"The Incident" Preliminary Rambles

"The Incident" was two hours chock full of awesomeness. And since I finished watching it last night I haven't really been able to stop thinking about it. I've re-watched the first scene at least four times now. Best show ever.

There was so much info downloaded into our brains that I'd rather not shoot my wad right here and now with some kind of epic five thousand word recap. So for once, I'm going to get organized about this. Below are some random points I'd like to touch on immediately. Future posts will go into heavier, juicy detail.

-First, if you haven't yet looked up what Richard said as an answer to the "What lies in the shadow of the statue" riddle, it was Latin for "He who will save us all."

-The opening scene tickles my mythology bone so fiercely that I'm tempted to call it an even better opening scene that the Desmond-revealing opener of the season two premiere.

-Who was the Second Man? A.k.a. the Man in Dark Clothes, a.k.a. Impostor Locke?

An obvious, non-nuanced answer: Satan.
He may represent the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who believed that humans were fundamentally evil (see the Second Man's "they come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt" line) -- which makes it wonderfully ironic that he then impersonated a man named John Locke.
If they were brothers, their story could parallel Cain and Abel.
But if we're talking Biblically, I'd be remiss to point out that Jacob -- son of Isaac, son of Abraham, who basically founded monotheism -- had a brother named Esau. Neither Jacob nor Esau were particularly great guys.

-None of the casualties in this finale were clear-cut. Sayid was left bleeding to death, and Juliet definitely seemed mortally wounded, but when the bomb went off, who knows what happened to both of them, and everybody else? Meanwhile, we find out that Locke is really dead -- but that he has been for a while.

-That was the saddest part of the episode for me, by far: Locke's arc is over. His storyline ended when Ben killed him. He has no grand destiny. It was cruel and heartbreaking. In a really awesomely-written kind of way.

-Two major complaints:

Sun is still getting riddled with all the lame lines. "If that's Locke, then who's in the temple?" Way to try to ruin an awesome scene with a painfully cliched line.
I'm sick of Jack/Kate/Juliet/Sawyer explaining their reasoning behind very complex moral decisions in very simplistic, romantic terms. It cheapens Jack's character to hear that he wants to blow up the bomb not to save Boone, Shannon, Charlie, and everyone else, but because he wants Kate back. (It also makes zero sense, since he won't know Kate and she'll be going to jail.) It cheapens the Juliet/Sawyer relationship to see Juliet change her mind on a dime about potentially killing everyone on the island just because Sawyer looked at Kate. (And why take a five-minute time-out when Sayid's bleeding to death? And why make the Jack/Sawyer brawl so darn bloody? That was way uglier than it needed to be.) Overall, that fifteen-minute period of in-fighting between the four romantic leads was atrociously handled.

-Jacob's meetings with the castaways -- he met with every member of the surviving original cast, plus Locke, plus Ilana, although I suppose he could've met with all the dead members of the original cast too and we just didn't see it -- were terrifically ambiguous. Did his meeting with Kate make her think twice about thieving, or encourage her to keep going? Was he being nice to Sawyer by giving him the pen, or helping him on his path toward revenge? Did he save Sayid from being killed, or allow Nadia to be killed? I'm inclined to think that he was meeting them more for himself than for them. The focal point of each meeting definitely seemed to be that he touched each person. What was the significance of this? Did that seal each one's fate to end up on the island?

-Jacob is God. Take that literally if you want to, but either way, he's definitely a God figure, complete with mixed messages about destiny: his big thing is that each person has a choice, and yet he definitely wanted the Black Rock to come to the island, he definitely wanted Hurley to come back. He has a plan that we should follow -- but we have the free will whether to follow it or not.

-Our first explanation of Richard's agelessness: that Jacob gave that to him. It's more and more likely that Richard -- or Ricardos -- came from the Black Rock, that Jacob saw something in him, and that Jacob appointed him to be an eternal island adviser/protector.

-So Ilana and the Shadow of the Statue cult: good guys?

-This episode drills in the point that Ben is not special: he admitted that he went to the cabin with Locke in Season 3 having no idea that somebody would be in there, and that he's never seen Jacob. Jacob's final line to Ben: "What about you?" was intriguingly cruel (although it might have been, as some friends theorized, a sort of honest question tying into Jacob's free will theme: "What about you? You can choose your own destiny, you don't need me to tell you") -- although it is in line with the notion that Ben is simply a power-hungry dude with no appointed place in the grand scheme.

-So who did Locke see in the cabin? Are Christian and Claire ghosts, or Smoke Monster apparitions? Are they really working for Jacob, or the Second Man? Is the Second Man in league with (or the same as) the Smoke Monster? Was Jacob ever using the cabin? What were the ashes for? Who broke the ash line? We have until 2010 to mull over these questions.

-The Rose, Bernard, and Vincent segment completely worked for me. A high point in the episode.

-Jacob's final line to Second Man Impostor Locke: "They're coming." Two answers: Ilana, Richard et al, or the castaways? I'm inclined to believe the latter: that Jacob's last dying act was ensuring that the explosion of the H bomb would propel Jack and company back forward through time -- and that they would be pivotal in eventually destroying the Second Man.

TAGS: Abraham, Ben, Bernard, Esau, Finale, Ilana, Impostor Locke, Isaac, Jacob, Locke, Ricardos, Richard, Rose, Season 5, Second Man, The Incident, Vincent
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[ READER COMMENTS ]

1

nogood said:

Wow, interesting thoughts I have on disagreement to something that you alluded upon. Why does Jacob and black shirt guy (I like the idea of Esau) have to be good and evil, god and satan? Does there have to be a hero and villan? If we cease to view them in this light certain contradictions of motivation from them and their agents are made null and void. I do agree with the idea that flat out murder seems evil but presumably the omnipotent being of Jacob has seen a great deal of death on his hands too.
I also believe that the H-bomb has just projected the 1977 persons back to their rightful time but the complications of changing the past and how that could be explained and keep it interesting for so long is unlikely. Therefore Sayid is bleading to death and Juliette has no chance.

Posted at 07:45 PM, on July 5 2009

"The Incident" Preliminary Rambles

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