Lost, Season 5, Episode 6: 316

Okay, Lost writers. We'll give you that one.

After multiple episodes in a row where questions got answered and characters got reunited, last night's episode felt like the writers saying "Enough with this. Let's throw some more mysteries at them." Fine by us. It wouldn't be Lost if you didn't feel a little...lost.

♦ Opening the show in an almost shot-by-shot re-enactment of the first minutes of episode one, season one was freaking brilliant. How long did it take you to go from "What the...?" to "He's BACK!"?

♦ Even though about midway through the episode we realized with some annoyance that it was going to focus solely on Jack - who, we might have mentioned before, is a douchebag - by the end, we really didn't mind so much. Jack's entire character arc from the first season is one of the man of reason slowly becoming the man of faith and last night's episode felt like, in some ways, the culmination of that arc. Ben makes that clear by recounting to him (in a church, no less) the story of Thomas the apostle, the quintessential faith-over-reason tale. Locke's damning - and heartbreaking - suicide note to him ("I wish you had believed.") was the final nail in the coffin of the old Jack.

♦ Jack's grandfather? Really? We're suspicious and wary of such late-in-the-game character introductions. It could just be that he's a one-off character, introduced to give Jack someone to say goodbye to and to get his father's shoes from. Still, he got a fairly lengthy introduction. Maybe we were just distracted by the fact that the actor was decades too young to play Jack's grandfather.

♦ There are certain contrivances with a show like this that you just have to roll with and Kate's melodramatic "Don't ever ask me about Aaron again!" was one of them. In the real world, people don't say these things and if they do, the response they get isn't normally a shrug and an "Okay." Like we said, you just have to roll with it. Besides, now we get to play "What the HELL did Kate do?" again! And we haven't played that one in a while!

♦ Our theory: After being threatened and/or blackmailed (probably by Widmore, to get her on that plane), she hid Aaron with Cassidy, her old partner in crime and Sawyer's baby mama. If she felt she had to hide Aaron from bad people, then Cassidy's a perfect choice. Besides, what do you think Sawyer whispered to her on that helicopter before he leaped out? Kate and Cassidy have definitely been in contact since she returned from the island.

♦ Why do we think Widmore threatened Kate? Maybe it was Ben who threatened her but our thinking is Sun left the meeting at the church and went straight to Widmore and told him everything that was going down. Widmore wants to find the island again and he hears that the best shot to do so is to get the entire 06 on that plane. He threatens Kate with something, hands her a passport (because how can she have one if she's on probation?) and forces her on that plane. Then, he arranges for Sayid's apparent arrest, to force him on that plane. The guy at the ticket counter that said "my condolences" to Jack and the woman with the badge escorting Sayid are Widmore plants. And we'll just bet they're both either former DHARMA babies or Hostiles babies, like Daniel, Charlotte and Miles. He picked them to get on the island and since it was a time flash that took the o6 off the plane (apparently), then those two would have to have previous exposure to the island to get sucked along with them, right?

♦ Which reminds us...FRANK LAPIDUS! We really thought his tale was done but we were pleasantly surprised to see him appear suddenly. Since he too has exposure to the island, we're thinking he might have gotten sucked off that plane too. We hope so. Frank gets some great lines. "We're not going to Guam, are we?"

Oh, that also reminds us: Ajira airlines...the Ajira airlines waterbottle the remaining castaways found in that canoe a couple episodes back...is it possible that the people chasing them in the canoe were the O6? Does that mean Juliet shot one of them?

How and why did Hurley get on the plane? Charlie told him to, of course. The guitar case.

And finally, Ben. If anyone might have forgotten just how nasty Ben really is, last night was a reminder. He'd gotten a little fluffy and non-threatening during the last couple of episodes and his blithe "Who cares?" when Jack asked him what was going to happen to the rest of the people on the plane was a sharp and funny reminder. Although not as sharp as his bloodied face when he called Jack from the docks after taking care of that "promise to an old friend." Oh shit, Penny. It's not looking good for you. Mrs. Hawking told Desmond the island wasn't finished with him and now he's got a reason to get back to it: vengeance against Ben.

♦ Oh, and that ending? Shut UP!


[Photos: ABC.com]


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