For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

LOST Spoilers ahead. If you have not seen tonight’s episode, and don’t want to know about it until you’ve done so, don’t read anymore.

I’m not sure Mr. Eko ever got it, and I’m not happy that the LOST writers left him in limbo or purgatory or unresolved or whatever. I like Mr. Eko. I agree that back in Africa he pretty much responded to events in the best way he knew how. And on the island, when he took out a couple of the Others, I don’t know what choice he had. And he didn’t finish Yemi’s church because he thought he had to push the button. I agree that decision was dumb, but not culpable. So, are we supposed to get out of all this that all sin is illusion and that everybody’s just doing the best they can. Even Kate who blew up her dad? Even Sawyer the con-man? Even Benny himself (who as far as I’m concerned is the Arch-Fiend)?

Or is the Black Smoke coming to get them all and make them pay for their very real sins? Was Yemi really Yemi, or was he the Black Smoke Devil impersonating Yemi? He said, “You talk to me as if I am your brother.” In that case, was the Yemi vision that Mr. Eko saw earlier that led him to the Pearl Hatch and the plane, a good Yemi vision or a demonic vision? That one sure created a lot of trouble, causing Locke to lose faith in the button-pushing and eventually causing the blow-up of the hatch.We are beginning to think that LOST island is the Island where dead people come back to life and lead people astray.

Sorry, Juliette. It may seem as if it would be the perfect way to get rid of your Benny problem, but Jack is not going to let someone die during surgery on purpose. You’re going to have to find another way —if I believe that you’re honest in the first place. I believe that Benny’s a liar and that you and he have some kind of tension between you. But I don’t know if you, Ms. Juliette, are any more honest, trustworthy, and upright than Benny.

Who’s the guy with the eye patch who made such a brief appearance on TV?

Wasn’t Mr. Eko cool when he got those guys who were planning to cut off his hand? Why, oh, why did the writers have to kill Mr. Eko?

What’s with the white robes for the funeral? It looked like a cult. Maybe the Others worship and appease the Black Smoke god so that he won’t do to them what he did to Eko. Oh, but Benny is good because he believes in God. What god does he think brought Jack to his rescue?

And why are the Others, especially Benny, engaging in all this deception and rigamarole? Benny has cancer. A surgeon falls out of the air. Why didn’t the Others introduce themselves, tell the survivors who they were and what they were doing on the island, and ask Jack to do surgery? Obviously, there’s something else going on, but what?

I’m not too happy with this week’s episode of LOST. Eko has “paid” for his sins, but he’s no more sinful, no more a “bad man” than many of the other LOST characters. If I were Bernard, I’d be really worried right now. People who crashed in the tail section of the plane don’t have a good prognosis for survival. Class prejudice.

I’m late this week because I couldn’t get my LOST fix on Wednesday night. Events conspired to make that impossible. And what happens when Mama don’t get her fix? Mama had a bad day yesterday. I finally watched via computer at 11:00 p.m. last night. Then, I went over and read De-Thinkling’s live-blogging report and all the comments below.

A-a-a-h! Relief. I’m now ready to discuss the latest episode of the on-going soap opera that is LOST. As usual, if you have not gotten your fix, there are spoilers to follow. Be warned.

I’m going to go through the character list for this episode and say what there is to say.

1. Desmond. If I didn’t already have Engineer Husband . . . It’s the Scots accent and the nose. But, that aside, Desmond is definitely a prophet, and as someone noted over at Thinklings, perhaps a Christ-figure. He has the look, and the coming back naked from the blast reminded me of Gandalf. So we have Desmond-Elijah-Jesus-Gandalf. I don’t like the the idea of the “new” Lostie that Desmond borrowed the golf club from. I’m having enough trouble keeping the names and characters of the Others straight. And a guy who hits golf balls, of which there must be a somewhat limited supply, into the ocean?

2. Claire and Charlie. Claire and Charlie deserve each other, just like Sawyer and Kate deserve each other. C and C are kind of clueless but sweet and sometimes funny. Claire kind of wanders off, in her mind and with her eyes, with whichever guy pays the least bit of attention to her, but I think she’ll end up with Charlie when all is said and done.

3. Juliette and Jack. So, Jack is there to save someone’s life. Ben, most likely. Of course, being Jack, he’ll do it. If the Others had the least bit of understanding of human psychology, they would know that Jack is compulsive doctor-man, and all they had to do was ask. SO why all these psychological mind games? “We have a whole dossier on you and we know all about you.” If they’re trying to convince Jack to be cooperative, they’re going about it the wrong way. However, Juliette might be able to manage Jack if Ben would give her a free hand. Ben, however, is power-mad, and he’s probably cancerous in more ways than one.

4. Sawyer and Kate. Neither Sawyer nor Kate is too bright, if you ask me. Why did it take Sawyer so long to figure out they were watching him, and why has Kate STILL not figured that out? She saw Ben spring Sawyer’s water trap, if she didn’t hear him say that they turned off the elecrtricity, so how come she doesn’t know yet that Big Brother is watching? Hasn’t she read that book? Probably not. Of the two, Sawyer’s the more intellectual. Kate’s a Criminal Mastermind, but a hick, nevertheless. I say, as I’ve said all along, they deserve each other, and if they can ever quit conning each other, they’ll mate for life. Oh, and I understand why Sawyer couldn’t afford NOT to believe in the pacemaker, but why couldn’t he risk telling Kate to run and come for him and Jack later? And why admit up front that he’s out for himself? Wouldn’t a good con man say something like, “Honey, we’ll get out of here, and we’ll figure out a plan to come back for Jack?” Whether he planned to do so or not.

I can’t keep all the other Others straight, so I can’t really write about them. And I suppose Locke’s somewhere preparing to be the Great Deliverer. Maybe he needed another session in the sweat lodge first. (Yuck!)

Computer Guru Son, who knows all sorts of secret information about everything, tells me that some major character is slated to die in the next two episodes. He guesses Mr. Eko. I hope not because I like Mr. Eko, but I can picture him saying (in that wonderful Nigerian accent), “My mission here is ended. Now you, John, must take up my staff (Jesus Stick) and lead this people to the Promised Land.” Or revenge or something.

Questions:

Are there really two islands? Or is Ben/Henry lying again? He lies a lot.
If there are two islands, it makes sense that Rousseau never mentioned running across Other Village. But why hasn’t anyone at least seen the Other island from the original one?
Where is Rousseau? Where is to the statue with four toes? Where are Sayid and Sun and Jin? Where are Rose and Bernard? Why do we have to introduce new characters when we can’t keep up with the ones we have already?
Why does Ben/Henry think he’s God? And when is someone going to do something to convince him he’s not? I’m reading Moby Dick right now, and Ben reminds me of Ahab, spinning his webs of fantastical revenge and power. Pride goeth before . . .

OH, I forgot to mention, this week’s featured book on LOST was Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Someday I was going to a post on literary references in LOST, but I imagine Lostpedia has already beat me to it.

Here be spoilers, and polar bears, and lots of blood. SO, if you haven’t seen the latest episode of LOST and don’t want to know anything about it in advance, don’t read.

1. De live-blogged the show at Thinklings. Unfortunately, we weren’t attending the same party. He says, “Locke is mute, and Charlie can talk (and talk, and talk). Punch him, Locke!! Please! You’ve done it before! I can’t take the charades!” We were saying, “Oh, good, Locke can’t talk. And Charlie can. Please let it last for a couple of episodes at least.” But it didn’t. By the end of the episode, Locke is making heroic speeches again. He’s the macho leader guy who’s redemed his mistakes by rescuing Eko, almost single-handedly. But I would have loved to have seen him carrying Eko on his back by himself all the way back to camp. Locke turns into The Hulk! Only he doesn’t. Charlie’s right. THey ignore him until they need him for guard duty or to hold up the other side of Mr. Eko. Then, Charlie’s their best friend. And Charlie is funny. Locke isn’t.

2. “Ever notice that Hurley is really the only voice of reason on the island?” Another quote from De, but this time I agree. Hurley is my favorite character on the island, and I think he’s losing weight. He also makes sense and comes out and says what everybody else is thinking. The only thing he gets weird about is the numbers, and he hasn’t mentioned them in a while.

3. So, when did Locke lose the use of his legs? He seems to have lived a full life: Daddy problems, Mommy problems, organ donor, girlfriend problems, running from the money guys, member of a druggie commune/cult, and then paralysis? I’m not sure I’ve got it all in the right order, but anyway you look at it he’s been a busy man. And he worked at a box company in his spare time.

4. We have an abundance of prophets on this island. Is Mr. Eko the prophet/messenger of God? Or is Boone a prophet come back from the dead? Desmond reminds me a bit of Elijah with a Scots accent. And at the end he seemed to be a prophet, or someone who was living backwards, or something.

5. How are the Beach People going to manage without Jack the Doctor or Sun the Herbalist? You’d think there would be a nurse or something in the group, but I suppose that information would have surfaced by now with all the medical emergencies they’ve been through.

I think tonight was a bit of a let down. I don’t like all the sweat lodge mumbo-jumbo. I don’t like Locke, faith or no faith. I added a picture of Sun last week, but no picture of Locke will be forthcoming. If Locke’s going to be the new hero of the play, they’re going to have to work on his character as far as I’m concerned. Rescuing Mr. Eko from a polar bear won’t hack it. But I’m glad Mr. Eko isn’t dead.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead. If you have not seen the final episode of LOST, the second season, you may want to skip this post.

Now that we (and the scriptwriters) have all summer to think about the two seasons of LOST that have already aired, and we can, at our leisure, predict, criticize, praise, and analyze, I have a few random questions and ideas and observations on LOST, the only TV show worth watching* for the Semicolon family.

1. I re-watched the pilot last week with Engineer Husband, who has yet to understand the attraction although we continue to have hope that he will become as addicted as the rest of us, and I noticed that several threads have been dropped, so to speak. What explanation have we gotten for the polar bears? Another Dharma experiment gone awry? Also the possible hallucinations that various of the islanders have seen? Jack’s father? The beautiful horse that Kate saw? Were Charlie’s hallucinations drug induced? And what’s happened to Rousseau? And how did that slave ship get to the island, and why was it full of dynamite? What happened to the Dharma people who were on the island before the plane crash and before Desmond got there?

2. Were all the characters on LOST running away from something or else looking for something in Australia before their plane crash? Jack was looking for his father; Sawyer was gunning for his father’s betrayer. Hurley was looking for the origin and meaning of the numbers; Charlie’s trying for a Driveshaft comeback. Locke wanted to prove he was a man (??) or something, to go on an adventure. Kate and Anna Lucia were both running from the law. Jin and Sun were trying to escape, Jin from Sun’s father and Sun from Jin and her father. Rose and Bernard were looking for miraculous healing. Sayid was looking for his lost love. Boone went looking for Shannon, and Shannon was running from herself. Michael was, of course, looking for his boy. I’m not clear on why Eko was in Australia, and is Claire the only main character who actually lived in Australia in the first place?

3. The finale episode reminded me of the first few chapters of Genesis. Did Eko believe that God had commanded him to push that button, that it would be sin not to push the button? Locke says that the button is meaningless, and he has Desmond going along with him until the end. Adam and Eve were told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that if they did they would surely die. Eko says he is absolutely sure that if they don’t push the button they will all die. Locke/Satan says they will not surely die, but rather they will become like gods, knowing freedom.

4. However, are all the supernatural elements in the story –the healings, the dreams, the ties between all the characters– going to be explained in the end as scientific, natural phenomena? I certainly hope not. If LOST is just a story about a big evil multi-national corporation and a rich manipulative daddy who wants to protect his daughter from a poverty-stricken jailbird, then it’s not that interesting anymore. The spiritual themes are what give it depth. On the other hand, all the emphasis on Fate as the moving force behind the events on LOST is dissatisfying, too. I don’t believe in Fate, and I don’t see how such an impersonal force could produce such intensely personal stories.

5. Are the LOST people going to change, be redeemed in religious terms? Locke said, before he lost his own faith, that they all had a second chance on the island, a chance to make things right. Will Charlie really stay an ex-addict? Can Sawyer ever be anything but a con-man? Is Kate a heartless murderer? Has Jack forgiven his father? Will Eko build his church?

6. Should the people behind this show wrap everything up next season? Can the excellence be maintained through more than three seasons, or will it disintegrate into a series of soap opera episodes in which resolution is promised, but ever really delivered?

7. I love the literary references in LOST. The Dharma film was hidden behind The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Henry the Other was reading The Brothers Karamazov (given to him by Locke), entirely appropriate for this show with its themes of sin and redemption and the father-son relationship. Sawyer, of all people, is the big reader in the bunch, reading whatever he can find from the plane’s wreckage. He’s been seen reading A Wrinkle in TIme by one of my favorite authors, Madeleine L’Engle, and Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret by one of my least favorite authors, Judy Blume. The question in the latter title seems appropriate for the LOST survivors. Sawyer also read Watership Down in one of the episodes, and if you know that story, it’s all about survival and leadership and defending a group against its enemies. in the finale, Desmond’s is devoted to Dickens, saying that he’s read everything the man wrote, except for the book he saving to read just before he dies, Our Mutual Friend. That’s a book I haven’t read, so can anyone tell me what significance it might have to Desmond or to the world of LOST?

It’s about time television offered something fun and significant and thought-provoking. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a TV show as much as this one. If you’ve not seen the show, I recommend you get the DVD’s and watch*. Thank you Mr. Abrams and Mr. Lindelof.

LOST quiz, emphasizing spiritual and Biblical themes in the first two seasons of LOST.

*Not for children. There’s a lot of violence, somewhat graphically displayed, and there’s enough sexual content to make me uncomfortable. I wish the writers had been confident enough to leave out the sexual content, at least on screen, but that would require a level of restraint that is not to be found these days in Hollywood.