THIS WEEK ON LOST: Sundown
Here’s the thing about this season of LOST. A lot of people are worried that the writers don’t have enough time to wrap everything up. I disrespectfully disagree. I think that they have too much fucking time on their hands. And instead of a tightly-knit prolonged orgasm of a season, we’re getting a lot of tip-teasing. Yeah, tip-teasing. There’s a lot of foot-dragging and every episode is backloaded towards the last ten minutes or so. This episode was no different, though I dug the fuck out of it.
Let’s start with the big picture. MiB is clearly being used to some extent, as a doppleganger for the Devil. El Diablo! Repent, or the Smoke Monster will eat you! Or at least, he’ll drag you. He does a lot of dragging. How does he actually kill these people? Just gun them into air, and let gravity do the rest? I’m not hatin’, that’s an awful way to go.
More specifically, last night he reminded me a lot of Milton’s Lucifer from Paradise Lost. Last night, Sayid is given a sword by Dogen and told to go meet MiB in the forest and stab his ass, and he gives him the specific instruction to not let MiB speak to him.
The whole thing wafts of allusions to the snake in the Garden of Eden. Sayid marches through the forest to meet with MiB. He walks through this Eden, because let’s face it, the Island possesses some seriously fucking impressive attributes, and meets up with Smokey. And just like Lucifer, Smokey is a shape-shifter. Naw, not a snake, but an equally impressive black cloud. And just like Lucifer, Smokey’s most powerful quality is his velvet-tongue. Lucifer is all like, yo, dude, eat that fucking apple. But he doesn’t do it by force, he does it by pouring honey into the ears of those around them.
Promising them things.
Just like MiB.
The MiB is arranging some sort of super-squad of douchebags from Oceanic 815 and homeless-looking people. And for all the aspersions he casts on Jacob for being manipulative, he’s just as much. MiB has gone from Sawyer to Sayid to everyone on the Island, and told them of this grand deception that have played a part in – you don’t have to stay here!, your choices were cast for you!, let us all go, now that Jacob is gone!
Throughout the entire time on the Island, he has conspired to kill Jacob. And he has done it all through intermediaries and violence. The fact that he even wears the form of Locke is a testament to his guile and persuasion. His velvet-tongue, his temptations and promises, like the Devil, get people to do his bidding.
Sayid, you can have your babe back!
Claire, you can have your kid back!
Promises, promises, promises.
In LA X, Sayid still wants to bang the hell out of Nadia. Unfortunately, she’s married to his brother. She’s married to him because Sayid was all emo and pushed her away in LA X. And when she’s like, dude, you’re still sweating me, why didn’t you get with this? Our kids would have been way cuter, have you seen my daughter? Her fucking eyebrows look like caterpillars, Sayid has the most disgusting response ever.
Because I don’t…deserve you.
Holy fucking groan! Did he just really say that? Jesus Christ. I turned to my friend Dave, who then barfed onto my crotch. After wiping up the vomit, he asked me, who is writing this? And I told him the Wachowski Brothers. But that was a lie. This season is aggravating, because they’re swinging these mallets instead of making their points. You don’t have to have someone say the words destiny to make your point, nor do you have to make Sayid outright say he doesn’t deserve her?
On the Island, Sayid succumbs to the succor of MiB’s sayings. He sets about killing Dogen and Lennon, which somehow, and I have no idea how, allows for Smokey to infiltrate the Temple of Doom. Really, a random Japanese guy who was a business man was the only thing keeping them out of there? I have to tip my cap to the writers for their handling of Sayid, because I didn’t see it coming. I always assumed that Sayid would be a virtuous dude. Apparently he’s destined to cause misery. OMFG.
The other miserable moment in this episode came when Dogen was telling Sayid about his life. Listen, writers. It’s the final season. We’ve never met this guy before. All he’s been since he was introduced is some contrived mysterious guy, whose entire personality is centered around floating half-baked sentences around to conjure up mystic bullshit. We don’t care about his kid, his dumb baseball, or that he’s an alcoholic.
And furthermore, we’re not going to care when Dogen dies! We barely know the guy! And not only that, what we do know of him, sucks! Thank God he’s fucking dead.
And what exactly was the purpose of the Temple? Does anyone know? It was clumsily introduced at the beginning of the season, and then what? They just sat there for five episodes, everyone in it dies, and now they’re leaving it. Pointless. A waste of time.
On LA X, Sayid once again kills Keamy. Jesus Christ, how creepy is Keamy? And the question about Free Will versus Choice is again raised. It’s erroneous to think that the shit poppin’ off on LA X is destiny. Hurley, Jack, and Locke are all living much nicer livers; albeit quiet and boring and mundane and a waste of my time. But Sayid? Sayid is back to killing again. Keamy, again. Some lives have changed, some are the same.
A strong theory is that LA X is some sort of dreamworld or reality conjured up by Jacob or MiB that gives the people of the Island the life they deserved. Coming at the beginning of this season, the writers kept dropping the word consequence. Consequence. Consequence, consequence, consequence. So perhaps Sayid is being punished in LA X for the fact that he just laid the boom down on everyone in the main reality.
Who knows?
It’s interesting though.
The last ten minutes of the episode were insane, and had me screaming at the top of my lungs. If you watch the show with me, you know I’m not not kidding. MiB busts into the Temple, and starts droppin’ heads. But even more bad ass? Ilana, Ben, and Lapidus roll up! When they showed up, I was like, OH FUCK, THE JUSTICE LEAGUE IS HERE! Lapidus is obviously Superman, Ilana being the Amazonian beauty she is stands in for Wonder Woman, and Ben is Batman. Just like our boy Wayne, he’s got a million ways out of everything. They were like a supergroup ready to lay the smack down on Smokey. Or at least save whoever wanted to come with them.
Some shit is up with Ilana, and I’m glad they’re not done with her character. When Jacob visited her in The Incident, he spoke to her as though she knew who he was, so she’s got some inside knowledge. Maybe she subscribes to Deities Weekly, and has been writing scholarly articles or some shit. I have no idea. She’s special.
At the end of the episode, the battle lines are drawn. MiB has conjured himself up a legitimate fucking posse. And they roll out in slow-motion, which every single posse should do at one point. I’m not certain where they’re going, but they are rocking out en masse, and they intend on leaving the Island. MiB has promised them all riches and excess freedom. Save for the fact that he’s done it down the barrel of a gun. Come with me and be free, or die. On the other side? There’s Jacob and his crew! Save for uh, the fact that Jacob is dead.
The obvious confrontation is between the philosophies of Jacob and MiB. Do either of them really offer Free Will? I’m not really sure. MiB has propelled people through Force, which fits nicely into people’s comparisons to him with Hobbes. And yeah, Smokey sure looks like a Leviathan, doesn’t he? And Jacob presents with them choices or opportunities. Like our philosopher Locke, not the crippled one, he believes in the human spirit. He doesn’t offer a direct hand, and it is his distanced approach that MiB has exploited as lack of caring, disregard, apathy, cruelness.
In the end, maybe they’re both just exploiting everyone on the Island in some deistic chess match. They are all pieces in a debate over the virtues of humanity. Is Jacob really offering free choice, if he goes to visit these people? Or, as MiB says, does that affect their entire lives, leading them there? And conversely, MiB isn’t offering anyone freedom or choice. In fact, he’s exploiting the very faults he enumerates in the Incident, their greed, their destruction, their consumption, to achieve his release. Who the fuck knows.
This was really long, I’m sorry. I’ll see you next week.