Hmmmm, this could go down as one of the most polarizing episodes of Lost ever. Personally, I found it very much a mixed bag of mythological treats, hard to swallow child acting (I'm looking at you, young Jacob) and sickly sweet Disney-esque 'magical light'.
Here's the good shit:
I got hurt feelings, I got hurt feelings....
Smokey is turning out to be one complex mofo. Despite being clobbered with the metaphorical rock to the head of stark black and white divisions between our islands two big game players (I had to laugh at the black and white baby blankets!), MIB is revealed to be anything but 'evil incarnate'. Just like our Losties, he was summoned to the island (albeit while still in the womb) and sucked in to a fate he never asked for - being groomed to be protector of that glowing piss cave (more on that later). I liked the development of his mistrust of people, and thought it linked nicely in to how he sees them as things to be scanned and manipulated for his ultimate goal - leaving the island. Does all this scanning / access to peoples memories feed his desire to experience the outside world as they have? Maybe he won't cause everything to 'cease to be' by leaving, perhaps he just wants a regular life, to watch CSI on cable with a few beers and a Chinese takeaway, not worrying about loopholes or Cerberus vents. But I doubt it.
Lilac wine, is sweet, and heady.....
Wacky wine that extends your lifeline! All jokes about drinking the kool-aid aside, we received an answer to how you become immortal on the island. Nope, you don't go spelunking in lucky charms cavern as I initially guessed, you just down a shot of Mother's mystical vino. This also seems to be how Jacob granted Richard eternal life - so what the hell is in that wine?!
Smoke in the water and fire in the sky, smoke on the water....
So we got to see the birth of ol' Smokey - or did we? It was cool to see Jacob open a can of whoop ass on his brother and set him sailing in to the light, then get regurgitated as that familiar pillar of electric smoke, but I don't think this is the first incarnation of the monster. No, that wanton destruction of the MIB's camp and filling of the well had smokey finger prints all over it. It all ties up with Mother telling Jacob going in to the light would be worse than dying (she knows, because she's lived it), her position as light guardian, and finally her thankfulness for finally being freed through death. I don't think it will ever be explicitly stated, but the hints were pretty heavy that she was the smoke monster before MIB.
And now, the shit shit:
Come in my cave, and I'll burn your heart away....
That fucking cave. When we first panned over to it, my heart sunk. Those awful shafts of light beaming outwards, the horrible piss yellow glow from inside. It's not even so much the dodgy effects though, it's the premise that a huge piece of Lost mythology had to be represented so literally as some hokum light that is 'within us all'. I think I'd much rather have that mystery left up to my own imagination, as that cheesy, grand explanation turned me right off. And how come no one else has stumbled across this shining 'beacon in a rock'? I bet Jack et al find it real quickly in the next few eps though! Stephen King talks about ditching plot and uncovering your story piece by piece as you go along, like excavating a fossil by slowly dusting away. While this frees up your writing from a stunted plot, you can easily write yourself in to a corner, with ever decreasing scope for a satisfying conclusion. The whole golden shower rock pool debacle wreaks of this to me. Let's hope the finale can go some way to compensate for it.
The things, you say, you're unbelievable.....
While Juno's step mum turned in another enigmatic turn, and even young MIB was on the whole believable, young Jacob just didn't cut the mustard. Maybe they sacrificed acting chops for a teenage facsimile of Mark Pellegrino, which worked when he showed up fleetingly to haunt Flocke (I never thought it was a grown up Aaron, honest!), but he couldn't carry half an episode. Hopefully he'll now be relegated to ghost status for the remainder of the series, which is only three and a half more hours, sob!
Across the sea didn't live up to expectations, but how could it really after 100+ episodes of build? Sure it was hit and miss, but we've been asking for answers, and it provided them, just maybe not the answers we wanted. The end game is fast approaching, and I for one am savouring every last bit of Lost before it chugs away in to the sunset, leaving us bound, gagged and weeping on the Pala Ferry dock.
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