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6.9 Ab Aeterno Hurley: "Your wife sent me." Is anyone else getting a "my favorite sci-fi show is turning religious" Battlestar vibe? It's not that I don't like the idea of the Island as a metaphorical cork keeping the genie of pure evil in its bottle. And the idea of the Island as a place where the past never happened and everyone can start over isn't exactly new; we've been on to that one practically from the beginning. And yes, the religious symbolism has always been there. But I don't want the Man in Black to actually be El Diablo. And I probably could have done without the last temptation of Ricardo, the buried cross (shades of Eko and Yemi), and the obvious baptism scene in front of the Foot. I wonder if I'm just getting tired of waiting for answers. Time travel? Magnetism? Walking dead? Infection? How do these things fit into this Island-as-cork scenario? I'll probably be okay with all this if it doesn't get too biblical. And at least the theory that they're all in Hell was dispelled by the end of the episode; I was getting uneasy about that one. (I thought the afterlife theory had been laid to rest five years ago by the producers, and I was thinking, no! You're not going to reneg on us at the last minute, are you?) Richard and Isabella Don't get me wrong. Nestor Carbonell was awesome, and I did feel for poor, shaggy Richard, who suffered tremendously and is still suffering. Why couldn't Jacob give Richard his wife back, even in the parallel sideways universe? Dogen got his son back, didn't he? I think that Richard asked for eternal life so that he would never suffer in Hell; and yet, he spent a lot of time in this episode certain that he was already in Hell, so I'm confused about that one. And the fact that Jacob's gift to Richard was unique made me wonder about gifts to the other Losties. Jacob touched Jack right after his famous "five seconds of fear" moment. Did Jack get his miraculous talent as a surgeon from Jacob? Did Jacob give Kate her ability to commit crimes and elude law enforcement forever? Did Jacob give Sawyer the certainty that he would get revenge against Anthony Cooper? I'm not sure how this translates to the other candidates, especially Hurley and the guitar case, so maybe I should stop there. Richard was uneducated but smart, teaching himself English from the Bible, and it saved his life. Why? What was Captain Magnus Hanso going to do with those people he bought? (And jeez, his minion Whitfield was a prince. I guess a quick death was better than starving in chains, but really. He couldn't just let them go die in the jungle?) I was confused by the two ghosts of Isabella. I *think* that the first was the Man in Black doing his Walking Dead thing to manipulate Richard into killing Jacob -- and the second that Hurley was channeling was the real thing. Actually, Hurley was so serene that he rather weirded me out. The Man in Black and Jacob The Man in Black has a brief, repetitive repertoire: kill Jacob, kill Jacob, kill Jacob. I thought it was interesting that he told Richard that if Jacob spoke, it would already be too late. There's that vocal power again. (Okay, power of persuasion, whatever.) Interesting, how Jacob and the Man in Black never seem to lie. They probably can't. I don't think they can eat or drink, either. Is Jacob actually good? I didn't like the way he treated Richard; he seemed sly and a bit nasty, and certainly manipulative. But Jacob did say he believes people can be good, while the Man in Black believes they're intrinsically evil. (Glass half full and half empty imagery, too; the wine bottle was this week's Most Obvious Symbolism.) The Man in Black said that Jacob took his body. For what it's worth. Ilana There was a repeat and follow-up to that Jacob/Ilana hospital scene in "The Incident," and again a discussion of the six candidates. What were the bandages on her face for? She got better pretty quickly; did Jacob heal her? Is Ilana someone we've already met as someone else? Did she get plastic surgery as camouflage (although that seems unlikely at such a poor hospital)? Am I getting carried away? Probably. What have we learned? -- The Island is a cork. Does that make the Man in Black an evil genie? -- We now know how the Black Rock got into the middle of the jungle, and how the statue got broken. -- But that's basically it. Frankly, I was hoping for more. What I missed last week: -- It was confirmed that the cause of the deaths on Alcatraz are a mystery. I didn't miss anything. -- The two other books on Sawyer's dresser were A Wrinkle in Time and Lancelot. -- I should have observed that Sawyer holds the record in sexual encounters with other members of the cast. Actually, I think he always did. -- The pop-up enhanced version reminded us *again* that Widmore told Locke that if he didn't return to the Island, the wrong side would win. Character bits: -- Richard, or Ricardo, came from Tenerife, Canary Islands, 1867. Interestingly, the biggest plane crash in history was at Tenerife, in 1977. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster -- Like many of the Losties, Richard killed someone before coming to the Island. -- Loved the campfire scene at the beach. At least they're finally sharing information now. -- "Whitfield" sounded a bit like "Widmore" to me. Bits and pieces: -- The title of the episode means "From eternity," or "since the beginning." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_Aeterno -- Ilana got an eye scene: the right eye. None for Richard, although there were lots of close-ups of his eyes during the episode, as well as a blindfold, and references to closing Richard's eyes. -- Richard's Bible was open to Luke 4. "And he said, verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country." I wonder who this applies to? I bet it applies to someone. -- Yet another vehicle crash. Yes, the Black Rock smashing through the statue counts. :) The shots of the broken up statue were fascinating, like an oddly dismembered body. -- Was Richard's corked bottle of medicine (yet another cork) one of the objects he showed to young Locke? -- I have to mention again that Mark Pellegrino (Jacob) and Titus Welliver (the Man in Black who isn't Terry O'Quinn) have both been in this season of Supernatural as well (my other favorite show), and coincidentally, playing similar characters. What are the odds? -- Was Titus Welliver doing Terry O'Quinn, or has Terry O'Quinn been doing Titus Welliver? Quotes: Isabella: "I looked into his eyes and all I saw was evil." This was the opposite of what Locke said when he saw the smoke monster for the first time. I'm probably going to get some disagreement, but I didn't love this one as much as I wanted to. Three out of four polar bears, and seven episodes to go, Billie View all comments or post a comment. |
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