http://www.guideposts.org/blogs/love-dem-cats/two-cats-battle-over-cardboard-box

I’d gone over to my sister-in-law Becky’s house to perform whatever geek magic I could on her computer, which had been behaving strangely all summer. My nieces, Alyssa and Addison, proudly lined up their Silly Bandz collections on the computer desk.

“WHAT are those?” I asked, picking up what appeared to be a blue neon dolphin outline.

“Silly Bandz!” they announced.

Becky patiently explained to me that Silly Bandz are not just rubber bandz, uh, bands, and they are far superior to the jelly bracelets that we remembered from our own youth in the 1980s. Remember jelly bracelets? All different colors! Then neon! Then glow-in-the-dark! And…scented. And glittery. And maybe all those things together, when they were trying really hard to stay trendy.

Looking at the Silly Bandz in front of me, I could easily see what the coolness-impairing limitation of jelly bracelets had been. They were round. That’s it. Silly Bandz are an actual interesting shape when they’re sitting in front of you on the table. Dinosaurs. Sea creatures. Dollar signs. Letters. Musical instruments. You stretch them open and put them on your wrist, and they kind of get squiggly and weird, and you can’t tell what they are anymore. Then – voila – as soon as you remove them from your wrist, they snap back into their original shape. Holy. Crap.

“That is SO cool….” I remarked, stretching a green “recycle” symbol and watching it snap back. I was truly impressed. “And the only way you can tell which ones other people have is if they take them off,” I mused. Yet another way in which jelly bracelets had been deficient – no secrets to reveal.

“Yeah, and only 12 for a dollar,” Becky added. Affordable coolness, yet.

And last but not least, I learned that many schools are trying to ban Silly Bandz, which is the ultimate incontrovertible proof that they have reached the pinnacle of cool. Alas, jelly bracelets never were exciting enough to disrupt the learning experience. This was, though – does anybody remember these? When I was Alyssa’s age, these were, like, an instant detention….

Since Bob is a Biker, that makes me an Old Lady, the term of endearment bikers use for their wives, whether or not they are actually old. (I’m not. Really.) My first official act as Old Lady was to insist that Bob, before he left the Harley dealership, purchase a helmet. This has been a problem ever since.

Apparently, at least in states like Indiana that do not have a law requiring helmet use, it is “uncool” to wear a helmet while riding. Most of the bikers we see riding around prefer to protect their heads with doo-rags. While stylish, doo-rags don’t seem to provide much in the way of actual head protection, although they do prevent the wind from styling your hair into interesting shapes.

“It’s better to be dead and cool than alive and uncool,” Bob said when I pointed this out. (He was quoting Mickey Rourke in the classic 1991 flick Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.)

“You’d really rather be dead than wear this?” I said, waving the helmet.

Bob fetched a deep sigh. “Ohhhh…kay,” he agreed, strapping it on, and proving that the only thing more powerful than state law is an Old Lady. Old Ladies can’t throw you in jail, but they can put you on one heck of an aggravation installment plan if you don’t keep ‘em happy.

But my Old Lady power fizzled one afternoon when one of Bob’s biker buddies, a neighbor of ours who prefers the doo-rag method of head protection, happened to mention that he could immediately recognize Bob zooming by because he’d just look for “Turtlehead.”

Turtlehead. Peer pressure was alive and well, and the Great Helmet Debate was back on.

“These little helmets are no protection, anyway,” Bob argued. “They’re mostly to make YOU feel better. If you’re in a bad crash, it won’t matter if you’re wearing this thing or not. If it really mattered, they’d make it the law.”

“It’s the law in Michigan,” I pointed out. “Are you telling me the only reason you bought this was to keep in your saddlebag in case you roll across the state line?”

“Yes,” Bob said.

So Bob took off that morning for work, vintage Harley-Davidson doo-rag securely in place. Twenty minutes later, Bob called me on his cellphone.

“My doo-rag flew off down by the airport,” he said. “I’ve had that thing for 30 years. Can you go look for it?” (Yes, I found it. I’m a very dedicated Old Lady.)

These days, Bob’s wearing the helmet again, partially because Bob’s sister, on her way to work, spotted Bob riding without his helmet, and called their mother to bust him. And partially because another friend of his, not wearing a helmet, got in a motorcycle crash recently and the whole thing made Bob just a little more safety-conscious. It’s easy to claim a helmet won’t save you if you’re in a wreck, but my guess is the split-second before you’re in a wreck, you’ll be saying to yourself, “dang, I should have put that helmet on just in case.”

Me, I remain 100 percent convinced that regardless of state law, a biker should wear a helmet. After all, I bought a really cool one at the Harley Shop, and I will wear it…as soon as Bob re-installs my sissy bar. (It ended up on the garage floor during the last round of bike customizations.)

Fabulous episode. Just stupendous. Not without faults, but stupendous nonetheless.

We’ll start with the stupendous. Which on LOST always means, “the craziest person on the Island.”

Stupendousness: The “Woman,” the unnamed female who took in a pregnant shipwreck survivor, helped birth her twin boys, and then smashed her head in with a rock. As disturbing as that was, it was pretty stupendous, because this is a woman 100 percent driven by survival, and obviously having a successor (a candidate?) is important enough, at least in her mind, to kill for. Bet she never imagined in a million years she’d get to choose between two successors – in fact, it’s the presence of these two original “candidates” that sets all this terrible stuff in motion. More on that in the next paragraph.

Stupendousness: The depth of these twins’ characters. It’s not just a simple case of good twin vs. bad twin. Because we find out that the Man in Black (at that time only the Kid in Black) was the favored son. But the MIB is driven by a burning desire to discover, to leave the Island and see the outside world. Mother’s favorite child is loaded with the hubris that causes all the grief on the Island, all the fighting and corruption and destruction. Kind of like a certain doctor we’ve come to know and love and sometimes be really annoyed by. Jacob, the kid she doesn’t like so much, is content with staying in the only home he’s ever known. Kind of like Locke. It’s fascinating that the bodiless MIB would choose for his vessel someone who in life was so much like his brother Jacob.

That second baby really screwed things up, didn’t he? Because he gave Mother a choice, a chance for free will to run amok. Had it just been Jacob, Jacob would have been the one to take her place as Guardian o’ the Cave. Clearly, she wanted it to be the other son, and clearly Jacob knew this his whole life, which was why he was in such a snit when Mother asked him to take over. Crazy Mama prefers the son who’s most likely to leave her, and the kid who was always loyal gets stuck with all the responsibilities. Recipe for strife, and just reminiscent enough of the Prodigal Son tale to be quite stupendous.

Stupendousness: The MIB getting sucked down that hole in the cave that it didn’t seem like he should have fit through. Creeeeeeeeeepy. It reminded me of that scene in IT where Pennywise the Clown comes up through the shower drain to attack little Eddie Kaspbrak! (I didn’t shower without fear for a month after seeing that.)

Stupendousness: To backtrack to the beginning of the episode, when I saw open water and debris and a person started surfacing…I jumped up and yelled, “Lapidus is alive! Lapidus is alive….oh, it’s some chick.” They fooled me for a second, there. But Lapidus is alive. He may still be adrift somewhere, but he’s still in the game.

And now for the cheese. For the record, it’s forgivable cheese, and I’m over it. But still cheese.

Cheese: Mother’s “in the light is life/death/rebirth” speech. C’mon. Really? The source of all light is in this cave, and every human being gets a little bit, so it’s like the source of human souls, or something? And what can destroy it is human greed for more of what they already have? A valid idea, but in a literary sense, haven’t we all been to this picnic before? This ain’t new. Well, maybe the cave part.

Crossing the line from mystery to cheese SO wasn’t necessary, either. Would have been easy to avoid by just cutting back on specifics. Mother didn’t have to know exactly what the Cave was or what was in it or what would happen if the light somehow went out, or if God forbid someone went in there. How would she know? Who told her? Not to mention that just a minute ago, she was convinced the boys weren’t ready to know anything about the Cave yet, and now she’s telling them everything? It’s much more effective, from a dramatic standpoint, to leave a little more to the imagination.

Case in point: Mother grabbing the kid by the shoulders and saying, “I’ve made it so you can never hurt each other.” Much cooler, because you don’t know how she did it. Gets your imagination going.

If you saw Mother chanting up an invisible chain and locking it around his ankle, you’d think that was cheesy. (Yes, the thought has crossed my mind, because of that chain-y sound we hear when Smokey appears.) If she just looked him in the eyes and said in a grave, yet pleading tone of voice, “You can never leave”? Much more suspenseful because you get to wonder why. Very “Hotel California.”

Another example? My favorite creepy/cool moment of the episode, when Mother and Jacob share a drink, and he looks all, “wow, what just happened there,” and she says, “Now you and I are the same.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? That they don’t age? I’m dying of curiosity. Ironically, if she had answered my question and said, “Now you’re like me; you won’t age,” I would have filed that scene under “c” for “crapload of cheese.”

Even though we need (and deserve!) answers, we don’t always need such a detailed answer. Mother was able to torch that village of Others without showing us how she did it; I really wish she’d been a little cagier with her Cave info.

Speaking of that cave, isn’t the quickest way to get a kid to do something telling them it’s not allowed? Because I’m sure from the moment Mother showed them that cave, they both secretly wondered what would happen if they went into it, or launched their little brothers into it. Not Mother’s best decision. But then, she’s crazy.

Cheese: Flashing to scenes of Kate and Jack finding “Adam and Eve,” and geez, Locke even saying, “our very own Adam and Eve.” Overkill. Um, haven’t we had this “Adam and Eve” mystery tucked into the back of our brains since season 1, assembling candidates in our minds, while wondering what the black and white stones meant? Sure, you could argue that it was for the benefit of those who haven’t been hooked on this show since the beginning, but c’mon. We already met up with Adam and Eve’s corpses again this season, when Hurley speculated they might be “us”, left over from time traveling to dinosaur times. That was enough of a reminder. And it gave us a chuckle.

All right, to sum up…lest you think I hated this episode, I did not. I loved it. Despite its cheese, which was far outweighed by cool revelations. I do have one lingering question, though: The Man in Black has stated that he knows what it’s like to lose someone you love. While he did lose his mother, I don’t know if that counts, since he was the one who killed her. Think he had a girlfriend (or even a wife) somewhere in that village of Others? He may think of himself as a man of science, but he’s a man first!

I love Frank Lapidus. This man has a purpose, just as lofty and important as Dr. Jack’s or Desmond’s. And it’s not, “pilot the sub down, then make it go back up just in time to get killed so Jack and Sawyer and Kate and Hurley can escape, but not you or Jin or Sun.” That is NOT Frank’s purpose. Sorry. Just can’t be.

I am fully expecting Frank to wash up on the beach, clinging to a piece of submarine hull or possibly the liferaft that he found at the very last second. Or maybe be the dude who sneaks up behind the bad guy and whacks him over the head, just when you think your heroes are done for.

This man has survived a helicopter crash, two emergency landings, cows, the Smoke Monster, and disagreeing with Martin Keamy. Plus, he’s a pilot. A great pilot. And they have a functioning plane. Whoever makes it through this alive is going to need him. What are they going to do, defeat the Man in Black and then think, oh crap, too bad that shaggy pilot guy got killed a little while ago, we’re screwed after all? Just because surging water and a metal door knocked Lapidus down a split-second after he uttered a cheesy one-liner, doesn’t mean he’s dead.

This week’s episode was just chock-full of death, most of it seemingly purposeless. What was the point of Sun coming back to find Jin, and Jin searching tirelessly for Sun, if it just meant they were both going to die? What about little Ji Yeon? Sayid trying to reduce the bomb impact with his own body was pretty cool – now that’s a purpose. Plus, a confirmation that not only was there still some good left in Sayid after all, but that he realized that he had made a deal with…yes, the devil, I believe. And that the only way to get out of it was to sacrifice his own life in the service of whoever was trying to fight the Man in Black.

Sayid’s last words to Jack are pretty chilling – it’s going to be you – and that makes me terrified for the rest of our group, especially after the Man in Black’s “all right, enough screwing around, I’m going to go kill me some candidates” attitude at the very end of the episode. This guy’s pissed. This may still be one big game, but he’s done playing. That look he had on his face as the sub pulled away, like he was about to start cackling with diabolical glee, terrified me. (Note to whoever invents awards for sci-fi: There should be a Terry O’Quinn Award, presented to actors who brilliantly play a character who’s dead and now has some evil supernatural entity inhabiting his or her body. Nobody does it better!)

Speaking of evil supernatural entities, it was pretty interesting to see that even the illustrious Man in Black is not infallible. The sonar fences, of course. But ol’ Sawyer picked up on another one: Water. Which is the reason the MIB has to use boats to get from Island to Island and can’t just turn into the Black Smoke and fly. I had kind of forgotten that. Getting shoved off the dock into the water didn’t kill him, of course, but it did seem to take him an awfully long time to pull himself back up, and boy was he mad. Something about him and water. An Island’s a good prison for a being that can’t tolerate water. But I think water would make an even better one…maybe the bottom of the ocean! What if there was a way we could sink the Island? Oh, wait….

I’m sure there’s a lot more dying coming up, and much pulse-pounding action, but I stand by my claim: We will see Lapidus again. Since the writers continually set him up to toss off the witty one-liners and move the plot forward – hey, guys, let’s go find some food so Jack and Sawyer can have a meaningful exchange of dialogue without so many people around – I sense he’s going to get to be the deus ex machina somewhere in the finale. One of those moments where there’s no way out, gotta do what the Man in Black says or Kate gets a bullet, dramatic tension, tears, Kate begging Jack (or Sawyer) not to give in even though it means her life…and here comes Lapidus creeping up behind the MIB with a big bucket of water! Or something. I’m sure of it. The Island isn’t done with Frank Lapidus.

At first, I was incredulous. Who would steal a garbage can? I couldn’t get over it. Then, after I talked to the trash company and found out new ones cost $50, I was furious. Luckily, they told me, if I filed a police report I could get a replacement can for free. And then they attempted to reassure me by telling me something that got my brain percolating: “This happens all the time.”

Really? This particular thing – someone strolling onto another person’s property and wheeling away a garbage can full of garbage, plus a nest of very cranky yellowjackets – happens a lot? This means that the kind of people who would do such a thing are walking amongst us. As are the kind of people who, like me, can’t believe such a thing happens. And both kinds of people could thus relate to, and appreciate, a story about a stolen garbage can.

Well, at that point I was no longer incredulous. I was fascinated. Because I realized, anytime you ask yourself, “Who would DO that?” in reference to a crime, you’ve probably got an excellent idea for a story. So many great books and movies have been based on the answer to questions like this.

“Who would break into a house and pee on someone else’s rug?” becomes the movie The Big Lebowski. (Actually, this movie’s plot answers a lot of questions, like “who would purposely cut off his girlfriend’s pinky toe?” and “who would take a Pomeranian bowling?”)

“Who would steal a dead body?” Well, that could be a lot of movies, from Men in Black to Weekend at Bernie’s II. Reason for its popularity as a plot device is, it’s a most fascinating question.

“Who would burglarize his own house?” Remember that awesome 80s comedy, A Fish Called Wanda?

Okay then, to get back to my question, who DOES steal a garbage can? Easiest answer is probably, “someone looking for unshredded documents with social security numbers on them,” as a friend of mine pointed out. Eh, maybe. A little too James Bond for Northwest Indiana, but certainly possible.

More likely, it’s someone who needed a garbage can because something happened to theirs and they don’t want to shell out $50 for a new one. Like, maybe their garbage can was stolen by their psycho neighbor, and they’re afraid to report it or ask for it back because of how insane he went the time they complained about him burning mattresses in his backyard.

Or maybe it’s a husband who accidentally ran his garbage can over with the pickup truck, and he’d rather steal someone else’s than deal with her eye-rolling rage.

Or it could be a kid who destroyed his family’s garbage can playing with cherry bombs while his folks were away, and this was his “last strike” before getting shipped off to military school.

The possibilities for stories…are endless.

So, as miffed as I am at the garbage can thieves, they did give me a valuable insight into story development – pay attention anytime you utter the statement, “What kind of person would DO something like that?” He or she could be the star of your next story….

This was a good episode. Not a great one, but a good one. Highly decent, lots of things going on, and my favorite, people saying things that don’t seem important at the time but are probably going to turn out to be highly significant.

Key quotes from this episode:

Jack: “I don’t have any idea what the hell you are.”
Un-Locke: “Sure you do.”

UnLocke, Flocke, Smokey, whatever you call this guy who looks human but can turn into smoke and has been “trapped” on the Island for so long…is actually the devil. Evil incarnate, as the late, great Dogen once said. For a while I thought that answer was much too simple, but it is quite elegant in its simplicity, and its ability to explain what’s going on here. It explains the shape-shifting, the lying-without-actually-lying, the belief that humans are predisposed to sin, Jacob’s evil-is-like-wine-trapped-in-the-bottle metaphor. It also makes “Ab Aeterno” that much cooler, because of how hard Smokey tried to convince poor Richard that Jacob was the devil. Diabolical, idn’t it?

The Man in Black’s not arguing that “I’m not a what, I’m a who” point anymore, either, is he? I think he knows his followers are getting the picture. It’s no coincidence so many of the people in the MIB’s camp keep referring to him as “that Thing.”

Hurley: “You can always bring people back from the dark side.”

Major overarching theme of the series alert! No one’s beyond redemption. Ben, the crown prince of Island evildoing, came back from the dark side. As did Sayid, at least before he was infected – but it did look to me like talking to Desmond down in the well might have changed his mind about some things, and we didn’t actually see Sayid kill him, did we? I think Des might have brought him back around by bringing up the subject of Nadia. (Love cures evil…another major overarching theme of the series.)

Ilana: “This is Mr. Shephard.”

No, this isn’t Mr. Shephard. This is Dr. Shephard. What is up with this?

This isn’t the first time in the alternate reality that we’ve encountered “Mr. Shephard” – the gate agent who “lost” Christian Shephard’s body kept irritatingly referring to Dr. Jack as “Mr. Shephard” and it bugged me then, but I can forgive the guy that because he’s just a simpering customer service agent who doesn’t know any better.

But Ilana the lawyer? Ilana the lawyer should definitely be aware that Christian Shephard’s son is a doctor. Why the heck did she keep calling him “Mr. Shephard”? Either she’s an idiot (which we know she isn’t) or she doesn’t know (which she, uh, should) or in this reality Jack isn’t actually a doctor (which we know he is, as evidenced by his total I-can-fix-this-guy rapturous excitement when he sees John Locke’s “obliterated” dural sac on the x-rays in the OR).

Lapidus: “I saw some canned food down in the galley, anybody else starving?”

Way to lighten the mood, Frank. I love this guy. He has totally not had enough meaningful dialogue this season, and I thought it was stupid that they made him say, “Looks like someone got their voice back,” when Sun and Jin were sharing their moment. Didn’t need that pointed out to me, and I especially don’t need my beloved Jeff Fahey transformed into Basil Exposition. He’s so better than that. If this guy does end up piloting the plane off the Island, they better not give him moronic sightseeing announcements. “If you look out the right side of the aircraft, you’ll see that four-toed statue where Jacob lived….”

I don’t have much to say about the most recent two stupendous and wonderful episodes of LOST…beyond that they were stupendous and wonderful. We got reunited with some of our favorite characters we haven’t seen in a while – Desmond, Ms. Hawking (now known as Eloise Widmore), Daniel Faraday (now known as Daniel Widmore), Penny, George Minkowski (woo-hoo! I love this guy, even when he’s not time-tripping), and my favorite supporting character of all time, Carmen Reyes! Wasn’t she a riot, trying to set Hugo up with a date? Yeah, so you’re a big rich philanthropist who’s changing the world for the better. Big whoop. You need a woman! Classic mom.

I have to say, my first viewing of “Everybody Loves Hugo” kind of got ruined for me because I chose exactly the wrong time to get up off the couch and go grab a snack. I backed into the kitchen, still watching the TV, as Ilana was on the beach telling everybody that they had to listen to Richard. I was still watching the TV as she started stuffing things into her pack on top of that dynamite. That’s when I opened the refrigerator door, blocking my view, and…BANG.

“What happened? What happened?” I yelled to Bob, dashing out into the living room with my tortilla chips. There on the screen was a puff of black smoke where Ilana had been standing.

“Did she blow up?” I demanded.

“I think so,” Bob said. (Bob, who is not into LOST at all, is fully capable of sitting on the couch reading the paper while it’s on, so he was not much help filling me in.)

Only on LOST could we get so used to the idea of people spontaneously exploding, that we can hear an explosion and not wonder WHAT blew up, but WHO. Hmmmm. Makes you think.

Anyway, so I missed that big moment. I did stay glued to my cushion for the rest of the show, so I didn’t miss Fake Locke chucking Desmond down the Very Old Well, or Desmond running over Real Locke. Big shockers, there.

Well, enough with the episode details. Here’s the theory part. Keep in mind that I have avoided all spoilers, so if any of this happens to be right, I can’t technically be guilty of posting spoilers, since I didn’t know any of this for sure.

Theory: Desmond is going to find something very important down in that well. I don’t think the Island, working via Widmore’s goons, brought ol’ Des all the way back to the Island just so he could get tossed into a big hole and die. But it is possible that the Island, working via Widmore’s goons, brought Desmond back to the Island because it knew that the MIB would toss him down there, right where he needed to be to save the world. Desmond will wake up at the bottom, and he will find something very important. I’m guessing, the source of something. Whatever those folks who dug the well with their bare hands were digging for.

Another theory: The MIB can only read your mind if you’re afraid. Hence the constant brow-furrowing while he was talking to Desmond, like the MIB was thinking, “Hmmm, why can’t I read your mind, brutha?” and then asking him why he wasn’t afraid. I think fear is what gives the MIB his power, and lack of fear really frosts his shorts. Probably why he turned into the Black Smoke and destroyed Mr. Eko, too. Mr. Eko flat-out told the Black Smoke he wasn’t afraid of it. (Man, I still miss that dude! When are we going to get his alt-timeline story?)

And yet another theory: Fake Locke chucking Desmond down the well was all part of the plan. Widmore’s plan. Why else would Desmond just happily trot along after Sayid into the woods and allow himself to be tied to a tree? Because at this point, Desmond finally gets that whatever happens next is what is supposed to happen, which has killed all his fear. Then his lack of fear causes the MIB to try to kill him, which will put him exactly where he needs to be.

And the last theory, which I’ve brought up before: After the final fadeout on this whole production, I believe, more than ever, that we are going to find out that Stephen King has been a man behind the curtain, creatively, this whole time. I think they’re saving the biggest surprise for last…though of course, I will not be surprised. I’ve been convinced they were conferencing SK in on creative meetings for the show ever since Arzt pontificated about sweaty dynamite. (That’s from The Stand, by the way. Yes, I know Damon and Carlton are huge King fans, and they say this is why somehow all these references find their way into the show. Not buying it!)

Once LOST is over for good, I think they should make a spinoff. A series called “Kill Keamy,” in which every week Keamy would commit atrocities against his fellow man, and they in return would kill him. And then the following week we’d find out he’d somehow survived, and would need to be killed again because he would never learn his lesson and quit being evil.

Then, when the “Kill Keamy” Season One DVDs came out, they could include a special bonus feature, “While You’re At It, Kill Mikhail.” And you could use your DVD remote to fire up the pylons or shoot him with a speargun. Except he’d never stay dead, either. (By the way — in the alternate timeline in this episode, did you catch Keamy referring to Mikhail as “Danny’s friend”? Ooooh, if by Danny he means Danny Pickett, the guy who kept trying to kill Sawyer back in Season 3, then Danny can be on the show, too. I will never forgive him for making Sawyer bleed so much!)

I’m feeling very punchy when it comes to LOST. Probably because I know it’s going to be over soon, and I can’t afford not to like an episode, so that puts additional pressure on me to love every episode, and some episodes just aren’t very lovable. Like “The Package.” Meh. Didn’t like it much, though it was highly decent. I’ve never been a big fan of Sun and Jin, and I’m still not. So, in lieu of going on and on about how these two bore me to tears, I’ll just accentuate the positive. Here’s what I did like about this episode:

* Angry Sun freaking out on Jack, Ilana, and Richard. It’s about dang time she got mad. Between the “screw saving the Universe, I just want my husband back” tirade and her seducing Jin into the premarital sex, this was the most un-boring she’s ever been.
* Ben trying to convince Ilana and the gang that he wasn’t the one who knocked Sun out and made her forget how to speak English. Poor Ben. What’s it going to take to make everyone believe he’s not evil anymore? You think he’s really changed? You can definitely still see his wheels turning, plan-wise.
* Un-Locke’s little nod-nod-wink-wink to Claire about pretty soon it’ll be okay for Kate to die. For the record, I’m not a Kate-hater; I’m hoping she and Sawyer get together in the end. But she is annoying at times, and I’m just glad to know she annoys the Man in Black, too.
* Widmore talking about how everyone they love would “cease to be” if the Man in Black leaves the Island. Finally, somebody brings up the idea of a universe-ending paradox caused by time travel/triumph of evil! If that’s what it is. Because I don’t really know, and I’ve made my brain very sore trying to figure it all out.
* Resurrected Keamy and Mikhail. Between the two of them, these guys have been shot (via bullet and spear), electrocuted, drowned, stabbed, and beaten senseless by Sayid and original Locke, and yet they continue to cause trouble. You have to admire that kind of persistence.
* The diabolical Mr. Paik. Sun’s dad knows how to hatch an evil plot, doesn’t he? Sending his daughter’s secret boyfriend on a mission to the U.S., the mission being to deliver an execution fee to his own executioner? With Sun right there, so she’ll learn her lesson about sneaking around behind Daddy’s back? Forget Ben and Widmore — Paik is baaaaad news.
* Desmond’s return. We just knew the Island wasn’t finished with him yet! In fact, I’d say my favorite moment of the episode was when Widmore’s crew dragged poor Des out of the sub, because then I knew for sure there would be another Desmond episode in the future. Yay! Wish I could get my hands on a bottle of MacCutcheon’s to celebrate.
* Frank Lapidus’ bacon comment. Miles comments that Hurley couldn’t track Richard unless he was covered in bacon grease, and Lapidus jumps in, and here I’m thinking Lapidus is going to say, “Hey, lay off Hurley, man, he’s cool,” and instead he goes, “Hey, don’t talk about bacon.” LOL!!!!

Okay, speaking of Lapidus, I have a question to pose about him: The Man in Black needs Lapidus, even though ol’ Frank’s not a candidate, doesn’t he? Does anyone else know how to fly a plane? I found the MIB’s statement that he’s still “three people shy” of leaving the Island pretty chilling, because it means one of the three “candidates” still on Team Jack is not necessary. Guessing it means Sun isn’t a candidate, because we know for sure Jack and Hurley are. Makes sense that the MIB would still need Sun, though, because without her Jin isn’t going anywhere. So Jack + Hurley + one other person. Doesn’t it have to be Lapidus, so someone can get that Ajira flight off the ground?

Which is why I was so utterly disappointed with this episode, where we find out Richard’s just this average-y guy who showed up on the Black Rock during the 19th Century. I mean, come on, hasn’t this guy had the look and unflappable calm of “I’ve been here since Biblical times, so nothing surprises me?”

I guess it was the title of the episode that threw me. I see Latin, I think seriously old, I think ancient secrets that if known and abused by modern man could unmake existence – real Indiana Jones type stuff. This wasn’t it. This was just another Jacob-induced shipwreck and Jacob’s frenemy turning into smoke and chasing hapless survivors around the jungle till he felt like talking. Been there, done that, with two airplanes, a helicopter, Desmond’s sailboat, and a raft full of Frenchmen.

I don’t know about you, but the first thing I did when I saw this episode was called “Ab Aeterno” was Google “ab aeterno” and find out it meant “since the beginning of time.” Then I got really excited. You too? I thought we were going to see dinosaurs, cavemen, ill-fated explorers, heck, maybe even some ancient Egyptians building what would later become the Big Giant Foot. Stuff like that.

Instead, here we are in 1867 with Richard, speaking Spanish, trying to rescue his dying wife, and he accidentally kills somebody and gets caught and sentenced to death. But on the eve of his execution, Richard, thanks to a crooked priest and the English he taught himself in prison, winds up chained in the hull of a slave ship – the infamous Black Rock – which hits stormy seas and gets tossed onto the Island by a rogue wave, ending up landlocked in the Jungle of Mystery. One of the officers starts killing all the slaves, but Smokey swoops out of the jungle and whomps the guy before he can destroy Richard, who then languishes in chains for days, unable to eat or reach water, and hallucinates (probably) that his dead wife is down there with him, “down there” being Hell, even though she seemed like a good person who was not at all hell-bound.

On the brink of Richard’s death, Jacob’s enemy visits him, releases him, and says that thing about it’s good to see him out of the chains. And then…Jacob affirms a “fact” that we don’t quite believe.

According to the crooked priest, and the guy on the boat who claims the devil is guarding this Island on which they’re about to wreck, and the dead wife Richard hallucinates, and then Jacob’s enemy, this is Hell – and Jacob is the devil. If you want out, and to see your wife again, you have to kill the devil. Here, take this knife.

Perfect story to tell a Catholic who’s convinced he’s hell-bound anyway, isn’t it? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the only reason Richard believes this is Hell is because this is what he was told, and the only reason Jacob’s enemy told him this ridiculous story in the first place is because he thought it would make Richard kill Jacob. This was merely Jacob’s enemy’s first attempt to assassinate the guy holding him prisoner. So no, this is not Hell. Hell was just a convenient, efficient lie.

Now, I have to hand it to ABC. They surprised me by bringing up this “Jacob is the devil” idea. I’ve spent so much time wondering who’s good and who’s bad that it never occurred to me that they BOTH were bad. For the record, I will never believe that Jacob’s enemy is a good guy. Not happening. He’s got way too many bodies piled up for me to believe that. BUT I could be persuaded that Jacob is bad, too. In this episode, both of these guys come across like bratty kids arguing over who gets to play with the best toys.

So, for now, I’m believing they’re both bad. Maybe one (Jacob) is more sympathetic towards the humans, but neither one of them seems to have the divine power of good, really. Jacob can’t bring Richard’s wife back, and he can’t save Richard from Hell. Raising the dead, and forgiving mortal sins? Both things Jesus could have pulled off, easily. So Jacob clearly isn’t God. He does have some pretty major powers, though, if he can touch a guy and curse him to live forever.

Yeah, Jacob could be the devil. But that doesn’t mean this is Hell, or that Jacob’s enemy is a good guy just because the two of them don’t get along. In fact, I’ve started wondering – and I’ve read a couple theories to this effect – if Jacob and his enemy aren’t warring halves of a frighteningly fractured personality. (Crazy Mama could have something to do with this, right?) I guess if a guy can transform himself into a pillar of smoke whenever he feels like it, he could inhabit two different bodies at the same time.

Hey, speaking of crazy mamas…couple Greek names to throw out there:
* Circe. Had a habit of transforming people into animals, including pigs – remember that pig nosing around the Black Rock when Richard was in there dying? – and fond of weaving.
* Perse. Circe’s crazy mother. Plus, there’s a species of blue butterfly native to Southeast Asia called Virachola perse. Because that butterfly fluttering through the Black Rock while Richard was in there dying was just too weird and obvious not to mean something.