Lost is On: When Is Christian Shepherd?

Lost has been in rare form the last two weeks. It would seem that what made this show so commanding a spectacle; so bedazzling in its form, is back. It's like what Hurley said, "Seems like old times." Deep down I think that's what the creators of this show are interested in - bringing the show back to its roots. While of course, keeping the premise as mind-screwing as possible. The flashes "sideways" are still a little bit head scratching, but at least they help to supplement the episodes with heart and reality. Something that, thankfully, the last two episodes accomplished well. While I'm still not sure what the real motive behind the presentation of these characters in an alternate reality is, I'm willing to accept it and move on with this fantastic show. After all, it is the greatest thing to ever happen to TV. Remember?

So yeah, the flashes sideways in this episode dealt with Jack coming to grips with the challenges of...fatherhood? Okay, he wasn't a dad before in the original timeline, and with this coupled with all that has changed in previous episodes, we have to assume that some serious BUTTERFLY EFFECT SHIT went down after the nuke exploded. Also, Jack's appendix has been removed. I find it a little perplexing that he doesn't remember his own appendix bursting, but whatever. Who am I to judge? For all I know, I could look down tonight when I get in the shower and notice that I too have a scar on my abdomen. Lord knows I haven't looked at it in the mirror for like a decade.

Anyways, Jack's son goes missing, and I know I'm not the only one secretly praying that when he's combing his ex-wife's house for him, Christian will be sitting around the corner in the shadows somewhere. "Jack, you...have to go back," he might say. Oh how easy that would have been, Lost writers. But I'm not here to write your damn show for you either, so we'll just go with what you've got. His son is auditioning to get into a prestigious musical school. Pretty cool! He tracks down the kid and nods with his Jack-smile in approval. "How long has he been playing?" asks the dude from the Temple in Timeline 1 (at this point, it doesn't surprise me anymore). "I don't know," says Jack, "I'm a good-for-nothing father." Okay, he didn't say that second part, but he might as well have. He talks to his son, who I guess was afraid of failing in front of his father, and that's why he didn't tell him where he was? I don't know, if I missed "a couple of notes" on what was practically the effin' Flight of the Bumblebee, I'd be afraid my dad was going to call me a fairy, or a nerd, or something. If anything, Jack probably would've called him the bees knees.

So Jack tells the boy he loves him no matter what, even if he does suck at playing sports, which was what Jack always secretly wished he would do with his life and collegiate career when he was born. Then, they share some extremely cold pizza back at home.

MEANWHILE.....back in the jungle...

We're in Psychoville and Claire's the mayor. She gets Jin out of the bear trap and apparently uses her famed Shepherd Family Surgeon Blood to stitch the wounds on his leg closed. Good job, baby crazy! Then she proceeds to interrogate the guy who she shot in the arm a couple weeks ago. This guy (Hugh Jalips, let's call him) is all like, "Untie me so I can break her neck...in the time it takes for her to boil water and come back." Yeah right Hugh. Way to strategize an escape. Claire's about to go baby crazy with an axe on Hugh, when Jin's all like "Kate has your baby, you crazy little(ton) shit!" Then Claire sighs in relief and axes Hugh anyway. Poor Hugh Jalips, we knew yee not nearly long enough. Then Jin's all like, "I was lying, I think." That's good, Jin. Because apparently that kind of sensible, human behavioral response from Kate warrants her the same fate as dead Hugh over there. Then, just as things are about to heat up between the two of them, in walks El with his trademark, "Howdy" smile and swagger. "That's not John. This is my friend," Claire says. Clearly, we see that this is who has been keeping Claire hidden all this time, and not contract negotiations with ABC.

On the other side of the island, but still conveniently close by...

Jack is having a pow wow with Sayid about the poison pill they tried to give him. Hurley is playing Tic Tac Toe with Miles, who is so insignificant at this point, it still takes me awhile to remember his name so I can type it here. Hurley makes for the Temple mess hall and runs in to...HUH! Jacob. Stirring the waters in the muddy river water bath tub (who says living in a commune can't be fun?). He gives Hugo some instructions. He follows them to the letter, but...he needs Jack! Hugo tells him that he "has what it takes" and Jack's all like, "Shit just got real, let's go talk to Jacob."

So they traverse through the Jungle and run into...KATE! Who's like, fifty feet away from the temple, but has been gone for days? Jack's all wanting her to come too, but Hugo goes all Lundegaard on him and is like, "Jacob said just us to. He was real clear on that." So they keep walking and find yet another gaudy thing on the island that they've never seen before. Well surprise, surprise. It's a lighthouse that sees whatever Jacob wants it to see. Jack turns the nob to where his name is etched on a table, and sees in a mirror the image of his childhood house. This makes him pretty upset (Jacob the Peeping Tom!), so he smashes the mirror into likeabagillion pieces (Hugo: "Thanks for the seven years bad luck, dude.") Jacob meets back up with Hugo and is like, "Everything's cool. This was all just a wake up call for Jack. Oh and by the way, your friends back at the temple are screwed."

I loved this episode for several reasons. One was that Hugo was brought back into hero mode by Jacob, and that he does it with that same, easy going, Hurley-esque charm and wit. Another was that Jacob came into action and showed us how he goes about influencing people; sometimes with little nudges, other times with blatent instructions. The show's premise has always been about destiny vs. free will, and I think what Jacob is trying to show is that it really is both, Forrest Gump. Jacob knows our characters so well that he knows exactly what it will take for them to decide, on their own, to go the ways that he wants them to. Yeah, it could be construed as manipulation, but I think it's still comforting to know that he's not using this power to push them places they shouldn't be. And it's not like it's happening all the time, either. This, and several other things to happen in the past two weeks is what is keeping me hooked on this show. "The suspense is killing me. I hope it will last."

Lost is On: And the Nominees Are...

Richard is still alive! Thankfully. Lord knows where we'd be without his sage, eyeshadowed wisdom. First he had to be like, "I woke up in the middle of the jungle...in a SACK!" and John/El is all like, "Sorry I have to be such a twat towards you." ANYWAYS, El implores Richard to follow him, but Richard's all like, "HUH-NUH," and takes off into the woods. Then El using his Super-Cloud-Powers spots a frazzled Sawyer drinking his sorrows away while listening to "Search and Destroy". Fitting, it almost seems like that's what El is doing.

Sawyer decides to come with El, who promises to answer the most important question ever: "Why am I on this island?" It's all well and good, until Sawyer bumps into Richard again. Richard spouts more voodoo eyeliner wisdom and tells Sawyer that he needs to get the hell away from whoever the fuck is in John Locke and get back to the safe house at the temple. I swear, if I were just coming to this show, I'd say this was the equivalent of teenagers playing Capture the Flag. Sawyer's like, "WHATEVER", and keeps following El further across the island to a part that, huh, we've NEVER SEEN BEFORE.

That's something that gets me about this show. Is this island like so hugely massive that it actually has areas that none of the main characters have seen before? I mean sure, they didn't show any idle wandering going on around the island, but you'd think that on some sort of late night walk they could've stumbled across a ladder running down a cliff to the SECRET VOLCANO LAIR where Jacob decides on candidates to take over his job. Or all the different Dharma stations with several different entrances. And I get it, this is a show that needs to be unraveled slowly with time. The island is like an onion, and Richard is like that dark ring closer towards the center that makes you wonder if this onion is still good to eat or not. But I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

Okay so anyways, El is still preaching about getting off the island, and for some weird reason Sawyer wants to go with him. How come when John Locke was still John Locke no one ever listened to him or gave a damn, but when he's inhabited by the PRINCE OF DARKNESS everyone is like, "Oh sure yeah, I'll almost die to serve your unbelievable purposes!" So now we're left with El and Sawyer "fleeing the island", even though we know that's not what's going to happen.

A few curious things though - since the alterna-LAX world was kind of boring, not overall surprising, and had almost now real reason for us to be concerned about it, I'm pretty much going to disregard that whole section of the show. Which was, a lot - about 20 some-odd minutes. I think that in order for us to have a reason to pay any attention to the "sideways flashes" we're going to need bigger reasons than "HUH! BEN IS THE HISTORY TEACHER." Why should we care? We all know that this sideways timeline isn't the timeline that matters. Or maybe that's what the show's creators want us to believe.

Either way, I didn't find any of it terrible significant. What I did find significant was that there was a child version of Jacob running around bleeding in the woods. What I find even more curious is that Sawyer could see him, but Richard (dark onion ring) couldn't. What I also find curious was that the numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) all correlated with characters that Jacob thought would be good "candidates" for his job. Curious, curious, curious am I. But again, this show has failed to give us concrete answers as to why, or how. It seems to think that what is going on is enough. But we all know that there's a man behind the curtain, and we all know that Richard will ferry us to him. Just how deep does the onion ring go, there Richard?

Lost is On: Land of a Thousand "Huh?"s

You know, I'd forgotten how easily this show can lose itself in its weakest characters. Out of all the big surprises to land this episode, I definitely was not expecting the return of a wasted "Kate" episode. Sure, not all of it was about Kate, since Claire was tied to Kate in alterna-815 world, but seriously. Am I the only one who watched this series on DVD and fast-forwarded through every Kate flashback/flashforward EVER? And I get it, they want to wrap their primary characters before the show ends, but in the immortal words of every cast member of Arrested Development: "Her?" I was lead to believe that every episode this season was a precious commodity, and that numerous questions would have to be answered given such a short time frame. But I'm not sure any questions were answered this episode. In fact, I'm pretty sure they just sent themselves deeper into questions answered debt. Again, the characters danced around what was wrong with Sayid for a whole episode rather than just coming out with it like any sensible human. And two nobodies get killed out of nowhere by - WHAT THE EFF? CLAIRE!

Even with crazy things happening all about, like the resurrection of Claire (who is also the princess of darkness, apparently) and the return of Ethan as Claire's doctor in alterna-815 world, I was none impressed with this episode. None of the characters went anywhere, except further down paths that we as an audience have already been down several times. Kate loves to flee (we got a runner!), Jack trusts no one, Sawyer is a renegade rebel (thanks Kendrick), and Jin just loves Sun. I would politely ask the creators of this show for some character development, but we don't have TIME for that. They've written themselves into a necessity to answer questions, hence questions need answering. I already know that Kate is a flight risk. We already know all of this stuff! And frankly, I don't care if Kate ever stops running. Get to the answers! I swear, this is worse than the unnecessarily long commercial break between the Final Jeopardy! clue and answer.

Bottom Line America:
There were things about this episode that made me curious what will happen next, but nobody is interested in watching Kate and Sawyer "???" eyes at each other for 40 minutes. Get to the action! 

Hot Chip - Made In the Dark

See kids, Hot Chip...Hot Chip is fun. This is a band I could dance to at a dance club. Of course, I wouldn't pigeonhole them as a pure dance band, per se, but their music is very dance-able. They're upbeat. They're rhythmic. They're genre-bending. Now I wouldn't call them Animal Collective, and I also wouldn't call this album Merriweather Post Pavilion. That would be blasphemous (snicker). No, I think Made In the Dark is a break-free from the mold, and a major step in the right direction for the dance/trance genre as a whole. Let me rephrase that -- I think HOT CHIP is a break-free from the mold band. This record is, well it sounds like a lot of experimentation is going on. But the stuff that does wind up sticking to the wall really, really works and it makes for a great experience.

Made In the Dark begins as an exercise. "Out at the Pictures" churns to a start and already we're feeling some pretty hefty rhythms. It's a tad repetitious, but hey, it's the lead-in track. You gotta' have some kind of foundation to build off of. And once "Shake a Fist" starts rolling along, that's when the surprises start rolling in. It's then that this becomes much more than just a simple dance record, and then hearing it becomes as enjoyable a ride as they must have had creating it. This kind of shared experience -- a sort of kinship with the audience -- is really fun to listen to and be a part of. I kind of wish they would've built the whole record like "Shake a Fist", but that probably would've diminished its effectiveness. Just as so many great moments on so many albums go, their fleeting nature only lends to their charm. Any more and it would take away from the moment's power.

Not that the rest of the album doesn't hold some power of its own. But the strength in the tracks to follow is really their togetherness and variety. Tracks like "We're Looking For a Lot of Love" and "Made in the Dark" are refreshingly cool songs, but they probably wouldn't stand on their own without the supporting upbeat tracks like "Bendable Poseable" and "Touch Too Much". Together, they work wonderfully to form a sort of yin and yang vibe throughout the middle bridge of the record. This kind of hot and cold continues, but more so within each individual track. "Don't Dance" is a great example, with its drop-outs and breakdowns in front of and behind pumping dance licks. "Wrestlers" shows off a bit of lyrical flare in this regard as well.

"Whistle For Will" and "In the Privacy of Our Love" round out the record, and leave us on a bit of a slow note. Yet even in this sort of mellow state, they still manage to slip in grooves that can get your head bobbing a little. They have this effect throughout most of the record, and some of the rhythms and grooves can be downright infectious. It's obvious that they're diving into a lot of different pools as well, with an almost tribal vibe on "One Pure Thought".

Yeah, they're toying. It's pretty obvious that they haven't got much to say from the onset though. But then that's not the point either. The point, I think, is to present us with a record that is listenable, enjoyable, and fun. Some of the fun they're having is pretty freakin' great, too. Some of the strongest moments on the record are where they're just plinking around on a piano, or dizzying up a squarewave, just for the hell of it. And that's all this kind of music really needs. It's one thing to be particular about instruments or sounds when you're orchestrating a symphony. It's another thing to worry about the particulars of losing your mind on the dance floor.

Lost is On: Teh God Machine

Okay, the island is underwater. Everyone lands safe and sound at LAX. No one remembers a thing. But wait, there's another Jack, Kate, and Sawyer on the island in THE FUTURE. The producers said no more flashbacks, flashforwards, or even time travel. What they failed to mention was two different timelines. We'll be breaking this up into two sections: 1) Timeline 1, or "the future" 2) Timeline 2, or "2004"

Timeline 1
In the future, John is actually "him", who I will be referring to as "El" unless he is named by the show otherwise. El is on a bloodthirsty hunt for a way off the island. He wants to go home. Isn't that special? He's also the "smoke monster". He kills a bunch of dudes and probably Richard.

Jacob is dead, but he still finds a way to speak to Hugo. He tells Hugo to take a dying Sayid to the temple, where they plan on saving him. Also, he asks Hugo to bring the guitar case holding a giant wooden symbol that contains a letter to the people running the temple - a VIP guest list of sorts. The water pool (an obvious homage to the healing pool of the gospels) is bubbling, which implies that hey, this might not work. Sayid drowns while they're trying to save him, and he dies.

Meanwhile, Sawyer and Miles are burying Juliette, whom they have just discovered in a rubble that used to be the hatch. She died after telling Sawyer that she had something very important to say. While she couldn't finish her thought, Miles (HE HEARS DEAD PEOPLE) informs Sawyer that she wanted to say, "IT WORKED". Whatever that means. Sawyer and Miles get ambushed by a group of the others and they're taken to the temple to meet up with everyone else.

Jack is about to get his beat down on, when suddenly, Sayid wakes up. He's back from the dead to say, "What happened?" That's what we all want to know, Sayid. That's what we're all asking.

A few things worth noting:
1. El tells Richard that it's nice to see him out of "those chains". What does that mean? Was he bound? Does Richard contain the spirit of some other kind of diety, like Jacob or El?
2. John Locke's body is still around, and Sayid was just raised from the dead. Will the real John Locke please stand up?
3. Jacob doesn't at all seem worried that he's dead when talking with Hugo. He makes it sound like he's been planning this all along. Ben also notices that Jacob didn't fight back against him. Christ allegories abound here, folks. Heck, allegories for all sides of the Bible abound.
4. The stewardess from the plane is one of the Others. So are the...kids? I don't know. Someone may have to explain that one to me.

Timeline 2
Jack wakes up from his forever nap to discover that he is floating above where the island used to be. It is, in fact, at the bottom of the ocean. The plane hits a very mild patch of turbulence, then proceeds to fly all the way to LAX. Everyone ever from the show is on board - Hugo is chit chatting with Sawyer, Boone is shootin' the breeze with Locke (who's still paralyzed), and Jin is a jerk again. While in the air, Jack is visited by Desmond, who he recognizes, but not really. He then gets called upon to rescue a dying Charlie, who's choking on a heroine bag in the airplane bathroom. Charlie didn't want to be saved, apparently (he's gonna die, brother), so he doesn't thank Jack for saving him. While he's gone, Desmond isn't sitting next to him anymore. WEIRD.

Doubly weird is the fact that when they do land, Jack's dad isn't there. I mean, his dead dad didn't make it on the plane. Oceanic doesn't know where he is. Kate asks Crazy Marshall to take her to the bathroom. Big mistake. Doesn't he know you never, ever let them go to the bathroom? ANYWAY, Kate makes yet another great escape (with the aid of Sawyer, I might add), in a taxi that an eight-month pregnant Claire is riding in. Jack bumps into Locke in lost baggage claim because long story short, Locke is missing his knives, and Jack is missing HIS FATHER. Jack tells Locke to call him sometime for a consult, and Locke is a little surprised that his last name is Shepherd. HMM.

A few things worth noting:
1. Where the heck is Shannon? Boone mentions that he didn't manage to bring her back with him. Maybe I missed something, but shouldn't she be on the plane too?
2. What's with Dez? He's reading Catch-22, he mysteriously is on the plane, and then just disappears again without any explanation. ALSO, they don't show his left hand. No way to know if he has ties to Penny now or not.
3. Kate's escaping again, Charlie is presumably going to jail for having heroine on board the plane, and Jin and Sun are being processed by airport security. Sawyer is doing whatever Sawyer does - ok, where the hell is everyone going? ISLAND? Hello? Round these people up, maybe? I mean, there is no Island anymore in this timeline, but from experience watching this show, I'd gather that everything is happening for a reason. There must be a reason for all of this.
4. Where are Locke's knives (that money can't buy)? And where's Jack's dad?

Bottom Line America:
John Locke sans Island is a miserable John Locke. Oh, and I said WTF at least a dozen times over the course of two hours.

'Til next week...