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Although not as strong as last week’s ‘The Subsititute’, last night’s episode was still a good one, developing the mystery of Claire, the numbers and Smokey Locke. There was also a strangely satisfying jaunt into sideways world involving Jack Shepherd.

What’s been best so far is that there’s finally a sense of an interlocking story coming together and the creators are back to following plot threads through from one ep to the next, which they haven’t done this consistently since season 1. And that’s the thing about Lost; it’s only able to fire on all the cylinders when it’s working as a story. Last night we had more Jack angst, and Hurley’s patented humor (“Maybe we went back to dinosaur times and those skeletons are us!”) and a new, crazy Claire. But to me, those pieces were satisfying because they are once again serving a forward narrative. That, and I love the Lighthouse idea.

Let’s take a look at Sideways Jack first, and then move to the island:

Jack has a son named David, who is a teenage piano prodigy. I seem to remember a few eps of Jack playing the piano, but those individual moments aren’t coming clearly back to me? Anyone care to help me out? Jack is also, like his own dad, a kind of absentee parent, estranged from his son. There are plenty mentions of David’s mother, but in a possible tease, we don’t see who she is. I would have suspected Julie Bowen, who played Jack’s first wife, but instead we do not see her at all. Who else might it be then? We know it isn’t Kate obviously, but Juliet maybe? Certainly not Bai Ling at least.

For me, the oddest bit of this sideways Jack is captured in two moments; Dogen’s arrival at the recital with his own pianist son and Jack’s look at his appendix scar. I know that the non-castaway cameos have been coming at a clip since the sideways world opened up, but something about last night’s small bit with Dogen felt like a Matrix moment. It inspired a thought about how much of any of this we are seeing is real, and I guess that now includes whats happening on the island. Dogen’s moment with him is odd because we get the feeling he may know he is there, while Jack does not. “How long has your son be playing? Maybe he’s asking questi0ns he knows Jack doesn’t have an answer for, although the writers have masked it with Jack’s absentee father guilt. I’m reminded me of the questions John Murdoch asked in Dark City;” Have any of you seen the sun? Does it even exist in this place?”

I’m not suggesting a ‘they are dead’ scenario or that they are all sitting in cryo-tubes in a government facility, but it’s starting to feel like this second realityhas a contrived nature to it, one that sets up the characters to resolve the issues of their lives, and as a result, no longer be the kind of seekers that Jacob/the island/whomever needs. Last night Jack even says “I came back to this place because I was broken. I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.”

There’s a Philip K. Dick vibe here, who once rattled on about the possibility that return of Christ was imminent, it was still the middle ages, and the advance of history was an elaborate illusion crafted by demons. Is Sideways world real, or an illusion? If so, then how much of the island world is real? It’s not a concept I buy, but I’m throwing it out there for thought. When Jack looks at his appendix, he doesn’t remember the scars or the experience. His mother says he had it taken as a child, but he doesn’t buy it and it doesn’t feel like we are supposed to either. I suspect that appendix was taken out on the island, and maybe the lives they are living in sideways world are somehow happening after the current events on the island. Maybe a cosmic witness protection program, where the memories have been wiped? Yes, I know there are characters alive who died on the island and other such details. It isn’t a fully formed theory, just a suspicion possibly aimed vaguely in the right direction. Or perhaps not.

Regardless of the nature of that world, I found Jack’s moments to be legitimately touching and effective, which hasn’t happened since season 1. On the island he’s developing into the man John Locke was, while sideways Locke is headed down a stable path of reason. In sideways world, he’s making sure he doesn’t become the man his father was. I was legitimately moved by the moments between Jack and David at the end, and it proves that Fox can handle the pathos fine when it’s in the right place.

When Hurley takes Jack to the lighthouse he has a near spiritual crisis, which is different from Locke’s own on the island. Locke would have given anything to find that lighthouse, to see his name there, to know he had been chosen. It’s a burden for Jack though, he’s been resisting the idea of predestination and some clandestine higher design. Those names on the lighthouse are interesting; Kate’s is here, but I didn’t see it in the cave. And who is 108? A smokescreen to get Jack up to the lighthouse, or a legitimate other visitor. My guess is that the number is Desmond, who did spend the better part of a few years pushing a button every 108 minutes. Maybe, it’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Jacob’s interactions with Hurley are priceless, and give off a “he works in mysterious ways’ vibe, coupled with a sensibility of free will. Interesting too, they have been moved away from the temple.

Finally, for this week, there’s the issue of Claire. I’m not sure how I feel about this one honestly. Claire doesn’t seem like she’s cut out for the Rousseau treatment, although Emile De Ravin is giving her best shot at it. She doesn’t seem grungy and hard, more like mussed and kind of cute. It’s the difference between John Rambo living in the wilderness and a soccer mom who’s just had a frazzled day. Rousseau was closer to the former, and Claire the latter. The revelation she’s been hanging out in that jungle with Smokey isn’t necessarily surprising. I am curious though, because she identifies her ‘friend’ and her ‘father’ and I’ve been assuming both were the same. Smokey was posing as Christian. I guess not. All of this throws the concept of who and what Smokey is into question. One moment he’s seemingly a security system that serves the island, can transform at will, and then later he’s a malevolent free agent.

In that vein, is Jacob only a man, or another similar force to Smokey? Is there more than one pillar of living smoke? Early on in the show’s first season, Locke looked upon something and declared it beautiful and it made him trust the island. Eko, who was eventually killed by the pillar, said “that is not what I saw.” All of that time, we have been led to believe that the force was manifesting itself according to some morality system, and would appear as what a person needed. Is it possible, that instead, there are more than one of them? Or has it been just Smokey the whole time, imprisoned on the island, working as a conduit for whomever, and now he’s got a shot at freedom. I assume that’s the only reason Jeff Fahey, Lapidus, is still on the island; to fly someone off of it.

So, in closing a great episode that has stirred the pot a bit, and returned us safely to that adventurous mystery of the first season. No easy feat, but the real task is making all those seasons in between count for something. I’m curious about what all of you think though. Let’s get some theories started in the comments below. I’m anxious to see what others are formulating.

Til next week, I’m out. Check out the previous Lost write-ups here:

Lost 6.1 & 6.2: “LAX ”

Lost 6.3 “What Kate Does”

Lost 6.4 “The Substitute”