The episode promised so much, but for once LOST didn't deliver. That doesn't mean it was bad, it just disappointed a little bit. And I kept screaming (mentally), "WHAT IS HIS NAME?" (or her's for that matter) I guess it doesn't matter.
We begin with a pregnant woman, who we come to find out is Claudia, floating just off the shore of the Island; we'll also learn later that she was shipwrecked. She makes it to shore, then to a creek where she's found by a nameless woman, who takes her to a cave. Claudia asks (speaking Spanish?) where her other people are, but she has none. She refuses to answer any more questions (each question will just lead to another). When the baby is born, she takes it away and doesn't let Claudia see it. Claudia declares that it's name is Jacob. Then she goes into labor pains again and another baby pops out. She only picked one name, and perhaps he never got one at all? Claudia asks to see the babies, but instead she gets beaten to death with a stone.
MiB kid finds a box on the shore which is a backgammon game. He "just knows" how to play and Jacob joins him, taking the white side. MiB says they can't tell mother, because she'll take it away. Jacob returns to the cave, where his mother is working on a tapestry. She asks what they were doing and he gives a non-answer. She asks if she loves him, and when he answers affirmatively, she tells him to tell the truth, so he fesses up to the game.
Mother goes down to the beach and sits with MiB. She explains that Jacob doesn't know how to lie, but that MiB is different and special. Of course he can keep the game, which she claims to have left for him. She also says that there is nowhere else other than the Island (in response to his ideas about alternate origins for the game), and explains that she came from her mother, who is now dead. But dead is something that MiB is not going to have to worry about.
Later, Jacob and MiB hunt boar, but the boar is abruptly killed by someone else. Crouching behind a bush, they see three Viking-like hunters who've gotten it first. They run back to Mother, who says that those men don't belong on the Island. They are here for a reason, and it's not time to fill the boys in on just what that reason is yet. But they both insist, so she blindfolds them and takes them on a hike. Along the way, she explains that men come--they fight, destroy, corrupt, and it always ends the same--pretty much verboten what MiB tells Jacob in "The Incident" (although she insists these visitors come from elsewhere on the Island). They arrive at a stream that runs through a cave. Inside that cave is a glowing, golden light, which she describes as the warmest, brightest light possible. No one can be allowed to find it, because while there's a little of the light inside everyone, they'll never be satisfied with what they have and try to get more. They can't take the light, but they could destroy it, and if it goes out on the Island, it goes out everywhere. Mother says that she is its protector, but she can't do the job forever and one of them will have to take over. MiB in particular seems dazzled staring into the light.
MiB and Jacob play backgammon again. Jacob makes an illegal move, and gripes about how MiB made the rules. MiB says that someday Jacob can make his own game and set his own rules which everyone else will have to play by (eating those words now, huh Smokey?) Then MiB sees Claudia, and Jacob cannot. He follows Claudia into the jungle, and she explains that Jacob cannot see her because she is dead. She leads him to the shore where she shows him her people's camp. Thirteen years ago they were shipwrecked, and Claudia came with them from across the sea--where MiB is from.
MiB wakes Jacob in the middle of the night and wants him to accompany him. Jacob is hesitant, and eventually ends up jumping him in the jungle to stop him. Their mother breaks it up (saying that she's made it so that they can never hurt each other), but MiB insists that he wants to go home and Mother insists that he can't. He begs Jacob to come, but he refuses, and MiB insists that someday, he will prove that he can leave.
Later, Mother sits with Jacob on the beach, and says that she knows MiB will not come back. She cops to killing Claudia, but still insists that those people are bad and that Jacob needs to stay good. Jacob asks why Mother loved MiB more than him? She claims to love them in different ways, and Jacob agrees to stay.
Jacob is now working on the tapestry as well, but leaves to go play backgammon with his brother. MiB asks why he watches the people, and Jacob says that he wants to know if Mother is right about them--they don't seem that bad to him. MiB scoffs that it's easy for him to say that, but he lives amongst them, and they're greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy, and selfish. Jacob asks why he stays with them, and MiB matter-of-factly says that they are a means to an end--leaving the Island.
MiB takes his dagger and throws it; it sticks to a well. They've found the electromagnetism, and have built wells at all the locations they can, and will use them to find a way off of the Island. MiB asks Jacob to come with him, but Jacob wants to stay with Mother. MiB asks about what will happen when she dies, but Jacob seems to think that she won't, and I got the sense that he has no conception of death, but I could be reading too much naiveté into his delivery. Jacob adds that the Island is home.
Mother knows that Jacob visits his brother, and asks what they talked about. She goes down to the well herself, where MiB is at work. He explains that he has been searching for the golden light, but couldn't find it so he found a way around. He's currently building what we'll come to know as the frozen donkey wheel to channel the water and the light, and sure enough, the light shines through when he removes rock walling it off. He and the smart people he knows have figured out how a scheme to leave. Mother asks how he knows all this, and he scoffs that he's special. They have a hug-it-out goodbye scene, but Mother says "I'm sorry" and thrusts him into the wall.
She returns to the cave, telling Jacob that "It's time" and leading him back to the golden light cave. She says it's his to protect, and that it is life, death, and rebirth, the very heart of the Island. She says he can never go down there, as it would result in a fate worse than death. She pulls out the wine flask he know, and invites Jacob to drink and accept the job for as long as he can, then find his own replacement. He's very hesitant, though, as he knows that she wanted MiB to take the role all along. Mother claims that she was wrong, she sees that now, but Jacob doesn't really have a choice. He drinks, and Mother declares "You and I are the same now".
MiB wakes up above ground to find out that the well is covered and that everything else is destroyed. He sees a pillar of black smoke and finds that the entire village has been torched and that all of its inhabitants are dead. He finds the backgammon game and holds it to his forehead in agony.
Jacob and Mother part, with Mother warning him to be careful. She returns to the cave, where the tapestry is destroyed/stolen and everything is in disarray. She finds the backgammon game and its corresponding stones, then is stabbed from behind by MiB. As she dies, he asks why she wouldn't let him leave. The answer: "I love you", followed by "Thank you".
Jacob appears at the mouth of the cave and administers a beatdown upon MiB. He proceeds to drag him to the lightcave, which MiB is shocked that Jacob was shown. It's angry Jacob, and he says "You want to leave? Then leave", and pushes him into the stream. MiB finally reaches his the light that he's coveted, but he dissipates as he does, emerging shortly thereafter as the smoke Monster.
Jacob finds his body downstream and is sad. He carries it back to the cave--our cave, the cave Jack was led to by MiB way back in "White Rabbit". He buries both MiB and Mother there, putting the white and black stones in a pouch in MiB's hand in remembrance of the game he loved so much. So there's a mystery answered.
Random disjointed thoughts:
* As I said, I was a little disappointed in the episode. It pains me to say that, because it doesn't do justice to the wonderful story that Damon and Carlton have laid out for us over the years, and because it's their story to tell. But even in the hour and a half between the end of the episode and writing this, I've warmed to it significantly.
The major complaint is that I would have loved to see more of the Island's history--who came along to build a statue to Taweret and why Jacob took up residence there, how the natives came to seemingly worship the Monster, and how MiB began to function as the Monster and the choices he made about his path. And what his name was.
In the end, this episode reminds me of "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"--one for which extraordinary expectations were built up, and one that potentially could have been cooler, but also one that will stand the test of time as a good episode that delivered needed information to the audience, if in a little more of a workman-like fashion than some would have liked.
* It's nice to see where Jacob got his love for weaving.
* We now know that the kid who haunts MiB is in fact the young Jacob, and his flaunting about the rules makes all the more sense when we see that it was MiB who was a stickler for the rules.
* Is the light cave where Jacob had his people build the Temple? If not, will someone stumble upon it in the remaining two episodes?
* It is an interesting commentary on human nature that Jacob, looking at humans from afar, found them to be good, but MiB, living amongst them, found them to be evil. Your own view on human nature will color which part you agree with and why. When you step back and look at the balance of what humanity has done, do you see good despite all of the horrible things people do to each other? Or do you see our achievements as a species as being forever tainted by the manner in which they came into being?
And that is another important point to defuse a criticism that may be leveled against the episode. Some will certainly find the description of the light as light, death, and rebirth as shallow and not worth protecting an Island over. But that kind of milquetoast generality is really necessary in order to avoid offending anyone. The show could choose to take a certain religious, philosophical, or political viewpoint to define good and evil, and we all might like it to take ours. But it would be a path to offending many. In the end, the safe thing to do is to side with humanity (with reservations) and speak in the language of the most basic of shared human experience.
* In the end, MiB really is his mother's son, despite them coming into conflict. He is the one who will kill and lie to serve his larger agenda. The one trait that Jacob and Mother share is a desire to protect the Island rather than leave it. Everything else about her is mirrored by MiB, and it is no wonder that she favored him. One of the few times MiB wasn't lying was when he told Kate that he had a messed-up mother.
* Jacob, because of his obedient nature, never really had a choice about whether to go with MiB, whether to accept the role of Island protector, and the like (or, depending on your perspective, he was too cowardly/shallow/scared/etc. to make that choice for himself). In any event, the shotgun nature of his status as Island demigod helps to explain why he values free will.
* Finally, some people will doubtlessly complain that the episode did nothing to present MiB as fundamentally evil, and Jacob as good. I agree to the extent that we did not see the actions of the two after the creation of the Monster in order to get a sense for how their rivalry unfolded. However, to the extent that there is no fundamental evil infused into MiB from birth, I think this is a good thing.
Even if one feels that MiB was wronged by Jacob, that only justifies retaliation against Jacob--even if Jacob or Mother has put rules in place that prevent him from doing that. It is not morally acceptable to draw innocents into the conflict and dispose of them as you please (be it the Pilot, Eko, Claire, Sun, Jin, Sayid, or anyone else whose blood is on the Monster's hands).
By not making him evil by nature (sure, he lies to his mother, but Jacob's refusal to do so makes him the exception to most of humanity), we are left with no option but to conclude that MiB chose to become evil. He made the decision to pursue his quest to leave the Island or escape his ethereal nature at all costs. And so the show sides with Jacob again--you always have a choice. This is a more powerful story than the alternative, and my biggest regret about "Across the Sea" is that we didn't get a chance to see MiB's decision tree from the time he became the Monster.
