It's incredible to me how far downhill this show has gone. Yes, the third season was god-awful, but I felt like the show redeemed itself with the fourth and fifth seasons. This sixth season, however, with very few exceptions, has been absolutely horrendous. The plot is crawling along at a snail's pace, with sporadic episodes in which so much happens it's impossible to get the full impact (last week's episode was a perfect example). It's gotten so bad, in fact, that even when the show finally answers some of the huge questions that it has set up (as this week's episode did), they are robbed of their significance by the knowledge of how awful the show has become. This week we finally learned the background of Jacob and the Man in Black, but aside from revealing this information the episode was not very good at all, and so it took away from the satisfaction of finally getting some goddamn answers from this show. After the jump I've got the full recap.
The entire episode takes place apparently hundreds of years ago on the Island. A pregnant woman named Claudia washes up on the beach and stumbles into the jungle, where she meets an older woman, whose name we never learn. The woman brings Claudia to a familiar-looking cave, where Claudia suddenly goes into labour. She gives birth to a son, and names him Jacob, but wait, there's more. It turns out that Claudia was pregnant with twins, and a second son is born. The second child is born with a caul, and Claudia says she only picked out one name. Before she can do much else, the other woman apologizes, then bashes Claudia's head in with a rock. Well, at least she was polite about it.
The woman raises the two boys as her own, keeping them isolated and never telling them that there are other people on the Island. When they are 13, Jacob's brother discovers a box containing a game with black and white stones, and makes Jacob promise not to tell their mother about it. Jacob is a momma's boy, however, and reveals the game's existence to their mother. The mother speaks with Jacob's brother, telling him that he is special, and that he will never have to worry about death.
While out hunting boar one day, Jacob and his brother discover other people on the Island. They rush back to tell their mother, and she blindfolds them and leads them to a small cave with a stream leading into it. Bright light shines from the cave, and their mother claims that the cave is the reason they are on the Island. She explains that "Light" is in the cave (well yeah, it's a goddamn glowing cave!), and that they must make sure no one ever finds it. She says that part of this light is in every man, but all men want more, and they could put the light out if they tried to take it from the cave. She tells the boys that one of them will have to protect the light. She also explains that she has made it so that they can never harm one another (but of course she doesn't explain how she has done this).
Later, Jacob and his brother are playing the stones game when Claudia appears. Only the brother can see her, however, because she is dead. She leads him to a village and explains that these are the people who came to the Island with her, but they were separated in a shipwreck. She tells Jacob's brother that she is his real mother, and that the woman who has raised him is actually her murderer. Jacob's brother returns home and begs Jacob to come with him to the village. Jacob flips out and beats the shit out of his brother before their fake mother arrives and Jacob decides to stay with her. Jacob's brother leaves, and his mother tells Jacob the truth of his origins. She says that she kept him separated from the other people on the Island because she needed him to stay good. Jacob reveals that he knows she loves his brother more than him, but says he will stay with her anyways.
Thirty years pass, and we learn that Jacob has been visiting his brother at the village to play the stones game. Jacob is curious about the people his brother live with, and the Man in Black says that they definitely are bad people. He's only with them because they are a means to an end. He shows Jacob a magnetic well, and Jacob runs home to tell mommy. The mother visits the Man in Black in the well, and he explains his plan to create the wheel that made the Island move back in season whatever (I can't remember and I don't care enough to look it up). MIB claims that he has to leave because he doesn't belong on the Island, and his mother hugs him goodbye before smacking his head against the wall. She returns home and takes Jacob to the light cave, saying that he will be the one to protect it now. She says it is "the source, the heart of the Island." She makes him promise never to go into the cave, as he would experience a fate worse than death. He protests his new position, saying that his mother had always wanted the Man in Black to be the one to guard the cave. His mother explains that this is true, but it was always supposed to be Jacob. She then gives him a glass of wine (from the bottle that Jacob would later use as an allegory for the Man in Black being on the Island) and he drinks it in a ceremonial acceptance gesture.
The Man in Black wakes up to find that his mother has somehow managed to collapse the well (uhhh) and kill everyone in his village (uhhh) and burn it to the ground (OK seriously. How the fuck would one old lady manage all of this?). He goes to the cave and stabs his mother in the back (classy), asking her why she wouldn't just let him leave. She says it's because she loves him, then thanks him (presumably for killing her. The audience thanked him too, because she was awful). Jacob arrives and beats the shit out of his brother (again), then drags him to the light cave and throws him in. Wait, what? Didn't his mother explain to him that this cave was to be protected and that he was never to go in? Why would he assume that his brother could go in without fucking things up? Immediately the light in the cave goes out, and the smoke monster explodes out of the opening. Jacob runs away, and finds his brother's body on a riverbank. He brings the body back to the cave, where he lays it next to his mother and puts the black and white stones from the game in a pouch with the bodies. Of course Lost thinks we're goddamn idiots, so we were treated to several scenes from the episode in the first season when Jack, Kate, and Locke found the two skeletons in the cave, and Locke called them Adam and Eve.
Like I said, the fact that the episode sucked and the show is now terrible means that I couldn't even enjoy the revelations that this show had to offer. Jacob and MIB are brothers. We finally see how the smoke monster came to be. We have an idea of what Jacob is protecting. Most importantly, we know that the Man in Black is actually dead. And yet the best reaction I can produce is "OK." OK. So now I know these things. Great. The show still sucks. These revelations don't change anything about the way that I view the show, and the fact that with only two episodes left we're being given an episode that basically just fills in the blanks without doing anything to move the plot forward is infuriating. This episode should have happened five or six weeks ago, when it wouldn't have seemed like the writers are just shoving answers in our faces as fast as they can. Guuhhh. Two more episodes, and then I can forget this fucking show.
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