Lost: History Revised
By Dan Birlew | Posted March 24, 2010 in Television | 5 Comments »Evil Contained
First off, great f#$%ing performance by Nestor Carbonell. Hey, if the VP can get away with saying it, so can we all. 
His acting job in tonight’s episode was first rate, in two languages even, and really puts him up there with both Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn as one of the acting masters of the show.
The Man in Black will deceive anyone into killing his captor, Jacob.
In terms of answers to long-standing questions, we get the following from Richard’s origin story:
- He was originally Spanish, from the Canary Islands.
- The island sometimes appears near the Canary Islands, setting it up as a possible candidate to be the legendary St. Brendan’s Island.
- He was “brought” to the Island by Jacob, who wanted to bring the Black Rock to the island in order to prove something about mankind to the Man in Black.
- The four-toed statue was originally a giant statue of Taweret, Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth.
- The statue was destroyed in a collision with the Black Rock, when a tidal wave carried the ship into the statue.
- The Black Rock was carried so far inland by the massive tidal wave that destroyed the statue.
- The Man in Black is capable of assuming the forms of the dead, including Isabella. He’s also capable of taking a form and making the black smoke sound effects elsewhere at the same time, so that he can make it seem the dead and the black smoke are two different entities.
- Jacob believes that the Man in Black is evil, and the island is a way of containing him, thereby protecting the world.
- Richard became adviser to the Others by pointing out the fault in Jacob’s way of thinking about the men he brings to the island.
- Richard became immortal by Jacob’s touch because he didn’t want to die and be judged for his sins.
But other than that, most of which he hasn’t even shared with the castaways, Richard really doesn’t know anything… just like Ben tried to tell Jack. So now more than halfway through the season we still have a lot of outstanding questions. We need another show told from the Man in Black’s perspective to tell us how he and Jacob first locked horns, and how they established or learned about these “rules” they both need to abide by. We need to know why the Man in Black is prevented from killing Jacob himself, why he can change forms, become smoke, and embody evil itself. According to rumor, we should get something very like that in the 15th episode of this season, which supposedly has almost no regular characters in it. (According to EW.com)
Jacob convinces Richard that the Man in Black lied to him.
We also see that the Man in Black has tried to convince others to be his patsy before Ben, and that this isn’t the first time he’s sent someone else with a knife to kill Jacob. This is also the second time we’ve heard the “don’t let him speak a word before you stab him” instruction. The last time was when Dogen handed Sayid a ceremonial dagger (identical to the one the Man in Black handed Richard) and sent him out into the jungle to kill the Man in Black. Dogen’s instructions to Sayid were also “don’t let him speak a word” before stabbing him. However, the Man in Black managed to say “Hello, Sayid” before the fatal blow was struck. When the Man in Black pulled the dagger harmlessly from his own heart, Sayid concluded–perhaps in error–that the Man in Black couldn’t be killed and that Dogen had sent him on a suicide mission to get rid of him. But perhaps that wasn’t the case. Since Jacob got to speak to Richard before he had a chance to stab him, his voice may have been able to convince Richard to join his side. So we’re still left questioning whether Jacob is truly in the right as the Man in Black’s jailer, and whether the Man in Black is truly “evil” wine contained by the island cork.
All in all, Richard’s story leaves us with almost as many questions as we had before.
Otherwise, who else was glad for a little break from the sideways universe? I was scared at first that we’d been misled by last week’s promo when this week started with Ilana’s flashback. I was starting to think that we weren’t going to get Richard’s back story after all, but hers. It was a rough few minutes, contemplating all the complaints we’d be hearing from the other viewers. But thankfully we were only faked out for a few minutes.
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Thanks again for the recap! I had one of my infamous “long blinks” during Ricardo and Jacob’s chat on the beach and I missed the part about Jacob’s bringing people to the island to prove something to MIB.
Glad I know that now, because it casts Jacob in some shady light. All along, I’ve been saying, “MIB tugs at the heartstrings sometimes, but he’s killed so many people, he’s definitely not ‘good.’” However, Jacob’s body count is higher than MIB’s right now, if indeed he’s been the one bringing people to the island. All but 40-something people survived the crash of 815. Everyone on the Black Rock save Richard died (even before MIB got involved). Is it more moral to cause the death of people indirectly than to actually snuff them out with one’s smokey powers? If its an accident, then maybe, but if Jacob is deliberately drawing vessels of innocent people to the island to play a game with the MIB, he’s really not such a good guy.
Glad as always Jain, especially this season. I try to leave my personal thoughts out of the post as much as I can, especially the ones without evidence to back up, but my humble opinion is that Jacob was showing himself to be a truly Jack-like character in this episode; Total God-complex at work. I’m not such a Bible scholar anymore but I think I remember some Old Testament stuff like about Abraham and such where God was telling people “Don’t challenge ME, I’m God’n shit, yo” and “Don’t question me” or something like that. (Someone feel free to lay the Bible quote smack down on me here.) And then in the New Testament Jesus sacrificed himself so that God would continue forgiving the sins of humans once again (cuz evidently, he’d stopped) and reopen the gates of Heaven. So before Richard arrived, Jacob was living by the Old Testament. But Richard convinced him that someone must intervene in the affairs of man, otherwise he’s abandoning them to evil. Therefore, everlasting Richard is everlasting Christ.
You’re right, Jacob bringing people to the island has inflicted a lot more harm than good.
I’m starting to think that the whole white rock/black rock metaphor really is an “inside joke” and doesn’t mean that Jacob is necessarily good or that MIB is necessarily evil. If you go back and re-watch the scene when Jacob talks about the wine, he’s talking about Hell; he doesn’t actually mention the Man in Black, per se: “Think of this wine as what you keep calling Hell. There’s many other names for it too: malevolence, evil, darkness. Here it is, swirling around in the bottle, unable to get out because if it did, it would spread. The cork is this island, and it’s the only thing keeping the darkness where it belongs.”
Then Jacob continues, almost without a breath, saying, “That man who sent you to kill me believes that everyone is corruptable because it’s in their very nature to sin. I bring people here to prove him wrong. And when they get here, their past doesn’t matter.”
I suppose we could ‘infer’ that Jacob is saying the Man in Black is Hell, Evil, Malevolence, or the Devil; but he doesn’t actually SAY that, does he? One minute he’s talking about the purpose of the island, the next he’s talking about MIB. There’s an almost imperceptible subject change. Therefore, one is not necessarily equal to the other.
Naturally we can also infer from the final scene that MIB smashing the wine bottle conveys his desire to set darkness free, but is that really him admitting that he’s darkness personified? He’s admitted over and over now that he’s the black smoke, that he’s not really Locke. If he was truly Evil or Hell incarnate, would he admit that too?
What we also have to realize is that whomever is most likely to replace Jacob, whether it’s Jack or Sun or Jin or Sawyer; that person isn’t going to necessarily turn into an angel on the spot. He or she is going to bring all their human flaws into their dominion of the island, just like Jacob has shown. If Jacob’s replacement is Hurley then yeah, I would kinda agree that he’s going to become a bit angelic, cause he’s halfway there already.
I would assume Sayid is out of the running, since whenever the Man in Black is through using him he’ll probably just flop over like a deflated balloon. (After all, Miles didn’t seem entirely convinced that Sayid was actually ALIVE again.) So we have to assume that Jacob got his job from someone else, and brought all his human flaws into it, such as his apparent god complex. And whomever replaces Jacob will obviously have the same problem, which is why we spent 3 seasons learning the complete backgrounds of all the candidates. 
Therefore if the Man in Black was really a “man” at one point and got stuck with the job as some kind of punishment, then he can’t really be evil incarnate, can he?
Side note: Isn’t Jack starting to sound a little TOO eager to find out what Jacob wants them to do next, what the next step is? I bet he’s already fashioning himself as the next Jacob in his mind. He (and therefore, we) could be in for a rude awakening if that’s not the case…
I was thinking about your comment about the smackdown of God v. Abraham, and really, the OT is full of STFU moments between the Almighty and questioning, doubting, and whining believers. Job, Ezekiel, and Jonah are all examples. It seemed to be God’s M.O. in the whole OT– establish that he’s the new boss in town and assert his awesomeness (by force if necessary) over the other tempting religions and cults that had been thriving in the region for centuries.
But here’s another interesting thing– OT God has a bodycount that’s metaphorically similar to Jacob’s. All the Egyptian baby boys, the Egyptian army, and entire tribal nations were slaughtered either by God directly or by his peeps, who were known as the children of Israel (and we all know that Jacob took the name Israel after he beat the angel– see “Bullet the Blue Sky” by U2 if finding a Bible is problematic).
So if Lost is going all Christian parable-ic on us, then Jacob could still be “good” in his God-complex thinking, even if he kills people. Jacob’s on a mission to prove the righteousness of mankind. Can’t make an omlet of righteousness without breaking a few eggs.
And… if we’re going for the full blasphemy now: God, the father, isn’t the one doing the killing in the Bible. He sends the holy ghost down and it does the dirty work. God never walks among the people or does anything physical, like killing people. So if Jacob is the non-interfering father, Richard is the son (who interferes), and MIB is actually the ghost/spirit, that does the dirty work. This doesn’t really work, though, because there’s no precedent for the holy ghost wanting to escape from the trinity.
And with that, and having had enough of religious interference in things I enjoy (no offense to believers who think religion belongs everywhere), I go back to my space cop answer. An imperfect jailer and an imperfect inmate are marooned on an island on earth (see “Pitch Black”). Jacob can grant eternal life because he has alien medical technology (mitochlorians? sp), but he can’t absolve sin and he can’t raise the dead (“dead is dead” and sin is a construct without implications if one doesn’t believe in heaven or hell). After so long being crashed there (the EMP source is actually the core of their crashed spaceship), MIB and Jacob have developed this relationship and contest. Isolation has made them both a little crazy, which explains MIB’s issues and Jacob’s careless disregard for airline safety.
Okay, yeah… now I remember why I stopped attending Sunday Mass.
You made my point exactly: Jacob has a high body count and so does God in the Bible. Yet they’re both still “Good.” We can only hope that in constructing this parable the producers are trying to get Christians to examine their definition of what they really believe is “Good.”
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