Lost: Season 6, Episode 15 Review: Across the Sea

Across the Sea

Original Airdate: May 11, 2010

Writer: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof

Director: Tucker Gates

Midway through The Shield’s second season they spent a whole episode, “Co-Pilot”, going back to the first day of The Barn, the nickname of the station in Farmington.  It showed how many of the cast members spent their first day and is basically the closest the show had to an origin story episode.  It’s also a very controversial one as it has little to do with that season’s arc and completely breaks up the story’s momentum.  “Across the Sea” is Lost’s “Co-Pilot”.  Right after the end game started and a third of the cast got killed, the show goes way back and focuses on the supporting cast (save for Johnny, only in Titus Welliver form) and one new person for a whole episode.  The only glimpse we get of the main cast is in stock footage from the first season.  While it makes sense to help explain why Johnny is who he is, it breaks off the momentum pretty dramatically.

It starts millennia ago, when the presumed sole inhabitant of the island, who we’ll call Mother because these reviews should sound like they’re being written by Norman Bates, welcomes a shipwrecked woman of presumed Ancient Roman origin.  When the woman, Claudia, gives birth to twins, Mother realizes something is up and murders Claudia.  She later explains she wanted to keep them unspoiled, but perhaps like Jacob she had a list of candidates and Jacob and an unnamed person were on that list.

OK, they’ve been teasing the fact that Johnny’s name since his formal introduction hasn’t been mentioned, but the birth scene is the cruelest of cruel teases.  “I only picked one name”?  Really?  Even if they somehow muted the line it would’ve been better than this.  Why not just say “I don’t have a name” from the start?  Bringing the Buffy comparison back, The First didn’t have a name, and they didn’t tease giving it one as I remember.  Obviously there are going to be things about Lost we’ll be debating forever, but what’s the fun in guessing his name?

Mother raises the twins in isolation from the other survivors of Claudia’s shipwreck because she wants to keep them “good”, even using her magic powers to keep them from killing each other.  Interestingly, Johnny’s philosophy on humanity came from a woman he called insane and justifiably blamed for his problems, even quoting her the day Richard’s boat arrived centuries later.  Despite living with her longer, Jacob advocates free will and develops some hope for humanity.

She raises Johnny with the belief that he’ll take up the title of protector of the island, which creates some tension even decades later when Mother settles on making Jacob that person.  However, like their relationship with their mother, this one is complicated.  They both lash out in the heat of the moment and as soon as the blade is in or the body sucked in to the source, they regret it.  Who knows what would have happened if Johnny had not been beaten unconscious and Jacob forgave him.

After finding out the truth about his real mother, Johnny decides to live with the Shipwreck people, and confirms the suspicions Mother put in his head.  However, his manipulative streak begins as he sees them as a “means to an end”.  They are the people responsible for the Frozen Donkey Wheel, presumably not this one, and have tunneled into the earth to figure out what’s causing metal to behave mysteriously (Shaggy 2 Dope must’ve been a member of this tribe), but Johnny sees it as a route to The Source.  The explanation for the didn’t quite work, and perhaps should’ve been left a mystery: as if there’s some explanation for a device going into a section of energy and being used to get off the island.

That seems to be a theme of the episode: people trying to explain things long before the age of modern science.  The Source is clearly electromagnetism, but they don’t know what that is, so they go with light because it is bright.  One explanation they never give is what would happen if Johnny were to leave.  Of course, his Smokey form could cause a lot of damage in the real world, but Jacob was dealing with a big unknown.  It’s possible that nothing would happen, although considering him killing those people in “The Candidate”, we believe that the worst case scenario is right.

While the last episode set up Johnny as the big bad of the series, this episode makes us sympathize with him.  His whole life he was misled and lied to.  He spent the first 13 years of his life in the company of only his brother and adoptive mother, who tricked them into thinking she was their biological mother.  He was told he could never leave the island, but never given a straight answer as to why.  When he tried as an adult, his path was blocked and the people helping him killed.  He doesn’t even get a name in all the years he’s spent on the island.

This episode also gives us a new perspective on Jacob and it is not flattering.  He’s a bit of a brat and despite being in his early 40s, acts like a child.  However, his actions and making Johnny the man he is today was a sobering event where he knew he had to grow up.  He saw what it was like to be forced to accept a title he didn’t want and how his problems ruined his brother and took away his choice as well, something that collected with his “good” nature made him advocate for choice, even if the execution of these ideas was flawed.

There’s been a good amount of debate brewing over if Johnny’s consciousness became the Smoke Monster, or if the Smoke Monster was some piece of the island that was released and took Johnny consciousness with it.  I’m inclined to think the latter, as his leaving the island would mean the “light” goes out everywhere.  Although how they can kill him without putting out this light isn’t clear assuming that’s right.

Although this episode reveals the birth of Smokey as we know him, there are suggestions that some other version existed before.  Claudia’s light around her may be related to the light in those electromagnetic pockets all over the island.  Or this could be the same thing Young Ben saw when he was in Dharmaville and saw his dead mother.  Then there is Mother’s massacre of the shipwreck society Johnny co-opted, as well as filling up the well with dirt, something that seems unbelievable for one person to do alone.

Ending the episode, it’s revealed that Mother and Johnny’s human form were the Adam & Eve skeletons Jack & Kate found in the caves back in season one.  Despite being a small piece of the mythology, these two skeletons received a lot of speculation over the years and thanks to the introduction of time travel the idea that it could be characters in the present became an inviting possibility.  Fans drew to Carlton Cuse’s claim that those skeletons were proof that there was a plan all along.  This outcome probably wasn’t what they were expecting: a character that’s never been mentioned before and a person’s human form who we didn’t actually meet until the last season’s finale.  I’m not sure that’s something I would point to aside from Locke calling them “Adam & Eve” and them being the source so to speak of the Losties’ problems on the island.

“Across the Sea” is easily the most controversial Lost episode since “Expose”.  Is it as bad as the detractors say?  No.  It is odd to have a Damon & Carlton penned episode not be well received, though.  It is awkwardly put in at this late point in the game, which feels like they wanted to give the lead cast the week off to prepare for the final episodes.  The kid actors are a little clunky in the way a lot of kid actors are and Allison Janney, while a very talented actress, feels a little too modern to be playing this figure from ancient times (or that could be my associations with West Wing).  After seeing the next episode this episode is a little better, but like many of the disappointing episodes, the scope feels too big for one episode to do it justice, especially now when we’re going full speed to the finale.

Overall Score: 7/10