Episodes 14 and 15: “The Candidate” and “Across the Sea”

Introduction

I plan on going through these two episodes rather quickly, and dedicating a little more time to the most recent episode, the penultimate one.

13: Flashsideways: 2004

The real Locke awakes from his successful surgery. Jack thinks he could make him walk again, but Locke refuses the offer. We find out Locke took his father, Anthony Cooper, on a plane ride, and they crashed. Locke was paralyzed from the waist down, but Cooper became comatose. Locke sees his situation as punishment, a purgatory of sorts, and his guilt disallows him to take Jack up on his offer of possible healing.

13: The Island: 2007

All of the candidates are together. When they – and this includes Un-Locke – find the plane rigged with explosives, they go to the sub. Everyone gets on except for Un-Locke and Claire. This was Un-Locke’s plan. The apparent theory is that Un-Locke cannot kill any of the candidates, so he tries to set them up to mistrust and kill one another. It sort of works. Sawyer distrusts this aforementioned theory, as espoused by Jack, so he pulls out the wires to the bomb Un-Locke put in Jack’s bag. This accelerates the bomb. Sayid tells Jack where Desmond is – then the bomb instantly kills him. This was pure sacrifice, and it allows Kate, Jack, Hurley, and Sawyer to reach the shore. Sun and Jin don’t make it… (What about Frank? I think he’s coming back. Who else will fly the plane?)

14: Jacob and… What’s His Name?

I mainly like this episode, but I disliked a bunch of it, too. Let me try to summarize what we learn: Jacob and The Nemesis are twins. A nameless woman, known only as “Mother,” kills the brothers’ real mother right as they’re born. She is the Island Protector before Jacob. We assume she isn’t the first, since she mentioned arriving on the Island just like the pregnant woman, apparently washing up on shore. She seems to be protecting some sort of life source – a life source that cannot leave the Island, even though it will be desired, or else bad things will happen.

As children, Jacob doesn’t lie, but his twin is more sneaky. He doesn’t seem evil, just more devious. Mother likes the Nemesis more. But the Nemesis wants to leave the Island after seeing other people on the Island that came from another country. He leaves, and Jacob chooses to stay.

After much time has passed, the Nemesis, along with the help of others he is with, discovers a possible way to leave the Island. When Mother finds this, she destroys the well and kills all of the men. The Nemesis is pissed off (and rightfully so, right?) and he kills Mother. In a fit of rage and revenge, Jacob throws the Nemesis into the life source, since he has heard that going in there would be worse than death. The Nemesis exits as the smoke monster, and his physical body is dead.

Quick Thoughts

I like the idea of going back and explaining some of the Big Picture, but I’m hesitant that this was the best approach. The storyline doesn’t explain the Nemesis’ evil-ness; it makes Jacob look highly flawed – in fact, why is he any better than the Nemesis? He stayed with Mother, who doesn’t seem to be a positive character. Importantly, the good vs. evil or man-is-inherently-good vs. man-is-not conflict really goes by the wayside; in its place, we get more of a disorganized feud between two flawed people.