Lost, “Ab Aeterno”

¿Que te pasa, Ricardo?

As has been said elsewhere, in other, more conventional recaps, this was definitely the best episode of season six so far. With that in mind, I’m going to start off anyways with something that has been an insurmountable problem for me so far in the season:

“Lapidus: So you guys met when you were kids, huh?

Ben: No, Frank. I was a kid. Richard looked just like he does today.

Lapidus: You’re saying this guy doesn’t age.

Ben: That’s exactly what I’m saying.

Lapidus: And how the hell do you think that happened?”

Let me ennumerate what’s wrong with this dialogue, and what’s wrong more broadly not only with the entire campfire scene at the front of “Ab Aeterno,” but with a surprising amount of the dialogue so far this season. Firstly: the only reason for Lapidus to say, “So you guys met when you were kids, huh?” is to set up the discussion of Richard’s immortality for the less knowledgeable viewers. This is an out-of-show reason. In-show, in the conversation, the question is awkward and out-of-place. As is Lapidus’ following line: “You’re saying this guy doesn’t age.” This conclusion is not something drawn by Frank Lapidus from what Ben’s said; it’s the writers outlining a point and putting it in Frank Lapidus’ mouth. Ben’s response, “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” is so forced and redundant that it literally made me smack my forehead. It exists as a line solely to (A) further clarify the point for the less knowledgeable viewers, and (B) fill a space in the dialogue so that Lapidus can deliver the line, “And how the hell do you think that happened?” This latter line also exists for purely out-of-show reasons: to serve as a transition into Richard’s flashback. In-show, it’s simply not a sensical thing for a human being to say in that context. In other words, this entire conversation (and the entire conversation round the campfire, barring Ben’s snarkier asides) exists for purely out-of-show reasons. It isn’t characters communicating with each other; it’s the writers communicating with less knowledgeable viewers through the medium of the characters. And it’s unbearable. As someone who dabbles in screenwriting, I realize that there exist times when you have to write a scene to communicate information to the viewer. However, that should never be all a scene is doing. It has to make sense within your fictional world.

However. That aside. Once we escaped into flashback, this episode was so very much stronger than any other episode of season six has been. I think the reason for this can be seen in the scenes on board the Black Rock after it’s crashed on the island. For a surprisingly long period of time we see Richard/Ricardo struggling to free himself from his chains, struggling to reach rainwater, seeing a wild boar eat the flesh of his dead comrades. These scenes serve no immediate plot purpose. However, I would argue that they’re vital in terms of telling the story. They’re vital for rhythm and pacing, and in order to set up the emotional context of the Man in Black’s liberation of Richard. I feel like it’s been an extremely long time since Lost allowed itself this kind of artistic grace note. This episode was full of them: the beautiful wide shots of Richard in the dense jungle of the island, the odd and somewhat uncanny CGI butterfly that drifts into the Black Rock… these are the things that may, on the surface, seem dispensable– but in actuality are the most important building blocks of cinematic story.

It’s also helpful that Nestor Carbonell has untapped reserves of mad acting skillz. I’m biased; Cuban-accented Spanish is, after English, the language I find most beautiful and easiest to understand, and so I could listen to Carbonell speak Spanish all day. But he also possesses an immediacy as an actor that’s striking, something to do with his physicality or the expressiveness of his eyes. He anchored even the most abstract and mythological scenes in this episode in a way that was sorely needed. (One of my problems with the mythology of this season is that it simply doesn’t seem to matter very much. It exists as an abstract idea that doesn’t feel vital to any of the main characters except, perhaps, Ben. Yet here, when tied up in the immediate fate of Richard, it felt real. I wonder also how much this has to do with the context that the historical flashback allowed: for Ricardo, a 19th-century Spanish Catholic, Hell and the Devil are meaningful and present in a physical way that they’re not for modern-day characters. Once I let myself sink into this mindset a little, I liked it. It made Jacob and his nemesis feel — again — real.)

I’m not going to even get into whether any of the mythological stuff revealed makes sense. I don’t think it does, but I also don’t really care. For me, the important thing is not whether the mythology all fits into a logical, consistent framework — it’s whether it feels logical and real. I didn’t quite get there with Jacob and The Other Dude this week (too much of their dialogue falls into the template described above, of facilitating communication between the writers and viewers rather than between characters),  but… moreso than before. Some of this is down to the camerawork, which was just shockingly good in this episode — the strange angles and light used in shooting Jacob were effectively creepy.

Nitpicks: the scene between Jacob and Ilana at the front of the episode grates so much on account of the near-incomprehensibility of the Russian spoken. “Я очень рада тебя видеть,” I think is what Ilana says… but even I– and I am by no means fluent in Russian — could pronounce it more convincingly. Along those lines I should point out the wildly varying accents of the Spanish speakers in the episode… but I’m not going to, because they all at least sounded fluent in Spanish, which makes for a nice change.

Touch wood that next week will continue this quality trend…

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