Countdown to the Incident.

What's going on in Lost?
Well, there are two time periods having their story's told concurrently; 1977 and 2007.
In 2007, Locke was leading Sun and the Others in a Mad Quest to kill Jacob, Claire was still M.I.A., Christian hadn't creeped anybody out for a few episodes and oh yeah, the Shadow-statue people, Iliana and Bram and so forth, had enacted their own coup, conked Lapidus on the head, and were marching off to an undisclosed location with a very awkward looking metal box.
Also, gone bot not forgotten, Desmond was recovering in a hospital somewhere and Charles Widmore was scheming.
And back in Dharmaville 1977, things were on a collision course: 'the incident' is coming, and Daniel was determined to prevent it by way of nuclear detonation. Then his mother shot him in the back. Very sad. Jack took up his crusade and enlisted the help Daniel's murderous but repentant mother and the always welcome Richard Alpert to finish the task and wipe out all life on the Island for good. Kate took exception to this and left, Sayid showed up and had no problems with it.
In Dharmaville proper, the jig was up; Sawyer and Juliet were on the sub (cue Kate), and Miles, Jin and Hurley were lurking by the dock spying through binoculars. While their original plan was to head to the Beach for the whole 'starting over' plan, it remains unseen as to whether Hurley will try to force some kind of rescue plan. It's not as farfetched as you might think; he saved Sawyer and Juliet's bacon back in the Season 3 finale.
Now it seems to me that to satisfy a literary completeness, we must see these two disparate groups reunite. They parted ways in last years finale and have been working towards each other (whether they knew it or not) all year. It also seems that Desmond has been so thoroughly under-used this year that he must play a huge part. Because it's not like they've let us forget about Desmond. Every now and again they'll pull him out like a magic trick - now you see him, now you don't- just to remind us that he's still around, and still unpredictable.
In regards to the bomb I am of two minds. I mean, how cool and fucked up and Lost would it be to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the finale? Cool and fucked up, yes, but also rather consequential. That, and, Jack's an idiot. He won me over for awhile there in Namaste and He's Our You, but I just can't support any of this whole 'let's undo the entire show' sort of nonsense. I'm siding with (shudder) Team Kate on this one.
'Don't Nuke our Imaginations, dude!'
Now, I'm afraid that, despite my best intentions, I do not go into this evening totally unspoiled. This is mostly because Dave's a jerk, and I'm weak. So what I know is this: We will see a much older version of a present day character, indicating some kind of time shift to the far future.
What?
So basically, I know that I know nothing. This was just a way to bring my mind up to date and kill a bit of time. 8 hours, 20 minutes now.

Take me to your Leader

Some episodes of Lost are like potato chips; great while it lasts but you feel hungry again right afterwards. Others, like the penultimate episode of the penultimate season Follow the Leader are more like full-fledged buffets; we gorge and then spend days afterwards, bloated and happily digesting.
And, if by chance you can see Star Trek in the interrum, it makes the week long wait to the finale that much more palatable.
I'm done saying that 'Such and such was the best episode ever', but I am ready and able to accept this latest offering and happily digest it while I try to keep myself off spoiler sites for the next 5 days.
As far as spoilers go, I'm a Title Man. I like to get the title in advance and ponder it's meaning, dissecting the few words and reading the entrails. With Follow the Leader, the immediate question was 'Well, who is the Leader to be followed?'
Dead is Dead seemed to indicate that man was John Locke, and while the episode didn't exactly disagree with that assertion, it also threw up a lot of alternatives. Put simply, Follow the Leader was lousy with leaders.
There were new leaders (Radzinsky), old leaders (Widmore), ageless leaders (Richard), resurrected leaders (Locke), 'redeemed' leaders (Jack) deposed leaders (Ben & Horace); it seemed in fact, that everyone but Hurley was calling the shots. Or trying to. Even Miles had a plan and they were sticking to it.
When leaders abound, whom do you follow?
This guy?


This guy?


Not this guy, surely:


Wait. Maybe this guy:



Sorry, wrong show (and yet, I can't somehow wonder how Tom Zerrick would do as an Other. Look out, Widmore!).

But I digress.
Follow the Leader was an episode without flashbacks, which are pretty well my favourite kind. The story featured 4 primary arcs - Jack's retarded quest to detonate a hydrogen bomb, Sawyer getting the Jack Bauer treatment from Radzinsky, Hurley and company planning their great escape (and spilling the beans to Chang), and finally, John Locke and his Other friends.

First things first: I was really glad that somebody was not on board with the whole "nuke the Swan" plan, even if that happened to be Kate. I fear that in Jack's brief stint as a janitor he may have inhaled a few of the chemicals. As happy as I was to hear Kate's dissent, I was even happier to see this:


Sayid has spent the last few days hanging out in the jungle waiting for someone to kill, apparently, and I believe that's all the explanation we are ever likely to get. Whatever. He's back, he's in black (I hated that purple shirt soooo much) and he's kickin' ass. He is also, unfortunately, lending his not inconsiderable talents to Team Jack and it's mad quest, which causes me no small amount of distress. But I think whereas Jack is talking out his ass and living out his ultimate 'Fixing Things' fantasy, Sayid has actually thought this through.
There's this wonderful little moment that occurs after he learns that his own plans to change the future were unravelled by none other than Kate, and before he says his wonderfully nuanced line: "Why did you do that?"
You can practically see the wheels turning inside his brain as he sees the timeline course-correcting. I believe Sayid is accompanying Jack precisely because he believes his plan will fail. I think Sayid just wants to see how.
Of course, it's equally plausible that his inability to change the future has given Sayid a bleak and nihilistic viewpoint, as evidenced by the line: "Well if this works you may just save us all. And if it doesn't, at least you'll put us out of our misery."
I'm betting the former, and let's hope I'm right because we left Jack, Sayid, Richard and Ellie standing in a tunnel before the bomb. Cue: Season Finale.
Meanwhile in Dharmaville, Sawyer spent much of the episode paying for his stupidity in the two previous ones; the capricious Gods of Lost deemed he would pay for his sins by being repeatedly punched in the face and it was so. What struck me about this scene was how Phil turned out to be so much more of a dick than Radzinsky. Phil, we've got a finale coming up here; it is not a wise time to be replacing Radzinsky as the most hated character on the show (remember Keamy?). Also, you shouldn't hit girls.
Sawyer made his deal with the Devil(s) and bought himself a ticket on the submarine. I guess I wasn't surprised to see Sawyer taken in by the whole 'sub scam', but shouldn't Juliet know better? The whole 'strike a bargain with fel powers in exchange for exit by sub' plan never works.
Also, and we will discover the validity of this statement very soon, but I still don't think that sub is how Dharma gets too and from the Island. Something very fishy about the sub. Just when James and Juliet appeared to be sailing off into an underwater sunset for their Happily Ever After, Kate came back and ruined everything. Cue season finale.
Miles, Hurley and Jin, meanwhile, were splitting back to the beach as was the original plan before Sawyer blew it. Hurley had some problems with this, which is so Hurley. Man, what's with that guy and caring about people? Claire last year and now Sawyer and Juliet? That kind of group minded thinking will never get him anywhere on Lost.
In addition to the hilarious exchange between Chang and Hurley, we also got to see Miles come to terms with his Daddy Issues. Seeing his father put him and his mother on the sub, realizing the lie he's labored under. "It's the only way he can get her to leave," he says, and you can hear the forgiveness, the understanding in his voice. Warning Miles: the episode before the season finale is not, repeat not the best time to resolve your issues. You're a dead man, dude.
This episode was also great because we got so much Richard Alpert. We got Richard in the past with Team Jack, and we also got Richard in the present with Team Locke. In fact, if this episode was 'centric' to anyone, it was Richard Alpert. By far the coolest bit here was the re-play of the Richard & Locke scene from 'Because you Left'. Just the way this story folds back on itself sometimes is just so brilliant. Also, we recieved a little (very little) bit of clarification regarding Richard's status with the Others. He's a kind of... advisor. Which, of course, tells us nothing that we couldn't already have surmised. The real question is, why? Why all these puppet regimes? Why wield power from behind the throne? I find it hard to believe that it's because he doesn't believe in himself. At no point have we seen Richard Alpert suffering from any sort of self-esteem issues.
No doubt this is another one of the 'rules' of Lost; one that can't be broken. If we were to run with my own half-baked purgatory/rebel angels theory, it would make sense that Richard can only influence, he can't overtly lead people into damnation or salvation.
It was interesting to see the lengths that John was willing to go to protect the time line. Again, he and Jack are on the opposite ends of the spectrum here. While Jack is trying to undo the past 3 years, Locke goes out of his way to prevent paradox. He tells Richard to tell his past self to bring everybody back to the Island; though he will later admit to Ben that he has no interest in helping his friends. He's playing for bigger stakes now, and truth be told, he has been since as far back as 'the Brig', when he told Sawyer he was on his own path.
Only now, he's got a whole bunch of people following him, the Leader.



Next week: the Death of Jacob, the Bomb drops and Lost is gone forever.
Can't wait.

The Variable Wtf?

Lost's 100th episode. Our first Faraday flashback. The mirror episode of this series' best so far: the Constant.
It's safe to say that my expectations were running high, and unreasonably so. Quite possibly nothing short of the the next Citizen Kane would have satisfied me.
That being so, could they not even have tried?
Okay, I get that we're in one of the building episodes to the finale and that a lot of cool shit must needs be set up here. And sometimes set-up isn't the most gripping stuff ever. But. Still.
We'll just put aside the fact for now that Daniel has joined those who 'Eat chocolate before Dinner in the Sky'; this episode featured a lot of characters, some who are smart, some who are Jack, acting in unbelievably stupid ways. Daniel grabs a sub from Michigan with a notebook of equations and his head all full of Nuclear Detonation dreams (wtf?!??!). His first order of business then, of course, is to barge over to Jack's house in the middle of the night. I understand that Dan's out of the loop and not aware that Jack's been demoted to janitor, but what I do not understand is the exchange that happens next.
After demanding how Jack got back and who sent him and learning, as best as he was going to anyway, the answers he says:
"You don't belong here at all, Jack. She was wrong." Cue spooky music.
Now, unless Dan hates Jack as much as I do, it's difficult to see just what exactly he's talking about, especially in context with the rest of the episode. He could be referring to his plan to prevent the Incident and 815's crash, but considering this is more or less his plan come to fruition (started way back when he sought out Desmond in the season premier) he seems less than impressed.
After the teaser comes our first flashback, and I was right and it is Daniel and, damn!, can that kid ever play piano! However, his evil murderous of a mother is more interested that he can keep exact count of the metronome ticks while he plays (which I admit is super-cool), rather than his playing itself. She takes some liberties with the definition of the word 'Destiny' and more or less begins her long and cold pre-meditated murder.
Seen in retrospect, this scene gives me chills. Mrs. Hawking gives me chills. Creepy bitch.
Anyways. After barging in, waking Jack up, Miles feels the pull of the writers pen. He has no time to explain, he says. The writers need him over at the Orchid, stat! Something about an obligatory scene from the season premiere.
I mean, the whole thing just felt awkward. Miles is the driver because... I don't know. Circle of trust? All Dharma security guards are also drivers? Actually, as obsessive as Dharma is about giving everybody One Task to do (and stitching it on the overalls), I find it dubious that they don't have Designated Drivers. Miles is along for the ride because he was meant to be, Mrs Hawking would tell us. Miles is there because his name was on the script.
The awkwardness continues at the Orchid, where Daniel, racing the clock as we later learn, walks past Chang to have his brief aside with the foreman. ('Time travel. How stupid does that guy think we are?')
WHY does he walk past Chang? Oh Lords of Kobol, tell me why??!!!!
Whatever they wrote, happened.
I am out of time, having put this recap off again until -literally- the last moment. In 6 minutes it's 'Follow the Leader'; an episode I have seen naught but the trailer for; an episode which is the penultimate this fine, fine season.
The Variable was balls though.
Lost is a drug so I love it while it's happening. But sometimes the skag is better than others. Sometimes, you go to Thailand.
Sometimes, very smart characters are written stupidly.
Chaos ensues.