Live together, die alone. Early in Lost’s history, that phrase was strip mined for as much emotional currency as the show could draw from it.

Last night, the castaways in both universes moved ever closer to making it once more a reality. Finally, with quick, broad strokes, the series headliners are bringing all the characters together for the kind of sweeping ensemble interaction that made those first few seasons such a pleasure to watch. Jack and Claire finally meet one another after discovering they are siblings, Jack confronts the thing wearing the skin of the man he’s grown to respect, and Sawyer, of all people, starts organizing the gang for a trip off the island.

It was a good episode, all things considered, although calling it hectic would be an understatement. There’s a lack of fluid movement, but that probably had a lot to do with the attempt to cover so much ground in both realities and give each character as much screen time and impact as could be fit into a single episode. I counted more reunions than have possibly ever occurred on the show.

First up, there’s Jack and Dark Locke, in a scene I quite enjoyed. Something of the Smoke monster’s personality and opinion towards the man whose body it’s using is on display here. Several episodes ago, when the monster was talking to Sawyer or Ben (I don’t actually recall who right now), it said it had chosen Locke because he had sought something more, dared to find meaning. He was almost reverent in his choice of words. When confronting Jack, who seems to have adopted the similar path of John, the monster berates Locke and calls him stupid and paints him as a pathetic loser.

Jack defends the real Locke, but the dark one mocks him for it. I think here we are finally seeing that Smokey is actually fearful or at least confounded by the kind of fidelity to the island that John had, and perhaps more threatened by men of faith than men of science like the former Jack or men of war like Widmore. For Jack’s part, it’s an interesting character arc that brings him to a place where he’s championing the beliefs of a man he once despised and openly opposed.

On the island Jack was also reunited with Claire, who seems genuinely glad to see him and while emotionally manipulated by the monster, she doesn’t seem to have been stripped of her identity in the same way that Sayid has. It is also finally revealed that the Smoke monster was using Christian Shepherd’s visage to lead and direct Jack, and presumably it’s also the same force that told John he must go to the mainland and bring everyone back. How much of what the original John thought of as the ‘will of the island’ was just Smokey pulling the strings.

Later, Sun and Jin would get a touching reunion, and Sun’s voice would return just as she found what she was looking for. Just one question there. What exactly was the purpose of the entire ‘losing your ability to speak’ plot thread. Was there a reason?

One of the more ambiguous island moments was Sayid’s mission to kill Desmond. Turns out the well wasn’t that deep, and Des was still alive. Sayid was going to shoot him, and seemingly was turned from that task when Hume asked him what the woman he was doing all this for would say about his current actions. We never learned what happened to Desmond, although Sayid insisted to Smokey that he had killed the man. You could smell the lie a mile away, though, and I think Flocke did too.

Then, there was Sawyer’s plan to grab as many of the remaining sane castaways and get them to the submarine so they could escape without Smokey, and thwart his plans. I found it interesting that Jack doesn’t push harder for his sister’s inclusion on the boat, but Kate does, prompting Claire to put down her rifle and join them. In another moment of perfect symmetry echoing the relationship between John and Jack from season 3, Sawyer gives Jack a choice; give up the quest to stay on the island, or get off the boat. Jack jumps into the water and heads back towards the shoreline, and when he gets there he finds Dark Locke and his remaining army, right before Widmore’s people strafe them with what appear to be bombs of some sort. The episode ends with Locke carrying Jack into the jungle and exclaiming, ‘Don’t worry, you’re with me now.’

I presume then that this makes Jack the last recruit? Also was I the only one fearful that the wilderness version of Tina Fey was gonna shoot Sawyer and or Sun and Jinn down on the beach? For one terrible moment, I thought the show was really going to throw us for a loop and murder all of them, what with the sideways world being a safety net of sorts. Thankfully that didn’t happen. Yet.

Speaking of sideways world, there’s a damaged John Locke is on the brink of death, potentially remembering his other life, with Jack Shepherd poised to save his life. In fact, sideways world finally put almost every one of the big names into everyone else’s orbit last night. Sun recognizes Locke from the island when she is taken to the hospital, and Jack and David meet Claire for the first time, and Ilana, who is a lawyer in this world. What is less clear to me is how Desmond recognizes Ilana as part of the plan, as I don’t think he has met her in either world. The answer is most likely that he didn’t, but managed to piece together the connection between Jack and Claire. Maybe Ilana is just along for the ride.

Ben is in the ambulance with Locke, and Kate’s chilling at the police station with Sawyer, who later heads out with Myles and arrests Sayid Jarrah as he’s planning to make a getaway. Slick bit with the garden hose Sawyer.

The pieces are being moved into alignment, and now the biggest question I have about this world is this. Without an island to hold him, what happened to the Smoke Monster? Where is he? And for that matter, where is Jacob?

Great work guys, and I’m hoping you can sustain the momentum for the final four.

See ya next week on the island, when the show teases to give us more insight into the smoke monster’s identity.

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.

Jin and Sun, I think it’s time for both of you to leave the island. Fast. Run. Run. Thanks to the writers, you have outlived your interest and are now just helping to suck the life out of a show that needs any bit of vitality it can get before the (hopefully) big finish.  Sadly, it didn’t have to be this way.

Anyone who had the tedious experience of watching the latest episode of Lost will understand just how turgid and uninteresting this couple’s storyline has become. Outside of a few, brief scenes (including the ending) last night’s The Package was a routine delivery that came way too late and took it’s good, sweet time in arriving. Even by the recent standards of the show, this one was shockingly uneventful.

So, what did happen? Well, we get a peek into the sideways reality of Sun and Jin, and learn that while they are not married here, they are in love and Sun’s father still proves a threat. Keamy returns (this is apparently just hours before he’s killed by Sayid) and abducts Jin on behalf of old man Pak, who doesn’t want to see his daughter spooning with the hired muscle. There’s a return visit by Mikhail, the one-eyed Russian with nine lives, who shows up to be Sun’s interpreter.

Sayid’s story intersects with Jin’s, but it never goes anywhere. A few episodes ago, it was suggested that maybe this meeting would be fortuitous or of great importance. It turns out to be little more than a throwaway piece, like all the other interlocking cameos. The most interesting facet of the episode involves Sun being shot in the stomach and then telling Jin that she’s pregnant. The episode moved away from any resolution on this front, and abandoned the Kwons to their own devices.

It’s notable because this is the first time characters in sideways world may actually facing death. Most likely is that in Jin’s rush to get Sun to a hospital, they will be running into one Dr. Shepherd.

On the island, the story was also spinning its wheels and even whipped out a terribly contrived new plot device to slow the already sluggish trudge of progress. Yes, I’m referring to Sun’s aphasia, which apparently obliterates her ability to speak English, although she still speaks Korean fluently. I’m not entirely sure that aphasia works that way, although I’d love to hear from someone in the know on how close it really is.

Either way, it’s used here as a way to frustrate Sun’s efforts to communicate with those around here and to delay her quest to find her husband, who’s just been shot with a dart and carried off from MIB’s camp to Widmore’s headquarters. Not much happens in either scenario, but at least Daniel Dae Kim gets the opportunity to sell Jin’s obvious emotions at learning he has a daughter. In addition, the rugged Tina Fey wannabe recognizes his signature on the Dharma map and tells him that he will be useful in locating pockets of energy on the island.

In actuality, that little bit of information is fairly interesting. It intersects nicely with the end-of-episode revelation that Desmond Hume is the ‘package’ that Widmore has brought to deal with Locke. Is Widmore ready to tap into those stores of island energy while using Desmond as a conduit? Will that make Hume a kind of human explosive device? Perhaps, but I suspect Desmond’s real importance to the plot involves his ability to move between realities. I, of course, am assuming most of this due to his flashing in and then back out during the season premiere on the plane.

And what of Widmore, who seems to be legitimate in his desire to destroy the evil manifestation of Locke? He references “myths and ghost stories” when talking about the dark force and refers to him as ‘it’ on a few occasions. He also seems convinced that if it ever gets off the island the rest of them are as good as dead.

Which leads me to a question about the sideways world. If the island is under the water, and it has been destroyed by some means, then what happened to Jacob and his smokey nemesis? Are they still trapped there, or did Dark Locke escape when the island went down? Do those two forces even exist in the sideways reality, or have they been extracted from it?

I’m still of the opinion, that in some way, the ‘sideways reality’ is a part of the current reality; whether it’s further along the timeline or the entire thing is some kind of experiment or test, I’m not sure.

What I do know is that even with a mere handful of episodes left, the show cannot afford to turn out such tame and haphazard writing and plotting. Outside of Jack’s fine campfire scene with Sun and Kim’s terrific acting, there was nothing in this episode to evoke even a small spark of interest outside of what we already know or have been speculating about. Desmond’s reveal is the big moment, but it’s supposed to be punctuation at the end of the sentence, not the subject.

The show’s creators keep saying that Lost is ultimately about character and not about secrets. To some extent, I agree that the logic can be applied to the earliest of the seasons, but in recent years, the writers have been abusing the audience’s trust with both the secrets and with the characters. They have largely gotten away with this because they usually were able to place some well timed surprises or acting showcases into the mix and reinvigorate the audience.

However, when they haven’t got anything to throw at us, but still labor tirelessly to involve us, it starts to feel a bit embarrassing. It’s like the sitcom skit where one character parades about like a buffoon, trying with all their might to distract another’s attention while a third misplaced character crawls out a window unnoticed.  After awhile, so obvious is the ‘look this way, not that one’ hand waving that I just felt frustrated.

I’m sure that the season still has a few good and welcome surprises left in its arsenal, but right now it’s hard not to suspect that even now the writers are stalling, and that maybe that grand ending isn’t as thought out as we’d like it to be.

See ya next week on the island, where Charles Widmore tries to convince Desmond Hume that the island isn’t done with him.

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”

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!

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.

Here he comes…here comes Speed Racer. He’s a demon on wheels.

I am a big Speed Racer fan. I used to rush home after school to catch Speed Racer before doing my homework. I even wanted to paint my bike white and put a red 5 on the side to make it my Mach 5. So I was stoked when I started seeing advertisements for this movie months ago. I couldn’t wait to see how one of my boyhood shows would be turned into a motion picture.

This movie is a cornucopia of colors, sights, and sounds. For everything that was wrong with the last two Matrix movies, the Wachowski brothers managed to do everything right with this one. They not only captured the essence of the American “Speed Racer” but they also were able to tap into the Japanese original “Mach Go Go Go” for further inspiration.

The movie starts with Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) driving like a demon on wheels at Thunderhead race track. He’s not only trying to win the race but he’s also trying to chase after his dream of being like his older brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter).

Pops (John Goodman) is the matriarch of the family and the designer of the famous Mach 5. He is supported by his loving wife Mom Racer (Susan Sarandon). Also with the family is younger son Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his pet Chim-Chim the monkey. Pops can’t do everything alone so he has long time family friend Sparky (Kick Gurry) as the mechanic of the group but also Speed’s race day spotter. Rounding out the family is Speed’s girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) who has been there for speed since grade school.

There is more to this movie then the racing. There is a story of big business corruption and how it is taking over the World Racing League by fixing races. One such business is Royalton Industries headed by A.Royalton (Roger Allam). He’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants and if that means paying off drivers to stop Speed from winning then that’s what he’ll do.

Trying to stop him is the CIB, an international law organization that has a few tricks of their own. The lead investigator, Inspector Detector (Benno Fürmann), has a driver that will stop the corruption of the WRL by brining justices back…Racer X (Matthew Fox) is that driver. But he can’t do it alone so he enlists the aid of Speed Racer to help crack the case and bring Royalton’s company down.

The Wachowskis were able to do something new and fresh with the races and make the cars seem alive. Each race left you breathless and waiting for more as you watched the stunning driving of Speed Racer and the other drivers. From the beginning race at Thunderhead to the final Grand Prix you will be amazed at the acrobatic movements of the automobiles.

The casting was perfect. Each actor selected was able to channel their animated counterpart. This movie has plenty of action, adventure, and humor for all to enjoy.

Speed Racer is distributed by Warner Brothers, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. It is rated PG for sequences of action, some violence and language.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆