I wonder if anyone else writing about this show found it hard to formulate thoughts about this penultimate episode, since it built up such a nice momentum going into the finale that I’m almost content to wait and see how it all plays out on Sunday. (I can’t believe this is going to be over on Sunday.)

So.

Things in the Sideways World are set to converge at David Shephard’s concert, part of the grand opening ceremonies for the new paleontology wing at Pierre Chang’s museum, funded by and named after Hurley.

I did not see that particular scenario coming.

Interesting, though, that this gathering almost mirrors the benefit thrown by the Widmores — we haven’t seen Daniel or Eloise since that episode, and just as Widmore snuffs it here, it’s like that particular narrative layer has folded up. (Maybe.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. It felt as though the story was truly and finally settling in for a sit around the campfire to tell us everything we need to know. (Not necessarily WANT to know. But need.)

It was an excellent blend of quiet scenes, weighted with the full force of previous seasons, and explosive violent scenes. I loved the scene between Jack and Locke in the Sideways world, as I have tended to love all of their scenes together. Loved that Locke echoed his own words from Season 1: What if all this is happening for a reason? And loved that Jack replied with another Lostian echo: Don’t mistake coincidence for fate.

Loved Ben’s scenes with Alex and Danielle, particularly that they happen after Desmond forcibly shows Ben the world that should be, so that Ben must have gotten flashes of Alex as his daughter on the island as he watched her study. And that knowing look that passes between Ben and Danielle — I’m chalking that up to “I remember you” and not any sort of romantic moment. Because the latter is a little too much for me to handle right now.

(Sidenote: I think I’m going to institute coq au vin night.)

And Ben tells Locke that Desmond was there to help Locke “let go.” It didn’t occur to me before that letting go is something both Lockes would benefit from — Sideways Locke needs to let go of his guilt and martyrdom so that he can have the chance to walk again; Smokey Locke needs to let it all go — his rage, his vengeance, his plan to kill everyone, his plan to destroy the island. Seriously. Dude. Just let it go.

Which makes me wonder whether Ben’s apparent 180 (or 360, as it were) is his plan to get Smokey to let go. Because I’m 97% sure that Ben is playing Smokey, either for self-preservation (which is completely in keeping with his character) and/or to save the island (ditto). He needs Smokey to believe that he’s on his side, so he gives up Widmore (I have to believe that revenge was always at the forefront of Ben’s mind as well, especially after Miles and Richard bring up Alex). And in using Smokey to kill Widmore, Ben appears to, possibly, once again have the upper hand as he has always had with Locke, up until the point at which Smokey/Locke convinced him to kill Jacob.

Which is not to say that Ben wasn’t absolutely, completely CHILL-MAKING in these scenes. Sinister Ben, I have missed you. But please don’t be evil.

Can’t say I’m sorry to see Widmore go, either. Much better to have the fate of the island rest in the hands of the characters we really got to know over the last six seasons.

But oh, Richard. The minute he said “I’m going to go talk to him” I knew it would go wrong because one of the things we know for sure is that you do NOT let Smokey talk to you if you want to stop him. But I wasn’t prepared for Smokey to hurl Richard so violently into a tree. Can Smokey kill Richard as he couldn’t kill Jacob? I don’t see anyone coming back from that, immortal or not. And if Richard’s indeed dead, he got an even rawer deal than Ilana and all the people on the sub. (Although it might have been better that way, as I don’t think I could take another drawn-out death scene.)

And Jack stepped up to become the next Jacob. OK, first of all, the scene around the fire made me recant what I said last week, that perhaps the whole of “Across the Sea” could have been reduced to a couple of flashbacks within another episode. Had that been done, I don’t think Jacob’s words to Kate, Sawyer, Jack, and Hurley would have been as impressive or powerful. Second, I am fully on board with Jack’s choice. He made that choice from an understanding that it was his destiny — this is why he was brought to the island; this is why he was brought to the lighthouse. These are the answers he’s wanted. He made his choice as Season 6 Jack, not as Season 1 Jack, who would’ve stepped up out of a compulsion to have to be the one in charge, in control, at all times. Both Season 1 and Season 6 Jack are still powered by their need to fix things, but their motivations for wanting to do so are different.

What I didn’t buy so much was Hurley’s “At least it wasn’t me.” I may be saying so out of a slight sense of my own disappointment, but I caught in Jorge Garcia’s delivery more than a touch of regret that he didn’t step up before Jack did.

Other things:

Jack’s neck started bleeding — something he first noticed on the flight back from Sydney, still as mysterious as ever. A literal bleeding in of the original timeline into the sideways timeline?

We get teased with the prospect of finally seeing who David’s mom is. Any guesses?

Who let Desmond out of the well?

I liked the breakout scene, featuring Ana Lucia as a shady bribe-taking cop.

Strange men keep giving Kate dresses.

Speaking of Kate, what did you think about Jacob’s explanation for why her name was crossed out?

Finally, as we look toward the finale (!!), what do you most want to see happen? What’s left unanswered for you?

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Why are Desmond episodes so good? It’s partly because Henry Ian Cusick is just so good, so fun to watch, but it’s also because Des eps always have to do with the timey-wimey stuff, the scientific explanations for why the island is like it is, its powers and limitations. It’s the same reason the Locke and Ben episodes are always so good — Locke eps always have the spiritual element of the island at their core, while Ben eps tend to focus on the island’s history. These three are like the Island Trinity.

This episode was like “Flashes Before Your Eyes” and “The Constant” swirled together in a delicious Desmond cone. My notes are all exclamation points. “Minkowski!” “Driveshaft!” “Daniel alive! Musician!” “NOT PENNY’S BOAT!” “MILTON!”

Now that I think about it, this entire episode was really little more than a string of callbacks and references to previous episodes, back to back to back. And it was FANTASTIC.

Minkowski: not a mathematician, but a driver for Widmore, kinda skeezy, but thankfully questioning Desmond on his request for the 815 flight manifest. Good on Minkowski, for actually asking a pertinent question! Good on Desmond, for answering it! Except he doesn’t really, but still. Also, does Des say “I need to show THEM something,” or “show HIM something”? Where him = Widmore, but them = everyone on that flight? I would assume that the manifest would somehow prove that the Sideways world isn’t real, but how? (Maybe them = the Widmores?)

We also saw the return of animal testing (boo!) with the white rabbit named Angstrom. (Ha! I really got a kick out of that.)

Widmore has a large painting of the scales of justice in his office, recalling the scales in the cave.

That Widmore and Desmond are all buddy-buddy parallels the way everyone’s father seems to be pretty decent in the Sideways world. My throat caught a little when Widmore brought out the bottle of MacCutcheon (best fake scotch ever! Every time I see it referenced my mind goes to Kramer’s Hennigan’s commercial).

Widmore and Eloise Hawking are married. Daniel is a musician. And I have to wonder whether Eloise deliberately steered him into music, the same way she had deliberately steered him into physics. It was pretty clear that Eloise knows exactly what’s going on — telling Desmond he’s “not ready” to meet Penny.

I am probably one of about five people who was happy to hear “You All Everybody” again. Sorry, but that song has always cracked me up. And Driveshaft being still together explains Liam’s presence at the jail however many episodes ago.

Desmond sees his own reflection a couple times, in the arrivals board at LAX and in the door to the jail just before Charlie walks out of it.

I know I’m a big ol’ sap, but I was surely not the only one who got chills when Charlie does his “Not Penny’s boat” gesture in the sinking car. CHILLS. Coming as it did after all the layers of Desmond and Charlie’s relationship were referenced — Desmond is charged with babysitting Charlie, the two of them talk about love and choice — to have the pivotal drowning scene from the end of Season 3 repeated was powerful.

Desmond experiences more flashes before his eyes, all about Penny, as he goes into the MRI chamber. At that moment I thought that everyone was going to converge on the hospital and Doctor Who would show up and sonic screwdriver the MRI machine into something hugely powerful and that’s how everything gets OK.

Oh, Eloise’s LOOK when she meets Desmond. Fantastic. And then she echoes Faraday in saying “What happened, happened.” Also fantastic. She knows. She knows! (How?) (Nah, don’t care. She’s always known.)

Penny’s last name is Milton. OF COURSE. You could ask how this last name came about, why it’s Milton and not Widmore, and I’d answer that I never understood why Daniel’s last name was Faraday, unless it was to shield him from knowing that Widmore was his father. So my guess is that Sideways Penny doesn’t know that Widmore is her father, and this was done to prevent Desmond from meeting her before it was time. Daniel knows because his two worlds are bleeding into each other.

Oh my stars was it nice to see Jeremy Davies again. Damn, I missed him. And his description of seeing Charlotte in the museum and just knowing that he already loved her — so sweet! And HELLO now the look Jack gave Kate in the first episode makes sense.

I’m also not one to roll my eyes at the idea that love is going to be The Answer to Everything at the end in some sort of Harry Potter way. I don’t think this is where they’re going with this, but capital-L Love has ALWAYS been a major part/theme of this show: Desmond/Penny, Jin/Sun, Charlie/Claire, Rose/Bernard! — let’s also include Daniel/Charlotte now and Jack/Kate and Sawyer/Juliet (please?).

(Sidenote: how come it’s just the guys who have these love at first sight flashes?)

My take is that seeing Charlotte was a trigger for Daniel’s real-time consciousness to seep into his Sideways consciousness (true love’ll do that sometimes, make you dream in quantum mechanics and stuff), so he drew this graph and equation without really understanding them. I caught the words “real space” and “imaginary time.” The Sideways world isn’t real. I mean, duh, but I’m glad we got confirmation on that, and I think it’s more than “it’s not real.” Another theory floating around was that this was how things would turn out if Jacob hadn’t touched any of the candidates, but that’s no longer valid. Jughead wasn’t a giant reset button, it was something else altogether. This world simply isn’t meant to be. It’s imaginary.

And again, Daniel and his mother are approaching things in different ways — Eloise seems to be adhering to a very rigid set of circumstances that must happen in a certain order (whatever happened to course correction?), while Daniel — perhaps banking on the variables once again — is all “Penny? That’s my sister! Yeah, she’s running a tour de stade. Go find her.”

I loved that Des finds Penny at the same stadium he and Jack met. I loved that he asks her for coffee and my breath caught because I was waiting for her to answer as Juliet mumbles at the beginning of the season. Which wouldn’t have made sense, but I was still waiting for it. (P.S. My new theory is that Juliet’s “I’d love to go for coffee” is not said to Sawyer, but to Ben.)

(Why was Penny at the stadium and why did she then suggest to meet for coffee in an hour when she’s supposed to be at this charity thing?)

And finally, the minute Desmond shakes Penny’s hand, his consciousness jumps back to the island, and we’re right back in “The Constant” territory, and . . . Desmond is different. He’s calmer. He’s TOO calm. He tells Widmore he gets it, he’s ready to start. And then with equal equanimity, he follows Zombie Sayid after watching Sayid snap a guy’s neck. My guess: Desmond now sees the whole picture. He’s fully aware of both real and imaginary timelines, what has happened in both, and more importantly what WILL happen in both. So he knows that he needs to go with Sayid, knows that Sayid is not really Sayid and more importantly that Sayid will lead him to Smokey. And why does Desmond need to find Smokey? I think there are two possibilities:

1. Desmond’s the new Jacob. No, we haven’t seen his name on the list of candidates, but. Widmore spoke of a sacrifice he was going to ask Desmond to make, once their experiment was over. I think that sacrifice could very well be “You’re never going to see your wife and son again. You have to stay on this island and protect it.”

2. Or, possibly, that Smokey is actually Faraday (this is a theory I’ve seen batted around a few times — check out Jeff Jensen’s posts on Lost, because he’s written about it, but I don’t remember for which episode. The one where Smokey tells Kate that he had a crazy mom). I’m not entirely sure I understand it, or fully buy it, but it’s intriguing, so let’s go with that as a premise) and, because Desmond is Faraday’s Constant, Desmond is the one person who can pull Faraday out of this mess, which will then somehow put everything back to rights.

Or, of course, neither one of these could be true. Or they both could be true. It’s probably something completely different and more simple. But clearly Desmond is the key to saving the island, saving the world. So the Desmond/Jacob theory I think holds some weight, despite evidence to the contrary.

I didn’t see previews for next week, but Lostpedia lists the episode title as “Everybody Loves Hugo,” which is a reference to another favorite episode of mine, “Everybody Hates Hugo,” which has my favorite Lost opening of all time.

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Meh?

Am I right?

Mostly meh, anyway. I don’t think it’s wrong to expect Lost to follow up one kickass episode with another, because they’ve done it many times before, but this was so far from kickass that now that I’m sitting down to write this I find myself mostly disappointed in it. But anyway. Some good things did happen, and some fun callback stuff happened, but some pretty ridiculous stuff also happened, so. Onward.

Let me get this straight: In the Sideways world, Sun and Jin are secret lovers but not married. Mr. Paik learns of this tryst and sends his daughter and her lover as bodyguard to LA for Keamy to kill Jin. That seems extravagant, even for Paik. I call contrivance.

I did like that Keamy and Mikhail were working together — the two guys who just! won’t! die! (And Keamy STILL didn’t die! Hilarious.) It took me a couple scenes to figure out why Mikhail looked different — he didn’t have his eye patch. And then Jin shot him in the eye at the end. Ha!

Also liked that Sayid gave Jin the means to free himself, but didn’t cut him free himself. Kinda Jacob-like, to only give someone the means to free oneself. Even though Island Sayid is an Apocalypse Now soul-dead zombie.

Knew Sideways Sun was going to get shot, and it stands to reason that she would be pregnant — that would’ve been the something she wanted to tell Jin at the hotel. Nice for the Sideways plot to end there on such a cliffhanger — will Sun survive? Will the fetus? Might JULIET make an appearance?

On the island — I don’t know how I feel about the whole aphasia thing. I think it’s mildly ridiculous but I don’t really mind it so much. I like the symmetry inherent in the way it’s Jin who speaks fluent English now, and Sun who can’t. I like that Sun’s speech was taken away so that the full force of her objections to Richard’s plan to blow up the plane couldn’t be understood. And of course, Island Sun loses her ability to speak English as we learn for sure that Sideways Sun never learned English at all. So that’s a nice connection. Even if the whole thing felt like something better suited to daytime soaps.

I thought Jack’s talk with Sun was well done as well, tomato metaphor notwithstanding (that was more than a little ridiculous. “No one told this tomato that it was supposed to die.” All I needed was a reappearance of the moth from S1). Jack seemed very Jacob-like. On a more shallow note, I like how shaggy Matthew Fox’s hair is right now.

So Widmore’s people took Jin because Jin had mapped out the terrain for the DI in 1977 and they need him to help them find other pockets of unusual energy. Because . . . they can’t read the maps themselves? They’re maps! Whatever. I don’t like Zoe (or maybe it’s the actress — either way, I don’t like her at all) so I don’t have a problem with the idea that she’s a freakin’ geophysicist but she can’t read a map.

And the electromagnetic pockets — this is what’s going to keep Smokey on the island, channeling that energy into something larger than the pylons? To use as a weapon or means of moving the island? How moving the island keeps a cork in things I don’t know. Is Widmore looking for something specific? Maybe he’s looking for something off those maps, which would then render my disdain for Zoe’s lack of map-reading skills moot. Still don’t like her.

But then Jin sees pictures of his daughter for the first time and if you hadn’t prepared for this like Jenn had then you don’t know Lost, my friends. That was very, very sweet. Also nice to see Bpo Bpo again.

Oh, and of course, DESMOND. So Desmond is “the package” (I’ll say!), which means I was right! Sort of! when I guessed it would be Desmond that Jacob was referring to in “The Lighthouse.” Because he is special, the rules don’t apply to him, etc. so it stands to reason that he would be instrumental in stopping Smokey/aligning these timelines. And man, the look between Desmond and Sayid was like an episode in itself.

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Hey. ‘Sup.

So ummmm . . . whatcha all doing?

Oh, right. Sorry. I was distracted by shirtless Sawyer. What? Like you weren’t.

Today is one of those rare days in which I have lots of stuff to do, so I can’t give this episode its full due — but I think that’s fine, since I thought it was a sort of tepid episode. Plenty to like about it, but . . .

Stuff I wasn’t crazy about

* Liam looking for Charlie — though it was great to see Liam, this felt like backsliding into the COINCIDENCE? OR NOT business the flash-sideways scenes were doing at the beginning. Though if this means that Charlie’s going to be back soon, then I’m OK.

* Sawyer — sorry, Ford — hooking up with Charlotte was also too much, though perhaps the intent of this part of the plot was to create as strong a jarring feeling in the audience is possible. In audience time, Sawyer is still flooded with grief, and to watch him jump into bed with not one but two women is . . . painful, right? Felt wrong. Sexy, but wrong.

* Also, I’m pretty sure that Charlotte was ransacking Sawyer/Ford’s drawer looking for anything but a t-shirt. It’s possible that she’d been tasked by Miles to hunt around for information, but I think that’s too much of a stretch. Though maybe. Regardless, I wish they’d followed up on that.

* The island stuff felt like it didn’t move at all. It did, with Sawyer going to the Hydra Island and finding Widmore’s people (this time around Widmore hired a pole dancer and Chip from Kate & Allie) and playing both sides of this fight that had BETTER BE EPIC. But mostly this felt like set-up, which is fine, but man, the next 8 episodes had better all feel like finales.

* The scene between Sawyer and Widmore fell flat. The final scene was Sawyer tells Kate that they’re going to just let everyone else duke it out while they make their escape also didn’t feel like the sort of ka-blammo ending that Lost usually gives us. “We’re gonna take the sub.” Ooooh. Like you know how to pilot a sub any better than you know how to pilot a plane.

Stuff I dug

* I’m not the first and I won’t be the last to say that I would watch the Sawyer and Miles cop show in a heartbeat. Sawyer is a COP. I love it. And his explanation to Charlotte makes the most sense both in terms of Sawyer’s past (which happened exactly as it did in the original timeline) and in terms of the bigger picture: Sawyer had a CHOICE between turning criminal or turning into a cop.

* Of course, his plan for revenge against Anthony Cooper blurs the morality line, which again fits in with the bigger thematic picture.

* But what interests me the most about this sideways turn of events is that it’s the first one that parallels the island in 1977. The previous eight episodes have all called back to events that either happened on the island in 2004 or, in the case of the Oceanic 6, off-island in 2007. 1977 Sawyer and Sideways Sawyer are both called Jim, they both work as figures of authority in peace-keeping situations, “LaFleur” is their codeword.

* What does it mean? I’m not sure what it means in terms of these two worlds eventually reconciling, but I think in this case what we saw of Sawyer in “Recon” is who he really is, or who he was always supposed to be — it wasn’t until he time-skipped to 1977 and became Jim LaFleur and assumed a position of authority, respected by his employees and those he protects in the DI, calmly reading a book during a crisis, that Sawyer really came into his own.

* Still — “LaFleur” is a totally random codeword. How’d they come up with it?

* I loved it when the woman at the beginning called him “Dimples.”

Other stuff

* Well, of course it would be Kate on the run at the end. That was a good way to balance out the actual ending, because I immediately wanted some follow-up. Josh Holloway’s delivery on “Son of a bitch” was one of the highlights of the episode.

* And it makes sense that Miles and Charlotte would know each other through Miles’ father — who apparently ALSO left the island. Starting to wonder whether the bomb even went off in the Sideways World, or if the DI simply ran out of funding or something. (Or maybe it wasn’t the bomb, but the “incident,” but those people would’ve been on the island then as well.)

* The Kate and Claire stuff was pretty intense. Kate’s totally out of her depth right now and much as I dislike the character I was feeling sympathetic toward her. Claire tries to stab her and Sayid just watches? Ouch. The conversation she has with Smokey was interesting, too — Smokey talks about his crazy mother, but did he mean his crazy mother or Locke’s crazy mother?

* Can Widmore actually be ON the island? I’m wondering if the conditions of his exile mean that even if he finds a way back (which he has, twice now) he can’t actually physically set foot on it.

Finally, next week’s episode looks like it’s going to center on Richard, which I wasn’t expecting given last week’s episode. I feel sort of sated on the whole Richard issue, so while I’m looking forward to this I think it would’ve been better if next week’s episode had already happened, because I fear it’s going to feel like an afterthought. Especially since Richard told Jack he didn’t have any answers! And now ABC is touting the Richard episode as one with a whole bunch of answers? Granted, that’s a network problem rather than a writing problem, but still. I am skeptical.

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