Desmond Hume is back on the island against his will, but his reappearance looks set to benefit everyone, especially us viewers. Last night’s Lost episode might be the most significant one of the season yet because it finally got around to doing something I had been expecting for awhile; it connected the island reality with the sideways universe. And, as suspected, it did it using Desmond.

The episode opened up with Charles Widmore trying to explain to Desmond why he’s been brought back and that he’s important to everyone’s survival. Widmore even tries telling him that ‘the island isn’t done with you yet’, to which he gets a furious beating with an IV for his troubles.

Really, who can blame Desmond? He’s been notoriously shunned by Widmore for the duration of his relationship with Penny, and he only ever ended up on the island and in that hatch because of his desire to win the old man’s respect, and subsequently, the hand of his daughter. When he eventually circumvented Widmore (while he was busy dealing with Ben on the island) and ran off with Penny and had a son, the man still found a way to take it all away from him.

And yet, this time, Widmore seems to desperately require his help. Still, he isn’t above putting Desmond into a room with more electro-magnetic energy and simulating an experience similar to the one (on a smaller scale I presume) that blew up the hatch in season 2. He tells Desmond that he will need to make a ‘sacrifice’ after this little test. No exact explanation for what that sacrifice is, but I’m expecting there’s a definite finality to it.

Most interesting in last night’s episode was the direct focus on Desmond without sidelining to other character’s stories. In fact, the bulk of the episode, more so than others so far, was concentrated within the sideways universe. The show creators make us believe that Desmond flashes into the sideways world after the experiment, due to the direct cutaway that takes place after Widmore throws the switch.

However, this is the first time Desmond doesn’t seem to have any memory of the island at all when he jumps, and his identity in the new universe is curiously informed by his experiences in the ‘real world’. He’s the exact antithesis of everything he was before; successful, pragmatic, and in full command of the respect and admiration of Charles Widmore. He is also lonely and has never met the love of his life, Penny.

In a really fun turn of events, Widmore’s wife, Eloise, is hosting a party for their son, Daniel (Jeremy Davies) and wants to combine classical music with contemporary rock, so they have commissioned Drive Shaft to play. And of course, there’s a certain drug addled bass player who isn’t cooperating and needs babysitting, so Charles sends Desmond.

For the first time since the incident in the Looking Glass, Charlie Pace and Desmond are back together. Things start getting weird for Desmundo when Charlie points out that he isn’t actually happy, and that what he’s missing is true love. Charlie apparently discovered this ‘love’ when he nearly died in the bathroom on the Oceanic flight. Before Jack resuscitated him, he saw, presumably, Claire and remembered their happiness on the island together.

Like taking the red pill and waking up briefly in the Matrix, Charlie is now aware of the artifice of everything around him. He offers to show Desmond what he’s talking about, and then abruptly grabs hold of the wheel of the car and runs it off a pier and into the water. When Desmond saves Charlie, he himself gets one of those flashes–back to the Looking Glass– with Charlie putting his hand up to the door with the message “Not Penny’s boat” written on it.

Just like that, Desmond fixates on the name, Penny, and when he talks to Charlie, it becomes apparent that somehow they are sharing memories of some other, distant life. Later, he gets a full fledged trip down memory lane that runs him through the high points of his time with Penny; their meeting, the birth of his son, their tearful reunion after the island.

The excellent culmination of the episode sees two things happen. First, Desmond returns to the party without Charlie in tow and meets both Eloise and Daniel, who help to further clue him in on the fact something isn’t right here. It should not be lost on the audience that Eloise was Desmond’s first guide through time travel and cosmic course correction. Thing we still don’t know is if she was really Eloise then, or some other power disguised as the older woman.

This Eloise draws attention to the fact that Desmond has what he always wanted, the respect of Charles Widmore, and that he isn’t ready to see everything yet, to know all of what lies behind the fog in his mind. He wants the guest list to find Penny’s name, but she won’t give it to him.

Enter Daniel, once Faraday now Widmore, no longer shot to death by his mother on an island years before his birth. He too has had one of these ‘love’ moments where he saw Charlotte and instantly connected with meeting her previously. It seems that extreme emotional connections are prompting these flashes. It may also be of note that prior to Desmond, the only two people who really had these flashes also died on the island in the other reality.

Daniel has a portion of quantum mechanics scribbled down in his diary, but he doesn’t understand, as he’s a musician in this world and not a scientist. Everything is feeling very Philip K. Dick at this juncture, and Daniel suspects that detonating a bomb at some point may have constructed this reality they are now trapped in. Desmond learns that Penny is Dan’s half-sister, and he goes to meet her at the same place he met Jack in the other reality; at an empty stadium.

They have an odd but cute meeting, and then Desmond is seemingly returned to the floor of the cabin where the experiment took place, back on the island. He’s suddenly in full agreement with what Widmore wants him to do, even though he doesn’t have full details, and he goes along eagerly. Sayid comes out of the jungle, takes out Desmond’s entourage and tells him to follow along. Des goes along willingly.

This scene is strange in its ambiguity. We know Sayid has been influenced by the darkness in Locke, and yet we also know Desmond’s memory of him is as a friend who helped him on the boat. Something seems a little off with this returned Desmond though. What are we seeing here, exactly? My assumption is that Desmond has been to sideways world, come back and believes Sayid is going to help him, but if he were so gung-ho to help Widmore, why would he so readily leave?

Or is the Desmond that arrived after the experiment similar to the Locke that came back to the island?

I’m not sure of all the intricacies here, but the show has definitely set up a tantalizing concept for the end game. I’ve been waiting to see what part Desmond would play in all this, and what the exact nature of the sideways world is. The final scene has Desmond requesting the flight list for Oceanic 815 and informing Fisher Stevens that he’s going to show them all something. So it’s going to be Desmond that wakes everyone up, but what happens after that?

Strange to, that this man who was once training to be a monk, is becoming an evangelistic missionary of sorts for the island, reawakening his compatriots to the truth. What will it all mean for the end game? And what his Desmond’s significance on the island?

With six episodes left, I imagine there is still time to deliver a riveting conclusion to events, and certainly last night’s episode moved us closer to that goal.

Next week we have an episode centered on Hurley, who’s my number 1 pick for Jacob’s replacement. Let’s see how that it goes.

Sawyer and Kate are at it again. Sigh. Thanks, you wacky Lost writers. We didn’t see that coming.

Outside of giving Holloway some welcome screen time to flesh out his presumed allegiance with Smokey, last night’s episode of Lost was mostly just some padded calm before the storm. The title was ‘Recon’, the last intel gathering activity that usually precedes a battle. That, if nothing else, is welcome news.

On the sideways front, there were some interesting if unrevealing twists. The best of these is that James Ford became a cop instead of a criminal; he describes the discrepancy as a single choice to go one way instead of the other. Also satisfying from a fan perspective, is finding that Miles (Ken Leung) is his partner on the force and when Miles plans to set Sawyer up with a date, it turns out to be everyone’s favorite redhead named after an English writer, C.S. Lewis (Rebecca Mader).

It makes sense, however, that James is still haunted by the death of his parents as a result of the actions of Anthony Cooper and that he still wants to track him down. Miles suspects Jim’s recent trip away wasn’t actually for relaxation, and has sent Charlotte in as recon of his own. When Ford finally does confess to Miles that he’s been planning to find and then kill Cooper, the conversation is cut short by a car smashing into their vehicle. The driver of the car; Kate Austen. Ford tracks her down on foot and then apprehends her, ending the sideways flashes with the reunion of Kate and Sawyer.

Anything of substance to be had here? Well, most compelling is the fact that the man fans have fallen in love with in on the island doesn’t really exist in sideways world. There is no ‘Sawyer’ for Ford except the con artist he’s been chasing since childhood. The tragedy of Sawyer was that he fell into the very practice that robbed him of his parents, and here he’s using that experience to save others from it. The trajectory looks the same, save for something else; this James has friends before the island. Miles might be the catalyst that prevents Jim from becoming a murderer.

It’s nice to see that Sawyer and Miles have a strong connection in the sideways world, as their interaction in previous seasons was what gave the latter a sense of purpose and presence. I’m sure the writers made the decision to team him with James here not because it’s an integral part of the plot, but because their camaraderie was so effective before–and it would be hard to buy Hurley as a cop. I feel like the same is true of Mader’s cameo. It doesn’t really serve much except to drop another face in our lap. There’s a decent amount of time setting it up, with no payoff, not as of yet anyway.

A question I have: is Anthony Cooper still Locke’s dad? I wonder about that because there was a brief implication in ‘The Substitute’ that Locke’s dad would be invited to any kind of wedding they had, obviously a far cry from the man who pushed Locke out of the window, stole his kidney, etc. It wasn’t clear then, if Cooper was Locke’s father, although I suspect the sideways world is keeping all of those relational details. If he wasn’t pushed out the window by pops, how did it happen? Are the forces of sideways universe converging on Locke’s wedding day?

That’s all there really was to the sideways stuff, save for a poignant but kind of dopey scene where Sawyer watches Little House on the Prairie and mopes. After last week’s death of Merlin Olson, seeing those clips was odd.

On the island, we learned…well, not much. Sawyer is playing both sides as usual, and putting his conman skills to practice; like Cadmus sowing the dragon teeth, he’s pushing Widmore and Smokey into each other’s orbit so they can have a throw-down. Seeing as how both of those guys are men of violence and lies, I wonder if they are even enemies. Sawyer can usually spot a con, so if that’s what they are doing, it’s odd he doesn’t see it. Unless he simply doesn’t care.

Claire is running around frazzled and crazed, and poor Emile De Ravin is having a really difficult time out-acting her hair. Terry O’Quinn delivers the best performance of the week as he finally settles Smokey down into his Locke skin and starts really behaving like the man. It makes sense why he chose Locke, he’s the guy everyone is most likely to follow instinctively. Unlike the real man, who was at heart a loner, this Locke takes the time to lie away the fears of his followers. Creating a tension between the persona he’s inhabiting and Smokey’s own mysterious nature is the gift O’Quinn brings to the role. And he’s still got great chemistry with Sawyer.

The situation on the Hydra island with the plane survivors all dead and Widmore and his people installed o n the beach, is interesting but not surprising. What Widmore tells Sawyer isn’t surprising either, and while I’m ready to believe him, I don’t know if we should. At any rate, a showdown between the show’s two big heavies would be welcome.

Strangest part of this week’s episode is Smokey’s mention of his own crazy mother and the effect it had on him, relating this to Kate in regards to Claire and Aaron. Is he lying, and if so, to what end? He claims he only wants off the island, but he seems to be setting up a larger endgame. I’m looking forward to learning the lowdown on who and what the black smoke really is.

Which brings us back to Kate and Sawyer. After tonight, it’s become clear that the tension and relationship that’s been built between the two isn’t going away. In some ways, I guess that makes sense. Like his namesake Sawyer who had Huck Finn, Jim finds in Kate a fellow outlaw and rebel to society’s rules. Twain’s protagonists gravitated towards each other because of their ornery natures and because at the end of the day, they were likely to be the only ones still in each other’s company. The dippy romantic subplot aside, that’s really what’s been structured here in James and Kate. Austen is Ford’s Huck (or is it the other way around) and when the world starts falling apart, you can expect them to gravitate towards each other. Will it matter on a larger scale when the war starts?

Is there any significance to the fact that when James returns to find Kate on the beach, she’s roasting a rabbit, the animal most often linked to Sawyer and his journey?

Next week, we see where Richard Alpert has been on the island. Will he have a flash in sideways world?

What were your thoughts about this week’s episode? Were the writers just marking time or was it a worthwhile story to tell?

Check out my other recaps and come back next week for 6.9!

Lost 6.1 & 6.2: “LAX ”

Lost 6.3 “What Kate Does”

Lost 6.4 “The Substitute”

Lost 6.5 “The Lighthouse”

Lost 6.6 “Sundown”

Lost Producers hint at final season spoilers and answers

Remember Me is a tragedy.  

I’m not talking about the film’s plot or themes, or even the idea that it’s a dead-on-arrival romance. In fact, it isn’t. Surprisingly, Rob Pattinson and Emile De Ravin make a believable and interesting couple and the film actually delves into some effectively dramatic family relationships.

What’s tragic about the movie is that after finding its legs and delivering several wonderful and on-point moments, Remember Me destroys every single thing that came before with an ill conceived, nearly flabbergasting ending that doesn’t just cheapen the film and its characters, but renders them all inconsequential.

Imagine going to the house of a casual friend who often irritates you, sitting down and then being treated to some wonderful cooking and great conversation. Just as you are thinking what a great idea it was to get together, said friend sneaks behind you and brains you with a shovel, and then immediately bolts out the door. It’s exactly like that and it hobbles what was working as a good, poignant romantic drama.

But let me digress from the ending and its obvious troubles and focus on something else. Rob Pattinson is acting here, and on top of that, it’s good acting. Lost’s Emile De Ravin (she’s Claire) shares much of the film’s screen-time with him, and they take this slight, New York-centric indie chick flic and give it honest, emotional gravity. This is particularly an amazing feat given how contrived and heavy the general premise feels.

Pattinson plays Tyler, another angsty twenty-something (as opposed to Ed Cullen’s  angsty 220-something), who’s a heavy drinking, rebellious mess of daddy issues and deep grief. The daddy issues come for distant businessman, Pierce Brosnan, who spent his life financially providing for his family, and saw that as pretty much the end of the responsibility. The grief is from the death of Tyler’s brother, who killed himself 6 years prior and shattered the family even further as a result.

 One night, Tyler drunkenly shoves Sgt. Craig (Chris Cooper) and gets a face full of windshield for his troubles. Craig himself is a brooding type, and with good reason; his wife was murdered on the subway in front of his young daughter. Now that daughter, Ally, is grown-up and played by Ravin. Tyler’s sleazoid roommate, Aiden, identifies her at school and pushes Tyler to date and dump her, as revenge for the officer’s brutal handling of him.

Of course, as is the case of things in a movie like this, they fall for each other and Tyler abandons his plans of vengeance in favor of cuddling, sharing sob stories, and eventually, doing things with Ally that will no doubt make any Twilighters  in the audience pass out and choke on their gummi bears. This plot is old, old news, and I’m not so sure I liked it the first 400 times they walked it out of the gate. But, when you have the right people and the right pieces in the right places, any formula can work (except for torture films and anything with Stephen Baldwin). This one does, I’m almost loathe to admit, largely because of Pattinson.

What the Twilight saga has so thoroughly obscured is Pattinson is a gifted actor with his own sort of charm. Yes, that charm is based off of an aloof, sulking kind of persona, but if you can build a character that exists under that, then there’s something that an actor and an audience can unwrap; you aren’t left with just a pale, pasty straw man eyeing up your neck. Pattinson really pulls up some emotional baggage in Tyler and then he gets to show the young man in the process of throwing that baggage away, and it’s largely due to Ally’s influence on him.

The most welcome surprise of the film is that Pattinson’s best scenes aren’t just reserved for his time with Emile, and he gets some stellar interaction with Brosnan, who’s making a new career out of very juicy bit parts. Tyler also has a kid sister, played by Ruby Jerins, and they have this very warm, sweet relationship that could have generated a different and likely better film all on its own. 

Ravin began as a pretty face on Lost, but she built Claire out of strong stuff and pushed the character through several emotionally tricky circumstances. She’s got a very disarming way of playing notes of distress or sadness, and it helps that she manages to soften and radiate during moments like that. It makes Ally not just credible, but her attraction to Tyler credible too. This isn’t a pairing based off of long moody stares, but shared pain and struggles with family, and the movie has the courage to let the characters work through both factors; the pain and the family.

Unfortunately, we’ve reached that point of the review, where it becomes necessary for me to bring up the film’s end and issue a disclaimer for what has been a positive review. I’m not going into a single spoiler, but quite frankly, there’s no single good reason why the choice was made to shoot this ending. Understand, it’s not just bad, or dishonest, or even inherently divisive to the rest of the film. It’s worse than that; it’s completely overwhelming, the kind of broad, shocking statement that is trying to create context and give us something we can socially connect to.

So, take that into account. If you leave the moment Rob Patt walks out of his dad’s office, you will have still seen a good movie and can go home with the integrity of your 10 dollars intact. If you stay, well I warned you. Some may suggest I should be harder on the film, but the truth is that most of it works and it will serve as a good reminder to fans of Pattinson’s vampire stuff that not every love story is based around pouty looks.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

If you’re the creators of Lost and you are looking for a sure -fire way to heat up the season, the answer is always the same. Dig up a John Locke episode. It works every single time.

Tonight’s episode, ‘The Substitute’ is proof of that, as it combined more honest suspense, emotion and intrigue than the last three episodes combined. It even managed to end on a note of near revelation. We may possibly know the impetus behind why all of the 815ers are really on this island.

That is, of course, if Smokey Locke can be trusted. While I sincerely doubt he can be, I also don’t think he was lying to Sawyer in the cave when he revealed that Jacob had been looking for a replacement guardian for the island. A replacement to guard what? The creature disguised as Locke is my guess, but is it all bigger than that? Earlier, in the jungle with Sawyer, Anti-Locke said he had once been human too, and attempted to deceptively relate to the younger man’s pain.

Whatever he is, he’s ominous enough to make Richard Alpert run about through the underbrush like the White Rabbit, and inspire fear and dread in Ilana, who now has Jacob’s ashes with her. I kept hoping she’d sprinkle them on Locke’s body and we would get a glorious Locke-Off with the two Johns wiping up the jungle floor with each other. But, hey that would be too silly right?

But, as everyone keeps asking, why John Locke? On one level, it’s pretty simple. Terry O’Quinn has given, by far, the most nuanced and complicated performance in the entire show, with the possible exception of Michael Emerson. Over the five years Lost has aired, Locke has been a figure of pity, of fear, of hope and even unbridled awesomeness. “No one will tell me what I can’t do” became his mantra, and we cheered for him, believed in him, at points resented him, and were always fascinated by him. Because while the others were chasing time streams or frustrated love triangles, John Locke was looking for his purpose. Now, he’s dead and that purpose may have eluded him.

There’s a triple sense of dark finality in three of tonight’s sequences; Katey Segal tearing up Jack Shepherd’s card in the sideway’s universe, Ben’s tender but twisted eulogy (‘He was a better man than I will ever be, and I’m sorry I murdered him’), and the Smoke Monster crossing Locke’s name off that cave wall.  Somehow, the writers managed to have their cake and eat it too. We finally get the dark villainous Locke that so many fanboys salivated for back in season’s 2 and 3, and we had what may amount to a heartfelt goodbye to the character we loved, and yet there’s that glorious sense of renewal and promise when we see him wheel into that teacher’s lounge and meet Ben Linus. Indeed, in another world they may be allies.

So, what is happening here? What’s the real significance? I believe that it goes back to that scene on the beach where John showed Walt the white stones and the black stones in his backgammon game and talked about the disparity between darkness and light. Over the years, seemingly prescient characters like Rose (who had a great scene in sideways world tonight) and Walt himself have expressed dread regarding John. As it turns out, it wasn’t  his true nature they sensed, but the force that now impersonates him.

In the early days of the island, John was like a saviour of sorts, helping the island take away the things that kept his fellow survivors prisoner. Charlie and Boon, both now dead, spring to mind as recipients of his help.  Then, he went through a Job-like test of his faith, and had the Sisyphean task of pushing that button, over and over again. In seasons 3 and 4 he was like a mad prophet of God, looking for the truth, trying to keep the faith, and still utterly lost. He might as well mutter “Why have you forsaken me?” right before his Judas, Ben Linus, strangles him to death in that hotel room. And now, striding across the island like that unseen demon in the Evil Dead films, he has become the deciever and the devourer.

Because, at the end of the day, all of the mystical and spiritual themes of Lost have been heaped onto the sweaty, brawny shoulders of John Locke. Let’s see if he gets to carry them over the line. The battle between good and evil, will, I believe come down to the choices that the John in this now split tangent universe will make. How much sweeter it will be, when he does, if Jack and Ben make that stand with him.

That’s more or less all I got this week, other than to share a bit about Locke’s pseudonym from season 4, Jeremy Bentham. The interesting thing about Bentham was that he believed that the bodies of great men should be perserved and displayed long after they die. In fact, Bentham’s body was preserved and is kept at the The University College of London in a wooden cabinet. The head has been replaced with a wax one, so we aren’t looking at his proper visage, but the body is indeed his. Or was. The legend used to be that the body would be wheeled out during university meetings, and attendance would be taken with Bentham listed as present. He thought of this idea as his ‘Auto-Icon.’ Not too unlike what’s happening on the island right now, eh?

Those pesky writers. Until next time, long live John Locke!

You hear that sound? That was the Lost writers grinding the show to a hault after their full-tilt gallop out of the gate last week.

Understandably, I expected a slower pace and more character accentuation after the event and reveal of the premiere, but last night’s episode, What Kate Does, seemed to be entirely too tranquil. Pretty much every question I posed after last week’s episode, with the notable exception of one, remains unanswered and there was very little forward plot movement. On a more troubling note the show seems hell-bent on rehashing the tired romantic drama that swamped season 3 back in 2006. We only have a handful of eps left here people. Don’t waste them.

Still, it wasn’t a poorly written episode, or one without its own interesting highlights. It’s just that after priming us for a cataclysmic war of sorts, and introducing enough key players–Smokey wearing his Locke-et, Jacob, Widmore’s group, The Others, Jacob’s army–it seems unusual that the show leads would be this purposefully frustrating. There are numerous scenes of Kate staring pensively at something, whether it be Sawyer, Claire, a stuffed Orca, or at Jack whom she doesn’t really know in this sideways universe. In addition to that, Dogan, the asian leader of this gang of Others, keeps denying Jack answers only to give little snippets after stalling. He keeps exclaiming “we don’t have much time’ and then he just sits there and looks smug. It’s a really transparent attempt at prolonging tension but it grows dangerously close to simply infuriating.

For me, however, the biggest problem with the script to What Kate Does is the clear lack of real-world logic applied in the sideways reality. I understand this is a show involving a time-shifting island, a pillar of sentient smoke, and a fat guy stranded in the jungle who never loses weight, but this was well below Lost’s usual standards.

For starters, we have Kate easily slipping the FBI and airport security in 2004, three years after 9-11? She hijacks a cab, is stalled by a bystander who is nearly run over (Artz in a funny cameo), and still manages to drive away unscathed. Worse yet  is the fact she just seems to drive around afterwards, staying in the area like she’s running errands. Hardest for me to swallow was that the pregnant Claire would still be standing there, on the side of the road, like a pawn waiting to be moved. Add to that the dreadful ‘Kate hiding in the closet’ to throw off the Feds and you have a serious lack of effort on your hands.  It wasn’t unforgivable, but it was sloppy and the show deserves better than that. It shouldn’t have been too hard to write-out those inconsistencies, which makes their appearance all the more glaring.

What was good about the episode? Quite a bit actually, underneath the flaws.

Miles gets the best line of the night with “If you need us, we’ll just be in the food court.”

Matthew Fox is really developing Shepherd into a growing character, and after so many seasons of ‘whiny Jack’ having a contemplative Jack that is still capable of decision and leadership is nice.

Dogan has the potential to be a really great addition to the Lost character roster, and I enjoy the poise and presence that Sanada brings to the role. I just hope he gets to be more than the reluctant prognosticator of mumbo jumbo.

Josh Holloway did the most emotionally satisfying work of the episode, and possibly of that character’s entire storyline, by making us feel the pain and regret he has over the death of Juliet. Structuring a time-tripping show like Lost is difficult because it’s easy for an audience to base attachment on screen time as opposed to what the characters themselves have experienced. We saw Sawyer and Juliet together for a handful of episodes, but Holloway was able to express a depth of feeling that his character never previously tapped into, and it instantly made me aware of the fact that he was living happily with his dream girl there in Dharmaville for quite awhile before Jack and company showed up. In that scene on the pier with Kate, he was summing up a hundred shared lunches, sunsets, and tender moments we never got to see and he did it remarkably well.

Sayid has been ‘claimed’. This is in keeping with my theory that he is Jacob’s vessel, and while Baby John Lennon and Dogan are convinced he’s ‘infected’ with a darkness, the episode never does anything to suggest that it isn’t Jacob who is taking over. For one, there is never any direct comment on the part of Sayid that reveals he has his original memories. He says he was shot, but based on the fact he has a bullet hole in his chest, that would have been an easy thing to infer or relate. When he taks about trusting Jack, this still makes sense if indeed that’s Jacob inside. Is it possible then that the Others currently inside the temple have a skewed view of things, and percieve Jacob as the threat, as opposed to whatever opposing force is currently running around with John’s meat suit?

Finally, it seems odd that none of the characters are more compelled by the idea of being ‘claimed’.  The first few seasons of Lost were terrifically resistant to the idea of the supernatural, and there were attempts to have people like Jack constantly questioning everything. I understand they have all seen a lot, but if Richard can be surprised by someone else taking Locke’s persona, than shouldn’t Jack express more concern over the prospect that a force is ‘claiming’ his friend? My guess is that if he were more disbelieving, he’d just ask more questions that Dogan will stare at him for, tempting the audience to greater frustration.

The most tantalizing bits of the episode though, come through what appears initially to be the most extraneous part; the sideways universe revelation of what Kate Austen does after getting off the plane.

A few observations:

Claire is still pregnant, but she has chosen the name ‘Aaron’ because it feels right to her, and the prospective adoptive parents have split-up leaving the potential mother unwilling to take the child. So, Claire is seemingly planning to keep the baby herself, and Kate appears ready to stop running and possibly help with Aaron. The interesting point is this; even without the island, and without the bonding experience of the plane crash and the stranding, both characters  are more or less making the same decisions they came to in the reality we know. Originally, it seemed that being trapped on the island was a kind of reset or purgatory for the survivors; a place and opportunity for them to stop the destructive path of their lives and turn things around. Whats happening here is that the sideways universe seems to be orchestrating the same results without the island.

So, it isn’t that these people needed the island, it needed them. Then again, part of what motivates the characters are flashes and remembrances of what was their other life on the island. In point of fact, although both Kate and Claire made decisions regarding Aaron in the crash timeline, the interfering force of the island still managed to seperate them from him. In this new reality, who knows?

Then there is Ethan Goodspeed, creepily replaying the events that occured in the Dharma station when he kidnapped Claire prior to her pregnancy. With no island to return to, is this mere coincidence that Ethan and Claire are meeting, or more orchestration by higher forces? Do the rules of ‘cosmic course-correction’ that Faraday’s mother talked about still apply?

Finally, Claire has gone all Rousseau. And she also has a ‘darkness infection’? Now this is a development I can get behind. I wonder if she will dye her hair all emo-style again to reflect the change.

The big question now is will something significant and important happen next week? I sure hope so.

See ya back on the island.

If you missed last week’s rundown, it’s here: Lost 6.1: Demi Gods, Island Universes, and Hurley’s guitar case

The scene opens the way many, including Jack Shepherd, thought it would; aboard Oceanic 815 with all of the characters we have come to know, love and hate, sitting there together on the plane that stranded them on a mysterious island.

And then, something different.

There’s Desmond Hume, sitting next to Jack. Even more unexpected is the follow-up shot as the camera dives into the ocean and in an amazingly shoddy display of television fx shows us something intriguing–the island is underwater. Dharmaville, the four-toed statue, the beach; everything, has gone the way of Atlantis. Welcome to another wonderfully wacky season of Lost.

That’s right kids. Lost is back, and although the two hour premiere, entitled LA X , has its share of flaws, there’s plenty of answers and intrigue packed into the running time. Lindelof and Cuse have woven a tapestry so tangled that not even Philip K. Dick could have hoped to unravel it without getting a headache. In fact, at this current junction–or is it terminal?–there’s no hope of unraveling it. Lost has burned more juicy bridges (Walt and his powers, why women die in childbirth, how Locke’s dad ended up on the island) than it could possibly rebuild.

We can only go forward hoping that they intend to stick the thematic landing, and the dueling banjos of good and evil, order and chaos, fate and chance will continue to play out in feverish melody until seasons end. And, hey, at least now we know who the smoke monster is. Well, sort of.

Without doing a plot rehash, lets take a look at some of last night’s more compelling mysteries and moments.

First off, there’s the implication behind the opening scene. Instead of choosing whether or not the bomb went off and changed things or whether the timeline remained the same, the creators did neither. They followed both possibilities. While this could seem like a cop-out, it’s actually in keeping with some of Lost’s more daring attempts.

We watch Oceanic 815 land safely, and at the same time Jack, Sawyer, Kate, the detonated Swan site, and  a motley group of The Others have all been transplanted to modern day on the island. At the same time, in potentially yet another facet of reality, the Black Smoke monster is wearing Locke like an old, rumpled suit and running circles around Richard, Ben and Jacob’s insurgent army.

What’s the deal then? Is there one true reality, or are we seeing the concept of ‘island universes? This idea, posits that there are entire other worlds that feature versions of ourselves going about their own business exist simultaneously with ours. They are not simply alternate realities with no future, but parallel existences, running next to but never intersecting with our own.

 Why bring this up? Because we are lead to believe that what we are seeing is the result of Juliette blowing up the bomb at the end of Season 5. Wait though, because there are already some significant differences in this universe that may or may not have been influenced by the actions taken in the 70s. Among them:

Desmond is on the plane, although it’s possible he’s still phasing in and out like Billy Pilgrim.

Charlie is choking on a bag of drugs, but not actually doing them, as he was in the first iteration. He’s signifcantly more derailed here than before.

Shannon never got on the plane.

We have yet to see if Claire is pregnant.

Hurley doesn’t appear to be cursed by bad luck.

Potentially, Sun never actually learned English.

 And there’s no Eko, Anna Lucia, or Libby seemingly present there either.

I’d point out no Nikki or Palo either, but why even mention it?

The biggest difference of course is one of global consequence, if the island is as important as Jacob and the Others believe it is; the entire thing is submerged and presumably not serving whatever cosmic purpose it was supposed to serve.

We know Jacob was greatly involved in the lives of the 815ers throughout their history, so maybe detonating the bomb takes him out of the picture and due to some small changes regarding his influence, events are different as a result. Or, what we are witnessing is a universe that was always different and is on a course to intersect with the world we already know.

It can certainly burn the brain, right? No matter, what’s actually so brilliant about this new tact is that it is dramatically satisfying without necessarily being an intellectual closure. We get to follow facets of characters we grew to love because of the circumstances the show put them through, and we are teased now with the opportunity to observe those same characters make an entirely different set of choices, plausibly free of the influence of the island. Lost has never found its most tantalizing material in its answers, but in its provocative ideas, and this is one of the most provocative yet.

Towards the end of the second hour, Jack and Locke have a conversation about his dad’s missing coffin and Locke mentions that “How could they know where he’s at? They lost your dad’s body. Your dad, he was already gone.” Jack looks at Locke’s wheel-chair and says ‘nothing is irreversible’ and puts his business card in John’s hand. Whats happening here? The man of science set to heal the man of faith? What dynamic will this bring about?

And what of the events back on the island, as Jack and the gang race to save Sayid by taking him to the temple of the Others, now lead by the very welcome Hiroyuki Sanada (The Twilight Samurai) . The Others apparently have a fountain of youth–or at least healing– afterall, although something has happened to it that they can’t explain. At first it doesn’t seem to heal Sayid, but kill him. When he rises from the ground, after being lifted Christ-like from the water, who can we expect find behind those eyes now? Is Sayid Jacob’s vessel? Is Mark Pelligrino set to wear Jared Paladecki on Supernatural and Naveen Andrews over here on Lost? That’s just a bit too much soul transference for one character actor to handle right?

Stranger still is that inside of the guitar case that Jacob gave Hurley is a giant wooden ankh cross. Inside that ankh is a message. Wow, could cosmic forces being anymore impractical in their symbolism. I wonder what was running through Hugo’s mind when he found out that the heavy thing he’d been toting through the woods could have served its purpose just as easily as a tiny slip of paper in his shirt pocket.

And then there’s the dark figure who now takes the form and appearance of John Locke who he describes to Ben as ‘admirable.’ The dark man, the Esau to Pelligrino’s Jacob, and now finally, the smoke monster. I’ve always suspected the force trapped in the cabin, surrounded by that ring of ash, was the same entity that revealed himself at the end of season 5. Back then I was worried that Lost might be setting their heavy up as a supernatural or mythical creature. The ring of ash, the ability to alter reality, and the billowing smoke all suggested a variation on the arabian idea of djinns, or ‘dust dogs’.

From my perspective then, the last thing Lost needed was a Barbara Eden wannabe. But, now, the idea of a djinn existing in this universe doesn’t seem so odd, and wouldn’t that sort of make him a kind of cruel demi-god, subverting and altering the world until he’s trapped on the island? But with the island sunk, has this dark angel been loosed from his cage in one reality, all the while seeking to return ‘Home’, not unlike Milton’s Lucifer, in another?

When Dark Locke says to Richard, ‘good to see you out of those chains’, the most logical assumption is that Alpert came to the island as a slave on the Black Rock, or perhaps he’s from earlier than that, a slave from Egyptian lineage. Is it possible though that  the chains spoken of are different altogether–similar to whatever Earthly chains were holding Esau on the island prior to his escape? What relationship do Richard and Not-the-John actually share? Lost has slipped from the quasi-spiritual to the near biblical with an almost imperceptible shifting. Now that we are here, what are the stakes of whats being set up in this final battle?

For me, the most tantalizing thing about Lost remains the character relationships and the empathy which which the writers craft them. Forget all of the gonzo revelations, the best bits were John and Locke talking after the plane, and the poignant moment where Sayid asks Hurley sincerely ‘Where do you think I will go after I die?” At the same time, there’s more than enough heavy-handed drama floating about to sink the island a second time. Juliet dies heroically at the end of season 5, do we really need another teary-eyed, bloody-faced death scene? There’s entirely too much broody Jack on the island as well. The show has moved so far beyond the Kate/Jack/Sawyer triangle that even suggesting its continued existence makes one want to roll their eyes. Well, me anyway.

Regardless of that though, Lost is back, and it’s found a way to remain fresh while actually slyly revealing it’s endgame without betraying all of the layered mystery that went before. If the rest of the season walks such a creative and stimulating line, then we could well be in for one of the finest series endings in the history of television.

See ya next week…

When “Lost” ends in May, there is only one thing we know for certain: the show will definitely be over.

The series that launched creator J.J. Abrams into the limelight is known for its odd twists and turns, but the show’s producers are firmly committed to the series’ end.

Executive producer Carlton Cuse spoke at a news conference on Tuesday. He said that although the last episode has yet to be written, they have had the final scenes of the mythically complex show in mind since day one. They know how the series will end.

Cuse and fellow producer Damon Lindelof, gave away few secrets at  the conference. They mostly spoke in broad terms, saying the show’s final season will be reminiscent of its first season in 2004. The only specific tidbit offered up to fans was that Cynthia Watros, who played the character Libby before being killed off in the second season, will return this year.

So there will be no sequels or spin-offs. However “Lost” ends, its ending will close the door upon the island and all of its secrets sometime this May.

2008 can be said to be a year plagued by tragedy, disappointment and shame. Just like at the movies, the small screen in general didn’t exactly shine this year. Very few movies could even be considered watchable and many shows with an established following, like the hit NBC show Heroes, saw nearly a 50% drop in viewership. So those who managed to make their way to the Top 10 fought through the muck and deserve to be on this list. Number 1 is considered the best show of 2008 in my books.

10. Lost – Lost was considered by many viewers the best show of 2008 but since this position was assumed around May I can officially say now that it is a bogus prize. Lost, while struggling to find its roots between creepy and just too much going on at once, is in concept a very good show. J. J. Abrams is just what everyone thinks he is, a genius.  The man could wrap a warm turd in tinfoil, present it to studios, and receive money for it. Lost, while not completely a turd, can frequently smell like one. The show’s biggest miss is in moving the show too much; supposedly, the island is movable. Locke is dead, Jack is obsessed with going back even though he has the beautiful Evangeline Lily to mack on, and then there’s that scary out-of-nowhere cabin. Lost‘s high point is easily the acting which, in my opinion, can be seen as top notch. Matthew Fox did a fine job as Jack in the previous season playing through the drunk and stubborn phase. During the course of more than one episode I found myself becoming teary-eyed or near bawling, like when he was on the edge of suicide. Lost gets the Number 10 spot because it gives fans questions and answers some of them – which in the eyes of some can be a problem, but keeps some die-hard fans coming back for more.

9. Avatar: The Last Airbender – Call me childish, call me immature, call me anything that will make you sleep at night but not many cartoon are so epic that I actually find myself saying, “Wow” over and over and over. The final four-episode arc “Sozin’s Comet” is probably one of the most powerful endings to a series I’ve ever seen. Aang unleashes the full power of his Avatar abilities to fight the Fire Lord which creates massive destruction across the Fire Nation. Aang literally becomes so powerful that he wipes out all the Fire Lord’s powers and leaves him powerless for the Nations to take pity on him. The act of completely rendering the Fire Lord useless isn’t just heroic; it symbolizes his determination to not fall into the category of murderer, as he had the option of completely obliterating the Fire Lord. The ending, while chaotic, as 3 major action scenes were happening at once, was very satisfying.

8. Battlestar Galactica – Ever have something you waited so long for that was so big that you just couldn’t stand to wait any longer? Then after all those long moments of waiting you get it and it turns out to be something you didn’t picture? Well, welcome to the season finale of Battlestar Galactica. The build up and the let down were so huge that I physically and mentally couldn’t believe it. I shook in horror as the ‘hope’ that Starbuck built up for the Colonial Fleet, that this safe haven or Earth, turns out to be just a planet shattered by a nuclear war. They found their safe haven but it doesn’t have the trees or the beautiful animals they were looking for. Some of the highlight moments from last season were the Colonial Fleet finally destroying the Resurrection Hub, the infamous fight between Tigh and Adama, and, well, any scene that incorporated Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff or Grace Park.

7. 30 Rock – Ever since some of the staple comedians from Saturday Night Live left, I’ve never been interested in the show. It was mostly filled with bizzare and unintelligent humor that usually involved physical humor that never made a lick of sense to me. Never once did it seem like anybody ever sat down and thought of a truly funny joke to say. However, a woman by the name of Tina Fey has saved that show and figured if she can save a show from falling apart, she can create a show. 30 Rock is brilliant, I mean flat-out brilliant and ‘08 has confirmed this. Fey went as far out as bringing in big names like Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Martin. Not only does the writing get better but the acting seems to get better and better. Alec Baldwin is brilliant as Jack Donaghy, an egotistical moron, and in the episodes “Cooter” and “Sandwhich Day” show off his sarcastic and fluid humor. Episodes “MILF Island” and “Episode 210” are some of the show’s best episodes.

6. Burn Notice – It’s not often that a show leaves me demanding a  comeback by simply screaming at the TV. The second season of Burn Notice can simply be summarized in one simple word, Amazing. Jeffrey Donovan is in every way the spy version of Jack Bauer. Donovan pulls off some of the best narration work and acting in 2008 that should be considered highly (and I stress highly) deserving of an Emmy. Not only is the acting more stellar than in its previous season, but the writing is way more fluid. Action sequences roll together and blend very well with the narration and wry humor presented by the trio of Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar and Bruce Campbell. Their chemistry is flawless in every way. The addition of Tricia Helfer as the sexy and mysterious Carla creates a new obstacle for Donovan’s Michael which can adding new suspense to an already thrilling plot.

5. Life - Another show that seriously can say it gets better as time goes on. Damian Lewis continues in his second season as the awkward yet charming detective, Charlie Crews. Life shows in its second season that even though its viewership is down, the show is not going to lay down and die. 2008′s biggest episodes, “Find Your Happy Place”, “Trapdoor” and “Black Friday” all show great writing and a great display of character development in both Reese and Crews. The addition of the relationship between Reese and Captain Tidwell (the greasy yet funny Donal Logue who makes his debut this season) helps. This relationship, while being awkward, adds even more funny (nothing like a police captain being denied a bank loan). Crews’s best friend Ted is now in jail and while this subplot seemed to be downright unneeded it has actually turned humorous. Crews’s inmate friends help him by protecting Ted, which adds an added comedic angle when people try to take down Ted. Life, in my opinion, has some wiggle room where it can easily move into that Number 2 or 3 spot but we need to see some more interesting villains before we make that judgment.

4. Leverage – Rarely does a show come on the air that I just cannot stop watching. One that has this season is Leverage. A cute and quirky comedy of the best thieves in the business turning from the dark side to the light side to help everyday victims of unfairness. The closest comparison is probably the Ocean’s trilogy and while it does dance around the thieves’ arena it is nothing like Ocean’s. This might catch you off guard, but Leverage is actually much better than the Ocean’s movies. Timothy Hutton plays that George Clooney role of the planner and let’s just say he does it with better style and acting. The show isn’t just thieving and laughing. It also has some gadgets, some action and mystery-solving. Here you can watch a show for 40 minutes and find out what happened exactly in the last two and be completely shocked. Leverage does that and with a cast of nobodies (excepting Timothy Hutton). Easily, the life of the show is Hardison, the computer whiz who drops a good joke with superb delivery every time he is on the screen. I see big things coming from this show and I can easily see this show taking home some big Emmys down the road.

3. Psych - The most underrated television show on the planet. It’s easy to overlook a comedy that thrives on  pop culture references and jokes that play comically immature characters against one another – and that is a mistake. Psych is a prime example of an ensemble of actors with the perfect chemistry working together. It has a completely fresh premise and every episode is executed with an energy that pulls the viewer along. Unfortunately, Psych now faces competition from a plagiarist, The Mentalist. The Mentalist is just a more viewed version of Psych that CBS has put up. It’s the same thing but with weaker chemistry and mechanics. Psych, with every episode, will bring something great – Gus and Shawn pointing fingers at each other or Shawn  making up new pet names for Gus, or the members of the Santa Monica P.D. Psych just does it better for me than The Mentalist.

2. Bones – A show I always seem to watch when I’m eating and I always think to myself that’s a bad idea.  It’s all gory and its all great. People who stopped watching Bones because of the whole Ross and Rachel theme between Agent Seely Booth (the wonderful David Boreneaz) and Dr. Constance Brennan (the sexy and well-picked Emily Deschanel) will be happy to know that every episode they move closer to that point where the fan shakes their head and says the magical words, “They’re going to have sex!”. Bones is easily one of the most enjoyable television shows of the year. The chemistry is beyond steaming between Booth (who adds the heroic yet cocky and sarcastic elements) and Bones (who adds the strict, by the book and robotic feeling to the show). The best part of Bones is knowing that every episode, someone has died (unpleasantly!), and yet the crime will be solved expertly and with humor. Probably the best addition to the new season is John Francis Daley who portrays psychologist Dr. Lance Sweets who brings a childish angle to the humor of the show. Bones does what its competitor CSI does but better, adding scientific detachment to ensemble chemistry and dry humor to entertain a mass audience. Bones simply delivers.

1. Chuck – Probably the best show since the series finale of the legendary NBC show Friends. Chuck isn’t just the best show for one reason, not two reasons or three reasons but because of all reasons. It’s the funniest show on television, with its quick little references (such as the infamous DMC DeLorean, Lost’s Flight 815 and Call of Duty 4); hot chemistry, as Sarah and Chuck constantly smolder on-screen together – and, last but not least, the action – quick gunplay with great comedy. Chuck appeals because it delivers to everyone, it has something anybody and everybody will like. It’s predictable enough so you know where it’s going but unpredictable enough that it keeps you guessing as to how it will get there. Last season brought some of the best episodes I’ve ever seen on a television show. “Chuck Versus Santa Claus” was a massive twist that was very well written and directed. My all-time favorite is “Chuck Versus The DeLorean” which showed how amazingly crappy the now-infamous DMC DeLoreans are. I’m especially fond of Chuck because of the beautiful and highly talented Yvonne Stravhoski, who plays out the perfect American accent and adds that essential eye candy to the role. This is fine because she can act very well. Probably one of the best casting picks is Adam Baldwin as Agent John Casey who is just downright sarcastic and freaking cool. They make him seem so tough that he hates Chuck and yet trying to kill him almost causes him a nervous breakdown. I’m sure Josh Schwartz and McG both will turn their heads to each other in ten years and say, “Boy, we created one of the best television shows in TV history,” and in ten years I’ll be nodding my head with them.