Jacob: You want to find the light? You want to leave this place, brother? Then GO!
This week: Ugh.
– Things We Learned, Pt. 1: Moms are bitches. They lie to you, they keep secrets, they kill people, they plant games on the beach for you to find rather than just give them to in a gesture of love, and they do all those things while smirking and implying that they know what’s best. Everything bad that has happened is the result of some shitty parenting. Happy Mother’s Day, Mama Lindelof and Mama Cuse.
– Things We Learned, Pt. 1(a): Don’t have kids. Those moms who have kids on the Island end up 1) crazy and 2) dead, not necessarily in that order (nice knowing you, Claire). The baby WILL be stolen and the mother (or in case of recent momma brain trauma, the stepmother) will lead a life absent of rational thought and effective haircare.
– Things We Learned, Pt. 2: Nobody has a clue. Nobody. We’ve been led to believe over the course of five seasons that Jacob is an omniscient overseer/protector of the Island who gently guides his followers to the right path, except three hours from the end we find out that Jacob knows nothing, because his predecessor mom told him nothing. She implied a lot of things, but unless there was an unseen information session where she handed him a binder full of Island Protector FAQs, the briefing was a little light on the facts. AND that’s assuming we are to believe she was telling the truth, because even though she was the main source of exposition this episode, she spent the rest of her time being passive-aggressive and murdering, neither of which jump out to me as activities of an honest person.
– Things We Learned, Pt. 3: The Island exists to house The Cave Of Wondrous Light And Happiness™ which is a totally understandable and relatable thing that exists. If the light in the cave is something men always have in them that they always seem to want more of, then I have a few theories on what that light is:
- meats and cheeses
- testosterone/human growth horomone
- tolerance for heavy-handed morality parables with unnatural and preachy dialogue
- patience (just kidding, see above)
– Things We Learned, Pt. 4: Herbert/Locke/Guy From Deadwood’s true intentions are to stick it to his mom for being such a bitch. Well, I guess I learned that. See, my DVR’s program description said this episode was about how “Locke’s motives are finally explained,” which, uh, spoiler alert, they weren’t. Unless I am supposed to believe that the Smoke Monster (not Jacob’s brother, but the Smoke Monster who emerged when Jacob’s brother was sent down the Lazy River OF DOOM into The Cave Of Wondrous Light And Happiness™) really does want to get off the Island like his Adam-skeletoned counterpart, in which case his “motives” come from that scene where he was like “I’ll get off this Island and show you!” So Frank fucking Lapidus just sank to the bottom of the goddamn ocean because you’ve got mommy issues. I hope you are proud of yourself.It’s a sad life for Claudia. I mean, there’s the shipwreck and the surprise twins (is it possible to have twins from different fathers?) and the dying and whatnot, but what’s really sad is that her whole life, every man she ever met was named Jacob. Her father, her grandfather, her baby daddy, every guy on her Viking ship, etc. I mean, that’s the only reason she couldn’t think of another name, right? And it’s not like she could come up with something in a pinch, like Claude or Claudio.
– I’m going to sidestep the easy analysis of Jacob’s candidacy – that as the knitting-enthusiast Plan B momma’s boy virgin stuck playing by someone else’s rules until he gets so mad he could just tackle something, climb on top of it and punch the shit out of it, his credibility as Island protector is in question – because I’m starting to believe that Mother Island was either a) the Smoke Monster or b) a Combination Smoke Monster and Protector and she was guiding them both at the same time.
– Mom had neither a name nor a problem with mass murder, just like her favorite little boy, Herbert/Claude/Guy From Deadwood. Plus there were no rules saying she couldn’t make them both wear white shirts – you’ve got the blonde pussy and the live-action anime kid, there was never any chance of mixing them up. It’s funny that Jacob would be the one to tell Richard (and others) that there’s always a choice, when neither he nor his brother had a choice in what color their shirts were for centuries. Finally, mom thinks men are evil (maybe she’s just an uber-feminist? she does look a little Lillith-Fair-y) and that “it always ends the same”, which sounds a lot more like Herbert than Jacob. Besides, she had to know that she could only pull The Truman Show act for so long until one of the boys tried to escape to Fiji.
– Now I graduated with a minor in Viking Science, but I’m not picking up on how the big giant wheel that “channels” water and light from The Cave Of Wondrous Light And Happiness™ makes one able to leave the Island. So unless Daniel Faraday’s composition book was full of donkey wheel calculations and instructions on how to burn rocks, this is a technology that relies heavily on the blanket explanation of MAGICs. “What’s in there, wondrous light and happiness? Let’s put a fucking wheel on it.”
– Also, the acknowledgment of donkey wheels and Viking Science DOES NOT COUNT as an origin story. I don’t need you to make me the sandwich if you can just give me the ingredients, but don’t give me peanut butter, jelly and bread, then knock me unconscious, bury the ingredients under 30 feet of rock, kill all of my people and then act like I’m the asshole. Did he come back after his conversion/possession/smokification and start digging again? Did mom realize after knocking him out that the wheel was actually a pretty good idea and get to work installing it before caving the whole place in?
– I’d point out that having your first actions as New Protector of The Cave Of Wondrous Light And Happiness™ include throwing your murderin’ bro into said Cave Of Wondrous Light And Happiness™ might not be the smartest idea, but by the look on Jacob’s slack-jawed face, he kinda figured that out himself, either when the column of smoke came billowing back out or when he saw that the heart of the Island pooped his brother’s body back out into the creek (the creek he drinks out of, even!).
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