Whuuuuuuuuuuuuut?!
First thing's first, as they say in sports: nothin' but SPOILERS.
So, Jacob. He is real, and he is pretty cool. Even back in the 1600s he talks like a normal dude. One imagines that when that giant sailing ship landed on the old beach and everyone disembarked saying "what hast thou to sustain our personage" or "doest ye know wherein I can partake in a slumber," he was like "huh? Why don't you dudes talk normal?" Anyway, Real Jacob has a Real Nemesis who wishes he could Real Kill Him. But he can't. I don't know. Forget it, Jake, it's Shadow of the Statue Town. In any case, Jacob keeps bringing people to the island, but his nemesis, we will call him Boblo, wants to keep people away from the island because all they do when they get there is fight and destroy and corrupt (they corrupt?) and it always ends the same way. "It only ends once, anything that happens before that is just progress," Jacob says. This, of course, sets up one of the classic narrative conflicts:
Man vs. Nature
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Himself
Jacob vs. Fish
Jacob vs. Boblo
I am already on the edge of my seat. What happens next?
Jacob, it turns out, has been there all along! BOOM GOES THE MINDAMITE. Here he is buying Kate a New Kids on the Block lunchbox. Here he is giving Baby Sawyer a pen to write his murder letter. Here he is congratulating Sun and Jin on their wedding in fluent Korean. Man, Jacob is the best. I wish he was my immortal friend. My favorite is when he gives Jack a candy bar.
Jacob's interference in the lives of the Losties is kind of weird. Like, thanks for the candy bar, Jacob, sure, but really? You traveled all the way from the island to hand Jack a candy bar years before he is going to plane crash into your home? Meanwhile you give Hurley the tough sell to get him back to the island (and the tough guitar)? And you basically murder Sayid's wife? And you wait for the exact moment of Locke's paralysis to give him words of encouragement? Why do some people's encounters with Jacob seem meaningless while others seem quite meaningful? JACOB WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS.
So Locke wants Ben to kill Jacob, and he takes him to the shadow of the statue, or whatever, but then it turns out that LOCKE ISN'T LOCKE! Locke is Boblo! The first rule of Lost Club is you do not talk about Lost Club! He found his loophole? I don't know. These guys are ancient, we can't be expected to understand their Middle English. Jacob gives Ben a choice, to kill him or not to kill him. Although Locke before (we knew) he was Boblo gave Ben a pretty convincing rationale for killing Jacob (cancer, his daughter's death, banishment), and it's clear that Jacob does not like Ben. Who does? Even the smoke monster is like "ew, Ben is gross." So Ben straight stabs a Jacob. And as he is dying, just before Boblo kicks him into the fire (HOW'D IT GET BURNED? HOW'D IT GET BURNED HOW'D IT GET BURNED!) he is like, "They're coming."
Who does he mean? Does he mean the New Losties, who have just shown up outside the statue with Real Locke's body and seem to know all about Boblo and are maybe Jacob's pals? Or does he mean Classic Losties returning from the '70s? Or does he mean someone else entirely? This is called a cliffhanger, because of how similar it is to gripping with your fingertips at the ledge of survival as your legs swing freely over an enormous crevasse of death. For eight months.
MEANWHILE, 30 years ago, Jack wants to detonate Faraday's hydrogen bomb to make it so that this whole show has all just been a dream. Sayid helps him use Faraday's notes to extract the core from the bomb buried in the tunnels so that it can be easily transported via rucksack to the Swan site. My favorite part is when Sayid is doing this and Jack asks if he's done with Faraday's journal. "Oh, you mean the journal I'm using to help guide me through the process of extracting a nuclear device from a 20 ton warhead, which I'm not at all done doing? Sure, take it." Jack takes it.
Learned: at some point, Faraday's mom was leader of the island. WRITE IT DOWN IN YOUR LOST MOLESKIN.
Kate convinces Juliet to help her escape from the submarine to go stop Jack from detonating a hydrogen bomb and killing everyone on the island. Luckily for them, Juliet is highly trained in Krav Maga? How is it possible for her to be handcuffed to a table, and still be able to totally destroy a security guard? Juliet Jaa over here. Anyway, now they are back on the island and they find Rose and Bernard, who are living peacefully in the jungle and want no part of this continuing drama. Fair enough.
One loose end tied up, 500,000 to go.
Jack and Sayid surface from the tunnels in the Dharma camp and try to "hide in plain sight." Oldest trick in the book. But it doesn't work. They are spotted. Sayid is shot in the stomach. Jack has a monster shoot out and kills a bunch of dudes, which again, I'd just like to point out, dude is a doctor! Where did he get this live ammunition combat training and his complete disregard for human life? Miles and Hurley save them in a Dharma van and everyone is on a ROAD TRIIIIIIP to the Swan station, but that is when they run into Sawyer and Kate and Juliet, and Sawyer is like "give me five minutes," and Jack is like "five minutes." Sawyer's argument to talk Jack out of blowing up the hydrogen bomb seems to amount to "why don't you just not do that," which to be fair to Jack is not very convincing. Perhaps Sawyer's FISTS will convince him! The fight is pretty evenly matched, lots of solid punches to the face.
Fuck HD, see how clear my view is?
Sawyer takes the mount and is about to submit Jack (no jujo) but Juliet breaks it up because she has decided that Jack is right, the best thing to do right now is detonate a hydrogen bomb. OK! I feel bad for Sawyer. What a trained monkey, fighting what he's told. He asks Juliet what changed and she says that she saw how Sawyer looked at Kate. Man, tell me about it. Jealousy is the worst. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a romantic situation where I thought, fuck this, no one treats me this way, DETONATE THE HYDROGEN BOMB.
Miles hydrogen bombs my mind when he suggests that maybe detonating the hydrogen bomb is what already happened in the past and is actually the reason for their plane crashing in the first place. Boom. It is like nuclear winter up in my head. Everyone gets real quiet for a second, but then they're like "shut up, Miles."
Blah blah blah, shoot out with that fucking nerd.
Hate that guy. Who made him King Shit of Lost Mountain? Jack drops the bomb and it's all very "Hide and Seek" (2:53). But then...nothing. And then...MAGNETS!
Jack, look out!
Toolbox to your dome!
Tiny nerd gets impaled by some metal stuff. Bye, tiny nerd! Dr. Chang's hand gets crushed by some metal stuff. Bye, Dr. Chang's hand! And then, of course, Juliet falls down the CGI mineshaft. I guess that's sad. THAT IT WASN'T KATE! (Zing.) Bye, Juliet.
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Except, of course, that Juliet isn't dead! She is basically dead, but she is not dead. So she picks up a rock and smashes it against the hydrogen bomb. Apparently, when it was tossed down the mine shaft, it fell into a bed of feather pillows, because all it takes to set that thing off is the dying rock slap of an 80 pound woman. And then...KABAM.
See you next year.
