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shadowkatI didn't know the title of last week's Lost episode was the Substitute until I read my flist's reviews of it. Rather good title, and far more interesting than the previous weeks.
This episode is one of those that gets better several days after you watched it, after you have time to ponder it and think it over. No, I haven't re-watched. I don't re-watch Lost. Actually I rarely re-watch tv shows in general. Only those that hit a certain emotional chord get rapid re-viewings.
Before I go into a lengthy review - an aside. I've realized something recently...or rather always knew it but was reminded of it this weekend, which is it is hard posting a perspective on the net, particularly controversial ones. It will get attacked. There are people for example, reading this journal, who despise the tv series Lost and do not understand how I can enjoy it. Just as there are people who read this journal who thought the Buffy/Spike relationship on that tv series was disgusting, sick, and the most self-destructive/anti-feminist thing ever and you'd have to be a nutjob to think otherwise (yes, I know some of you guys think that, but I love you anyways - as I guess or hope you love me, okay maybe love is too strong a word...like? tolerate? put up with??). I'm aware every time I write an entry that these folks are out there and may or may not read it and may or may not choose to reply or refer to the entry or things I stated within it. Just as I know that my co-worker, who I would do just about anything for, has political views that turn my stomach. The problem with life is we have wildly divergent tastes, interests, and perspectives on things for various reasons, most of which we do not know. There's so much we simply do not know about one another, that the majority of the time in our interactions with each other - we are playing guessing games and often step on the equivalent of a land-mine, which to us may seem like nothing more than just a normal bump in the road. All week long Ifightnegotiate with people. I fought negotiated with my insurance company for most of this week to the point in which if I were queen of the universe I would get rid of all insurance companies. It's head-ache inducing. Damn it, people. I sometimes want to scream. I'm right, you're wrong! Can't you see that!!! But I know that's not true, well about 40% of the time at any rate (;-) and I know as herself_nyc once wisely stated in her lj, being right isn't always important, sometimes it gets in the way. So I'm working hard on that. It's not as easy as it looks. ;-)
In this episode, we get to follow Lock. The Islandverse and the SidewaysVerse. On the Island, Lock is actually Smokey (man in black). And in the Sideways verse - he's Lock, but not quite the Lock we came to know and love - there are differences. Due to the actions of the people sent back in time - Jacob was unable to influence the direction of the castaways lives in quite the manner that he had in the islandverse. Nor was the island. There were people who were on the island before the castaways crashed there that never made it to the island, or if they'd been born on the island, were evacuated and never returned. The Sideways verse asks the questions what if the island did not exist in these people's lives or what if, it did exist but then ceased to?
It's an interesting metaphysical question. How would our lives be different if something was removed entirely from them? In the case of the people on the island - it is the island.
In the Sideways verse - Lock does not do the things we'd expect nor does his life follow the same trajectory as it did prior to coming to the island. So we aren't seeing what would have happened to Lock if the plane had never crashed, we are seeing what would have happened if the island was sunk/destroyed and no longer a factor in his life - at all.
In this verse - he returns to Helene, played quite beautifully by the multi-talented Katey Sagal. In the Islandverse - Helene had left him years before his walk-about in Australia, his father caused his accident, and I can't quite remember, but I think the company knew about his trip and had fired him before he left? At any rate - in this verse - he is not only with Helene, they are happy and getting married. And his father is coming to the wedding. Also when he does get fired from the company by the annoying Randy, Hugo Reyes - Hurley - who owns the company, bumps into him literally, and refers him to Rose (of Rose and Bernard) who is with the company's placement office. She talks him out of working construction and gets him to accept his situation and make the best out of it. IslandLock would probably have taken Jack Shepard up on his offer and gotten spinal surgery. Sideways Lock tears up Shepard's card and tells Helene that he needs to accept his lot in life that there are no miracles. To which she replies there are miracles, John, just not always in the places we expect them to be. Her miracle was for him to finally realize what he had and to stop trying to reclaim some fantasy. It was an inspirational bit of story telling - the antithesis actually of his tragic arc in the islandverse. In the Islandverse - Lock is a tragic figure, here, in the sideways verse - he is not.
At the end of the Sideways verse - portion of the episode - we see Lock as a substitute teacher at a high school. He is coaching kids in P.E. and teaching math. A perfect fit. And in the teacher's lounge, he runs smack dab into Benjamin Linus - who is teaching European History.
The Sideways verse is the positive track. The Islandverse is the opposite.
In the Islandverse - Smokey/Lock goes off to find recruites, with Richard Alpert - who is afraid of him. Alpert, I'm guessing, is not human. But I don't know. Maybe they were all sent to the island as prisoners in the distant past?
At any rate, Smokey wants off the island. Alpert insists that Smokey wants to kill everyone on the island. I don't know if this is necessarily true or if it is necessary in order to escape the island. Not clear. But Smokey cannot kill certain people. He couldn't kill Jacob - he had to get Ben to do it. I'm guessing he also cannot kill Richard Alpert, not sure about Sawyer.
I think it's Alpert because the kid shows up when he is with Alpert both times and Alpert doesn't see the kid. While Sawyer does.
Sawyer is interesting. He knows right off the bat that Smokey is not Lock. He even tells him.
You aren't Lock. Smokey asks how he knows and tries to feign confusion. Sawyer states simply - because Lock was terrified and you aren't. You aren't scared of anything. That's an interesting assessment of Lock and on target. Showing that Sawyer is far more perceptive than people give him credit for. He saw who Juliet was and fell in love with her. He sees who Kate is, and he sees who Jack Shepard is. The people he friends and admires - are Hurley, Jin, Juliet, Kate,
and to a degree John Lock. He does not trust or like Sayid and he can't abide Jack. I have to say, I agree with him. The most dangerous guys on the island are Sayid and Jack - they've killed the most people with their good intentions.
What he states about Lock is also interesting - because it explains the character and the difference between Islandverse Lock and Sideways Lock. Islandverse Lock is terrified - and desperately needs to believe in something. While Sideways Lock isn't as scared and more willing to trust. Sideways verse Lock is far less destructive.
Smokey takes Sawyer to a cavern near the sea - where Jacob used to sit. The cave has a weight balance or scale with two stones in it - one black and one white. Smokey picks up the white stone (I think it was the white one) and tosses it. When Sawyer asks what he is doing, he states, private joke. I think it was their game about good and evil. The scale is not balanced, the black rock is pulling down the white one. On the ceiling there are a lot of names, several are crossed out and numbers are next to a few of them - Hurley's numbers. Smokey tells Sawyer that the names are candidates, Jacob's candidates for taking his place as caretaker of the island. That Jacob touched each of you and manipulated your path so that you would come to this island. You did not arrive here by chance - he pushed your buttons so you'd come here. At some point in your life, when you were at your most vulnerable or weak - he showed up and touched you - pushed you in a direction that you may not have gone otherwise - just so you would come to the island. And we get a replay of the people he touched and when. James Ford/Sawyer we're told was touched at the funeral of his parents, Jacob gave him a pen - the pen he used to write the letter that he later sent to the real Sawyer, the conman, whose name he took and whose footsteps he followed in, all in the name of revenge. Now, in 1977, we were told by James Ford that he could have gone back to the States and stopped the conman from destroying his life - that those events were happening at that moment. What would happen if Jacob never gave him that pen? That's the question that Smokey askes James Ford.
The options, Smokey tells Ford, regarding whether or not they get the candidacy and whether they get their names crossed off are: 1) do nothing and see how it plays out. You're name gets crossed off. 2) take over, guard the island, protect it. (Ford asks from what and Smokey states that's just the thing -from nothing, it is just an island. There's no reason to protect it.)
and 3) is to fight to get off the island, to get everyone off the island.
Sawyer/Ford who at this point has more or less lost all that he cared about - is ready to leave the island. Note he wanted to leave the island in Season 1 and 2, gave up in Season 3, wanted to stay in S4-and set up a life with Juliet in S5. Now, he thinks screw it - let's get off this friggin island. And he hates Jack - who he blames for Juliet's death.
Meanwhile - we are following Ben, Jun,and the plane's Captain. Ben and Jun bury IslandLock
and Ben says an odd bit above the grave. Apologizing to the man that he murdered. Ben's murder of Lock is reminiscent of Of Mice and Men - where one brother kills the other, by tricking him.
Ben states that Lock was a better man than he was, and a man that he shall miss. He also tells Illana that Smokey and NotLock are the same. We are lead to believe by this bit and by Alpert that Smokey is evil and Jacob is good.
But.
The Sideways verse is making me question this. Jacob interfered in others lives. If you recall at the beginning of the incident, the Man in Black asked why Jacob kept bringing people there, over and over, dragging or pulling or compelling them to this island. The speech leads us to believe that Smokey hates the people, but what if he is just tired of playing with them?
What if he is tired of Jacob's games?
I'm not sure Jacob is the good guy here. And I'm not sure that the Temple people are either - after all, they did torture Sayid and they did shoot Jin. Also how do we know Claire is evil?
Or dark? She's been claimed by the island, by Smokey?
The thing about Lost is you can't really trust the text. They often tell you one thing and show another - which is why it can be so head-ache inducing. My take is from the very beginning, Jack has consistently screwed up. He's at the point in which he no longer trusts himself and hates himself. Jack hates himself as much as Sawyer does. But, Juliet tried to tell Sawyer that it worked. Perhaps she was trying to tell him about the Sideways verse? The verse where Jacob doesn't exist and can't play his games?
If I'm right - this is also an interesting metaphysical question - are we the makers of our own fate? Is free will better than the alternative? It's a question Angel the Series played with as well - what happens when God or something else interferes with our choices and manipulate us?
When the characters are not pushed or manipulated in Sideways verse...they find their own way, it is a better outcome, then when they are in the islandverse. Is Jacob's interference a sign of arrogance - a master weaver controlling the thread, as opposed to someone who prefers to leave the thread alone, let it weave itself and solely supplies the thread and the means in which it can do so?
This episode is one of those that gets better several days after you watched it, after you have time to ponder it and think it over. No, I haven't re-watched. I don't re-watch Lost. Actually I rarely re-watch tv shows in general. Only those that hit a certain emotional chord get rapid re-viewings.
Before I go into a lengthy review - an aside. I've realized something recently...or rather always knew it but was reminded of it this weekend, which is it is hard posting a perspective on the net, particularly controversial ones. It will get attacked. There are people for example, reading this journal, who despise the tv series Lost and do not understand how I can enjoy it. Just as there are people who read this journal who thought the Buffy/Spike relationship on that tv series was disgusting, sick, and the most self-destructive/anti-feminist thing ever and you'd have to be a nutjob to think otherwise (yes, I know some of you guys think that, but I love you anyways - as I guess or hope you love me, okay maybe love is too strong a word...like? tolerate? put up with??). I'm aware every time I write an entry that these folks are out there and may or may not read it and may or may not choose to reply or refer to the entry or things I stated within it. Just as I know that my co-worker, who I would do just about anything for, has political views that turn my stomach. The problem with life is we have wildly divergent tastes, interests, and perspectives on things for various reasons, most of which we do not know. There's so much we simply do not know about one another, that the majority of the time in our interactions with each other - we are playing guessing games and often step on the equivalent of a land-mine, which to us may seem like nothing more than just a normal bump in the road. All week long I
In this episode, we get to follow Lock. The Islandverse and the SidewaysVerse. On the Island, Lock is actually Smokey (man in black). And in the Sideways verse - he's Lock, but not quite the Lock we came to know and love - there are differences. Due to the actions of the people sent back in time - Jacob was unable to influence the direction of the castaways lives in quite the manner that he had in the islandverse. Nor was the island. There were people who were on the island before the castaways crashed there that never made it to the island, or if they'd been born on the island, were evacuated and never returned. The Sideways verse asks the questions what if the island did not exist in these people's lives or what if, it did exist but then ceased to?
It's an interesting metaphysical question. How would our lives be different if something was removed entirely from them? In the case of the people on the island - it is the island.
In the Sideways verse - Lock does not do the things we'd expect nor does his life follow the same trajectory as it did prior to coming to the island. So we aren't seeing what would have happened to Lock if the plane had never crashed, we are seeing what would have happened if the island was sunk/destroyed and no longer a factor in his life - at all.
In this verse - he returns to Helene, played quite beautifully by the multi-talented Katey Sagal. In the Islandverse - Helene had left him years before his walk-about in Australia, his father caused his accident, and I can't quite remember, but I think the company knew about his trip and had fired him before he left? At any rate - in this verse - he is not only with Helene, they are happy and getting married. And his father is coming to the wedding. Also when he does get fired from the company by the annoying Randy, Hugo Reyes - Hurley - who owns the company, bumps into him literally, and refers him to Rose (of Rose and Bernard) who is with the company's placement office. She talks him out of working construction and gets him to accept his situation and make the best out of it. IslandLock would probably have taken Jack Shepard up on his offer and gotten spinal surgery. Sideways Lock tears up Shepard's card and tells Helene that he needs to accept his lot in life that there are no miracles. To which she replies there are miracles, John, just not always in the places we expect them to be. Her miracle was for him to finally realize what he had and to stop trying to reclaim some fantasy. It was an inspirational bit of story telling - the antithesis actually of his tragic arc in the islandverse. In the Islandverse - Lock is a tragic figure, here, in the sideways verse - he is not.
At the end of the Sideways verse - portion of the episode - we see Lock as a substitute teacher at a high school. He is coaching kids in P.E. and teaching math. A perfect fit. And in the teacher's lounge, he runs smack dab into Benjamin Linus - who is teaching European History.
The Sideways verse is the positive track. The Islandverse is the opposite.
In the Islandverse - Smokey/Lock goes off to find recruites, with Richard Alpert - who is afraid of him. Alpert, I'm guessing, is not human. But I don't know. Maybe they were all sent to the island as prisoners in the distant past?
At any rate, Smokey wants off the island. Alpert insists that Smokey wants to kill everyone on the island. I don't know if this is necessarily true or if it is necessary in order to escape the island. Not clear. But Smokey cannot kill certain people. He couldn't kill Jacob - he had to get Ben to do it. I'm guessing he also cannot kill Richard Alpert, not sure about Sawyer.
I think it's Alpert because the kid shows up when he is with Alpert both times and Alpert doesn't see the kid. While Sawyer does.
Sawyer is interesting. He knows right off the bat that Smokey is not Lock. He even tells him.
You aren't Lock. Smokey asks how he knows and tries to feign confusion. Sawyer states simply - because Lock was terrified and you aren't. You aren't scared of anything. That's an interesting assessment of Lock and on target. Showing that Sawyer is far more perceptive than people give him credit for. He saw who Juliet was and fell in love with her. He sees who Kate is, and he sees who Jack Shepard is. The people he friends and admires - are Hurley, Jin, Juliet, Kate,
and to a degree John Lock. He does not trust or like Sayid and he can't abide Jack. I have to say, I agree with him. The most dangerous guys on the island are Sayid and Jack - they've killed the most people with their good intentions.
What he states about Lock is also interesting - because it explains the character and the difference between Islandverse Lock and Sideways Lock. Islandverse Lock is terrified - and desperately needs to believe in something. While Sideways Lock isn't as scared and more willing to trust. Sideways verse Lock is far less destructive.
Smokey takes Sawyer to a cavern near the sea - where Jacob used to sit. The cave has a weight balance or scale with two stones in it - one black and one white. Smokey picks up the white stone (I think it was the white one) and tosses it. When Sawyer asks what he is doing, he states, private joke. I think it was their game about good and evil. The scale is not balanced, the black rock is pulling down the white one. On the ceiling there are a lot of names, several are crossed out and numbers are next to a few of them - Hurley's numbers. Smokey tells Sawyer that the names are candidates, Jacob's candidates for taking his place as caretaker of the island. That Jacob touched each of you and manipulated your path so that you would come to this island. You did not arrive here by chance - he pushed your buttons so you'd come here. At some point in your life, when you were at your most vulnerable or weak - he showed up and touched you - pushed you in a direction that you may not have gone otherwise - just so you would come to the island. And we get a replay of the people he touched and when. James Ford/Sawyer we're told was touched at the funeral of his parents, Jacob gave him a pen - the pen he used to write the letter that he later sent to the real Sawyer, the conman, whose name he took and whose footsteps he followed in, all in the name of revenge. Now, in 1977, we were told by James Ford that he could have gone back to the States and stopped the conman from destroying his life - that those events were happening at that moment. What would happen if Jacob never gave him that pen? That's the question that Smokey askes James Ford.
The options, Smokey tells Ford, regarding whether or not they get the candidacy and whether they get their names crossed off are: 1) do nothing and see how it plays out. You're name gets crossed off. 2) take over, guard the island, protect it. (Ford asks from what and Smokey states that's just the thing -from nothing, it is just an island. There's no reason to protect it.)
and 3) is to fight to get off the island, to get everyone off the island.
Sawyer/Ford who at this point has more or less lost all that he cared about - is ready to leave the island. Note he wanted to leave the island in Season 1 and 2, gave up in Season 3, wanted to stay in S4-and set up a life with Juliet in S5. Now, he thinks screw it - let's get off this friggin island. And he hates Jack - who he blames for Juliet's death.
Meanwhile - we are following Ben, Jun,and the plane's Captain. Ben and Jun bury IslandLock
and Ben says an odd bit above the grave. Apologizing to the man that he murdered. Ben's murder of Lock is reminiscent of Of Mice and Men - where one brother kills the other, by tricking him.
Ben states that Lock was a better man than he was, and a man that he shall miss. He also tells Illana that Smokey and NotLock are the same. We are lead to believe by this bit and by Alpert that Smokey is evil and Jacob is good.
But.
The Sideways verse is making me question this. Jacob interfered in others lives. If you recall at the beginning of the incident, the Man in Black asked why Jacob kept bringing people there, over and over, dragging or pulling or compelling them to this island. The speech leads us to believe that Smokey hates the people, but what if he is just tired of playing with them?
What if he is tired of Jacob's games?
I'm not sure Jacob is the good guy here. And I'm not sure that the Temple people are either - after all, they did torture Sayid and they did shoot Jin. Also how do we know Claire is evil?
Or dark? She's been claimed by the island, by Smokey?
The thing about Lost is you can't really trust the text. They often tell you one thing and show another - which is why it can be so head-ache inducing. My take is from the very beginning, Jack has consistently screwed up. He's at the point in which he no longer trusts himself and hates himself. Jack hates himself as much as Sawyer does. But, Juliet tried to tell Sawyer that it worked. Perhaps she was trying to tell him about the Sideways verse? The verse where Jacob doesn't exist and can't play his games?
If I'm right - this is also an interesting metaphysical question - are we the makers of our own fate? Is free will better than the alternative? It's a question Angel the Series played with as well - what happens when God or something else interferes with our choices and manipulate us?
When the characters are not pushed or manipulated in Sideways verse...they find their own way, it is a better outcome, then when they are in the islandverse. Is Jacob's interference a sign of arrogance - a master weaver controlling the thread, as opposed to someone who prefers to leave the thread alone, let it weave itself and solely supplies the thread and the means in which it can do so?
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Re: A few things on Backgammon
Date: 2010-02-23 05:20 pm (UTC)What I'd like to know is whether the game is only relevant to Jacob and Smocke or if there is a larger consequence to the game play that could leak out past the island?
Possible. There's already a temporal anomaly - they managed to actually change the timeline and cause a splinter universe to split off from the existing one, which co-exists with the existing one. BUT - there is a rather controversial theory in parrellel string theory that I've read in sci-fi, which states that two separate universes based on the same one cannot co-exist, without one cancelling out the other or bleeding into the other. Can't remember which sci-fi theory/tv show stated this. (The problem with reading and seeing a ton of sci-fi stuff, is after a while it blurs together and you can't remember what you read, watched or where you got the info from. ;-) )
At any rate - it is altogether possible that by creating the splinter verse - they caused the original verse to become unstable or to begin to fall apart.
I.e - they broke a rule by changing time, while Smock broke a rule by killing Jacob (he found the loop-hole through Ben Linus).
I'm not sure. The story has become incredibly convoluted at this point. ;-)
Re: A few things on Backgammon
Date: 2010-02-23 08:25 pm (UTC)Smocke is from Mo Ryan aka The Watcher.
Rufus