We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat: Lost Recapped

This is what's frustrating about the potentially truncated season: episodes like "Confirmed Dead," which are clear set-up episodes for the next 14 that Lindelof and Cuse had planned, feel utterly fruitless by the end of them because of all the extenuating real life circumstances that are at play. Knowing the WGA Strike might cause this season to finish in the Fall or at worst, in 2009, makes me feel that any resolutions to what was laid out is just too far out of reach.

It's like cooking an expansive meal and then after everything is all finished, you are told you're not allowed to eat it. Since we only have six "definite" episodes remaining, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last time we see even an inkling about the "Other" Others back stories and the Oceanic Flight 815 "recovery" before the season ends.

But on the face of it, this would have been a great episode if we only got to watch Locke and Jack completely fail time and time again as leaders of men. These two are ill-equiped to lead at this point that it's like watching a slow motion car wreck. I can't get enough of watching Jack and Locke continually get manipulated by those around them.

As for the rest of the episode:

The "Other" Others

As Naomi so eloquently said to Matthew Abaddon, "a head case, a ghost buster, an anthropologist and a drunk."

This is a fine motley crew of characters and actors. Some worked, some didn't.

Could there be a better marriage of actor, role and television show than what we have with Jeremy Davies playing Daniel Faraday on LOST? He's completely perfect: jumpy, weird, unhinged, and as an added bonus he has the stammering delivery of Christopher Walken down to a tee. I defy anyone besides Walken to do a better job with this line reading: "The light! (pause) It's strange out here, isn't it? It's kinda like (pause) it doesn't scatter (pause) quite right."

And despite only being in two scenes and having the cliched role of "drunken pilot who thinks he should have been on that flight!" Jeff Fahey was a welcomed sight. It's nice to know that he's become a younger version of Robert Forster, minus the hair plugs.

As for the other two: Ken Leung's Miles was grating to me. I liked him better as Junior's crazy-ass asylum buddy on The Sopranos. LOST would have to do a lot to lose me, but having characters interact with dead people is a start. How many more allusions to The Sixth Sense are we going to get?

And Rebecca Mader's Charlotte, well, again, there isn't much there. She doesn't have the sinister look of Elizabeth Mitchell. She doesn't have the wiry ferociousness of Evangeline Lilly. She's not even as interesting as Miss Klugh was, and Miss Klugh had maybe 16 lines in the entire series. She's just there, looking like a British version of Cynthia Nixon.

The Archaeological Dig Site.

Hi, I'm LOST. Know how I'm going to blow your geek culture addicted mind? By taking equal parts Indiana Jones, Close Encounters, Stargate and Jurassic Park and throwing it into one scene that seems to show off a lot of what the future has in store for you. No pun intended.

So there is a Dharma Polar Bear running around the Tunisian desert? And it's been there for how long? This scene, combined with the odd reactions that Charlotte gave to the Locke faction when she ran into them ("So you've been living here this entire time?" "Did you have him [Aaron] here on the island? That's amazing!") lead me to believe that the Island is clearly at home in some weird time dimension. Time must travel at a much slower rate on the Island than it does in real life. This also would explain Naomi's fancy iPhone that Sayid never saw before.

And though I don't think it has anything to do with time travel, perhaps it would also explain why Locke got shot in the stomach and is walking around fine. Oh wait, that's right. He's still alive because he only has one kidney. Right, my mistake. (Read: sarcasm.)

Matthew Abaddon.

Why is Lance Reddick the scariest person on earth? Why does it look like he's standing in front of a blue screen every time he appears? It's bizarre to me. There is something completely off about his character. He's not a ghost, but he also doesn't appear to be very human. Maybe he's of the same ilk that Richard Alpert was.

"Taller Ghost Walt" and the Ben-Sawyer Comedy Tour.

Once again LOST managed to be filled to the brim with utterly hilarious lines of dialogue, like:

Karl: Keep your mouth shut Mr. Linus

Ben: Karrrrrl. Now if you're going to sleep with my daughter, I insist you call me Ben.

Have I mentioned how much I love Michael Emerson? Statues should be built around New York City to honor this man's talent. And Sawyer, well it took him long enough, but he finally got around to calling Locke "Colonel Kurtz." Seriously, how did it take the writers almost four years to figure that reference out?

Speaking of "Taller Ghost Walt."

This is why LOST is both hilariously cheesy and totally awesome. Malcolm David Kelly went through puberty and got too old to play Walt? Let's have him grow up and reference it! Also, Walt's growth is another reason why I think the time travel thing is getting more and more clear.

Wrap Up.

I loved this episode because it nailed the hangers into break at every turn. It had a great flow of cliffhangers throughout. But the big twists at the end weren't that shocking. So the "Other" Others are looking for Ben Linus. Why? Wasn't he, oh, 8-years-old when he came to the Island? And doesn't he never leave? What could they possibly want and/or know about him? And who could Ben's spy on the other side be? From the credits, we know the only two "stars" left that haven't been revealed are Fisher Stevens and Zoe Bell. And since Fisher seems like the leader of this pack (he's the voice of Minkowski), I figure it's going to be Zoe Bell as the spy. And perhaps she'll even be Ben's girlfriend from the Dharma Initiative all the way back to when he was a kid. That girl is clearly going to come back around, and since we never saw her body, it would be a nice little reveal.

Of course that means I'm going on the idea that the "Other" Others are really part of Dharma or something else more sinister, but it seems logical.

Or maybe it doesn't.