Lost: In Vino Veritas

Jacob is a man (?) after my own heart, explaining things with a bottle of red.

Last week’s episode of Lost was like emotional and myth porn. Such an overload that I needed a full week to decompress (and deny that each week we are getting closer to the end). Last week we got what we have been waiting for: Richard’s back-story. It was awesome and revealing, and made me wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school.

We pick up with the Losties on the beach, trying to figure out what to do now that the temple is gonezo and that was the last of Ilana’s instructions from Jacob (How did she get injured? How does she know Jacob? Why does she work for him? Why did he give her limited info when he knew Richard knew nothing about the candidates?). Team good looks to Richard for answers, says he doesn’t know what the hell is going on and already tried to kill himself, so he has goose egg. He has a temper tantrum and runs off into the jungle, saying that he is going to go find someone else to follow since Jacob turned out to be a D in his eyes.

Now we get something new and different from Lost, a linear flashback for the sole purpose of figuring out what Richard’s deal is (where did he come from? why was he in chains? why doesn’t he age?). Jump to 1867 in the Canary Islands (I’ll give you a moment to whip out your map), and Ricardo is horseback riding and sporting a shaggy look. He gets to his home/hobbit burrow where his very sick wife, Isabella, is hocking up a lung along with some blood. He tells her that he will save her, then she gives up her most valued possession, her cross, to pay el doctor.

Richard rides through the night and rain to get to the doctor’s house, and he is a total dick. Great. After insulting Ricardo and his wife’s cross, he withholds the medication that will save Isabella’s life. Begging the doctor, Richard gets a little carried away and pushes the doc into the table, cracking open his head and killing him. It could happen to anyone? He has the meds (which are white…significant? probs not) and races home only to find Izzy dead. Heartbreak ensues.

Next we see Richard in chains in prison, reading the Bible. The Priest comes in, comments on the English Bible, and then receives Ricky’s confession and basically tells him he is screwed and going to burn in hell for accidentally killing the doctor. Why is he screwed? Because he doesn’t have time to repent since they are killing him tomorrow. Nooooooooooo. Priest is also a major D, but what else is new. The next day, Ricardo is blindfolded and taken out of his cell, only to stop in front of some guy feeling his hands and mouth and asking about English. Rightfully confused, Richard tells the guy that he can speak English (in the nick of time), and the guy (I don’t even care what his name is) hands the priest a baggie of money, and tells Ricardo that he is now the property of Magnus Hanso. Ohhhhh Black Rock time!

Hang on a tick:  So Magnus Hanso is the great great grandfather (or something) of Alvar Hanso, who was the financial backbone of Dharma. Does this family just make really bad financial investments, or are these people fates to be effed over by the island?

Back to Black Rock: Ricardo is down below with the other slaves, chained up and getting manhandled by the sea/storm. One of the other prisoners looks out through the slabs of the ship, and sees the statue on the beach that Jacob lives in, and announces that it’s the devil. Way to calm the situation. The storm is too violent and the ocean too rough, and the Black Rock ends up slamming into el diablo, knocking its head off and becomes stranded in the middle of the jungle (plausible? dunno. best explanation we are going to get? probs). That guy I don’t care about is one of the few survivors of the shipwreck, and goes below deck to kill all the slaves, telling Richard that they have limited resources and not enough officers, and that the slaves would just kill the officers if he let them go. Well he got his 5 seconds later when the smoke monster killed everyone that wasn’t dead already. Except Richard. Rather, the smoke just got up in Ricardo’s face and paparazzied him before retreating.

Theory: I think that ticka ticka flash flash action is somehow reading people’s minds… maybe to manipulate them later? If that theory holds, Smokey got into Ricardo’s head and knew exactly what to use/do to convince him to do what he wanted. So Smokey used Isabella to manipulate a cracked out Richard, having her (really him? ew) appear to Richard and tell him that they are dead and in hell. So when the original man in black comes on the scene, he gives Richie some water, conveniently has the keys to his chains, and tells him that the devil has his wife.

Once poor Richard is out of his chains and has some boar in his belly, MIB gets down to business. He tells Richard that the devil has his wife, and he needs to kill him to get her back. He also slips in that he is the smoke thing and killed those other people, but no matter. Uhhhh ok. Richard still believes killing is always wrong, but the chance to be with Isabella is sooooo much better than morality at this point. Smokey then basically uses the exact same wording that Dogen used (to get Sayid to kill Flocke) to get Richard to kill Jacob: stab him in the heart immediately, if he gets a word in it’s too late.

Richardo marches to the beach, knife in hand, ready to kill the devil. Except he is totally unprepared and clearly still reeling from the dead wife/life in chains/ thinking he is in hell, because Jacob basically hands his ass to him. After beating up Ricky, Jacob asks what the hell he is doing, and Richard says that he wanted to kill him because they were all dead and in hell. In an I’ll-show-you moment, Jacob drags him to the water and water-boards/baptizes Richard until he tells Jacob to stop because he wants to live. Jacob throws him on the beach and says that is the first sensible thing he has said. R and J have some chat time over a cup of wine (I would totally think it was poisoned…Richard seems to think so too). After telling Ricardo that he is not the devil and that they are not in hell, Jacob gives a very helpful explanation for what the hell is going on. Not just for Richard, but for us.

Jacob uses his bottle of red to show Richard that the wine is what he keeps referring to as the devil/hell/evil, and that the cork in the bottle is like the island: the only thing keeping the wine/evil from getting out. So I guess Dogen was telling the truth, that the man in black, no Flocke, is evil incarnate. Jacob also tells Ricardo that he is the one that brought the Black Rock to the island, saying that the man in black thinks that everyone is corruptible, and Jacob wants to prove him wrong. But his track record isn’t so good, seeing as how everyone he has brought thus far is dead (because they were evil? because the man in black got to them? how does he decide who to kill?). Ricardo asks why Jacob doesn’t step in, and J says that he shouldn’t have to step in to make people do the right thing, and that wouldn’t really count then as people choosing to do the right thing. Ricardo tells him that he has to step in, otherwise the man in black will. Jacob looks like this thought has never crossed his mind, and then offers Richard a job, working as his in-between, or representative, for the people on the island. Asking what he wants in return, Richard says that he wants his wife, no go, or that he wants to be absolved of all his sins so he doesn’t go to hell. Upon hearing that J-man can’t do this either, Richard settles on never dying so he won’t burn in hell, and Jacob makes it happen with the touch of his hand. OK, what exactly are Jacob’s rules here? Immortality sure, not going to hell, no? Whaaaat.

For his first job, Ricardo goes to the man in black to give him a white rock. MIB seems pissy but understanding, and then tells Ricardo that if he EVER changes his mind about his offer, it still stands. Then disappears. Tra la la. Ricardo buries Isabella’s cross, knowing he will never see her again, and cries.

Back in real time, Richard finds the spot that he buried the cross hundreds of years ago, which is conveniently still in the top layer of soil, and then calls out to Flocke that he changed his mind, and asks the great void if the offer still stands. Out of the woodwork comes: Hurley! Richard is pissed and tries to get him to go away, but then stops dead in his tracks when Hurley tells Richard that his wife sent him. Twist! I totally thought Hurley had been speaking Spanish to his grandpa or something back on the beach, but it was Isabella. The next couple minutes of Hurley’s 6th Sense and Richard’s breakdown/reunion with his wife were some of the most touching moments of LOST and showed just how good this show can be. The mythology in this episode and use of back-story and freaky island whatnot was awesome. I love Richard, and after this episode, I think he loves himself again.

The episode ends with Hurley telling Richard that Isabella also said that he has to stop the man in black, or else they all go to hell. Uh oh. Then we see Flocke looking at Richard and Hurley, looking pretty pissed, and then we flashback to Jacob and the original (?) man in black having a chat on a log. I don’t understand their little buddy buddy witty banter. Jacob didn’t seem that pissed that he tried to have him killed, and says that the man in black isn’t going anywhere as long as he is alive, and then the man in black says he will kill him or anyone who takes his place so he can leave… apparently sooner than Jacob thinks as he dramatically smashes the bottle and releases the wine onto the log (we didn’t need the slowmo to get the message, LOST).

So, the island is the only thing containing evil incarnate. If it/he is released, then they are all in hell. Does that have anything to do with the episode when Eloise was like, if The Oceanic Six don’t get back to the island then may God help us all? Did she need them all to get back because she knew they were candidates? Or was it another version of the island story she was going off of? Also, with Ricardo starting his own little subculture on the island, how did others become The Others with Richard as their liaison? Well, we know how he became the liaison but how did they become affiliated with them?

More big picture questions: Jacob and man in black… how were they picked as heaven and hell? Where did that knife come from? Is it significant since it also looked like the one that Dogen tried to trick Sayid into killing the man in black with to get him killed, but then Sayid ended up killing Dogen and that hippie with the knife anyway? Where did the man in black originally come from? Was he lying saying that Jacob took his body and his humanity? Why was Jacob such a D about who is allowed to go in the statue? How was Richard able to leave the island all the time and time travel didn’t affect him the same way as it did with the losties? Why doesn’t Jacob age for that matter? How is Smokey able to change bodies? Are you sick of these questions?

Well, I am. And I could go on forever. So until next episode, have fun lusting after Richard, because that’s what I’ll be doing.

Season 6, Episode 9: Ab Aeterno (Originally Aired March 23, 2010)

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Tuesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC and Mario Perez.