Locke

The father, the son and the holy hottie

In the end there were no fireworks. No yelling and screaming. No fingers in the chest nor recitations of missed ballgames, withering slights, alcoholic screw-ups or Oedipal murderousness. The surface anger melted and all that remained - in the sheer white light outside the Unitarian church - was a father and son sobbing happily in one another's arms.

Their friends sat in the pews, unbloodied and unbowed. And, finally, together.

The island, with its heroes, villains, monsters and constant life-threatening struggles, was less a literal place than a stage for a greater emotional battle: a thrill-ride version of psychotherapy:, where the patient is made to confront, engage and then move beyond the obsessions and weaknesses that have defined his/her life. 

Everyone's answer is different. For Jack it was accepting surrender; for Hurley it regaining self-confidence; for Miles it had something to do with discovering his faith in duct tape.

What matters is that what once were lost are now found. And what was "Lost" is now a memory. A long series of memories, actually, packed with action and adventure and dark humor, but also yearning and heartbreak and frustration and all the stuff of human exerpience. But no matter the blood and bombs and bad-ass thugs and monsters and on and on, the source of all that white light  came from within the characters themselves.

The mythology, as cool and confusing as it could be, was exactly like the cool, confusing mythology we all weave for ourselves: A Hollywood-style animation of the internal drama flickering behind all of our eyes.

Are you ready to move on? That's always the question. And for most of us, pretty much most of the time, the answer is emphatic: Helll, no. Thus psychotherapy, if you're a secular urban mod with health care and/or expendable cash. College kids can take philosophy classes, and engage in dorm room bickerfests about reality. Everyone else gets religion, or worst case, primetime tv. And just in case you wanted to wrap it all up in one tidy package, these last six years have also given us "Lost."

Don't leave the island without it!

As the end of "Lost" approaches every previously-accepted point of the show's fact, history and fancy seem to pirouette, somersault and get blown to smithereens.

Sayid - dead. Sun and Jin - dead. Lapidus - vanished and presumed....well, your guess is as good as mine. Hurley - weeping uncontrollably. Alt-Locke - revealed as the loving son of a vegged-out Anthony Cooper, wracked by guilt because he crashed the plane that not only shattered his own spine, but destroyed the life of his beloved old man. Leaving the bald boy so wrought by guilt he won't even consider Alt-Jack's offer of a near-surefire cure for his paralysis.

Did I mention that this post might include some spoilers from last night's episode? Maybe I should have noted that earlier.

Questions are answered, stories resolved. Satisfying or not, an ending always means the foreclosing of options. The collapse of some possibilities in favor of others. Which leads just as inevitably to disappointment and outrage. It's like the show's creators have pillaged your imagination, kicking apart your dreams and contradicting your own sense of logic and reality.

No surprise then to turn on the Twitter this morning and see some of my favorite tweeters (James Poniewozik; Tim Carvell) already engaged in a what-if-the-ending sucks-does-it-wreck-the-whole-series exchange.

Which reminds me of why I think series conclusions, particularly in long serialized shows full of myth and mystery, will always be roundly loathed. And why the final answers to "Lost" shouldn't matter that much to anyone, anyway. . . .

Dave's not here!

By Nick Gorini
 
In a break from form, I feel the need to start off this post by issuing this week’s Stupid Award to yours truly. Why? Well, I spent last week telling everyone and their brother that ‘The Last Recruit,’ this week’s episode of ‘Lost’, was going to possible be an absolute bloodbath of Eli Roth-like proportions.
 
My Intel and my Spidey Sense were WAY off.
 
Consider this my formal mea culpa: For getting caught up in being the first with the gossip scoop, for paying more attention to what the internets were saying (I mean, they never lie, right?) and less to the pulse of the story, for not being diligent in my fact-checking, and for being gullible, I have won this week’s Stupid Award!
 
Was I confused, living in an alternate timeline? Was I manipulated and swayed by the Smoke Monster? Did Jacob steer me in this misguided direction to teach me a larger lesson? Was it because the episode cryptically appeared on the date of 4/20, Man?
 
I bring up 4/20 for a couple of reasons: The Losties crashed on a tropical island, looking much like Hawaii. Tropical islands (like Hawaii) are typically known for growing certain types of plants that have a known, enthusiastic following. Let’s put it this way - I imagine Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson might even have vacation homes near Hydra Station (hydroponics is a popular topic of discussion with this subculture).
 
With this information in mind, I ask you, why the hell didn’t Jacob try having a toke with Smokey? His name is Smokey, after all. Why didn’t Smokey try growing some weed in a quiet, fern-covered patch of his back yard, next to the chicken coop? While I don’t believe in any chemical cure-all (this is Lost – resolution has to come from within), can you imagine how different our storyline would be if Smokey had the occasional, well, smoke?
 
For all his troubles and eternal enslavement, all Jacob offered Smokey was half a carafe of table wine (back in Alpert’s episode). I’d be pissed, too. Give me something a little stronger. Of course, you don’t have to be Catholic to know that what Jacob offered Smokey wasn’t really wine; it was something much stronger. Smokey knew that, too, which is why he smashed that sacrament and faith into shards littering the hallowed ground.
 
Perhaps that’s what Jacob wanted for Smokey. To not ply himself with narcotic, to not be complacent and trapped. After all, ‘It only ends once. Everything before that is progress.’ Maybe Jacob wants this escalation, maybe Jacob needs this chaos to help save Smokey. To help save his soul. To help Smokey embrace his destiny. Wonder what that could be?...
 
By the way, have I mentioned that I still haven’t stopped thinking about ‘Ab Aeterno’?
 
This week’s Aye, Caramba! moments...and more....after the jump:

They got the same greeting at David Geffen's place...

So many stories, so many characters, multiple realities, intertwining crises. And maybe the one thing they all have in common is that no one is telling the truth, exactly. Particularly when they look you in the eye and swear to creation that everything they say is real.

And while it's true that some people can, and do, tell a lie in pursuit of a moral end, the creation (or perpetuating) of a reality that is nothing but a hall of mirrors serves mostly to throw dirt in the air and turn everyone, good or bad, blind.

If the subject is "Lost," which it is, I could be talking about anything now. About Sawyer reneging on his deal with MIB/Locke. About alt-Desmond tailing, and steering, alt-Claire to the meeting with the alt-Ilana, alt-Jack. About alt-Desmond's bumper car exploits with altLocke. And on and on. About alt-Sayid's murders of Keamey & friends; about Sayid's non-murder of Desmond (if you don't see the body....), and more.

But what's really got me shaken up, after several weeks of thinking it was coming, is the news that the post-death Christian Shepard, seen so often in various stations and moods on the island, was always Smokey, animating yet another dead person's body. Which implies that Smokey was the guy in "Jacob"'s moveable jungle cabin; and the guy helping Locke push the wheel that sent the island spiraling back and forth in time; that Smokey was the one appearing to Jack in various places during his first L.A. sojourn....except, wait a minute. That COULDN'T have been Smokey, because that was in L.A., and guess who can't travel over water?

So does that mean all those Smokey-seeming Christians weren't Smokey after all? 

At this pace "Lost" begins to resemble a kind of sci-fi version of Whack-A-Mole, where each successfully whacked plot twist only sends a dozen other rodents leaping out of the dirt.

Ben and Sun: Some people really weren't meant to be together

My kid has been watching "Lost" with me this year, and so when we got off one plane at LAX last week, and made our way into the international arrivals terminal enroute to another flight, he took a look around and said: "I guess this is when our flash-sideways lives begin." Made me laugh out loud. And it also reminded me of one my favorite aspects of the series: Its ability to both acknowledge, and make light of how absurd some of its central premises are.

Perhaps the best in these moments came in this episode, "The Package," when Sawyer confronted NotLocke/Smoke Monster in the midst of NL/SM's preparations to rustle up a boat for his and Sayid's trip to the Hydra island.

Sawyer: " “Why don’t you just turn  your ass into black smoke and fly over there?”

NotLocke: “I can’t do that, James. If I could do you think I’d still be here?”

Sawyer: “Of course not." (pause) "‘Cause That’d be ridiculous.”

Just because you can turn yourself into black smoke, among other things, and fly hither and yon and destroy everything in sight....well, obviously that doesn't mean you can cross bodies of water to do it. I mean, duh.

But then again, what isn't absurd in the realm of faith and hope and philosophy? It's one thing to have dueling light/dark characters who clearly standi in for God and Satan. But to invest them with similar supernatural abilities -- and the same fundamental questions on the very essence of good and evil - is the sort of highwire act you should never see in popular media. That's Salman Rushdie territory, and last time I checked a significant percentage of the world's population was still intent on killing him.

Maybe the consistent (and consistently angrifying) notion is that life itself is ridiculous. That grace itself -- e.g., the living tomato Jack pulls out of Sun's dead garden -- is a non-sequitur, just as tragedy -- e.g., alterna-Sun catching a stray bullet in the restaurant kitchen shootout, just after sinister-but-doomed Keamy told Jin " that "some people aren't meant to be together." 

Looked like a serious gutshot, in fact, and so the last we saw was Jin carrying her off to get help, which he may or may not find in time. Just as Island Sun has to resist Not-Locke's invitation to take her to her still-long-lost Island husband because she just doesn't trust the Smoke Monster inside of him.

What this all adding up to, Jin-and-Sun-wise, is an-fixable destiny of being kept apart. Just as Widmore - scheming away on the Hydra, with Tina Fey at the head of his recon group - must live tragically without his daughter.....who we now assume is tragically without Desmond, the poor Scots bastard, who has been dragged back to the island for reasons unknown.

So maybe this is the final answer at the heart of "Lost"'s mythology: Shit happens. And then, if you've been touched by Jacob, you don't die.

Another ridiculous notion: Smokey's sense of moral righteousness, even after slaughtering the innocents in the temple: They had their chance to come with him and they didn't take it, he tells Sun. "Those people were confused. They had been lied to." Even the devil has God on his side.

Ridiculous notion #2: The truth, and how to tell it. Ben Linus lied about everything virtually all of the time, but once he made a promise to someone, he prided himself on keeping his word. Smokey seems to roll exactly the same way, and we heard echoes of the same my-word-is-bond business from Jacob and Widmore. Does this mean that the moral poles of humanity maintain their honor even when their acolytes don't? 

The world is devolving. War is afoot. The purest rivers are running dark, the cork may pop and darkness may poison the world. But even a dead garden can cough up a sweet, cherry-red tomato. The spark of life goes on. And like faith, life and (to a lesser extent) "Lost," that's either beautiful or ridiculous. Or both.

Too much stinkin' thinkin'?

By NICK GORINI

Hatred is an ugly thing. Like many ugly things, it can be powerful, overwhelming, unsettling. It can dictate lives, instigate change, and even alter the course of history.

Self-hatred is, if possible, even uglier. Unlike regular old hatred, it is self-contained. Un-influenced from any positive outside force. Warped, destructively narcissistic, it is nourished only on what serves its purpose: To destroy its source.

The rub? That self-hatred is such a strong, singular force, it is almost unstoppable. It's aim is small, contained. But oh, the havoc it wreaks. The Horror. The Horror.

Folks, welcome to the mind of Sayid! We sure like visiting Sayid, by far the ass-kickin'est of the bunch. But we wouldn't want to live there.

Where's Stuart Smalley when you need him? Look in the mirror and repeat after me, Sayid: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me."

TIMELINES (I MEAN, ARE WE EVEN THINKING IN THESE TERMS ANYMORE?)...

WHAT HAPPENED TO HALF OF SAYID'S SOUL:

We see freshly-scrubbed but more jheri-curled Sayid reluctantly stepping out of a cab to meet the woman/unattained ideal he seeks known as Nadia. Before she opens the door, we see Sayid's reflection, but instead of seeing himself (like Jack, Kate and Locke before him), he looks straight past any self-reflection to the eyes of what he seeks.

Nadia greets him warmly, but before we can get the gist of their new alt-relationship, two cute kids come tromping up the lawn to greet "Uncle Sayid!".

His wimpy, can't-kill-a-chicken-but-can-try-and-take-credit-for-it brother Omer pops up before things get too mushy. Hey, Jealousy!

Sayid is back from a boring business trip in Australia "Translating oil deals"  (READ: Killing people, right? I think...). So, brother Omer ended up with Nadia, having kids, and running a dry-cleaning business. Even though we last saw Omer as a boy, we can see he's still kind of an ass. He's bossy and distant with Nadia, who clearly still wants a piece of Sayid, respectfully. Sayid's got  boomerangs for the kids, and Nadia wants to know why he never responded to her letters...

By-the-way, this is Locke's neighborhood they live in - I'm sure of it.

Later, we see Sayid asleep on the couch. When his brother goes to wake him, half-asleep Sayid nearly snaps him in two, which is further confirmation that "Translating oil Deals" is code for 'I eat Chuck Norris for breakfast'.

Omer is urgent. He borrowed money from b-a-d people and needs his little bro Sayid to lay some smackdown. Sayid offers his money, but Omer says he needs Sayid to be the "Man I know you are." He guilt-trips Sayid by dangling the responsibility and accountability of his wife and kids to help. However, unlike the original Sayid, who is more than willing to put morals aside in order to help others (he really has been by far the most unappreciated core member for all the violence, killing and sacrifice he's been through), this time Sayid tells his brother that if he won't accept money, than it's on him to solve the problem. Sayid's out of the killing biz.

The next morning, we see Sayid walking his niece and nephew (and we know that he longs for these children to be his) to the school bus, but the serenity is interrupted by a teary-Nadia. Omer has been mugged and brutally beaten. To the hospital, which is of course, Jack's hospital. I guess Sayid and Jack exchanged glances for two seconds, which I missed, because I was writing the very freaking notes you are now reading.

Omer has a punctured lung, a broken this, a fractured that, but he'll pull through. Sayid gets that 'Sayid Look', but our dear Nadia (she's dear because she's sweet, and we've watched her die and get tortured numerous times, poor girl) stops Sayid and asks him to watch the children. Be good, Sayid! Not only do I need you, but I need you to be the good man I know you are! The scene ends, but it tugs: Nadia, if only you'd been on the island with Sayid. You could've been Sayid's Stuart Smalley!

follow the jump!

Definitely not a sunny-side-up kind of guy.

Mercenary, mobster, whatever, Martin Keamey has got the real evil flowing in his veins. During his island days a couple of seasons back he tromped the underbrush like a squared-away psychotic. Killed everything in sight. Murdered a terrified little girl while her father watched. Blew up the boat and crew that had delivered him, as a kind of backwards gratuity. (he had other reasons too, but still)  Q'uest que ce? Run, run, run away.

So no surprise that parallel Keamey, now a gleeful mobster in Los Angeles, has his goons deliver parallel Sayid to some kind of spotless industrial kitchen, where he greets him warmly, offers to make him eggs any way he likes, with toast. Sayid refuses, so Keamey shrugs and eats alone, promising to murder his guest's brother, sister-in-law, children and dog (implied) if he doesn't see to brother's ongoing debt payments. So this isn't going well at all for Sayid, particularly since he already turned down brother's earlier plea that he mete out some two-fisted justice to these same thugs in order to avoid this very eventuality. Parallel Sayid said no way - he's a different man now, no longer close to the Iraqi Republican Guard torturer he once was, hey, didn't he set up his brother with his own beloved Nadia? For whom he still visibly, painfully, yearns?

The point: Parallel Sayid has kicked the darkness. He doesn't do evil shit anymore, not for any reason, not even to protect his loved ones.

But may be he really doesn't like eggs? Sayid certainly didn't want to be threatened by Keamey and friends, he's got this survival impulse like no other. And so whiz-bang-boom, suddenly things go quickly sideways for Keamey: Sayid thumps one mobster, snatches his gun and kills the other guy while said other guy accientally drills mobster #1. Keamey, no longer hungry, seems to kneel: Slow down! Let's just forget about this, okay? Debt forgiven. Life goes on. We'll just forget about this, okay?

Sayid: "I can't." 

Kablammo.

So that's it for Keamey, again, and that's interesting enough 'til this muffled thumping comes from a walk-in freezer, in which alterna-Jin is inexplicably tied up and walk-in-freezing. WTF?  A real bad-ass would just drill this mystery Korean and get on with his far-less-complex life. But you just know he's going to rescue this stranger, and give him his freedom.

Thus the essential conflict in Sayid's soul: He's extremely good at violence, and has used it against legions and legions of people, not always in the service of the most moral ideals. But Sayid is a moral person at heart. Or at least he really, reallly wants to be: He knows right from wrong, he yearns to save the innocent. It's just that life keeps throwing him Keameys. When bad people come to town the good ones turn to Sayid and ask him, pretty please, to do some righteous ass-kicking.

For most of "Lost" Sayid served as a human animation of the US's war against Iraq and (arguably) every armed conflict any self-described moral society has entered. We all know war is essentially brutal and ugly. Once you unleash the darkness you can never keep it from destroying the innocents.  And yet we do it again and again, cloaked in vibrant red, white and blue, with spotless white hats and the true conviction that God is on our side.

You aleady know the contradictions at work here: Can anyone use darkness in pursuit of justice? And once you do it once, is it ever possible to scrub the blood from beneath your ragged fingernails?

One of the most compelling things about "Lost" is that it doesn't seem to know for sure. It's a dramatic thriller that certainly wields the catalytic thrill of redemptive violence. But it also understands and makes (painfully) clear that the true toll of those battles can't really be known or understood. Because even the victors lose something when they take out their antagonists. You kill a piece of your own soul when you extinguish someone else's. And as Island Sayid -- already pegged by Guru Donen as unredeemably evil -- lost all grasp on his moral compass, eventually opening the gates of the temple to the true embodiment of evil (NotLocke/Smokey, Crazy Claire and probably worse) he really did believe he was acting as a liberator: Saving the innocents, killing their leader and his aide-de-camp (Lennon, whose round glasses and center-parted hair were clearly intended to evoke the peace-singing Beatle whose own divided heart was pierced by another psycho killer). 

"I always do what I say," NotLocke/Smokey promised crazy Claire. So does the USA, we like to believe. We storm in, kill the leaders, burn the villages and wait for the terified locals to shower us with flowers and thanks. And when they don't -- often because they're too busy suffering the consequences of our redemptive violence -- we shrug, declare victory and forget about it. It's morning in America: Time for eggs, toast and a long, hot shower.

As if you could scrub the shadows from your soul. As if you really were light and verity, free of even a wisp of darkness.

I quote again from my song of the moment, Kasey Anderson's beautiful, cihlilng "I Was a Photograph.": "I was numb back then/I ain't even numb no more." 

Is this gonna be on the test?

By PETER AMES CARLIN and NICK GORINI

So a month into the final season we're still made to wonder: What is "Lost" really about? Is it a show about philosophy? Is it a vast analogy about the wages and moral toll of imperialism? Or is it all, somehow, about the polar bear?

So many ideas, so many direct quotations, so many books turning up everywhere you look. But a lot of that stuff is pure Maguffin; a graduate school of red herrings.

So we here at PAC.com's "Lost" central - including our shadowy leader, Guru Dev Nick Gorini, lit the candles and fired up the incense, took a dunk in the hot tub of wisdom and attained clarity. What follows are the REAL moral/intellectual/narrative headwaters of "Lost."

THEORY THE FIRST: "LOST" IS A METAPHOR FOR RISE AND FALL OF THE BEATLES

John Lennon is the Man in Black: A little bitter, more than a little sardonic, determined to escape the bonds of the utopia he helped create (to say nothing of the wide-eyed fans who reside there), he's possessed of an explosive temper and, when you least expect it, deep sensitivity. When the MiB told Sawyer that Jacob and the other Island cultists were killing one another over nothing he was really saying: “Imagine there’s no countries/it isn’t hard to do/Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion, too. . . “

Paul McCartney is Jacob: Handsome, charming, a trifle melancholy, deeply in love with his own illusion. Jacob/Paul is more than a little manipulative and never shy about picking a fight. Many people believe he’s dead, though his regular appearances - often looking far younger than you’d expect - argue against it. Convinced that ebony and ivory can live together in perfect harmony, but there sure are a lot of names scratched off his cave ceiling. . .

George Harrison is Sayid: Meditative, eastern, suffered at least one near-fatal attack before actually getting killed. Reincarnation important to both. George didn’t seem to return from the Other Side as quickly as Sayid. . . but something in the way he moves just might remind you of another lover.

Ringo Starr is Hurley: The perpetual baby brother, mostly adorable and funny, but a surprisingly capable hit-maker. See also: “It Don’t Come Easy,” which Hurley discovered all too clearly when his lottery winnings seemed to spell nothing but doom. Later turns out to be far more intelligent and better-adjusted than anyone expected.

Stu Sutcliffe is Charlie: Artsy, sensitive, troubled, not quite able to stick with the band. Doomed to die young, but given immortality in the name of his legacy and the spiritual impact he had on those who would go on to greatar glory.

Pete Best is Ben: The very foundation of the rock-and-rhythm, the drummer is always a group’s secret leader. Until the group calls for a new drummer. Now Ben is in his own spiritual Liverpool, sentenced to a life of woulda, coulda, shouldas.

Yoko Ono is Kate: Beguiling, not always friendly, perfectly capable, and willing, to kick anyone’s ass at any moment. Just when she seems charming - that’s when you should be afraid. Very afraid.

Linda McCartney is Juliet: Blonde, smart, no evident musical ability, but a natural-born matriarch. Dies tragically young, leaving behind a shattered partner who rebounds quickly into another, extremely ill-considered new partnership.

Brian Epstein is Locke: A man of faith whose reach often exceeded his grasp. And yet his spirit was pure, his belief in his cause unwavering, and his success so astonishing as to be inarguable.  All this despite being shockingly ill-equipped for his role, and more afraid than anyone would guess. Died young under conditions so murky no one can say for sure if he committed suicide, died accidentally or was murdered.

Allen Klein is Charles Widmore: Shadowy, scary, will do anything and kill anyone in order to get what he wants. But even when he wins the battle, he always seems to lose the war.

THEORY THE SECOND: "LOST" IS A METAPHOR FOR THE GW BUSH WAR TEAM: 

After a cataclysmic event, a group of empowered surviviors gathers together to fight back, survive, solve life's greater mysteries, and tackle the essential question of man's nature. Was it fate or free will that led us into war? Both groups are/were lost in many ways. Let's briefly break down some of the key players:

George Bush is Locke: After a life riddled with failure and endless daddy issues, finds himself in a position of great power. A man driven by faith who doesn't spend much time using logic or thought to make decisions, the power goes to his head. Like Locke, Bush's reputation is deader than a crab-riddled corpse.

Dick Cheney is Jack: The REAL power broker in the group, almost too coldly analytical, and unwilling to listen to anyone, even when the truth is staring him in the face. Convinced he can fix anything, and that anyone who doesn't understand what he's doing or where he's coming from, he rarely tells anyone in the group what his motivations are. The only difference between Jack and Dick? Jack has a heart.

Saddam Hussein is Ben: Am I telling truth? Am I lying? Am I your ally? Am I your enemy? Sure, I do awful things, but you understand, it's for good reasons. I may be a tyrant, but I provide you some stability. I sure love all this power. Oh, wait - are you getting sick of this game yet? Sorry, I'll tell you truth about everything! Wait! Wait! Damn, too late. I've lost all my power...

Donald Rumsfeld is Smokey: More than ready to head to war, nearly salivates over it. He just wants to go home, if home means a world where Capitalist-based Christianity reigns in every nation. He'll do anything to get home. He's tired of the game of balanced diplomacy. A war needs to happen, and there has to be one winner.

Colin Powell is Jacob: Strong and reserved, a peaceful warrior, if you will. He tries to guide the group towards what is good, but ultimately, he is not in a position to affect choice. He can only show them 'The Way'. Like Jacob, he can never go outright and just say what he wants. And like Jacob, he ends being symbolically sacrificed (his political career, that is).

Condoleeza Rice is Kate: Strong, smart, sexy and easily influences the men in her group. She isn't above compromising some of her evident morals for people she loves, she's torn between bad guys and good guys. Can she/we even tell the difference anymore?
George Tenet is Sayid: Both like to torture people, ALLEGEDLY, and are decidedly good at it. Can they elevate their morality and use their power for good? Doubtful... 

John Ashcroft is Jin and Sun: Essentially good, but surrounded by a lot of destructive ideas, and an old-world view that limits personal growth. Resistant to change, but not incapable of it. C'mon, John - Let the Eagle Soar!

Ari Fleischer is Sawyer: Strong, charming and sharp-tongued, he can speak for the group on many levels, and people really, really like him, even when he says or does some really dumb things.
 

 I don't think he's gonna pull through...

When I was in 4th grade the rock group Three Dog Night had this huge hit with "Black and White," which found a maddeningly tuneful way to reduce the world's racial/social conflicts, the very headwaters all the non-tea tax-caused wars in world history, into a child's singalong:

The ink is black/the page is white/together we learn to read and write...

Even as a 10-year-old I could sense that this was far too simplistic an analysis; that it offered limp platitudes rather than tough moral choices; that it might inspire Paul McCartney, ten years hence, to rewrite it and score an even bigger hit out of the arguably more dreadful, "Ebony and Ivory.

Only what I didn't foresee was that 20 years after that, "Lost" would take up the same issue (albeit not in racial terms) and present a far more complex and entirely compelling version of the age old manichean struggle: White v black; community v independence; fate v self-determination; good v evil.

No matter where you look, it's the same story: Stark distinctions; impossible choices; because you can never really tell what is good and what is bad, and why certain acts that seem like unalloyed evil might, in fact, be truly just and even merciful.

So when Sawyer, in seemingly idle talk with the NotLocke/Smoke Monster/Man in Black during a jungle stroll starts musing on John Steinbeck's "Of MIce and Men," sit up and take notice. And realize that what what you're about to see in the cave they're heading for tells you as much about "Lost"'s core themes as it does about the relevance of the notorious numbers and a glimmer of a hint about why the Losties were ever drawn to the island, and then all but forced to remain there.

All from the Man in Black/Smokey perspective. Which, as it turns out, makes some sense.

Central plot reveals: 

Jacob, who long since won the role of Island caretaker/boss/spiritual headwaters, chose/nurtured each Lostie in their pre-island lives, somehow pushing/compelling them to the point where they would all be on that Oceanic #815.

Each number was a signifier for an individual Lostie. If they signified something more profound (a top forty?) we don't know yet.

Argument for greater significance: Jacob was cultivating each Lostie as a potential substitute/replacement for him when he either retired, went on vacation, or got stabbed to death and then shoved into a campfire.

Someone brought an Iggy Pop record to the Island.

The non-island/alternative "Losties," left to their own devices in the good old US of A, seem far more successful, less angry and (to coin a phrase) fucked up than their Island-bound alter-egos. Hurley is a successful businessman; Locke, albeit wheelchair bound, is in a warm relationship with Helen and, by the end of this episode, finding new meaning as a substitute (!!!!!) teacher; Ben, also a teacher, satisfies his bossy nature by kvetching about other teachers' unwillingness to start a new pot of coffee even when they finish the old one; etc. etc.

The deep end analysis, from God to mice, comes in the jump....

By NICK GORINI
 
Now that we've had nearly a week to sit with our Kate-centric episode, it's time to gear up for what will be a more revelatory-what-the-heck-is-going-on episode, titled, 'The Substitute.' Although all episodes of this show are a must-see (minus a few that spent way too much time in bear cages), this week's will be especially important. More on that in a minute. First:
 
A FEW SCRAPS I MISSED:

In the first episode, I initially failed to notice Desmond's wedding ring in his little 30-second plane ride. Well, remember that he threw Penny's engagement ring in the water way back when that nice/sinister Old-Lady Faraday told him his love was doomed and he couldn't change fate. Now we have a married Desmond, presumably to Penny. And an episode later, we have a broken Sawyer tossing his Juliet's engagement ring in the water. Coincidence? Well, of course not.

Also in that first episode, I didn't notice Sayid's new passport: Iranian. Not sure how relevant this is... Yet.

Last week, Sawyer tossed that ring from the submarine dock. The submarine dock? Wasn't that blown up by Locke awhile ago? Well, looks like it's been rebuilt. And I imagine we'll be seeing the submarine again, too. Could that be a piece of the timeline convergence puzzle?

Just as Kate was meant to be part of Claire and Aaron's lives, so too was Ethan. And for all the bad stuff Ethan did  back in Season One, I think we can speculate that Ethan was meant to save Aaron's life - in both timelines.

To restate, Jacob wanted Sayid or whatever is possessing Sayid to get beyond the Temple's protective barriers. So all so far is going according to plan. But here's the catch: remember how unsurprised Dogen was that Jack didn't give Sayid the poison pill? Well that was part of the plan. What wasn't part of the plan was Jack popping the pill in his mouth. Further proof that Jack is the new variable.
In a recent interview, show producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof wanted to reassert that the main question they want all of us to ask: 'Is humanity essentially good or essentially evil?' Yes, this is stating the obvious, but it's a good compass for us viewer's to hold onto when we get too caught up in all the side stuff that occurs.

Peter's last post astutely mentions that the 'infection' that some characters appear to be succumbing to is really a metaphor for the Original Sin. As you will see in upcoming episodes, this infection can come in various forms. More on how this relates to the next episode in a little bit.

In another recent interview, Michael Emerson, who plays Ben, had what was probably the best quote about this final season's story-telling conceit: In regards to the two timelines, "The dimensions of time and space are... Porous."

In a weekend conversation with a friend, he stated that he dearly loved the show, but was surprised that the impending game is becoming so blatantly Biblical. I agree, although I am finding as many parallels if not more in another Christian writer's primary work: C.S. Lewis and his 'Chronicals of Narnia.' I skimmed through my beaten, beloved books and found Jack, Kate, Locke, Jacob, Esau and even Ben in lots of of characters. It was a fun exercise, and made me look forward to reading them with my seven-year-old.
 

How does he do it? No one knows. . .Follow the jump for even more. . .