John Locke sure does look dead... but is he?  And if he is... will he stay that way?

Credit: Mario Perez/ABC

Who's got two thumbs and loves "Lost" more than caramel corn right now?

This guy.

This week's episode was written by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, chief architects of my weekly addiction, and it's got about a jazillion giant things going on it it.  Confirmations of theories.  Final moves of some major chess pieces.  New questions.  And an ending moment shocker that immediately suggest some big answers to the show's big questions.

So, yeah... it was a good one.

I was taking notes in the dark on my little reporter's notebook... something, I'll point out, I never do during a movie in a screening room or a theater.  I find it too distracting.  With me doing this recap each week, though, I want to have a few things written down, things that jumped out at me as I was watching.

[more after the jump]

Great opening tease.  For a fan of the show from the very first episode, that image is pretty iconic, pretty direct.  Here we go.  Island.  Jack.  Sitting up.  That's how this starts.  There's a hint of "The Matrix" to it.  Like he's waking up in a program, in a cycle that he runs over and over.  I'm not saying he is.

I'm also not saying he's not.

I love the piece of paper in his hand that just says "I wish..."  Is that part of how they got back?  That seems like a pretty big stretch.

Then cries for help.  The big jump off a waterfall.  And... Hurley and a guitar?  That's an odd choice.  Why's he got that? 

And there's Kate, out cold on the shore.  No one else in sight.  Jack wakes her up.

"Are we..."

"Yes."

BLACK.  46 hours earlier.  That's how you tease an episode.  No more talking about it... we're going to get these people to the island tonight.  And here's how it all goes down.  BOOM.

The episode picked right up where last week left off, and Faraday's mom is a creepy dead eyed wax woman.  She freaks me out, man.  And the way she explains everything she's got to explain is just skeevy and weird.  She's got answers, but she's a freak.  She leads everyone into a basement of the church, and it's a crazy room with a pendulum over a map and blackboards filled with arcane equations.  And Hawking is basically Madame Exposition, and she presents the Oceanic 6 (or at least those of them who came inside) with an outrageously weird plan and some reasons why it'll work.

She gives the name of the room... the name given to it by the Dharma Initiative:  The Lamppost.  How very, very C.S. Lewis of them.

I love the patter in that scene, too.  There's a lot of great patter in this episode, and much of it has to do with Ben, like when he walks into the Lamppost with Jack.

"Did you know about this place?"

"No."

Jack looks at Hawking.

"Is he telling the truth?"

"Probably not."

Well played all the way around.

So we learn that the island is always moving.  That's what makes the island such a special place, or at least one of the things that does.  Explanations are made about how to get to it.

And then Desmond lays down a massive bitchfit.  I can't blme him, though.  He recognizes Faraday's mother now, and he remembers her as a factor in him ending up stranded on the island.  He is understandably less-than-pleased to see her, and when she says, "The island isn't done with you yet," she's lucky he doesn't beat her head in "Irreversible" style.  That's his life this woman is messing with, treating like a game piece.  Great Des moment.

And I think all of that was during the opening credits for this week's episode.  That's how dense the start of it is.  She explains about Flight 316, how they must be on it.  How there's a window of opportunity and that flight is going through it.  And they must reproduce the conditions on Oceanic 815 as exactly as they can.  That's why everyone has to go.

And then Hawking pulls Jack aside to tell him that he's got to take someone with him.  Someone dead... someone to replace his father.  Locke, in other words, but wearing something of his father's to tie them together.

Maybe that's what the guitar case was with Hurley at the beginning.  Charlie's guitar so that it was more like flight 815.

We learn that John Locke hanged himself.  And he left a suicide note for Jack.  That note turns out to somewhat of an invocation, tied in to a conversation Jack and Ben have about "Doubting Thomas."

What the hell did Kate do with Aaron?

I love the quick shot of Hurley reading "Y: The Last Man" in Spanish.  Not only is it a nice nod to Brian Vaughn, author of the comic and now a writer/producer on "Lost," but it also ties into the Spanish lanuage versions of the comic books found in the 815 wreckage.

Great lines:

"Who cares?"

"We're not going to Guam... are we?"

"How can you read?"  "My mother taught me."

And that ending... dear god... the flash suggests that Kate, Hurley, and Jack have been tossed one direction in time while other people from the plane have been thrown in a different direction.  We saw wreckage from this flight in the future, so I don't think everyone's together.  And I'm guessing Sun did not make the jump with Kate and Jack and Hurley, because that would make everything sooooo much easier.  Nope.  They're in the past, in the day of the Dharma Initiative, and that's where they find Jin.

Why was Ben beat to hell?  And why was he at a marina?  Who did he attack?  Are they alive or dead now?

Who convinced Hurley and Kate to get on the plane?  Why is Sayid being escorted onto the flight by a marshall?  How does Frank play into all this?  Is Ben pathlogically unable to tell the truth?

Is it next week yet?  Is it?  Can I just skip forward in time, one week at a time, until I'm done?  I can't take the wait, no matter how much I love it.

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Drew McWeeny
Film Editor

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A respected critic and commentator for fifteen years, Drew McWeeny helped create the online film community as "Moriarty" at Ain't It Cool News, and now proudly leads two budding Film Nerds in their ongoing movie education.