Room 23 Lottery Contest

As a thank you to all of the supporters of Room 23 and of my products in the Room 23 Store I created a contest page. The first Contest is for a Starter Set of my Lost Trading Cards. Go to the Lottery Page and add your name and E-Mail in the Comments.

http://room23lottery.blogspot.com/

Lost's Michael Emerson Injured During Filming

Tue., Mar. 23, 2010 1:15 PM PDT by Marc Malkin

Michael Emerson gets beat up a lot playing Ben Linus on Lost.

So much so that when friends recently saw the Emmy winner sporting a major bruise in Hawaii, they thought it was fake and possibly just some leftover makeup from a day of shooting.

But, no, it was real. What happened? Read on for the painful details.

"He has a huge shiner on his right eye!" a source reports. "Apparently, he has a fight scene and the choreography when slightly awry. One of his costars actually connected with Michael's face and gave him a huge black eye."

You'd think the real-life injury would be incorporated into the Lost storyline, but our source said, "Michael joked that the makeup department now has to hide his black eye every day instead of creating one."
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b173023_losts_michael_emerson_injured_during.html

"Recon" Poll Results

What did you think of "Recon"?

As AWESOME as Miles and Sawyer's Cop Partnership 7 (33%)

As GREAT as an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" 5 (23%)

OK 7 (33%)

BAD, I felt Conned out of an hour of my life. 2 (9%)

So HORRIBLE it smelled like a pile of dead Ajira pasengers 0 (0%)

Votes so far: 21


What were your favorate things about "Recon"

Sawyer's Bust 4 (25%)

Sawyer & Miles as LAPD Cops 7 (43%)

Seeing Charlotte Staples Lewis again 5 (31%)

Seeing Liam Pace again 3 (18%)

Watershipdown cameo 4 (25%)

Miles "Die alone" comment 5 (31%)

Sawyer visiting the Polarbear cages again 5 (31%)

Zoe 1 (6%)

Widmore's men jumping out at Sawyer 0 (0%)

Sawyer visiting Widmore on the Sub 5 (31%)

MIB's story about his "Crazy Mother" 10 (62%)

Sawyer revealing that he's setting MIB and Widmore against each other. 6 (37%)

Claire attacking Kate 3 (18%)

Votes so far: 16


Whats in the locked door in the Sub?

A weapon for use on MIB 5 (33%)

MIB's crazy Mother 0 (0%)

Walt 0 (0%)

Desmond 6 (40%)

Aaron and Ji Yeon 0 (0%)

Anthony Cooper 0 (0%)

Annie 0 (0%)

A white bunny with an 8 marked on it 0 (0%)

Something/one else 4 (26%)

Votes so far: 15


Who was MIB/Locke refering to when he told Kate about his "Crazy Mother"?

His own Mother 5 (38%)

Locke's Mother because he's starting to confuse his own memories with Locke's since Locke is becoming part of him 2 (15%)

MIB using Locke's history to lie to Kate 6 (46%)

Votes so far: 13


Who killed the Ajira Passengers?

MIB/Smokey 6 (54%)

Widmore's Men 3 (27%)

Someone else 2 (18%)

Votes so far: 11

Tail Section Artwork for 6.9

I'M ON A TREE!

'Lost' star surprised by fans' grief

By BILL HARRIS, QMI Agency

Last Updated: March 18, 2010 1:46pm

Sawyer (Josh Holloway, left) and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) in one of Lost's heartbreaking death scenes. LOS ANGELES — Elizabeth Mitchell said she was shocked by the outpouring of grief from fans when her character on Lost was killed earlier this season.

“That was surprising,” said Mitchell, who played Juliet. “I never thought Juliet was particularly likable, so I was surprised that people were sad that she died.”

Mitchell has gone on to star in V, which returns with a new episode March 30 on ABC and A. Lost, meanwhile, is in the middle of its sixth and final season on ABC and CTV.

In Lost, of course, death is a relative thing. Mitchell is returning to the show in some form, and she said she was due to receive the series-finale script some time this week.

When asked if Juliet and Sawyer (played by Josh Holloway) might be living together happily in Lost’s alternate universe, Mitchell said, “I love to think that.”

Mitchell chuckled when considering that Juliet kind of died twice. She fell down a well in the finale of Season 5, and was presumed dead, but then she was still breathing for a short time in the first episode of Season 6, just long enough to die in Sawyer’s arms.

“I had somebody say to me, ‘Like, really? I already cried!’ ” Mitchell said with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘Well, we didn’t ask you to cry again! I didn’t write it! They just asked me to come back and I said yes!’

“So maybe a little overkill on that one.”
http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/tv/2010/03/18/13277856.html

'Lost' Releasing Character Music Videos

March 18, 2010 02:56:23 GMT

The first one is dedicated to Ben and more which are set to different recording artists will come.
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ABC has announced that it will release a music video in tribute of "Lost" characters one by one. The first one has already been put on the network's official site, highlighting on Michael Emerson's Ben and aptly utilizing Michael Jackson's song "Ben".

The music videos are made in celebration of the sixth and final season. Beside putting a character in spotlight, the video will also contain footage from this season. To follow Ben's video are that of Sawyer, Richard Alpert, Sun & Jin, Desmond, Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sayid and Locke. They will be released each week on ABC.com.

"Lost" is airing every Tuesdays at 9/8c. There are eight episodes left before the show reaches its conclusion. Next week's episode will be Richard-centric and through the character, some of the island's mysteries will be unveiled.
http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00031354.html

Doc Jensen: 'Lost' recap: Working the Angles

This Sawyer-centric episode gets us set up for the action to come next, while possibly giving some insight into Fake Locke
By Jeff Jensen Mar 17, 2010

When Lost fans speak of ''set-up'' episodes, they're usually trying to be kind about an hour wherein nothing really happened besides moving characters emotionally and placing them geographically so they are primed and positioned for more eventful episodes to come. This wasn't that kind of set-up episode, even though it often played the part. While Queen Ilana’s beach crew cooled their heels off screen, King Crock Locke shepherded his freaked-out flock of ex-Others across The Island, first to Crazy Claire’s cozy-creepy Little Yoda Hut on the Prairie, then to Banyan Tree Creek. At one point, we got a shot where ''The Smoke-Thing'' practically played traffic cop, motioning his herd along the path like a flight attendant directing passengers off a plane after an emergency landing. (In a deleted scene, Cindy noted his technique, tried to correct him, and then got slapped silly for being ''inappropriate.'') Along the way, Locke Ness Monster diverted Secret Agent Sawyer to Hydra Island to smoke out insurgents among the Ajira passengers. Instead, Dharma's former security chief and de facto sheriff made the acquaintance of the smaller island's new regent, exiled uber-Other Charles Widmore — a little Elba for the Island's deposed Napoleon. Sawyer returned to Smokey with intel (Widmore's got goons, guns, and sonic fences) and new mysteries. (What — or who — is locked up in the submarine? Who slaughtered the Ajira 316 redshirts?) He also came back with a plan to get himself, Kate, and presumably Jin and Sun off the Island. Kate wondered: But who's going to fly the airplane? Silly rabbit! Don't you know Sawyer is all about the Watership Down? In short, ''Recon'' told us where almost everyone in the saga currently stands (and sits) in advance of significant action.

And yet, like a certain red-headed archaeologist who found great booty while digging through James Ford's sock drawer, I found much to treasure and ogle within ''Recon.'' I was riveted by the return of Sawyer to the narrative mainstage and loved the trickster, long-con storytelling; every line seemed to be possessed with double meanings, every scene seemed to be pregnant with possibilities. Emphasis on possessed. And pregnant. (I'll explain as we go.) The first line of the episode came from Island Sawyer as he burned himself on a coffee pot: ''Son of a bitch!'' Of course, those were Juliet's final words before detonating Jughead. Juliet's name was never spoken in the episode, but she haunted the proceedings via association, as did several other dead friends, including hobbity dope fiend Charlie Pace and especially fate-screwed whiz kid Daniel Faraday. In fact, I was reminded of Eloise Hawking and her snake-eating-its-tail ouroboros broach when Sideways James issued the last line of his L.A. Confidential arc as he pinned fugitive Hoodie Kate against a fence: ''Son of a bitch!'' ''Recon'' spiraled through space and time and passed through metaphorical realms of limbo and worse to tell a story about Sawyer choosing to let go of the hell in his heart and replacing it with a dream of heaven.

This ''set-up'' episode was all about set-ups, from its opening sequence fake-out that seemed to present Sideways James Ford as every bit the slutty, soul-numbed vengeance-questing criminal as his Island iteration, but then revealed himself to be a… slutty, soul-numbed vengeance-questing cop. No doubt the happy sunflower glory days of his previous life as Dharma Initiative security chief had prepared him for the gig. But alas, there was no Juliet in this sad sunflower's life, and we were made to ponder if that made all the difference. His partner seemed to think so. Miles! Detective Miles Straume, who tried to fill Jim's lonely void by setting his buddy up with a blast from Lost's freighter-folk past, Sideways Charlotte Lewis. (Apparently, no matter the world, Miles will always end up wearing a badge with Sawyer.)

In the Island world, Fake Locke scrambled to manage the suspicious and impatient personalities within his Island escape club with what seemed to me to be an interconnecting series of short cons. Strategy? I think Smokey sent Sawyer to the Widmore Zooropa — in part — to get Kate's guardian angel out of his no-hair so he could isolate her for a Claire attack, then save her from it, so he could get a chance to spin her under this thumb. His preferred tactic seems to be the very thing that Sideways James struggled to embrace in his story: emotional intimacy. UnLocke tried to bond with Kate by unlocking a little bit of himself — cryptic tidbits about his background, like semi-redacted details from his dubious dossier of his life. Who's his bad mom? What were those ''growing pains''? Smoke-Thing, who the hell are you? Cain? Abel? Are you the evil demiurge Yaldabaoth or are you the Gnostic spirit Eve-Zoe? Are you the fulfillment of my Evil Aaron theory? My benevolent Swamp-Thing theory? Or are you Hamlet? Norman Bates? Or Stephen King's Carrie? Whoooooo are you, Smokey? Who-hoo? Who-hoo? Because I REALLYWANNAKNOW…

And you know what, kids? I think I do know. Because it seemed to me that Fake Locke was pulling another con, too, one that may have revealed his true character. The episode was called ''Recon,'' which itself was a con. We were clearly supposed to assume it was short for ''reconnaissance mission.'' But ''Recon'' was also a pun for ''Re-con'' — as in ''a previously executed con, done again.'' The story flicked at all of Sawyer's classic con man stories, from ''Confidence Man'' to ''LaFleur.'' I think FrankenLocke picked one of those scams to repeat anew — and I think I'm pretty creeped out by the implications.

The Sideways World
Souvenir of Hell

This prison has now become your home
A sentence you seem prepared to pay
It took a day to build the city
As I returned across the lands I'd known
I recognized the fields where I'd once played
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

—Sting, ''Fortress Around You Heart''

The name was Ford. James Ford. And only James Ford. Never Sawyer: Sideways Jim could never take the handle of the man of who destroyed his family and took away his childhood. That was one difference between Sideways James and Island Sawyer. Here was another: Detective James Ford was a horrible con man. Everyone could spot his tells. Everyone could see through his Steve McQueen cool. The grifter chick in the motel. Charlotte ''Indiana Jones'' Lewis. His partner, Miles Straume. We didn't want him to have the tragic past of his Island counterpart. We didn't want him to have the dark heart that his childhood horror show had sired. But alas, he did. He was a cop in name only. His badge, a mere means to an end. His mission was two-fold: Find the Monster. Kill him. And yet, by story's end, we were left to wonder if James would really do the deed if he got the chance. Just nurturing this hate had come at a cost. He could share his body with a woman, but not his soul. And in the eyes of his partner — his friend — he was fundamentally untrustworthy. When he got his Sideways storyline mirror scene, Ford punched the loathsome face staring back at him. What he wants is to be free and to be known, to be loved and to love — to be James LeFleur, Dharma security honcho and kick-ass Juliet boyfriend. Last week, Benjamin Linus went rummaging through Island Sawyer's tent/library and found a text by Benjamin Disraeli called ''Justice is Truth In Action.'' I prefer this other Disraeli quote for Sideways Sawyer: ''Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.'' Now there's a motto worthy of a dollar bill.

Regardless, my guess is that Sideways Ford will get a chance to prove his moral metal when he finally tracks down Sideways Anthony Cooper at… Sideways John Locke's wedding.

I've enjoyed almost all the Sideways stories so far this season, and I've had fun deconstructing them to bits in this space each week. But thinking through ''Recon,'' I realized that looking at the forest was more valuable than examining the trees. This was a story about an authority figure — a lawman — who was working the system and abusing his position with it to pursue a self-serving, possibly evil agenda. I hope that sounds like the Man In Black to you, because it sure does to me. Until the events of ''The Incident,'' what role did he serve on the Island? Rousseau: ''Security system.'' Eko and Ben: Judge. FUN FACT! The Book of Judges in the Bible describes the series of ''Judges'' that God would appoint and task with bringing the stray sheep of Israel back into spiritual relationship with God, only to themselves fall prey to temptation and corruption and need to be removed from power and replaced. Case in point: Samson. The Book of Judges culminates with combined forces of Israel, led by the tribe of Dan, warring with the tribe of Benjamin. Ben loses. Uh-oh.

Of course, if I'm correct about the forest, than the trees become more interesting. Like Detective Ford's botched ''Pigeon Drop'' sting, when Ford told the grifter woman that the cops wanted her husband, not her. The woman was a dead ringer for Charlotte Lewis, who during her brief time on Lost was romantically linked with… Daniel Faraday. Then there was time on the clock: 8:42. Back in ''The Substitute,'' we learned that 8 = Hurley Reyes and 42 = Kwon, which could either be Jin or Sun. Interesting that as of last night's episode, Hurley and the Kwons were the only Jacob candidates who have not gotten a Sideways episode yet. BTW: Jin is the only husband on the show — even if his wedding ring is currently in Sun's pocket.


PROJECT FOR NEXT WEEK'S DOC JENSEN! Review all the Sideways stories. Can they be viewed as allegories for Smokey? In my Doc Jensen columns yesterday, I examined how Lost has been fixated with the themes of divorce and children this season, in addition to mirrors and shackles. Can these things, too, be applied to Smokey? Something to consider next week — and something I'm going to factor into my blockbuster theory that closes this column.

But we have miles to go first. I mean Miles Straume, who said some curious things himself in this episode. Did you catch that he has a girlfriend? Didn't say her name. Could it be... Juliet? He also said his father (Dharma film narrator Dr. Pierre Chang) worked ''at the museum'' with Charlotte. (Is Miles pals with Frank Lapidus and Faraday, too?) Too bad things ended so poorly between James and Charlotte: We could have gotten a future episode where he visited her at work and listened to Dr. Chang explain what happened to the Island. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Miles set James up with Charlotte. The chemistry worked for me, but it was still hard watching him have sexytime with anyone else but You-Know-Who, with the slight exception of You-Know-Who-2. This was surely intentional; the show wanted us to be feeling: This isn't right. This should be Juliet... although I will also accept Kate. We were nostalgic for love(s) that this James had never had — and you got the sense that James felt the same way, too. Like he was profoundly incomplete without a better half.

Their conversation was loaded. James' perception of archaeology: People ''stuck in a room somewhere, dusting off antiques.'' (We saw a locked room later in the episode in Widmore's submarine. Who could be inside?) The couple bantered about Indiana Jones. Some quick thoughts about each of the four Indy movies. Raiders of the Lost Ark: The 10 Commandments. (More later on this.) Temple of Doom: Kidnapped kids turned to slaves. (Ditto) The Last Crusade: Holy Grail; troubled, neglected father-son relationship. (Ditto) Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Troubled father-son relationship — plus interdimensional alien archaeologists with psychic powers that promise a ''gift'' of All The Answers You've Ever Wanted To Know About Everything, but then rudely blow out the villain's brain and disappear. In other words: what the producers of Lost are planning to do at exactly 11:01 PM on May 23.

They flirted about the whip. Sawyer tried to convince her he became a cop because of Bullitt. Charlotte said: More like bulls---. She didn't want the lines he gave all his other conquests. She wanted to see his heart. Sawyer gave her a peek. ''There was a moment in my life where I was either going to become a criminal or a cop,'' he said. ''So I chose a cop.'' One wonders if he might have chosen differently if a strange though saintly man showed up at his parents' funeral and offered him a touch and a pen ''Dear Sawyer'' letters... unless, of course, James' whole Sideways world exists because of that touch and pen. FUN FACT! Bullitt is a cop drama/mystery in which SPOILER ALERT! it's revealed that the bad guy, a mobster, has faked his death and disguised himself to avoid certain judgment by the courts. The film starred Steve McQueen, who also headlined The Blob, Hell Is For Heroes and Love with the Proper Stranger.

As they said on the show, ''you know what happens next.'' But in case you don't speak innuendo: hot stranger sex! Afterward, Sawyer fetched refreshment, while Charlotte searched for a T-shirt. Clever Lost. Charlotte: archeologist. What do archaeologists do? Dig up the past. What does Indiana Jonesette find buried in Ford's sock drawer? The ruins of past. The ''Sawyer'' folder, plus the wrinkled family photo. Together, a complex symbol of... the Law, broken justice, judgment/vengeance (Raiders); stolen childhood (Temple of Doom); a dark knight grail quest (The Last Crusade); a dream of family reunion that violence and ''answers'' will never fulfill (Crystal Skull). We've seen Charlotte dig one other time on Lost — the season 4 episode ''Confirmed Dead,'' in which she found a polar bear skeleton and a Hydra Station collar in the sands of Tunisia. And what happened later in ''Recon''? Island Sawyer went to Hydra Island, returned to the polar bear cage where he had been held captive, found Kate's dress, and recalled their intimacy — a pivotal turning point in his heroic journey on Lost.

Alas, Charlotte chose... poooorly in flipping through James' dossier of doom. He blew up at her. ''What did you see? What did you see?!'' Interesting choice of words in an episode wherein what was seen and unseen, what was shown and concealed, were important themes. James drove her away. The photo fell to the ground. A father. A mother. A son. Where have we seen that before?

The next day. James went to work and bumped into — of all people — Charlie's brother. Sideways Charlie had been busted for drugs following his OD on Sideways Oceanic 815; Liam was there to get more info and maybe bail him out. Perhaps Lost was telling us it had not forgotten this plot point; perhaps Lost was trying to set us up for the Charlie-evoking ending; maybe Lost was trying to underscore themes of brotherhood, relational and moral division. TBD. This led to the scene where Miles dumped James as his partner because he had lied about going down under. (Miles' paranoid credit check struck me as... well, paranoid. Not sure I bought it.) James sulked by eating microwave dinners and watching Little House on the Prairie. An inspired, perfect choice for a guy who, like the tragic hero of his favorite novel, Of Mice and Men, dreams doomed dreams of home and hearth and living off the fat of the land with family and friends. In the scene, Charles Ingalls tries to assuage his daughter's mortality angst with some Highway To Heaven touchy-feelies:

''You can spend your whole life worrying about what's going to happen. People aren't really gone when they die, because they live in memories. Memories that sustain us until we see them again.''

James was moved off the couch by Pa's words. I don't know if he was trying to escape the existential agita they produced or if they inspired him to some carpe diem. Either way, it led him to Charlotte's door for a late night booty call. She mocked his ''sad sunflower'' and told him to get lost. This seemed to take him aback — or perhaps startle him awake. He had lost his partner. Now, he had lost his mojo with women. No more charmed life magic-word salvation. No more sexual escapism. No more ''La Fleur.'' He put the flower down on her doorstep — a plea for forgiveness; a RIP gesture to his old self — and took a leap of faith: he sought out Miles and entrusted him with secret. He gave him his Sawyer folder. He told him he'd been hunting Cooper since he got out of the Academy and confessed his pain and corruption. Sawyer's vendetta was not unlike the dream of vengeance Fake Locke gave Claire: it was something that held his world together, gave it meaning, gave him purpose. Also see: the long con that Sawyer pulled in ''The Long Con'': creating a false nemesis to rally a community to order. Ford's epiphany: that's living in fear; that's living a lie, not real life. I think he was also afraid he'd lose his soul if he went through with the murders — and lose any chance of seeing his family again. Hence, when Miles asked him why he was confessing to him. Sawyer replied: ''Because I knew you'd try to talk me out of it.''

Perhaps Charlotte Staples Lewis' literary namesake, CS Lewis, sums up Ford's Sideways arc the best. From The Great Divorce: ''I do not think that all those who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists of being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit-by-bit, with ‘backwards mutters of dissevering power' — or else not. It is still ‘either-or.' If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth), we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.''

By giving up his Sawyer file — his souvenir of hell — to his partner-confessor-priest Miles, James seemed to put himself on a highway to heaven. He also seemed to put him on a collision course with destiny. At that moment, Hoodie Kate careened into his car. He ran her down and pinned her up against a gate, an ironic reversal of their caged-heat Hydra lovemaking. No matter what world he's in, James Ford is always getting set up with Kate — and always gets one chance to nail her against some bars. Somehow. Son of a bitch.

Kate's hoodie was conspicuous. In the episode ''The Long Con,'' the big twist — SPOILER ALERT! — was that Charlie had assisted Sawyer in his fake-crisis, fear-cultivating, gun-grabbing power coup. Charlie, wearing a hoodie, revealed that the only reason why he partnered with Sawyer was to humiliate Locke, who had humiliated him episodes earlier. Fittingly, ''Recon'' re-teamed redeemed outlaw lovers Sawyer and Kate (now playing the Charlie role) in a bid to subvert Fake Locke and Nautilus away from the Island. They better hurry. As it happens, I think there was another reading of Little House on The Prairie we were meant to find. Did you know that there was a two-part episode of Prairie called ''The Lost Ones''? In those episodes, two siblings watch their parents die in a horrible accident. Now orphans, they yearn to stay with Charles, but he can't afford them. The kids wind up with a man who says he'll protect them... but he winds up abusing them and using them as slaves. Which brings us to...

This Island Earth!
Infernal Affairs

Looking for to save my save my soul
Looking in the places where no flowers grow
Looking for to fill that God shaped hole
—U2

Don't be angry, don't be sad,
Don't sit cryin' over good things you've had,
There's a girl right next to you
And she's just waiting for something you do.
Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
—Stephen Stills

My theory that the 18 hours of Lost 6.0 are analogous to the long weekend of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection is holding. ''Recon'' — which took place the day after ''Sundown''/Good Friday — conformed to the part of the Easter story known as The Harrowing of Hell, wherein Christ descended into the underworld. Some traditions say Jesus confronted Satan; others say he liberated captives, especially prophets, leaders, and ''holy fathers'' of the faith whom God had exiled to Hades because of Original Sin. The word ''harrowing'' comes from a Greek word pertaining to a military mission — you know, like a ''recon.'' The ''Hydra'' in Hydra Island pertains to a six-headed female snake demon that guards the entrance of Hades. And what did we spy on Hydra Island last night? Cages. Dead people. And the former ''holy father''/chief prophet/leader of The Others, the exiled Charles Widmore.

Sawyer's hellacious odyssey to hell and back began inside something that passed for a tomb: The Grim Garden Grotto of Claire Gone Mad. There, Sawyer played nurse to wounded Jin, who winced as they waited for Crazy Rabbi Locke to come back from Temple. Jin said that FLocke was nuts and they had to scram. Sawyer said he was aligned with FLocke but vowed to get both Jin and Sun off the Island. And with that, Sawyer's ''every man for himself'' pity party/selfishness began to crumble. But speaking of hobbled Jin... FUN FACT! The legend of the Fisher King — the guardian of the Holy Grail, or enchanted spring — holds that there are two custodians at any one time. There is a king, and there is a knight. Sometimes they are father and son. For some reason, the natural order of things requires the Fisher King to have an infirmity that makes him incapable of moving. He has an injury to his leg, foot, or groin. The job of the Grail Knight is to heal the Fisher King. But alas, Grail Knights are known to get distracted by selfishness or missions of vengeance and neglect their duty to the Fisher King. When this happens, the kingdom becomes infertile. No flowers; no babies. Oh, and the abode where the king and knight live pops in and out of reality, at different times and places. One more thing? The Fisher King is called the Fisher King because he fishes. A lot. Mostly to pass the boring-ass time guarding the grail. THEORY! Jacob was the Fisher King. Smokey was his knight. Smokey became disenchanted, neglected his duties, wanted out, conspired to kill the Fisher King to earn that freedom.

Fake Locke brought his Temple exodus to Claire's hovel. Have FLocke and Claire been living together? If so, what's been the sleeping arrangement? If so... ewwww! FLocke gave a short speech, trying to assuage anxieties and terror of... well, himself. He squatted so he could look the kids Alex and Emma in the eye. ''I know what happened back there was really scary,'' he said, referring to the Temple massacre. ''But it's over, and I promise I'm going to take care of you.'' I thought: Uh-oh. I then thought: Little House, ''The Lost Ones.'' And then I remembered something else — another occasion when a castaway got eye-to-eye with a child and promised that he wasn't a bogeyman and he'd do anything in his power to change the tragic destiny that awaited her. I speak of the moment when Daniel Faraday returned from Dharma HQ in Ann Arbor, Michigan, following a prolonged absence and initiated Project: Jughead, but not before making those outrageous promises to Charlotte.

Before beginning FLocke's (death?) march across the Island, Claire said a tender goodbye to her sick substitute for her creepy kid, that weird skeletal whatchamacallit that she kept in a crib. The Abominable Faux Baby — skull, button eyes, stuffed animal fur — totally looked to me like the infant version of Frank the Apocalyptic Bunny Suit Monster from Donnie Darko. (Those who know Donnie Darko well have seen many Lost parallels in the movie, i.e. plane crash, time travel, and alt reality interpretations; we shall investigate at another time.) Kate stepped inside Claire's mad world. She saw Claire's creepy fake creepy kid. Her eyeballs barfed. Kate: ''What is that?'' All-kinds-of-wrong Claire looked at Kate with eyes full of tears and fears. ''It was all I had,'' she said. Chilling. Sad. And if you asked me to compile a list of my 20 most favorite scenes in Lost ever, this would be on there.

I'd also use Abominable Faux Bunny as one more proof that Fake Locke really is some kind rotten apple, because he surely must have indulged this f'd up fantasy. I appeal again to The Great Divorce, which gives us a scene where a mother is denied entrance into heaven because she has no desire for God or truthful living. For her, belief in ''God'' is just the means to an end — to be reunited with her young son, who had died 10 years before. Her idolatrous relationship to the memory of her boy is such that she never packed away his old room and refused to move out of the house, despite the wishes of her husband and daughter. She is told that her morbid fixations are ''the wrong way to deal with sorrow.'' The mother snaps: ''You are heartless. Everyone is pitiless. The past was all I had.'' This is why the Anti-Locke is the Anti-Christ: He keeps the castaways shackled to the past, to their demons, to their infernal affairs; he's using the castaways as means to an end. And worst of all: it appears he sincerely thinks he's doing right by them.

But at least he's being polite about it. Smokey demonstrated himself to be a stickler for manners, demanding tact from his followers but showering them courtesies, empathy, and apologies as needed. As the Monster mushed his lemmings across the Island toward a multi-night stay at Banyan Tree Cove, Sawyer dared to quiz him publicly about his intentions. When and how are we leaving this damn rock!? A flustered FLocke asked Sawyer for a sidebar conversation away from the Others and chastised him. When Sawyer said he was sorry (quite sarcastically), FLocke actually accepted the apology. Later, when Claire tried to kill Kate, FLocke sincerely apologized for her behavior and took responsibility for it. I love this Monster, whose ethics condone mass murder and deicide but require that people follow Robert's Rules of Order in his presence! And please: no name-calling, either!

In his ''private'' talk with Sawyer, FLocke had another one of those moments where his eyes shifted nervously about, as if trying to figure out what half-truth or lie or button-pushing blah blah blah to say next... except this week, thanks to the shading of the Sawyer content, I was made to wonder if FLocke's uncertainty was really all about not knowing if he can trust these people with his true self. He rolled the dice with Sawyer. He said he was the Smoke-Thing. He said he killed the Temple loyalists because they viewed him as a threat. He said it was kill or be killed. ''And I don't want to be killed!'' There was something so earnest and plaintive and even childlike about FLocke's declaration. It was certainly a sentiment Sawyer could sympathize/empathize with, and so we must wonder if that's exactly why the Monster said it. But it also sounded to me like the pained bleating of someone we all know who tried very, very hard not to get killed, and failed. Or did he?

When Sawyer continued to press Smokey for details on the escape plan, FLocke decided to give his prickly irritant something to do. He told him to go to Hydra Island. He told him there were some enemies in the Ajira camp. He told him to smoke out the baddies, and he told him that he had total faith in him because Sawyer was ''the best liar he had ever seen.'' Sawyer looked stung. Despite the undercover life of his Dharma days, Sawyer the Con Man was a guise he had retired years ago, thanks to Juliet. Not that he would try putting it back on, anyway. When FLocke brought him to the beach and showed him the panoramic view of Hydra Island, I wondered if Sawyer was recalling the humiliation he endured during the season 3 episode ''Every Man For Himself,'' when he was made to learn during his Hydra incarceration that that the folks who run the Island were superior tricksters than himself. He knew he didn't have a chance of fooling FLocke with a con. So he decided to execute his task in a manner that defied UnLocke's view of him: he told the truth almost every step of the way.

Almost immediately upon arriving on Hydra Island, Sawyer found himself at the polar bear cages where he had once dined on fish biscuits, received a brutal beat down by Ben, and got busy with Kate. The sight of the cages knotted his guts. He found Kate's dress — the one that Ben made her wear to breakfast with him on the beach. Sawyer picked up the dress. He felt the dress. Memories surely must have flooded his mind. What did this moment mean for Sawyer? The pessimist might say: heartbreak, pain, despair, damnation. The optimist might say: renewal; resurrection; reconstitution. The affair of the polar bear cage was a turning point for Sawyer. This wasn't miserable-con-man sex. This was heart-full-of-love sex! Maybe it didn't mean much to Kate. But it definitely meant something to him. He loved her. He wanted her to love him. He chased after her. She would never have said ''I do.'' Still, he sacrificed himself for her, and when he thought she had died, he was heartbroken... but he grieved the loss, thanks to some help from John Locke, and after watching her help Claire give birth to Aaron during one of his time flashes, Sawyer let go of her, without letting go of what he gained. He recognized he needed someone — someone who would love him, and better, someone that he could love. He found that someone in Juliet. They were never formally married, but they lived like it, happy and content in the same Dharmaville home that he had once wanted to make with Kate. But then Juliet was taken away from him, and Sawyer became a man destroyed. Abandoned, he convinced himself he was meant to be alone. Enter FLocke, the King of Pain, the exploiter of sadness, who took advantage and recruited him to his fold. Several weeks ago, I insisted that Sawyer was the one playing FLocke, not the other way around. If that wasn't true then, it was true now. Standing in his old cage, Sawyer recalled the moment everything began to change for him — the moment when he began to change, into a lover, a hero, and even if he never wore the ring, a husband. He remembered his redemption. He remembered a vision of heaven to guide him out of hell. He continued on to...

The plane, slightly jackknifed off the make-shift runway, resembling a proud, gleaming Pegasus waiting to be mounted and flown away. (Frank Lapidus! Paging Frank Lapidus! Your purpose in the season 6 narrative just arrived!) Then, the Hydraville Massacre. Sawyer followed a swath of trail formed by the drag of dead bodies to a pile of corpses hidden in the underbrush. Insects swarmed. He gagged, nauseated. Who killed these people? My chief suspect is Smokey. He's demonstrated a proclivity for mass murder; see: the Temple. His motive? Among many options, including some kind of vampiric binge on human souls for some kind of demonic power-boost? I think Smokey killed these folks just so Sawyer would find them. Just like Ben wanted Jack to watch Kate and Sawyer hump in the cage to break and control him, I think Smokey wanted Sawyer to see the pile of death to better manage the threat Sawyer represents. The message Smokey was trying to impart: Don't f--- with me. You know Kate? You know your friends? You know all those people I took out of the Temple, including those little kids? I'll kill ‘em. Especially the kids. I'll kill ‘em all if you get in my way. And we are reminded: Thou shall not steal. And we remember why bad men kidnap kids: extortion.

If I had my druthers, this is where I'd give you another 1,000 words about how (Dead Bodies + Flies) X (Graven Idols + False Messiah thematics) = Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a frequent Lost reference, in which rival camps of kids go savage, and the false god they have made out of a pig's head, the Lord of the Flies, rules them all like a golden calf. Amid those 1,000 words, I would pose this question: Who's the real ''Lord of the Flies'' on Lost? Smokey? Charles Widmore? Jacob? I would probably conclude by settling upon Smokey, but then hit you with this twist ending: I would say that Lost's fixation with Lord of the Flies is actually a coded reference to the play The Flies by Jean Paul Sartre, an ironic retelling of an old Greek myth suffused with the writer's existentialist philosophy (see: Nausea; Being and Nothingness; No Exit), in which a human hero takes it upon himself to restore mankind's free will and liberate people from the tyranny of malicious gods and the fallacy of original sin, which Sartre symbolized in the form of flies. Maybe next week.

Sawyer heard rustling in the bushes and found a woman named Zoe hiding in the brush. She claimed to be an Ajira survivor. Zoe, Greek for ''life,'' was played by Sheila Kelly, whose most famous credit was L.A. Law. Perhaps Sideways Sawyer would have been seduced by her charms, but not Island Sawyer. She asked too many questions. And Sawyer answered all of them truthfully, until she asked about the guns. He smelled a con — or maybe he remembered ''The Long Con.'' He called her bluff. The lady whistled. Goons appeared, and Sawyer was beaten. ''Is your name really even Zoe?'' he asked. She replied, ''Is your name really Sawyer?'' The answer is no. In a story that was all about reminding James Ford who he really was, the answer should have been: ''LaFleur. James LaFleur.''

Sawyer got another reminder of that when Zoe and co. walked him across the plank to Widmore's submarine. Another dagger to the heart: the last time he boarded a submarine, he and Juliet were being deported by Dharma back to the United States to continue their happily ever after away from the Island. Nonetheless, Sawyer bravely climbed down into the lion's den. On his way to see New Sheriff In Town Charles Widmore, Sawyer walked past the fiery furnaces that powered the vessel — and stopped at a locked room. He called it out. He was told: Mind your own business. I remembered how Anthony Cooper had been brought to the Island via sub by the Others — and how John Locke had tricked Sawyer into killing him. FUN FACT! A ''locked room mystery'' is perhaps the oldest identified genre of mystery fiction. The oldest ''locked room mystery'' on record: ''Bel and the Dragon,'' an apocryphal Biblical text, in which a famous prophet debunked a false god by... sprinkling a perimeter of ash around a room. The name of this prophet? Daniel.

Sawyer met Widmore. In the process, Chuck let slip that his bespectacled associate's name was Zoe. Zoe! But where's his old Gnostic Acheron queen, Eloise Hawking? Nowhere to be found. Does Widmore regain his Others throne with Zoe as his consort? TBD. Widmore chided Sawyer for ''just how little'' he understood about what was really going on. I don't know about that. As Sawyer peered into Widmore's eyes and told him he knew that they both knew that John Locke was not Locke, I wondered if Sawyer was also trying to tell Widmore that he knew exactly who Fake Locke really was. They struck a bargain. Sawyer would bring Fake Locke to him so they could duke it out on the beach. In exchange: safety for the friends in his boat and a ride home. Widmore agreed. And now we debate: Who will Sawyer choose for his boat? It's going to be the Raft all over again! THEORY: Remember that time travel moment from season 5 that's never been explained, when Sawyer and co. were fired upon by another raft in the distance? They returned some shots, but flashed away before they could figure out who was shooting at them? Here's your answer, kids: It's going to be Sawyer's boat, paddling over Zooropa with his selected sub friends. Will there be casualties? Talk about a past coming back to haunt you...

Sawyer went back to Fake Locke. Sawyer called him out. FLocke didn't really need him to do recon on Hydra, did he? Nope. Sawyer told him about the dead bodies. FLocke tried to act shocked. That's terrible! Then came the true test: Would Sawyer spin or spill everything he knew? Answer: spill. He basically told FLocke the whole truth about what had happened between him and Widmore. FLocke seemed to be surprised when Sawyer disclosed that Widmore was over there, but I wasn't 100% sure it was genuine. Regardless, the Monster beamed with pride as Sawyer told him everything, and said, ''I appreciate your loyalty.'' Then again, maybe it was the knowing smile of two chess players that had dueled to a stalemate. FLocke wanted him out of the way for a little bit so he could work on Kate — and wanted him to see the cost of betrayal. Sawyer was transparent about what he wanted — and about his clear understanding about where all of this is heading, which is a showdown between Smokey and Widmore. And in tacitly acknowledging that understanding, Sawyer was also telling the Man In Black what he wasn't willing to do for him:
Kill his father.

Which brings us to FLocke's conversation with Kate. It took place after Claire's assault. Claire had the advantage. She was going to drive a knife into her throat. She was going to unleash all her Aaron rage on the woman who had taken him. Kate appealed to Sayid for help. Sayid sat there stupefied. Zombified. Almost zapped of will or initiative. Something was wrong with him, he said. My guess: It's the magic knife Dogen gave him to stab FLocke. It's all but neutralized Sayid's usefulness to FLocke. That utility? Killing. The title of this section, ''Infernal Affairs,'' refers to a section of hell in Buddhism reserved for people who kill their fathers, mothers, and enlightened beings. In this section of hell you don't stay forever — but you have to work to earn enough Enlightenment and Dharma to leave. One wonders if Sayid is frozen and gripped by an experience of penance; maybe his will/soul has been temporarily diverted to the Sideways world to work things out.

After peeling Claire off of Kate and slapping her into submission (an act of violence that even stunned Kate) and parking her in a time out, FLocke found Kate sitting in a refuge of banyan trees. He explained himself. He confessed he had duped Claire into believing The Others had Aaron. He explained he needed to give her anger to give her purpose, to pull her out of what was likely suicidal despair. Kate asked where Sawyer had gone. He brought her the beach and offered her a view of Hydra Island. Again, he searched for the right words to say, for whatever reason… and then told her story about his mother:

''My mother was crazy. Long time ago before I looked like this, I had a mother just like everyone. She was a very disturbed woman. And as a result of that, I had some growing pains. Problems that I'm still trying to work my way through. Problems that could have been avoided if things had been different.''

Kate wanted to know: Why was FLocke telling her this?

. ''Because Aaron has a crazy mother, too.''

We were left to wonder what exactly Kate was supposed to make of that story, and what she actually took away from it. To me, it sounded like FLocke was trying to convince Kate that Claire was an unfit mother. To me, it sounded like he wanted Kate to move off the dream of reuniting Clair and Aaron. To me, it sounded like he wanted Kate to think about saving Aaron from Claire lest he become a scary super-monster like FLocke. To me, it sounded like FLocke was… setting Kate up to murder Claire.

Time will tell what really happened in that moment. If I'm right, though, let's hope that she resists the manipulation, just like Sawyer resisted Fake Locke bid to Brig him. By ''Brig,'' I mean ''The Brig,'' the season 3 episode where con man Sawyer was conned by John Locke to follow him to another iconic Island prison locale, the Black Rock, and do what he couldn't do himself: murder his father, Anthony Cooper, the con man that Sawyer had vowed to kill. This was the real re-con of ''Recon'' — Fake Locke's bid to get Sawyer to commit patricide one more time by killing Charles Widmore. Which is all to say, meet the Man Behind The (Smokey) Mask:

Daniel Faraday.

Not the Daniel Faraday who was shot and killed by his crazy mother in 1977. And not the fetal Daniel Faraday who was growing inside his pregnant mother when she shot and killed adult Daniel Faraday back in 1977. I’m saying: It’s a freaky fusion of both, a disembodied mutant hybrid soul, essentially left behind on the Island as a consequence of the Jughead time reboot that also rebooted pregnant Eloise Hawking. It’s possible that this entity may have been grafted onto an eternal supernatural being that has lived on the Island performing some great spiritual function that it has now tired of. Or it could just be a feral supernatural force that’s been left to develop and grow haphazardly on its own, possessed by the dream of one day becoming a real human being again. Either way, Smokey Faraday is all kinds of wrong — and I think that’s why his father, Charles Widmore, has come to the Island. To take responsibility for his own Abominable Faux Son, and put it/him out of its/his misery. What does Charles have locked up in his submarine? A secret weapon. A weapon more powerful than the dream of vengeance that possessed Sawyer and Claire for so long: It’s the toxic brew of guilt and love, damnation and redemption. Her name was Theresa Spencer. She’s the woman that Daniel Faraday once loved, but whose mind he broke as a result of his time travel experiments that his psycho mom spurred him toward, a woman that Charles Widmore kept alive on his own dime for years, just so he could use her for this very moment.

I’m thinking Sawyer called it: Son of a bitch.

But I could be wrong.

Bye.

Follow Jeff on Twitter @EWdocjensen

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20313460_20352243,00.html?ew_packageID=20313460?xid=email-alert-lost-20100317-item1

Interview: Mark Pellegrino — Jesus or Lucifer?

03/15/10 11:39 AM

Many know him as Jacob from Lost or Lucifer from Supernatural. I know him as a really nice guy who was a joy to interview. I caught up with Mark Pellegrino (photo left, credit: ABC) a few weeks ago to discuss being on such an iconic television show, life in Hawaii and his plans for the future.

When you were cast as Jacob on Lost last year, had you been a fan of the show, or did you have to do some quick catching up?

I had to do some quick catching up, that's for sure. I almost don't own a TV. We have one here for watching movies and stuff, and my wife watches TV to relax, but I'm so busy I can't usually watch unless I get cast in something and have to watch to do some research.

Because of the great secrecy, do you receive the entire script, or just the scenes you are in? How protective are they of that?

The scripts do come with a special tape on them – I don't know what the tape means, it's a kind of reflective tape – and it is delivered directly to the house. I do get the whole script for the episode, surprisingly enough, and I get it about a week in advance. And I'm surprised about that, because people are so hot after the material, you'd think they'd be even more cautious that somebody would steal it off the doorstep.

How is the cast to work with, and how do you like shooting in Hawaii?

Shooting in Hawaii is great. I don't get to see the island too much unless I have some free time and I'll bring my wife out there. Otherwise I am in my hotel room hunkered down, reading the script and working on that, and writing and catching up on movies and stuff. But it is really beautiful, and I've done a few of the touristy things.

The cast is just phenomenal – not only great actors, but they're really good people. I've worked a lot with Jorge Garcia (giggles) and he's a really funny guy, (giggles) and a really really good actor (giggles). I'm laughing at something, I don't even know if I can say – just the way that we work with each other off-camera, he kind of laughs at me and has fun with me. And I've worked with Matt (Fox). He's a really great guy, and so intense, as intense as his character onscreen. So is Nestor (Carbonell), who actually studied at the theater company that I teach at and studied there for a while. He's a really great guy. It's nice – it's a nice group of people.

Were you intimidated to join a show that already had such a faithful following and was such a huge phenomenon?

Luckily I didn't know it was a huge phenomenon until I landed on the island and was told. There audition sides are not the character name, and the scenes are not the scenes you end up doing. It's all made-up stuff to throw off all the bloggers and people on the Internet who are trying to get the material. Sounds crazy, but I had no idea what it meant until I got there.

That must be difficult for the casting team, because they have people auditioning for roles, but it's not the material they'll be doing, or even the character name.

You know, in a way I am glad they did it that way, because it's such an iconic role, you don't want to fall into traps. You could try to act the stature of the part, and it's really so much more simple and down-to-earth. It's a good thing to be Jesus the carpenter, as opposed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, the God-like figure. That's hard to act – the carpenter's better.

If you had Jacob's God-like powers, how would you like to see the show end?

I hope it ends well, and I hope Jacob's point of view about human nature is born out, that's for sure, because I think it says something about us. I don't know what that means, but I just hope it ends well, and that my point of view wins out. But I don't know what that means in concrete fact; I don't know what that means with respect to the characters.

Playing Jacob certainly is a change from playing your character on Supernatural, which happens to be Lucifer (photo left, credit: David Gray/The CW).

It is fun. In fact I leave on Monday to do some more Supernatural stuff, and I'm looking forward to that because we're in the middle of the apocalypse. But playing Lucifer is fun; he's a fun bag of tricks.

How did you make your Lucifer different from other Lucifers in past movies and TV shows?

I guess it's just to enjoy the different Lucifers I've seen in past films and know that this Lucifer is written very differently than the other ones. This Lucifer is written as a very down-to-Earth, honest person. I think I have justice on my side, and that's a very strong place to come from. I don't have to lie, pretend, fool anybody, charm anybody – I just tell the truth. That's pretty unconventional. I can't think of too many Lucifers who've had to deal with those circumstances. They are usually big, iconic, charming, interesting ... although Viggo Mortensen was kind of an interesting – he played Lucifer in Prophecy, didn't he? He was an interesting, down-to-earth kind of devil, in a way.

You've been on a lot of top-notch television shows, like Burn Notice, Dexter, Grey's Anatomy. What have been some of your favorite experiences and why?

I was coming out of the make-up trailer of Grey's Anatomy, and Sandra Oh was like, "Oh my God!" and grabs me by the face, kisses me on the face and hugs me. She's apparently a big Dexter fan. It was a totally shocking experience to have that happen. So that was a really nice, enjoyable experience.

Being on Dexter was funny too, because me and Michael C. Hall were rivals in the show for Julie Benz's affection, and for the first episode or two, we didn't really speak to each other. And I thought he didn't like me, and he thought I didn't like him. So we had this totally antagonistic type of relationship, and we never really dealt with it for the first couple of shows until one day by chance, we were at craft services eating something at the same time. And I forget who broke the ice, but one of us just started talking, and we realized that he thought I didn't like him, I thought he didn't like me, and we became friends. He's a nice guy. And I hope he found out I'm nice too.

Is there a particular show you get recognized for more when fans approach you on the street?

Well lately it's been Dexter, Lost and Supernatural, but I do get a lot of: "I think I know you from somewhere." Like they think they met me at a party somewhere, but they really saw me maybe on Burn Notice or something. But I've been getting a lot of recognition for Lost now. I've been getting people walking up to me in the supermarket. Just the other day when they had the premiere, I was getting groceries for my family, and a girl asked, "Are you Jacob from Lost?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "We are having a dinner party for you tonight. What are you doing in Valencia?" And I told her I live here with my family, and she says: "Oh, OK, good. Well, all right. Bye!" It's an interesting phenomenon, definitely.

You played lots of different and interesting characters in your career, but what would your dream role be?

A dream role would be Charlie in Flowers for Algernon, I'm kind of obsessed with it, but I think Will Smith is going to do it. But it's been a project that I've loved for a long time. Actually there is a pilot that Frank Darabont is doing called Walking Dead that I am totally into, and I just went out for it. That would be kind of a dream role. I love the zombie/apocalypse thing and horror. This is from a series of graphic novels, and I like the main character a lot. It's kind of like 28 Days Later. He wakes up in the hospital after being shot, and the apocalypse has happened and he has to find his way to safety. It's kind of a cool scenario. And you can't go wrong with Frank Darabont; I love his work.
http://www.tv.com/interview-mark-pellegrino-andmdash-jesus-or-lucifer/webnews/51360.html

Dr. Linus Poll Results

What did you think of "Dr. Linus"?

So AWESOME it was dynomite!
11 (52%)

As GOOD as a reunion on the beach.
9 (42%)

OK
1 (4%)

As BAD as getting caught in a lie.
0 (0%)

As HORRIBLE as having to dig your own grave.
0 (0%)

Votes so far: 21


Can Jack be Killed?

Yes
9 (52%)

No
8 (47%)

Votes so far: 17


Whose side will Widmore be on?

Jacob's
6 (37%)

The Man In Black
5 (31%)

Neither
5 (31%)

Votes so far: 16


What was your favorate parts about "Dr. Linus"?

Lunch talk between Ben, Arzt and Locke
3 (13%)

Ben and Rogers moment
4 (18%)

Miles revealing that Ben killed Jacob
2 (9%)

Ben digging his own grave
4 (18%)

Jack and Richard's explosive conversation in the Black Rock
14 (63%)

Dr. Linus lesson about Napolean
3 (13%)

Ben saving Alex's future
5 (22%)

Ben's conversation with Ilana at gunpoint
11 (50%)

The Beach reunion scene
6 (27%)

The Widmore reveal
7 (31%)

Another one
0 (0%)

Votes so far: 22

Lost Preview: "Recon"

Some familiar faces return.
by IGN TV
March 15, 2010 - Last week ended with the surprising return of Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) via a submarine. Widmore hasn't made his presence known to the island's inhabitants, but that could happen very soon. Ben's nemesis isn't the only one returning to the show after a break. After being killed last season, Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader) will be returning this Tuesday. Charlotte looks to join a long list of characters who died and are finding new life thanks to the new flash-sideways sequences the Lost producers devised.

Meanwhile, The Man in Black (Terry O'Quinn) and his band of misfits are preparing for their fleeing the island. However, before they hit the high seas, The Man in Black convinces Sawyer (Josh Holloway) to go on a rather eventful mission for him.

Click above to watch two scenes from ''Recon''Be sure to tune in to "Recon" when Lost airs on Tuesday, March 16th at 9:00pm ET on ABC.
http://tv.ign.com/articles/107/1077606p1.html

Michael Emerson offers expert commentary on "Dr. Linus"

ABC.com has a pretty neat feature that allows you to watch each episode of Season Six with some special guest commentary. And this week, it's none other than Michael Emerson himself, offering up his inside thoughts on his very own episode, "Dr. Linus." Here's some info on how you can find the expert commentary, and how to make it work.

First, visit ABC.com - this link takes you right to the expert commentary for this particular episode. You need to do a couple of things before you can see the written commentary from the actor: First click the Connect with Facebook icon and connect to your Facebook account. And then you'll be prompted to sign in to ABC.com (or create an account if you don't have one). You'll find the links you see in the picture above quite a ways down on the page -- scroll down and they'll appear.

Last step: Click on the title of the show, "Dr. Linus" that you see right under the picture of Michael Emerson (again, a good ways down the page). That will launch the episode with commentary.

It's an interesting way to watch- I just caught the first few minutes, and I'm thinking I'll watch it all tonight before tomorrow's latest, "Recon."

Here's a screen cap of what it looks like with the expert commentary playing.
NamasteAndGoodLuck
http://wabc.typepad.com/7_things_about_lost/2010/03/michael-emerson-offers-expert-commentary-on-dr-linus.html

Jimmy Kimmel's Secrets of Lost

Old Spice Guy with Kate!

Andalone was nice enough to mention my Trading Cards on Blog

Theres a lot of great Lost products collected on this blog.

http://amazingexgirlfriend.blogspot.com/2010/03/lost-room-23-character-trading-cards.html

Doc Jensen: 'Lost' recap: Lessons Learned

Episode 6 of season 6 was chock full of answers as we got a Ben-centric episode. Doc Jensen sifts through it to find new Island-Sideways parallels
By Jeff Jensen Mar 10, 2010

Even as a mild-mannered teacher, Ben had the urge to be the one in control. And Arzt was ready to help him... for a price All AboutLost
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There was a moment back in the most polarizing episode of Lost's most turbulent season when the Island's god of lies told the truth about the way he works. No, I'm not talking about His Royal Smokeyness, FrankenLockenstein, although the confession sure fits him, too. I speak of Benjamin Linus, the Little Napoleon of the Others — or, in the spirit of last night's very special back-to-school edition of Lost, the devious Tracy Flick of Craphole Island High 90666. The episode was ''Expose,'' a.k.a .the Nikki and Paulo vs. the Spiders episode, and the moment of truth came when Juliet asked Ben how he intended to get Jack to operate on his tumor-choked spine. ''Same way I get anybody to do anything. I find out what he's emotionally invested in and I exploit it,'' Ben said, sounding sadly resigned about his own nefarious nature, as if his conniving character was innate and immutable, or at least fixed and unchangeable. In the divine election of all possible worlds (''divine election'' being a fancy theological term of predestination), Ben Linus is forever doomed to manifest as some Machiavellian devil, some power-grabbing Brutus, some Jesus-betraying Judas, no matter the reality, no matter the world. Right?

Wrong. In ''Dr. Linus,'' Ben Linus was exposed as a soul who only has himself to blame for his woe-is-me bad self, whose corrupt nature is an accumulation of freely made choices. Which also means that Ben is also fully capable of resisting evil and selecting virtue, as well. His Sideways story was the proof. We were presented with a new version of Ben that was a truly decent man — a smart, idealistic teacher who cared for his students; a devoted son who cared for his ailing father, Roger Linus — but also one who yearned for a grander station in life. Dude had a doctorate! He was owed! On Planet Sideways, Doc Linus was presented with the opportunity to tricky-Dick his way to higher office, albeit at the expense of sweet, innocent Sideways Alex. But in his defining moment, Ben's conscience got the best of him, and he was a better man for it. Sorry, Arzt: those new lab aprons will have to wait.

On the Island, Ben the Dethroned seemed set to pay for his sins and abuses of power after Ilana smoked out his Jacob-stabbing secret and sentenced him to death for killing her beloved godfather. Then the Man In Black showed up and made him an offer he seemingly couldn't refuse: restored Island rule in the future in exchange for his loyal service in the present as part of his Hydra Family gang. Ben made a choice. He bolted. Ilana chased. Ben got himself a gun and was about to put a Bada-Bing in Jacob's girl the way he blew away Caesar the Whodat? last season. But then Ben made another choice: He bared his soul. He told the truth about killing Jacob, shared his rage over feeling betrayed by his Island god and his shame for choosing Island power over his daughter, and then offered this heartbreaking explanation for why he was joining Mr. Evil Incarnate (Allegedly): ''Because he's the only one that will have me!'' Then Ilana did something that left Ben gobsmacked: She forgave him. ''I'll have you,'' she said, and walked away. Ben shuffled after her, as if sucked in by the undertow of her grace. He came to the outskirts of the Beach camp, then stopped and considered his options. Stay and serve in this humble little patch of heaven, or join Devil Locke and coldly play for a shot at living the ''Vida La Vida'' once again. You always have a choice. This time, Ben made the right one — fulfilling, perhaps, Jacob's dying thought hope that Ben had the capacity for change. Has Ben the flip-flop artist truly embraced redemption? If so, would his redemption have been possible without Jacob's death? If so, did Jacob know that when he offered his chest for Ben to puncture? And so we debate like theologians.

This was a good episode. For fans starved for ''answers'' the way Hurley craved for cheese curds last night, ''Dr. Linus'' offered a plate of appetizers — salty-yummy scooplets of Richard Alpert, Black Rock, Jacob, Charles Widmore — in advance of more substantial courses that now appear imminent. Meanwhile, the Sideways story was played like a rich, full metaphor for Ben's Island arc and a kind of veiled, Roman-à-clef theory for almost all of Lost. On the whole, I was intellectually stimulated by yet another complex sketch of nature/nurture psychology and redemption dynamics, and I must admit my geeky heart was microwaved to soggy mush by the (partial) castaway reunion at the beach (The Beach! At last, the Beach!), complete with slo-mo montage and Michael Giacchino strings, to boot.

Not everything worked for me, though. I hate to begrudge genuine humor in Lost, but I felt Ben's Sideways story could have been a smidge better if played a little more straight. (Put another way: I am not exactly the most ardent patron of the Arzt.) A great scene for Richard Alpert in the Black Rock was overshadowed — literally — by a distracting lighting choice, a self-conscious use of chiaroscuro that may have been a go-for-Baroque attempt at communing with Caravaggio's ''The Incredulity of Saint Thomas'' that Lost referenced last year in ''316'' but... well, see, now I'm talking myself into loving that strange scene. Ditto: Jack's leap of faith with the dynamite stick, which left me debating between ''Totally genius!'' and ''Totally ridiculous!'' And how about finding another way to bring Fake Locke into a scene than having characters looking frantically about as they hear the tikatikatikatika while the camera pans over to Smocke popping out of the bush behind them with a smug smirk on his face?

Finally:

Bueller?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Translation: It's time for Ferris Sawyer's Multi-Episode Day Off to come to close. Seriously.

Nitpicking concluded. Your scorn? Bring it. Your agreement? Not necessary. I hope we can all agree that bugs aside, ''Dr. Linus'' gave us stuff to ponder and moments to savor. And so we take out our textbooks and begin the lesson.

The Sideways World
No Child Left Behind

''None of this would have happened if Mr. McAllister hadn't meddled the way he did. He should have just accepted things as they are instead of trying to interfere with destiny. You see, you can't interfere with destiny. That's why it's destiny. And if you try to interfere, the same thing's going to happen anyway, and you'll just suffer.'' — Tracy Flick, Election

''Just follow your heart. That's what I do.''— Napoleon Dynamite

There was a funny moment at the start of Ben's Island story line when he stumbled into Ilana's company, or rather, glommed on to them, as a lost soul always on the make for somewhere to belong is wont to do. Like a stray searching for a home, like a parasite in need of a host, like that creepy Orphan chick in Orphan. Ilana — sensitive, inquisitive Ilana — immediately asked Ben about... Sayid. Ben was stung. ''I'm fine, thank you,'' Ben said sarcastically. It was a primo Linus snark, but it was a window into his wounded heart, too. Benjamin Linus: unappreciated, unloved, and unwanted. He has spent most of his entire misbegotten existence hustling to secure and maintain a toe hold in the world, improvising his relevance and significance to the narrative of life that he worries would otherwise neglect him and forget him and leave him behind. When the cosmos is that indifferent to you, you might gas a village, too. Ah, they were just stupid hippies, anyway.

Sideways Ben was similarly afflicted, but less severely so. I was struck by his relationship with his father. They lived together in a humble home. They dined on microwave (organic) turkey dinner meals. They grieved broken ideals and unrealized dreams. We learned they had been on the Island as members of the Dharma Initiative — but they had left, before the Island had sunk. ''This isn't the life I wanted for you, Ben. I wanted so much more,'' Roger wheezed. ''Imagine how different our lives would have been if we had stayed.'' (Cut to: Roger Linus throwing a Dharma beer can at his boy's head and berating him for the thousandth time for killing his true love during child birth.) (An extremely little known fact: the subtitle to the season 3 classic ''The Man Behind The Curtain'' was actually ''Very, very loosely based on the novel Push by Sapphire.'') Sideways Roger presented himself as a sad old soul who viewed his son as an underachieving talent but only blamed his own bad parenting choices for Ben's fate. An improvement over Island world Roger? Yes. But I was left to wonder what it must have been like for Sideways Ben to grow up burdened by his father's ambition for him. Regardless, we saw the result: Ben the Overeducated, Overqualified High School Teacher, dogged by enough feelings of inadequacy to deem himself a loser. I got the sense Ben saw his father clearly — clearly enough to feel a little resentment, but not so much that he hated him, or, like, wanted to drive him out into the jungle and gas him to death. In a clever flick at ''The Man Behind The Curtain,'' we got a scene where the Good Son changed his ailing father's oxygen tank and doted on his comfort. Bottom line: Sideways Ben was more like Florence Nightingale, less like Heinrich Himmler.

THEORY REVISION ALERT!
Categories: Sideways Island Sinkage; Parallel World Historical Discrepancies.
Analysis: Until last night, it had been safe to assume that both the Island and Sideways worlds shared the same history until 1977, which is when the time-traveling castaways detonated Jughead. But the Linus men of the Sideways world blew up that thinking. I took the story to mean that Sideways Roger and Ben left the Island prior to its sinking. But Island Roger and Ben were still on the Island when Juliet banged the bomb. Implication: If the two worlds share a common history, the fork in the road is sometime before 1977. Rebooted Theory: The divergence begins on that fateful night when some phantom stranger struck John Locke's teenage mother, causing her to give birth three months early. That phantom stranger? I'm saying it's Charles Widmore.

Sideways Ben was a history teacher. Fitting for a man forever fighting for a place in history, and whose Island iteration may have been stalling the flow of destiny, if not meddling with it and making a mess of it, all in order to keep and preserve his Island good thing. He only ever succeeded in manufacturing suffering — for himself, his daughter, the Others, the castaways, and more. Through Teacher Ben, we got historical citations that I dare to now apply to Lost lore. We got a reference to Napoleon in exile on Elba, neutered by the loss of his power. Island Ben would later link himself to the reference. But Charles Widmore and Smokey also fit into Napoleon's pantaloons. After all, Napoleon ultimately escaped from his Island prison and reclaimed France (if only for 100 days) — and both Widmore and Smokey are exiles wanting to get back to their respective kingdoms/homes. (Something to also think about: after Napoleon got booted out of power again, he was exiled to another, less desirable island, Saint Helena, where he would die of stomach cancer/ulcer/poisoning. Foreshadowing for Smokey or Widmore's final fate?) (I'm telling you, that knife Sayid stabbed Smokey with last week? Dogen poisoned it.) (And didn't Alex last night mention she was nursing a stomach ache while the principal and the nurse were... you know... ''doing it''?) Dr. Linus also spoke of the East India Trading Company, the powerful British business entity that was established to execute trade with India, but wound up ruling much of it. And we recall that Ben has long alleged that all Widmore wants to do is exploit the Island for his material gain... although I personally suspect what Widmore wants most the Island is to use it to cheat death.

Ben's Sideways story mirrored his entire Island arc and even suggested many possibilities for the entire saga. You might even say Ben's parallel world yarn works as a theory of Lost. Let's bunker down in that conspicuously labeled REFERENCE section of the high school library and cross-reference the Sideways story with what we know about the greater epic, beginning with...

THE HIGH SCHOOL
The first several scenes of the Sideways story line emphasized the sad state of Ben's school. It was struggling to fulfill its educational mission, hit hard by ''budget cuts'' and ''crises'' that were ''above the pay grade'' of the school's administrators and teachers. This expression of our once glorious public school system was deeply imperiled.
THE ISLAND
The Island is like a school — a school for the soul. A place for people to learn and improve; a place where mistakes can be made without fear of failure, and instead be learning opportunities. But the Island is dying. Because it is a mystical/spiritual/mythical place, because it is an ideal, it exists only as long as we believe in it. But science and catastrophe and war and cynicism and reality television have rocked our faith and interest, thus weakening the Island's power. Or maybe it's not our fault at all! Maybe the Island has shrunk from view and gone awry because its owner is a proverbial absentee landlord, and the managers he installs to run the joint routinely suck or become corrupt. Yes! Let's blame them! And let's start with...

PRINCIPAL REYNOLDS
We knew he was going to be a big meanie the second we saw he was being played by William Atherton, the very fine character actor famed for playing pricks in movies like Die Hard, Ghostbusters, and my favorite of the bunch, Real Genius. (Essay time! 300 words on the relevance of those titles to Lost. Go! Seriously! GO!) Ben painted him out to be a heretic soulless political player who had lost sight of priorities and values. ''Principal Reynolds is an administrator. He's not a teacher,'' Ben said. ''He's forgotten what the public school system is about... taking care of the kids. That's what important.'' By contrast, Dr. Linus positioned himself to be as idealistic as his Charlie Brown namesake. After Arzt dismissively told Ben to ''keep dreamin','' Linus replied as ''I know you've given up but I refuse to.'' All this said, it should be noted that the story gave us no reason to believe Reynolds was some unenlightened, uninspired Enemy of Education. (You know, besides that whole thing about cheating on his wife and boinking the school nurse on campus.)
CHARLES WIDMORE
The Others' former majordomo was forced to abdicate by Ben for violating one of the many rules Island magistrates must abide by if they wish to hold office. His offense: allegedly sneaking off the Island and knocking up some mainland honey, presumably Penelope Widmore's mother. We don't have confirmation that he was still romantically linked with Island consort Eloise Hawking at the time of his indiscretion, but we presume that to be the case. Still, was Widmore really such a bad Island caretaker? Not if you asked him. ''You might find this difficult to understand, Benjamin, but every decision I've made has been about protecting this Island.'' Widmore said these words to Ben during their defining conflict:

HISTORY CLASS VS. DETENTION
Reynolds ordered Ben to execute detention duty for a week. Ben balked. Doing detention would mean he'd have to pull the plug on history club, and Ben thought that would be a horrible idea. Cutbacks were bad enough. But to deny the kids the investment of time from teacher who wish to freely give it? For shame! The kids, Reynolds! Think of the kids! But the principal scoffed. Facilitating history club
with only five members, including Alex Rousseau
was a waste of precious resources. Besides, history club wasn't about the kids, Reynolds said. ''It's for you. It helps you feel needed.'' Ouch! And true. Regardless, Ben went rogue and began tutoring Alex privately — to help her, to spite Reynolds, and to exert his will. During their sessions, Alex tipped Ben off to Reynolds' unethical sexual conduct with the intense glee of a gossip girl. Ben's reaction was interesting. He seemed genuinely appalled, as if Reynolds' conduct was heretically offensive to high-minded ideals. But he also saw an opportunity for a power play, too. The idealist became a revolutionary.
THE BEN/WIDMORE CONFLICT OVER ALEX
Shortly after Rousseau had finished off the rest of her fellow French scientists and given birth to Baby Alex, Chief Executive Other Widmore ordered Ben to ''exterminate'' both of them from the Island. He coldly dismissed baby Alex as an ''it,'' as if she were an animal that would just be a drain on Island resources that needed to be devoted elsewhere. Yep: definitely sounds like a guy that ain't about ''taking care of the kids.'' So Ben balked. He couldn't bring himself to murder. Ben clearly had developed a different vision for how the Others should be managing the Island and living their lives. Widmore dismissed Ben's ''idealism'' as sentimental and self-serving — about him needing to feel needed. But he didn't stop Ben from taking on the project of raising Alex alone. Ben's victory inspired him to dream bigger. And when he uncovered the truth about Widmore's off-Island slick willying, he staged his coup and forced him into exile. He also moved the nomadic Others out of the wild and into Dharmaville. But Ben's dream of settling down and playing house — modifying Others culture in such a way to service and fulfill his own desires and needs — was surely antithetical to the Others' true purpose, and was most likely what earned the Others' their baby-making curse from the Island/Jacob. Richard Alpert said as much when he encouraged Locke to make a play for Ben's job. ''Ben has been wasting our time with novelties like fertility problems,'' Richard said. ''We're looking for someone to remind us that we're here for more important reasons.'' Of course, Richard had himself to blame for his Ben problem, which brings us to...

LESLIE ARZT
Ben needed help to remove Reynolds from office and enlisted Arzt, who leveraged his unique expertise to get Ben the inside intel he needed to blackmail the principal. In exchange, the science teacher wanted better lab equipment, new aprons, and a better parking spot.
RICHARD ALPERT
Alpert undoubtedly helped Ben with his insurrection. Why? What did he get in return? (Besides a Dharma purge.) I'm hoping future episodes will tell the tale. But Ben had another ally in his revolution — the person who actually planted in him the seed of regime change dreams. And that would be...

JOHN LOCKE
While Ben and Arzt ate lunch and griped about Reynolds, it was the Substitute who spoke up and encouraged Ben to act on his dissatisfaction. ''Maybe you should be principal. It just sounds like you care about this place,'' Locke said. ''And if the man in charge doesn't, then maybe it's time for a change.'' When Ben wondered who, if anyone, would listen to someone like him, Locke raised his hand and flashed either his warm smile or mischievous, baiting one. ''I'm listening,'' he said. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING! I have no doubt the burning question that'll be making the rounds in the Lost fan culture is going to be this: Is Sideways Locke actually...
THE MAN IN BLACK/SMOKEY/FAKE LOCKE...
Throughout his Others reign, Ben insisted he was hearing the voice of Jacob and heeding his will. He justified everything by putting it all on his Island god. But the time has come to begin wondering how attuned to Jacob that Ben has been — if he's been attuned to him at all. In our real world, there are those who claim to know God and hear God's voice in their lives, but they could be wrong. Doesn't mean there isn't a God, just that God ain't talking to them. I suspect Ben is one of those people. ''What about you?'' Jacob asked Ben last season. It sounded so dismissive. But Jacob could have also been challenging Ben on his self-deception, or basically saying, ''I'm sorry. Do I know you?'' Ben's either been faking his rapport with Jacob, or (and this is my theory) the supernatural entity that's been speaking to him all along has been the Man In Black. Ben thought he was serving Jacob the Christ, but he was most likely the victim of a long con perpetrated by a snake oil-selling false messiah, Smokenstein the Anti-Christ, who was just using Ben in his master plan to escape the Island and live anew as a man in a separate reality, one with no Island and no Jacob to trap him: the Sideways world.

Sideways Ben didn't go through with his blackmail plot. Or at least, not all of it. He got far enough to throw incriminating emails in Reynolds' face and demand that Reynolds quit and leverage his clout to install Ben in the job. (One wonders if Island Ben made Charles Widmore do the same — recommend him to the post Ben was forcing him to vacate.) Reynolds in turn threatened to ''torch'' Alex's chances at getting into Yale and thus destroy her future, just as Widmore sent his goons to ''torch'' the Island and kill Alex unless Ben bent to his will. Ben chose the Island over his daughter and both he and his girl paid dearly the choice. Sideways Ben made a different selection. He backed off his demands for Reynolds' position, and instead ''negotiated'' to shore up the humble station he already occupied, one that allowed him to live out the values and ideals he believed in, budget cuts and higher orders and crises and heartless administrators be damned. In other words: no detention. He took pride in watching Alex walk away toward promising future. And when Arzt complained about getting screwed, Ben compensated him by sacrificing his parking spot. That's Sideways Ben for you. A giver.

We were left to wonder why Ben chose as he did. As a historian, Ben probably is familiar with the phrase from George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Maybe Sideways Ben was able to avoid duplicating the fate of his Island world counterpart because of some genetic or past life memory bubbled into his consciousness. Maybe he gleaned a lesson or two about power, priorities, regret and responsibility from what his otherworld avatar had learned in the trial-and-error spiritual classroom of the Island. Maybe that info radiated into his brain via the reflection he saw of himself in the window of his microwave as he was zapping organic turkey for his father. Or maybe not. Maybe Sideways Ben is simply made of slightly better stuff and slightly better experiences — a well-meaning if flawed father; exposure to the well-meaning if flawed idealistic culture of the Dharma Initiative; and surely more. Either way, this version of Benjamin Linus found redemption by following his heart. In the words of Napoleon: GOSH!

+++ INTERMISSION: A BRIEF WORD ABOUT ADULTERY
Last week, I suggested that Lost 6.0 was akin to The Decalogue, famed director Krzysztof Kieslowski's series of one-hour films meditating on the Ten Commandments. Last week being the fifth episode of the season, we got a meditation on the Fifth Commandment, Thou Shall Not Kill. ''Dr. Linus'' was the sixth episode of the season, and the Sixth Commandment is Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. What did we get? A story about Ben blackmailing a guy for cheating on his wife. Okay, that's not really what ''Dr. Linus'' was about. But it was about fidelity, about remaining faithful to your beliefs and values and ideals even if they don't get you what you want in the moment or even what you want most; it was about what happens when all those convictions get tested and challenged and seemingly proven useless, foolish, and wrong. And what does happen? Well, for some, there is chaos, despair, and the feeling that their whole world has been blown up and annihilated. Yep: sucks to be them. And last night, suckage reigned on....

This Island Earth!
The Hurt Locker

''It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe.''
The Chosen by Chaim Potok

''I was robbed! I spent the whole night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, when I could have been out for tricks or treats. Halloween is over, and I missed it! You blockhead. You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, and all that came was a beagle. I didn't get a chance to go out for tricks or treats. And it was all your fault. I'll sue! What a fool I was! I could have had candy apples and gum and cookies and money and all sorts of things, but no, I had to listen to you. You blockhead. What a fool I was. Trick or treats come only once a year. And I missed it by sitting in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead. YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!'' — Sally Brown to Linus Van Pelt, It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie BrownIn my recap of ''Sundown'' last week, I proposed that the Island portion of Lost 6.0 will take place over three full days, using the Biblical template of Christ's long Easter weekend trip to hell and back. The first six hours of the season took us through the dark night of Good Friday, which means that ''Dr. Linus'' brought us to Saturday morning. On Saturday, as Jesus assayed the Harrowing in the underworld, his disciples on Earth were presumably freaking out, feeling a little bit like Sally Brown, I'm sure. The Island story in ''Dr. Linus'' focused on three disciples of Jacob who processed their grief and despair and anger over his death in different ways. Richard wanted to die. Ilana wanted vengeance. Ben, as usual, just wanted to survive, by any means necessary. All three were on the precipice of making dark, damning choices to resolve their agita. Instead, they each chose something different, and found themselves stumbling into something totally unexpected: hope.

ILANA AND BEN

She called Jacob the closest thing she ever had to a father. Which means only one thing for certain: Jacob wasn't her real father. He could have been her father in the God sense of father — a supernatural entity responsible for her existence and purpose. Maybe it's more of a Godfather thing; she could be Jacob's consigliore (like Tom Hagen, a Ben-esque stray/outsider taken off the street and groomed into a top assistant), maybe his Luca Brasi. We have a few missing years on the Island — the three years between when the castaways began time traveling (late 2004/early 2005) and 2007. We also know that Ilana spent some time in the hospital with bandages wrapped around her face and Jacob visited her and tasked her anew with a mission. How did she get injured? I'm guessing she was on the Island during those missing three years fighting a battle that went badly, possible trying to keep Smokey bottled up. She is now charged with protecting the candidates to replace Jacob. Don't ask her what it means: she doesn't know or isn't telling us. She was asked how many were left, she said six. Was she counting John Locke? Fake Locke? Jin and Sun twice?

Ilana asked Miles to work his magic and chat up Jacob's ashes. We had been led to believe last year that Miles doesn't speak with cremated bodies, but he could have been lying back then. She discovered Ben had murdered Jacob, then did nothing about it until reaching the beach camp. Everyone got to work. Ben scavenged through Sawyer's tent finding two books, The Chosen and another sporting Benjamin Disraeli's name and famous quote ''Justice is truth in action'' on the cover. On, a porn rag, too, all about the butt. Headline: ''Getting to the bottom if it!'' (''The things people bring to read on an airplane....'') Ben perked up when Frank Lapidus explain that he was supposed to have flown Oceanic 815, but had overslept. Frank floated the question: How might have things been different? Again, we are left to wonder: Are the SIdeways stories resolving that mystery? If not, what are the Sideways?

Ilana quietly stripped the camp of cables and locks and then abruptly, violently put a gun to Ben's head and marched him out to Boone Hill and made him dig his own grave. She was going to shoot him dead in it — shades of ''Man Behind The Curtain,'' which ended with Ben shooting Locke (seemingly) dead into the mass grave of dead Dharma members.

While Ilana brooded and nibbled on mangoes, Fake Locke appeared to Ben and made him one of his Faustian offers: future management of the Island. I couldn't tell if Smokey was being sincere; this promise would be the easiest to keep, but I was kinda getting the sense — or maybe just making the assumption — that the Monster had no desire to see the Island continue existing. Fake Locke's screen time here was about equal to the amount of time Sideways Locke got with Sideways Ben. He also presented to Ben as a sympathetic, supportive ally. Ben's survival instinct — and Somebody Wants Me!! instinct — kicked in. He ran to where Smocke had said he'd find a rifle. He got the drop on Ilana, but instead of shooting her, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to explain himself — as if realizing for the first time what he really wanted: to be known, understood, and not rejected, even though he was about to reveal his ugliest inner bits. His confession was part self-laceration, part rage against the Jacob/Island machine: ''I watched my daughter Alex die in front of me and it was my fault. I had a chance to save her. I chose the Island over her. All in the name of Jacob. I sacrificed everything for him, and he didn't even care. I stabbed him. I was so angry. Confused. I was terrified I was about to lose the only thing that ever happened to me, my power. But the thing that really mattered was already gone. ...I can never forgive myself.''

Maybe he couldn't — but surprisingly, she could. Or maybe she decided life would be better — and grieving would be just a little easier — if she let go of the anger. He was floored. It was like he had experienced a new emotion he had never known existed. I might call it ''Amazing Grace.'' Saved, the once-lost, now-found wretch made the first of two heroic choices that represent the proper response to such a gift. The first: renouncing evil. Ben became the first person this season to turn down a FrankenLocke bargain. That's going to have consequences. The second: sacrifice. He entered the beach camp and offered Sun his help putting up the tarp, just as his Sideways version would have easily, effortlessly offered assistance to one of his students. Sun looked at him with eyes that said, What the hell got into you, Guy Who Wanted To Use Me As Breeding Stock In Season 3? Please, Sun: Let's not resort to name-calling. Call him Linus. Dr. Linus perhaps...

JACK, HURLEY, AND RICHARD

Everything about this arc seemed loaded with meaning. Hurley waking up in the field of flowers reminded me of the poppy sequence in The Wizard of Oz. Jack wanting to get moving toward whatever destiny awaited him while Hurley wanted to eat first — reminders that Hurley is gripped by hunger when he's anxious and Jack defers food until his deeper yearnings are sated. They then fought over the right path back to the Temple. Hurley was either going to take the long way or the wrong way, while Jack wanted to go directly back the way they came. It was hard to hear the line and not think Lost was saying something about its two-track, parallel world structure. Then Richard showed up and offered a third path. Jack followed. When Hurley asked if Richard could be trusted, Jack said, ''At least he's not stallin'.'' It was another wink at the audience in an episode full of them. Combined with the line about Napoleon's Elba being the place where ''everything became clear,'' I wondered if Lost was addressing anyone griping about the pace of ''answers'' and saying, Don't worry. Trust us. Okay?

Ironically, then, Richard's path ended with... a lie. He took them to the Black Rock, which was not where he said was taking them, although it was where we've been wanting Alpert to go for a couple years now as we've wondered if the ageless Others came to the Island via the slave ship. (Another reading of Richard's third way as a metaphor for Lost's storytelling: We won't lead you astray, but we're not going the way you expect. We'll be doing this ''answer'' thing our way. ‘Kay?)

But I remain suspicious of Jack. When we last saw him, he was furious over the Lighthouse revelations. Now, after a long gaze out over the beach, it seemed Jack had thought over a few things and was totally activated to chase after all of the Island's magic white rabbits — whether they look like his father or wear eyeliner — and see where they lead. Does Jack want to know Jacob's purpose so he can faithfully fulfill it... or so he can angrily subvert it? He crackles with so much crazy mania, it's hard to know if he's a true believer or a great deceiver. Is it possible the title of the episode hints at an even more provocative possibility: that Ben, a.k.a. ''Dr. Linus,'' has replaced Dr. Shephard as the story's hero, while Jack has replaced Ben as its villain? Consider that sentimental slow-mo reunion sequence that ended the episode. We saw everyone in their huts and tents — including Miles, inspecting the diamonds he purloined from Nikki and Paulo's grave (all $8 million of it? No going dutch on coffee with him!) — as Jack, Hurley and Richard approached. This moment was staged to deliberately echo the scene from the season 3 episode ''One Of Us,'' when Jack, Kate, and Sayid returned from New Otherton, bringing Juliet with them. When the beach crew saw her, the happy-huggy moment abruptly ended, and everyone gave her the stink-eye (especially, ironically, Sawyer) — just like Jack and Ben traded suspicious looks in last night's episode. We learned at the very end of ''One Of Us'' that newbie Juliet was indeed shady; she had been sent by Ben to spy on the camp. (The moment was mirrored, I think, by having ''Dr. Linus'' end with Widmore's submarine spying on the castaways.)

Why might Jack be so angry? Oh, I don't know. The same reason Sally Brown was so angry after spending all night in a pumpkin patch with Linus Van Pelt waiting for transcendent revelation to arrive. This Island thing — Jacob, Ben, everything — has made a big mess of his life, and he wants someone to take responsibility for it. He wants payback. Sally's cry is his cry: ''YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!''

Of course, back in season 3, Juliet and Jack were nurturing heroic double-crosses. Still, at this point in the season, I'm looking inside Jack's heart, and wondering which way his scales are tilting. Will he be replacing Jacob by season's end... or Smokey?
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