ABC/MARIO PEREZThis one hurt a little bit, didn't it? Lost's fifth-season finale, "The Incident," was one of the show's more morose and hopeless outings in some time. Many terrible things happened and there was just one lone puppy dog on the scene to help make things happier. (There's only so much the fuzzy fella can do!)
If you haven't watched yet, you really need to spin up that DVR and see what happened, but if you have seen tonight's episode and you're ready to discuss, grab some dog treats for Vincent and get in here...
THE CURSED LOVE POLYGON
Here are tonight's key developments on the Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet circuit:
Jate: The only thing Jack wants in life is apparently Kate, but as he told Sawyer, "I had her. I had her and I lost her." This was one of the many semi-pathetic declarations of surrender in this episode. Will no one fight for love? Kate, for her part, was wicked pissed at Jack for making her come back to the Island, but she still had his back anyway. Then again, she also had Sawyer's and Juliet's backs, doing everything possible to help them fight the good fight.
Jawyer: Jack and Sawyer finally had the fistfight they've needed to have since episode three of Lost. As Juliet said, it was good that Sawyer got it out of his system, and we're just glad we can check it off the Lost to-do list. (But who won?!)
Kulawyer: Kate, Sawyer and Juliet made a formidable threesome as they stood up to Jack and his Dharma van of doom. Sigh. Couldn't they all have moved to Juniper Creek on Big Love or the Oprah-endorsed Yearning for Zion Ranch to be polygamistically happy and gorgeous together?
Suliet: We saw (straight through to the end of "The Incident") that Sawyer was never anything but loyal and loving with Juliet. Once the Island's leading screwup, Sawyer never so much as set a foot wrong in their relationship. As he put it, "I made a choice, and I'm sticking to it." Sawyer would be (or perhaps is) a wonderful politician: No flip-flopping, ever. But...according to Juju, Sawyer looked at Kate a certain way, and that convinced "Blondie" that they were doomed, so she signed up for the apocalypse as a backup plan. As she told Sawyer, "I changed my mind when I saw you look at her...If I never meet you then I never have to lose you." Later, she parroted her mother and said, "Just because two people love each other doesn't mean they're always supposed to be together." Way to rip our hearts out, J.
Juliet Alone: Juju, you are the apotheosis of tragedy. Juliet killed herself (more or less) in a Shakespearean expression of despair, grief and hopelessness. Despite the heroic efforts of both Kate and Sawyer, Juliet made like her namesake from the play and cheerfully, melodramatically died of a dysfunctional relationship. And in the end, that's not cool...I truly thought our Juliet had more gumption.
The Nuke: It's not the fall that kills you. It's the hydrogen bomb. Juliet somehow didn't die after falling into the pit of despair. Alive but wishing herself quite dead just the same, she took a rock and detonated Jughead by hand. We'd usually say "you go girl" at this juncture, but the white-out ending put a fine point on the issue of thermonuclear weapons: It's never until after the bomb goes off that everyone realizes how absolutely ridiculous the nuclear option was in the first place.
Locke Is Dead: Ilana had John Locke's body in a case, which means that the Locke who's been blithely walking around the Island is no longer original-recipe John Locke. Ben successfully killed original-recipe back in the real world, but what has reanimated him? What connection does extra-crispy Locke have to fellow walking dead guy Christian Shephard? Does zombie Locke have a boss? If we come back in 2010, Damon and Carlton might tell us...
Jacob: In other, more mythological news, we finally met the much-discussed Island god called Jacob. Jacob is played by Mark Pellegrino, whom you Dexter fans will remember from his role as Rita's abusive ex, Paul.
- Jacob is the old man who lived in a
shoefoot. - Jacob thinks Ben is beneath contempt.
- Jacob has a BFF (best frenemies forever!) who wants to kill him, but it's not possible for some reason.
- Jacob likes to spin his own thread (even though it takes a long time) and weave tapestries...and leave shreds of them as mementos on walls in cabins.
- Jacob made Richard Alpert into the ageless wonder he is. (Jacob takes no credit for Richard Alpert's fabulous eyelashes.)
- Jacob is corporeal enough that he can be killed, thanks to the tag team of Locke and Ben.
Flashbacks: Wonderful to see some old-fashioned expository flashbacks of our main characters! They were arguably Jacob-centric, as he stepped off the Island to push the pieces around the board to his satisfaction, but his agenda seemed to be to make sure that the Losties got on the various paths that eventually brought them to the Island: Kate became an flirtatious, amoral wench with an affinity for Patsy Cline; Sawyer was a punk consumed by vengeance; Juliet learned not to trust in love; Sun and Jin were lovers with terrible communication skills; Locke ended up a paraplegic dupe; Jack became an emotionally needy fixer; Sayid reverted to his familiar lone-wolf status; etc.
Black Rock/Richard: Was that the Black Rock on the horizon in the first scene between Jacob and the guy played by Titus Welliver? It has to be, right? Seriously, how many clipper ships can one show support? And do we all agree that Ricardos, aka Richard Alpert, was likely a Black Rock sailor before Jacob got his magical mitts on him?
Michael Emerson: Gotta love Memerson. Even when Ben is committing murder in a fit of childish pique—"Why him? What was so wrong with me? What about me?"—he still has more dignity than the next 20 men.
Locke Versus Jack: At the moment, the man in charge is dead zombie Locke. According to Ben, Locke's not just the leader, he's well and truly a Moses of his people. Do you buy that? Do you think that by the end of series Locke will have liberated his people from bondage?
Sayid Is Mr. Orange: Sayid has always been the most lost of causes, past the point of no return before we even met him, and tonight he reiterated, "Nothing can save me." That is so sad and has so many layers of meaning. Also, OMG, Jacob intervened in Sayid's life to make sure Nadia was run down and killed. Hey, Ben, do us all a favor and stab Jacob a few more times, will ya? Evil freak. (Oh, and speaking of whimsical vengeance, was anyone else bummed that Phil didn't die by Sawyer's hand but by accidental rebar impalement?)
Losties! Rose, Bernard and Vincent were all rediscovered, and Rose laid the smack down, like she always does. "Oh hell no. Bernard! They found us." Renard have been happily retired from the Lost craziness for the past three years, enjoying their quiet place by the ocean and each other's company. Rose and Bernard have a simple, clutter-free value system that they live and die by. Fantastic.
Easter Eggs
- The colors of the final Lost logo were reversed: black on white instead of white on black. Does that mean season six will be an inverted bizarro world, or was this season the inverted bizarro world? (And not to whine, but can't we all go back to the beach camp and hang out together? I had such a fit of nostalgia when Sun found Aaron's crib and Charlie's Drive Shaft ring, and for that matter, when the gang got together to attack Radzinsky's well-defended Fort Swan.)
- Richard's answer to Ilana's question ("What lies in the shadow of the statue?") was in Latin, He said, "Ille qui nos omnis servabit." Translation: "He who will save us all." But which of the fellas now in the shadow of the statue is the savior? Is it Ben, dead Locke, now-dead Jacob or a player to be named later?
- We've spent years wondering what it means to be on a list or to be special on Lost, and there was another hint tonight about this aspect of the show. Ilana and Bram debated Frank's worth and wondered out loud, "What, you think he's a candidate?" Hopefully next season this business of listy specialness and candidacy will be explained once and for all!
- Jack was trying to buy an Apollo bar in his hospital flashback.
- Radzinsky spent eight years designing the Swan.
- While waiting for Anthony Cooper to push Locke out of an eighth-floor window, Jacob was reading Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge.
MYTHOLOGY
This episode seemed to be positively chock-full of allusions to ancient mythologies. Here are some highlights:
Ancient Egypt:
- Jacob's tapestry appeared to depict a winged sun, which is a key icon of ancient Egyptian art.
- There were also three jars in Jacob's temple. Any chance those are the canopic jars that typically contain the organs of Egyptians who'd been mummified?
- Is the statue the crocodile-headed Egyptian god Sobek, representative of Nile fertility, or is it another member of the Egyptian pantheon? Michael Emerson says it's Taweret, a hippo-headed goddess of childbirth, but those teeth look crocodilian to me...What's your call?
- Jin said that being away from like Sun was wrong, like the "sky being apart from the earth." In Egyptian mythology, the goddess of the sky is Nut, and the god of the Earth is Geb, and as depicted in the image to the right, they are lovers lying together, forever mating and creating the world.
Ancient Greece:
- There have been many references to the Odyssey in the show, and another oblique one would appear to be Jacob's hobby of wiling away eternity by weaving a tapestry. The original Penelope (Odysseus' wife, not Desmond's girl) warded off the many suitors who wanted to court her by saying she would consider their offers once her tapestry was finished. She wove during the day...and unraveled her work every night, buying herself endless time to wait for her man.
- Another classical myth worth mentioning is the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos), the three sister and weavers of destiny, who manipulate our mortal lives with their spinning, measuring and cutting of thread.
Fairy tales:
- You can't throw a spinning wheel and spindle into a story without reminding us of Sleeping Beauty and her affiliation with Dorothy Gale and all the other dreamers of myth and legend. Our Losties surely have been living in a dream time since this tale began. Will they ever be able to awake?
Questions:
- What language were Ilana and Jacob speaking to each other in the hospital?
- Sorry, but who do Ilana and Bram work for? They say they are the good guys, but let's just skip to their chain of command for a second: Who's the boss? Widmore? Jacob? Someone else? Very confusing.
- Jacob's last words were: "They're coming." But who is they? The extras on the beach or someone else?
And that's all we wrote about Lost season five! This Redux was brought to you by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Zero" and organic green tea with ginger. Now, what are your thoughts about Lost's "The Incident"?