Desde Siempre
Mar. 24th, 2010 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniLost is still playing with its poor characters and with us and there are only 9 episodes left before the grand finale!
Last episode, "Ab Aeterno", solved part of the mystery about the Man Who Doesn't Age and Wears Black...Khol, that is Richard Alpert.
The game goes on...
What struck me in the episode was the parallel between Ricardo and Sayid. Isabella is the first avatar of Nadia. The Ricardo/Isabella romance also sort of echoed the uber-romantic Penny/Desmond love story, in a more Victorian cliche.
Jacob pretended to drown Ricardo until he admitted that he wanted to live. The temple people tried to drown Sayid to save him.
The MiB even used exactly the same words as Dogen did when sending Sayid to kill No!Locke as if MiB and Jacob has been role playing all the time, sometimes switching their part but using the same scenario and dialogues over and over. Ab aeterno.
Jacob blames the MiB for his manipulative words and bring out the people's worst tendancies but Jacob does manipulate people's threads of destiny too, causing death and destruction in the mean time, and the MiB points out how persuasive Jacob is.
Jacob says he can't absolve Ricardo's sins just like the Father Suarez told him so in jail before thinking that his learning English (new parallel/counterpoint with Jin this time btw) could be considered valuable and eventually Jacob offered him a job just like Whitfield did. Ricardo became his spokesman or if you prefer his prophet (a prophet being the one who speak for the gods, who is the intermediary/interpreter). His behaviour seems to simply echo the one of other figures of authority that used/played with Ricardo before him.
Hugo played the interpreter too, since he can hear ghost speak! He was a sort of Whoopy Godberg while Isabella got Patrick Swayze's part and Ricardo was Demi Moore...without "Unchained Melody" but Richard was out of chains after all!
Speaking of lost souls, did anyone else notice the digital butterfly that flapped into the boat? Greeks considered butterflies as dead people's spirits...
Jacob's metaphor of the wine jar reminded me of that hole Ben used to summon the Smoke Monster, he just removed a cork. I don't buy Jacob's explanation of course, but he told Ricardo , the man who feared El Diabolo, what Ricardo needed to hear. He was...very convincing indeed.
Is the genie in the bottle necessarily evil? Usually those supernatural beings grant wishes, often three wishes but the characters fail to make the best use of them.
Personally I think that Jacob needed to keep the MiB on the island so the game could go on. It isn't a matter of preventing evil from spreading out.
As for MiB breaking the jar, it sorta called to my mind the explosion that Juliet triggered. Mirrors and glasses have been broken lately in the alt-verse too. He is a player and he knows that cheating is possible, but he is also a character who was a man once upon a time, whose humanity has been stolen by Jacob, if we believe what he says, and whose journey reflects the one of the other characters on the show. In the revious Swayer-centric episode, Not!Locke pointed out the connections, when mentioning his mother. Jacob and MiB are big players using our poor pawn-characters but they are also archetypes. All the characters have been locked and stuck in one way or another.
And now we all wonder what/who is in the locked room aboard the submarine!
And then, there were the two rocks again. The big Black Rock destroyed the giant white statue, but Jacob recruited Ricardo and sent him to deliver a white rock to MiB. In tennis that would be a deuce.
Ricardo was like a ping pong ball, bouncing from an island to another, from a reluctant physician to a slave-seller priest, from Captain Marcus Hanson's crew to Jacob's team, from a saviour (MiB) to another one. The first one got him out of chains and out of a dark hold, gave him water and food; the second one granted him eternal life but figuratively kept him in the dark.
He killed once but didn't mean it so no wonder he chose Jacob's offer and turn down MiB's hit job...on the other hand he did his best to kill Jacob first but Ricardo isn't a good assassin. He doesn't have Sayid's skills when it comes to kill in cold blood.
After 140 years, being still in the dark sucks though. It's interesting to see that Richard left Ilana's group at night and reached the place wherein he summoned the MiB in the light.
Anyway of all the metaphorical games we've got on the show, ping-pong might be the one that suits the writing best.
Some of our characters have been bouncing through time too.
Watching Lost is a ping-pong experience as well for the viewers; we have been tosseda round, from the island-verse to the flashbacks; from the flashforwards to the island-verse; from the island-verse to the alt-verse, back and forth, from side to side.
It's all about pitching and tossing...we aren't on the island but on a ship!
Last episode, "Ab Aeterno", solved part of the mystery about the Man Who Doesn't Age and Wears Black...Khol, that is Richard Alpert.
The game goes on...
What struck me in the episode was the parallel between Ricardo and Sayid. Isabella is the first avatar of Nadia. The Ricardo/Isabella romance also sort of echoed the uber-romantic Penny/Desmond love story, in a more Victorian cliche.
Jacob pretended to drown Ricardo until he admitted that he wanted to live. The temple people tried to drown Sayid to save him.
The MiB even used exactly the same words as Dogen did when sending Sayid to kill No!Locke as if MiB and Jacob has been role playing all the time, sometimes switching their part but using the same scenario and dialogues over and over. Ab aeterno.
Jacob blames the MiB for his manipulative words and bring out the people's worst tendancies but Jacob does manipulate people's threads of destiny too, causing death and destruction in the mean time, and the MiB points out how persuasive Jacob is.
Jacob says he can't absolve Ricardo's sins just like the Father Suarez told him so in jail before thinking that his learning English (new parallel/counterpoint with Jin this time btw) could be considered valuable and eventually Jacob offered him a job just like Whitfield did. Ricardo became his spokesman or if you prefer his prophet (a prophet being the one who speak for the gods, who is the intermediary/interpreter). His behaviour seems to simply echo the one of other figures of authority that used/played with Ricardo before him.
Hugo played the interpreter too, since he can hear ghost speak! He was a sort of Whoopy Godberg while Isabella got Patrick Swayze's part and Ricardo was Demi Moore...without "Unchained Melody" but Richard was out of chains after all!
Speaking of lost souls, did anyone else notice the digital butterfly that flapped into the boat? Greeks considered butterflies as dead people's spirits...
Jacob's metaphor of the wine jar reminded me of that hole Ben used to summon the Smoke Monster, he just removed a cork. I don't buy Jacob's explanation of course, but he told Ricardo , the man who feared El Diabolo, what Ricardo needed to hear. He was...very convincing indeed.
Is the genie in the bottle necessarily evil? Usually those supernatural beings grant wishes, often three wishes but the characters fail to make the best use of them.
Personally I think that Jacob needed to keep the MiB on the island so the game could go on. It isn't a matter of preventing evil from spreading out.
As for MiB breaking the jar, it sorta called to my mind the explosion that Juliet triggered. Mirrors and glasses have been broken lately in the alt-verse too. He is a player and he knows that cheating is possible, but he is also a character who was a man once upon a time, whose humanity has been stolen by Jacob, if we believe what he says, and whose journey reflects the one of the other characters on the show. In the revious Swayer-centric episode, Not!Locke pointed out the connections, when mentioning his mother. Jacob and MiB are big players using our poor pawn-characters but they are also archetypes. All the characters have been locked and stuck in one way or another.
And now we all wonder what/who is in the locked room aboard the submarine!
And then, there were the two rocks again. The big Black Rock destroyed the giant white statue, but Jacob recruited Ricardo and sent him to deliver a white rock to MiB. In tennis that would be a deuce.
Ricardo was like a ping pong ball, bouncing from an island to another, from a reluctant physician to a slave-seller priest, from Captain Marcus Hanson's crew to Jacob's team, from a saviour (MiB) to another one. The first one got him out of chains and out of a dark hold, gave him water and food; the second one granted him eternal life but figuratively kept him in the dark.
He killed once but didn't mean it so no wonder he chose Jacob's offer and turn down MiB's hit job...on the other hand he did his best to kill Jacob first but Ricardo isn't a good assassin. He doesn't have Sayid's skills when it comes to kill in cold blood.
After 140 years, being still in the dark sucks though. It's interesting to see that Richard left Ilana's group at night and reached the place wherein he summoned the MiB in the light.
Anyway of all the metaphorical games we've got on the show, ping-pong might be the one that suits the writing best.
Some of our characters have been bouncing through time too.
Watching Lost is a ping-pong experience as well for the viewers; we have been tosseda round, from the island-verse to the flashbacks; from the flashforwards to the island-verse; from the island-verse to the alt-verse, back and forth, from side to side.
It's all about pitching and tossing...we aren't on the island but on a ship!
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 08:39 am (UTC)Richard wanted to do penance for the murder, for failing his wife. And the god of the Island, Jacob, gave him his wish. Abundant life, several lifetimes to work through his penance. And yet Richard thought he was lost with the death of Jacob. Without Jacob, Richard could not see how to go forward; he was without foresight, without purpose. Thus he called out to the MiB, saying he changed his mind. But Hugo and Isabella were there to give him what he needed, absolution. It was what Richard wanted all his life, and now that he has it he can go on. It was a very moving story.
...
no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 09:28 am (UTC)I saw his story (and btw I could have mentioned that Father Juarez told him that "penitentia" was the only path for him, before Jacob did anything), I can't say that I found it that moving though. Nestor Carbonel was good but it sounded too much like a sentimental story from a romance novel.
Lost rarely moves me anymore, it rather calls to my analytical mind, I like its structure mostly...well, except when it comes to Desmond and Penny of course!
no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 09:31 am (UTC)Ben's story moves me more than Richard's. What does it say about me?
no subject
Date: 2010-03-25 11:17 pm (UTC)