For an episode that was supposed to answer so many questions, "Across the Sea" was a letdown in not covering total early Island mythology. The teens who played young Jacob (Kenton Duty, who also has been Ghostly Jungle Boy in previous shows) and Boy in Black (Ryan Bradford) were somewhat wooden.
Except for some startling kills/attacks, and the chemistry between Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver (the adult rivals), and a stellar Overbearing Mom role by Allison Janney, I just didn't think this was one of Season 6's best. With its premise of Island origin stories, and even with a script by Lindelof and Cuse, something was just off. I found it to be a real blah show, with some metaphysical wackadoo about an illuminated Fount of Life, the Universe and Everything Else in some Incredible, Magical, Mystical Cave of Wonders. (Imagine the song Alan Menken and Howard Ashman could have written about that.)
Near the end we received answers to a big mystery -- the identities of Adam and Eve -- who aren't any of our castaways who experienced time travel or anything. Also, we learned that ironically the Island's own protector, Jacob, created Smokey. We learned that Jacob and MIB are siblings. But L & C followed a continued pattern of solving several mysteries while opening even more new ones!
To wit:
--What is the Man in Black's real name?
--What is the name of their adoptive mother?
--What is that glowing electromagnetic Cave of Wonders the Island guardian must protect, and what is that weird golden light bathing it?
--Where are the temple, the statue of Tawaret (Jacob's house) and the lighthouse, and who built them? (I don't think it was MIB's people, as they were still living in their primitive village, despite being "very smart," as MIB called them.)
--What was the deal with Smokey dropping his old human body on the river?
--How is it that the bodies of Mommie Dearest and MIB completely rotted away, but the little bag of game stones that Jacob placed with them, and was found nearly 2,000 years later by Jack, didn't decay at all? Is this the very same magic that caused a wooden sailing ship to smash into a solid stone statue, shear it off, and then land nearly intact on a desert isle?
In several cases, Smokey was telling the truth in his various conversations with the castaways. Yes, he once had been human. Yes, his mother (adoptive) was a manipulative nutjob, who recalled two recent off-their-rocker mothers -- Danielle and Bad Hair Claire. And yes, for centuries all this guy wanted to do was go across the sea (the meaning of the title, a reference to the world beyond the Island) and go back home.
Jacob and MIB as brothers mines a whole long tradition of sibling rivalry going back to Cain/Abel and Jacob/Esau in the Book of Genesis. The parallel to the latter boys is even more applicable, considering they were fraternal twins. Jacob was slight and intellectual, remaining in the camp with his mother, while Esau had a ruddy complexion, was hairy and burly, and was the hunter of the family. And eventually he left home, some time after Jacob persuaded him to give up his birthright in exchange for a bowl of stew, and later deceived their father, Isaac, into giving Jacob the blessing that Esau should have received. This was a scheme engineered by -- his mother Rebecca. (Further, Isaac also expanded his wealth by running a well digging business.)
Claudia (Lela Loren) is among a whole mass of people who are shipwrecked on the Island in the first century A.D. (implied by online leaks and spoilers, and the fact that they speak Latin). Hugely pregnant, she comes ashore to a beach covered in ship timbers and pottery.
She is immediately taken in by a mystery woman (Janney, who has quit as President Bartlett's press secretary and has gone back in time to serve as the official, current Island Guardian). While Claudia introduces herself, for some reason she doesn't ask her hostess' name. Well, I'll call her Mommie Dearest. Meanwhile, the other survivors, who are cultivated in this show as yet another type of "Others," construct a village.
Future Mommie Dearest offers Claudia a drink of water, and they suddenly switch from Latin to English for our convenience. Indirectly, this answers another Lost Question -- why learning Latin was mandatory for joining the Others. It was Jacob's original language.
Claudia wants to know how Mommie Dearest got to the Island, and she says, like anyone else, it was by accident. When she asks where the other people are, she is told, "Every question I answer will lead to another question," which is how fans feel when they watch these episodes.
Claudia goes into labor, closely attended by Mommie Dearest. She punches out the calmest, smoothest looking newborn you ever saw. She immediately says his name will be Jacob. Just as she is about to ask MD to hold him, she is slammed with another contraction.
Mommie Dearest, in her Captain Obvious exclamation, tells Claudia, "There's another baby in there!" Well, possible, as they didn't have ultrasound in 23 A.D., and Claudia hadn't been to a doctor lately because she was busy sailing on a ship.
Baby MIB comes out howling loudly. When asked what he will be called, an exhausted Claudia says, "I only picked one name." He is placed next to his brother, wrapped in a black blanket. And Jacob, who is tranquil and doesn't cry at all, has a white one. (And these become their Clothing Colors for Life, which could be like those old black hat/white hat westerns, but probably isn't. After all, "Man in White" Jacob turns his bro into Smokey, gets potential candidates repeatedly killed for centuries, and later orders the gassing of Dharmaville.
Boy in Black doesn't get a name? What the hell? I think for this recap I'll call him Black Bart. Short for Bartholomew, which was a name you might have found back then.
Mommie Dearest looks at Claudia and says, "I"m sorry," and then fatally brains her with a huge rock.
After the word from our sponsors, a now 13-year-old Black Bart, who, of course is wearing clothes of that color, is walking down the beach, when he finds a backgammon set among the old wreckage of his people's ship. It contains one each large black and white stones. (The recapper for TIME magazine says that it is the ancient Egyptian game called Senet, which ties into all that other Land of the Pyramids stuff on the Island.) Jacob wants to know what it is and how it's played. Bart says knows how to play it, and when Jacob asks him how he does, he replies that he just does. If Jacob won't tell on him to Mommie Dearest, who would take it away, he'll teach him how to play. They set up the game and try it out.
Back at their camp, Mommie Dearest is weaving. He asks her if he can help, and she has him sort threads. She grills Jacob, who says he was down at the beach and staring at the ocean, and oh, Bart was just taking a walk. She quickly discerns what happened.
Unlike Bart's guess, she doesn't take the game away, because she was the one who left it for him on the beach. Jacob told her, because he can't lie. And she tells Bart that he is special.
"It came from you?"
"Of course it did. Where else would it come from?" Mommie Dearest says.
"From somewhere else. Across the sea."
"There is nowhere else. The Island is all there is."
"Then where did we come from?"
"You and your brother came from me, and I came from my mother."
"Where's she?
"She's dead."
"What's dead?" Bart says.
"Something you will never have to worry about," Mommie Dearest says, and plants a kiss on his cheek.
While hunting a boar in the jungle, Jacob and Black Bart hear voices, hide in some vegetation, and watch as other people take down the pig.
Back home the boys want know how the people are, and where they came from. Mommie Dearest says while these "Others" may look like them, they are not like them, and the brothers are with her for a reason.
As she leads the boys through the jungle, blindfolded, they ask about the people. Mommie Dearest tells them, "They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, and it always ends the same." They are in another part of the Island for that reason.
Black Bart says, "We're people. Does that mean we could hurt each other?"
"They're people, and that's what they do. I've made it so you never hurt each other."
She takes them to the very CGI-looking Cave of Wonders, which glows just like the Emerald City, only gold and not bright green.
"What is down there?" Black Bart says.
"The warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt," says Mommie Dearest, adding that no one should ever find it.
Every person carries a small amount of the light within themselves, and if they got more of it, they would want more. (It's the Force, Luke! As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.") If the light goes out in the Cave of Wonders, it would go out everywhere. She can't protect it forever, and therefore one of the boys will have to succeed her.
(The idea that the light will go out also means that Charles Widmore was sort of telling the truth about the world going dark, since MIB later absorbs some of this light and is transformed into Smokey, and apparently his leaving the Island does something to the energy.)
After their visit at the Cave of Wonders, Jacob and Black Bart are playing backgammon. Bart tells Jacob that he's breaking the rules, which he created, because it's his game. Someday, Bart adds, Jacob can come up a game of his own and make up his own rules. (Sort of like the Game of Island Protectionism?)
Suddenly the ghost of Claudia appears, but visible only to Bart. Jacob asks what he saw, but Bart only says he is going to go "for a walk."
Phantom Claudia takes Black Bart to the village and explains the people were shipwrecked on the Island 13 years earlier. The people are from "across the sea," and he and Jacob also came with them.
"That's not what my mother told me," Bart says.
"She's not your mother," Phantom Claudia rebuts. "I am."
("No, I am your father!" -- Darth Vader)
That night, Black Bart has gathered up his things and is preparing to leave their camp. He wakes Jacob up and tells him their mother lied about everything and doesn't love them, and he plans to go the village. He invites him to leave. Furious, Jacob does not believe him and starts to punch Bart in the face repeatedly.
Mommie Dearest hauls Jacob off him. Bart tells her he knows they aren't really her sons, and he's going to his real people. He tells her that his real mother told him, and knows MD killed her. Jacob stands by Mommie Dearest and refuses to go with Bart.
"I'm going to go home," he says.
Mommie Dearest says that whatever he was told, he will never be able to leave the Island.
"That's not true!" Black Bart says. "One day I will prove it."
He stalks away, heading for the castaway village of "bad" people.
On the beach the next day, Jacob and Mommie Dearest have a heart to heart. Jacob thinks Black Bart will come back, which she refutes. She confirms that she did kill their birth mother, because she believes she would have taken them back to the village, where they would have become "very bad." She wanted them to stay "good."
Jacob, though, feels second rate and jealous. "Why do you love him more than me?"
"I love you in different ways. ... Will you stay with me, Jacob? Please?"
"Yes." She hugs him and cries, while he looks bitter. "For a while."
Thirty years pass, and now a 43-year-old Jacob (Pellegrino) is weaving. His mom, who's feeling her age and is tired, tells him it's very nice.
Jacob goes down to the village to watch his brother and later joins him for a game of backgammon on the game that is now one of his most highly valued posessions. Black Bart (Welliver) says he knows that Mommie Dearest knows he visits him regularly.
Bart acknowledges that the people are bad, a couple of them are even insane. They are greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy and selfish.
"Then why are you with them?" Jacob says.
"They're a means to an end."
"What end?"
"I'm leaving, Jacob. I found a way off the Island."
"No, that's impossible. There is no way off the Island."
He throws a dagger -- that same one that killed Jacob and should have killed Smokey -- which shoots toward a well in the village and sticks. That electromagnetism!
Black Bart says that though the people have their faults, there are "very smart men" among them who have discovered places on the Island where metal behaves oddly.
"What will you do when she dies?" he asks Jacob.
"She won't die. ... I never want to leave the Island. It's my home."
"Well, it's not mine!"
He goes back and tells him mom about Bart's plans.
On the next day, Mommie Dearest comes to the Island, where she goes down into a well that the "very smart men" have built with Black Bart. It leads into a cavern, where Bart is busy hardening the tip of a spear.
He says that though Mommie Dearest wouldn't show him the cave, he spent 30 years searching, walking the Island "from end to end." Then he thought, maybe the Light is beneath the ground. The very smart men found a way to dig down toward the Light. He removes a brick from the wall, revealing the Light. He also indicates a primitive donkey wheel, which he says will be attached to some equipment that the smart men constructed. The system will channel the water and the light. He turns the wheel, and voila, off the Island.
"How do you know it will work?" she asks.
"I'm special, Mother."
"Please don't do this. Don't go."
"I have to go."
"Why?"
"Because I don't belong here!"
"Then I suppose this is goodbye."
She cries and embraces Black Bart. "I am so sorry," she says. Then she screams, shoves him across the chamber and smashes his head into the wall, just as she did to Claudia over 40 years ago!
Mommie Dearest takes Jacob down to the Cave of Wonders, where she conducts the Awesome and Sacred Wine Drinking Ceremony of Immortality. As she uncorks the bottle, it recalls the scene in "Ab Aeterno" where Jacob told Richard the Island was like a bottle of wine that needed to be kept corked to trap Smokey. She says some mumbo jumbo in a foreign tongue and coerces Jacob to drink it.
"What is down there?"
"Life, death, rebirth. It's the heart and source of the Island."
By taking that cup of vino, Jacob is pledged to protetct the Island until he finds a replacement. He doesn't at first, still bitter and convinced Mommie Dearest loved Black Bart more than him, and now she's picked him only because his brother bolted for the village.
"It always was supposed to be you," she says. "I see it now."
Finally, he drinks.
"Now you and I are the same." Mommie Dearest says.
(Religious overtones? In the story of Jesus, he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before the crucifixion, that if it be the Father's will, "let this cup be taken from me." Later, after praying, Jesus realizes he must sacrifice himself. Sort of like Jacob resigning himself to Island protection. Not to mention that Jacob drinking the wine is halfway like taking communion; just need some bread there. L & C have not shied from throwing Bible analogies in there. )
Black Bart wakes up the next day, still living, and his special well and cavern are destroyed and charred. He returns to his village to find all the houses burned, and the entire population dead. He fishes his backgammon set out of the remains of his house, bursts into a rage and sobs.
Back at his former home, Mommie Dearest sends Jacob out to get firewood before a thunderstorm arrives. She returns to her camp and finds it trashed. She finds Black Bart's old game on the ground and looks at the black stone. Bart pops up behind her and stabs her in the back with his dagger.
She tumbles to the ground, mortally wounded.
"Why would you not let me leave, Mother?"
"Because I love you. (Gasp.) Thank you." A smile, a long sigh ... and she dies, perhaps grateful that her long, long job of Island guardianship is over.
Jacob comes back with the firewood and sees Bart over his dead mom.
"What did you do?" he screams and starts to repeatedly punch Bart in the face. "What did you do?"
Bart tells Jacob that Mommie Dearest is crazy and burned everyone up. "You can't kill me, Jacob. She made so you can't!"
He takes him down to the Cave of Wonders and says, "Don't worry, brother, I'm not going to kill you."
Bart asks if Mommie Dearest brought him back to the Cave, and he says she did, because she told him he has to protect it now. Jacob garbs Bart by the neck and throws him into the river that runs into the Cave of Wonders.
"You wanted to find light, you want to meet this place, brother? Then go!"
...And his body drifts into it, disappearing through what looks like an invisible barrier or force field. The ground rumbles beneath Jacob's feet, a primal roar is heard...
...And Smokey issues forth for the first time from the Cave of Wonders! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!! Freight train-like noises as Smokey rushes past his old bro! The Smokey Express, comin' through!!
Jacob, still in shock over killing Bart, the debut of Smokey, death of Mommie Dearest, etc., stops to take a drink at yet another river. He looks, suprised to see Bart's body lying nearby.
He goes back to camp and gets his mother's body and the black and white stones, putting them into a small bag. He takes the bodies to a cave and neatly arranges them side by side. He puts a bag containing the black and white stones by them. Quick flashes to Season 1, showing Jack and Kate looking at skeletons in the cave.John Locke comes the the cave opening and looks at the bodies. After Jack tells him one is female, he says, "Our very own Adam and Eve!"
Back to Jacob, who lovingly makes final adjustments to the corpses of the only family he ever knew. He gazes at them and says, "Goodbye, brother. Goodbye." Fade to black. (And I don't know why he didn't say farewell to Mom.)
And this is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end, my only friend, the end... Those lyrics from The Doors' "The End," effectively used at the beginning and end of Apocalypse Now, loudly and unsubtly announce the last regular episode next week, "What They Died For." Scenes quickly appear in what looks like submerged bubbles, so maybe water will be a huge factor in this upcoming show?
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