Ok, ok, I’m a little bit late with this finale review. Just a little. OK, like six or seven weeks late. But who’s counting? By now the dust has cleared, the new and improved theories have been stitched into the warps and wefts of the interwebs, and the last ever Lost finale cliffhanger is a memory. There’s just one thing left to add. And so, with no further ado, I present, at long last, Fishbiscuit’s Review of “The Incident”.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Expectations are always sky high for a Lost finale. We expect them to enlighten and clarify, even though we know by now that all they ever do is discombobulate and confuzzle. Like many Lost fans, I’ve come to the rueful conclusion that the puzzle will never fit exactly right, will never look the way I imagined it would. But I still want to try and figure out what it will look like! I’ve decided that, like any other existentialist-ish dilemma, the best way to approach it is from the side. Peripherally, not directly. And my operating theory is this: The answer will never make ANY sense.
After all these years of wandering in the forest of fantasy, it’s a foregone conclusion that Faith is going to win out over Science in the end. Which means, right off the bat, there’s no way this will ever make sense. So that takes a lot of the pressure off, doesn’t it?
Lost dropped a few of its finale traditions this year. The story actually ended ON the Island, something it hasn’t done since Season One.
But overall, tradition was upheld. Including recent traditions, like Hurley running a VW Rescue Bus service.
Or Ben going Psycho with Mr. Pointy.
For the third straight finale, Locke was in the box.
Kate was still mopping up Jack’s blood.
Juliet received the dubious honor of not only speaking the Official Lost Finale Slogan, but illustrating it as well. It seems like no matter how hard people try to Live Together, everyone still pretty much ends up Dying Alone.
Of course the most hallowed of Finale Traditions was observed.
Important stuff blew up!
This year they went atomic, and really the outcome is very much up in the air. Thermonuclear weapons of the Jughead variety were quite capable of decimating small islands.
That’s probably not what happened here, since Jack only dropped in a piddly thermonuclear trigger warhead, but there was still a lot of nostalgia, a lot of looking back. From the reappearance of Charlie’s Driveshaft ring,
to Ben and Locke reminiscing over mementos from their first date,
to the return of the unsinkable Vincent,
from Kate’s New Kids on the Block time capsule lunchbox,
to yet another reminder that Jack knows how to count to five,
there were shout outs and callbacks and handshakes with past seasons riddled throughout the episode. Just like Alice returned from her adventures Through the Looking Glass to the same sitting room she started out in, it feels like Lost has begun to circle around an ending that is going to take us right back where we started.
“If you want to know the end, look at the beginning”
- African Proverb
That seemed like the working premise to me, a theme split between the two halves of the episode.
Wherein the faith based mad scientist was on the move again, this time racing as hard as he could to get back to the future he could have had if he’d never gotten on that goddamn plane in the first place. And…
Which sucked us back through the vortex of time to Island antiquity, back to when the inscrutable Saint Jacob was weaving the cloth of history down deep in the Shadow of the Statue.
This was Jacob’s Coming Out party. All these years, watching men tremble at the mere mention of his name, we’ve wondered about him. Who is this omnipotent potentate?
Well, first off, he looks exactly like, but clearly isn’t, Paul, Rita’s creepy ex-husband who Dexter beaned with the frying pan.
(I hate when I get distracted like that.)
Turns out Jacob is a blond. An excellent fisherman.
A patient craftsman. A world traveler. And a linguist.
In the Bible, Jacob was a famous Twin. His elder twin brother, Esau, struggled and wrestled with him even while they were still trapped in their mother’s womb. They’re the ancient poster boys for the kind of brotherly strife we’re very familiar with on Lost.
Esau was a “cunning hunter, a man of the field”,
while Jacob was a “plain man, dwelling among the tents.” They were never friends, though they eventually made a wary truce, and it’s easy to see why they never got along. God had already played favorites.
“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” the LORD says. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
– (Malachi 1:2-3)
We have yet to learn what event created the murderous stalemate between Blackshirt and Whiteshirt, but the bitterness between the Biblical Jacob and Esau was due to an ugly shared scar. When they were fifteen, Jacob had tricked Esau, who was hungrier than he was smart, to trade away his birthright for a bowl of stew. Then, years later, when their father Isaac was dying, Jacob tricked Isaac into blessing him as his firstborn, by wearing an animal skin and pretending to be his hairy brother. In the Bible, Jacob was known as a great and successful conniver. A deceiver.
But in this story, it doesn’t feel like Jacob has been the one pretending. There were many hints and clues that the No Name Man in Black, who we can call Esau for convenience sake, was the one who has been shifting shapes all this time. Was it Esau who appeared to Eko as Yemi before destroying him? Was Alex really Esau when she ordered Ben to obey Locke? Was it Esau that had been in the cabin, the one that Ilana burned in a kind of exorcism when she realized Jacob had not been there for a very long time?
Has Esau been appearing as Christian? The way he now appears as Locke?
What were we to make of the black and white tunics?
Is this like a private grudge match or are they planning to take this global?
With all the transmogrification going on lately, is it possible we’re headed for an ending that looks something like this?
Is it a black and white morality play, like it once seemed Locke was hinting at?
If so, is Jacob the Good Guy? He did have a saintly glow and he went willingly to his slaughter, almost like Aslan, like Christ.
With Locke as his mouthpiece, Blackshirt Brother was ominous when he spoke to Richard about “taking care” of the rest of the Ajira 315 gang, and brutal in the way he shoved gentle Jacob into the firepit. If he’s been appearing as the Smoke Monster, as it now seems likely he was, is it safe to say then that No Name Guy is:
This is not a blood sport; it’s more like an existentialist chess match. There are Rules.
As Ben could not kill Widmore, neither can Esau kill Jacob…unless he finds The Loophole, in this case a Proxy Killer to do the dirty deed. As he said, he had to go through a lot to get there. First he had to grow little Ben Linus up into a skeevy little goblin. Then he had to get crazy John Locke involved in all kinds of head games with him. When Ben left the Island, Esau had to scheme a way for Locke to get himself murdered – by Ben, of course – and then carted back, all so Esau could impersonate Locke before anyone found out Locke’s corpse was still in the box! Jacob did have a clever defense mechanism in place. By only agreeing to see one person at a time, he knew that Esau, as a single person, would never be able to kill him. But he hadn’t counted on the diabolical cleverness or the eternal patience of his Bad Twin brother.
In this picture from Jacob’s Tapestry, we see nine figures (like the nine people Jacob visited in the episode flashbacks) arrayed as if in battle, controlled by the outstretched hands of the Sun God, while at either end two figures sit, on thrones, like kings. A war is coming, as we’ve been told and told. But how can there be a war if one of the kings is already dead?
Is it even possible for Ben to kill one such as Jacob? It’s remarkable how much the above picture resembles the famous Rembrandt, of Jacob fighting with the Angel. Is it possible that Jacob is not dead at all, but merely transformed, just passaging another stage of some eternal struggle?
What happens if Jacob is dead? What happens to the Tapestry he was weaving? Jacob not only weaves the cloth but he spins the thread. Jacob keeps bringing people to the Island, where as we learn they do nothing but destroy and corrupt. But Jacob does more than just lure people to the Island, he goes straight out and spins them into the kind of thread he’s looking for to complete his great masterpiece.
In his dying moment, Jacob pleads with Ben to use his Free Will. But is Jacob really the best spokesman for that cause? After all, for almost his whole life, poor Ben had sublimated his own Free Will to Jacob and his incessant decrees and commands and his lists.
You can see why Jacob advocating for Free Will enraged Ben. Like Jacob in the Bible, this Jacob is very expert at manipulating people into doing his will. Biblical Jacob was known for his Covenants, which is another word for contract or promise. We saw Jacob make contracts with little Kate
and little Sawyer,
getting both of them to make promises they’ll never be able to keep. He uses Death to force his will into the life of Sayid
and he uses the touch of Life to capture Locke.
Jacob, who robbed his brother of his Blessing, blesses Jin and Sun’s marriage, another promise, contract, covenant.
He tells Hurley that he is also blessed. And just to prove it, he gives him a free guitar.
Last but not least, he reminds Jack that if you really want a candy bar,
you could at least try to jiggle the machine before you storm off to do something rash.
What does it mean to receive the touch of Jacob? Is it a blessing or a curse? And, for all the lip service he gives to Free Will, how much is that part of Jacob’s shell game? The clue here, as to Jacob’s true agenda, might just be in his chosen symbolic icon: the spinning wheel. Historically, the spinning wheel is symbolic of the famous man of peace, Mahatma Gandhi.
“I am like God wanted me and I do as he advises me to do. Let him do with me as he pleases. If he wants to he may kill me. I believe that I do as he orders.”
-Ghandhi
Mythologically, it was Penelope who spun and wove, unmaking each night the weaving of the day before, to keep her 108 suitors at bay while her Desmond-ysseus was at sea.
But that symbolism seems all wrong for Jacob. First of all, he’s a dude, and secondly, he’s not unbuilding anything. He’s moving in the direction of Progress. He’s got a plan and he’s carrying it out. Jacob’s spinning wheel is more like that of the godly Greek sisterhood known as The Fates.
Specifically, Jacob is analogous to Clotho, the one on the left, the one who spun the thread of human life and, as such, was responsible for the magical mystery of Birth. So here we have Jacob, spinning like Clotho, creating the fates of human lives, all in the shadow of the statue of Tawaret, another ancient goddess of…you guessed it… Birth!
It seems to me that most Lost reviewers can’t resist playing symbolic tic tac toe. In Jeff Jensen’s finale review alone, he managed to compare Juliet to not only Tawaret, but Isis, Nausicaa, Oedipus’s mommy, the Holy Mother of God … oh, and Stephen King’s Carrie, too! Basically there’s almost no god, goddess or fictional archetype that can’t be swapped into this story to suit almost any interpretation. It’s childsplay.
But I have a harder time making these connections. I mean, this is how Tawaret was portrayed by Egyptian artists:
You may be wondering, like I am, what happened to the stumpy legs, the big belly and the saggy boobs. Hippo head aside, many thought, with no small justification, that the statue more closely resembled Sobek, the god of Chaos.
TPTB have apparently confirmed for all the world that the statue is indeed meant to represent Tawaret, so all we can do is go with that. Think of it as a kind of Hollywood version of a fertility goddess. Hollywood, where even a pregnant hippo can be tall and tan and lean and lovely. As a matter of fact, this fertility goddess was built kind of like a certain fertility doctor we know, the one whose heartrending death transcended the silliness of the quadrangle storyline that she was so unfortunately trapped in this year.
The character machinations of the quadrangle were so downright dumb in this episode, it’s embarrassing to even try and remember them.
Juliet jumps off the sub to save “all those people” but then they run into Jack who needs to bleach Kate out of his memory bank so he’s going to blow up the Island and hope that puts him back to never knowing her, which prompts Juliet to change her motivation completely and jump on Jack’s bandwagon because she also agrees she wishes she could go back to never having known Sawyer! Seriously!
I mean, words fail me, but… Seriously??? This is the best they could come up with for character motivations for four grown adults?
Maybe that’s why the players in this year’s triangle were all featured in flashback as immature children. We saw that Kate was getting into trouble with Tom long before she managed to help him get dead.
We saw that Sawyer never would have written his vendetta letter without Jacob’s helpful assistance.
Both Sawyer and Kate were touched by Jacob. Very tellingly, Juliet was not. Juliet learned a different lesson. When her parents gave her and her sister the divorce “talk” they managed to frame the whole thing in very fated tones. Some loves aren’t meant to be. Just because Juliet didn’t want to accept it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Pinkshirt Juliet’s worst nightmare had come true and Redshirt Juliet was cutting Sawyer loose. Why? Well, it seems the whole plot hinged on Sawyer accidentally choosing a most inopportune time to give Kate this one sad, longing Look.
Faced with the all-too-revealing question of who he’d most wish to spend Forever with, Sawyer looked at Kate when he shoulda looked at Juliet. And that, as they say, was that.
Juliet was all charged up and ready to help Jack drop some Go Away Bombs. Looks on Lost are important, especially between lovers and ex lovers and would be lovers, and as we all know, finale Looks are the best kind, the kind that can send message board ship wars into hyperdrive. Even if they’re almost always misinterpreted.
As Jack dropped the bomb, our Season Five Quad Kids had their very own Finale Look.
What did this Look mean? Was it Goodbye?
With Sawyer and Juliet now separated by a death scene that had about a thousand times more feeling than their entire unbelievable relationship ever had, it’s hard to see how the Look meant anything other than farewell for this pair that was never meant to be.
But what about Kate and Jack?
Who the frack knows? Or cares? Sure, Jack wanted to destroy Kate’s memory forever and sure, he was fine with sending her ass back to jail and sure, he couldn’t be bothered to walk even a few steps to jiggle the candy machine before he blew up the Island. All of that is true. So, yes, Jack and Kate remain one of the most unappealing and uninspired couples in the history of tv romance, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good. All we can do is offer fervent blessings to Jacob and hope that the Quad Looks were a casting off of that entire knitting row, that we’re done, finally, with all such relationships that are not “meant to be”.
I know, I know, who am I kidding? There’s really nothing much else to be said about the silly Quad plot that mucked up the Jackisode half of the finale, except to note that there is a very loud and determined internet contingent that is unwilling to accept any possibility that Juliet, despite falling to the center of the earth and detonating a nuclear warhead, might in fact be dead. It’s true that Desmond survived a similar (?) kind of explosion in Season Three, landing naked in the middle of the jungle, none the worse for wear.
So I guess that might be a nice fantasy for Juliet’s horndog fanboys. I sympathize with those fans who’ve lost their favorite character, and Lord knows we could ill afford to lose another female from this Boys Only Club, but the clues for a living Juliet just don’t seem to be there.
It was Juliet, and only Juliet, who wasn’t touched by Jacob. Am I putting too much faith in one clue? Should I be thinking more like the geniuses who put together Bernard’s offer of tea (the fetus loves the folic acid!) and Juliet’s hand touching her stomach (or adjusting the gun sticking into her crotch), and concluded…
Yep! It’s a baby for Sawyer and Juliet in Season Six! She’s not dead. She’s going to be a mama!
Yo. There’s a limit to how far parsing clues will get you on Lost. You can use them to justify any wishful theory your heart desires, and at least for as long as the hiatus lasts, you can convince yourself that you’re the only one who truly gets it. And why not? It’s not as if actually reading the clues we’re given is all that helpful. It’s easy to get confused. For instance, did it mean anything that when Jack got clocked, it was a big red Toolbox that hit him?
I like to think so.
But then I thought the big car sized box Ilana’s boys were carrying was akin to the Ark of the Covenant. Who would have thought that guys carrying a dead body around a tropical island would want to make it ten times heavier, just for the hell of it?
Was that an icebox they had Locke in?
Clues can be tricky. Some of them may be inside jokes, but others, which might at first glance seem goofy, turn out to be quite meaningful. When Hurley painted a Sphinx as a Rehabilitative Art project, it wasn’t anything to scoff at.
Because here we are now, smothered in Egyptian imagery, unriddling the mystery of what lies in the shadow of the Four Toed Foot.
Candy bars named after Greek gods might have seemed frivolous,
but this passage on Jacob’s Tapestry forces us to speak Greek. Under a picture of tall masted sailing ships are these words:
Richard was seen building a ship in a bottle in the episode before the finale, “Follow the Leader”.
Jacob was seen awaiting the arrival of a very similar 19th century sailing vessel, another one of the many he has brought to the Island. There is a big beached boat marooned improbably on the interior of the Island, the slave ship Black Rock, out of Portsmouth, England.
Can we put two and two together here and conclude that Richard was the Captain of the Black Rock and that Jacob, after bringing him there, favored him and bestowed on him immortal life?
It sure seems possible.
What are we to make of all the Eyes we see on Lost? Jacob’s Tapestry is topped by the Eye of Horus, a symbol of godly protection being woven into history by He Who Protects Us All.
Although Ilana is a new character I seriously wish I didn’t have to care about, I couldn’t help noticing that the only thing left uncovered by her mummy makeup was her one Cyclopean eye.
What did Ilana look like before she was mummified? Is it significant that she maybe sees out of only one eye? Or is it a different eye analogy they were going for? Maybe a Third Eye kind of thing?
It’s so hard to say. In any case, it seems inevitable from what we have that Ilana has come to fight in The War on Jacob’s side. Is she a Good Guy, like Bram said, or the kind of Bad Guy who keeps saying she’s a Good Guy, like Frank hipped to?
Who will fight on the other side of The War? Not Bernard and Rose, I’m thinking.
These two were looking chill, and their Zenlike tranquility was so deep even death could not frighten them. Does this mean they are the carcasses found by Jack and Kate in the cave, the ones with the symbolic black and white rocks in their pockets, the mysterious Adam and Eve, the favorite message board guessing game for true Lost fanatics?
There’s no such thing as a straightforward clue on Lost, which is why so many of us are paranoid. It seems many fans jumped to the conclusion that the fish Jacob was seen cooking in the opening sequence was in fact an honest to God Red Herring, a trick clue designed to throw us off the trail.
But I don’t think so. First off, it’s not a Herring, which is a coldwater fish. It’s more like a Rockfish, or tropical perch, but it is a RED fish. Or yellowish anyway. Maybe it is another joke they’re playing on us, but wouldn’t that negate the entire mystical, enigmatic drama of Black and White Beachboys exchanging cryptic dialogue? That would be underhanded even for Lost. I think the fish is meant to represent instead the Ichthus, the symbol of Christ.
“Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish…The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
-Matthew 13:47-50
In its most primitive form, the Jesus Fish was portrayed by ancient Christians, as an eight spoked wheel, here marked with the Greek word for Ichthus.
It’s a symbol we’ve seen so very often on Lost, the recurring theme of the Dharmachakra, the great Wheel of Life and Death. It’s another one of those instances on Lost where unrelated cultures clash and find common ground, where things that have no relationship to one another – like say, Egyptian gods and Christian saints and Buddhist imagery – are synthesized into one great big unified theme. I think the Clue of all Clues in the episode was this one:
I don’t think it was Flannery O’Connor’s story that was being referenced. Or the inside joke that “Everything Rises” just as Locke is taking a dive. Or the dove with the arrow through its heart, though certainly that soon became Jacob’s fate.
I think the important point was just the title itself: “Everything That Rises Must Converge” The title is a reference to the philosophy of the fascinating Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
No one has ever tried harder to synthesize both Science and Faith than this man, who attempted to reconcile the scientific study of evolution with the orthodox teachings of Catholicism. It wasn’t easy and he risked condemnation from his Church by doing it, but he perservered. He believed in his philosophy that all evolution, by increasing the complexity of organisms, from cell to organism to planet to solar system and whole-universe, was resulting in a Unification of Consciousness that spiralled inevitably towards an irresistible point of perfect harmony, a condition he named the Omega Point.
“”Evolution is nothing but matter become conscious of itself.”
- Julian Huxley
We have seen many times on Lost this perpetual intermingling of cultures and faiths and languages and themes.
“‘Be not afraid, open, open wide to Christ the doors of the immense domains of culture, civilization, and progress.”
-John Paul II
Instead of splitting the world into Black and White halves that can never be joined,
perhaps Jacob represents the Omega Point, the force that is drawing humanity together towards a Supreme Consciousness. If so, then Bernard and Rose were probably right. It won’t matter whether anyone lives or dies, only that they find a way to finally attain the harmony and peace that Destiny has designed for them. Jacob draws people to the Island, where time and again they are destroyed and corrupted, but all this is just the upward converging progress of human consciousness, being drawn to the one and only endpoint, towards Omega.
There are many questions left hanging for next season. Was Jack’s great race after Destiny nothing more than him creating the very same Incident that had always happend, as Miles theorized, when nobody was paying attention to him?
Did whatever happened just happen all over again?
Will Sawyer be able to overcome his grief?
Will sexy Sayid survive?
Will Sun ever get a plot?
One thing that seems inevitable is that all clues are progressing towards WAR next season. But maybe that’s the ultimate red herring. Maybe we’re being thrown off by the idea that this is a story of blacks and whites, that must inevitably clash and create chaos.
Maybe that’s not it at all. Maybe the story isn’t circling around its own beginning. Maybe instead it’s circling around Omega. And everything that happens along the way is just … Progress.
“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”
-Anais Nin
46 Responses to “Approaching Omega – 5.16 and 5.17 “The Incident””
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Thank you, Fishbiscuit! I’m been ranting for weeks now to anyone who’ll listen how postively stoopid were the motivations of Kate, Jack & especially Juliet, but nobody does a logic-check with your same insightful precision! I can let it go now. I think.
“The character machinations of the quadrangle were so downright dumb in this episode, it’s embarrassing to even try and remember them. I mean, words fail me, but… Seriously??? This is the best they could come up with for character motivations for four grown adults?”
While not the pinnacle of the lost story, I don’t think the quadrangle stuff is as dumb as people make it out to be.
The last 3 years of these people’s lives have been absolute crap with getting shot at, friends dying, etc. The only bright spot in these people lives have been their special somebody. Now they each face losing each other any way, not matter what they did. So if I had a chance to reset it all? Frak yes.
Wow really great! Much funnier and more insightful than other reviews I’ve read.
Insightful at some points — especially the Omega idea.
You missed a very important clue on the tapestry — check it out on my blog.
I do get the feeling that Jack and Locke are the new Jacob-Mr. Loopy/Ben-Widmore. I’ve always figured the last scene of the show would have Jack and Locke talking on a beach and then that opening scene of the finale seems to kick that idea in motion. Wouldn’t it be crazy if that scene was reenacted by Jack and Locke? Of course I have also always seen it ending with a close up of Jack’s eye closing, once again reflecting the pilot opening. This way, we go out the way we came in. There’s also my theory that when we finally see the island from above, it will be shaped like a QUESTION MARK. ?=round part is the main island and the dot is the smaller Alcatraz like island.
Good review also.
Oh man, this is fantastic. Taking your time to do your write up and gather your thoughts REALLY worked out and produced one of the smartest, highest quality Lost “blogs” I’ve ever read.
Fun read, very interesting stuff with Jack with 3 eyes and Illyana as Cyclops and Illyana and Bram as candidates for Adam and Eve.
However, it’s so damn long I didn’t get to finish it, sorry haha
Fantastic job.
So much better than knee jerk reaction “blogs” reviews done the day after an episode. I’m a fan now.
I believe that Jack created the incident. And that Juliet always blew up Jugheads core. The Teller-Ulam fission bomb that was supposed to trigger Jugheads fusion may still made a big bang in 1977, but maybe the Swans ‘Energy-Pocket’ was able to freeze or absorb the explosion. Hence the ‘Tchernobyl-Wall’ in the hatch.
While I just rewatched 3:19 ‘The Brig’ in which Locke grabs Sawyer and asks him to kill Ben, I was surprised how much that foreshadowed ‘EsauLocke’ using Ben as a proxy killer two seasons later. And one episode later, in ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’, Locke goes gung-ho on Mikhail. That felt quite strange and out-of-character to me, too. After Locke got shot by Ben at the Dharma pit, he felt like the old John again.
Had anyone noticed the symbolism of Ilana and her team carrying this box, which had real John Lock body, in the manner the Levities carried the Ark of the Covenant in the time of the exodus. Its like whats in inside the box is something of great importance, the ark of the truth maybe.
Genesis 25:
Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!”
Then Esau sells his birthright in exchange for the stew. On Lost:
Jacob: Want some fish?
Esau: Thank you, I just ate.
A little inside joke?
I love Fishbiscuit! She understands the difference between being a fan and being a fanboy (er… girl).
What a refreshing and insightful review! And one that managed to describe defective plot devices and weaker storylines without the typical response of: “[insert least favorite character here] is useless, why oh why don’t they kill them off!” Makes it readable by all kinds of fans.
Well worth the wait Fishbiscuit!
If you are going to wait 7 weeks to write your review and circle your ideas around the concept of Chardin and the Omega point you probably should give a shout out to the writer’s and blogger’s who first brought the concept in relation to Lost into the bloggasphere; and that would be HEMA theorist Dr. Todd J. Hostager and Eye M Sick blogger Bigmouth. I think even Jensen made a reference to it, but if you want I more accurate and interesting relationship between Omega and Lost everyone should check out HEMA theory.
Well, other than that and your unfortunate need to sh$t on Jack and the slightly unbelievable motivations of certain characters (I don’t know about you, but one thing I have learned over my 40yrs on this earth is that people do stupid things for stupid reasons: so is the motivations of these Lost characters really that far fetched? I mean have you ever been in a relationship? Does all the motivations of your partner make sense? We all are crazy and when in Love… incomprehensibly stupid), I found your write up very interesting and insightful. One of your best. And the picture of Jacob and Essua on the beach with Locke and Jack’s head photo-shopped on to the formers bodies gave me a moment of pause. Could they really end Lost like that???
Thanks for your kind (?) words, neoloki, but I’m not sure why you think I should have credited those two guys, since I have no idea who either one of them is. I don’t read many Lost blogs, but I’m not surprised others came up with that connection. It was a pretty straightforward relationship to make from the prominently featured title.
As for the character motivations – sorry, can’t agree with you there. That was abysmal writing. Insultingly bad.
You know I would like to get a hold of the people who wrote the script for my marriage, because THAT was BAD writing!!!
Sorry, but I don’t think I buy your lack of knowledge of these other bloggers. But if you don’t know who they are you should check them out.
http://losthematheory.com/default.aspx
http://eyemsick.blogspot.com/
It is always helpful to get other opinions of those who are writing at a high level about a similar subject.
Maybe you will end up being more open minded.
Thank you! I love your reviews. This was worth the wait.
thank you so much for this.
Awesome as always.
Great Job! As usual, you point out things that I missed or never considered. It was well worth the wait. Thank You!
I’d like to echo Neoloki above. References should be compulsory. Doc Jensen, for one, has referenced your work on numerous occasions.
I really liked the breakdown of Jacob/Esau correlation. Nice little note by Spinflip above. In a strange way, that, for me, helps validate the Jacob/Esau theory.
Big misstep on the relationship/character motivation angle. Just because you would not act a certain way does not make it unbelievable when someone else does. More importantly, LOST is all about the people, their lives, their interactions, their experiences. I watch because I’ve grown to care about these people and what happens to them. That buy-in is absolutely necessary. Without that connection, LOST is just a confusing sci-fi story.
Doc Jensen referenced my work? Really? When?
Fishbiscuit,
Your recaps have been among the best I’ve read in the lost blogesphere. Always insightful, well thought, and put together. Good show.
Look, I’m always the first one to defend Jack (and there have been times over the past couple seasons when I have become quite frustrated with the Jack bashing, haha. But hey, your amazing recaps, your feelings, and there are time when he can act like quite the Dr. Jackass). However, I could not be more upset with Darlton with how they handled Jack (and then by extension Juliet) in this finale.
Honestly, they spend five seasons developing Jack. Have him take small steps in becoming less of a stubborn (and at times douche) of a leader, have him finally embrace letting things go, becoming a man of faith akin to Locke, heck, even having him tell off Kate earlier this season (‘You didn’t like the old me, Kate’) and then they throw so much of that development away in the finale….
I was okay at first with Jack wanting to detonate the bomb. Did it spit in the face of where they were (and where I still think they will) take this character. Yes. I really wanted to believe that Jack understood they all have a larger destiny ON the island. And that they are supposed to be there.
But I was okay at first with his attempts to rewrite history because it fit with the stubborness of his character. His inability to let go and make the right decision. He has always been about getting everyone off the island and saving everyone. And his arguments in the penultimate episode, ‘Follow The Leader,’ when he argued that everyone that they have lost will be alive and that Claire will be with Aaron… I was fine with that.
I was hoping in the finale that he would reach the hatch, look down and decide not to drop the bomb. The point being he would really begin to finally let go, allowing history to play out because he wants to discover what this detsiny is on the island. Why he had to come back. However, never did I ever think they would boil down Jack’s desire to erase the past three years because he could not make it work with Kate. What the hell writers.
It’s not just that he has little chemistry with Kate (I think it was Sepinwall who said that if this was Sawyer and Kate it could have been a little better as they had always had more chemistry) but I just was in shock that the writers, after all this time, expect us to believe that Jack thinks his destiny is Kate Austen. I don’t buy it. I just don’t buy it. Not after everything that have been through. There is so much more going on.
The love triangle (quadrangle, whatever) has always been the least successful and poorly written part of the show. LOST has done some incredible character work over five seasons. The evolution of Sawyer. Ben and Locke. Hell, Desmond is my favorite character and he wasn’t really developed until the Season 2 Finale. And it has been a pleasure to watch these characters grow and evolve. But this love quadrangle just has to stop.
I’ve always hated HEROES because I felt characters made choices to service the plot and not their characters. I never felt LOST had this problem mainly because they had well drawn out, multi-faceted characters. However in the finale, the choices made by Jack and Juliet rang so false to me.
On to Juliet, here we have a character who was so richly developed in Season 3; who’s want in the narrative was clearly drawn out: She wanted, more than ANYONE else, to get off this island and be with her sister. Obviously by Season 5 she found love with Sawyer and peace in staying on the island. But I felt it was so out of character for her to act the way she did in the finale. Willing to blow everything up because she ‘lost’ Sawyer. I really hoped that when we saw her flashback it would tie into everything we’ve come to know about the character. How perpetually screwed over her life has been for the past 7 years. And if they wanted to bring in her love for Sawyer, and his obvious desire for Kate, into this… terrific. There I would have been more invested. If I was given the glimmer of that broken woman who cried to Ben that she just wanted to go home to be with her sister. A reminder that there were always deeper problems with her.
But no, nothing. She loved Sawyer. She thinks she lost him. Time to go BOOM.
At the end of the day I couldn’t believe how infentile it all was. They were playing around with the lives of hundreds. And what it came down to was the fact that they couldn’t work out their love life? Really? Sawyer even said, “You want her, Doc? She’s right over there.” But no, gotta blow up the bomb.
I really hope Miles is right. I hope Jack (and Juliet) did cause the incident. I really hope next season Jack finally gets it. That it’s time to let go of Kate (we all know she’s going to end up with Sawyer) and embrace his larger role in thie end game on the island, whatever that may be. And if they did cause the incident and get flashed to another time on the island, whenever that may be, then I think that will be enough for Jack to finally do so. Time to let go Jack. Destiny found.
What it really came down to is they were not supposed to be in 1977. They all knew it and this was the one chance to correct the timeline. I think we are putting too much emphasis on Jack and Sawyer’s talk before they beat the hell out of each other. Yes, love was one motivation but after watching five seasons of these characters we know it isn’t the only motivation.
My prediction for Kate, Sawyer and Jack is none of them end up with each other and kate gets killed in the season premiere.
Well, I can always dream!
Thank you! Thank you for saying what I’ve said since they first showed Sawyer and Juliet as a couple. WHAT? Completely unbelievable, I was never sold on it. It was a good way to try and grow Sawyer as a character but Juliet always seemed like a cold fish to me and a very unlikely match for him (blech). I couldn’t care less about the whole who ends up with Kate, etc.. deal except for how it affects the rest of the story and the overall big picture. And you’re 100% correct in that the quadrangle, skater, whatever, situation rang false in the last episodes.
Gotta agree with Neo and and Hawk although i agree jensen never referenced you. I just think you are filled with a little too much anger. you blatently attack numerous other bloggers while at the same time claiming not to read many blogs. Meanwhile you make simple mistakes like draft shaft ring, its dexter stratton, (something i would not expect from a lost blogger of your experience) and you have numerous gramitcal errors. I do find your reviews insightful dont get me wrong and I do read them, but you can tone down the pompous dial just a bit, cause it takes a lot away from your review and does something insultingly bad to my intelligence.
Please dont get me wrong i completely agree with the whole quadrangle story line being weak as well as motivations, but i will say the show has never seemed to me down. maybe that find away to clearly announce within the show how horrible that decision by jack and co was tho..
The ring with Dexters initials has been passed on to the first born of each generation in the Stratton family, inspiring Liam and Charlie to name their band Drive Shaft.
And what are ‘gramitcal errors’?
(Marc:It’s a Drive Shaft ring *and* a Dexter Stratton ring).
Great post, Fishbiscuit. Smart and very funny. (And your tone is great).
And I agree with your estimation of the quadrangle. I really enjoyed seeing Sawyer and Juliet together as a couple, and I thought Kate and Jack’s becoming a distant, we-once-had-something couple was handled well.
But for those to become major motivations in the finale was unsatisfying. I would’ve much rather heard Jack repeat and expand upon previous reasons–Boone, Claire, Locke, etc. He could’ve also felt like he was being jerked around by the island: escaping only to have a hellish off-island life, and then returning via botched destiny to the wrong time period. That would’ve mirrored more nicely John Locke’s crisis of faith in previous seasons.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved the season finale. But apart from Desmond-Penny and Sun-Jin, romance has never been Lost’s strong suit.
I also really liked your observations on “reading too much” into clues. For instance, while I enjoyed your thoughts on Teilhard de Chardin, I wondered if it’s probably something more simple: the title is just a nod to the converging of the characters and the various threads of the narrative. It could, of course, go deeper than that. But, it seems to me, the books referenced in the show haven’t had as much deep relevance as expected or hoped.
That Photoshop of Locke and Jack on the beach is great. I wouldn’t be surprised to see two Losties taking the place of Jacob and Esau, ending with something like “Do you have any idea how much I want to kill you?” It wouldn’t be my ideal way of ending the show, but it would fit with the patterns of repetition they’ve built in. And, on that note, Darlton are fans of The Dark Tower and The Wire, which use narrative in a similar repetitive way, with the fates and destiny winning out (“Ka like a wheel” and “Baltimore as Greek tragedy”).
Ok, so good review but please… flashing gifs? They’re so damn distracting. Trying to read your words and in the corner of my eye, everywhere in the peripheral vision are images flashing flashing FLASHING! Come on man, are you living in the 90″s? Might as well throw some midi music up that starts playing as soon as you load your review! Seriously. Bad form man, bad form.
Absolutely sublime work, Fishbiscuit!
Love your recaps and wondered where this one had gone, but guess you were already underway working on your massive assignment. This one looks so deep, thorough and analytical that I am going to have to print it off in Word, and, I’ve just whipped up a macro especially for this to reduce images by 50% otherwise it is literally a 50 pager!
The pictures do [do] wonders and are very important, so there is no way that I will sacrifice them. At a quick glance, this looks like it is also going to equip me well for the rewatchs that many people will be undertaking this summer. I must say, however, that despite being a regular visitor here, I’ve joined up with Nikki Staffords rewatch because I hit there first (Nik also wrote for Buffy (another one of my fave shows) and although we all in this together, I felt that I owed it to those guys. Nikki’s schedule (starting on July 5th) also ties in nicely with the release of the season 5 DVDs and I will be going on a short vacation too.
Thanks again – and also good work Doc on the podcasts, regular subscriber and thoroughly enjoyed em
It really isn’t a big deal but it is a Dexter Stratton ring and a Dexter Stratton ring alone. That does not change cause of the name of the band. There are gramatically errors thorsten, but i was too lazy to go back and site them on my original post and i can’d do it now from work, but i will later. The DS thing just annoys me cause everyone refers to it as drive shaft ring and that is just incorrect.
You’re right it’s not a big deal. It’s a non issue. And you’re criticizing Fishbiscuit for grammatical errors? You should reread your own posts first (it’s “cite” for one thing, not “site”)
This is why I was so glad Fish left DarkUFO. All these nitpickers who feel the need to pick apart a great fun review that’s given to us for free, to enjoy if we like or ignore if we choose. I don’t get why Fish seems to be the wone who attracts this kind of rude treatment. It’s so uncalled for.
Thanks from me, Fish! I enjoyed it beginning to end. Just pure pleasure. Thanks!
It’s one not wone. But neither of us are posting an article. we are commenting.. grammer isnt important. and yea im nitpicking with the grammer comment. but it seems to me that although i do enjoy her posts which i continue to stress.. fish seems to be nitpicking lost more then anything. doesnt seem like she even likes the show most of the time. thats my point. also if you are gonna post something on the internet you better be ready to be critqued… thats just the way it is.
It’s because Fish tells it like it is and doesn’t have her head shoved up the show/writer’s ass. If the writing is bad, she says so and the fanboys can’t stand that.
Juliet decided the stuff. She paid for her decisions. Stop saying shit about her. That was the most logical decision from her point of view. Period. The end.
Blame Sawyer for looking to Kate in front of the woman he has been with during the last 3 years. THAT was stupid.
Juliet was the variable… w/o being touched by Jacob she was the only one with free will.
Amen, Fish, amen.
With what happened to Juliet, at least Sawyer and Sayid have something to share a beer over. Loves’ a beach. As for the “Jack n’ the bomb” well Kate really screwed him up, pass him a beer too. Kate needs to go, now thats something I can “let go”.
Point Being;
She destroys men’s lives by either killing them or emotionally numbing them to want to die. Poor “one-armed willie” in Aussie who had a “helluva mortgage” ended up knocked out and no truck, step-daddy blew up, poor marshall cracked skull, impaled, shot, then suffocated, the police hubby who married the woman was drugged and left to rot, our poor poor bank robber who just wanted help miss maggie got shot, dear ole’ Tommy OMG our male “Thelma and Louise” hero ends up shot and his poor family lost their dad and hubby…now Jack whose life was so twisted by this woman thought best to take the core out of a thermonuclear device and detonate it just for a remote chance to never having to meet this woman. Not even to mention our little Aaron who was just abandoned by this woman and then given to a woman Kate didn’t even really know, she didn’t even ask for ID. Katie the lunch box stealin’ witch. As per advice from Christian “Let it go, Jack” damn straight!
Ouch.
You do the best recaps. Much appreciation. Especially glad that you’re not in the knee-jerk “Juliet is the only good character on ‘Lost’” club.
Some excellent insight! Regardless of who first mentioned it, I particularly liked the reference to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s spiraling Omega Point description. Well, as a solution to LOST, I think it’s okay and certainly makes sense, but I’m more interested in its implications for real life. It works particularly well with Ian Lungold’s “Secrets of the Mayan” calendar: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-489786527478456160&ei=8OxISuDZG5OAqwLCucmJBg&q=secrets+of+the+mayan+calendar&hl=en
It’s the idea that we live in periods of time where the same energy happens in smaller and smaller intervals all converging on December 21, 2012. This is why time, technology, events, etc, seem to be happening faster and faster.
It also fits with my own beliefs that time acts as a vertical spiral, and that similar events with similar themes all happen in alignment but on different levels, i.e., Tower of Babel, Titanic, World Trade Center all relate to the theme of ego claiming that something was the greatest being destroyed to make way for a new energy. These all happened within different levels of the spiral, but at similar points to form a straight line. This is why history continually repeats itself.
While plot-wise, it remains to be seen how satisfying of a conclusion this would be to LOST, as a mythological interpretation of our world, I think it’s really interesting and certain serves as a heads-up for what might be coming for us in the next several years.
Very Interesting & Funny. Excellent insight!
Thanks a lot!
Always great reviews, worth reading well after the show’s are over, in no small part thanks to the great pictures and funny, insightful words.
Thanks for helping with my withdrawls, Fishbiscuit!
Oops, I mean “shows are over.” Not show’s are over. Sorry.
I got all the answers…oh yes i did…but we just suppose,aren’t we?Well thank you,really good,it took me lots of time to read it…:)You put our minds in a logical way of thinking….Excellent!
This is an incredible recap. I never thought of a few of your insights from that perspective. So much to comment on though! I think the idea of Jacob actually being a negative influence is a right good twist; meaning some of the O6’s behaviors in the finale appeared childish because Jacob’s touch CAUSED them to be unable to develop into much more mature adults.
It’s late but I LOVE this review, and the gifs are actually quite important for interpreting stuff you say. Excellent work!!!