Matching last week's stupendous Locke episode would have been difficult, but this week's Jack episode had a lot of fans, especially among those who care much about Jack's ruminations about fatherhood. I am not in that group, so I won't discuss the amazing (!) revelation (!!) about Sideways Jack in this episode; you're welcome to do so below. I'm more interested in what's going on with Hurley and Jacob (and their interactions with Jack) -- and even with Claire and UnLocke (and Jin ... and Justin.)
I've decided that this Intro bloc should have a link to the three other discussions that I (somewhat) follow on the topic: at the Onion's analytical "AV Club" (which has excellent comments), the effusive Entertainment Weekly site, and the Bored Duo (plus the damn good Chadwick Matlin) at Slate (which is worth visiting for the "Previously on Lost" video feature.)
If you head to any of them, or after the jump, please bear in mind that there are:
SPOILERS BELOW
And verily I say again:
SPOILERS BELOW
I've already suggested that one big theme of this season seems to be that "Lying Has Bad Consequences." I continue to think that Ben's ass-covering lie to Ilana about Smokey having been the one to kill Jacob will lead to numerous deaths because Ilana will take action believing that Smokey "broke the rules." Now it appears that Jin's ass-saving lie about Claire's baby being with the Temple others will lead (or "has already led," if one can believe Jacob, which, as I note below, I strongly believe that one can't) to some sort of massacre there. Claire against the Temple? Do those seem like fair odds? Well, having Smokey on her side may change things. I foresee the Temple's waters getting murkier -- and perhaps dyed red.
By the way -- count me among those who liked Emilie de Ravin's Claire's very different remake of Mira Furlan's Rousseau character. A direct homage would have been too much. De Ravin showed us what nice gentle Claire, to whom we were fortuitously reintroduced on opening night of the season, would be like as a crazed killer. She's still mostly nice! The problem I had with her actions were this: I can believe that an ax to the thorax would kill Justin immediately, and I can believe that such a blow would not be very bloody, but I have a hard time believing both things at the same time (and I'm not inclined to find out if it's true.) I will give Claire Line of the Week honors for "If there's one thing that'll kill you around here it's infection." Ho, ho, ho. Indeed -- even if by proxy.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention this: Can we now conclude, from the fact that Claire was last seen with Christian Shepherd and now considers him her friend, that the Vision of Christian Shepherd is Smokey? No, I suggest that we cannot. Those who believe this theory should have to explain why Christian Shepherd was able to make it off the island to tell Michael Dawson that "he could go now" in the explosion in the last episode of Season 4. Beyond that, there's the question of how VoCS was able to make it to Jack's hospital. I think that the most likely theories are that (1) Both Jacob and Smokey have spent time as Christian Shepherd, (2) some other force -- perhaps the Island itself, perhaps the Young Blonde Boy from the previous episode, and perhaps I'm being redundant there -- is appearing as Christian Shepherd, (3) perhaps the ship was within the range of the island where Smokey could reach -- but c'mon, and (4) it's either Jacob or Smokey -- and either way I think that it doesn't make sense.
My fear is that they're going to make Christian = Smokey and just not explain how he got onto the freighter to bid Michael "Happy Travels."
On to Jacob: he is such a liar. I've wondered since the beginning why they chose an actor, Mark Pellegrino, who -- to put it bluntly -- does not look like a nice guy. (My judgment may be colored by his role on Dexter as an abusive ex-husband, but I don't think so. It's in the eyes.) Jacob looks most natural, to me, when looking grim. Perhaps others don't share this perception -- and perhaps you'll say so! -- but if I'm right then one has to wonder what they were trying to convey in this choice of casting.
Jacob's being a liar has several implications. First, a lot of what UnLocke says about Jacob -- including the spiel to Ben that gets him to kill Jacob in the Season 5 finale -- appears to be true. The people on the island don't seem to matter much to him individually, but only as chess pieces in his game against UnLocke. Second, if Jacob is a liar, how far back to the lies go? It seems to be that they may include his last words (or nearly so, I'm not looking it up) to Ben: "you have a choice." Maybe Ben didn't have a choice -- and hasn't for some time. Third, it occurs to me, as mentioned above, that he may be lying about the massacre at the Temple already having taken place. His purpose is to prevent Jack and Hurley from warning the others (or, in this case, literally "warning the Others"), in time to prevent what perhaps has to take place.
By the way, that reminds me to digress: who among our fearless crew is left at the Temple right now? Sawyer is gone, Jin is coming back with Claire, Kate is trying to come back for Claire, and we don't know if any others like Sun, Ilana, and Lapidus have yet made it there. The only people that we know are there are Miles (who may enjoy an early warning system through the Network of the Dead) and Sayid (who may be saved by his having been "infected.")
OK, here's the fourth implication about Jacob, which I don't yet see bandied around the Web much: I think that Jacob is flat out lying about why he brought Jack and Hurley to the Lighthouse to begin with. Was it to shine a beacon so that someone coming to the island (perhaps Widmore, if Jacob is pissed off at Ben for killing him -- if it was a choice?) No, I don't think so. Nor do I think was it so that Jack could engage in his journey of self-discovery. Arguably, it could have been just as an excuse to get the pair of heroes out of the Temple pre-massacre, but surely Jacob could have come up with a plan that didn't involve magic spy-mirror smashing. (By the way: my guess is that Jacob could no longer use the mirror, being dead and all, and wanted to make sure that no one else could either.)
No, I think that it was because Jacob was pretty sure that Jack would fly off the handle and break the mirror (with, EW notes, an amber spyglass, in a nod to Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy) so that he could prevent someone from finding the island. Then all he told Hurley, to stay in Hurley's good graces? That's just blather from a far more experienced con man than Sawyer. Hurley, I suspect, is finally going to figure this out. How will Jacob get him to do his bidding then? Maybe the same way that Keamy lobbied Ben?
We are not, I think, to equate Jacob with "good" and Smokey with "bad," and the producers are probably going to hit us over the head with that a few more times to make sure that we get it. What dichotomy can we make about them, if not that? I keep coming back to the one with which I started off this diary series after writing about Episode 1, which I'll now recast as "Warden" and "Prisoner." It's an interesting dynamic -- one should not necessarily be sympathetic to either warden or prisoner when they conflict; you need a lot more information to know what to think. And that, I think, is where we are. It does mean that there is more reason than we might think to be sympathetic to UnLocke, who might well be a prisoner -- perhaps innocent -- who simply will do anything to escape.
But the big advance in the episode so far as the Great Mystery is concerned had to be seeing the lighthouse mirrors (and what they can do) themselves, complete with the roster of characters with "the numbers" attached. People seem to think that the Lighthouse was Jacob's and the Cave was UnLocke's. (Light and dark -- get it?) The key would probably be seeing whether anyone who died after Jacob but before that episode took place had their name crossed out -- which Jacob (presumably, if he can't influence physical reality by touch) could not have done. So, who's gotten killed recently and do we know their last names? Then we have to ask: is their name crossed out? If so, then presumably it would have been done by UnLocke, not Jacob. Anyone have any recently dead names -- remember, Actual Locke was killed a while ago -- to explore?
Hurley has been rightly described this week (for example by Chadwick Matlin of Slate) for serving as a kind of Greek Chorus representing the views of fans. But Hurley is no idiot. I tend to agree that the end of the story may involve a face-off between Jack and Sawyer (with Sayid and whichever Kwon survives the massacre or later tribulations) perhaps making the game a 2x2 match. But the conflict that I'm waiting for, which is in many ways the most interesting to me, is the one between Hurley and Jacob, because I don't think that Hurley is going to sit still for Jacob's lying to him forever.
After all: Lying Has Bad Consequences. Maybe even for gods.
PREVIOUSLY ON LOST FRIDAY NIGHT DISCUSSION
Episodes #1, #2, and #3!