Lost is On: Turn of the Screw

The gears are turning. The board is set. The pieces are moving. This is the kind of Lost episode we find when the pot is slowly beginning to boil. It starts as a bubble. A little second glance in a mirror. The bubbles begin to appear more frequently; a gunshot wound, an explosion, a double-cross, an unspoken connection. The more of these that take form, the more violent the boil becomes. An episode like this is where things start to get crazy. Split second decisions are made and hands are forced. It's brutal, but somehow we can sense that it's only going to get worse. Not only are our characters reaching a breaking point, they're being changed in ways neither they or we could have expected, and maybe in ways we still cannot even see.

There were so many parallels going on in the real world and the alternate world that I can't even count. There were even more parallels drawn to previous seasons. We found out that Smoke/Locke was also Smoke/Christian earlier in the series. Then I suppose one could infer that he must've also been several dead people leading our characters astray. What we do know is that now Smoke/Locke cannot change forms. At least not into another human. So although I found it hard to believe last week that Michael was actually a "ghost of Island past", and not one of Smoke/Locke's minions, it must be true. So Jacob has obviously let go of the reins on his people and is letting them make their own decisions. But are they really their own decisions? Or is Smoke/Locke and Widmore forcing everyones' hands?

This battle between two opposing "big factions" is constantly dividing and changing our characters. Sayid seems questioning even of his own "absolute evil". Did he really kill Desmond? If he is absolutely evil, and feeling of no remorse, then he must have. But did you see the look in his eyes? Desmond's question to Sayid was brilliant: Does the end justify the means? That's a really good question. I'd pose that question to both Jacob and Smoke/Locke, who seem to get their kicks off manipulating both living people and dead people to prove who is superior or "right". In fact, one could attest that if it weren't for Smoke/Locke's everpresent "need" to get off the island, Sayid wouldn't even have to make a choice like that. But, if it weren't for Jacob, Sayid never would have come to the island in the first place. So really, what is this all about? Why these specific characters? And if several will wind up dead in the end, does the end justify the means?

I'd really like to know if the end of this show is going to live up to all the hype the show has created for it. I mean, I know we all want "answers", and slowly but surely we're getting them, but will we be satisfied with an answer to the eternal question of "Why?" Somehow I doubt that we would. Like great performance art, there is no why. One could ask the same question about real life and still come up with no real answers why. Is it ironic that the ficticious answer to the life, the universe and everything is...42? Of course not.

Ok, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't really want to know why. I just want to feel like my investment in this show has justified all this time I've spent with it. I know I've said all this before, and I must sound like a broken record, but I obviously love this show enough to write about it every week, so. I'm just going to pray for a decent ending. Even though I probably won't get one.

On a lighter note, I read a blog quote today by a user named Jakc's Beard. It read...

"WE HAVE TO GROW BACK!"