LOST: The Big Bad

 OK, do you get it now? I'm talking to the "Maybe JACOB is evil and the Man in Black is actually good" crowd, assuming that theory persists.

 I know Lost traffics in ambiguities, and I'm never comfortable pointing at a character and saying "She's evil" or "He's good," because it's rarely that simple.

 But this time it is. You don't do what the Monster did tonight and get your name in the Good Guys column. 

 I'm still not saying Jacob's an angel. Like I've argued before, he's destroyed countless lives basically just to settle a bet. And next week, we'll apparently learn a lot more about him, and the Man in Black and his motivations. Still, he's our villain, committing a truly heinous act tonight and doing it the way he's pictured here, with a smile on his face.

 And yeah, I know: sideways world, flashbacks, ghosts, etc. There are plenty of ways we could -- and probably will -- see Jin, Sun and Sayid again. 
 
 That doesn't make their deaths any less affecting: Sayid re-embracing the light in a final act of heroism, Jin making good on his promise never to leave Sun again, even if it meant joining her in a watery grave.
 
 (At the same time, I sort of agree with Alan Sepinwall, who wonders why neither of the Kwons seemed to spare a thought for their daughter. Poor little Ji-Yeon. And poor Frank Lapidus, who never really got much to do on the show other pop off occasional one liners, and who seems to have perished with Sun Jin and Sayid.) 

 Even more shattering, for me anyway, was the way the other characters reacted to the news: Hurley pretty much sobbing, Jack's broken look to the heavens. If that didn't make you feel something, you're as heartless as Anthony Cooper, or as catatonic as the sideways Anthony Cooper.
 
 And if the episode wasn't sad enough, we came back from the break after the sub sank to hear sideways Locke's awful story about turning his father into a husk of a man after his disastrous first flight.
 
 Nice fake out, by the way, with the title of this episode. It's called "The Candidate," which leads us to believe we'll find out who Jacob's successor is. But it actually refers to Locke, and how he's a candidate for the surgery that will repair his spine, and that he absolutely doesn't want.
 
 So the episode then becomes about Jack struggling and ultimately failing to be a liberator, whether it's Locke from his physical and emotional paralysis or the other castaways from the Monster's treachery.
 
 He seems to have more success with the former, almost convincing Locke that an operation could not only heal his body, but his psyche. And let's just pause and say, for the 45357th time, how great Terry O'Quinn is, conveying Locke's pain and the Monster's invulnerability. 
 
 "What makes you think letting go is so easy?" Locke asks him.
 
 "It's not," Jack admits.
 
 This exchange reminded me of an earlier conversation between Locke and Jack when they were arguing about pushing the button in season two.
 

 Locke: Why do you find it so hard to believe?
 
 Jack: Why do you find it so easy?

 Locke: It's never been easy.

 Now their roles seemed to be reversed, with sideways Jack asking Locke to take a leap of faith, and island Jack looking to the stars for answers. He better hope they come soon, before the Monster makes good on his closing promise.

 Other thoughts:

•  Jack still hasn't gotten the a-ha! moment that Desmond and Hurley have experienced in the sideways world, but this episode at least showed him realizing there's something odd going on surrounding Oceanic 815, after meeting with Bernard and talking to Claire.
• For that matter, is sideways Locke going to have one of those realizations after Desmond mowed him down? Maybe he did, and maybe it has something to do with his refusing Jack's surgery.
• Best moment of the episode: Jack knocking fake Locke into the water. 
• That Monster knows his bomb making, huh?
• Note that Jack gives Claire an Apollo bar, just as Jacob did for Jack last year.
• I liked the way Jin's final words were in Korean. And the way Sayid died doing something kind of bad-ass. RIP everyone.

Tom Coombe

Comments

[Chris Casey]

Those folks dying sort of like Christ's apostles falling by the wayside after he died and rose from the dead, huh?

[Tom]

I hadn't thought of it that way. To me, it was a way to 1. Show once again that LOST is willing to kill beloved characters

2. As Cuse/Lindelof told Entertainment Weekly, show us the MIB really is a bad guy.