Great Ab (Aeterno) Workout

LOSTaways-

I have the distinct feeling that I will be saying this again a time or two more before the series finale, but Ab Aeterno was the best episode LOST has presented to us in some 5 years. For all the people who have LOST hope and/or faith in the show this season (most commonly the result of not "getting" the alternate-reality storyline), Ab Aeterno embodied everything that is great and wonderful and mystical and mysterious about the people (and island) we've all come to love.

Think of how long we've been waiting to learn who Richard Alpert is, why he doesn't age, how long he's been on the island, and what his relationship to Jacob, Flocke and the Black Rock actually is??? Think of how many times you've banged your head against the proverbial wall and longed to know the secrets of Alpert.

Well, we were just treated to massive revelations about him, the island's history, Jacob, Flocke, etc. etc. Enjoy it. Soak it in. Be grateful and happy. Appreciate a show that has substance and suspense and masterful story-telling abilities. A key to happiness in life (and to enjoying its guilty pleasures...like a tv show that is clearly better than any other in the past 20 years) is the ability to revel in small victories. This episode was a victory. It was a reward for faithfully sticking with a show that, like any epic, has its more tedious and more compelling moments.

Enough on that.

"Ab Aeterno"brings us back to 1867, to the Canary Island of Tenerife, where Ricardo Alpert has rushed home to be with his sick and dying wife Isabella. Disease and sickness and physical suffering are common themes in LOST, as they sadly are in real life. Rose had cancer. Locke was paralyzed. Jack's ex-wife was in a tragic car accident. Rousseau's French expedition team was "sick" and each member needed to be put down like a lame horse. The noteworthy thing from this episode that ties into a larger them of LOST is in regards to how the main characters react to the physical suffering in their own life, and also, in the lives of those they love.

My main man Bernard couldn't deal with Rose's cancer and so he took them on a wild healing goose chase to Australia....which landed them on the island. Locke couldn't handle his paralysis and headed to the Land Down Under in order to prove to himself and others (or as Jin would say, "Udders...Udders") that he was still a full man in the figurative sense....which landed him on the island. Richard Ricardo couldn't accept his sick wife's TB-induced fate and ended up killing a doctor and stealing medicine...which landed him on the island.

The women in the lives of all three of these men (Rose-Bernard, Locke-Helen, and Richard-Isabella) were much more ready to accept the physical and emotional limitations of the situation that drove their men to rash action. The balance between accepting one's fate and fighting a losing battle to hold out hope is an often tenuous one, especially on LOST.

Richard promises Isabella that he will save her (Jack-style) and rushes off to murder the likely government-employed local doctor. It was in fact an accident, the murder, so let's just say "man-slaughter." He had brought with him the last of his money and the cross necklace that belonged to his beloved wife, but it was not enough to buy the medicine. I loved the line where Richard hands over the necklace and says, "There...you have everything now." His devotion to his wife is commendable, but it is also his downfall ultimately. Devotion = obsession for Ricardo.

Richard is arrested for his crimes and we next find him in jail. He is reading the Bible (Luke 4...more on that later) when the prison's priest enters to hear his confession. Now was it just me, or did that priest seem a tad callous and insane in his interactions with Alpert? The man was confessing his sin, admitting he had literally killed the doctor, but that it was an accident, and the priest tells him that he's LOST and should just get used to the fact that he's got a one-way ticket to Hades. No Protestant or Catholic clergyman would have said such things to Richard. Then, before the execution, he sells him into indentured servitude in what appears to be some illegal racket the padre's running from the prison.

The man who bought Richard, Jonas Whitfield, was in the employment of one Magnus Hanso, the captain of the Black Rock. Hanso ought to be a familiar name to all of you, as it was his great grand-son, Alvar Hanso, who originally funded the DHARMA Initiative (as seen on the original orientation film back in season two). Whitfield loads Richard onto the slave ship and we next find Richard aboard the Black Rock in the middle of a raging, tsunami-like storm. The waves were so abnormally high that the ship crashed into the top of the Egyptian statue and ended up in the middle of the jungle (where we've seen it the past 5 seasons). As they were crashing, another slave next to Richard can be heard yelling "I see the devil...this island is guarded by the devil."

Dude, you have no idea.

This week's LOST-related tune? The End, by The Doors.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

When Richard and the other slaves wake up and begin to give thanks to God for saving them from the storm, they are greeted by a disheveled and distraught Whitfield who informs them that Captain Hanso is dead, they're in the middle of a jungle, and that he's about to off each of them with a saber to the gut so they won't try and escape or kill him later. In an inverse way, this scenario echoed the story in the book of Acts where an earthquake destroys the prison that Saint Paul is being kept in, and the prison guard is so worried that he will be blamed for prisoners escaping that he wants to kill himself. Except instead of the prison guard wanting to kill himself, this prison guard actually killed prisoners. That is, until Black Smokey appeared from the foggy mists and did his thing.

The only one left, the only one spared from the shipwreck and the Smoke attack is Richard. This wasn't by mistake. Jacob brought him there for a purpose, and Smokey spared him for a purpose. Jacob was looking for a mediator between himself and the people he brought there as candidates. Smokey was looking for someone who would be easy to manipulate due to a traumatized emotional state (due to, oh I don't know, a recent tragic death of a loved one).

Speaking of said manipulation, Smokey allows Richard to fester in his own stink, sweat and sorrow in the hold of the ship for a number of days before he appears to him in the form of his deceased spouse. Isabella tells him that they are in hell and that El Diablo is on the prowl. She then promptly runs out of the ship towards the sound of that prowl and gets whipped away to the chagrin of her still-chained hubby. It was so obvious that Isabella in that scene was Smokey, although later, she does I believe actually appear to Hurley when he is communicating between her and Richard. It was a Sayid-like setup from the start with Smokey who was hoping to win the allegiance of Richard in his quest to kill Jacob and escape his island constraints.

Alpert initially takes the bait, but after a run-in with Jacob, switches teams. But Smokey doesn't seem all too upset. He lets Alpert know that the offer will always still be on the table for him to change teams and help him kill Jacob.

I'm going to talk more about the discussion/interaction between Jacob and Alpert, which was the most important part of the episode in terms of LOST mythology and lore, but enough can't be said for how moving and touching that scene with Richard, his dead wife, and Hurley the Interpreter. Richard has spent nearly 150 years of his unnatural life trying to make up for his past sins and beating himself up for what happened to his wife. He buried "her" (her necklace) when he first got to the island and made his mission making amends for his past sins. When Isabella visits him (with Hurley's help) she "absolves" Richard of his "sins." It's the thing he has been craving and needing for so long. If you remember, Richard said that the entire time he's been on the island he has avoided the Black Rock and now we learn he had also avoided his wife's "grave." In the last few weeks we've seen Richard deal with both skeletons in his very old (and probably musty) closet.

On to the meaty parts of Ab Aeterno...

When Richard finds Jacob (and his fists) on the beach, he is still convinced that Jacob is the devil. He is also certain that he is dead, and already in hell. So what does Jacob do to convince him otherwise? He baptizes him in the water. How many times does he dunk him under the cresting waves? Four. Four? Cuatro.

Wonder if there's any religious metaphors or allusions in that act...

Something that stood out was Jacob's reaction to Richard's recounting of his time on the island thus far. Namely, that Smokey was now recruiting castaways to try and kill him (Jacob). Jacob seemed incredulous at that news. So were these two not always going after each other? Jacob said that the Man in Black/Smokey believes that any person can be corrupted because it is in their nature, so he (Jacob) brings people there to prove that this is not the case. Actually, let me just show you his exact words:

Jacob: ''Think of this wine for what you keep calling hell. There are many other names for it, too. Malevolence. Evil. Darkness. And 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. That man who sent you to kill me thinks that everyone is corruptible 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.''

Man, there's a lot to unpack here. I'm not going to get to it all this week, but fret not, we've got 8 or 9 episodes left to delve further into these themes by the time all is said in done in LOST land.

Richard wants to know why Jacob doesn't get more personally involved and Jacob says he wants the people he brings to the island to help themselves and figure more out on their own. Richard doesn't like the sound of that and suggests that if Jacob doesn't get involved, "he will" (Flocke). So then and there Richard gets eternal life (or until someone not named Jack is willing to light the dynamite's fuse) and becomes the middle-man between Jacob and those he calls to the island's shores for the little moral play he's concocted. Or maybe not concocted himself, but has been tasked to oversee.

The whole concept of the "candidates" obviously points to the fact that Jacob has not always been, nor always will be, the island's protector. He also seems to have many answers, but not all of them. By no means do I think that he is God and Flocke is Lucifer, but just as the angels in heaven don't know all of God's secrets, Jacob is an ambassador for the good guys. I see his role (and Flocke's) as being one more of appointed front-line defenders of each "side's" interest. The island is the cork in the bottle keeping hell from spewing forth on earth. At that convergence of energies and interests there are two men who have been selected to battle. Think of a David and Goliath situation. Not necessarily so much in the "big guy losing to little under-dog" sense, but more in the "the Philistines and Israelites did battle by proxy through two men, one representing each side" sense.

Jacob has power, and has access to off-island things and people, but he is not all-powerful. He can't cleanse Richard of his sins. He can see people all around the world through his magical peeping-scope in the Lighthouse. He can touch people and give them eternal life. But he can be stabbed (unlike Flocke). It almost seems like Flocke is more powerful than Jacob, but I think the better way to put it is that Flocke has different powers than Jacob.

We saw Jacob come to visit Ilana in the hospital last season, and this week we got a fuller view of what that conversation entailed. He told her he had 6 people to protect, that she had been preparing her whole life for this moment, and that after reaching the island and taking Jack, Hurley, etc. to the Temple, she was to find Richard who would know what to do.

Preparing her whole life for this? Is Ilana someone special herself, or just another recruit (like Dogen) of Jacob's? How much does she know about what is going on? She seems to have a deep, unwavering faith in Jacob and their mission, something we've seen even Richard lose.

But despite Jacob's promise that Richard would know what to do, Alpert insists he doesn't and that is when he heads off to find his wife's necklace and attempt to switch sides. We've covered much of that already.


Random Thoughts/Theories:
-Richard was reading in Luke 4 when the priest came in for his rejected confession. Among the many important things that happen in that chapter is the devil's attempt to tempt Christ to sin while he was in the desert for 40 days. Satan tempted Jesus by promising him power, offering him food, and encouraging him to put God to the test. Sound familiar?

-The dagger that Smokey gives to Richard is eerily similar to the one Dogen gave to Sayid to kill Flocke/Smokey earlier this season. Smokey's story to Richard, about having to stab "the devil", is basically the same thing Dogen told Sayid. So what gives? Was Dogen really bad and working for Flocke? That wouldn't make much sense. More likely, Dogen knew that Sayid wouldn't be able to kill Flocke and had sent him out there on a suicide mission. But then again, if Dogen knew that Sayid wouldn't be able to kill him, he would also probably know that Flocke would be able to con Sayid into joining his side. Maybe Dogen was an "inside man" who Flocke had no use for any longer and had Sayid drown him for him (and now Sayid is the new Dogen). Hard to follow that line of reasoning? Ya, me too.

-I've been asked a number of times in the past month whether I think Jacob or Flocke is the "good" one. As I've reflected on that question a few things have come to mind. First, this show has undeniable religious undertones. Greek Mythology. Egyptian polytheism. And most notably: Judeo-Christian, Old/New Testament theology and morality tales. So in a weird way I have approached analyzing which of the two main protagonists is "good" the same way I've come to certain conclusions about my own faith and who God is. In contemplating the word "good", especially as it pertains to good vs. evil in the biblical, moral, spiritual sense, I know that my definition of good and God's are not always the same.

I've come to what I consider to be a reasonable, rational conclusion about the seeming disparity between God's goodness and what I consider to be good: if I knew all the answers, I'd be God (or the person I thought was God would be exposed as a sham/impostor). The writers of LOST are blatantly influenced by the Bible and have interwoven complex themes of faith, trust, hope and belief into their story. So in trying in to the head of a LOST writer, and assuming that they are utilizing the Jewish-Christian religious tradition and understanding of God as some sort of basis for their unfolding drama on the island, I would say that Jacob is good...but perhaps not in the same way the characters (or even we the viewers) might think.

Few examples to explain what I mean. When asked by Ben "What about me?" at the end of last season, Jacob responds: "What about you?" The island and all the events going on around him were never all about Ben. He had selfish motives (i.e. power-hungry) for wanting to be a leader and felt scorned when he wasn't treated like a real leader by Jacob. God wants us to love Him because He first loved us. God wants us to serve Him for His glory, not our own. By our very nature as created beings we are subject to "rules" that are outside of our control, and what God asks for us is not a blind faith, one devoid of thought or rationality, but a child-like one that has at its center a love for Him as a child loves his or her parent even after they've been punished for not playing nice with their brother or sister. Jacob wanted Ben to be a servant-leader.

Jacob wanted Ben to stop thinking of how to grab more and more power and control, but to appreciate the privilege of being on a beautiful, magical island. Ben had been shown great and wondrous things, yet his heart was still hard and selfish. THAT was his problem and Jacob wasn't going to reward him for being a self-centered, manipulating putz his whole life. That didn't make Jacob evil or wrong, and in fact, I would say that made him good (if we're assuming that it is a good thing to be a nice person who doesn't let their daughter get capped in the cranium to keep their power).

Jacob in this episode dunks Richard back into the water those four times to wake up him and give him a kick in the pants. He doesn't reveal himself to people like Jack, but shows him enough so that Jack will be drawn back to him. Flocke meanwhile always treats everyone he's trying to get to join his side very nice and slyly (like a certain serpent in a certain garden). Flocke promises "turkish delight" while Jacob seeks out those who will follow him, even if they don't know every detail of the Who? What? Where? Why?

All of this is to say that I think Jacob is the good one. Not that he is God, but that he is representing the goodness of God against the evil, manipulating, lying wickedness of Satan (a.k.a. The Deceiver).

-Flocke poured out the glass of Whiskey that Sawyer offered him in Othersville earlier this season, and the other night smashed the flask of wine Jacob had given him. Jacob was seen eating a fish last year, which he offered to Smokey/Flocke, and Flocke turned a piece of fish down as well. Kind of like the cursed pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean, maybe Flocke is also cursed and wants to get off the island to eat a hamburger?

-Richard is told by his dead wife Isabella that he must stop Flocke from leaving the island or, as Hurley put it, "We all go to hell." So is Richard the new leader? Is he the one tasked with stopping (or killing) Flocke? Or was his wife speaking in more general terms...as in, "You guys all need to do this or the earth's in trouble"? I ask that because Jacob said to Hurley earlier this season that Jack was brought back for a purpose. Maybe the doctor who is obsessed with saving lives will be tasked to end one (Flocke's).

-"Ab Aeterno" means "from eternity" which fits perfectly in with the eternal life granted to Richard, but also I think points to just how long this island and cosmic battle has been going on.

-In the Vulgate (Catholic) Bible, Psalm 8:23 reads: "Ab aeterno ordita sum et ex antiquis antequam terra fieret." or, in English, "I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth."

-Flocke said that Jacob "stole my humanity." So it is really Jacob's fault Flocke is there, or like Cain and Abel in Genesis, is Flocke simply jealous and mis-directing his anger at someone who really doesn't have control over him?

-When Richard is talking to Jacob on the beach, he asks him what is inside his statue home. Jacob responds with: "No one can come in unless they're invited." John 6:44 reads: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day."

-Hurley has really come into his own as of late. Jacob has used him in special ways. He was seeing people like Charlie and Mr. Ekko while in the mental institution, and now on the island he's being used by people like Isabella and dead-Jacob to coordinate important activities. I still won't forgive him for that lame episode where he drove around in the VW bus (or the cannonball scene).


Okay, that's all for now. Leave your thoughts and comments below.


Swing away,

John Locke's Pants