Jacob

2 Comments Posted on Recaps, Uncategorized

LOST Recap: Season 6, Episode 12- “Everybody Loves Hugo”

I’m getting a little nervous.  After last night’s episode, I can’t help but think that there are so many questions that will not be answered in the next few weeks.  It raised more questions than answers.  Here’s what I did learn from “Everybody Loves Hugo”.

1)     The “whispers” on the island are from the people who died there but can’t “move on” because of the wrong doing they committed while they were still alive on the island.  Despite the writers of the show promising that the island is not really purgatory or hell, it’s hard not to see it that way.

2)     Desmond has the ability to interact between both reality and alt-reality.  He ran over the real Locke in alt-reality after Faux Locke threw him down the well in reality.  Unless alt-Desmond was simply carrying out some shady dirty-work orders of his boss, Mr. Widmore and that ultimately Desmond’s attempted murder of Locke was to show the balance between the two realities, being that Locke had a near-death experience when he was thrown out of the window.  Of course Jacob saved his life in reality.  Will someone save Locke’s life in alt-reality?

Desmond, Charlie, and the Widmore’s aren’t the only ones aware of alt-reality.  We can now add Hurley and Libby to that list.

I don’t know why, but Ilana always annoyed me.  Ben Linus’s response: “The island was done with her.”  It’s funny how dynamite typically gets rid of annoying characters on the show.

1 Comment Posted on Recaps, Uncategorized

LOST Recap: Season 6, Episode 11- “Happily Ever After”

Everybody loves Desmond.  And Desmond loves Penny.  Even when he’s in a flash-sideways and has never met Penny before, the Scottish fellow still has memories of her and is in love with her.  If that ain’t love then I don’t what love is.

This big reveal of this episode is that the flash-sideways really are connected to what actually happened.  Daniel, Eloise, and Desmond all end up becoming aware that their flash-sideways life is not the way it was supposed to happen.  The island should not have blown up.  Therefore, the plane was meant to crash on the island.  Which of course comes down to the philosophical challenge between Jacob and Esau (“The Man in Black”).

It was fun for us to see Charlie and Desmond relive that fateful Season 2 episode as a drowning Charlie placed his hand up against the window.  Even when he’s a heroine obsessed jerk, it’s hard not to like ole Charlie.

Hard-core Losties took special notice of the balance scale in Widmore’s office along with a model ship which caught Desmond’s eye.

Widmore told Desmond that Penny and his son will be gone forever if Desmond doesn’t help Widmore and his minions.  I’m seeing Widmore the way I used to see Ben Linus: A man determined to do whatever it takes for his higher purpose, even if it means innocent people die in the process.  But not necessarily an evil man.

Desmond is special, of course.  So he escaped Widmore’s torture chamber unharmed and actually motivated to help Widmore even further.

Ironically, the half-Scottish, half-Peruvian actor who plays Desmond, Henry Ian Cusick, played the part of Jesus in a 2002 movie called The Gospel of John.  So this isn’t the first time he has played a compassionate man who becomes a savior for the greater good of mankind.

2 Comments Posted on Recaps, Uncategorized

LOST Recap: Season 6, Episode 10- “The Package”

My sister Dana, the one who got me started on LOST three years ago, often teaches me good theories about the show.  She picks up on details I miss.  Today for my recap, I am copying and pasting her e-mails as a way for her to co-write this with me, despite her living in Alabama and me in Tennessee.  I’ll let her take start us off.

Dana:

Some things are just meant to be, so Mikhail would have lost an eye no matter what.  Are the 2 timelines intertwined, like The Butterfly Effect somehow?

Sun was pregnant and got shot. At the end of season 2 (or maybe it was 3 and shot an Other (who was pregnant) who came onto their boat. But maybe she wasn’t pregnant. Sun shot someone, and Sun got shot.  Balance.

Also, once someone becomes evil (Claire and Sayid) they stop feeling emotions. But Claire seems to have gotten hers back in the last episodes. She showed rage toward Kate and then later felt sorry and hugged her.

Any thoughts on why capturing Desmond would be so important to Jin? Not sure why Widmore wanted to show him to see Desmond ‘The Package’ Hume.

Do you get the feeling that Widmore is somehow one of the good guys?

Widmore warned that “a war” was coming. And now that we know he and Smokey are on different sides, he appears good. Widmore said that if Fake Locke were to escape the Island, everyone they cared about would cease to exist. (Sound familiar?) That’s what I thought he said.

There’s got to be so much more to Desmond than we’ve been told. Eloise Hawking appeared to him several times trying to get him not to marry Penny. Then he crashed on the Island, worked for Dharma, got rescued by Penny. I wonder if Widmore knows that Desmond is somehow a bad guy (connected to the smoke monster somehow?) and he’s trying to protect Penny.

We saw “room 23” again finally, where Alex’s boyfriend Carl was being brainwashed with subliminal messages about God and Jacob.

Nick:

Well done.  My take on Sun is that she doesn’t die.  After us waiting two seasons for her and Jin to reunite, I just think that would be cruel of the writers.

I agree Widmore is ultimately good, just like Ben.

I stand by my prediction that the Kwan Kid is the chosen Kwan, not Sun or Jin.

I remind you yet again that at no point so far in the series has it showed what happens in the year 2010.  It’s only showed up to early 2009 so far.  A major twist in episodes to come will involve the year 2010: present day.

So far we’ve only seen the past (though at the time it sometimes was the future, but not the timeline never ventured into life after 2009).  The LOST writers are keeping us in the dark about the immediate present day as far as where the characters are and the island itself.

In closing, I think it’s interesting to see the names of the upcoming episodes, with my predictions in parenthesis:

Episode 10: Happily Ever After (Jin and Sun reunite?)

Episode 11: Everybody Loves Hugo (Hugo and Libby get a second chance at love, in a flash-sideways?)

Episode 12: The Last Recruit (Desmond?)

Episode 13: The Candidate (The Kwan Kid?)

Episode 14: Across the Sea (We get to learn more about Widmore’s life off the island?)

Episode 15: What They Died For (Not necessarily implying that more main characters die, but instead an explanation on why favorite characters had to die, like Charlie and Libby.)

Episode 16: The End (The timeline finally reaches the year 2010.)

6 Comments Posted on Recaps, Uncategorized

LOST Recap: Season 6, Midseason- “Ab Aeterno”

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

After going on a LOST recapping hiatus since this season’s premiere episode, I came out of hiding to praise the job well done of the long awaited Richard-eccentric episode.  I feel so relieved, excited, and passionate about LOST again.  Because the show has finally stepped back into its former mystique while at the same time taking a giant step forward.

It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of the flashes-sideways.  They were cool.  I liked learning where the characters would have ended up had things gone differently.  But after a few episodes, the game started getting stale.

Yes, I get it.  James and Miles would have been buddy cops.  Ben and Dogen would have known each other through a high school.  Kate would have still ended up helping Claire.  Jack would have meet Locke and offered to help him gain his mobility back.  (And I’ve read an interview with one of the writers that said Hurley and Libby have a baby together in an upcoming flash-sideways.)

The first half of this season, to me, has felt more like a group of forsaken bonus episodes.  I feel like last night’s episode was the first real episode of the season.

Last May when I did my Season 5 finale recap, I predicted that Richard came to the island as a Spanish explorer in the 1600’s and was killed by the Smoke Monster.  So I was a little off.  He was a Spanish slave in 1867 from the Canary Islands (Spain) who became shipwrecked on the island.  I also predicted that the whole premise of LOST was a game between Jacob and the man I still refer to as Esau.  It now clearly appears that is indeed the case.

On a side note, the actor who plays Richard, Nestor Carbonell, is a Spanish-Cuban American who does not actually wear eyeliner, despite popular assumption.  He just has really thick eyelashes.

While some Losties are disappointed that the six seasons of the show have all led up to a moral chess game between two spiritual beings, I think it’s the only plot that the series could have that is grandiose enough to pull this all together.

Because just like real life, when all it’s all over with, it will be apparent that we were all participants in a sci-fi story alongside a spiritual war.  Yes, our life matters and is real, but ultimately we have a spiritual audience watching us and even influencing our personal decisions.  Brilliant.

Read “SCIence + FaIth = Sci-Fi” http://wp.me/pxqBU-1N

As for who and what exactly Jacob and Esau are, here is my guess.  Jacob is an angel and Esau is a demon.  Here is why they are not God and Satan.  When offering to grant a wish to Richard, Jacob says he can not raise the dead nor absolve Richard’s sins.  God would be able to.  But as an angel, Jacob is restricted by what God allows him to do.

Jacob’s gift of everlasting earthbound life is interesting.  It keeps Richard from going to hell, but makes his earthly life a form of hell by keeping him trapped on Earth while still not reuniting him with Isabella.

“Ab Aeterno” (the name of the episode), which is Latin for “since the beginning of time” or figuratively “since a very long time ago”, was by far the most blatantly Christian episode to date:

Richard learned to speak English by reading the Bible and carried around his wife’s cross necklace.  When Richard was shown to us in the prison, he was reading the 4th chapter of Luke which tells about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan to turn the stone into bread (the lust of the flesh), to worship Satan in exchange for the domain of the world and all its glory (the lust of the eyes), and to attempt to commit suicide knowing that God would save him anyway (the pride of life).

This concept was later reiterated in 1 John 2:16- “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

I wonder if this was intentionally (and loosely) played out with Richard through the episode:  Esau granted Richard the lust of the flesh when he freed him from his chains and gave him food and water.  Hurley enabled the lust of the eyes to Richard through his vision of Isabella.  Jacob granted Richard the lust of the pride of life by giving him earthly eternal life.  That could all be a coincidence, but maybe not.

In other Christian elements, Jacob asked the priest, “What can I do to earn God’s forgiveness?”, which is a pointing towards the need for God’s grace.  Also, there was the use of the word “sin” by Jacob when he quoted Esau, “Everyone is corruptible because it is in their nature to sin”.  Explicitly New Testament Biblical.

So far, Jacob has not yet been able to prove his case to Esau, that a person can ultimately choose good over evil.  He continues to bring people to the island to find someone who will be his representative of righteousness (symbolizing followers of Christ), since Jacob himself refuses to force his will upon anyone.  And of course that’s another obvious reflection of God and his relationship with humans: The granting of free will.

As for my predictions for the last half of the season:

Ben Linus: I stand by my belief that he is ultimately good.

The Smoke Monster (Esau): It is a “soul train” that collects the spirits of those it kills, so that it can take the human form of them once they are dead.  Sometimes it “takes pictures” of their good deeds when it flashes the light at them to decide whether to collect them (by killing them) or keep them alive, like it did with Eko in the first season and with Richard back in 1867.

The List:  Jacob touched 7 potential “saviors of the island” back in their past including Kate (as well as Locke, Hurley, James, Sayid, Jack, and Sun/Jin), but for some reason Kate’s name wasn’t written on the cave ceiling when Faux Locke took James there: Kate somehow disqualified herself.  Also, no one knows whether it’s Jin or Sun that is on the list because only their last name shows up- but I predict it’s their kid instead, not either of them.

The Flashes-Sideways:  Not what actually happens, only glimpses.  The island is reality.

I will close with a few other quotes from the season so far that really stood out:

“I am not a zombie.” -Sayid

“John Locke was a much better man than I’ll ever be and I’m sorry I murdered him.” -Ben Linus

“I’m the smoke thing.” -Faux Locke (I like this name for him best because it rhymes with “Mohawk”.)

Read LOST Recap: Season 6, Episode 1- “LA X” http://wp.me/pxqBU-vo

Leave a comment Posted on Recaps, Uncategorized

LOST Recap: Season 6, Episode 1- “LA X”


“When I die, what do you think will happen to me?” -Sayid

The anticipation… Such a big deal! Like being a kid… So exciting!

Yet now that the 23 millions of us have seen the first two hours of the final season of our favorite show ever, we’ve got our homework cut out for us. Watching LOST is a serious event. The whole time I’m taking notes, scene by scene.

Our predictions about the two different Last Supper promotional photos featuring the LOST cast were accurate: There are two main different timelines going on. No more flash forwards or flashbacks. It’s like those Choose Your Own Adventure books.  We are now dealing with the narrative device referred to as “flash-sideways”.

But by the finale, does only one of these destinies become the real one?  The writers of the show aren’t saying.  They don’t want to acknowlege either of the realities as the alternate one.  Until the finale episode, all we can do is just enjoy seeing what would have happened had the plane never crashed.  Because we’ve always been curious anyway about that.

There are two main parts from the episode that keep bouncing around in my mind.

The first: Who is in Sayid’s body now? Jacob. He told Hurley (in the new unknown year with the temple and the new Asian dude with long hair) to take Sayid to the temple (even though Jacob died an hour before in 1977). Sayid died at the temple (or was murdered by the men that were supposed to save him), then soon after comes back to life. That’s no coincidence.

In one of The Lord’s Supper parodies, Sayid assumes the role of Judas and John Locke represents Christ. Prediction: The new Sayid will betray the new Locke. In other words, Jacob will deceive Esau by making him think Sayid is still alive.

There is much irony in Sayid’s asking of what will happen to him when he dies. He was assuming and referring to his soul’s judgment to hell. But for us viewers, we now see this was a foreshadowing that the thing that would happen to him when he died is that Jacob would take over his body.

Going back to the fact that Jacob told Hurley to take Sayid to the temple in 1977, this solidifies a theory and anwers a mystery that we’ve been wondering since the 2nd season.  After a person has died on the island, and after Esau (or Jacob) takes the form of their body, they can appear as that person at any point in the past, but not in the future. Dying as that person prevents them from living on in present day.

When Jacob appears to Hurley and he had already been dead for an hour, remember that he was killed by Ben in the future.  Therefore he was able to go back in time and instruct Hurley to set up the takeover of Sayid’s body.

Pretty clever, yes?

The second thing bouncing around in my head is this: What year are Jack and Co. stuck in on the island? Based on the temple’s structure and the clothing, I assume sometime in the 1500’s, at the latest. I call this timeline “The Turban Times” because of the burgundy turbans worn by some of the temple mongers.

We’ve been introduced to two new bad guys. I think they’re bad guys. The Japanese dude with long hair. Until I learn his name and until I learn his actual ethnic background, I will call name him Emperor Miyagi. And his weird looking scientist friend, Dr. Hooknose. Both of them appear to be up to no good. But right now we’re still trying to sort out who’s good and who’s bad.

I hold true to my predictions that somehow in the end Ben Linus will end up being a good guy. Based on the fact that Benjamin in the Bible was righteous. Even the good guys are at least a little bad on LOST.

In closing, I have a feeling that the Egyptian cross, the ankh, will continue to have a major symbolic meaning for this final season. It is the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character for “eternal life” and represents the deities of the afterlife. The ankh was believed by the Egyptians to protect them against sickness, infertility, and a loss of psychic powers.

When it’s all said and done, the struggle on the island will all come down to Jacob and Esau’s struggle for eternal life, which they attempt to maintain through the appearance of the bodies of those who have died on the island. Sort of like on the movie The Skeleton Key.

And those who for whatever reason made their way to the island are forever exposed to the game of Jacob vs. Esau. That is, unless the alternative timeline proves to be solid. I have a feeling it won’t.

Read my recap from last night’s episode:

LOST Recap: Season 6, Episode 14- “Across the Sea”