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Lost Recap: Special Mother’s Day Edition

Posted May 12, 2010 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated May 12, 2010 at 03:02 PM

Remember the “Bad Twin,” the manuscript Sawyer finds and reads on the island? It’s a title from seasons past that suddenly seems more important.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me that Jacob and MIB were brothers, let alone twins, but it fits with Lost’s duality – black and white, science and faith, fate and free will. Good and evil, too, although I’m not as convinced as I once was that MIB is straight-up evil.

“Across the Sea” brought us Jacob and MIB’s back story and kinda explained some stuff and kinda not (that explanation of what MIB wanted to do with the donkey wheel made no sense to me). We needed this episode, but I sympathize with the people who didn’t like it and wanted more action and more Losties. We still have so much more to find out (Widmore’s role, why the island hates babies, what is up with the sideways timeline, etc. etc. etc.) and I’m a little afraid we’re going to get some really quick explanations as they try to cram it all in that won’t satisfy our curiosity.

But. Still some good stuff here. The episode starts with a hugely pregnant lady, later called Claudia, washing up on the island’s shore. Lostpedia.com puts it between 450 BC and 900 AD. Claudia meets Allison Janney, who is looking way more rugged than her “West Wing” days, and Allison helps treat her wounds but refuses to give her much info.

Claudia goes into labor and Allison plays midwife. The first baby is born – Jacob. But there’s another baby coming, and it’s also a boy, and his name is? We have no idea. Claudia only picked one name. One is swaddled in white and one in black and when Claudia asks to see Baby in Black, Allison brains her with a rock.

Years pass. Boy in Black finds an Egyptian game washed up on the beach. He and Jacob play a few rounds, but BIB tells Jacob not to tell mom or she’ll confiscate it. But later when “mom” (Allison Janney) asks Jacob what he was up to, she pulls it out of him. She tells BIB that Jacob doesn’t know how to lie – unlike BIB. BIB wants to know where the game came from. Fake Mom says from her, because there is nowhere or no one else. She tells BIB she came from her mother, who is dead.

BIB says “What’s dead?” (rolls eyes) and Fake Mom says it’s something he won’t have to worry about.

(More interesting to me is that we see that young Jacob is the same kid who Fake Locke has been seeing in the woods.)

The twins chase a boar into the woods but screech to a halt when they come across three strangers, all painted up. They rush back to mama, who tells them the men don’t belong on the island, unlike them, who are there for a reason. The boys want to know what reason and although Fake Mom doesn’t want to tell them, she eventually blindfolds them and leads them into the jungle.

She explains that the men are dangerous, that they fight and corrupt, but she has made it so Jacob and BIB can never hurt each other. Then she shows them the reason they’re on the island – this warm, bright light emanating from a cave.

Her explanation: everyone has a little light in them but people want more. And you have to protect the light, because if it goes out here, it goes out everywhere.

My explanation: the light is what makes the island special – its electromagnetism or energy that allows it to move through time, cure cancer and other goodies. But because it’s so powerful, the power can corrupt, so you have to protect it so it won’t be used for evil.

Later on, Claudia appears to BIB and leads him to what would have been her camp if Allison Janney hadn’t stolen her babies. She tells BIB the inhabitants had been on her ship and that she’s their real mother. BIB packs up his stuff and tries to get Jacob to leave. But when he tells his brother, Fake Mom is not their mom, Jacob goes ballistic. Fake Mom separates them – BIB yells that he is leaving and Fake Mom killed his mother. Jacob refuses to go. Fake Mom says that BIB can never leave the island. BIB says oh yeah? Watch me.

Jacob and “mom” have a chat, and she confesses that she did kill Claudia. She wanted to take the twins to the bad people and Fake Mom wanted Jacob to stay good. Jacob wants to know why she loves BIB more than him. Fake Mom doesn’t deny it but says she loves them in different ways.

Seems to me that Fake Mom saw the boys’ birth as her chance to get released from island-protecting duties and raise them as candidates.

More time passes. A grown Jacob and MIB are playing their board game (how nice that they have kept in touch). MIB is still harping on how he’s leaving … soon. He throws a knife and it turns mid-air to slam against a rock. Seems there are several areas on-island where metal behaves strangely, and MIB and his peeps are exploring them. MIB thinks this is his way off the island.

Fake Mom visits MIB and I don’t even know how to explain this scene. They’re in the spot that we’ll see as the Frozen Donkey Wheel much, much later, but it’s not frozen yet. MIB says he can’t find the cave o’ light that Fake Mom showed him but he and his boys have found other stuff and they are going to reach the light another way. Then he has a long explanation involving the wheel, holes and water that will allow him to leave the island. Fake Mom says goodbye and she’s sorry, and then smacks his head hard against the rocks.

Returning to Jacob, Fake Mom makes him promise to protect the cave but never to go into it because it would be a fate worse than death. She does some voodoo over a bottle of wine and urges Jacob to drink. “It has to be you, Jacob,” she says. Jacob doesn’t want to, but she talks him into it so he will now be the island’s protector. She says now they’re the same.

MIB meanwhile opens his eyes and looks around, confused. The entrance to his donkey wheel is bricked over and his village is burning. Everyone is dead. We know he wants revenge. Fake Mom sends Jacob out for firewood, and when she returns to her camp, her loom is ruined. MIB stabs her to death. She says thanks.

But while Mama might be relieved to FINALLY die (we have no idea how long she has been protecting the island), Jacob is livid when he returns. He beats MIB, drags him to the cave, tries to drown him, throwing his body into the stream and into the light. There’s a tremor and a pillar of smoke shoots out. Hello, Smokey.

Jacob finds his brother’s body downstream and carries him back to camp, where he buries him with his mother and the black and white stones that Jack and Kate will find later on “Adam and Eve.”

So we see how Smokey got trapped on the island, and we have a possible explanation for the Dharma purge in Ben’s day. Did Jacob direct Ben and Richard to gas the Dharma folks because they were getting close to exploiting the island’s light?