Lost Rewatch on VHS: Across the Sea

 

The Trauma Plot has become such an overused trope in television and really all forms of art in the last decade that it’s striking, in retrospect, to look back at so much of the first period of the Golden Age and find how little it was a part of so many of the greatest shows. We’d gotten used during the 1990s to having trauma shape so many of the characters in the decade previous  - the abduction of Samantha Mulder, the death of Carter’s brother leading him to a career in medicine in ER,  Andy Sipowicz’s career before – and during – NYPD Blue – that perhaps the most shocking thing about these series was that so many of the male antiheroes and other characters during the first decade of the 21^st century didn’t have the ready made excuses of traumatic backstories to justify their monstrous actions.

There was no trauma affecting the slingers and cops that made their lives so horrible in The Wire. The Fishers had a pretty happy live at least until Six Feet Under began properly. Tony Soprano’s mommy issues were more of a justification for his actions than anything else over time. Al Swearengen overcame his horrible upbringing to become a powerful force in Deadwood and all the women in the series underwent far worse experience well before they arrived in the camp. OZ didn’t use the traumas of the characters lives as a reason for their being here (in one sequence Harold Perrineau’s character mocked the idea as nonsense to the audience). The traumas of everyone on Sunnydale helped bond them to fight the forces of darkness and Angel and Spike would acknowledge their traumas were not excuses for the monsters they became. There were no real demons driving Vic Mackey and Jack Bauer’s family issues weren’t part of the worst days of his life. (Unless you count Day 6 and most of us try not to.)

By the second half of the decade trauma was starting to become more prominent in many of the lives of critical characters but in many cases it was a way to reinvent themselves. Don Draper took the trauma of being Dick Whitman and used it to (literally) become a new man. We didn’t learn of the real reason Walter White hid his diagnosis of cancer until well into his descent into evil and by that point, it was a threadbare justification even to himself. Even Dexter Morgan would eventually acknowledge his ‘Dark Passenger’ was just an excuse for the monster inside him all along. There were successful shows that dwelt with trauma as part of the characters’ lives but Shonda Rhimes wrote most of them and by the time of the past decade, it was practically a baked in excuse for so many women’s bad behavior.

I remember watching Across the Sea the night it came out – I was late getting home and I’d recorded the episode. I didn’t get to watching it until nearly 1 in the morning. I remember being in awe of so much of it, thinking that it finally answered so many of the questions we had about the series. I didn’t know until after reading Alan Sepinwall’s book The Revolution Was Televised that it was one of the most hated episodes in the entire canon. I’m still not sure why from a creative perspective but certain things are clear to me now that weren’t more than a decade ago.

Part of it is the timing: as viewers we are still reeling from the most traumatic event watching Lost today as three of the most beloved characters in the series died in less than five minutes. Now rather than immediately get back to the action we travel back in time thousands of years and finally seem to get the backstory of Jacob and The Man In Black.

‘Seem’ is the operative word. I’m reminded of the two part episode we got in Season 6 of The X-Files that promised us ‘Full Disclosure’ about everything we wanted to know about the alien conspiracy. And what we got was very few actual revelations and what amounted to waiting for most of the Syndicate to be killed – but all of the critical regulars escaping and no real resolution. It’s the same in Across the Sea. Here we meet another person who claims to have all the answers and may actually have them – this time it’s Alison Janney – and she spends the entire episode not only telling us anything but actually seeming to give voice the loyal fans when her character tells a desperate woman: “Every question will only lead to another question.” It might be naïve for even the devoted fan to expect that all our questions would be answered with only two episodes to go in the series but it’s hard not to look at so much of Janney’s behavior – and Jacob and The Man In Black’s reactions – as something very close to a stick in the eye.

By far the larger problem comes to the idea of the Trauma Plot. The Man In Black has referred to all of the characters as ‘irrevocably broken’ and while the modifier is a bit extreme, we can’t deny the broken part. Every single character we’ve met since the series began has been traumatized almost from the moment they were born, by bad parents, bad friends, trusting the wrong people, not trusting the right ones. One of the reasons I initially had such a bad reaction to the series finale was not so much the explanation but because I had liked the idea of the flash-sideways so much. Having watched all of the episodes, the greatest difference has been that, with the exception of Sayid and Kate, every one of them has shown people far less broken, not just those focused on in the flashes. In some cases the traumas are still there – James Ford’s parents were still killed; Locke is still in a wheelchair – but they seem much more capable of dealing with it then they ever were in the real world. They’re not necessarily at peace but they don’t need a plane crash to make them whole.

So the real issue with this episode isn’t that it seems everything that we’ve been dealing with seems to come down what amounts to a glowing hot tub. It’s because it really seems that every single thing that every character has been dealing with the entire series – and hundreds, if not thousands more over the millennia – is essentially due to the fact a crazy woman killed a pregnant lady after they gave birth, adopted the children as her own, lied to them all their childhoods and essentially put impossible burdens on both of them because she loved one brother more than the other. And because of her crazy irrational behavior,  these two men have been fighting for thousands of years, have killed each other – and their battle still isn’t over. It’s hard not to feel cheated by that revelation and honestly that’s more of a let down then whatever we think about ‘the Heart of the island’.

In the context of the final season a large part of the reason Across the Sea suffers is in comparison to the other epic flashback episode Ab Aeterno. When it comes to revealing secrets of the island it does as good a job and in many ways surpasses it. We finally learn the truth about ‘Adam and Eve’ and how they ended up in the caves. We learn the origin of the Frozen Donkey Wheel, how they tie into the wells that we saw mentioned last season and who helped dig them in the first place. We get the backstory of the ancient dagger that The Man In Black gave to Richard to try and kill Jacob and that in turn Dogen gave to Sayid. (In typical Lost fashion we’ve learned its backstory in reverse chronology. ) We see how the smoke monster was created, even if we don’t truly understand how it links to the Man in Black.

And for all the often ridiculous nature of it how we do get the backstory of Jacob and The Man in Black and there is a truly Biblical nature to it. Before they were mortal enemies they were brothers who truly loved each other very much. Jacob was a quiet child desperate for his mother’s love, and a silent follower. The Man in Black was, in a sense, more like all the other characters we’ve met on the show: he had questions about everything and the woman he thought was his  mother, despite clearly favoring him, refused to give him any answers. When he learned the truth about his parentage he considered it a betrayal and chose to venture out on his own to find it. He clearly wanted Jacob to come with him and he makes multiple offers as a child and a adult. But Jacob seems determined to want the love of this woman who isn’t his mother and despite what she tells him, clearly loved the Man in Black even after he chose to abandon her.

The argument put forth at the conclusion of Stafford’s books is that we never had a clear idea who the good people and the bad people were on the island. She compares the Man in Black and Jacob to the Devil and an Old Testament God, respectively, and her comparison makes sense: there’s a valid argument that so much of what we have seen on the island has been a reenactment of the Book of Job. The Man in Black takes the devil’s role, believing that if you test man enough it is in their nature to sin. Jacob has been essentially testing everybody over the millennia, always stepping aside when he brings them there, never feeling fit to explain himself. His last words before Ben stabs him are Lost’s version of “Where were you when I made the world?” and now that we know the truth about how he got here, it makes him look even more deserving of Ben’s knife than before.

But I disagree as to whether there is a source of evil on the island because in this episode we do. However lacking Alison Janney’s performance can be at times (and sadly, this ranks as one of the weakest performances in more than a quarter of a century on television) it’s very clear just how disturbed ‘Mother’ is. We didn’t think UnLocke could be trusted when he told us back in Recon “his mother was crazy” but it turns out he was telling the truth. His mother is disturbed, detached from reality in a way that goes beyond clearly having deity like powers and a psychotic approach towards humanity.

If you consider ‘Mother’ as the baseline for everything we’ve seen, there’s a sick sense to it: she believes the island is the most important thing in the world; she goes out of her way to emphasize in her ‘children’ youth that’s there nothing else in it. She has a hatred of humanity that she passes down to her son which is never explained but may just be the kind of detachment that comes from being immortal. We’ve spent all this time wondering why no one can leave the island and it’s a sick joke that the reason seems to be because she doesn’t want the son she favors to leave the island. Jacob, as we’ve seen, has been able to travel the globe with no restrictions but he seems to have passed that down as a mandate going forward. And while she may say  she loves her sons in different ways that love clearly involves taking away both her children’s free will. One son is trapped on the island forever; the other is a prisoner to spending the rest of his life protecting the island, a job he doesn’t want but is told he doesn’t have a choice to take.

And perhaps this answers one of the deepest underlying questions we’ve had for a long time: if everyone’s lives were so miserable before they got on the plane and the island offered a chance for salvation, why was everybody so desperate to leave? Across the Sea gives a subtle answer: the island has sometimes seemed to be self-aware and perhaps the sense of the two men who have been locked in mortal (and undying) combat for 2000 years because of their being trapped here has seeped down much like the light that represents the source. This island is capable of granting miracles but if those miracles come at so great a cost, how can it be magical?

The acting of both Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver more than make up for the often flat work of Janney in large part because they are truly human in this work. Pellegrino has seemed so benevolent and placid as Jacob in his previous appearances, save for his violent streak meeting Richard, and he has always seem all-knowing and all-wise. So to see this Jacob behave child-like both in his often weak behavior towards mother and his demands to literally have the cup taken from his lips is shocking and well done.

Welliver likewise is given more dimensions than he’s been allowed to see before. We’ve seen him angry occasionally but now we see his anger has a root – and frankly understandable cause. All he’s ever wanted to do is leave the island and have his questions answered (haven’t we all?). And he’s clearly one of the few characters we’ve met in the entire series who didn’t just accept what was happening on the island. Mother may have wanted him to guard the island and its possible he would have been a good candidate to do it (as a child looking at the light he seems fascinated by it while Jacob is clearly afraid) but its also clear he would have been horrible at it because of his nature. The island has always demanded blind loyalty and its clear the Man In Black has never been anything resembling a follower. And considering that the one thing he’s always wanted to do – leave the island – would have something he would never have been allowed to do under those circumstances, he would never have signed up even if Mother had offered it to him.

And yet despite all of these revelations, the brilliant technical aspects and the great work by the two leads Across the Sea is still lacking in comparison to Ab Aeterno. The main reason that episode was a masterpiece and this one is considered disappointing honestly may come down to heart.

When we learned how Richard came to the island, we never got the sense of boxes being checked off even though it was the most revelatory episode to date. And that’s because there was also a deep human story at the center of Ab Aeterno that honestly went against so many of the themes we’d seen on the show over six seasons. It argued that both science and faith, the twin themes of Lost since Season 1, both failed Richard when it came to his fate. It argued that his great love that led to him coming to the island and that he had spent 140 years mourning had been weighing on him to that point. It revealed his devotion to the island came at a time of his emotionally lowest point. And most importantly, it gave a link between the present and his backstory  and gave him a chance to finally lift his burden. The characters may not know why he does what he does but Richard does and he has been moving forward.

Aside from the fact that none of the characters get to witness what happens in Across the Sea – a flaw that Darlton later admitted was critical – the problem is that for all the mysteries revealed, there just isn’t the same heart as before. Part of it is because we only met Jacob and The Man in Black in person in The Incident and we’ve only seen them in a handful of episodes this season. Learning the truth about them, however revealing, doesn’t have the emotional oomph of learning the story of a character who’d been on Lost since Season 3 and who seemed to for a long time be the key to the show.

It's also important that Richard, despite being apart from the Others, was still a vital part of the island and spent a lot of time interacting with all the characters well before Nestor Carbonell became a series regular. Jacob was talked about for nearly as long but we’d never seen him until The Incident and we didn’t know about the Man in Black until we officially met Jacob. And honestly considering that UnLocke just arranged things so that three of our favorite characters died, its very hard to feel sympathy for him no matter how tragic his backstory is. (Again this is an issue with the timing of the episode).

And at its core the conflicts we see in Across the Sea are, sadly, retreads of the ones we’ve seen play out so many times with almost every other character, particularly the bad parenting issue. Is it refreshing that all of this is the fault of a bad mother rather than a horrible father? Sort of. But it doesn’t change the fact that Jacob is essentially messed up for the same reason that Jack and Locke have been all this time. The fact that both of them are siblings is interesting – all of the characters we’ve met over the series have mostly been only children -  but it doesn’t change the fact that Jacob and The Man in Black are both victims of the same dysfunctional parenting we’ve seen.

They’ve also been stolen and raised  by a different mother at birth, which covers the ground that we saw with Rousseau and Claire, but both of them went mad because their children were taken from them: Mother was crazy when she took Jacob and the Boy in Black. Not much nuance there either.

And look the boy in black can see dead people. Nice but it explains nothing, certainly not what Claudia represents or why so many people, like Hurley, can see the dead. And as a result the Man in Black goes to live among a group of ‘Others’ who he doesn’t trust or like, much like Alex did near the end of her tenure.

And why does the smoke monster exist? The Man In Black killed his mother, just when Jacob was starting to feel like she loved him. It’s clear that Mother knew what was going to happen to her when she sent Jacob away, much the same way Jacob knew what was coming when Ben stabbed him and she clearly seemed to welcome it the way Jacob very well might have. Of course Jacob found out, didn’t listen to his brother and decided to kill him – sort of.

At the end of the day I think the real reason so many people were upset at the end of Across the Sea wasn’t because it didn’t reveal many mysteries but because so much of it seemed lacking in the emotional core that made Ab Aeterno – and indeed Lost as a whole – so magnificent. Watching the final minutes, I don’t feel much sympathy for the Man In Black. Yes, his free will was taken from him but his reaction was to commit a form of matricide out of rage. Nor do I feel sympathy for Jacob, who also acted out of anger and selfishness because he spent his entire life trying to please his mother and only got something like it when she was about to die.

No the sympathy I feel comes for the one nod to the previous group of characters. At the end the writers flashback to House of the Rising Sun when Jack, Locke and Kate discover the caves, find the skeletons and Locke named them “our very own Adam and Eve.”  All of these characters think surviving a plane crash is the worst thing that happened to them. They have no idea that the skeletons they found are, however indirectly, the cause of all the pain and suffering they’ve lived through  They don’t know that the man who is laying his family to rest is about to create his own game and has already made all of them follow his rules without knowing they were playing in the first place. They don’t know that they’re going to endure even more death, suffering and loss in the 100 days and far worse over the next three years. They don’t know that the island they’re going to spend so much time trying to leave has trapped them there before they were even born.

And they don’t know that all of this is because of someone else’s trauma.