Lost 6x15 Review
May. 16th, 2010 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iariaAcross The Sea
I really loved this episode. It was certainly very different from any others we’ve seen on the show (we only see three of our main cast, in a flashback to S1, at the end of the episode for a minute or two) but that didn’t bother me. I didn’t actually miss any of our main cast.
I was completely engrossed in the tale of Jacob, Mother and Brother and it was fabulous. Mark Pellegrino, Titus Welliver and Allison Janney knocked this episode out of the park. I had been worried when I saw Allison in the episode and that I would keep thinking of her as CJ but I didn’t. I have to say I love Terry Quinn as Smokey but I really loved Titus Welliver here as Brother and I hope we get to see him again in the last episodes.
• I can’t believe even after getting a flashback episode for the Man in Black we still do not have a name for him. That just really, really annoys me. At this point now it doesn’t make sense for him to not have a name. It isn’t mysterious and intriguing anymore; it’s freaking irritating. Even if they hadn’t revealed it throughout the episode the ending was the perfect opportunity for it – specifically when Jacob says the last lines of the episode “Goodbye, brother.” The beats, the tone, of that moment and the fact that the episode ended on it indicated that there was something momentous or important either on the show or for the viewers about what Jacob said and to me it would only have made sense for it to have been ‘brother’s’ name; something that has been unknown/secret for two seasons now. Instead as it went it didn’t make any sense to me – neither the fact that MiB was Jacob’s brother or the fact that he was dead were things we didn’t know. There was just no interest in that ending. Although I suppose in one sense there is some... balance (?) to us knowing neither Mother or Brother’s real names.
• The story was very tragic – especially for the twins – and I found the whole thing very affecting. I got teary-eyed several times throughout the episode – when Mother hugged Brother goodbye and he broke down in her arms, when Brother killed Mother and when Jacob found Brother’s body and laid both of them to rest. The two scenes between Mother and Brother in particular got to me and really moved me. I felt myself feeling so sorry for both the twins and I don’t think I’ll ever look at them, Smokey in particular, the same again. He’s suddenly become a much more sympathetic character. I do think it’s the tragedy of it all that has made it resonate so much with me. If only Mother had been more honest, if only Jacob had arrived home earlier or Brother had talked to Mother before stabbing, if only Jacob had returned in time to hear Mother thank Brother, if only...
• I find myself wanting these three characters to get some sort of ‘happy’ ending. Happy meaning the three of them reunited and forgiveness given. The relationships between the three of them – Jacob and Brother’s, Jacob and Mother’s and Brother’s and Mother’s – were so interesting, and wonderful and complex. I want more. I loved that Jacob continued to visit Brother during the thirty years they lived separately – talking and playing together, and still loving each other. I loved that despite feeling betrayed by Mother, and knowing the truth, Brother clearly still loved her and thought of her as his mother, and she loved him and was hurt by his leaving. I loved that Jacob loved his mother so much that the truth didn’t matter.
• Oh, and I have just now made the connection – Brother’s knife is the same one Dogen had and that Smokey sent Richard with to kill Jacob – and like the instructions they gave about its use Brother didn’t give Mother a chance to talk before stabbing her. Does this mean then that if he had he wouldn’t have been able to stab her, or that it wouldn’t have worked?
• I did really feel for Jacob who was so good and always listened to their mother and was there for her and loved her so much – and yet was never good enough and was never loved as much by her as she loved Brother. Or at least so it appeared. I think she meant ‘I love you differently’ and believed her but I still think she loved Brother more. I mean she never told Jacob she loved him, even at their parting when I was pretty sure she knew she wouldn’t see him again, but they were the last words she said to Brother. This also seems tragic in how defensive of her he was – it was his love for her that lead to him attacking Brother for the first time and his refusal to leave her, and it was his love for her and grief over her death that in part lead to him killing/changing Brother in a rage. I think perhaps he never felt she loved him as much and so he tried even harder to be what she needed, as if he could earn that love. When he asked her what she thought of his tapestry, and he was just so proud, and she gave this tepid and uninterested ‘it’s nice’, his face dropped so much and I just wanted to hug him. I admit that overall I found myself feeling more for Brother than Jacob but he certainly had his moments as well.
• Another thing I noticed was how similar both brothers were in how they dealt with their rage. Both of them impulsively killed one of only two people they loved when confronted with their betrayal and then regretted it pretty much immediately after. Oh, boys.
• Mother stealing the twins and killing their biological mother so that they wouldn’t become evil reminded me very much of the Others stealing children. Jacob’s orders? And it appears it wasn’t the only thing he got from her – the tapestry weaving and the whole not actually telling anyone anything.
• As is usual for this show we got a bunch of questions answered – the two skeletons in the cave are of Mother and Brother, where the Smoke creature came from, some more information on what the Island is, how the wheel came to be, where Jacob and Man in Black came from and their relationship to each other, where Man in Black’s dislike of humans came from – but it also left a lot of questions. On the answers given and actually on the story as a whole I found this done so much better then Richard’s background episode.
Questions:
- Who was Mother, who were her people and how did she become the Island’s guardian?
- What happened to the rest of her people?
- What exactly is the Island’s Guardian anyway?
- Where does their power come from (granting immortality, making it so the twins can’t kill each other)?
- What is the light in the cave exactly – the source of life in the world/universe?
- What exactly is the smoke monster?
- Is Brother truly dead then and the Smoke is just using his form or does the soul/being of Brother live on in it?
- Does the fact that Brother wanted so much to leave the Island the reason the Smoke does too (if it’s not MiB)?
- Was the manifestation of their birth mother Claudia really her ghost? Why then could Jacob not see her?
- Why did Brother have so much seeming instinctive knowledge (and Jacob didn’t)?
- Why was he ‘special’? Because Claudia didn’t name him? And does this in any way tie into Walt and/or Aaron?
I really loved this episode. It was certainly very different from any others we’ve seen on the show (we only see three of our main cast, in a flashback to S1, at the end of the episode for a minute or two) but that didn’t bother me. I didn’t actually miss any of our main cast.
I was completely engrossed in the tale of Jacob, Mother and Brother and it was fabulous. Mark Pellegrino, Titus Welliver and Allison Janney knocked this episode out of the park. I had been worried when I saw Allison in the episode and that I would keep thinking of her as CJ but I didn’t. I have to say I love Terry Quinn as Smokey but I really loved Titus Welliver here as Brother and I hope we get to see him again in the last episodes.
• I can’t believe even after getting a flashback episode for the Man in Black we still do not have a name for him. That just really, really annoys me. At this point now it doesn’t make sense for him to not have a name. It isn’t mysterious and intriguing anymore; it’s freaking irritating. Even if they hadn’t revealed it throughout the episode the ending was the perfect opportunity for it – specifically when Jacob says the last lines of the episode “Goodbye, brother.” The beats, the tone, of that moment and the fact that the episode ended on it indicated that there was something momentous or important either on the show or for the viewers about what Jacob said and to me it would only have made sense for it to have been ‘brother’s’ name; something that has been unknown/secret for two seasons now. Instead as it went it didn’t make any sense to me – neither the fact that MiB was Jacob’s brother or the fact that he was dead were things we didn’t know. There was just no interest in that ending. Although I suppose in one sense there is some... balance (?) to us knowing neither Mother or Brother’s real names.
• The story was very tragic – especially for the twins – and I found the whole thing very affecting. I got teary-eyed several times throughout the episode – when Mother hugged Brother goodbye and he broke down in her arms, when Brother killed Mother and when Jacob found Brother’s body and laid both of them to rest. The two scenes between Mother and Brother in particular got to me and really moved me. I felt myself feeling so sorry for both the twins and I don’t think I’ll ever look at them, Smokey in particular, the same again. He’s suddenly become a much more sympathetic character. I do think it’s the tragedy of it all that has made it resonate so much with me. If only Mother had been more honest, if only Jacob had arrived home earlier or Brother had talked to Mother before stabbing, if only Jacob had returned in time to hear Mother thank Brother, if only...
• I find myself wanting these three characters to get some sort of ‘happy’ ending. Happy meaning the three of them reunited and forgiveness given. The relationships between the three of them – Jacob and Brother’s, Jacob and Mother’s and Brother’s and Mother’s – were so interesting, and wonderful and complex. I want more. I loved that Jacob continued to visit Brother during the thirty years they lived separately – talking and playing together, and still loving each other. I loved that despite feeling betrayed by Mother, and knowing the truth, Brother clearly still loved her and thought of her as his mother, and she loved him and was hurt by his leaving. I loved that Jacob loved his mother so much that the truth didn’t matter.
• Oh, and I have just now made the connection – Brother’s knife is the same one Dogen had and that Smokey sent Richard with to kill Jacob – and like the instructions they gave about its use Brother didn’t give Mother a chance to talk before stabbing her. Does this mean then that if he had he wouldn’t have been able to stab her, or that it wouldn’t have worked?
• I did really feel for Jacob who was so good and always listened to their mother and was there for her and loved her so much – and yet was never good enough and was never loved as much by her as she loved Brother. Or at least so it appeared. I think she meant ‘I love you differently’ and believed her but I still think she loved Brother more. I mean she never told Jacob she loved him, even at their parting when I was pretty sure she knew she wouldn’t see him again, but they were the last words she said to Brother. This also seems tragic in how defensive of her he was – it was his love for her that lead to him attacking Brother for the first time and his refusal to leave her, and it was his love for her and grief over her death that in part lead to him killing/changing Brother in a rage. I think perhaps he never felt she loved him as much and so he tried even harder to be what she needed, as if he could earn that love. When he asked her what she thought of his tapestry, and he was just so proud, and she gave this tepid and uninterested ‘it’s nice’, his face dropped so much and I just wanted to hug him. I admit that overall I found myself feeling more for Brother than Jacob but he certainly had his moments as well.
• Another thing I noticed was how similar both brothers were in how they dealt with their rage. Both of them impulsively killed one of only two people they loved when confronted with their betrayal and then regretted it pretty much immediately after. Oh, boys.
• Mother stealing the twins and killing their biological mother so that they wouldn’t become evil reminded me very much of the Others stealing children. Jacob’s orders? And it appears it wasn’t the only thing he got from her – the tapestry weaving and the whole not actually telling anyone anything.
• As is usual for this show we got a bunch of questions answered – the two skeletons in the cave are of Mother and Brother, where the Smoke creature came from, some more information on what the Island is, how the wheel came to be, where Jacob and Man in Black came from and their relationship to each other, where Man in Black’s dislike of humans came from – but it also left a lot of questions. On the answers given and actually on the story as a whole I found this done so much better then Richard’s background episode.
Questions:
- Who was Mother, who were her people and how did she become the Island’s guardian?
- What happened to the rest of her people?
- What exactly is the Island’s Guardian anyway?
- Where does their power come from (granting immortality, making it so the twins can’t kill each other)?
- What is the light in the cave exactly – the source of life in the world/universe?
- What exactly is the smoke monster?
- Is Brother truly dead then and the Smoke is just using his form or does the soul/being of Brother live on in it?
- Does the fact that Brother wanted so much to leave the Island the reason the Smoke does too (if it’s not MiB)?
- Was the manifestation of their birth mother Claudia really her ghost? Why then could Jacob not see her?
- Why did Brother have so much seeming instinctive knowledge (and Jacob didn’t)?
- Why was he ‘special’? Because Claudia didn’t name him? And does this in any way tie into Walt and/or Aaron?
