Lost - Pandemonium Edition

In 1667 John Milton wrote an epic poem that you may have heard of called "Paradise Lost" in which he gave the capital of Hell a name and that name was Pandemonium. Last night on LOST, Richard called the island hell, Smokey called the island hell, Jacob said that it was the cork to hell. No matter how you sliced it, last night was one hell of an episode. =) Puns are fun.







I'm not really sure how I feel about the episode, I was expecting a bunch of answers to long lingering questions about the true nature of the island and yet here we are Wednesday morning with even more questions, people we only have 8 hours left, get to it! But at the same time I can tell that we're making some progress, at least they acknowledged the islands place in the story a little bit if they didn't answer it all. And we got to see more dialogue between Smokey and Jacob, so that is always good. So I think it was a good episode only let down by my own expectations. Turns out after thinking about the episode more and writing my little crap up I like it a lot more.







Richard the man, the myth, the legend, the Spanish farmer? Lucky for him there in the end that Hurley just happened to be Hispanic and be able to see dead people huh? You know it's stuff like that that really make me love the show. I mean seriously how would they know 6 years ago when they cast Hurley that they would need him to be the one to speak to Richard's dead wife? I mean I guess you could write you're way to that conclusion, but seriously it was a pretty smooth way to get there, it didn't feel forced at all.







But I'm getting ahead of myself, that was the end of the episode, there were a bunch of other things that took place within the first 55 minutes. Richard is a man of faith when we meet him, a Catholic living on an island in the Atlantic ocean (mind you the island last we knew was in the Pacific or Indian ocean) and his wife is dying. Time to ride half way around the island to go fetch the doctor and apparently the island has the same HMO that most Americans have because they rejected his insurance claim unless he handed over all of his money. Not saying I'm for or against the health insurance bill, just pointing out how corrupt the medical insurance industry is, funny how that would come up in an episode about Hell...





Day 2 of writing, so if my tone changes a little that is why





So Richard ends up in prison for murder where like any murderer he is reading the bible looking for absolution for his sin, to which what I'm going to call a pretty corrupt priest tells him that he is going to hell for his sin. Damn that is cold! Maybe if Richard had been a boy the priest might have been a little lighter on him, oh sorry the Pope would need to endorse that type of action, oh wait, he does! Now that was cold! Anyway the priest let's a boat captain know about Richard and that he'd be worth a couple more coins for trade out on the open sea because he can speak English and lucky lucky Richard he gets to find his way crashing through Tweeket and ending up in the middle of our island enjoyment.





But naturally the fun doesn't stop there, I mean this is the Lost island it's all about fun, it was on the brochure. The captain of the ship comes down into the cargo hold and starts killing off any excess mouths to feed, in a way it makes sense, sure it's evil as all hell, but it's survive or die and I'm not sure that a bunch of slave former criminals are the people that you want to live with on an unknown island, he probably was right they'd do it to him in time so what are you going to do? Smokey didn't really agree with the captain though, as he decided that it was death to all of the sailors, yes clickity death for all you mates, except Richard whom he decided to give a deep scan of.



This deep scan gave me my first really big theory for the episode, I mean why kill everyone else on the boat but leave Richard? Well my thought is that the scan he did was to see if he would be able to use Richard potentially at some point in the future. He scans Richard and later on Richard is presented with the image of his dead wife, very similar to how Ben saw Alex and how Eko saw his brother. In those cases Ben begs for forgiveness, which he is granted under one condition, do whatever John (Smokey) tells him to do. Eko is also presented with a chance to atone for his sins when Yeme gives him the chance to repent, but Eko defiantly says that he did what he had to do to survive, at this point Smokey has no use for him because he won't be able to manipulate him, thus beats the living snot out of Eko and he ends up dead. Interestingly enough who found dead Eko, John, kind of goes back to my assumption that John had inside knowledge from Smokey even that early on. And finally Richard begs for his wife's life, Smokey sees this as an opportunity and eventually makes a deal with him, that he kill Jacob, ie the devil.



In order to save his wife Richard pretty much doesn't care what the cost is and really can we blame him, wouldn't we all choose to go to hell if it meant that we could spare those we loved from that fate. Richard shows up at the remains of the statue looking for Jacob who then proceeds to kick the crap out of Richard, nice to see Jacob as a little bit more a man of action then how he allowed Ben to just stab him. Which is odd, why would he let Ben kill him, but Richard he kicks his butt and then gives him a lecture.



The conversation between Jacob and Richard was essentially the conversation that anyone that doubts faith I think has with God at some point, "Why not just get involved?" To which Jacob very defiantly says, "That they need to figure out right and wrong for themselves." Welcome to free will, and the idea of original sin, oh and the last scene of the episode did you notice the giant tree like a tree of knowledge but more on that in a minute. Richard says that Smokey will interfere and this takes Jacob back, so that's where Richard comes in. Interestingly enough Jacob tells Richard that he can't give him his wife back and he can't absolve him of his sins either, thus he's not God, but does that make him the devil as suggested by Smokey?

The island was compared to a bottle of wine (think blood of Jesus there too) and that the island itself was the cork keeping the evil trapped to prevent it from flowing free into the world. That evil is strongly being suggested as being Smokey. So let's see here, we have a world that is holding evil souls at bay and the guy in charge is Jacob, maybe he is the devil after all. Honestly I think the truth between Jacob and Smokey is going to be a grey area where neither is really evil or good but degrees of each. Smokey is selfish in that he wants to get off the island, but why not just kill Richard after he fails to kill Jacob? Instead he's more resolved to the fact that Richard was working with Jacob now, doesn't that void the agreement with Smokey? Smokey seemed more disappointed but I didn't get the sense that he was vengeful, which honestly I'd see the devil being if you screwed him out of a deal. By the same token Smokey isn't always the most honest, and neither is Jacob right.

One other thing struck me about Smokey not killing Richard like he did the other sailors, could it be that everyone on the island is essentially a piece in a giant game of morality. Let's take a bunch of people that for the most part are good people, but have done some seriously bad things and bring them to the island and as Jacob says, "Give them a fresh start." The game between Smokey and Jacob is a question about the nature of man being good or evil, Smokey says that man is inherently evil, born with original sin. Jacob is saying that if one person comes to the island and individually they can prove that they don't have to be evil then it proves his point that man isn't inherently evil, as he said, "It only has to happen once, everything else is just progress." So Smokey gets to test and tempt them to see if they will sway to the dark side thus proving his point, while at the same time he plays on them in order to manipulate the same players to see if he can get one of them to kill Jacob (thank you Ben). Like I said last week, I think Smokey is just done playing this game and thinks it's futile, so why not unleash Hell on Earth because the Earth itself is already made up of man and his sin, thus there is no point to keep a barrier between the two, they are the same. Jacob only has 6 more candidates to prove him correct or it really will be Hell on Earth.

It's kind of like Jacob and Smokey were angels sent to protect this barrier so that the pure evil could not cross over into the Earth that God created, Jacob is holding loyal to that job, if not a little frustrated as when he talked to Richard, while Smokey is just sick of sitting at his post and wants to leave because he thinks it's pointless.

And finally how about Jacob wanting a child to be born on the island? Let's imagine that the island doesn't exist on our normal plane of existence which I think is safe to say at this point. Would it be possible to be born there without original sin? So say a child is born without sin wouldn't that prove Jacob correct that man isn't inherently flawed with sin, proving his point to Smokey? Not sure if that will play out, but it seems to fit into the story.

So in the end my theory is that Jacob and Smokey really are the guardians of Hell, not necessarily evil because they're the ones holding back the evil found there, but more than capable to do anything in their means to protect the island, including killing. Remember God kills people all the time, doesn't make it evil. And you want one more out of left field analogy, remember way back in season 2, the two guys in the remote ice station looking for the island. How about a remote island with two angels sitting there protecting it, sound similar?

What I'm really curious to see at this point is how does the sideways world play out? I'm starting to wonder if it's not a case of that's what the world is supposed to look like for our castaways after their souls are redeemed on the island when one of them steps up and proves that they aren't inherently evil. And the world that we've seen from the beginning is what the world looks like with Hell unleashed upon it, where everyone is tainted. I guess that all depends on your definition of Hell, for me any reality where you're soul is trapped in any way by those demons in your life (much like our losties) would constitute living in hell. Who knows, should be fun to see how they finish it up and what the writers take on the whole argument is.

And speaking of the ending I saw the title of the final episode, it will be titled, "The End", pretty unique. But if you go back to Jacob and Smokey sitting on the beach, Jacob says, "It only has to end once." Guess what is going to happen in "The End" the cycle will end that one time.