I Am DB

Okay, those babies are adorable, but I’ll still come right out with it: this episode, initially at least, pissed me off bigtime. Normally I would have waited until the next night, but I had to watch Glee immediately after in the hopes that some upbeat music and Sue Sylvester quips would wash the bitter taste of disappointment from my mouth. I have never once succumbed to the kind of frustration that led so many Lost fans to abandon ship around the time that Shannon saw soaking-wet Walt materialize in the jungle speaking devil tongue. I didn’t have a problem with Season Three’s extended Hydra Island, prisoner-in-a-polar-bear cage period or the seemingly unnecessary introduction of Nikki and Paulo – things that so many fans still complain about (seriously, was the Bai Ling episode really that bad?). The on-going mysteries that seemed to turn off many others only made me more jazzed to stick around and find out what it all meant. And I’ve waited patiently, enjoying each step on the journey with confidence that an amazing destination lay ahead. And I still feel that way. But I went into this episode with certain expectations of what I thought it would do, needed to do, etc. in getting us to that destination. Instead it did things that didn’t seem all that significant. Jacob and the Man in Black are brothers. Interesting? Sure. Revelatory? Not really.

I know the criticism is not entirely fair when there are still 3 ½ hours that may provide more context and payoff, and I didn’t want to judge the episode too harshly knowing that those hours are still due. But when it ended I felt like this episode which practically came gift-wrapped with the promise of answers instead delivered a whole lotta nothing. In bitching about it during the week with reader Denise B., she asked me if I would have felt better about the episode had it come earlier in the season. It was an interesting question, and my answer was yes, though for different reasons than hers. She said that having it immediately follow the emotional blow of so many deaths was a jarring interruption in the build-up to the finale. For me, earlier would have been better because I wouldn’t have minded so much not getting answers I wanted if I knew there would be several episodes left to address those things. But coming so late in the season, time is too short. At this point, there are too many mysteries from the last six years unexplained for me to have patience with new ones.

I’ll say more later, but for now I’ll stop complaining about what didn’t happen and turn to what did.

UNIVERSAL MOTHER
A pregnant woman of possibly Hispanic origins washes ashore on the island amongst the wreckage of a ship. She is found by a Caucasian woman wearing loose blue and white garments, who offers to help her and brings her to a cave where she apparently lives. They speak to each other in what I guess is Latin and the pregnant woman introduces herself as Claudia. She asks the Woman in White where her people are.

W: There’s only me.
C: How did you get here?
W: The same way you got here. By accident.
C: How long have…
W: Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.

That’s a nice acknowledgment from the writers to sum up Lost in one sentence. I’d have laughed a little harder at it were it not so frustratingly true at this point.

Claudia quickly goes into labor and delivers a baby boy who she names Jacob. But to both women’s surprise, there is another baby. The Woman in White delivers the second child, but Claudia says she only picked one name. After laying both children down, staring lovingly at them as if they’re her own, the Woman in White apologizes to Claudia and then bashes her head in with a rock.

Worst. Midwife. Ever.

Thirteen years later, Jacob and his brother are being raised by the Woman in White, who it appears was incapable of choosing a name for the second born, leaving us to call him the Boy in Black. The boys are close, and all seems well and idyllic, but the Boy in Black has a curiosity that worries his mother. Whereas Jacob is more innocent, accepting things at face value and believing what he’s told, his brother is inquisitive and wants to know why things are the way they are. He finds a box on the beach one day containing black and white stones and a board with drawings, and he and Jacob occupy their time playing this new game. “How do you know how?” Jacob asks the first time.

“I just do,” his brother replies, adding that Jacob shouldn’t tell their mother because she’ll take it away. But she gets it out of Jacob anyway and pays a visit to Boy in Black on the beach. (Later, Jacob will tease him about having made up the rules himself. “One day you can make up your own game and everyone else will have to follow your rules,” Boy in Black smiles. If only he’d known how far Jacob would take that…)

B: Jacob told you what I found.
W: Of course he did. Jacob doesn’t know how to lie. He’s not like you.
B: Why, what am I like?
W: You’re special.

She says she left the box so he’d find it, which disappoints him. He says he thought it might have come from somewhere else; from across the sea. She tells him that there is no place else. There is nothing across the sea. There is only the island. He questions where they came from, and she tells him he came from her and she came from her mother, who is dead now.

B: What’s dead?
W: Something you will never have to worry about.

Ohhhhhkay…….

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
While running through the jungle chasing a boar, Jacob and Boy in Black discover other men, the first people they’ve ever seen on the island. The boys go unnoticed, and urgently report their discovery to the Woman in White.

J: Where do they come from? They looked like us!
W: They’re not like us. They don’t belong here. We are here for a reason
B: What reason?
M: It’s not time yet.
B: Mother! What reason?
M: Come with me.

She says it’s not time yet more to herself than the boys, and hesitates before telling them to come with her. And then this happens.

“They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. And it always ends the same.” We’ve heard this before. It’s exactly what the Man in Black says to Jacob on the beach in the opening scene of Season Five’s finale The Incident, when we first meet both of them. She doesn’t directly answer…well, pretty much any of the questions, but specifically for now the one about why the other people would hurt them. She just says “because they’re people, Jacob, and that’s what people do.” Is this meant to imply that she is not a person? That she is perhaps another kind of being that has taken human form? Jacob and the Boy in Black must be human as they were born to Claudia, but it sounds as if the Woman in White has gifted them with certain powers or protections. How is she able to do that?

So what’s down that golden passageway? Is it Eden? Heaven? Iowa? The Genesis Cave? Boy in Black looks at it with lust, but not greed. The sight plugs directly into his yearning for discovery beyond the simplicity of the island, and a mysterious visit soon fans those flames: while playing the stones game with Jacob, he looks up and sees Claudia standing nearby. She calls out not to be afraid. Off Boy in Black’s startled stare, Jacob turns but doesn’t see anything. Boy in Black say he’s going to the beach alone and runs after Claudia, who tells him that Jacob can’t see her because she’s dead. She asks him to come with her so she can show him where he came from – a place across the island that he’s never seen. So she takes him to a hill overlooking a village and tells him that the people living there shipwrecked on the island thirteen years earlier, the day before he was born. He asks what a ship is, and she tells him it is a way of traveling from place to place. “It’s how we came across the sea,” she says, echoing the exact phrasing he used earlier to the Woman in White.

B: There’s nothing across the sea.
C: There are many things across the sea. You come from across the sea too.
B: No, that’s not true. That’s not what my mother told me.
C: She’s not your mother. I am.

Boy in Black returns to the caves in the middle of the night, wakes up Jacob and beckons him away. In the jungle, he says that he’s gathered their things and that he’s going to live with the people on the other side of the island and wants Jacob to come with him. Jacob repeats their mother’s argument that the people are dangerous, but Boy in Black said she lied to them and that she’s not their mother. That accusation makes the usually peaceful Jacob angry enough to tackle and punch his brother. The Woman in White shows up and pulls them apart, and Boy in Black lays into her with his new knowledge: that she’s not their mother, that she killed their real mother, that he belongs with the people who came from across the sea and that someday he’s going to leave the island and go home. Woman in White is surprised and saddened that he knows these things, but she does not try to refute the facts. She does, however, grab his shoulders and say, “My love, you need to know this: whatever you have been told, you will never be able to leave this island.”

“That’s not true,” he says. “One day I can prove it.” He asks Jacob to come with him one more time, but he says no. Later, Jacob asks Woman in White if she really killed his mother. She admits it, saying she had to do it so that Jacob wouldn’t grow up to be one of the bad people. When he accuses her of loving his brother more than him, she says that she loves them in different ways. So I guess we can add Jacob and the Man in Black to the nearly all-inclusive club of Lost characters with serious parental issues.

ALL GROWN UP AND NO PLACE TO GO
Jacob continues living with the Woman in White into adulthood, and he regularly visits his brother on the other side of the island, where they still play their game. In this meet-up, the Man in Black says he’s found a way off the island and intends to leave.

Jacob returns to the cave and tells the Woman in White, when she asks where he’s been, that she knows where. He tells her that his brother has found a way off the island. So she goes off to see him too, and finds him working alone at the bottom of one of the wells. The reunion brings out mixed feelings for both of them, and brings us back to one of the most mysterious locales on the island.

She gives a look of grave concern when he says that other people from his group saw the light, and when he yells at her that he doesn’t know because she wouldn’t tell him, I wanted to high-five him. As Lost characters go, this Woman in White is about as maddening as Ben when it comes to doling out cryptic non-answers. That night, she brings Jacob back to the tunnel of light for the first time since the first time, where a sort of ceremony takes place.

When Man in Black wakes up the next morning, he is back above ground outside the well, which has been knocked apart and filled in. He sees smoke nearby and follows it to find his village destroyed and burning and his people murdered. The rage on his face is frightening to behold, and he immediately returns to his childhood home and stabs the Woman in White with the dagger he used previously – the dagger which will later pass to Dogen and be used by Sayid in an attempt to kill Man in Locke. As soon as he removes the blade he feels regret, and asks her why she wouldn’t let him leave the island. With her dying breaths she answers, “Because I love you. Thank you…” She dies, and as he kneels over her crying, Jacob arrives. Man in Black is remorseful and tries to explain, but Jacob tackles his brother to the ground and punches him repeatedly in the face, just as he did once in their boyhood. Only this time their mother isn’t there to intervene. In his anger, he drags his brother back to the tunnel of light, where he seems to inadvertently release the island’s great evil.

Jacob goes to what might be another part of the same creek – maybe on the other side of the tunnel – and finds his brother’s body washed up on the rocks, tangled up in branches. He embraces him and carries him back to the cave, where he lays both bodies – the Woman in White and the Man in Black – side by side for their eternal rest, placing with them a pouch containing one black stone and one white from his brother’s game. Centuries later, Jack, Kate, Charlie and Locke will find the bodies, mere days after crashing on the island. Examining them, Jack is able to determine that one is male and one is female, and that they must have been there for a long time. “It takes 40 or 50 years for clothing to degrade like this,” he says

“Our very own Adam and Eve,” Locke muses.

Okay, so one big mystery was answered in this episode, and I thought it was a satisfying explanation, though I probably assumed – like many viewers may have – that the Adam and Eve skeletons would be a pair of Flight 815 survivors who wound up there through some trick of time travel. But the answers offered in this third to last episode of the series stopped there. Knowing that the hour would be devoted to the island, Jacob and the Man in Black, I thought we’d get more about Jacob’s master plan and the how and why around his years of bringing people to the island. I thought we’d learn about the cabin and the scary eye seen twice within. I thought we’d learn about Jacob’s connection to Ilana. I thought maybe Richard would appear and we’d get a look at how he functioned on the island from Jacob’s point of view. And I thought we’d learn more specifics about what could happen if the Man in Black gets off the island.

But we got none of that. Instead, we were left asking more questions. How did the Woman in White come to the island? Why does she tell Boy in Black that he’ll never have to worry about being dead? How has she made it that the boys can never hurt each other? (Which doesn’t turn out to be so true anyway.) Why can’t Jacob see Claudia but the Boy in Black can? Why does Woman in White tell Boy in Black that he will never be able to leave the island? How does she see the two boys: are they a means to the end? If she intends for one of them to protect the island, what does she expect of the other one? And what’s with the tunnel and the light and the black smoke? Why did she say “thank you” to the Man in Black when he stabbed her? Is she relieved to be relieved of her duty to the island?

MEN IN BLACK
There was another plotline I expected to be addressed which wasn’t: the Man in Black and his powers. But there was a surprising twist around this mystery. When we found out early in the season that the resurrected John Locke was really the Man in Black and the Smoke Monster, my reaction was okay, cool…so how does that work? I thought this episode might explain how the Man in Black changes to and from a billow of think black smoke capable of grabbing people and slamming them against trees, walls and cages or else surrounding them and projecting images of their lives in some expression of judgment. In addition, how is this Thing able to appear as other dead people? Obviously we didn’t find out about any of this, but we did find out that the Man in Black as we’ve seen him previously – on the beach with Jacob in The Incident and trying to manipulate Richard when he arrived on the island in Ab Aeterno – is not the original Man in Black. He’s the Man in Black II.

The original Man in Black, it would seem, washed up in the creek after his trip into the tunnel of light and was buried in the caves, where our protagonists found him safely decomposing years later. The Man in Black from The Incident and Ab Aeterno is someone or something else. But what? What happened when Jacob’s brother was carried into that tunnel? Whatever it was, it was quick. Was the power that resides in the Black Smoke always down there, trapped? Did the appearance of a human body somehow set it free? Has it ever been out? Was the Man in Black the first person to enter the tunnel? Was it the Smoke Monster who took on the form of Claudia? (That’s a reasonable guess, considering that most of the later appearances of dead people on the island are really Smokey.) And if that’s true, was the Black Smoke trying all along to lure the Boy in Black into its clutches? Is that why only he could see Claudia?

Once the Black Smoke takes on the appearance of the Man in Black, how does Jacob come to understand what it is? How does his role go from guarding and protecting the light to keeping Man in Black II from escaping the island? How does he know what will happen if Man in Black II leaves?

In Ab Aeterno, Man in Black II rescues Richard from the Black Rock and tells him that the devil – Jacob – took his wife Isabella and that he must kill the devil in order to see her again. Man in Black II says that he was betrayed by the devil, who took his body and his humanity. But really, doesn’t it appear that it was him – the Man in Black II – who took the body and humanity of the original Man in Black? Throughout this episode, Man in Black expressed a desire – a compelling need – to leave the island; to go home. That was consistent with everything we’ve heard him say in his Man in Locke guise all season long (and in Ab Aeterno) except for the now-revealed hiccup that it’s been Man in Black II talking about wanting to leave the island and go home.

Are you with me? Cause I’m barely hanging on by a plot thread.

So how will this resolve itself? I mentioned in my Ab Aeterno write-up that at a press conference, Carlton Cuse had said that Terry O’Quinn “is playing a guy who we’re not going to see until the finale.” That seemed strange to me, since I thought O’Quinn was playing the Man in Black via Man in Locke, and we saw the Man in Black in Ab Aeterno. But now I get it. The guy we saw in Ab Aeterno was not Smokey’s true form, just as John Locke isn’t his true form now. So apparently, one thing we can count on in the final episode is an explanation around what or who Man in Black II really is. And hopefully the answer will be much more satisfying than Men in Black II. Cause that movie kinda sucked.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-It may or may not be important to note that the Boy in Black from this episode is not the same dark-haired boy who Man in Locke saw in the jungle when he was taking Desmond to the well. As I’ve pointed out before, it was in fact the same boy – same actor, at least – as the blonde boy that he saw first while going to Jacob’s cave with Sawyer. That actor is the one who plays Jacob in this episode. So is the Boy in Black from this episode supposed to be the dark-haired boy Locke and Desmond saw, and the role has just been re-cast? Or is the blonde boy from the Locke/Sawyer episode – who we now know to be Young Jacob – supposed to be the same boy in the Locke/Desmond episode, but with dark hair? And if so, why the change in hair color? And does it even matter? Why does Man in Locke keep seeing the boys in the first place? And what does it mean that Sawyer and Desmond saw them too (and that Richard didn’t)?

-The portrayal of Jacob in this episode once again reveals a different side of his personality, just as Ab Aeterno showed us his more violent, aggressive side when he kicked the crap out of Richard on the beach. Here, as I said, we saw him as an innocent, trusting what he’s told and demonstrating fragility even as an adult when he accuses the Woman in White of always having wanted his brother to be the protector of the island. How does he go from the sweet boy who represents goodness to the crafty, confident Dungeon Master of the island, playing a complex game of his own device (just as his brother told him he would one day) that involves bringing scores of people to the island and testing them? Is it the drinking of the wine and his acceptance of the protector role that begins shaping him into the unflappable island god who practically provokes his own murder by coldly saying to Ben, “What about you?” or by telling Man in Black II, “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress?”

The other unexpected aspect of Jacob we see in this episode is how little he understands about the island, at least at this point in his life. The Woman in White tasks him with guarding the island, but she never explains any of its secrets to him – secrets she possesses and which, oh, I dunno, would probably be important for him to know as he carries on her mission. So how can he be expected to protect the island when he doesn’t understand what it is? Throwing his brother into the tunnel demonstrates a total ignorance of the island’s powers, and suggests that he is actually responsible for the Smoke Monster’s release and for the additional task of having to keep it contained. And by the way, why is it that even the original Man in Black can’t leave the island – was told by the Woman in White that he would never be able to leave – yet Jacob seems to come and go freely?

-Why did Jacob physically age into young adulthood at a normal rate and then stop, living on for who knows how many hundreds of years without ever looking any older? Is that another possible consequence of drinking the wine? Did it stop his aging?

-All season long, Man in Locke has been trying to win over the castaways’ trust and sympathy by painting himself in terms of his humanity, calling on experiences they can understand. When Sawyer asked him on their way to the cave what he was, he answered, “What I am is trapped. And I’ve been trapped for so long that I don’t even remember what it feels like to be free. But before I was trapped I was a man, James, just like you…I know what it’s like to feel joy, to feel pain, anger, fear, to experience betrayal. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” Later, after Claire tries to kill Kate, he sits with the latter on a beach and tells her that his mother was crazy. “Long time ago, before I looked like his, I had a mother, just like everyone. She was a very disturbed woman. And as a result of that, I had some growing pains. Problems that I’m still trying to work my way through. Problems that could have been avoided had things been different.” I bring these examples up now because this episode casts them in a new light. While we didn’t know at the time if we could believe him or not, now we know that the things he says are true…save for the fact that they didn’t really happen to him. Or at least, the crazy mother thing didn’t happen to him…because he is Man in Black II and it was the original Man in Black who had the crazy mother. What he said to Sawyer about being trapped – that seems to fit, except that we don’t know who or what the Man in Black II really is, so we don’t know if he really was a man at one point or if he was born a poor black smoke billow. But when Smokey/Man in Black II took on the form of John Locke, it maintained possession of Locke’s memories, so maybe the things he says to Sawyer and Kate are based on his ability to preserve the original Man in Black’s memories.

Is all this babble about Man in Black and Man in Black II coherent at all?

-I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but I liked that the episode seemed to contain little allusions to Jacob’s game, like when the Woman in White gives him the wine and tells him he doesn’t have a choice. I interpreted that as part of his motivation for bringing people to the island as part of a game where choice is everything. Or there’s the bit where he’s playing the board game with Man in Black, who tells him that it’s easy for him to judge the people of the village when he’s “looking down at us from above” – which is exactly what he seems to have done with those he brought to the island: observe, judge, but not directly interact.

-I don’t know what’s up this year with the Lost gang partnering with the Muppets, but I am so not complaining about it. Here is Crazy Muppet Chang in the latest Lost Untangled, as well as another edition of the Lost Slapdown series, featuring Damon, Carlton and one of my favorites: the Swedish Chef. Ooondi foondi bloo.

-Damon and Carlton have been saying for a while that once the finale airs, they’re going on radio silence and will not be doing interviews or answering questions. Yet. They’ll probably talk about it down the road a bit (the complete series DVD set comes out August 24th and might be accompanied by publicity), but who knows how much they’ll ever be willing to explain or account for. I don’t think that Sopranos creator David Chase has any plans to explain the crazy, controversial, classic ending of that show any time soon. But in this last week of Lost, Damon and Carlton will be popping up here in there. They’ll be giving a live interview on Thursday evening that will be broadcast to select movie theaters around the country; they will be answering questions submitted by Lostpedia fans (though apparently those questions will not deal with the show itself); and they are slated to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live Sunday night, following the finale – which seems to go against the whole radio silence promise, but maybe their segment is being pre-taped. Or maybe they’re just doing ABC and Jimmy a favor.

FINAL THOUGHT
So to circle back to my opening comments, this episode appears to be one of the most divisive in the show’s history and has generated a heated, love-it-or-hate-it response amongst the fans. The reaction is not lost on Damon and Carlton; Damon said in an interview with the New York Daily News, “We did this episode…some people don’t want to eat the peas in their dish, but it’s there because it’s good for you.” (Bad example. I would argue that the disgusting taste of peas outweighs any health benefits they might offer. But I digress…)

So obviously they feel that the information imparted in this episode is important for what’s to come, and in fairness I’ll say that the content of the episode itself isn’t what frustrated me. It just failed to accomplish what I thought it should, and with precious little time left to make up for that, I enter the final hours of the show with intensified expectations that are probably impossible to meet. Do I need to let go of my expectations and let the show do its thing? Probably. But on the other hand, I didn’t pull my expectations out of thin air. They were set for me, and now I want those who set them to deliver on them. As we return to the aftermath of the submarine trauma and the SidewaysLand coming-together, I’m ready to have my mind blown.

Let’s do this.

Tonight’s Episode: What They Died For