Things I learned (and didn’t) from Lost last night

Learned

CJ can be bad some times. Not to mention crazy.

The color of a baby’s swaddle decides their destiny.

People have always come to the island through shipwrecks and airline crashes because – presumably – the island needs people (oh, let’s just call them candidates) to be the next guardian of the island.

There’s a glowy thing at the heart of the island which is always protected by that guardian even if you don’t really know what it is, much like the glowy thing in Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase is protected by Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield.

All men have some part of the glowy thing inside them, and it makes them want more of it, and if they ever get their hands on it it will go out for ever. Under no circumstances is this to happen.

Going into the glowy thing is worse than death.

Jacob? Not that smart after all. Sticks with mom after she reveals his matricide, even though she loves not-Jacob best, throws not-Jacob into the glowy thing because goddammit, he had it coming even though (a) worse than death, and (b) goes out forever. And, oh yes, turns him into a smoke monster.

Just because someone calls your skeletal remains ‘Adam and Eve’ doesn’t mean that you’re a couple.

Smokey’s beef with Jacob and the island is actually kind of understandable. I mean, not justifying-death-of-Sun-and-Jin understandable, but still.

The guardian of the island can’t apparently kill themselves – but they can be killed by others (just not other candidates perhaps), hence crazy CJ’s ‘Thank you’ as she dies.

The island might have it’s guardian, but that doesn’t mean that the island isn’t above screwing with you. The island appears to young Smokey as his dead mother – which throws into question how many of the previous appearances of dead characters on (and off) the island were Smokey as I’ve been assuming. In fact, I’m now thinking that the island may not necessarily want to be protected after all.

Not learned

Why Jacob got to basically pick and choose his candidates from a list, get off the island to influence their lives, watch them from a lighthouse, and generally be all Yoda-like whilst mommy dearest settled for smacking someone over the head with a stone and taking the first baby that came along.

How said mommy dearest managed to make it so that Jacob and poor, nameless not-Jacob couldn’t kill each other – although that apparently didn’t extend to not being able to batter each other senseless and toss them in a river towards a fate worse than death.

How Jacob – in spite of an apparent policy of pretty much non-interference – managed to get a bunch of failed candidates (a) to stay on the island, (b) to build a massive temple, lighthouse and statue, and (c) to operate in the outside world as well. I mean, other than his winning personality.

As I was watching the episode I was feeling vaguely disappointed – the big mythology episode didn’t seem to answer all the questions that I had, or at least it explained what the answers were without actually answering them.

Afterwards though, I liked it more. The more I thought about it the more I wondered – what did I really expect? The episode was well written, very well acted (especially by Titus Welliver and Mark Pellegrino playing less assured, less experienced versions of their familiar characters) and had a suitable mythic tone to it. There’s enough information there to satisfy most answers even if it isn’t spelled out word for word.

I mean, you know what you get when you do spell out things word for word?

Midi-chlorians.

And nobody wants midi-chlorians.

Tags: Lost, Star Wars, TV-Archived

This entry was posted on May 12, 2010 at 10:33 am and is filed under Archive, TV-Archived. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.