Jacob vs. NotJacob

6.15 "Across the Sea"

So, first of all show, way to add midichlorians. Really, show? Eleventh hour glow-y life force inside the island? Really?

And second, I really like NotJacob. The thing I enjoyed about this episode is that we got to see that Jacob and NotJacob weren't always as certain about things as they are now. And, from what I made of the episode, neither of them is really good or bad. It wasn't hard to see the "Man of Science, Man of Faith" theme with these two. Just because Jacob is the man of faith, it doesn't necessarily make him "Good", because he was just as susceptible to anger and vengeance as anyone else. NotJacob wasn't bad, he was just born with serious wanderlust (of which I am possibly overly sympathetic). And considering it's been however many hundreds of years now that he's been wanting to leave the island and Jacob seems to have found a way to come and go as he pleases, I can understand where he'd be kind of pissed and Jacob would be the focus of his anger.

Initially I was pretty annoyed with this episode because it felt like the writers had put together a myth story for the sole purpose of answering some of the lingering random questions. Like they thought to themselves "How can we explain the skeletons in the cave, the black and white rocks, the well with the wheel, and Smokey all in one story?" and then they wrote this. I might still feel that way. And I maintain that there is no possible way that this story is what JJ Abrams and The Darlton have known to be true since they first started writing the show.

Despite all that, and after a week of ruminating, I've realized that I basically enjoyed this episode. It's fun myth. It's not so serious that it's intolerable. With the exception of the glowing life force crap, it also stayed pretty vague, which is good. The best way to make the show terrible and piss off everyone would have been to start laying out extensive mythology in incredible detail. Instead they just gave us a glimpse of a story and so little context that we're able to understand it just about as well as we can understand anything going on on the show. Overall I was satisfied.