NotLocke

 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....

Guess who's coming to dinner! Now, guess who else is coming!

"I'm sorry you had to see me like that."

Ah, it's Locke, with his Colonel Kurtz head, his crinkle-eyed smile, his jungle-stained summer-wear. And now, his unsettling ability to become a (THE) smoke monster, complete with deadly coal-black smoke legs that can blast everyone and anything in sight into smithereens.

Who isn't Locke at all, of course, but some other being entirely. Jacob's evil brother? His rival? His Esau? Something has subsumed Locke -- who is, to be fair, dead -- and now it's unclear who or why and who's on his side, and what his side (his goal?) IS, exactly.

Welcome to the new, and final, season of "Lost." And we'll get to that in a moment, but not before we admit that this is not an unfamiliar story. No, it's the essential story of mankind (womynkind, too), all of us splayed between the contradictary natures within our own divided souls. It's hard to get truly lost these days, what with Mapquest and handheld GPS devices. Until you look inside yourself, of course, at which point the (moral) compass spins crazily and true north vanishes altogether. Gaze within and you're thousands of miles away from any rescue party. No man is an island, John Donne said. If only because those internal islands are so full of monsters and spirits and unsettling memories and whispering voices that sometimes you want them to vanish altogether. Either that, or go back in time so you can un-do all the mistakes you made along the way.

For all you fans out there obsessing over the "Lost" mythology (including part of me, of course) let's just put that down for a moment and realize that it's THIS other story -- the internal one; the psychological one; the overgrown wilds of the psyche one -- that resides most closely to the heart of the series.

The rest of it, the wildly-imagined and crazy-baffling stuff, is the grooviest window dressing in the history of popular American entertainment. It's the submarine; the Oceanic flight; the portal in the desert. But where you're headed, really, is deep, deep inside.

Still, the storytelling/question-answering went on at warp speed, too. To wit: