Ben

By NICK GORINI

I love puzzles. Sudokus, crosswords, word jumbles, even those maddening 5000-piece jigsaw puzzles picturing some blurry German castle. There's something about the List-maker, the Completist in me. I appreciate the structure that can be built from what at first appears to be senseless and chaotic.

My favorite moment when putting a puzzle together isn't starting the task, and it isn't completing it, either. When solving a puzzle, the moment I get my "runner's high", when I get those little knots in my stomach, is when I can see the solution appearing before me. I'm not done yet, and I may have a long way to go, but that instant when I can forecast how the pieces come together, and I start moving very, very quickly to the finish line - that's my favorite moment.

And that's the feeling I had watching this week's episode of Lost.

"And I've been Locked out, and I've been Locked in. But I always seem to come back again."

What is about the Locke episodes that are almost always so adept at combining all the disparate elements of this show into a most magical elixir? A pinch of action, a teaspoon of mystery, one cup of mythology and whole pile of character development. The perfect cocktail - do you prefer your Locke shaken, like the Locke of old? Or perhaps you like your Locke stirred, like the winding, whirling-dervish of a devil now inhabiting our dearly-departed hero?

THE SIDE TIMELINE:
We open on the serene, bland suburbs that Locke serviced in one of his many previous job forays (looked an awful lot like Nadia's old neighborhood, didn't it?). Locke as Job continues, as he struggles getting out of his handicap van, tries to go all Evel Knieval popping a wheelie off the platform, and lands face first in his lawn. Before he can get too pissed, the sprinklers come on, drenching him in shame... Er, no wait: this isn't quite the same Locke. Sure he's prideful and stubborn, but this time he laughs. Laughs out loud at his predicament. I am sure it is laughter twinged with some level of pain, but here's a guy who's coping.

Then Peg Bundy comes hopping out of the house! I mean, Helen comes hopping out of the house! She's back! Locke's lost love (truly lost - if you remember that upon returning to the island, he was told she had died of a brain tumor) is living with him. This is great for two reasons: We're happy for our beloved Locke, but we're also happy because this romance was real - well-written and well-played. Helen and Locke, who originally met in an anger management class, seemed like real people, meeting in a real place, having a real relationship, on a show that can also indulge in some extreme existential fantasy.

Well, turns out they're getting married. She even suggests they elope, and that dear old Daddy Locke should come along. WHAA? Can I get a HUHH? So who or what crippled Locke? Time will tell. I did dig that Helen's shirt said something about Kharma on it, I believe. Also of note - Locke lies to Helen when asked about his trip. This Locke is a better man than the original, but not without flaws. Like all of us, dark impulses nibble away at our corners.

They have a brief discussion about his airport encounter with the friendly spinal surgeon, and how destiny may be telling him it's time for a visit. Locke downplays the encounter, and we move on.

Back at Locke's office cubical, we get a glimpse of a happy, less-follicularly-challenged Locke and his dear old bastard, I mean dad. Still not buying it - maybe this jerk just hasn't sucked out his illegitimate son's kidney yet.

Fate's pain, isn't it? I mean, here's new Locke, still wheelchair-bound, and still working for that petty tyrant Randy. Still considered a nerd for playing Axis and Allies on his lunch break ("Hey Colonel!"), Randy paws at mousy Locke like fat, lazy cat until goes in for the kill. He knows Locke went on his thwarted Australian walkabout on the company dime. You're fired, dude. Side note: Side timeline = No Abbadon. So, who convinced Locke to go on this trip?

Locke wheels himself and his box of belongings (including a polar bear statue, if memory serves) out to the parking lot, but there's a problem. Prideful Locke doesn't use handicap parking because he doesn't have to and thus, his van is wedged against an obnoxious yellow hummer owned by Locke's boss, Hurley! Aha! Now, as much as I like Hurley, I don't like big, gas-guzzling hummers. So I now like Hurley a little less. Just a little. I bet he still eats hot pockets.

Follow the jump to get to gym class and then Jacob's Ladder...

 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....