evidence of a melding of the timelines? Of a bleed-through that’s physical as well as mental? It sure seems that way.

• It’s practically a given at this point that Juliet is Jack’s ex, yes? I imagine we should expect coffee to make an appearance in the final episode. Does this mean that the Second Snake theory might actually, improbably, be true?

• Claire joining Jack and his son for breakfast was an enormously warm scene to watch. Again, there’s a sense here that this off-Island world offers a chance at happiness for these characters – not a “happy ending,” because these lives are still complicated, still governed by human error and choice.

Voice: “This is Oceanic airlines calling to inform you that we’ve… located your missing cargo.”

• Desmond steps up in a major way in this episode, actively beginning to steer the Castaways toward some as-yet-unseen end. The goal of “awakening” these people is now obvious, but to what purpose we don’t know. Why would Desmond want Jack to go to LAX? Is it simply to get Jack to show up so that Desmond can facepunch/run over/otherwise ‘enlighten’ him? Maybe. But maybe not. More on this below.

• Kudos to Evangeline Lily, who does some of her strongest work in this scene. She looks godawful, and she comes across as profoundly shaken by what they’ve just gone through. Jack and Kate’s moment on the beach mirrors Season One, but reversed. Here, it’s Kate being sewn up. Jack says the Magic Word, “infected,” and I throw my arms up and scream.

“If you don’t hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.” – Flannery O’Connor

Kate: “Locke did this to them. We have to kill him, Jack.”
Jack: “I know.”

• With that, the end-goal of the Castaways has been set. Their conversation with Jacob later in the episode will confirm the validity of it: Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley are out to kill the Man in Black. But how do you kill something without true form, without real life?

You go to The Source, I’d imagine.

• Sawyer standing on the beach, watching the wreckage of the submarine washing up onto the shore, is just about The Saddest Thing In The World. Josh Holloway continues to prove he’s got The Goods, delivering the kind of guilt-wracked stoicism we expect from our favorite laconic con man. These people deserve long, steady, solid careers. Honestly, there’s not a weak link among them. Maybe some of them are limited in range, but all of them are very good at what they do. It’ll be strange to start seeing Sawyer popping up as the bad-boy love interest/intimidating ex to Sandra Bullock in films with titles like “Love and Devotion” (it’s from a song!) and “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” but he deserves the success. Evangeline Lily’s never blown me away, but she was very good in The Hurt Locker. So on and so forth. I wish them all well in future endeavors.

• I’m as sick of the Kate/Jack/Sawyer-go-round as most of you are, but this moment still killed me. It’s a wonderful moment for both characters, and so quietly played.

Jack: “If Locke wants Desmond dead, then we’re gonna need him.”

• Who’d have thought that Desmond would be so central to the Island and its mysteries? And yet, we really should have seen this coming. Since his introduction, Desmond has consistently been associated with the Island’s strange properties. It makes perfect narrative sense that he’d be acting as he does here – as the literal and figurative connective tissue in the story.

• Another quietly stirring moment: Sawyer’s wordless reaction to Jack’s words on the beach. The look of ache is on his face vanishes, replaced by the kind of grim surety that’s always marked Sawyer as genuinely dangerous despite his disarming charm. Shorter version: Anti-Locke picked the wrong good ol’ boy to f*ck with.

• Welcome back, Ben. We missed you. Michael Emerson elevates the game of every actor he plays against, and having Ben around guarantees a certain level of performance. He’s also, clearly, a hell of a lot of fun to write for. I’m not sure if this is simple coincidence or what, but What We Died For is the most overall-funny episode of the show in a while. That it manages this feat while also being a bunch of other things makes it even more impressive to me.

Desmond: “You want to know who I am?”

• Desmond Quantum Leaps back to Locke and Ben’s school, where it appears he’s about to try running Locke over again (and there’s a part of me that wishes this scene had happened earlier in the season so that the writers, never shy about telling a sick joke, could actually have done that – I would have found it brutally, blackly hilarious, personally, and highly illustrative of Locke’s overall lot in life, but it also would have been, I think, entirely too horrific, given how attached we’ve all gotten to the Island’s resident John the Baptist figure. Wow. Long parenthetical.). But before he can do that Ben comes to the rescue, ladling a rich layer of irony over the scene.

Desmond proceeds to beat the stuffing out of poor Ben, who’s a genuinely “good” person in the off-Island universe. This seems unfair but then, Desmond’s methods of spurring a dip into the waters of the Oceanic are kinda unorthodox. On Desmond’s fourth or fifth punch something shakes free inside of Benjamin Linus, and he experiences the same awakening of “Other” consciousness that Hurley, Charlie, and Desmond himself have all experienced. Doubling the irony, Ben’s flash is to the Marina dock where he tried, unsuccessfully, to murder Desmond and Penny. Sadly for Ben, the only fatality that day consisted of Desmond’s groceries, and Desmond proceeded to work Ben’s face like a prizefighter.

What’s interesting to me about Ben’s “awakening” here is where it seems to lead him. He experiences “enlightenment,” and suddenly he’s offered a chance at something that you could argue he’s craved his whole on-Island life: a family. A family with a wife that doesn’t die in childbirth, that wants to be with him minus coercion and creepy Cliffside threat-sessions and Oedipal issues; with a father who doesn’t get drunk and emotionally abusive every night; with a child that he can openly, deeply love, and will never use.

Great Miles Line: “Well, I lived in these houses thirty years before you did – otherwise known as last week.”

• As Ben, Richard and Miles reenter Dharmaville we get a potent reminder of Ben’s past. Miles senses Alex, using his still super-vague superpowers, and Richard reveals that he buried Alex after Ben turned the Wheel and left the Island. It’s a nice, understated moment that feels genuinely melancholy. It’s only slightly marred by the fact that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why Richard would choose to bury her next to/under a picket fence. Did I miss the episode where Alex expressed her life-long love of the picket fence or something? Wasn’t it kind of difficult/awkward to bury her body there?

I digress.

Great Miles Line Two: “What’s that? A secreter room?”
Great Ben Line: “It’s where I was told I could summon The Monster. That’s before I realized that it was the one summoning me.”

• Great, great line. Do you think we’ll ever learn who told Ben about this? I hope so, but I doubt it. Lost’s end-game, as I’ve said before and will say again next week, involves a purposeful lack of disclosure (so far) about a great number of the show’s mysteries. Some of this is going to be answered in the finale, and some of the Answers we’ve been getting this season operate to retroactively answer other questions in a very sneaky, very admirable way (take, for instance, the revelation that The Smoke Monster has been impersonating the dead in part to try and kill/isolate the Castaways, and how that significantly alters the entire fabric of the episode “Dave” from Season Two). But some Answers just aren’t coming, and so far, to the best of my knowledge, they include (1) the identity of the outrigger that shoots at Sawyer in Season 5, (2) an explication on what caused the Island’s fertility problems, and (3) Infection. In some ways that’s really disappointing to me. I want more Answers and, most frustratingly, I think the show was capable of giving them to us without losing much more of the murky quality they seem to be intentionally aiming for. But at the same time, I’m very content with them choosing to leave these questions wide open, allowing us to fill in the blanks and create our own Answers. It’s strange, because both these things are true at the same time, and my enjoyment of the season as it actually is – not as I’d like it to be – hasn’t been negatively affected by this approach much. The Infection thing? I won’t lie. Bothers the heck outta me. But that’s because the writers intentionally pulled that whole thing straight back into the limelight this year, and then chose to write around it. For some reason, questions about the outrigger or the infertility are the sorts of questions that I’m weirdly okay with finding my own answers to (and I have, and I like what those answers are).Your mileage may vary, of course. And clearly it does, judging from the comments about the season. That’s cool.

This, though….I want an Answer to this. It’s not an important mystery in the context of the show as a whole but it’s interesting to me. I want to know whether the Monster itself told Ben about it, perhaps in the guise of Ben’s dead mother. Its clear Richard wasn’t the source of that particular information. Had Widmore provided it I’m sure Ben would have mentioned it. Was it, perhaps, Eloise?…