Totally Lost - Finale Episode

One month ago, Lost vanished into the light, signing off with an epic, 2 1/2-hour installment—the last of an adventure that spanned six seasons, transported us to fantastic/fantastical places, and provoked an unhealthy amount of analysis. Today, we here at Totally Lost finally return to the gravesite to lay our souls bare—and our supersized finale down.

Source: Full Article at EW

ODI LOSTcast 61 - Theories with EW's Jeff Jensen

Hey All,
This week we are back with another bonus podcast with EW's Jeff Jensen aka Doc Jensen. The last time when Jeff joined us a few weeks ago, many of you loved the podcast so much that we asked him to come back and he did. This time both Karen and Danny (Vozzek) were a part of the podcast and it made for some good theorizing.

We mainly talked to Jeff about his thoughts on the reveals from this past week's LOST Episode 6x11 Happily Ever After. We also talked more about what Keamy said to Jin in the fridge last week and how we think the rest of the season might play out.

So hope you all enjoy it!

NOTE: We will still have the weekly recap podcast out soon.

You can find this podcast at iTunes or via the link below for an audio player and download link:

http://the-odi.blogspot.com/2010/04/odi-lostcast-61-theories-with-ews-jeff.html

ODI LOSTcast 52 - Theories with Vozzek and Jeff Jensen

Hey All,
So this week we have a special bonus podcast for you all. Entertainment Weekly editor Jeff Jensen joined Danny and myself to chat up LOST!

We talked about him being a super fan and writing about his favorite shows for a living. We also talked to him about his thoughts about the early days of LOST and of course overall theories for the show.

Plus, we discussed some of the more recent reveals of the candidate cave and lighthouse and what they could mean.

It is a fun interview, Jeff was totally cool and we hope to do it again sometime soon!

Unfortunately Karen was busy and could not join us for this podcast, but we are recording our recap podcast for Episode 6x05 today and will have that out to you as soon as we can.

In the meantime hope you enjoy this one!

This was posted to iTunes last night but below is a link to an audio player and download link for those that do not use iTunes.

NOTE: This podcast is completely spoiler free so do not worry about spoilers, just theories with Vozzek and Jensen.

http://the-odi.blogspot.com/2010/03/odi-lostcast-52-theories-with-vozzek.html

A Moving Ending by Jeff Jensen

The season finale of Lost was a major leap backward for the show, and I mean that with a big wink and much admiration for a powerful conclusion to a bold, winning season. ''Rewind'' was the operative word for ''No Place Like Home (Parts 2 and 3).'' An orientation film mysteriously looped back on itself. Old moments were revisited and re-examined, if not reinvented. Heck, the whole show was rebooted from the beginning, with Jack the Hero falling from the sky and rising to action and building a community out of lost souls, just as he did in the pilot. The final moments even ironically echoed the first season's famous twin cliff-hangers, with a raft at sea and two men peering into the abyss of a dark box — the coffin of one Jeremy Bentham, who looks a lot like a certain boar-hunting bald man we've come to know, love, and fear the past four years. ''No Place'' wasn't the magic act of last year's flash-forward fake-out, but it was more meaty, more emotional, more epic, and, with a gulpy leap into WTH? sci-fi, maybe more ballsy.

''OH, AND ONE MORE THING: YOUR BEARD SMELLS LIKE WET VINCENT!''

Here's what I mean by rewind: The episode began where last season's flash-forward fake-out finale left off, with Kate driving away from Beaver Pelt Jack, and then — screeeeeeeeeeech! — the former fugitive came to an abrupt stop and floored it in reverse. Apparently, Kate had a few things she wanted to get off her chest — stuff she forgot to unload on Jack in last year's finale. She told him that his ''we have to go back!'' crap was galling, especially in light of what happened on their final day on the Island; that a man they both knew — the man in the obituary, one Jeremy Bentham — had come to her a few days earlier and tried to make the same wacko ''going back'' argument; that Aaron still doesn't quite understand why Jack isn't around anymore to read Alice In Wonderland to him before bedtime. She slapped him and told him to keep his distance and then drove off in a heartbroken huff.

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Not Adding Up by Jeff Jensen

Ominous signs of impending doom abounded in last night's Lost. There was Flash-Forward Hurley's T-shirt, the one that said ''Ace of Spades'' — the death card, the card of war. There were also his accursed Lotto numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42), taunting him from the speedometer of his symbolically loaded Camaro, causing the soon-to-be loony-bin returnee to run like a proverbial madman. And there was the Orchid, our newest Dharma station, also known as ''the greenhouse,'' perhaps the most foreboding omen of all. Operation Greenhouse was the code name for America's A-bomb testing program in the South Pacific during the 1950s — a terrifying allusion in an episode where we learned that the freighter is a ticking bomb and that ''moving the Island'' could be a perilous, possibly catastrophic endeavor. ''Doing it is both dangerous and unpredictable,'' said a glibly cryptic Ben. ''It's a measure of last resort.'' Whatever it is that the Orchid can do, it was enough to cause Faraday to make an I-think-I-just-peed-myself face: ''We have to get off this island,'' he told Charlotte. ''Right now.''

It's probably premature to be jumping to conclusions about what any of this could mean: We've only seen part 1 of ''No Place Like Home''; the rest of it will air in two weeks. Then again, since when have these recaps been governed by common sense? ''No place like home'' comes from The Wizard of Oz, of course, though the line is actually found in (Numbers alert!) chapter 4 of L. Frank Baum's book, not at the end as in the Judy Garland movie. The title of that chapter? ''The Road Through the Forest.'' Perfectly fitting for an episode that saw much jungle trekking and emphasized the importance of following carefully marked if treacherous paths, be it the route from freighter to beach or the scripted lines of the Oceanic 6 cover story. The episode ended with Ben getting knocked out in the greenhouse — and whaddya know, if we continue to use the Numbers as a guide, chapter 8 of Oz, ''The Deadly Poppy Field,'' finds Dorothy passing out in a field of flowers. Perhaps the two-hour finale will correlate with chapter 15 (could ''The Discovery of Oz the Terrible'' = Jacob?), chapter 16 (could ''The Magic Art of the Great Humbug'' = Ben's twisty, tricky secret plan?), chapter 23 (could ''The Good Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish'' = Charlotte fulfilling her promise to Jin to make sure Sun gets away), and chapter 24, which is 42 backwards (''Home Again'' is clearly a reference to reincarnation/eternal-recurrence theory — I mean, clearly). (You're going to miss me during the impending hiatus, aren't you?)
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Cabin Boy by Jeff Jensen

Last night was for us. The cultists. The obsessives. The crazies who have committed to this long, strange trip and gotten lost in it. Like the candy bar Hurley generously shared with Ben while Locke was chatting with the spectral squatters inside Jacob's shack (a nod to the Neo-Oracle-cookie scene in The Matrix?), ''Cabin Fever'' was an episode packed with a chunky abundance of brain-fattening cryptonuggets to nourish our fevered theory making and message-board blustering. Comic-book references. Biblical allusions. Mythological connections. Double meanings to scores of lines. I loved Hurley's ''theory'' that he, Ben, and Locke were chosen for this vision quest because they were the craziest ones on the Island. This in an episode whose '50s-set flashbacks evoked, fittingly, AMC's Mad Men and whose thematic concern with fate mirrors that of No Country for Old Men, a narrative about three men dangling on sanity's thread, though at different points. Amid the clues, red herrings, and tomfoolery, I saw in the episode a fiendishly clever love letter to those of us who've become so locked up inside Lost that they've been somewhat deliriously messed up by it. That's really why they called it ''Cabin Fever.'' Just my theory, but who knows? Maybe I'm just seeing things again.

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Error with Ratings Code

Hey All,
There was some error in the code for the ratings for Jeff Jensen's recap post and when I fixed it, unfortunately it reset the total to zero. So if you rated his post prior to this post, please do it again.

Thanks
ODI

Unhappy Jack by Jeff Jensen

I'll get to why I think Claire is actually a ghost in a minute — but first, a word about Alice.

Alice of Alice in Wonderland fame, of course. You'd think Lost was trying to tell us something the way it keeps pointing toward Lewis Carroll's beloved children's book on its bookshelf. In last night's episode, ''Something Nice Back Home,'' flash-forward Jack — enjoying domestic bliss with flash-forward Kate — read a whole stinkin' passage from the thing as he put flash-forward Aaron to bed. Perhaps by Lost's last episode, if not sooner, we will realize that Carroll's topsy-turvy underworld was a clue to the show's essential metaphysical enigma; perhaps, for example, the castaways have literally tumbled into a hidden, beyond-microscopic dimension tucked into the seams of reality, as described by current superstring physicists. (For those of you who insist on a ''hard science'' explanation of Lost, check out The Elegant Universe, which makes such a scenario plausible.) But the specific Alice in Wonderland reference cited in last night's episode (taken from the book's second chapter, ''The Pool of Tears'') reminded us anew that Lost is first and foremost about its characters, and more deeply, the tough, often impenetrable mystery of ourselves:

''Alice took up the fan...and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: 'Dear, dear, how queer everything is today. And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: Was I the same when I got up this morning?...If I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.' ''

''The Pool of Tears'' is a transitional chapter in Alice's adventure. She's just fallen out of her world but finds herself stuck in a stuffy corridor on the other side of a door leading into Wonderland proper. As she ponders the riddle of herself and the problem of opening the door — a problem because the door is rather tiny and she has grown very large thanks to a piece of magic cake — she cools herself with a fan left behind by the White Rabbit, oblivious of the fact that the very act of fanning is magically making her smaller. The dilemma is making her weep: Poor Alice can't figure out how she fits — literally — in her new world. (I swear to you, this is relevant.) Similarly, ''Something Nice Back Home'' was partly a transitional passage in the Lost saga, a busywork episode designed to put all the characters in position for the year's big finale, a three-part affair that starts in two weeks. Jin cut a secret deal with Charlotte, Claire went MIA, Christian Shepherd bonded with his grandson, flash-forward Hurley went nutty, and flash-forward Kate did secret favors for left-behind Sawyer. But mostly, it was about Jack.

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Raiders of the Lost Story Arc by Jeff Jensen

Exactly two years from now, when ''Lost'' is in the home stretch of its final season, I have no doubt that the editors here will suggest the nifty idea of setting the stage for the show's climactic arc with (what else?) a list. In fact, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sneak into my secret room (sorry: can't let you in) and confirm this inevitable assignment by popping into the future using my own wormhole-powered Quantum Leapster. Just let me set the controls and follow the directions on my ancient hieroglyphic tablet here and...BZZZZZZ-BLINK. Bingo! There I am, sitting at my desk on April 25, 2010, typing up the list, just as I expected (except for the part where I'm actually employed by Wood Cabinetry Weekly; what the hell happened to me?), and there it is, sitting very high on this ranking of all-time pivotal Lost moments, the scene that we all witnessed in last night's episode: Ben's shell-shocked reaction to the assassination of his adopted daughter, Alex: ''He changed the rules.'' As for No. 1 on the list, that would be season 5's revelation that Jack is actually...BZZZZZZZ-BLINK. Damn! My frakking Quantum Leapster ran out of juice! Stupid alien technology! Maybe next week....

Of course, the irony of my fantastical scenario lies in the profound significance of Alex's death. The future has become unknowable and unreliable — at least as far as the once great and powerful Oz of the Others, is concerned. ''He changed the rules,'' muttered Ben, his battered and bloodied face dawning with horrifying awareness. ''He'' is Charles Widmore, the man on the other side of the cosmic chessboard to which fate-whipped Ben is shackled. And in ''The Shape of Things to Come'' — the ninth episode of Lost's fourth season — the whiskey-soused, nightmare-plagued billionaire Brit made a desperate, most unexpected move against Ben in his mad bid to gain (or is that regain?) that which was once his in the past, or (buckle up for this one, kids) that which was supposed to be his in the future.

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Cheating Time by Doc Jensen

They never made it to Albuquerque in the flash-forward future (at least, not yet), but Jin and Sun landed somewhere deeper in last night's moving, deviously tricky installment of Lost. Back on point after last week's subpar Juliet-centric episode, ''Ji-Yeon'' had me dabbing my eyes repeatedly. You're always going to get me watery with a story about the sometimes perilous road of bringing new life into the world; it's a personal thing, and Lost tapped it well enough, so there you go: I'm sold. Even better, I loved how this story, unexpectedly, dealt with resolving Sun's sin against her husband — her infidelity with Jae — yet also completed Jin's redemptive reconstruction into a husband worthy of his wife's faithfulness. I'm not sure if Jin really is destined for death, as the final moments of the show seemed to suggest, but in many ways the episode felt like a valedictory for the character. Recognizing his own moral failure during his fishing-boat heart-to-heart with Bernard (a kinda corny but altogether effective scene), the former underworld strongman was able to forgive his Sun and recognize his role in pushing her away. But the beautiful moment came when he said he would follow her to Locke's camp — this, from the man who just a couple months ago in Lost time demanded his wife obediently trot after him. The role reversal closed the circuit on Jin's redemptive arc and had me searching for tissues anew. When he asked, with great vulnerability, if the baby was his, and Sun assured him that it was, I grabbed more. Well played by Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim, this was Jin and Sun's finest hour since season 1.

But we're going to rumble over that flashback fake-out, aren't we?


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96 Tears by Jeff Jensen

Here is Jeff Jensen's recap of The Constant.

In a romantically moving episode, Desmond's 1996 consciousness takes over his mind now, but his connection with Penelope saves him

Is there a doctor in the house? I mean a real one? Because I need one. Yep, folks, I have the flu — the really nasty kind. The kind that sent me to the hospital on Wednesday. Ick! The last thing my doctor wants is for me to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. I need rest! So here's what we're going to do: I'm going to outline some talking points for your message-board discussion. Then, next week, I'll post more thoughts on the episode in my Thursday Doc Jensen column. Thanks for being gracious, kids.

''Unstuck in time''
That phrase, cited in last night's episode, comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, in which Billy Pilgrim finds himself toggling between time periods of his life, including a trip to an alien planet. In the process, Pilgrim nearly loses his mind. It's a good touchstone for Desmond David Hume, who began tripping the time fantastic after Frank Lapidus flew his chopper into an ominous (electromagnetic?) thunderhead, part of an offshore ring of weird-science weather that seems to encircle the Island. This is my interpretation of what went down: Desmond's Island-present consciousness was displaced by his Island-past consciousness. Then, that 1996 mind toggled back and forth through the entire episode while Island consciousness remained MIA until the end of the show. Am I getting this right? If I weren't so amazingly sick in the head right now, I'd be more confident. I'm counting on you to help a brother out here.

The anti-love boat
We finally got to go aboard the freighter last night. Turns out it's not exactly a Carnival cruise ship. Sayid and Desmond were greeted by two creepy-tough deckhands, whose smug smiles were about as cryptic as the Mona Lisa's. What secrets do these two hold? After being thrown into sick bay, Desmond met a man strapped to a bed and also suffering from the time-warp blues. His name was George Minkowski — we've heard his voice on the satellite phone since the season premiere — and he shares the same last name as Hermann Minkowski, an egghead physicist who introduced the fourth dimension of time into standard 3-D models of reality to create ''Minkowski space-time.'' One last thing about the freighter: It appears Ben's spy (my bet: Michael) recently sabotaged the communication systems. No wonder everyone's a little paranoid. What do you think the freighter's true agenda is?

1996
Desmond's flashbacks took place in 1996. We finally got a peek into his military days, and I don't think we've seen the last of that story; we still don't know how he wound up in military prison. After receiving some cryptic instructions from Daniel Faraday, Desmond sought out the Island-past version of the quirky freighter physicist. Their encounter had a Marty McFly-Doc Brown meet-cute vibe to it. Faraday, we learned, is obsessed with time travel, and with Desmond's help, he was able to fine-tune his consciousness-transfer/time-travel device. One unfortunate side effect: death by brain aneurism. Oxford-era Faraday told Desmond that in order to keep sane amid this uncontrollable quantum leaping, he needed to tether himself emotionally to something that bridges the past and present — a constant. Desmond, natch, picked Penelope, giving the episode an unabashed romantic vibe that had my wife in tears. If I hadn't been experiencing a profound state of physical ickiness, I might have been squirting tears instead of coughing up phlegm.

Upon finishing that last sentence, I passed out for 30 minutes — kinda like the way Minkowski collapsed whenever he flashed. Poor Minkowski: He went the way of Faraday's lab rat, Eloise, and died from a killer nosebleed. And I was looking forward to the Fisher Stevens experiment, too.

The Black Rock ledger
Continuing Lost's renewed interest in everyone's favorite beached slave ship in season 4, Desmond sought out Penelope's father, Charles Widmore, in order to learn her whereabouts. He found Widmore at an auction house, bidding on the ledger to the Black Rock. Why was Widmore so interested in the ledger? I don't think it's a simple matter of treasure hunting. I think Widmore thinks the ledger includes info on the Island's location. He wants either to find it or to prevent others from doing so. Another theory: Buying the ledger was designed to create the appearance of being interested in searching for the Black Rock. I wonder if he was setting that salvage vessel up to find the (faux) wreckage of Oceanic 815. Yes, I am saying that Widmore is one of the main puppet-master villains of Lost; he has traded off of forbidden knowledge of the future to build his wealth. In other words, he's Biff from Back to the Future 2.

''The constant''
The show ended with an emotional climax as Desmond made good on his promise to Penny to call her on Christmas Eve, 2004. (I guess that means next week's installment will be the very special Christmas episode of Lost. Also, isn't there supposed to be a tsunami occurring in the Lostverse about this time?) Yet as I watched Des and Pen declare their love for each other, I couldn't help wondering if we're being set up for a tragic finale. Wouldn't it stink if, in the end, just as Des and Pen were about to reunite, he suddenly collapsed from a killer nosebleed?

Okay, that's all I got in me, so I'm off to bed. Some other burning questions: What's up with Faraday's own spotty memory of his Desmond encounter? And what do you think his note about making Desmond his own constant meant? Post away!

Source: EW

Not What We Eggspected by Jeff Jensen

Here is Jeff Jensen's take on Eggtown.

I usually jot down notes when I watch Lost. It's pretty necessary when you do a job like this. Take last night's episode, ''Eggtown.'' As John Locke, not-so-benevolent dictator of Old New Otherton, prepared Ben's breakfast during the opening sequence (two eggs, fruit, a copy of Philip K. Dick's Valis), I wrote the following:

''Other books on the bookshelf: The Sheltering Sky and something by Arthur C. Clarke.''

''Interesting: Locke is now sleeping in Ben's (hospital) bed — and here's Ben mocking the former invalid for being more helpless ('lost') than ever.''

''If Locke ran a bed and breakfast, what would he call it?''

But as I reviewed my chicken scratches after the episode was over, I realized that I had accumulated far more questions than observations, ideas, theories, and/or lame jokes. Why didn't Kate want to bring her son to court? Is she trying to hide him from the world? Why did Jack tell the jury that only eight people survived the crash of Oceanic 815? According to the cover story of the Oceanic 6, who were the two who didn't make it? Who does Miles really work for? How does Ben know him? What was the significance of Daniel Faraday's guessing game with the cards? What happened to Frank Lapidus' helicopter? Why doesn't Jack want to see Kate's child? Speaking of said child, how did Aaron (!) become Kate's kid? What happened to Claire? And most of all: Why was the episode called ''Eggtown''?

It was one of those episodes of Lost where a few big answers came at the price of many, many more questions. If you're keeping score at home, this is what we can scratch off the Active Mystery List. Island Kate isn't pregnant. (I have to admit that I kinda forgot that was even a question.) The mystery man that Flash-Forward Kate referenced in the season finale last year was actually a mystery boy, Aaron. We now know — or at least reasonably assume — that Aaron is the fifth member of the Oceanic 6. And we now know what Hurley sounds like when he's going number two.

''Eggtown'' was technically a Kate flash-forward that revealed that the Oceanic 6 are nothing short of super-celebs. (Didn't Ms. Austin look Hollywood glam? Evie cleans up nicely, doesn't she?) But it was really all about bargaining and bartering, proposals and ultimatums. Perhaps the best way to recap the plot is by following the deals.

THE KATE-MILES PACT
Kate — perhaps truly enticed by Sawyer's proposal of making the Island their permanent address — asked freaky freighter dude Miles Straum for info about what kind of life waited for her off the Island if she went back. The caustic ghost whisperer agreed to help her — if she could arrange a meeting with Ben. Kate accepted his terms. But to pull it off, she needed to secure Sawyer's help, which led to some flirtatious banter between the two former Hydra humpers. Transaction status: Completed. Kate busted Miles out of his boathouse cell and into Ben's basement cell. In exchange, Miles informed her that yep, the freighter folk knew that she was a wanted lass and that a long prison sentence loomed in her future. Miles' suggestion: She should stay on the Island.

THE MILES-BEN PROPOSAL
The hotheaded hustler — tasked to track down über-Other Ben — told the Man With 1000 Passports that for exactly $3.2 million, he would tell his mysterious employer that he had found Ben dead. Ben asked the obvious questions: Why $3.2 million exactly? Why not 100 grand more? Heck, why not round it up to $3.5 mil? Miles dodged the question. When Ben clucked about not being able to scrounge up the dough, Miles got huffy: ''I know what you can do!'' Transaction status: Pending. Given his being a prisoner and all, Ben asked for a week to figure out how to fulfill his end of the bargain.

JACK-KATE: WINK-WINK, NUDGE-NUDGE
Kate's flash-forward dealt with her trial for her long list of crimes, beginning with killing her abusive father by blowing up their house. To help her cause, Kate's lawyer asked Flash-Forward Jack (pre-grizzly-beard edition) to testify as a character witness. Curiously, Jack's Bible-sworn testimony was a bunch of lies. He told the jury that only eight people survived the crash of Oceanic 815 and that Kate was a lifesaving Wonder Woman. Apparently, this fib is part of a larger cover story that the Oceanic 6 have agreed to stick to. Transaction status: Aborted. Kate cut Jack's testimony short. Interesting how Kate had no problem using Sawyer to get what she wanted in the Island story but was unwilling to similarly exploit Jack in the flash-forward tale. Perhaps this was her way of loving Jack: Maybe she understands how painful it is for him be ''living a lie,'' as Jack said in the season finale.

KATE AND HER MOTHER: GRANDMA'S GAMBIT
Kate's ailing yet clinging-to-life mother — the key witness for the prosecution in her daughter's trial — told Kate that she had no interest in testifying against her, though she seemed to suggest that the offer was contingent on being able to see the grandson she had never met. Transaction status: Spitefully rejected. Kate was still smarting over how Mom called the cops on her the last time they hooked up. But Kate's mother seemed to suggest that she had forgiven her because of her ''castaway hero'' part in the Oceanic 6 cover story. So much for unconditional love or forgiveness.

KATE'S PLEA DEAL
Give Mom a little credit: With Kate promising her nothing, she still backed out (or wheeled away) from testifying. Screwed, the prosecution offered a deal: 15 years in jail. Kate got panicky. Clearly, doing time would take her away from Aaron. But didn't you get the sense that there was more to her resistance than just motherly attachment? I have this theory that the Oceanic 6 know something about future events and, more, know something about the role that they must play in them. Being in jail would obviously really screw that up. Just a theory. After Kate's lawyer successfully spooked the prosecution with the prospect that a jury would probably side with her, the plea deal was knocked down to a mere 10 years' probation — and a promise that Kate would never leave the state. Transaction status: Accepted. Kate jumped at the deal. Case closed — and stakes established for when she ultimately changes her mind and joins Jack in his ''We gotta go back!'' quest. (At which time, I also predict that Kate will entrust Aaron to...her mother, finally completing their reconciliation.)

KATE AND JACK: THE DATING CONTRACT
In one of the episode's final scenes, Jack confessed to Kate that his I-don't-love-you stance on the stand was a lie. Kate got all weak in the knees and asked if he wanted to come back to her place. But Jack chickened out and said he had to get back to the hospital. Kate called him out: She said the real reason he was backing away was that he can't deal with Aaron. Transaction status: Deliberating. Jack didn't deny Kate's claim. What's up with that? I bet it either has something to do with the fact that Kate's child is his — what? — half nephew? Maybe Jack can't deal with Aaron because he reminds him of Claire — and if Claire met an unfortunate end on the Island, no doubt Doc Savior Complex blames himself.

All in all, I thought ''Eggtown'' was the Lost equivalent of a sacrifice bunt. It was all about moving all the simmering subplots forward so the next episodes can drive them home. (Prime examples: the allegedly-MIA-chopper intrigue; the Jin-Sun discussion about their post-Island home — both set up for future episodes.) For our indulgence, we were treated with some tantalizing new questions and some payoffs on some long-standing Kate mysteries.

Some quick hits:

Philip K. Dick's Valis In this trippy novel, one of Dick's best and most personal, ''Valis'' stands for ''Vast Acting Living Intelligence System.'' Sounds like the way Locke or Ben might regard the Island.

Locke putting the grenade in Miles' mouth Pretty cool — and kinda ridiculous. Locke suffered some challenges to his leadership in this episode, including a crisis of self-confidence. I guess stuffing an explosive into a bad guy's mouth is one way to feel like a man again. Sawyer is right: Locke is going Kurtz on us. The horror...the horror...

The Faraday-Charlotte card game The task involved Daniel correctly guessing what three overturned cards were. But the key line there is C.S. Lewis asking him, ''What do you remember?'' My interpretation: Daniel Faraday is a time traveler — or thinks he is a time traveler — and he's recovering memories of his past experience on the Island. Speaking of time travel:

The meaning of the title ''Eggtown'' I researched many options, include the significance to mythological ideas like the ''world egg'' and the ''cosmic egg.'' There could be a connection to the book Cracking the Cosmic Egg, too. But inspired by Locke's conspicuous mention of killing a chicken, I decided to investigate the Wikipedia write-up on the chicken and the egg. It has some interesting things to say about the theory of causality and ''the Grandfather Paradox,'' two important ideas in time-travel lore — and that's where we're headed next week.

Kate and Sawyer making out I think that was the last time. Don't you? How can she crawl back to him after he called her out like that?

St. Valentine's Day Massacre by Jeff Jensen

Here is Jeff Jensen's take on The Economist.

Lost is not kind to lovers, especially on Valentine's Day. For the second straight year, our beloved crypto-drama has aired an episode on February 14. And for the second straight year, Cupid was kicked in the nuts. Last year, in the trippy time-travel tale ''Flashes Before Your Eyes,'' Desmond toggled back to his breakup with Penelope, just to break up with her all over again. Last night, in ''The Economist,'' Flash-Forward Sayid fell for a woman he shouldn't have, and ultimately broke her heart — with two bullets to the chest. (To be fair, the femme fatale shot him first.) These things happen when you play secret-agent assassin for Germany's most morally ambiguous veterinarian — Benjamin Linus. Yes, you read that right. In his off-Island future as a member of the Oceanic 6, the former Iraqi torturer smokes European fat cats for über-Other Ben, who in his off-Island future has a croaky, low phone voice (All the better to delay the last-scene reveal of my true identity, my dear!), runs a pet hospital in Berlin, and manages a global conspiracy on the side. The Man With 1000 Passports has a whole list of bad people he wants dead, ''people [who] don't deserve our sympathies,'' as he told Sayid. Note to Ben's customers: Pay that doggy-grooming bill on time!

The episode's title, ''The Economist,'' was a reference to the job allegedly held by Sayid's current target, a powerful mystery man whose name went conspicuously unmentioned. It also suggested a key for reading the story. This was an episode about ''bosses'' and ''senior management'' and the minions who toil for them; about trade negotiations and merger proposals; about recession fears and hostile-takeover threats. It was a snapshot look at the information economy that shapes everything on Lost, one where secrets and inside information are valuable currencies, with hostages and guns running close behind. It was also an episode about the internal corruption that occurs when romantic idealists are forced to become cutthroat businessmen. (Literally.) As Daniel Plainview says in his other famous line from There Will Be Blood, ''I feel a competition in me.'' In his own damned way, I bet Sayid can relate.

Who's The Boss? Or where's the boss? That's what Locke was asking as he led his tribe of freighter fraidy cats to where Jacob's cabin should have been, only to discover that his house of sprits had disappeared from its circle of ash/salt/kitty litter. Abandoned by his Island god, Locke looked, yes, lost, and banged-up Ben was quick to jump all over that: ''He's looking for someone to tell him what to do next,'' the devilish Other told Locke's disgruntled flock. With Hurley showing signs of instigating a shareholder rebellion over the Charlotte-hostage issue, CEO Locke squelched the dissidence and shored up his office by playing the fear card, brow-beating Hurley with some tough talk about the cost of compromise. Did Flash-Forward Hurley's regret over choosing Locke over Jack begin here?

The Negotiating Committee Meanwhile, in Happy Helicopter Valley, the Jack Pack negotiated the terms of rescue with freighter fellas Daniel Faraday (twitchy physicist), Frank Lapidus (bushy-faced pilot), and Miles Straum (angry young ghost whisperer), who, of course, may not be there to rescue them at all. The shifty trio made it clear they weren't flying anywhere without C.S. Lewis (Charlotte edition), so Sayid stepped up and said he'd hike to the Dharma barracks and negotiate her release. Jack wanted to come, but given how the good doctor tried to shoot Locke in the face the last time they squared off, Sayid thought he should stay behind, lest the deal-making devolve into one of those protracted bargaining battles marked by phlegmatic rhetoric, heavy-handed tactics, and unreasonable demands over digital downloads.

Control Freak Jack got a proxy at the table, however, by sending Kate with Sayid and Miles. He felt her presence would give Sayid more leverage, as Locke wouldn't dare attempt any underhanded knife-in-back stuff, not with moony Sawyer there to play bodyguard. Yeah, you could say it was a contrived way to set up the possibility of more sex scenes between the old Hydra humpers. Still, it felt like classic Jack emotional dunderheadedness. You could tell Kate wasn't thrilled with Jack treating her like a pawn on a chessboard, and my hunch is that what we really saw in the moment was the beginning of her dawning realization that as much as she may dig Jack's cheese, he's got a lot more getting over himself to do before they can have a flash-forward future together, much less swap valentines and spit.

Acquisitions... Arriving at the Dharma barracks — or, more recently, New Otherton — Sayid, Miles, and Kate found Hurley tied up in the closet, allegedly left behind by Locke. It was a trap, one that exploited Sayid's soft spot for his friends and loved ones, a fatal flaw that makes both him and Hurley the most easily manipulated of the castaways. I thought Sayid should have seen through this ruse, and his failure to do so continued a dubious tradition of super-soldier Sayid not living up to his Republican Guard pedigree. (No wonder we beat those guys in three days.) Maybe I'm selling him short. Sayid was probably content to let Locke play and win his little mousetrap games, just as long as he sealed the deal he had come to make. I think he knew he would: His package was much too appealing. He offered Locke a hostage swap — Miles for Charlotte — plus himself. Sayid had come around to Locke's belief that the freighter people are nothing but bad news. His master plan, he told Locke, was to infiltrate the freighter and gather intel — corporate espionage. Locke was sold.

…and Mergers Meanwhile, as upper management haggled in the billiard room, Kate and Sawyer caucused in Ben's bedroom. The shaggy rogue explained that he has no intention of leaving the Island because there was nothing but a prison sentence waiting for him back in the real world, and since Kate was looking at the same fate, hey, why not stay with him? Kate was dubious: ''How long, Sawyer? How long do you think we can play house?'' Saywer was bold: ''Why don't we find out?'' I was impressed with the former con man's risky emotional frankness. I was also intrigued by the fact that this scene took place in Ben's bedroom, with all those tribal masks all over the place. Hmmmm…honesty and masks — hey, that sounds like a possible allusion to another work by Charlotte's namesake, C.S. Lewis: Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the mythical Cupid and Psyche love story, told from the point of view of Psyche's jealous sister. In the book, Lewis argues that you can't commune with the divine or experience supernatural possibilities until you drop your corrupt false self — your mask — and get your moral character in order. (Yo, Locke: Now you know why you keep losing your mystical connection to the Island. You're just not good enough.) Anyhoo, Sawyer's you-complete-me pitch may have swayed Kate, because she didn't return to Happy Helicopter Valley with Sayid and Charlotte. The ''I blew it'' look that passed across Jack's face when Sayid told him the news was pretty priceless; it reminded me of House of Meetings, Martin Amis' novel about brothers in love with the same woman, who go from being stuck in a Soviet gulag to struggling to return to ordinary life — very Oceanic 6. But I'm probably digressing.

Petty Cash Drawer I'm betting that the scene you'll be talking about the most on the message boards — besides the Ben flash-forward reveal — is the nifty moment when Sayid discovered Ben's secret stash of passports, foreign currency, and suits. Clearly, Ben does a lot of traveling for work. (Remember, the Others do have that off-Island company, Mittelos Biosciences; presumably, Ben is the boss.) Long ago, I wondered if the Others had an airstrip on the Island, so I wouldn't be surprised to discover Ben has a corporate jet, too — plus a hangar full of old Oceanic airplane parts. You know, leftovers from the false evidence that the Others planted in the Sunda Trench. (Just a theory.) Now, if you're going to go all crazy on me and claim that the multiple passports and husky-voiced Flash-Forward Ben are evidence that there multiple Bens in the world thanks to alternate universe/wormhole theory, I'm in! (FYI: The name on the Ben passport Sayid examined looked to be Dean Moriarty — a character from Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Moriarty is also the name of Sherlock Holmes' nemesis. Just so you know.)

Deficit Spending Another scene I bet you'll be going nutty over was the one where Daniel Faraday did his rocket experiment, which concluded with his admittedly ''beyond weird'' discovery of an apparent 31-minute time differential between freighter reality and Island reality, where time seems to pass more slowly. What does this mean? I don't know — but I immediately went to barnesandnoble.com and purchased Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time so you guys can borrow it, read it, and then summarize it for me while I eat grapes and watch Big Brother. Seriously, I'm crunching theories, but it takes time for me to do quantum physics. It takes me mere seconds, however, to do some cheap biblical analysis! Did you see the numbers on Daniel's clocks? One said 3:16, while the other said 2:45. As it happens, Daniel 2:45 is the culmination of the story in which exiled Daniel earned an exalted place in King Nebuchadnezzar's court by interpreting a dream concerning the future of Babylon and how ''the fourth kingdom will be a divided kingdom.'' Hey — that sounds like the fourth season of Lost! Meanwhile, Daniel 3:16 is part of the famous story of how Daniel's friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in the fiery furnace but were saved by God. How might that apply to Lost? Well, thematically, the story deals with three men who refused to abandon their spiritual beliefs and bow down before a false idol — a story that stands in stark contrast to Sayid's flash-forward arc.

The Sell-Out In the opening scenes of ''The Economist,'' we were given two quick, quiet moments that re-established two very important things about Sayid. First, we saw him praying. Sayid, if you recall, is a spiritual man, a Muslim. Second, we saw him tenderly shut dead Naomi's eyes and examine her bracelet, inscribed with ''N., I'll be with you always, R.C.'' Sayid, recall, is a romantic (see: Nadia; Shannon), and I bet that his desire that Naomi be sent home for a proper burial appealed to his religious convictions and sentimentality. Yet in his flash-forward future, Sayid ain't exactly living according to those ideals. In fact, like James Bond, his license-to-kill existence makes a mockery of the sanctity of life and love. Sayid remains sufficiently decent in the future that when it was finally time to move against the Economist, he came clean with Elsa, as he had genuinely fallen for her. But then she pulled a Casino Royale on him: It turned out she was an undercover lover, too, seducing him in hopes of smoking out Ben's identity. Elsa was Sayid's mirror twin, and to make sure we got it, Sayid smashed a mirror reflection of his Lady From Shanghai doppelgänger before popping some caps into her.

After Sayid stumbled into Ben's safe house/vet office for some first aid, his boss mocked him for his weakness. Then Ben dropped this intriguing tidbit: ''Need I remind you what happened the last time you thought with your heart instead of your gun.'' Sayid's response was even more mysterious: ''You used that girl to recruit me into killing for you.'' But Ben the master manipulator hit him where it hurts the most: the bottom line. ''Do you want to protect your friends or not?'' Sayid looked like a man over a barrel. What did he say about Ben earlier in the episode? ''The day I start trusting him is the day I sell my soul.''

Welcome to Hell, Sayid. Now get that game face on — there's work to be done.

That's what I got. How about you? Do you have a theory about the identity of the Economist? Who is the ''R.C.'' on Naomi's bracelet? (Regina the freighter chick?) Who are these names on Ben's assassination list? Scribble away!

Chute First - Ask Questions Later by Jeff Jensen

Here is Jeff Jensen's recap of Confirmed Dead.

I have been told by people who also received preview screeners that they thought last night's episode of Lost, ''Confirmed Dead,'' was flawed. The opening-sequence flashback — in which the wreckage of Oceanic 815 was found on the ocean floor — was a narrative cheat because it relied on perspectives not known to its character. Similarly, the moment when sisterless secret agent Naomi recalled receiving her Island infiltration orders from castaway-denier Matthew Abbaddon played fast and loose with flashback logic because...well, because Naomi was dead. (Maybe consciousness seeps out slowly on Soul Trap Island.) If Frank Lapidus really landed the freighter chopper as he claimed, how come he woke up so far away from it? (Maybe there's a story to be told there.) And come on: Isn't the whole business of Ben manipulating Locke with the promise of Island secrets getting just a little bit old? (Maybe...nah, you're right about that one.)

Bah! Mere quibbles. For me, ''Confirmed Dead'' was downright alive with fascinating new characters, mind-blowing new possibilities, and exciting new theory fodder. Like this one: I am utterly convinced Charlotte Staples Lewis has been to the Island before. Maybe it was her giggly delight as she splashed about in the Island's inland waters. True, the would-be freighter savior (or devil) could have been celebrating the mere fact that she had survived her harrowing arrival. But there was something more to her reaction — something that reminded me of another fantastical tale about an enchanted homecoming. The book is Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis, the sequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The story starts with a chapter called ''The Island,'' in which the Pevensie kids return to Narnia via a mysterious island marked by ancient ruins and odd creatures. First thing they do: play in the water. Maybe I'm just fishing again. But if you think I'm wrong, then you owe me a better explanation why Charlotte Staples Lewis has been assigned a name so conspicuously similar to the author's unfurled handle, Clive Staples Lewis.

(Don't roll your eyes at me — especially since we're only getting started! I spent 90 minutes researching Apocalypse Now and by extension the complete canon of Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad for Lost resonance thanks to Sawyer's snarky ''Colonel Kurtz'' crack. I found some, too: Check out The Shadow-Line, Chance, The Inheritors, and The Secret Agent. And for those who want to take me up on my C.S. Lewis challenge, consider investigating The Space Trilogy. C'mon, people! Support your local library!)

But for the more casual, less geeky Lostophiles who'd rather not engage the show with their English degrees (what else are they for?), the episode was equally worthy of watercooler kibitzing. For example, it looks like a monster more troublesome than Smokey might be setting its sights on the castaways — a certain green-eyed bugger named jealousy. The Jack-Kate-Juliet love triangle began to simmer anew. Ben mercilessly taunted Sawyer by poking at his I'm-not-as-good-as-Jack sore spots. And Locke was quietly rocked by Hurley's disclosure that he, too, could dial up Jacob's ghost shack. I don't think Mr. Mystic likes having to share the office of Island high priest with anyone. Hurley's recent flash-forward hinted at a looming rift with Locke; might a disagreement over properly interpreting Jacob be the cause?

But topping the talking points list: that WTF? opening sequence, in which remote-controlled cameras belonging to a salvage vessel called Christiane 1 stumbled upon Oceanic 815 — plane, passengers, and all — in the Sunda Trench of the South Pacific. (The backstory for Christiane 1 — which was actually hunting for the Black Rock — was recently told in an online story called ''Find 815.'') Does this wreckage prove that powerful forces are trying to hide the existence of the castaways — or does it prove that we're dealing with alternate-reality theory? Our message boards await your quantum leaps of logic.

They also await your reactions to the Freighter Four, whose imminent arrival in last week's season premiere divided the castaways into two tribes: the Jack Pack, cautiously confident that the freighter is their ticket off the Island, and the freighter-fearing Locke Lot. (Or the Ben Bunch, if you share Sawyer's belief that the seemingly leashed Other is still pulling the strings. Killer line: ''It's only a matter of time before he gets us, Johnny. And I bet he's already figured out how he's gonna do it.''). The Freighter Four fell to earth, like the castaways [or Icarus? Lucifer? David Bowie? Pick one — we're interactive!]; they had to bail after their helicopter encountered electromagnetic turbulence in the airspace around the Island. Lost has sometimes fumbled the needle when injecting new blood into the narrative. (See: the Tailies in season 2, Nikki and Paulo in season 3.) But here, the show has seemingly scored some primo plasma. The casting of Charlotte (Rebecca Mader), Lapidus (the Lawnmower Man himself, Jeff Fahey), Daniel Faraday (an appealingly quirky Jeremy Davies), and Miles Strom (Kenneth Leung, making a strong impression) totally worked for me, while their intriguing backstories left me jonesing for more. And did you notice that each one corresponded to a member of the Fantastic Four, another quartet of curious characters who fell from the heavens after bumping through a weird-science squall of cosmic rays? For purposes of both analysis and recap, let's take each of them in order of appearance:

Name Daniel Faraday
Island introduction Discovered by Jack and Kate in the jungle shortly after Strom shoved his chicken butt from the chopper. (''Hey, genius! Go!'') J&K were clearly puzzled by Daniel's jittery quirkiness — and deeply alarmed by the poorly hidden pistol on his belt and the gas mask in his luggage.
Occupation Socially awkward physicist, though ''physicist'' is too small a word for the eccentric egghead. ''I guess you could call me a physicist,'' he later told Sayid. ''I don't like to be pigeonholed.''
Fantastic Four analogue Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), socially awkward physicist, whose body is as elastic as Faraday's view of himself.
Name game Daniel was an Old Testament prophet who survived the lions' den and interpreted dreams for Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. Michael Faraday was a pioneering scientist in the fields of electricity and magnetism. Remember when Daniel noted how the sunlight ''doesn't scatter quite right'' on the Island? Exactly the kind of anomalous phenomenon Michael Faraday might have noticed.
Backstory intrigue According to Naomi, Faraday is a ''headcase.'' We got a taste of that in his flashback. While watching news coverage of Oceanic 815's (faux?) discovery, Faraday, dressed in jammies and robe, began to tremble with emotions he couldn't explain — as if experiencing a deeply disturbing bout of déjà vu. It reminded me of ''Flashes Before Your Eyes,'' when Island Desmond projected his mind through time and left Flashback Desmond feeling seriously discombobulated. Is Daniel destined to dance the time-warp shuffle, too?

Name Miles Strom
Occupation Ghostbuster + hustler = Ghosthustler! Miles can commune with the spirits of the deceased; he vetted Jack and Kate by psychically interviewing Naomi, whose mortal remains he dismissed as mere ''meat.'' I wonder what Miles is going to make of the holy trinity of Island spectral entities: Jacob, Christian Shephard, and Ghost Walt.
Island introduction Found on the windswept rocks near the shoreline by Jack, Kate, and Faraday. He appeared to be unconscious but was playing possum and popped up with gun drawn. Remember Naomi's dying words last week? According to Strom, ''Tell my sister I love her'' was code for ''Ugh! They got me! Bring weapons!'' Hence, Strom's haughty guardedness.
Name games ''Strom'' is an anagram for ''storm,'' which befits his blustery personality. But ''Miles Strom'' sounds very close to ''maelstrom,'' a wickedly strong whirlpool. (Shall we plum Edgar Allen Poe's ''Descent Into the Maelstrom,'' about a whirlpool that destroys a fishing vessel?) (No, we shall not.)
Fantastic Four analogue Johnny Storm, the hotheaded Human Torch, as fiery as Strom's temper and wit. When Sayid suspiciously inquired as to why Miles and Daniel weren't surprised to find the castaways alive if the outside world considered them dead, Strom sarcastically responded, ''Oh my God! You guys were on Oceanic 815! Wow! That better?'' Even Sayid seemed to smirk at that one.
Backstory intrigue Strom was hired to scare away the ghost of a murder victim (a drug dealer, it seems) who was haunting his grandmother's house. The eerie exterminator plugged in a portable cold generator (chilled air flushes out lurking spirits, according to poltergeist lore), meditated himself into a twitchy state of mind, and then shook down the specter for his secret stash of cash. Surely Dr. Stantz would not approve, though Dr. Venkman might. Creepy, hilarious, so very cool. (Is Scammy Strom greedy enough to resort to grave desecration if Nikki and Paulo blab to him about the diamonds buried with them? Would Lost risk provoking our N&P-hating wrath to tell us that tale?)

Name Charlotte Staples Lewis
Occupation Cultural anthropologist.
Island introduction After her splash-about, Charlotte was discovered by Locke's crew as they were hiking to the old Dharma barracks. She was stunned to find them alive — or at least pretended to be — but then grew weary of Locke's third-degree and bossiness. ''Me Tarzan. Me survive Ben bullet because of missing kidney, convenient plotting, and Magic Healing Island. You White Devil Freighter Woman come to ruin my good thing. You be prisoner and clean the Dharma latrine.'' Then Ben grabbed Karl's gun and shot her. So much for the homecoming party!
Backstory intrigue Bribing her way onto a hush-hush archaeology dig in the deserts of Tunisia, Dr. Lewis discovered a polar bear skeleton (!) and a Hydra Station collar buried in the rocky soil. Charlotte's face lit up; clearly, she had a hunch — and perhaps feverish hope — about what she was going to find. (My skeleton theory: Dharma was using the polar bears as guinea pigs for teleportation and/or time-travel experiments. Why? To invalidate the God-killing theory of evolution by planting false evidence in Earth's fossil record, of course!)
Fantastic Four analogue Susan Storm, the FF's token female, whose ''hard light'' powers were handy for conjuring bullet-repelling shields and making herself invisible. Wanna bet Charlotte is hiding something about herself — something that's right in front of us but we can't see? Something besides a bulletproof vest? More on this in a minute.

Name Frank Lapidus
Occupation Pilot; also ''a drunk,'' according to Naomi. And since he sports the required accessory for spiritually wasted TV boozers — a scruffy beard — she must be right. (But since it's only a small beard, maybe he's only a little boozer.)
Island introduction Found by Jack's crew. Despite the electrical storm, Lapidus managed to land the helicopter, the sight of which caused Jack, Kate, and Sayid to beam like kids on Christmas morning.
Name game Lapidus is a type of granite.
Fantastic Four analogue Ben Grimm, who piloted the team's ill-fated spaceflight through a storm of cosmic rays and was transformed into the sad-eyed, rock-encrusted Thing for his trouble.
Backstory intrigue While watching coverage of the Oceanic 815 salvage, Lapidus became convinced the corpse in a pilot's uniform couldn't really have been the plane's pilot because he wasn't wearing his wedding ring. Of course, we have reason to know he's correct. After all, we saw the pilot get eviscerated by the Monster in the first episode. But how could Lapidus be so certain? Because he used to work with Capt. Seth Norris (Heroes' Greg Grunberg in a still-photo cameo) at Oceanic Airways. Lapidus, in fact, was originally scheduled to sit in Oceanic 815's captain's chair. (Did you try calling the number on Lapidus' TV screen? It's 888-548-0034 — and it works.)

Clearly, the Freighter Four have more secrets to spill, not to mention their own private agendas. But we were told their primary common objective for coming to the Island. Their job — initiated by Abbaddon, the creepy suit who last week harassed Flash-Forward Hurley at the mental hospital — isn't to rescue the castaways but to abduct Ben. (''Their mission is a man,'' to borrow the tagline from Saving Private Ryan, which featured a brilliant performance by Jeremy Davies as a courage-challenged soldier.)

While the Jack Pack wrapped their mind around that revelation, the Locke Lot was on the verge of screwing things up for the Freighter Four by assassinating their quarry. The über-Other begged for his life by pulling the old I'll-tell-you-secrets trick, but Locke called his bluff with a dead-serious question encoded with a slight wink at the audience: ''What is the Monster?'' Ben looked baffled, then said, ''I don't know.'' Locke cocked the gun, and with no choice but to come clean, Ben blurted out Charlotte's complete résumé. How does he know so much about Freighter Girl? ''Because I have a man on their boat!''

So who could it be? The safe bet would be ex-castaway Michael: If you've been reading the press about the new season of Lost, you know that at some point Harold Perrineau will be returning to the show. But what if Ben's lying? What if his spy isn't a man but a woman — the same woman he just tried to kill? What if he and Charlotte are in cahoots and that shooting business was all a ruse — another move in Ben's 20,000-steps-ahead-of-everyone Island chess game? Theories! I have tons more of them, including the logic-tortured argument that Charlotte is the daughter of Ben's Dharma-days gal pal Annie. (Do the research — they look a lot alike!)

But it's time for me to turn the space over to you for your thoughts and quibbles. Did you dig Superhero Jack as much as I did? (''I don't know, Miles — how stupid are you?'') Do you think something dark is brewing inside Sawyer? How did you like Locke's disclosure that he's taking orders from Ghost Walt? And hello, Vincent! Post
Source: EW

Lost Recap - Back and Forth by Jeff Jensen

Here is Jeff Jensen's recap of the Season 4 Premiere - The Beginning of the End.

Watching ''The Beginning of the End,'' the season premiere of Lost, made me sick — sick in ways that my wife, my friends, and my court-appointed psychiatrist insist are bad for me and harmful to others. But with each passing minute of the episode, the old sickness that had lain dormant within me began to reawaken like a polar bear roused from hibernation by the advent of spring or a bald man with a torch and a can of hairspray. (Please tell me you got that.) Christian Shephard rocking in Jacob's chair gave me the chills. The vaguely sinister corporate suit named Abbaddon (''abaddon'' being a Hebrew ''place of destruction,'' or hell, according to Wikipedia) got me all sweaty. And when Charlie-grieving flash-forward Hurley started raging at not-yet-bearded flash-forward Jack about some ominous ''it'' (''I don't think we did the right thing, Jack! I think it wants us to come back! And it's going to do everything it can...''), I felt the searing fever consume me, and my mind was blown. Again. At freakin' last! After eight months of waiting, our mutual friend (and bad influence on my mental health) is back. Sickness, I am yours!

We usually get a premiere that begins with one of Lost's most frequent recurring motifs: an eyeball popping open. But that was old Lost, the Lost of flashbacks and Island despair and castaways waking up and orientating themselves to a new reality, one marked by sandy beaches, whispering jungles, and buried laboratories stocked with books, records, and candy bars. (Man, I want my own Hatch!) This is the new Lost, the Lost of flash-forwards and Island hope and six castaways in particular grappling with the disorientation of old lives that don't feel quite right and old ghosts that won't let them go. So, appropriately, we began with a discombobulating fake-out: an image of fruits set against an ocean-blue sky, the sound of seagulls cawing in the distance. We must have been on the beach, right? Nope! We were in the freight yard of a produce-shipping company in...where? And when? What the hell? Exactly. Exactly! (Huh?)

But quickly, we got our bearings. The city: Los Angeles. The time: the flash-forward off-Island future (or present, if you're now prone to think of Lost's on-Island action as happening in the past). (Tricky stuff, these time-toggling dramatics, ain't they?) The star of the show: lotto-winning, mentally shaky, food-challenged Hugo ''Hurley'' Reyes. As the episode opened, Hurley was leading the coppers on a high-speed chase in his daddy's old Camaro, blowing through that stack of fruit and crashing into the parking lot of a store in the midst of an everything-must-go fire sale. (Some winky subtext here? Remember, the producers of Lost successfully negotiated an end date — 2010 — for the series during the off-season.) Hurley tried to run, but the big man has no stride. As the policemen carted him off, he yelled, ''Don't you know who I am? I'm one of the Oceanic 6!'' And with that, the premiere gave us Season 4 Burning Question No. 1: If the Oceanic 6 are six survivors of Oceanic 815 who made it off the Island (and became famous for doing so), and we know that three of the six are Jack, Kate, and Hurley, then who are the other three? (This is why God invented message boards. Post your bets below.)

The car-chase teaser sequence was altogether fitting for a brisk overture episode that cut to the chase in a number of ways. In addition to providing an immediate answer to the ''How many people made it off the Island?'' question posed by the season 3 finale, the episode picked up right where we left off on the Island, with the castaways awaiting rescue from the folks on Naomi's freighter. The last two seasons gave us premieres that focused on small groupings of castaways (Jack in the Hatch; Jack, Kate, and Sawyer at the Hydra Station), which made for rich stories but also got their years off to slow starts because it took about two more episodes to wrap up all the other cliff-hanger loose ends. But ''The Beginning of the End'' peeked in on everyone, and was almost all the better for it. I really liked the check-ins with Sawyer (bitterly loading his gun; trying to engage Hurley about Charlie's death) and all things Ben-on-a-leash. But Jin and Sun seemed to get short shrift. And that Rose and Claire moment, in which Bernard's wife told Aaron's mommy that she'd better reward Hero Charlie with some beach-blanket action — umm, yuck?

To be fair, it makes sense for the castaways to be gripped by intense emotions, and I blame the show's long layoff for dulling my sensitivity. And for the record, I appreciate very, very much the whole concept of getting some somethin'somethin' from the ladies ifyouknowwhatI'msayin'. If I had one significant quibble with the premiere, it was Jack's self-righteous homicidal rage toward Locke for throwing the knife into Naomi's back. Doc Messiah Complex just found out he was going to get rescued. His primary emotional state should be off-his-rocker euphoria. Would there really be any available bandwidth on his grid for the kind of eye-for-an-eye rancor it takes to want to shoot someone in the face? I could understand if Jack wanted to pass the downtime waiting for the choppers by tracking Locke down and hauling him back to civilization to stand trial for murder and general rescue-jeopardizing nutbaggery. But that moment when Jack got his chance and attempted a point-blank execution with Locke's unloaded gun? Sure, it was hardcore cool, and kudos to Matthew Fox for selling it, but talk about overkill.

Like I said, just a quibble. And anyway, the episode wasn't really about Jack; it was about Hurley. And so, while Jack and Kate separately searched the jungle for a she-ain't-dead-yet Naomi (Wake up, Naomi — there's plot-contrivance work to be done...), and the French Lady dragged a hilariously snarky Ben around the jungle, Hurley got the news from Desmond that Charlie had died in the Looking Glass, effectively killing his happy, cannonball-splashing buzz. The despair that quietly drooped off his grizzled face was heartbreaking. With the spotlight of a premiere shining intensely upon him, Jorge Garcia totally delivered.

Through Hurley's L.A. and Island story arcs, ''The Beginning of the End'' delivered its most watercooler-worthy moments. Perhaps none was more momentous than his discovery of Jacob's cabin during his wayward trek through the jungle. (Or did Jacob's cabin find him? Apparently, the ghost shack is mobile.) Peeking inside a cracked window, our frazzle-haired hero saw a freaky sight: a shadowy figure kicking it in a rocking chair. I asked the instant-replay officials in my head to analyze the sequence, and they are convinced that the spectral entity was none other than Christian Shephard, Jack's corpse-MIA father, doing his best Whistler's Mother impression. And who am I to argue with the voices in my head? Season 4 Burning Question No. 2: Is Christian Shephard actually Jacob, or was Ghost Dad just keeping the chair warm while the Ben-directing Ghost Other was taking a wicked ghost whiz?

A perplexing poltergeist of a different stripe — and accent — haunted Hurley's flash-forward. One day while buying some snacks at a convenience store, Hurley spotted Charlie's spirit by the Ho Hos — the terrifying catalyst for his Camaro cannonball run. Of course, he kept this info from the detective assigned to his case, none other than Big Mike Walton, Ana Lucia's old patrol partner, who wins my award for Flashback Character Least Likely to Be Ever Seen Again. Admit it: When he called her ''gorgeous,'' you chuckled, right? Because I know how all of you just loooooooved old Dirty Harriet. But he was affecting — and an effective reminder of the provocatively wired interconnectedness of the larger Lost world. Might Big Mike become some kind of season 4 Sherlock Holmes, obsessed with cracking the secrets of the Oceanic Six? Season 4 Burning Question No. 3: Why can't the Oceanic Six tell the truth about their Island past?

Someone else desperate to know more about Hurley's Twilight Zone daze: the immediately arresting, sharply attired, cryptically named Matthew Abbaddon, played with quiet relish by The Wire's Lance Reddick. He tracked down Hurley at a sanitarium — dude thought he'd be safer if he just dismissed the Charlie visitations as crazy visions — and offered him an upgrade to a first-class loony bin with better views and more leg room. He presented himself as an employee of Oceanic Airlines, but when Hurley grew suspicious, Mr. Creepy cut to the chase: ''Are they still alive?'' Hurley freaked; Abbaddon walked out. Season 4 Burning Question No. 4: Who is Matthew Abbaddon really? And what are to make of that name? Matthew means ''gift of the Lord.'' By contrast, there's the hellish allusion of ''Abbaddon.'' My trusty TV Watch editor, Tom Conroy, pointed out to me that in the book of Revelation, Abaddon is ''the angel of the abyss'' and even the personification of death. I have theories — but they are best saved for next week, when we will encounter Matthew Abbaddon once again in an equally provocative scene.

Still, if I were to apply any Bible story to the premiere, it would be Jonah and the whale. Why? Because of the episode's curious fixation with fish, of course! Did you catch the chalkboard in background of that Hurley-Abbaddon scene? Sketched on it was a picture of a desert island and a big, toothy fish. There were also fish in Hurley's watercolor painting of an Eskimo. And there was another finny creature (partially obscured) printed on Charlie's T-shirt when the dead hobbit rocker — played by Dominic Monaghan, looking ethereally clean, like an airbrushed model — dropped in on Hurley for a (ghostly? hallucinatory?) visit. The self-sacrificing castaway had come to egg his old friend out of his hideaway hole and, more, to cajole him to do the right thing, which was to...what? Go back to the Island and save those left behind? It was unclear. ''They need you, Hugo,'' Charlie said. Of course, this is also the story of Jonah and the whale, which is never actually referred to as a whale but as a fish. Some scholars even suggest it was actually a shark. Jonah was given a calling to save damned souls from God's divine wrath. But instead of heeding the call, Jonah ran away. Bad Jonah! He got swallowed up by a fish, repented, and then, after being spit up (''hurled'' in some translations), finally fulfilled God's request. Season 4 Burning Question No. 5: Will the Oceanic Six answer Charlie's call and save the remaining castaways left behind on Hell Island?

Of course they will. But not yet. As he did with Jacob's haunted house, Hurley wished Charlie away — shades of ''Tricia Tanaka Is Dead,'' when Hurley used the power of positive thinking (and Island magic?) to restart the dead Dharma bus. In Hurley's final flash-forward scene, Jack (not yet sporting the beard; not yet screaming, ''We have to go back!'') stopped by the funny farm to shoot some hoops. Hurley told him that business about not doing the right thing, about being convinced that ''it'' wants them to go back — but Jack was having none of ''it,'' whatever ''it'' is. Season 4 Burning Question No. 6: What the hell do you think they were talking about?

These were the ideas and mysteries that captured my imagination. I would be remiss if I didn't add that I was moved by Hurley's attempts, both on the Island and in the future, to grieve and make sense of Charlie's death, and more, to honor his sacrifice by trusting his warning that the freighter isn't Penny's boat, that it might be really, really bad news. Which leads me to Season 4 Burning Question No. 7: Why does flash-forward Hurley now regret trusting Charlie and wish he had stuck with Jack instead of siding with freighter fraidy cat Locke? But enough of my questions — I want to hear your answers, plus your takes on all the stuff we didn't cover here, including the tribal split over the freighter-people issue and the arrival in the episode's last scene of Daniel Faraday, a fellow who brings with him to the Island even more burning questions — and a few truly curious friends, too.

Source: EW

The Looking Glass War Recap by Jeff Jensen

Jeff Jensen's recap of "Through the Looking Glass"

We got it wrong, didn't we? All the so-called clues in the text, all the suspected hints tucked in the subtext — Stephen Hawking and his time-warping black holes, Ms. Hawking and her symbolically loaded ouroboros pin, the Room 23 film and its hidden message, ''Only fools are trapped in time and space.'' For much of season 3, the freaky theorists among us suspected that Lost was setting us up for some continuum-contorting twist of Hiro Nakamura-esque proportions. Instead, the wrinkle in time that the show's sensational season finale laid on us was smaller and more human than our fantasy-soaked imaginations envisioned, and yet it was every bit the capture-the-imagination mindquake we were hoping for: Goodbye, flashbacks; hello, flash-forwards. Although I don't have confirmation that this narrative conceit will become Lost's new modus operandi, the epic episode seemed to strongly suggest that beginning next season, the on-Island drama in the present (or is that the new past?) will inform the revelations about the castaways' off-Island future (the new present?) — and vice versa. Lost, our great drama of anxiety in these terrible, terror-fried war-torn times, will become MASH and AfterMASH, rolled into one. Wow. Wow! Not for nothing did the plot of the finale hinge on the figurative flipping of a switch: With this simple shift in its dramatic paradigm, Lost flipped the switch on itself, revealing new dimensions to its creative world and grander ambitions in its exploration of redemption and damnation. And lest we miss the episode's most important implication amid all this wonky talk, we learned that yes, eventually, at least some of the castaways are definitely gonna get their butts rescued! (But how many? And who?) Again, I say: Wow! Wow!

Although the big twist was saved for the final moments of the episode, titled ''Through the Looking Glass,'' I suspect some of you smarties out there cottoned to it in the opening sequence. (Not me, though. Me dumb.) We saw Jack on a plane, badly bearded and guzzling booze, clearly a man transformed — for the worse. We weren't given a time frame for this flash-forward, and how coy of the show to give Jack a newspaper but not give us a good peek at the dateline. Something else about the newspaper was denied to us, too — a death notice (but whose?) that left Jack emotionally rattled. (Fun fact! The voice of the airplane captain apologizing for the turbulence was none other than Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof. His partner in crime, Carlton Cuse, also made a vocal cameo in the episode as a newscaster.) When Jack got off a plane, he drove to a bridge and made a call to a person unknown with a type of flip phone that didn't exist prior to the crash of Oceanic 815. (Or so my wife insists.) ''I just read — '' he said through tears, and immediately my mind linked to the Beatles' sonic collage ''A Day in the Life'' and the lyric ''I read the news today, oh, boy…'' Another line from the song — ''He blew his mind out in a car'' — came to mind when the despairing, spiritually distraught doc made a move to jump off the bridge. But Jack's suicide attempt was interrupted by a car crash, and suddenly, Action Jack, Island Superhero, found at least one fleeting moment of off-Island relevancy. As we watched him sink into the depths of pill-popping, booze-guzzling, rock-star-sunglasses-wearing spiritual oblivion — bobbing his head to Nirvana's ''Scentless Apprentice,'' no less! — Jack reminded me of all those stories of real-life heroes who can't make the adjustment back to ''normal life'' after their extended moment of living in a heightened reality fades. The theme also reminded me of two other pieces of plane-crash-survivor pop: Fearless, starring Jeff Bridges, and Castaway, starring Tom Hanks. Later in the episode, on the Island, Rousseau told Jack that if they were to be rescued, she would never want to leave: ''This is my home now. There is nothing for me off the Island.'' Perhaps in her oblique way, she was trying to warn Jack, too. ''Through the Looking Glass'' wasn't a fantasy about tumbling into Wonderland — it was a cautionary tale about what can happen when you tumble out of it.

The future drama of Jack was spliced into the Island-set story that brought the season-long conflict between the castaways and the Others to a close. It was also an interesting meditation on varying degrees of heroism, from the innocent, desperate-to-help idealism of Hurley to the by-any-means-necessary Machiavellian manipulations of Ben. (Assuming that you believe that deep down, Ben truly is a good guy. And you know what? I do.) There were many separate strands of plot — Charlie and Desmond in the Looking Glass trying to deactivate the jamming signal; Jack and the castaways trekking to the radio tower to hail Naomi's ship; Sayid, Jin, and Bernard on the beach battling Tom and the mercenary band of women-swiping thugs; Ben at the Others' encampment, scrambling to repair his unraveling plans amid a growing revolt among his doubting people; and John Locke in the Dharma mass grave, finding new life from an old, young friend. (Walt! Frakkin' Walt! Waaaaaaaaaaalt!) Taken together, the finale paid off on a plethora of season 3 plot points and set up many more for next season and beyond.


The castaway exodus provided the backbone for the sprawling story. They began on the beach, with tearful goodbyes said to the brave trio of sharpshooters tasked with blowing the invading Others to hell. Rose made Bernard repeat, ''I am a dentist; I am not Rambo.'' I also loved the line Naomi said to Jack as they trudged along the shoreline and into the jungle like Israelites marching toward the promised land: ''What did you do before you became Moses?'' (Even Jack the Shepherd had to laugh at that one.)

Of course, Jack's ''blow 'em all to hell'' gambit to avert the Others' Passover-style abduction plot didn't go off exactly as planned: the sharpshooters succeeded in detonating only two explosions instead of three, killing some but not all of Tom's posse. When the castaways realized something had gone wrong at the beach, Kate wanted to go back, and wanted Sawyer to go with her. The shaggy con man — sleepwalking through life since killing Anthony Cooper in ''The Brig'' — seemed not to care. But like the latter-day Han Solo that he is, Sawyer roused himself to reluctant valor, though he refused to take his Princess Leia with him. Jack later had to spell it out for her: ''He only wanted to protect you.'' Then, the whopper: ''I love you,'' the doc told Kate. Though she didn't say it, Kate's eyes finished the implied Empire Strikes Back homage: I know, they said. It hit me like Cupid's arrow: All these weeks of Jack cozying up to Juliet may have been a ruse, perhaps an attempt to draw info out of the former Other. Clearly, next season will focus on the Jack-Kate-Juliet-Sawyer quadrangle.

It also appears that next season will see Ben rejoin the beach bunch as a prisoner. Tipped off by the lovely ladies of the Looking Glass that the castaways were en route to the radio tower, the Lord of the Otherflies moved to intercept them, determined to prevent them from leaving the Island. And having learned that his daughter, Alex, had betrayed his plans via her boyfriend, Karl, Ben brought her with him, telling her that he was abandoning her to the castaways, her ''new family.'' We learned that the reason Ben was so determined to keep Alex and Karl separated was that he didn't want her to get pregnant and fall victim to the Island's curse — which means that at least one of the 1,193,004 theory/predictions that I've made this season actually came true! (That's one more than last year — look at the big brain on me!)

When Ben caught up with the castaways, he and Jack retreated to a quiet place for a superpower summit that played out like some Art of War scenario from hell. What came out of Ben's mouth was either a torrent of lies or some serious foreshadowing of next season's central conflict. He alleged that Naomi was not the woman she said she was but rather a representative of a group of people who've been trying to find the Island for a very long time, presumably for nefarious, exploitive reasons. These people, he claimed, were ''the bad guys,'' and bringing them to the Island would be very, very, very bad — for the Others, for the Castaways, and especially for the Island. Ben's deal: Naomi's satellite phone in exchange for Jin, Bernard, and Sayid, who could be heard yelling, ''Don't negotiate with terrorists!'' over the walkie-talkie as Ben laid out his proposal. Jack did the Bushy thing and refused. Ben ordered that the hostages be killed. Bang! Bang! Bang! Jack responded by beating Ben into a bloody pulp, an act of violence as terrifying as it was cathartic. Boy, did Ben deserve it. And boy, do I worry about the rage in Jack's heart, especially when he followed it up by swearing War on Terror vengeance on all the Others. His ultimate dream: humiliating Ben by making him watch as the castaways get rescued — then killing him. Heavy stuff. I wonder: Did George Bush have these kinds of daydreams about Saddam Hussein?

The twisted twist of Jack's rage was that back on the beach, Sayid and company were still alive. Ben's order was, apparently, a coded bluff: Pryce actually fired his bullets into the sand, even though Doubting Tom — increasingly disenchanted with Ben's leadership — wanted to blow the captives away. But the mercenaries paid the price for not killing and running when the castaway cavalry arrived in the form of...Hurley, charging onto the beach in his magic Dharma bus! Sawyer, Juliet, and Sayid sprang into action. Bullets were fired, necks were broken, and the Others were subdued — and then executed. In a move that left Hurley and Juliet shocked, Sawyer put a bullet into Tom. ''That's for taking the kid off the raft,'' said Sawyer, referring to the Others' abduction of Walt in the finale of season 1. ''Dude, it was over,'' Hurley said. ''He surrendered.'' Sawyer's response: ''I didn't believe him.'' Like Jack, Sawyer's ''heroism'' in this episode was darkened by the complexity of personal history, unresolved angst, and deep-seated fear. Sawyer, it seems, is still stuck in the brig of his damaged past. Here's hoping season 4 will see a prison break.

A cleaner portrait of selfless heroism was provided by Charlie during his Herculean assignment in the Island's aquatic underworld. I loved the wisecracks while the lovely ladies of the Looking Glass were playing good-cop/bad-cop on him. And after some bloody speargun violence involving the lovely ladies, Patchy, and Desmond, Charlie succeeded in shutting down the station's signal jammer by inputting a harmonic code, one loaded with tons of theory-spawning potential — the Beach Boys' ''Good Vibrations'' (a song, by the way, that inspired the Beatles to record ''A Day in the Life'' — coincidence?). And when the light stopped blinking, a transmission came in — it was Penelope, Desmond's lady love, confirming for certain that nope, Naomi wasn't working for her, and nope, she doesn't have a ship waiting offshore. Then Charlie died. Now, I know a lot of people are going to question the logic of this scene, as it seemed Charlie had many options to save himself. But remember why Charlie swam down to the Looking Glass in the first place: to fulfill the requirements of Desmond's prophecy of rescue for Claire, baby Aaron, and hopefully the rest of the castaways. For that to happen, Charlie needed to die, per the rules established about Desmond's precognition. The image of him pushing away from the window and crossing himself is as close as we get to visual poetry in the chat-driven medium of TV, and it got to me. Rest in peace, Charlie Pace. You earned it.

The drama of season 3 came to a climax in the shadow of the old Dharma radio tower, a legendary locale that's been begging for a visit since season 1. With the jamming device disabled and Rousseau's distress call turned off, the mysterious Naomi phoned the freighter — then sputtered blood thanks to a knife in the back. The cause of her fatal (presumably) misfortune? Locke, who was beckoned out of the Dharma ditch by a vision (?) of Walt, like Christ summoning Lazarus back to life, and who seemed to share Ben's seemingly mystical conviction that the castaways were not meant to leave these Twilight Zone tropics. At least not yet. Jack was furious. He grabbed the phone. Locke pulled his gun. A standoff ensued, and Locke was the one who blinked. Distraught, the born-yet-again true believer disappeared into the jungle as Jack made the call to Naomi's freighter. Ben begged him not to. ''Making that call will be the beginning of the end!'' he said. ''Jack, please — you don't know what you're doing!'' Jack: ''I know exactly what I'm doing.'' The castaways cheered their fearless-leader hero as a friendly voice on the other end named Minkowski told him that rescue was on the way. (''Minkowski,'' no doubt, is a nod to Hermann Minkowski's theory of four-dimensional space-time, which has inspired many Lost theories.) Ben shook his head in defeat — or was that a bloody smile on his Clay Aiken-after-a-bar-brawl face? Did Jack just save his friends or doom them all? Take your time answering the questions: We have seven months to debate and theorize.

And we also have seven months to debate the climactic, show-changing twist. In the final scene — the big reveal that the whole flashback was actually a flash-forward — we saw Jack meeting a cleaned-up Kate near the airport. He asked her why she didn't go to the funeral for the mystery person — a dude or dudette so dislikable that nobody except Jack bothered to pay his respects. (Who could this be? Locke? Ben? Who?) Their dialogue was full of other cryptic bits that raised many other questions. Jack: ''I'm sick of lying. We made a mistake!'' (About what? Have the surviving castaways been sworn to secrecy about their Island ordeal?) Kate: ''He's going to be wondering where I am.'' (Who's ''he''? Sawyer? Maybe her husband, the cop played by Nathan Fillion?) As the third season of Lost passed into history, Jack called out to the woman he said he loved: ''We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back!'' But Kate just drove away, leaving Jack the Hero all alone, and hopelessly...lost.

Clearly, there's more to be said — and if you come back to ew.com on Friday, we'll analyze some more in the last official Doc Jensen Lost column of the year. (Feel free to e-mail me your finale reactions directly at JeffJensenEW@aol.com.) But I want to you to get talking in the message board below. The big question: Flash-forwards. You digging this idea as much as I am — or do you think this has Big Mistake written all over it? Debate. Discuss. Fill in the blanks of what space and time have prevented me from addressing. Then, come back Friday for some theories, some final statements about season 3, some goodbyes, and even some tasty parting gifts!

PS: I know you're going to talk about it, so my quick take: No, I do not think Jack's references to his father meant that time has been changed and that Christian never died. I chalk it up to plain old drunk-guy/sad-dude crazy talk.

PPS: Hoffs/Drawlar = ''flash-forward.'' If you know what I mean, then...you know what I mean.

Recap by Jeff Jensen

Hit Lists - Review of Greatest Hits by Jeff Jensen

Review of Greatest Hits by Jeff Jensen.

I wouldn't be surprised if my grandmother had a heart attack last night. See, my mom's mom is a Lost fan, too, and she's taken quite a shine to the star of last night's installment, Charlie Pace, the former smack-injecting British rocker whose famed question still haunts us nearly three years later: ''Guys...where are we?'' For most of the episode, titled ''Greatest Hits,'' it appeared that Charlie would never get an answer to his inquiry this side of heaven. (Or hell, or limbo, or wherever the heck the Island is not.) Yep: Desmond had another one of his precognitive ''You're gonna die, bruthah'' brain farts. And like ''Catch-22'' a couple weeks ago, the season's penultimate outing toyed wickedly with Charlie's fate and my grandmother's nervous system with a story that seemed to be barreling toward tragedy. Hopefully she survived long enough to see the breathtaking (literally) final scene, though I should probably warn her to have paramedics and shock paddles ready for next weeks' two-hour season finale. Yes, Charlie ducked the reaper's scythe yet again. But Desmond's prophecy is still very much in play. Grandmother, may I suggest some tranquilizers?

As for me, ''Greatest Hits'' rocked my face like a Pete Townsend guitar solo blasting a front-row groupie at a Who reunion concert. It was kind of a reunion show, wasn't it? Lost's curiously mixed third season has inspired a great deal of whining from those bothered by the way it split the castaways into separate subplots. Despite the absence of John Locke — currently pursuing a solo career as a dying holy man in a mass grave of gassed Dharma bums (maddeningly for some, I'm sure, that story line wasn't addressed last night) — the gang has been back on the beach for a few weeks now, albeit splintered into bickering, suspicious, secret-keeping factions. ''Greatest Hits'' finally collected them into a dynamic unit — you know, just like an actual ''greatest hits'' album. There they were in the opening sequence, the entire frayed Fellowship trekking out into the valley of the foreshadowing of war, led by Jack, their grim Aragorn. Bringing up the rear of this ragtag parade was Charlie, our cheery Frodo, soon to be saddled with an awful ringbearer's task. In fact, ''Greatest Hits,'' heavy with power-chord riffs on friendship, heroism, and weighty responsibilities, was downright Tolkienesque, minus the turgid prose. (My mailbox is ready for your flaming arrows.)

The episode was all about the Oceanic 815 castaways' preparation for the mother of all battles with Ben and his barren, baby-hungry Others — a battle over mothers, actually. In the valley, Jack explained the gory game plan: Let the Others storm the beach, let them raid the tents that Juliet will mark with white stones — and then let them find Black Rock dynamite instead of Sun, Kate, or any of the women. It seems Jack and Juliet have been hatching this scheme for days, even enlisting Danielle Rousseau's help in gathering the explosives out of the old slave ship. (Finally, the loony French castaway's actions in ''The Brig'' are explained.) As he raved about no more running and no more hiding, about one irresistible opportunity to beat Ben at his own 15-moves-ahead chess-playing games, about the chance to expunge once and for all the evildoing terrorists of Quagmire Island, Jack's intensity was more terrifying than inspiring, more obsessive Captain Ahab than cool-headed Captain Picard. ''We're going to blow them all to hell,'' he said, nearly spitting with bloodlust. (Clearly, Jack's Hydra-station character rehabilitation didn't totally stick.)

Here's a question for you: Do you like Jack? I know my wife doesn't. ''He's such a pompous ass,'' she said. I tried to argue the merits of deeply flawed heroes on prime-time television. Amy just rolled her eyes. (Believe me, those brown orbs get plenty of exercise, especially when her husband is in Doc Jensen nuthouse mode.)

Later in the episode, Sayid diagnosed the doctor's problem: Consumed by anger and fear, Jack was more interested in taking down the Others than in getting the castaways off the Island. And the prospect of honest-to-goodness rescue seems to be legit: Sayid believed that Danielle's looping SOS signal was interfering with Naomi's satellite phone; if he could disable the signal, maybe they could make contact with Naomi's ship. But Juliet revealed an additional complication. Apparently, Ben's been jamming the radio tower's frequencies via another Dharma station, this one offshore and underwater, connected at the end of the Cable of Fate that runs into the ocean. (The radio tower, Rousseau's transmission, the cable, black and white motifs, and the sight-for-sore-eyes return of Bernard and Rose and even Nadia — ''Greatest Hits'' was also a proverbial box set of rare but beloved B-side Lost mysteries and arcana.) Our latest Dharma hatch has the most loaded, imagination-firing name: the Looking Glass. Its logo? A white rabbit, of course! At that moment of revelation, a nation of Lost obsessives paused their DVRs and began rummaging for their copies of the Alice books. But ''Greatest Hits'' also pointed toward another fantasy text that's worthy of investigation, one not as famous yet more explicitly Lost-esque. More on that in a second.

Initially, Jack wasn't interested in Sayid's phone-home pipe dream, especially after hearing from Juliet that the Looking Glass was flooded because of an unspecified ''accident'' and that swimming down to flip the jamming switch was basically a suicide mission. But he changed his tune once Karl arrived on the beach with a message: Ben had stepped up the invasion plan. The Others were coming. Now. With his intricately designed counterattack ambush suddenly imperiled, Jack realized there might be not be a chance for rescue; the Looking Glass mission would have to be undertaken ASAP.

Which brought Charlie center stage. And by that time, he was ready for the spotlight, as was his actor, Dominic Monaghan, who I thought turned in his best performance yet on Lost. Desmond's latest Charlie-gonna-die vision suggested that he would be the man for the Looking Glass switch-flipping job. In his mind the psychic Scot saw his fellow Brit inside the hatch, surrounded by gunmen, flipping the switch, then — gulp — drowning. He also saw something else, something that upped Charlie's stake in actually allowing events to unfold as predicted: a helicopter, landing on the beach, taking Claire and baby Aaron off the Island. At last, rescue — but per the perplexing cause-and-effect rules of Desmond's future-seeing powers, the dream would only come true if Charlie was willing to play the part of martyr.

And he was. Even before Desmond spelled it out for him, we saw that Charlie had begun to reconcile himself to the idea that fate was hell-bent on calling his number. To that end, he began making a list of his five favorite moments ever — the ''Greatest Hits'' of his life. It was intended to be a love letter to Claire, but it proved to be so much more. In flashbacks, we saw each of them:

Charlie hears his song ''You All Everybody'' on the radio for the first time It couldn't have come at a better time, too. His band, Driveshaft, was going nowhere. Seriously. Their touring van had busted a wheel during a driving rainstorm. Charlie wanted to quit. The album was tanking, they were only booking loser gigs, they sucked and couldn't face it — and then he heard it, loud and clear on the radio. It was like Island magic on a lame man's legs. Charlie's hope had been rewarded; his optimism restored and hard-wired. (Homework: Compare this moment to Hurley's similarly themed ''Road to Shambala'' broken-Dharma-bus escapade.)

Charlie's father teaches him to swim And with the old ''Trust me, I'll catch you'' bait and switch, no less. Once again on Lost, a father burns his son — but this time, for a good reason. And with the horror story of Ben and his manipulative and mean dad still fresh in our minds, this deceit seemed downright sweet. Lesson learned: Courage.

Charlie's brother gives him the ''DS'' ring for Christmas We used to think ''DS'' stood for Driveshaft. Nope: It was a family heirloom, passed down through the mother's side and given to the firstborn; it stands for Dexter Stratton. Liam gave it to his little brother as an acknowledgment that Charlie really was the good son of the two — an ironic, happy-ending inversion of the Jacob and Esau story, the older brother willingly surrendering the birthright to the younger. The relationship between Charlie and Liam would ultimately become more complicated, but the fact that Charlie decided to memorialize the memory on his list indicated that bygones were bygones. And in doing so, the ring became imbued with forgiveness and grace, making the precioussssss object a mirror twin to the one Gollum killed for and Frodo sought to destroy (but couldn't) in those aforementioned hobbit books. (Fun fact! Dexter Stratton is a fusion of two names from the 1980s Ricky Schroder sitcom Silver Spoons!)

Charlie saves a woman from being mugged and is dubbed a hero In the pouring rain, too — another memory wet with the semiotics of baptism. The timing: Charlie's street-corner minstrel days, first seen in Desmond's time-travel episode. Charlie's song selection: Oasis' ''Wonderwall,'' a tune about an imaginary friend (Dave? Jacob?); its title is a reference to George Harrison's soundtrack to a ''lost'' movie of the same name. The woman whom Charlie saves is also something of a blast from the (Lost) past: It's Nadia, Sayid's Iraqi lady love, last seen in John Locke's ''Daddy made me rip off the Mob'' flashback from last season. The lady sure gets around, doesn't she? But why? Is her presence in these past lives purely coincidental or evidence of a divine (or devious) design that links all the castaways? Questions, I think, for another season to answer....

And finally, Charlie's most favorite moment, No. 1 on his all-time personal hit parade: his first encounter with Claire, on the night they crashed on the Island 'Nuff said.

The irony of Charlie's modest list of ''greatest hits'' is that as a reflection of the life he's lived, it doesn't tell the complete story. You get no taste of Charlie the diaper-shilling sellout, Charlie the grifter-drifter junkie. Like any greatest-hits collection, it ignores all the crappy tunes — you know, the vast majority of an artist's catalog. But what's interesting is how, in the end, the real Charlie Pace becomes the mythic Charlie Pace of his list. Optimistic. Courageous. Heroic. Ready to sacrifice himself for his family, his community, for total strangers. Ready to take the leap of faith that could end his life. You have to wonder if the Island has something to do with it. Here is this magical place that heals and enhances the body. Might it also amplify a person's character or, more specifically, amplify his self-image? If so, then Charlie's list may have saved the day for the castaways, for it visualized a man capable of actually saving the day. Then again, if this idea is valid, what does it say about Jack, Charlie's mirror twin in this episode? Here's a man who tries so hard to be great, who tries so hard to be the hero-leader, yet the undercurrent of doubt, resentment, and anger is always there, ready to ruin his best intentions. Or maybe his worst: For all his bluster about wanting to be a leader, the truth is that's his wounded child talking, desperate to prove his worth to Daddy. Last season, Jack's sneaky save-the-day plan went up in smoke thanks to Michael's betrayal. This time, one wonders if his own bad self will do him and the castaways in. Physician, heal thyself — stat!

But that's next week. This week, there was only triumph. Desmond tried to talk Charlie out of it, even offered to trade places with him — just like the Charles Darnay-Sydney Carton sacrificial swap in Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, which was also the title given to the first episode of this season, a title that, finally, here at the end, really begins to make sense. As Charlie dove into the water and toward his destiny, the famous final lines of the novel came to mind: ''It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.'' We watched him as he swam down to the Looking Glass — a stunningly realized, Emmy-worthy triumph of F/X that evoked James Cameron's movie The Abyss. And just when it seemed Charlie was going to run out of air (here's my grandmother, clutching her pounding heart), the former junior swimming champ made it to the moon pool of the hulking deep-sea station and discovered — air! The place wasn't flooded, after all. (That Ben — such a liar.) But it was staffed with cute girls in jumpsuits with big guns, and as the episode came to a close, they had their weapons trained on Charlie's head, and suddenly we remembered: Desmond's prophecy is still very much in effect.

Take It or Leave It

Connections and observations that may have something to do with something or nothing to do with anything:

''The looking-glass self'' A psychological concept that states that we craft our identity based on how we are seen and deemed useful by society. The Jack and Charlie arcs in this episode in particular resonated with this idea.

The Moon Pool, by Abraham Merritt A 1919 ''lost world'' novel, filled with Lost resonance. A mysterious island in the South Pacific. A morally ambiguous monster. A scientist-skeptic hero. A duplicitous Russian villain. A battle royal between good and evil. Check out this synopsis.

Jacob's Room, by Virginia Woolf Why didn't we get this reference last week when Ben took Locke to the haunted house in the jungle to meet the literally elusive godfather of the Others? This book merits serious investigation in regard to the mystery of Jacob and, more to the point, Locke's experience of the mystery of Jacob. I'm wondering if Lost was nodding toward this book last night when Charlie mentioned the Night and Day Cafe in Manchester. Now, there is a real Night and Day Cafe in Manchester. But Night and Day also happens to be the book Woolf wrote right before Jacob's Room. Read this take on the latter novel's plot, then consider again Locke's experience of Jacob's room. Illuminating.

The Return of the Jedi Here's more fodder for all of you who see Lost as a latter-day Star Wars: Luke and the gang going down to the moon of Endor to deactivate the shield protecting the second Death Star = Charlie going down to the underwater Looking Glass to deactivate the jamming device keeping the Island hidden from the world. C'mon now! Are you with me?

Questions

1. I think Naomi is full of crap. Her story about how Driveshaft became popular again after the crash, how a greatest-hits album was released and became a big hit — all fibs designed to ingratiate herself further with the castaways and further sell this implausible story of how Oceanic 815 was found, along with the dead bodies of all its passengers. Are you really buying this ''second plane'' theory? And even if you are, doesn't it bug you that the castaways aren't more bugged by it and aren't even questioning this mystery lady's integrity?

2. The Jin-Sun moment — one among many scenes devoted to the couplings among the castaways. (It was not for nothing, I think, that everyone was busy tying knots in this episode.) Why can't Sun bring herself to tell Jin the truth about the Curse that dooms pregnant women on the Island?

3. Charlie-Hurley, the real Ruth and Naomi of Lost. I found their ''If you leave, I will follow anywhere'' parting vaguely end-of-Gilmore Girls-ish. And I gotta admit, I cried. Did you?

4. And last but not least: Charlie. Do you think he's a goner next episode? (FYI: For more about Dominic Monaghan, his thoughts on Charlie, and his future on Lost, check out this week's EW, on sale today. It features a profile on the actor, written by my good friend and colleague Dan Snierson. He even got to visit the Looking Glass set! Lucky dog!)




Recap by Jeff Jensen