Lost with LOST: Where's the money, Ricardo??

Andrew has written excellent recaps for the first 8 episodes, but he is understandably quite tired.  So he's calling for his closer to finish out the 9th.  Just call me The Sandman.

As every Lost fan will tell you, nothing is a coincidence on this show.  Everything happens for a reason, and those reasons are often quite subtle (or not so subtle).  Lost will also embed subtle literary and cultural references, which sometimes advance the plot, but often exist just so that eagle-eyed viewers have something fun to catch.  As I will discuss in detail later, this episode featured a whopping example of the latter.

Fittingly entitled "Ab Aeterno" this fantastic episode focused entirely on Richard Alpert.*  But we begin at some point in the pre-2007 past, where bandage-wrapped Ilana finished her visit with Jacob.  Jacob shows off his multilingual talents by conversing in Russian.**  He tells her that her job will be to protect six candidates, that the names of the six are on a list, and that Ricardus*** will know what to do next.  Why didn't Jacob just tell Ilana what to do next?  Because it would be very un-Lost to actually tell the characters (or the audience) what the hell is going on.

*In Latin, "ab aeterno" means "from eternity," and the phrase is commonly used to mean "since the beginning" or "for long ages."  I think it fits this episode perfectly, not only to describe Richard's gift (or curse) of immortality, but also to describe the struggle between Jacob and the MIB.  It could also refer to length of the episode, which checked in at a plus-sized 65 minutes.  Just kidding.

**This makes sense, as Ilana also speaks Russian.  But it does not explain why Jacob does not later converse with Ricardo in his native Spanish.  I'm inferring that Jacob can speak all languages, or at least the languages that his candidates/protectors/representatives speak.  So why speak Russian with Ilana and revert to English with Ricardo?  This issue is neither here nor there, but arguably worth mentioning.

***This episode introduced two new names for the eternal Richard Alpert: the old standby Richard, plus Ricardo and Ricardus.  Richard is clearly his Anglicized name, and Ricardo was his name in Tenerife.  So where did Jacob get "Ricardus" from?

Flash-forward to 2007.  Ilana tells the Losties that some of them are candidates.  Sun helpfully volunteers that they are candidates to replace Jacob.  Thanks for showing up, Sun.  You really earned your paycheck for this episode.  A brief but awkward silence ensues as some of the others (i.e., Miles, Lapidus, Ben) realize that they are not candidates.  Bummer.  Always the rational one, Lapidus asks what they should do next.  Ilana says that Richard knows what to do.  But Richard chooses to play dumb and rambles on about how they're all dead and the island is actually Hell.  Savvy and experienced viewers immediately dismissed this theory and waited for Jack to declare Richard crazy.  Which he promptly did.

Wait, did you hear that?  That was definitely a whoosh.  Not a flash-sideways whoosh.  A flash-back whoosh!  Back to the 19th century we go...

We arrive in 1867 watching Ricardo Alperto race through a prairie on horseback.  He's living in Tenerife, which is part of the Canary Islands.  To save you from having to click over to Wikipedia, the Canary Islands are little dots of land off the northwestern coast of Africa.  Not far from Spain, actually, which owns them.  Thus, Ricardo speaks Spanish, albeit with a Cuban accent.  Anyway, he's on his way home to check on his sick wife, Isabella.

Let's fast-forward through the next 20 minutes of plot.  It's just background and it wasn't that interesting.  Isabella is sick and coughing up blood on her deathbed.  Richard promises that he will try to save her.  He embarks on a half-day journey towards apparently the only doctor in Tenerife.  The doctor refuses to trek to Richard's shack in the middle of the night in the pouring rain to help Isabella.  But since this is 1867, the doctor claims to have an easy-to-use medicine that "will save her life."*  He extorts Ricardo for every penny he has, but it is still not enough, so he refuses to disburse the medicine.  Ricardo desperately fights him for the vial, which predictably ends with the greedy doctor's skull crushing against a table, killing him.

*This "medicine" is a white powder that looks suspiciously like cocaine.  Given the time period, it very well may have been.  Imagine a society where blow is considered a life-saving medicine.  Nice.

Ricardo takes off for home, but alas, he is too late.  Isabella is dead and the cops arrive to arrest him.  Ricardo confesses to a jailhouse priest who refuses to absolve him of his "accidental murder."  Just before he is to be hung, the priest sells Ricardo to a representative of Magnus Hanso, the captain of the Black Rock, since Ricardo has ambitiously taught himself to speak English.  So, prisoner-turned-slave Ricardo is about to take a long boat trip to "The New World."

Earlier this season, FLocke told Richard that it's "nice to see you out of those chains."  We speculated about what that meant, but now we finally see Richard in chains aboard the Black Rock.  It's the middle of the night and the ship is caught in a terrible storm.  They approach the island, and one of the prisoners believes that they are about to land in Hell (the island) and that it is guarded by the Devil (the Statue of Taweret).  This storm has made the high seas rise so high that the ship actually crashes into the statue.  The tidal wave carries the Black Rock all the way into the middle of the jungle.  We see later that the wave, coupled with the Black Rock, crushed the statue so all that remains is the four-toed foot and a small part of the leg.*

*Nobody seems to agree with me on this, but something's missing here.  The ship crashed into the head of the statue, but when it landed in the jungle, it looked pretty much intact.  A wooden ship crashing into a 250-foot statute made out of stone?  The ship should have splintered into a thousand pieces.  And as for that stone statute?  It seemed to break pretty cleanly mid-shin.  Perhaps too clean to be the work of a really big wave.  But as Nick Bombace, a loyal Lost fan, would say...perhaps we should learn to suspend our disbelief every once in a while.  This might be the best possible explanation.

The next morning, the prisoners wake up just to be slaughtered minutes later by a terrified Whitfield, the same officer who bought Ricardo from the priest.  He is terrified because Smokey has arrived to kill the intruders.  Just before Ricardo gets a sword through the chest, Whitfield is whisked away and killed by the monster.  Now it's just Ricardo vs. Smokey.  After an intense stare-down, Ricardo is left alone.  Why?  I think he's too valuable to kill because he taught himself English.  This means that he can be used to kill Jacob, who only speaks English.  (What's that?  He speaks Russian too?  Forget you saw that scene 32 minutes ago.)  Hours later, after Ricardo almost popped a blood vessel trying to carve his chains out of the wall, the Smoke Monster shows up again.

As usual, nothing good can come of this.  Ricardo, who had been speaking to an apparition of his dead wife, goes berserk when Smokey kills Isabella/Isabella's ghost.  MIB arrives and flexes his leverage against Ricardo: if he ever wants to see Isabella again, he has to kill Jacob.  Interestingly, he gives Ricardo the same speech Dogen gave Sayid a few episodes ago, except that Jacob and MIB are switched.  In this iteration, if Jacob speaks, it's all over.

Now, we get to the good stuff.  Ricardo, who immediately agreed to kill Jacob to get his wife back, marches over to the remains of the statue looking to for Jacob.  Jacob beats the crap out of Ricardo and speaks (uh oh!) by asking whether a man dressed in black had sent him.  Ricardo says yes but remains unconvinced that any of this is actually happening, since he's in Hell.  Jacob seeks to prove that he is alive and not, in fact, in Hell.  How does he do this?  By reenacting a priceless scene from the Big Lebowski*.  Needless to say, this is one of Lost's all-time great cultural references, and it has already spawned a fantastic spoof on YouTube.  It's worth embedding below.

*Mark Pellegrino, the actor who does an excellent job portraying Jacob, also appeared in The Big Lebowski as one of Jackie Treehorn's thugs.  In the very beginning of that movie, he tackles the Dude (played by Best Actor winner -- seriously! -- Jeff Bridges) and repeatedly dunks his head in the toilet bowl while demanding money.

Moving on, here's where we get to the nitty gritty of the episode.  Ricardo and Jacob have a little talk.  A very important little talk.  We finally learn more about the ongoing battle between Jacob and the MIB using a sweet wine bottle analogy.  The wine swirling around inside the bottle is evil, the devil, hell, etc.  The only thing keeping it contained and preventing it from spreading is the cork at the top.  The island is that cork.  And Jacob, presumably, is responsible for keeping that cork in place and preventing evil (MIB) from ever escaping to infect the rest of the world.  Thus, MIB could be either the devil or a representative of the devil, and Jacob could be either God or a representative of God.

This could explain some of the funky properties of the island.  Why does it have healing properties?  Because Jacob (or God?) gave it those properties, because if people got sick (Rose) or remained crippled (Locke) or were murdered (Ben) then they couldn't protect/replace Jacob and the MIB could escape.  Why is the island so hard to find?  Because if people could easily reach it, then people could find evil before evil could find them.  Why doesn't time proceed normally on the island?  Because the island isn't really part of this world.  It could be at the gateway to the real world, and if Jacob fails, evil will march through that gateway and plague the world's inhabitants.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

Eventually, Jacob makes Ricardo a job offer: Ricardo will serve as the intermediary between Jacob and the candidates that Jacob brings to the island.  Ricardo's only wish (that Jacob can grant) is to live forever and never die.  Jacob gives Ricardo's shoulder the "magic touch" and the deal is sealed: Ricardo is immortal.  He's now Jacob's representative, and Jacob hands him a white rock to give to MIB.  MIB accepts the white rock and says that his own job offer (to work for MIB and for Ricardo to get Isabella back in exchange) will always stand.  More on this soon.

Flash forward to 2007.  Ricardo digs up Isabella's cross that he had buried.  Hurley shows up and uses his I-see-dead-people skills to tell Ricardo that Isabella is standing right next to him.  Ricardo and Isabella proceed to have a moment.  After she's gone, Ricardo decides not to take MIB up on his 150+ year old offer.  Why does he conclude that?  Because Hurley tells him...in an extremely chilling way....that Isabella says Ricardo must stop the MIB, otherwise "we will all go to hell."  Creepy!

So....what does this all mean?  Where do we stand?

Let's start by noting what has been resolved.  We know why Richard never ages.  We know why he was in chains on the Black Rock.  We know his entire backstory, too.  We know his role vis-a-vis Jacob.  We know how the Black Rock landed in the middle of the jungle.  We know why the Statute of Teweret is mostly destroyed.  We know both Jacob and the MIB's roles on the island (though I suspect we will learn a lot more about that...perhaps a Jacob/MIB-centric episode?).

We can also surmise something about the white rock that Jacob gave to MIB.  As Andrew suggested, it's like the $1 bet from Trading Places.  Jacob tells Ricardo that the MIB believes everyone can be corrupted because it is in their nature to be bad, and that Jacob brings people to the island to prove him wrong.  Jacob also says that he wants people to know the differences between right and wrong for themselves, without being told by someone else (perhaps their father?  You know Lost and its daddy issues...).  So why did Jacob give the white rock, which represents $1 in the Official Currency of Jacob?  Because Jacob proved MIB wrong.  Ricardo was a prisoner-turned-slave on the Black Rock because he killed a man.  MIB tried to get him to commit another murder for selfish reasons = to get his dead wife back.  Yet Ricardo did not murder Jacob.  In fact, he did not even intend to murder the doctor.  It's just not in his nature to be bad.  Jacob wins.

Think about it.  Lots of characters turned out different once they were removed from their old environment.  Sawyer changed from a con man into a very loyal partner for Juliet (although he may be changing back into a con man given his arrangements with Widmore and FLocke...we'll see).  Jack, a life-saving doctor in LA, cannot save anyone on the island.  Kate is a fugitive in the U.S. but free-as-a-bird on the island, never missing a chance to escape.

MIB says it's in people's very nature to sin, and Jacob is set on proving him wrong.  So far, Jacob seems to be winning.  When candidates arrive on the island, their past doesn't matter.  On the island, Sayid has been tortured (Rousseau, Dogen) as much as he has tortured others (Sawyer).  Ricardo went from a penniless prisoner destined for execution or slavery to a free and immortal man.  But is all of this just a game?  Are Jacob and the MIB locked in a personal battle over who's right and who's wrong, betting white and black stones on the outcome?  Are all the Losties, as well as Ben, Richard, Widmore, and countless others simply pawns in their game of philosophy?

Andrew suggests yes.  I say no.  Jacob has shown no interest in profiting from this game.  And he has lost his life while playing this game.  I believe him when he says that his job, and the job of his replacement, is to prevent evil from spreading beyond the cork (the island) out into the real world.  That said, the fight has become very personal.  MIB claims that Jacob "stole his humanity".  Some could interpret that as MIB being angry with Jacob for stealing his body, which forced Smokey to take human form as FLocke, not the original MIB body that we see in this week's episode.

But I don't think that Jacob literally stole MIB's human body (i.e. Jacob's current body never belonged to MIB).  I do think that Jacob somehow took MIB's human body (represented by Titus Welliver) away from him, forcing him to choose Locke's body instead.  Perhaps they were lost souls looking for a home, as Andrew has proposed, or perhaps they have simply grown attached to one form or another after all these years (centuries?  millenia?  more??) fighting together on this island.

Potpourri:
-- Lost once again displayed its eye fetish.  We got closeups of both Ilana and Richard.

-- The owner of the Black Rock was identified as Magnus Hanso, grandfather of Alvar Hanso, who founded the Hanso Foundation, which funded the Dharma Initiative.  Tovard Hanso belonged to the same Hanso family and sold the journal of the Black Rock's first mate to Charles Widmore.  No relation to Hattori Hanzo of Kill Bill fame.

-- This is only the second time we have seen Hurley speak in his native Spanish.

-- Is it me, or does Isabella look vaguely like Elisabeth Moss (a.k.a. Peggy Olson) from Mad Men?

-- While this week's episode gives us a better idea of why the island has certain magical properties, it does not explain why some of the candidates have special powers off the island (i.e., Hurley and Miles).

It has been great recapping this episode in Andrew's absence.  I will leave you with one thought.  We know that every candidate Jacob brought to the island before Ricardo Alperto died.  We know that more recent candidates have died, too (such as Locke).  We also know that there are only six candidates left.  And, just as importantly, we know that Jacob brought them to the island.  But how would you feel if you were one of these candidates?  You are busy living your life off the island.  Regardless of whether you are relatively satisfied with your life (Sawyer) or whether you are absolutely miserable (Hurley) you have been forced onto this island and, if chosen, forced into taking over Jacob's job of keeping the devil at bay.  You stand a very good chance of being murdered.  Wouldn't you be inclined to say "no thanks"?  It's an unsolicited offer, and besides, what's in it for you?!  Perhaps Jacob is not so nice after all.  He might represent the opposite of evil, but that doesn't mean he's good.

Photo credits: Lostpedia and the NY Post.