'Lost' Goes Spiritual in 'The End'

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the last ever fresh episode of Lost.*

Live together, die alone.

'Lost's' 'Across the Sea' Promo Includes C.J. Cregg

Allison Janney, who played the awesome press secretary C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, will be a guest star on the next episode of Lost called, "Across the Sea." In the ABC promo below, Janney's character -- called "woman" in a press release describing the episode -- is tending to another woman's wounds, saying she was the only one of "her people" left.

When Janney's "patient" continues asking questions, Janney says, "Every question I answer will simply lead to another question. You should rest and just be grateful you're alive." Is this a none-too-subtle hint to the fans, like a verbal club hitting us on our heads and telling us to cut it out with all the never-ending questions? Hmm.



While we’re on the subject of Lost videos, I finally allowed myself to watch the Lost Untangled version of “The Candidate,” even though I wasn’t really in the mood to watch Dr. Chang get all goofy when I still feel like I'm in mourning. (See my recap/review of “The Candidate” here.) But Lost Untangled's depiction of the Man in Black/Smoky Locke WAS pretty funny.

'Lost' Has a Repeat Tonight, but May 4's 'The Candidate' Focuses on Jack & Locke

While tonight’s episode of Lost is a repeat of the Richard episode -- "Ab Aeterno" -- the fresh episode next week on May 4, is called, “The Candidate” and, according to TV.com, it’s about, “Jack's suspicions about Locke make his decision more difficult after he is asked to complete a difficult task.”

The TV Fanatic added that, “Jack's questions about Locke grow this week, as he's asked to complete a difficult task.” (Among the interesting photos TV Fanatic has posted for "The Candidate" is the one on the left where Kate’s reaching through the bars.)

What to make of this episode description? Will the “difficult task” be killing someone? Jailing Kate in those cages again?

Could it really be that Jack -- the one whose last name is Shephard -- is THE candidate to replace Jacob, finally achieve redemption and prove that he has what it takes, or, because he seems like such an obvious choice, is he just a red herring? (When discussing who could possibly be Jacob's final replacement with my spouse, I floated Desmond's name but he said, "Desmond is kind of like Switzerland. Desmond's just neutral.")

In the meantime, ABC’s latest promo is supposed to suggest what, that the Man in Black/Smoky Locke’s soul is what, on fire, all messed up? Now there’s a news flash for ya. . .



Image credit: ABC via TV Fanatic.

'Lost' Gets All Sawyer-ish with 'Recon' Episode

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost.*

So the bare-chested Sawyer (weird that the transported-from-the-1970s-Sawyer is bare-chested, no?) got an episode of his own.

Were there surprises in the new episode? In the sideways-flashing/uncrashed Sawyer’s life, he’s a detective whose partner is Miles. Sawyer was set up on a blind date with Charlotte (Daniel Faraday's daughter) and it went poorly after she snooped in his bureau drawer. There we learned that his dad STILL killed his mother and then himself after James’ cheating mother got conned (even though, as we know from the Locke sideways-flash, Locke was pondering inviting his “father” to his wedding). In fact, Sawyer, er, Jim Ford, was still trying to track down said con man, Anthony Cooper.

Is said con man Locke’s father? Is the con man someone else? What are we to make of the fact that Kate’s car crashed into Jim Ford’s? And, why in the world, in the post-crashed/post-Jughead world would Kate’s dress from her booty call in the cage with Sawyer have been left behind in the cage for Sawyer to find? Wasn’t she wearing that dress when she ran away while Jack was operating on Ben?

I’m trying not to read too deeply into all of this because, as I mentioned when I commented on the frustratingly boggling Locke episode a few weeks ago (still HATE the fact that the character histories we’ve talked about for years have been shelved, at least in the sideways-flashing lives), I’ve stopped trying to make this all make sense because the writers don’t have sufficient time to tie up the loose ends and make it seem reasonable. (If they do, I’ll write up a HUGE blog post saying how very wrong I was.) However in order to try to enjoy the remainder of this series, I’m going to have to put those irritations aside, like the writers did with the character histories they carefully created, and just roll with it.

As for the rest of the episode “Recon,” I engaged in more eye-rolling at the whole Charles Widmore/sub/armed Widmore henchmen thread. Yes, I’m intrigued by the overarching Widmore/Ben/Desmond/Penny story and how that factors into the Island’s lore, but – and I feel like I’ve been repeating myself a lot on this matter – but I’m growing weary of having yet another group of gun-toting people with vague motivations take more of the Losties hostage and leave behind a trail of dead bodies. I thought we were nearly done with this nonsense when Dogen and his sidekick were killed. But with only eight episodes left there’s not much hope that this unfortunately expanding circle of people is going to become smaller, more focused and more intriguing. It looks like it's just going to widen to encompass armies, like a dead post-Jughead Locke/Man in Black/Smoky army, a Widmore army and a loyal-to-Jacob army (which welcomes Ben, kind of, despite the fact that Ben killed Jacob)?

I’d be so much happier with more storylines like the one from “Dr. Linus” last week where we saw Ben become redeemed and where larger, more cerebral issues regarding destiny and fate were explored (Was Ben always going to be evil, regardless of what happened to him or did life's events make him that way? What role did his trip to the Temple when he was a mortally wounded child have on him?) But, alas, that doesn't seem to be the route the writers are heading.



What did you think of the Sawyer-centric episode? About him being a cop -- instead of a con man -- but still obsessed with hunting down the man who conned his mom? About the growing armies on the island?

Image credit: ABC.

'Lost's' 'Dr. Linus' Made Me Smile (Except for the End)

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost.*

For several weeks now, I’ve felt let down and disgruntled by the time I reached the end of each new installment of Lost. (If you've been following along here on the blog, you know why.) But I was thrilled that I did not feel that way after watching the “Dr. Linus” episode and witnessed the redemption of Ben Linus in BOTH of his realities, in his uncrashed life and in his post-crash/post-Jughead life. Such dualities haven’t occurred for the other characters whose sideways-flashes we’ve seen.

After Locke – who’s dead and whose body has been claimed by the Man in Black/Smoky -- my favorite character on Lost was Ben Linus because he was so deliciously evil and unpredictable, yet he also had a vulnerable, insecure underbelly which I found intriguing. So it was a shock to see him, in this final season, rendered largely impotent, a bug-eyed spectator as post-crashed/Man in Black/Smoky Locke assumed control over the island after conning Ben into killing Jacob. Even Lapidus seemed to have more authority than Ben and that was depressing.

The full depth of Ben’s feeling of betrayal hadn’t been explored until this latest episode where he confessed to Jacob’s “bodyguard” – a character about whom I could care less about -- that he’d sacrificed and given everything he had to the island because he had faith in Jacob and that he was doing what he had to do to protect the island. Ben had even allowed the evil Widmore freighter guy to shoot to death Ben’s daughter in front of him because he thought that’s what Jacob would have wanted, for Ben to remain alive to take care of the island even as he had to sacrifice his child to do so. (My guess is that, before he killed Jacob, Ben would’ve justified his actions by quoting scripture about sacrificing a child for God.)

But to see Ben, tearful, exposed and utterly defeated -- like the story he told his history class about Napoleon in exile on the island who might as well have been dead because he was powerless -- because he believed he’d dedicated his life and allowed his daughter to be killed for nothing, was a revelation. It humanized the little nut job, in a good way.

Ben’s sideways-flashing high school history teacher did what the post-crash/post-Jughead Ben could not: Do right by Alex and make sure that she got what she needed to succeed in life, or at least get into Yale. Though still deceptively manipulative in his sweater vest -- as evidenced by the way he persuaded the biology teacher to hack into the school nurse’s e-mail account – this version of Ben had a heart that superceded his ambitions.

The uncrashed Ben was even taking care of his father, making him meals and changing his oxygen tank; by contrast, the post-crash Ben killed his father and donned a gas mask to protect himself from the poison gas he had gotten someone else to release across the Dharma compound in order to stage a coup and put himself in charge. (Get the irony, killed by poison gas in one scenario, made more comfortable with oxygen in the other.) The uncrashed Ben was still Ben, but hadn’t been twisted by the island, hadn't been brought to the Temple when he was mortally wounded as a child after Sayid shot him in order to be "saved," something that likely darkened Ben's heart.

So does this mean that the island – and the presence of the Man in Black/Smoky – twists people, takes the darker parts of themselves that already exist and amplifies them by forcing people to choose between the common good and a selfish good? Do you have to have had contact with Smoky, like child Ben did, in order for this to happen? Who knows?

I haven’t yet read up on the other blogs to see other folks’ reactions to “Dr. Linus,” but I’ll venture to guess that the reactions to the redemption of Ben are mixed. In my own house, my spouse was unimpressed. “I don’t like Redeemed Ben and Bad Sayid,” he grumbled. I’m not a fan of Bad Sayid either – though I’m not totally convinced he’s bad, I HATED Dogen and his weasel sidekick – but I was a fan of last night’s Ben-centric episode.
 
Do you think Ben will remain redeemed for the rest of the series or will Evil Ben rear his scheming head again? Did you roll your eyes at the poorly executed scene with the sub rising out of the ocean and spying on our Losties with Charles Widmore inside of it like I did?

Image credit: Mario Perez/ABC.

'Lost' Untangled Takes on 'Bad Man' Sayid & Why I Want More Ben Linus

*Warning, spoilers ahead from recent episode of Lost.*

Sure, he was a torturer for the Republican Guard during the first Gulf War, but aside from that little nasty detail, don't you kind of feel badly for Sayid Jarrah, the poor, heartsick, menancingly lethal Sayid? I do, despite his violent past. The latest Lost installment, "Sundown," focused on Sayid's struggles with coming to terms with that Republican Guard past where, under duress, he was forced to do some very bad things and therefore believed himself to be inherently evil.

In this episode, we got a glimpse of his uncrashed life in which Oceanic 815 landed safely at LAX. In this sideways flash, Sayid brought flowers to the love of his life, Nadia, only Nadia was married to his brother who'd gotten himself into trouble with the mob over some shady business loan. In order to protect his brother, Nadia (who has feelings for Sayid but he doesn't believe he's deserving of her affections) and his niece and nephew, Sayid took out the mob loan guys, whose leader was the evil freighter guy Martin Keamy from the island in the post-crash world who killed Ben's daughter Alex when Ben wouldn't surrender himself. So do Sayid's actions in this sideways flash, shooting the mob guys, make Sayid evil at heart, given that it was in defense and protection of loved ones? I'm not sure.

But what's clear as a bell is that the post-crash/post-Jughead Sayid -- who teamed up with undead Locke/not-Locke because Mr. Smoky promised Sayid that he'd get a chance to see Nadia again (she'd been killed in this version of Sayid's life) -- has decided to go all out bad, drowning the annoying Dogen (yes!) and then killing his scooby of a translator in the murky waters of that ridiculously fake-looking temple.

In both versions of Sayid's life, he's still dealing with that "I am a bad man," feeling and can't escape violence which seems to follow him wherever he goes.

On another matter: I've been attempting to be more positive and lighthearted about Lost since my tirade following the Locke-centered episode a few weeks ago, but please allow me this gripe: They are UNDER-USING Ben, much to my consternation. I care more about Ben than I do about Claire or Dogen or the irritating Other Others or Miles. Ben has been developed into such an amazing character that I've been waiting (im)patiently for him to get more air time. Instead, after being tricked by Smoky Locke into killing Jacob in last season's finale, Ben has been reduced to standing around, looking bug-eyed and confused, almost paralyzed by the fact that he's been rendered irrelevant by Smoky Locke.

In fact, I was considering starting a Twitter campaign -- using the hashtag #morebenlinus -- to lobby for more Ben, not that it would actually change the episodes that have already been written and shot, but at least it'll make me feel better. Then I saw the ABC preview for the next episode which features, wouldn't you know it, sideways flashing/uncrashed Ben as a high school teacher talking about Napoleon losing his power in exile on an island. This little glimpse made me smile:



If next week's episode is anything like I hope it will be, based on this little snippet, I'll be one happy gal next week.

In the meantime, enjoy the always snarky Lost Untangled video which sarcastically dissects "Sundown:'"



Thoughts on Sayid the Bad Man? On whether we need more Ben Linus?

'Lost's' 'Lighthouse' Episode and Why I've Decided to Just Go Along for the Ride

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost*

I’ve made a decision which is going to make my life much easier: While watching the recent episode of Lost, called “Lighthouse,” I decided to stop trying so hard to figure it all out and just go with it, Zen-Namaste-Dharma style. Some may call this a cop-out, but (*deep centering breath*) I don’t care.

The turning point in my approach to watching this program occurred in the wee hours of the morning last week after I’d stayed up way too late in the wake of the Locke-centric “The Substitute” episode. I poured through several discs from my Lost DVD collection searching for clues to confirm what I thought I knew about Locke’s history before his fateful plane ride on Oceanic 815. When I toyed with caffeinating up at 1 a.m., I knew that things had gone too far.

I’m no longer going to parse every single statement, search for every single Easter egg, pause the TV and stare wide-eyed at the frozen image hoping to glean some insight. Nope. I’m not. I’m just going to enjoy Lost and not fret over the fact that I don’t have any freakin’ clue, for example, why the uncrashed Jack Shephard has a son, lives in a nice apartment and only sees his kid once a month, when the boy’s not living with his mom, who was not identified. I smiled when Jack told his kid David that he’d hooked up the cable on the TV in his bedroom so that he could watch the Red Sox. (Love that Jack’s a Sox fan.) Since I wasn’t so busy playing Lost detective, I was able to notice similarities between Matthew Fox’s days when he played Charlie Salinger on Party of Five and had a kid sister who was a music prodigy, like Jack Shephard’s son David. Sweet coincidence.

When Jacob decided to give Hurley marching orders because of all this “candidate” business, asked Hurley to write cryptic stuff on his arm and to speak authoritatively to the head of the Other Others, I didn’t let the confusion irritate me, just let it wash over me. (*feeling the Zen*)

I smirked when Hurley responded to ghost Jacob’s request that he try to convince Jack to accompany him on another quest by saying, “Did you ever try to get Jack to do something, it’s, like, impossible.” I derived pleasure from the first moments of levity since the season began when wry music was played as Hurley tried to be all 007-suave and convince Jack to come with him with his quip, “Be cool man, act natural.”

The armed, murderous, booby trap-setting, Rousseau-like, dark-hearted-Man-in-Black buddy Claire -- complete with the wild hair and the “I want my baby back” mission – was entertaining as well, as long as I tried not to think too hard about it. Didn’t even rise to the bait of the lighthouse imagery, a newfangled “wheel” (not the time travel-inducing donkey wheel) and freaky surveillance mirrors (pre-Jack-smash). Not gonna think too hard about it. Not. Gonna.

So I’m, essentially, going along with the ride. As Hurley, often referred to as the voice of the audience, said while he and post-crash/post-Jughead/“broken” Jack walked through the jungle together, “This is cool, dude, very old school . . . on a way to do something that we don’t quite understand. Good times.” Just like my newfound mindset toward watching Lost, the final season: Very cool, although I don’t quite understand. But that’s okay. Which made the latest Lost Untangled video all the more fun to watch. (Loved the line about Jacob being so mysterious.)



What do you think of Jack the Daddy? Of the lighthouse? Of the axe-wielding Claire?

'Lost Untangled:' The Substitute

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost*



Lots of Lost fans are busy around them there internets saying that they're pleased with the most recent Locke-centric episode, "The Substitute." I'm not one of them.

I know I'm supposed to be embracing this whole sideways flash novelty -- otherwise known as the parallel reality comparing the uncrashed Losties' lives against the post-crash/post-Jughead Losties' existence on the island. I completely embraced the flashbacks in the early days, the revolutionary flashforwards introduced in the season three finale to awesome effect. I was even willing to suspend the plaguing feeling I got when I worked really hard to follow along with the time travel business which occurred last season. I've loved wading through the literary, Biblical and pop culture allusions and the various clues. I've paused the show to examine what was on screen, like the map on the Hatch's blast door that had pinned down Locke in the season two episode "Lockdown."

But the sideways flashes conflict with everything we've come to learn about the backstories of the Losties.

While I watched "The Substitute" with my spouse, another Lost fan, and saw that Locke got fired for deceiving his boss about his Australian walkabout (pretended he went on a business trip paid for by the company), that Locke was with and getting married to Helen and that he was considering inviting his "father" to their wedding, we were thunderstruck. Did none of the previous episodes we'd watched over the years have any meaning? Were they all for naught?

I dug out DVDs of previous seasons to confirm how wildly divergent these sideways flashes were from the history of Locke we'd been presented. Previous episodes showed that Locke told his obnoxious boss that he'd saved up vacation days and was going on the walkabout, about which his pinheaded boss mercilessly harassed him. The love of his life, Helen, had left him, even when he was down on his knees offering up a lifetime of wedded bliss, because of his obsession with his con man of a father. His father pushed him out of a high-rise window rendering him paralyzed when John threatened to expose him as a con artist. Just before leaving for Australia, John had found a woman named "Helen" on one of those pay-per-chat phone lines (typically used for, well, you know), had been regularly speaking with her for eight months, and asked her to accompany him on the walkabout, only to have her tell him that she couldn't go out with a customer.

Events in people's lives would obviously have changed if Oceanic 815 hadn't crashed on the island and if the Dharma Initiative was halted in the 1970s following the detonation of Jughead. But, seriously, how would all of these other things have changed and how, in the short time that's left until the series finale, can writers possibly make all of this seem logical, logical in the world of Lost, that is?

The Numbers -- which we now know correlate with numbers Jacob assigned to possible "candidates" to replace him to be protectors of the island (very cool twist) -- were always bad luck for Hurley. He thought they were cursed. He thought he was cursed. People around him got hurt and he attributed that to the Numbers and his bad luck. Look at poor Tricia Tanaka. How is it possible that by preventing the Oceanic crash on the island and changing the island's history, that, somehow, Hurley would be a successful businessman? That he'd be a different person?

I was on board with the let's-see-how-this-alternate-reality-of-uncrashed-Losties plays out. Found it interesting, seeing if their lives would've been better (or worse) if their plane had safely landed in LA. But having fundamental bedrock stories about these characters' backstories become so radically transformed, I just can't wrap my head around it. After years of carefully constructing these characters, to toss out everything we've known about them as if the past never happened -- at least not as we've been told that events had occurred -- makes me wonder if the rest of the future episodes are going to tick me off in the way "The Substitute" did.

But it wasn't all bad. I DID like, totally bought and was thoroughly entertained by the scene with Ben Linus as a history teacher complaining that his colleagues had left an empty coffee pot and dirty coffee filter in the coffee maker in the teachers' lounge. It made sense because his father would've never gone to the island had Jughead gone off and therefore, Ben would've lived an entirely differently life, as opposed to the Hurley's suddenly lucky storyline.

Are the writers going to try to create some forced storyline about Locke's dad that, because the island blew up, he somehow never became a con man, therefore he never conned Sawyer's mom so Sawyer's dad never killed her and then himself, that he never conned Locke out of a kidney and later pushed him out of a window rendering him paralyzed? So Locke got paralyzed in some other way?

I'm with Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley, who, when informed about these new sideways flashes, told USA Today, "I was like, 'What?' It's a lot to swallow.'" And feel similarly to a Boston Globe TV critic who said, "I'm enjoying this season, but only when I'm able to let go of that gnawing, and very human, hunger for logic and sense."

I really hope I'm wrong. I hope it's all going to work out in the end. Guess that depends on whether I'm a fan with faith or a fan who's become jaded because she fears she's being taken down a rabbit hole.

'Lost:' Comparing Jack's Plane Rides, Plus New 'Lost Untangled' Video

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost.*

I wasn't on the internet late Tuesday through yesterday -- pressing family matter -- therefore I haven't yet been able to weigh in on the first episode of the final season of Lost. I'm going to echo what Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes wrote on Twitter today, "Saw LOST twice. Am very confused. Am happy about the chance to be confused over LOST again."

Well, I've only seen the premiere but a single time, however I'm planning on watching it a second time with The Spouse when he's available. And I too, like Rhimes, am very happy to be once again scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck's going on on Lost.

Some reactions:

'Lost' Supper? What Does These Promo Photos Mean?

Stumbled across a new Lost promotional image on Pop Candy this morning with the cast of Lost posed to resemble Jesus and his disciples in Da Vinci's famous painting, The Last Supper.

While I was trying to absorb the imagery (ruins of a Dharma building, gun under the table, a skull . . . maybe? Is that supposed to be a cross over Jack Shephard's left shoulder?), I saw the twin promo photo, where the castmates are all looking at the dead-not-dead "Locke," with a few of the people sitting in different places (Claire, Sun, Jin and Miles).

The New York Times' TV blogger Dave Itzkoff points out that in both images Sayid is standing where Judas stood (I would've thought Ben Linus would've been put in this position) and that Locke is smiling in the image when everyone's looking at him but not in the one where everyone's looking straight ahead.

What does this Locke-as-Jesus photo mean with the Losties sitting behind a table fashioned out of an airplane wing?

Image credit: ABC via Pop Candy and via the New York Times.

'Lost' Season Finale: The Incident

*Warning: Spoilers from the Lost season finale ahead*

I've just gotta get this out of the way . . . I will never think of the phrase"lock box" quite the same again. (Bad, I know. . .)

I spent a good hour-and-a-half last night vigorously debating with The Spouse about Lost's season finale, specifically about Jacob and his nemesis, and how time travel fits into what now appears to be a TV show about the innate good/evil tendencies in humans, free will versus determinism. Immediately after the screen went white (NOT black, per usual), the debate commenced. Jacob, dressed in white, represents God, The Spouse argued. Jacob's trying to prove that humans can do better than to succumb to their most base, evil temptations. The other guy, dressed in black, The Spouse continued, is the devil who's trying to prove to Jacob/God that people are inherently evil and selfish.

The other guy, let's call him Hal just so I don't have to keep calling him "the other guy," looked out from the island's beach, sitting next to a huge Egyptian statue, and looked at what I can only assume is the 1800s era ship, the Black Rock, that eventually shipwrecked there. Hal said, "How did they find the island? . . . You [Jacob] brought them here. You're trying to prove me wrong aren't you?"

"You are wrong," Jacob said.

"Am I? They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same."

"It only ends once. (?!) Anything that happens before that is just progress," Jacob replied.

Here, watch the opening scene for yourself (link to the main Lost site with the "loophole" video here):



I listened to and pondered The Spouse's arguments and then asked, "Does this mean that the island is like a Garden of Eden, a test site for a meta human nature experiment so that Jacob/God can improve upon his creation and prove to Satan that humans can be forces for good in the world?"

"Let's say I buy that whole good versus evil theme, buy into it as the framework for the remainder of this television series," I continued, "how the hell does time travel fit into it? Isn't time travel a scientific notion? Daniel Faraday, who told Jack Shepherd how to supposedly prevent the crashing of Oceanic 815 in 2004, was a scientist who spent decades studying time travel. He had knowledge of the electromagnetic properties of the island. How does that fit into a purely good versus evil story?"

The Spouse didn't really have an answer and was starting to grow a wee bit cranky as the clock ticked past midnight. (I think I'd had way too much caffeine prior to watching the finale.)

It was true that Jack had to decide whether he had faith in Faraday's scientific certainty, or whether Jack should instead just forge ahead with his own life and not blow up The Swan. He could've wooed Kate back and lived in the Dharma village. But Jack ultimately made the choice that he thought was for the greater good, not just for Jack Shepherd. He was proving a Jacob/God point that humans can be selfless. So there was some degree of faith there, a moral test, I conceded to The Spouse. But that scientific time travel element -- which has so dominated this season -- mucks up a good versus evil theme, muddies the waters, I insisted.

As much as I want to cross my fingers and hope that the writers are actually going to make this all make sense -- and I mean ALL , such as why these particular people, why they ALL had to come back to the island, why certain people are in 1977 and others are in 2007, why Jacob can appear on the island/off the island, what Christian Shepherd's ghost has to do with guiding Sun, how Locke's father wound up in "The Box" last season, why doesn't Richard age, what about Walt and how do the ubiquitous numbers come into play? -- I'm growing fearful that it won't all be tied together into a neat package as I so much want it to be. I want to believe that my own faith in the Lost writers will pay off in the end.

Anyway, onto more episode analysis . . . The issues of "free will" and choices for either the greater good or for selfish reasons, have been explored before, however in the finale they were repeatedly invoked. Sawyer/LaFleur wanted to take the Dharma sub and go away with Juliet to live happily ever after. Kate wanted to go back to help "save" their friends on the island. And while Sawyer, Juliet and Kate were initially going to try to stop Jack from detonating the H-bomb at The Swan because they were afraid they'd all be killed, not saved, they eventually allowed Jack to go forth and drop the bomb, hoping they'd be saving everyone who'd been killed since their plane first crashed in 2004. (Another nod to Jacob/God's selfless choices.)

H-bomb aside, the scene in Jacob's lair -- where Ben was told by the Locke impostor (Locke being supposedly possessed by Satan now) to kill Jacob -- played out more starkly as good versus evil. Jacob looked directly at Ben, who'd once been the "leader" of the island, to whom Jacob had never spoken, whom Jacob had refused to see. The more Ben thought about how he'd been blown off by Jacob, the angrier Ben (who'd been saved as a child by the smoke monster . . . or could it have been disciples of Satan/Hal who saved Ben from death, took his soul and made him evil?) got. "Why him?" Ben asked referring to Jacob allowing Locke to visit as soon as he'd been crowned the island's leader. "What was it that was so wrong about me? What about me?" then, of course, an angry Ben killed Jacob/God, scoring a victory for Hal/Satan. (See the violent scene below.)



When we learned that Locke's body was inside the big metal box being toted around by the latest airline crash survivors, I was totally confused. After all that Jesus/resurrection talk, the Judas and the cross imagery, Locke is actually dead and Hal/Satan has been impersonating him? I'll be frank on this matter; I don't understand this turn of events, despite the "loophole" stuff that Hal and Jacob discussed on the beach in the 1800s. I don't get how there could be two Locke bodies at once, unless of course one Locke body is time traveling, but I didn't get the impression that the Locke who told Ben to kill Jacob was OUR Locke. We're supposed to believe that it was Hal/Satan who'd somehow found a loophole to kill Jacob. How does this so-called loophole work? Could the key be somehow related to time travel?

I have no idea. Seriously. By the time I finished trying to reorient myself to the new Lost reality (Locke's not alive. Locke's not really supposed to be a resurrected Jesus figure even though he did hear Jacob say, "Help me," two seasons ago. Jacob/God visited and touched most of our Oceanic folks -- Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sawyer, Kate, Sun & Jin, appeared to resurrect a dead Locke after his father pushed him out of the high rise window. Hal/Satan is trying to prove that people are inherently selfish and evil and prone to violence.), it was 12:30 a.m. and The Spouse was telling me to shut up because he had to go to sleep. And now, 15 hours later, I'm still stumped.

I'd love to hear your theories, your reactions to the season finale, particularly how time travel fits into the overall theme of what now appears to be good versus evil. And what's up with Locke?

'Lost' Untangled: Follow the Leader

*Warning, spoilers from the recent episode of Lost ahead*

The new Lost episode -- "Follow the Leader" -- was one of those head-scratchers that made me feel confused and clueless, even though I've seen every episode of this show -- multiple times -- and frequent blogs with vigorous Lost fan bases.

Maybe I was tired when I was watching. There ARE two Boston teams in sports playoffs (Celtics, Bruins), plus I was also trying to simultaneously watch the Red Sox. I was also cranky, had a precariously low level of caffeine in my system and truly wasn't in the mood to be required to think this hard.

Now that I've had time to think about the episode, I'm trying to make sense of it. Let me get this straight:

-- Jack wants to carry on dead Daniel's work as outlined in Daniel's notebook which was given to Daniel by his mother who wound up killing him. Jack thinks that by blowing up "Jughead" (the hydrogen bomb buried under Dharmaville -- maybe THAT'S why women couldn't bear children), he'll be restoring the natural order to their lives, putting everything where it should be. The original Oceanic 815 crash will not happen in 2004 because the pent-up electromagnetic energy on the island will have already been released due to the bomb's detonation.

As I pondered this, I kept thinking of the phrase, "Dead is dead." If Jack, Kate, Eloise, Charles W., Hurley, Sayid, Sawyer/LaFleur, Kate, Miles and Juliet are all blown up how could they still be living in the future? Say only a couple of them are blown up, like Jack and Sayid if they happen to be close to the bomb. They'd be dead. They wouldn't be able to be on the plane in the future would they? Unless of course the island heals them, post-blast . . . Could they possibly head off the construction of The Swan and the infamous button?

-- Kate now thinks Jack's a suicidal maniac and prefers to face the Dharma mania to Jack's . . . and winds up on the sub that's evacuating the women and children off the island, along with Sawyer (who, circa 1977, wants to invest in Microsoft and become rich) and Juliet (who's less than thrilled that Kate has joined them). However ABC ruined the suspense for next week by showing a clip of Sawyer back on the island so we know their time on the sub plotting to relaunch their lives is short-lived.

-- Locke impersonates Moses by leading his tribe of followers down an island beach in search of "Jacob," after having provided them with fresh meat (in the form of a freshly killed, sacrificial boar). He tells them that when he finds Jacob -- who asked Locke to help him during last season -- he plans on killing him. Huh? Is Jacob alive and needs to be killed (like Locke "needed" to be killed by Ben) in order to live forever? Is Christian -- whose last name IS Shepherd -- Jacob, or are they separate?

-- There's been a large amount of chatter online speculating about whether Richard Alpert first came to the island on that Black Rock ship that crashed on the island (Richard was working on a ship in a bottle) or is some kind of ancient Egyptian (hence his eyeliner and the hieroglyphics in the Temple) who has been resurrected (hence he never ages). What really threw me during the last episode was that Richard, who always seemed so self-assured, seemed baffled when Locke told him to go meet a time-traveling version of Locke and assist with removing a bullet from his thigh. When Richard asked Locke how he knew that the time-traveling Locke would would be there, Locke replied that the island told him.

-- Which brings us to the question is "the island" Jacob? Does the island have its own spirit and intentions separate and distinct from Jacob and from Christian, who seems to be playing a pivotal role in guiding the time traveling Losties, like giving Sun the photo of the 1977 Dharma recruits?

The ONLY thing that's clear -- other than the fact that Miles' daddy didn't really leave Miles and his mother but was seeking to protect them, hence his picking a fight to make his wife leave -- is that "The Incident" will likely be the focus of the season finale next week, which will likely leave us on a life or death cliffhanger.

Meanwhile, the latest Lost Untangled video (link here) made me laugh with the comical images of Jack & Co. swimming through the tunnels, Sayid's "I am not a killer" line and Locke's grandiose presentation of the dead boar.

What did you think of the latest installment? What are you hoping to see in the season finale?

'Lost Untangled:' Dead is Dead

*Spoilers from recent Lost episode*

Maybe I've been spoiled by all the Lost goodness that's been aired in the past few weeks. What with time travel, Kid Ben getting shot and my head hurting from trying to figure out what everything means, I've come to expect to be absolutely thrilled by the time a new episode concludes. Not so much with this last one.

It's not that the fact that the episode, "Dead is Dead" was Ben-centric that turned me off. I love Ben Linus. He's one of TV's great villains. Manipulative. Ruthless. Unpredictable. Who could've seen coming him killing an already suicidal John Locke? Or shooting Cesar after convincing him that Locke was a potentially violent loon? Brilliance.

Yet I found myself not really caring what happened to Ben when the kid-loving character was preparing to be judged by the "smoke monster" in an Indiana Jones-like temple complete with hieroglyphics of some sort for which, no doubt, Lost fans will seek out a translation soon if they haven't already (on the Pop Candy blog, some commenters are suggesting that the carvings referenced some sort of god of the dead or of the underworld or souls). Ben wasn't going to die. Not yet anyway. He's too central as the only, long standing villain. Who could replace him and wear the series' big black hat? Charles Widmore? Richard Alpert? No one really could fill Ben's shoes, therefore I didn't expect anything to happen to happen to him in the belly of the temple.

I found Kid Ben compelling because he was just that, a kid who could've been influenced and changed, drawn away from his potential, future evil ways, or at least we could try to understand how and why Ben became sinister. Adult Ben -- who didn't really repent because he believes that the island trumps everything and is the excuse for everything he does -- isn't going to change at this point. Learning that Ben spared Rousseau from death years ago when he kidnapped her baby didn't alter how I feel about him. Seeing Ben pushing cute little girl Alex on a swingset while he was sporting an atrocious hairdo was only mildly interesting.

I did, however, find intrigue in how and why Widmore was banished from the island, in what the "new" plane crash survivors are arming themselves for and in the clearly Jesus-like resurrection of Locke, on the island where previously those who were dead stayed dead.

Meanwhile, ABC's new Lost Untangled video is very funny this week. I love the Locke voice. Quirkiest bit: "Precious Moments with Ben Linus."



Your thoughts on "Dead is Dead?"

Lost: Namaste Indeed

So let me get this straight:

It's 1977 for the following Lost characters: Sawyer . . . 'scuse me . . . Mister LaFleur, Jin, Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Miles, Juliet and Dan Faraday, wherever he is.

It's an indeterminate year for: Dead-not-dead-resurrected-Jesus-figure formerly known as Locke, Ben, Sun, Lapidus and the other people who had the misfortune of being on the Oceanic 6's flight. (Jeff Jenson from Entertainment Weekly says these folks are in 2007, though I remain unconvinced that that's been clearly established.)

The obvious outstanding question is: Why? Why were the castaways -- those who got off the island and returned, as well as those who stayed behind -- separated by time, and is there any chance of them meeting up with one another at their current biological ages (or will we see Sun and Jin reunite in the future and do a Benjamin Button thing where one has aged and the other hasn't)?

After reading a couple of reader comments from USA Today's excellent blog Pop Candy's Lost thread, someone floated an interesting, but flawed theory: Maybe Ben Linus cannot return to the island because he's ALREADY on the island, only as a child, the bespeckled boy who gave Sayid the condiment-free sandwich. But that wouldn't explain why Locke, Sun and Lapidas wouldn't flash off the airplane and into the groovy year of 1977 like their Jack & Co. friends did.

Also, there's Christian. Or should we call him Jacob? Or the scary, killer black smoke/mist stuff? Or Jack's dad? Or dead-not-dead(?) Claire's dad? Or all of the above? What to make of him, the man who guided Locke into turning the island's wheel of time?

A couple of other observations from the last episode of Lost:

-- If there's anyone out there who thinks that Jack Shephard is going to sit back and be content to be "Jack, Workman" and clean toilets while Saw. . . Mr. LaFleur runs security and tells the doc what to do, I've got some shares of AIG to sell them. The mano-a-mano Jack-Sawyer blow out is coming. Sanctimonious Jack can't help himself.

-- And I so do not want the writers to go THERE and have Kate and Juliet battle over the greasy-haired Sawyer. That's too Gossip Girl for me.

-- Okay, the Oceanic 6 had to return to the island in order to save those friends they left behind, or so said the church lady, Eloise Hawking. Those who were left behind were "saved" from moving aimless about in time when Locke fixed the wheel thingie in the Orchid Station. So what kind of "saving" does the Oceanic 6 need to do? Preventing the Dharma Initiative purge which elevated bug-eyed Ben to King of The Others?

-- One other thing mentioned by a Pop Candy commenter: Where the heck are Bernard and Rose?

Your thoughts on the latest Lost?

Image credit: ABC.

'Lost' Continues to Blow My Mind

It's taken me two days and two viewings of Lost before I've been able to write a post here about the most recent episode. (Plus I took my three February vacationing kids to see Paul Blart: Mall Cop yesterday and lost more than a few brain cells in the process.)

That being said . . . Wednesday's episode, "316," was one of the best and provocative installments I've seen in this series. So many elements came together and spurred questions:

Take the likening of John Locke to Jesus and Jack Shephard to Doubting Thomas (aka -- Thomas the Apostle), as well as having Locke serve as a stand-in for Jack's deceased father Christian on the flight.

The mysterious call made by a blood-spattered Ben to Jack from the pay phone at a marina. (Given that Penny and Desmond had docked their boat in LA, is it possible that Ben hurt or killed Penny as he promised he would?).

The uncertainty of what happened to Aaron (with Claire's mother?), coupled with the implied sexual relations between Kate and Jack after Kate told Jack not to ask about Aaron again. Did Kate become pregnant, representing the pregnant Claire on the flight?

Ben was reading Ulysses by James Joyce on the doomed flight; the book has chapters entitled "Hades" and "Penelope."

How, exactly, did the Losties got back to the island? (Was there an explosion? a crash?)

The single line of Locke's suicide note -- "I wish you had believed me." -- references the lack of belief that Jack, called the man of science in season two, had in Locke, the man of faith, about not leaving the island. This episode was entitled "316" which is also a Biblical passage, John 3:16, which says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

As I tried to take this all in, I was, simply, blown away. After I watched the episode a second time, I went online and looked up a number of other folks' analyses and found these to be among the best:

-- Entertainment Weekly -- which called this the "proverbial pilot episode for a whole new chapter of the show" -- had loads of amazing details and offered various connections between plot points.
-- Pop Candy's commenters provided great grist for discussion.
-- Jezebel and New York Magazine provided fabulously insightful episode wrap-ups.

Here's ABC's Lost Untangled video to help explain "316" (link to video here):



I still feel as though I need to read up more on Thomas the Apostle and Ulysses in order to prepare for next week's episode, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham," which, going by ABC's previews, has Locke wearing a Jesus-like cloak and includes a scene where someone is kneeling in front of him. (Ben?) Link to preview for next episode here.

Holiday Weekend: 'Bedtime Stories' and Catching Up on 'Lost'

Been in holiday hell for the past week, thus, no blogging in this space:

Lost too much time trying to load up The Spouse's Christmas gift (iPod Nano) with iTunes as well as songs from the CDs we have in the house that we haven't listened to since the first George Bush was in office. Looking at the Reality Bites and Friends soundtracks was a trip down Memory Lane, I tell ya.

Played happy homemaker (key word played) by baking a ton of cookies, including the batch of peanut butter/chocolate kiss cookies into which I realized, as they were cooking, I'd neglected to add baking soda. (The non-baking soda cookies were like little rocks.)

Attempted to wrap gifts while keeping my sick 10-year-old girl (who had a bad pre-Christmas cold) at bay so she wouldn't get an advanced preview of the gifts.

Lightly prepped the house for my parents' two-night stay. Made dishes for our family's traditional Christmas Eve dinner at my brother's house, then, with The Spouse, made Christmas dinner for parents and brother's family.

Once Christmas concluded -- I always feel a giant letdown after Christmas -- The Spouse and I took the three kiddos to the movies to see Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories, which also featured the luminous Keri Russell. The kids had been dying to see this film since they saw the trailer this past autumn when we went to see High School Musical 4047, The Pepto-Bismol Years and were hooked.

It was typical Sandler fare: Harmless, mildly funny and sweet at times. The two older kids laughed aloud more than once and were particularly fond of the pointless, big-eyed guinea pig named Bugsy, which had essentially no relevance beyond making the kids chuckle. However at several points during the film, our 7-year-old was confused about what was happening and The Spouse attempted to fill him in. It was never really explained, for example, why Adam Sandler's niece and nephew suddenly possessed the power to tell stories about their uncle that would, in some form, later come magically true, such as Sandler getting caught in a hail of gumballs or talking in alien-like gibberish. But hey, it's a family-oriented Sandler comedy, I wasn't expecting a Mad Men-esque tight production.

Once the kids got their movie fix, I got my DVD fix by cracking open the season four Lost DVD set The Spouse gave me for Christmas and watched an embarrassing number of episodes back-to-back (suffice is to say that I'm almost through season four). While watching the episodes, which I'd only viewed once during the truncated fourth season, it's amazing how much I've forgotten, including little details I'd missed this past spring.

Watching the eppies is good preparation for the fifth season's premiere on January 21. Speaking of which . . . ABC has uploaded another new sneak peek of the Lost season premiere online, complete with references to John Locke, last seen in a coffin in Los Angeles by a bearded Jack Shephard.