SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the episode airing February 23, 2010, don't read this!
I really liked tonight's episode, even if it sometimes descended a little too far into melodrama (more on that in a minute). I like that lines are being drawn in the sand. It appears (I say "appears" because this is, after all, Lost) that we're finally getting a clearer picture of the good guy/bad guy setup. Fake Locke and Claire (and thus, it would seem, Christian Shepherd and maybe soon-to-be Sayid)=bad. Hurley, Jack, Jacob, all the other "candidates"=good. A few other characters remain up in the air: Aaron? Kate? Ben?
Tonight was my favorite of all the sideways-flash episodes, as we watch a Lost character finally overcome his bad-daddy issues. Jack bonds with his son (a dead ringer for Jack, but my word, those were some bright red lips on that boy), expressing the affirmation he never received from Christian. Nice. But who is David's mother? Sarah, Jack's ex-wife? This seems unlikely; I thought Jack and Sarah only met a few years before Flight 815, not long enough to produce a surly teenage son. The mother cannot be Kate, of course; Jack and Kate just got off the plane and clearly were strangers (or mostly strangers).
Now. I need to discuss Claire.
I know we all needed to understand what happened to her, but I'm having a hard time really buying Claire as Crazy Jungle Woman. She was always painted as so innocent and gentle; this character shift is giving me whiplash. The parallels the writers are drawing to Rousseau border on the absurd (or at least the overly obvious). We GET it. She shoots people and sets traps. She's supposed to remind us of Rousseau. Let's move along. She tells us that Fake Locke is not, in fact, John, but her "friend". Does Smokey manifest himself differently to different people? I thought we learned last week that Smokey had to stay in the form of John Locke?
I'm eager to hear what you thought of the lighthouse scene. Again, it seemed a little contrived. I like the idea of Jack coming face-to-face with the specific calling on his life. I like that Hurley was the tool Jacob used to accomplish this. But the images reflected in the mirror? These seemed awkward to me.
The biggest question of the night, in my opinion? Where is Sawyer? Has he set off to fulfill Fake Locke's evil plan? I doubt it--Sawyer is too savvy. Is he dead? This also seems unlikely. But Fake Locke appeared without him at the end, so we're left with the wondering.
Hurley knocked it out of the ballpark in this episode, delivering his best lines ever, including:
(To Miles) "I could eat."
(To Dogen) "I'm a big fan of temples and history and Indiana Jones stuff."
(To Jacob) "I just lied to a Samurai."
(To Jack) "Very old school, man, you and me trekking through the jungle to do something we don't really understand. Good times."
If you're blogging Lost at your blog, feel free to leave a direct link to your post below. The list will close to new links in a few days, to keep away the spammers.
