Lost with LOST: The Chinese Food Episode

Last night's LOST left me with one overarching thought: it felt like a meal of Chinese food--I digested a lot but I'm still hungry and I'm not sure what I ate. And although I got a cookie at the end of the meal, the fortune inside wasn't exactly what I was looking for when I sat down to eat. Since LOST planned its end date, I don't think I've been disappointed by very many episodes but I have to say that I was not a fan of last night's "Across the Sea". And "not a fan" may be an understatement; I disliked it. With now only two nights left of LOST, I feel like last night's episode was a diversion from what I loved so much about LOST: meaningful character development. When I listed my favorite LOST episodes yesterday, the theme of each one was that it helped further our understanding of the people on The Island. "The Man Behind the Curtain" and "Ab Aeterno" sent us in a deep dive into the mysticism of The Island, but the reason I loved those two episodes was because of the meaningful character development.  Last night's foray into the history of The Island didn't live up to the expectations I had set out for it in so many ways.

Really! with Andrew, Jay and Jim

It has been quite a few years since I sat down and watched an entire Saturday Night Live episode, but this past week's Betty White-hosted episode was worth watching, especially to see the return of old stars Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon. Poehler, Fey and Seth Meyers teamed up together on the "Weekend Update" desk for a segment called "Really! With Seth, Amy & Tina" where they sarcastically blasted the news (Mediate has the details including my favorite, on last Thursday’s stock market-crashing typo “How is there not a backup system? When I delete a picture on Facebook, it asks me if I’m sure!”). Well I'm now going to "Really!" the heck out of "Across the Sea"

Really LOST!? You give us 13 episodes this season that featured a Sideways World yet you found it's better to tell us this story than explain to us what the heck the Sideways World is? Really!? We spend a whole episode with two characters yet we can't actually learn their names? "Mother" and "Man in Black"? Really!? I'm OK with questions not being answered but did you really need to spend a whole episode to explain to us that "Adam and Eve" are really Man and Black and Mother? Ohhhh...big reveal that Jacob and Man in Black are brothers...[sarcastic] ooooo. Really!? After a season where LOST finally got some really good acting performances out of mostly all the characters (hey, even Evangeline Lilly seems like she's trying this season) , we spent half an episode with some children we've never met before? I normally like the performances by Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver (who Sarah agrees with me is a clone of Charles Logan from 24), but it took until the very end of the episode until we got any of them and even when they did, I agree with EW's Doc Jensen who said that they really weren't connecting with the material. So we spent at least 45 minutes on characters we've never met before 12 days before the series finale? Really!? You couldn't have given us this episode a year ago or a few weeks ago? We're entrenched in the storyline now and you take a break for a week to tell us about what exactly? Using another 24 reference: you were answering questions no one was asking while asking more questions. Really!? And after all the hours that we've invested in this show as fans, could there really have been more of a semi-passable, ambivalent episode that seemed like a waste, especially when the "big reveal" of the Adam and Eve characters were given to us in such a begrudging way, executed quite poorly? These are the answers you give to tie things together? These are the questions you decide to answer? Really!?

James Poniewozik of TIME's Tuned In wrote this in his review which echoed a lot of sentiments I've had: "Speaking of the light, Mrs. Tuned In and I had a long discussion about the episode after it was over. She is much more firmly in the sci-fi camp of Lost than I am, and to her resolving the Island's power with a bunch of mystical mumbo-jumbo about light and warmth seems to sell out everything the show established about the importance of the Dharma Initiative and the science of the Island."

Jay followed that up in an e-mail to me by saying (I've inserted the "really"s but you get the idea): "I don't think I'm firmly in the "sci-fi camp" of Lost, as I think I enjoy the character drama just as much, but I do agree that Allison Janney's (who has never looked uglier, btw) explanation of the golden light was a bit of a sellout. Really!?

Really!? So you're telling me, Mother, that all of the Island's mysticism that we've been hearing about for 6 seasons, the magical properties that inspired the Dharma Initiative, the appeal and value of the Island to everyone from Charles Widmore to Daniel Faraday....it's just some vague "life force" that every man has inside him? I call bullshit. Better yet, I call cop out. You cannot take one of the most intriguing and addicting parts of this show and explain it away so cheaply. Really!?

Jay also was a fan of HitFix's Alan Sepinwall who said this: "When you answer a question, you take away the suspense that comes from waiting for that answer, but you also rob that question of its power over the listener. Had Mother told Smokey the full truth about herself and the island, maybe he would have run away and started digging for electromagnetic spots, but maybe he would have recognized the rightness of her cause and become the dutiful son and successor she wanted. And had Darlton been less stingy with information (and/or more stingy with raising more and more questions), maybe the fan focus at the end of the run would be less on demanding answers and more on paying attention to the character arcs that the showrunners insist are the true heart of the series."

Jim writes to me (I added the "really"s again): "Really!? It seemed like a waste of one of the final 3 episodes. I would've been fine with it if there wasn't so precious few time left. It just didn't really tell us anything we didn't know. Really!? The only good part was we found out how Smokey came to be but I'm still confused about that whole situation. It doesn't make sense. Did Jacob's brother die or did he turn into Smokey or both? I thought Jacob couldn't kill his brother. That was confusing--I was fine with it until we saw Jacob burying him with his mother. Once i saw that i was like wait....something doesn't add up here Really!?"

But I believe Doc Jensen (and if there was a homerific John Sterling of LOST recappers, Doc would be him) said it best: "I can’t say I loved it. I thought it was a collection of Grade A ideas in a Grade B package." I think that sums it up for me too.

Deep Breath and Then Analysis

Okay, I'm done venting for now. Let's try to analyze some of the "finer" points of the episode. In the end, we find out that Man In Black/Smokey/FLocke is not really all to blame for his evilness. This is in sharp contrast to the ending of "The Candidate" where Dogen's representation of "evil incarnate" seemed to come true. I think what "Across the Sea" showed is that, like Dogen said (or at least in my mind, he said), there is evil and good in every one of us and the scales just tip one way or another. Jacob is good, but, let's be honest, he has an angry streak, he killed his brother (or could he not kill his brother? I'm really confused there), and he's the reason Smokey is on The Island. Man in Black is bad, but he too could have made the choices to be good if circumstances had turned out differently. "We all have a choice" is the theme...until your FMother (right? She's not the real Mother? She's the "substitute". She's the fake, just like FLocke) kills your friends and tries to end your bid to leave her.

Now, the question has to be asked whether FMother's plan all along was to train a replacement--and the one to end her time on The Island? In some ways, you wonder if Jacob did the same. How much of Ben*'s blade** into Jacob was FLocke's idea and how much of it was Jacob's plan to get out of his job? And if The Island story just continues to repeat itself, does that mean that Ben and Widmore (two more people that, for some reason, can't kill each other) are really the new Jacob and Man in Black? Or was this whole "you can't kill each other" bit by FMother just a ruse to make sure that they didn't do so? She really was a "crazy mother" as FLocke described her.

*Side Note: I was speaking with some LOST fans over the weekend and we agreed that putting Jack or Desmond in charge of The Island may be too obvious at this point. Most agreed Hurley would be a good choice. I think that Ben is going to end up being Jacob's replacement. Mother who died after giving birth to him? Check. Invested in protecting The Island? Check. Spent their entire grown-up life on The Island? Check. I think the whole "not being a candidate" thing is just a diversion. That's my prediction for now. Come back tomorrow to get another.

**Side Note: And speaking of "the blade", it's interesting that we saw the knife being used by Man in Black to kill FMother last episode, but we saw it further on in time in "Ab Aeterno" when Man in Black gave it to Richard...and we also saw it further on in time when Dogen gave it to Sayid. I'm not saying that it's definitely the same one that Ben killed Jacob with--but I'm saying that it probably is. So what's so special about this blade? Who knows.

Which brings up an interesting analysis from this episode--for all of LOST's history, it's been daddy issues that's been the cause of pain for each character on The Island (except for maybe Desmond). Isn't it interesting that the two god-like figures on LOST--and the source of all this conflict--had mommy issues? And for the past few episodes some have surmised that all "ghosts" on The Island were Smokey inhabiting other people's bodies (although I was a lot more skeptical), but since Man in Black saw his real mother after she died, does that mean that was all a lie? Does that mean Michael was telling the truth when he says that ghosts on The Island are just souls waiting to escape? Does that mean that Christian Shephard was himself? Certainly changes things a bit. And since Hurley is able to see the dead like Man in Black was, do they have some sort of connection?

And that brings me to my one big issue/possible non-sequitur with this explanation: if Man in Black vacated his body when Jacob sent him down to The Light, then how did he show up in that body again in Ab Aeterno? Did he dig it out of the caves for an appearance? It makes some sense what Ilana said earlier in the season that now that Smokey had taken FLocke's body he was stuck there now. Did he turn into Smokey because Jacob couldn't actually "kill him" so his soul continued on in a puffy form? Was FMother actually Smokey I as some people have suggested? Is that how all those villagers suffered their fate? I don't think so, but it's possible. So that's how that wheel got down there (I guess). What was with the wine that FMother gave to Jacob (looks a lot like the wine bottle Jacob used to describe The Island to Richard)? And we definitely know now that the little boy running around the forest telling FLocke that he can't kill the candidates is little Jacob.

Methinks this whole bit about "The Light" (which some have referred to as "The Force" a la Star Wars) and how, for most men, it becomes "worse than death" means that this really comes down to Desmond (it sure does look a lot like other lights we've seen with Desmond). Will he have to re-Light that creek to right the system and end Smokey's reign? Will he have to stop Widmore from exploiting that Light? Is The Temple located over this area now and providing the functionality for that pool? Does The Light connect the Sideways World and the Island World? Or was this whole Light business just something that's going to raise more questions which will never be answered?

Conclusion

I was not surprised by the news that there is a black hole in space. I'm pretty sure it was caused by last night's LOST episode (which, amazingly, was the highest rated episode since the 2nd of the season but seemed to lose a million viewers between 9 and 9:30). My hope is that because this episode gave us all the MIB and Jacob one could handle that the rest of the show will just be about Jack, Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, FLocke, Claire, Ben, Miles, Richard, and Widmore--ie, the characters we've gotten to know over the years. I get a lot more interested in stolen babies when they come from Claire or Rousseau (characters we know) than a woman, Claudia, we don't know from Eve. So while you think about all the characters that died (for the next episode titled "What They Died For") and plan your LOST finale party think about what questions you have left that need to be answered. Are there any big ones besides "what's going to happen at the end?" or "what is the Sideways World?" I don't think so. I think that's good. Little ones hopefully will be answered. Those two big ones should be by the end as well.

LOST has always been a surprisingly polarizing show (the debate on Sun and Jin's decision from last week ranged so much to my surprise) so I won't be surprised if some loved this past episode--but I wasn't one of them. "Every question that I answer will just lead to another question" seems like "if I told you now, you may not be as excited for the final two nights"-type cop-out excuse to me. I'm willing to take a leap of faith and hope that the LOST writers who have dazzled us so much through the years are leading us down the path to a great ending. Last night hopefully will be seen as a necessary diversion along that road. I'm excited for the last new episode before the finale event. I'm excited to find out if Lapidus is alive or dead, where team MilesBenRichard has been, and to see what's going to happen with the Castaways. I just wish I found out some more this week towards that end.

Your thoughts? Do you disagree with me? Did you like the episode? Feel like it was necessary? Hated it? Let us know in the comments below.