What I’m Watching: Lost

Lost: Season 6, Episode 15 “Across the Sea” (C)

The main reason that I have a major problem with this kind of episode is that, while it provides some important background on the greater mythology of the island, it doesn’t follow the characters we’ve come to love and takes place completely in the long-ago past. The Richard flashback episode from a few weeks ago did a similar thing, and I wasn’t wholly impressed by that either. In this case, it’s interesting to learn how Jacob and the Man in Black grew up, but the actual process is grating and dull. Allison Janney’s guest spot was a bit peculiar, and her declaration of “any question you ask me will only be answered by another question” just perpetuates the aggravating notion that any resolved mysteries on this show will just lead to more mysteries. The random Spaniard woman’s inability to come up with a second name for Jacob’s brother serves as a moment of humor, but it’s more than a little hokey. Watching the two brothers grow up was hardly engaging, and that cheesy bright light in the cave was silly. As folklore, this episode works okay, but otherwise, it really doesn’t. The fact that we saw Jack via a flashback for a moment was cool, but all it really serves to do is to suggest that the writers knew what they were doing all along, positioning Jack as Jacob’s successor and Locke as his nemesis. With only three and a half hours left, only seeing our beloved characters for thirty seconds really isn’t fair.