LOST Again

I am absolutely loving LOST these days. I really think the agreement at the end of last season to set an end date and fix the remaining number of hours was the best thing that could have happened to the show. The contract's in place, so they don't have to worry about rushing an ending to fit an early cancellation,nor do they have to tread water to satisfy a network that wants to keep milking the show endlessly. They can put the plot twists out there exactly as they want. And they've been awesome all season.

So what did we learn this week?

-Firstly, that John Locke really is as "chosen" as he's always believed himself to be.

-That, no matter how much it might have scared Richard Alpert, John's choice of the knife really was the right one. When Matthew Abbadon suggested John's Walkabout, he said, "Just you and a knife, and you learn what you're made of." The case of knives John took on walkabout enabled the castaways to hunt boar and survive. John used a knife to kill Naomi, an act he performed in service of protecting the island.

-That Richard Alpert is either ageless or a time traveler. I lean toward ageless, since he appeared the same in two time periods on the island (when recruiting young Ben away from Dharma, and in 2004). It is disappointing that Locke, upon meeting him on the island last season, didn't recognize him from the brief-but-memorable childhood visit.

-It's interesting that Locke's teacher insisted that John was born to be a man of science and Locke denied that destiny, since the show's dichotomy has long been"Man of Science, Man of Faith," between Jack and John.

-The conspiracy theorist fans who have always thought Jack's dad was a key to the island appear to be right,though he's not (apparently) Jacob. And now he has Claire with him, seeming calm, content, and kind of saucy, even after abandoning Aaron. Is she dead, like her father? I must say, after many, many episodes of Claire being kind of a cypher, I'm pumped to see where she fits into the mythology.

-Apparently, if you travel to the island on a proper heading (like the chopper crew, or Sayid), you can get there in real time. But if you approach randomly, like the body of the doctor, you'll slip in the timeline and arrive who-knows-when. Hmm.

-Move the island? Guess we know why everybody's always looking for it, and why Ben said Widmore would never find it (even though Widmore's boat already had).

-Locke owes Matthew Abbadon one, as threatened. Without Abbadon's suggestion of walkabout, Locke would never have come to his destiny on the island. But Abbadon put together at least part of the team that's attacking the island. So when Locke does see him again, will he be split between his loyalty to the island and his gratefulness to Abbadon?

-Is Abbadon really an enemy of the island? Clearly, Keamy is, and probably so is Widmore, but Abbadon has only been seen assembling the research team (Naomi,Charlotte, Daniel, Miles, Frank), some of whom (especially Frank) we have seen to be against Keamy's destructive nature. So maybe he's working against Widmore's interests, and on behalf of the island.

Who knows?

Okay, that's what I've got right now. What a mind scramble. Next week: part one of the two-night, three-hour finale! (The final two hours air two weeks later, on 5/29, because GREY'S ANATOMY has a two-hour finale scheduled for 5/22.)

-Slick