It would be too easy to try and excuse myself by suggesting that I’d lost track summing up Lost this week because real life things had got in the way and because, really, if timeliness had ever been that much of an issue, I probably would have got around to watching the other seasons sooner than last month. Really, the most obvious and easy explanation honestly would be to say that life had got in the way this week. Bur it would be too easy, and too dull and frankly a good deal less than you deserve.

So instead I shall say that there was a small matter of an unfortunate bus ride that I took in the middle of the week, where a small bump as we inadvertently mounted the curb led to my being catapulted to a mystery and movable location four years into the past. Or the future. It was a confusing and dizzying time, very different, yet similar, from/to the reality I know now. I was about four years younger, or older, but with about as many wrinkles, hair length and wardrobe as I have now. There was an old white conservative guy in the White House. And popular British girl band and pop combo the Sugababes existed, but with an almost completely different line up than the one they have today. It was/will be a weird, WEIRD time.

So that’s why I couldn’t do my Lost homework this week. Honest.
However, after a kindly looking man with blonde hair and great words about some important role I had to play in some vague plan he had in mind, touched me in a public place, and convinced me to take a second, subsidiary bus ride that transported me back to this time and place. Whatever time and/or place this might be. It certainly LOOKS like my house on a Sunday night, but that just seems like a ridiculously obvious solution.

ANYWAY. So: Dr Linus it is, then. A man we’d become so accustomed to treating with fear and distrust, but who now resembles nothing so harmless as a plain Hobnob biscuit that someone’s propped a pair of glasses on and told some mildly surprising news to.

However, and luckily, this was not an episode in many things happened. Not REALLY. Certainly not in the 815 Safe Landing Land of the Passingerinsons, where Ben Other was a teacher who cared passionately about his students. Not in a weird way: in a good way.

Not like the principal of the school he and Dr Arzt (Leslie Arzt, apparently, which would certainly explain his dogged insistence on being known as ‘Dr’) taught in, and John Locke is/was/would have been/will be substituting at. The principal doesn’t care about learning and about the formation of young minds as much as Ben, and besides, he’s knobbing the school nurse, which is apparently as unprincipled as a principal can get.

So Ben, at the subtle suggestion of John Locke, THE SUBSTITUTE, tries to take the power of the Principal, but at the last moment, is informed that he’s going to have to choose between seizing power, or backing off. If he backs off, the Principal will write a glowing recommendation for one of Ben Other’s best students, Alex. Alex Rousseau. So Ben has to choose between power, and ensuring a happy future for Alex Rousseau.

(Do you see what they’ve done there?
It’s almost as if they think we might not have worked out the various parallels and allegories between the two worlds, and have decided to spend most of an hour ramming it down our throats like a packet of plain hobnobs. In that there is nothing really wrong with a packet of Hobnobs, but forcefully, and all at once? Not so yummy.)

So Ben chooses Alex. And the power goes away. But he is quite happy about that.

It’s always good when you find a TV critic you almost always agree with, and for me, that’s Alan Sepinwall, who says some very good and interesting things about the ties between the decisions we’re seeing being made on the Island NOW with the thigns that are happening in the land of the Passingerinsons here, so I’m just going to link to that rather than try and explain it, or put it in my own words.

However, the stuff on the island was interesting in and of itself.

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE ISLAND IN THE FUTURE

Illana asks Miles, with no fucking about
To fondle Jacob’s bits, and tell her how he carked it.
Miles (love’im) fingers Benji for it, no shadow of doubt
And Illana squints grumpily, takes Ben’s card, and marks it.

(And of course, I mean by that, in case that’s too obscure
that she decides to ‘dead’ him till he’s dead, by means as yet unsure)

Home to the shoreline; where previously, in their prime,
the Lost Family Lostinson spent so very much time.
Illana takes Ben to the graveyard, puts a shovel in his hands.
Now he’s to dig his own grave (she’s unsubtle with demands)

He’s doing so, and digging deep when PAF! Who should appear?
It’s Smokey McfuckinSmokestack all dressed up in his Lockey gear
“Oh Ben you should come find me. The island will be yours
I’ve left a shooty bang-bang gun for shooting ‘er indoors”

Ben runs off to the gun spot
‘Lana follows looking cross
He finds the shooty bang-gun
But, before he shows her ‘boss’
(who is the) or treats her to a floss
(most thorough) or makes her friends with moss
(or daises, the pushing up of such, partic)
he sobbingly explains how much he wanted Jacob’s love
and how he knows he chose the wrong path, now
when choosing ‘tween Alex and power.
Illana forgives him. With a glower.
He’s chosen the right way now, see?
And now returns to righteouswheeeeee.

Elsewhere, off in the Jungle, Dr Jack and Hurley wander
And for some reason that we are left to merely ponder
they’re backed by tuba music. We assume ‘cos Hurley’s big.
It’s the kind of thing that Disney would use to soundtrack a cartoon of tiptoeing Elephants. There’s just no way of making that rhyme. And nether should there be, because it’s a sodding riduculous thing to do. Sorry, it just is.

Richard, quite cleansed of eyeline paint
Finds them, jolly this ancient ain’t
He leads them off, then explains why:
because he needs their help to die.
(Once Jacob, magic fingered man
has rubbed you with his super-skin
You have to stay alive, you see.
Until another does you in)
He doesn’t die. Neither does Jack.
Nor Hurley: so they all head back…

To Lost Family Lostinson Beach
Where the sun always shines. Except when it doesn’t.

WHAT I LEARNT (AND WONDERED) DURING THIS EPISODE
1) I really am concerned about the worrying upswing in comedy music accompanying favourite characters on their adventures. The musical accompaniment to watching Hurley and Snarling Jack, Doctor of Hot Confusion
That it wasn’t followed up by a similarly inventive use of the chase music from Benny Hill when Illana was chasing Ben through the forest was no small matter of disappointment, however.
2) In the last few minutes of the episode, we discovered something both very interesting, and very alarming. Racing through the water like a dolphin doing a very fast backstroke with a very big erection, a submarine with its one-eyed doodle poking all the way up was seen to be rushing toward the Island. Widmore is in it. You know, Jim Robinson from Neighbours.Turns out he DIDN’T die of a heart attack after all.
Oh no, wait, that WAS Jim Robinson on Neighbours. Never mind.
3) Remember when the Others used to be all about walking silently and dribbling a lot in other people’s tents? Why don’t they do that so much any more? Did I miss the Table Manners episode? But I didn’t miss ANY episodes, I didn’t think? Bother.