Previously on Lost: Jack smashes some lighthouse mirrors because he's angry and confused. Smokey throws a massacre party, and everyone at the Temple is invited. Ben Linus is suddenly impotent in whatever cosmic game Jacob and Smokey are playing. Hurley makes a Star Wars reference, and then an Indiana Jones reference. And somewhere in a makeshift camp deep in the jungle, an abandoned skullbaby mewls for the insane momma who's left it to join the Crazy Army.
Now sling your rifle over your shoulder, push your filthy, but still jauntily styled, hair our of your face, and plunge onward into the island's thicket of secrets with us as we again attempt to answer 23 questions about last night's episode.
Is it sort of perfect that Ben--
Hey, that's "Dr. Linus" to you, bub!
--sorry, Dr. Linus is a high school history teacher in the flash-sideways?
It's nearly perfect. Unfortunately, most high school curricula don't include coursework in Homicidal Self-Preservation And Magical Island Management, which would be his ideal gig.
Where have I seen Principal Reynolds before? He looks awfully familiar.
Welcome ubiquitous 1980s scene-stealing superstar William Atherton -- Ghostbusters' own Walter "Yes, It's True, This Man Has No Dick" Peck, Die Hard's memorably prickish Richard Thornburg, and Real Genius' Professor Jerry "I Hate Popcorn!" Hathaway -- to Lost's final season.
Wasn't Ben's dad also in Real Genius? Should we read anything into that? Everything is so carefully orchestrated on this show!
Indeed, Jon "Roger Linus" Gries played reclusive, burnt-out, closet-dwelling genius Lazlo. If you must force some Lost connection on this bit of casting serendipity, the secret underground bunker that Lazlo lived in was similar to the Hatch, and if we really want to go crazy, maybe we can imagine that Lazlo, as a precocious youth, programmed the Dharma computer system into which the special string of numbers had to entered every 108 minutes, and that his realization about the part he unwittingly played in Jacob and Smokey's master plan drove him insane.
What year was Atherton inducted into the Eighties Movie Asshole Hall Of Fame?
In 1992, he and William Zabka were both first ballot inductees. It was a moving ceremony; legs were swept.
Nostalgia is great, but we're getting off track here. What was in the satchel that Miles gave to Ilana after she asked him how Jacob died?
They want us to believe it contains Jacob's cremains, retrieved from the fire pit into which his freshly murdered body was kicked. But it's actually full of pharmaceutical-grade marijuana that Jacob had been holding for Ilana. Good sh*t is really hard to come by on the island (when it did become available, Sawyer would always wind up stealing the stash), so this bequest to his loyal protector was significant.
So Alex is Ben's student in the flash-sideways, and not his (adoptive) daughter?
Correct. Though she is still, perhaps curiously, a Rousseau.
If she's still a Rousseau, shouldn't she be living in France with her French mom?
In the flash-sideways, Danielle Rousseau, no longer a scientist, moved to Los Angeles to open an upscale, very successful brasserie. But she still sends Alex to an under-funded public school, for some reason.
What's the book that Ben ignores in the "library" tent in the ransacked beach camp?
The Chosen, by Chaim Potok. Because many of them have been "chosen" to be "candidates," get it?
In that same scene, is there any significance to Ben's lingering over the porno mag Booty Babes, or its tagline, "Big Beautiful Bouncy Buns"?
Ben's interest in the magazine might indicate that he's an ass man, a fact that could become important later in the season. But the magazine's primary purpose was to serve as a naughty "easter egg" to hardcore Lost fans, as the featured booty on its cover actually belongs to e3xecutive producer Carlton Cuse.
How come Oceanic Airlines doesn't have some sort of system for tracking down pilots who are running late for work because they overslept?
Because they know that even when guys like Frank Lapidus oversleep, Fate will somehow rectify their work schedules in such a way that they will eventually reach their intended destinations on mysterious, uncharted islands.
Is Frank "claimed"? He's got a serious case of Claire-style "Island Head."
No. He's just not a vain dude.
Is Principal Reynolds really a "total perv" for porking the school nurse?
Of course not. Isn't that every principal's fantasy? But in Alex's defense, maybe she eavesdropped on some deviant role-play when she stumbled upon them getting it on.
Would Miles, once a shady, low-rent ghost-whisperer-for-hire, still be interested in that $3.2 million he once tried to extort from Ben, in return for looking the other way while he bolted from digging-his-own-grave duty?
Ha! Not when Nikki and Paolo are buried ten feet away, ghost-screaming their heads off about the $8 million in diamonds* they're entombed with! Now quit your goldbricking and get back to shoveling out that hole they're going to toss you in after Ilana shoots you in the head for stabbing her boss, Linus!
[*SFX: Loose Thread Resolution Siren Blares]
Why does Richard want to kill himself?
Because Jacob touched him, and when Jacob touches you, it's a gift. A sexy, sexy gift. Until Jacob, whom everyone thought was more or less immortal, somehow gets killed, and then that gift turns into a terrible, terrible curse. Because you can't kill yourself and end your suffering over having lost the person to whom you'd dedicated your entire life, a life now that has no purpose.
Doesn't it seem like a dumb loophole to the "can't kill yourself" gift/curse if you can ask someone else, like Jack, to light your suicide dynamite? You're still essentially killing yourself by making the choice to end your own life.
But then we wouldn't have gotten that great scene where Jack lights the fuse, trusting that his own gift/curse from Jacob would prevent the dynamite from detonating and blowing the Black Rock to Island Come. And it's really no dumber a loophole than being able to trick somebody else into stabbing the godlike being with whom you've been locked in a centuries-long pissing match, when you think about it.
Why didn't Jack just demand some answers from Richard in return for helping him kill himself, instead of playing that game of dynamite chicken?
Jack's never been one to demand answers when he can avoid asking important questions in favor of some crazy scheme that puts other people in mortal danger.
Why didn't Smokey W. Lockenheimer III, upon visiting Ben while he dug his own grave, just deliver that rifle he left 200 feet away in the jungle, instead of making him run for it with a gun-toting Ilana in hot pursuit?
Too easy.
Fine. Then why didn't Mr. Johnathan Lockeington Smokegull just turn himself into the Black Smog of Vengeance and kill Ilana himself?
He was still a little winded from slaughtering everyone at the Temple. A murderous smoke monster's gotta pace himself.
Why couldn't Ben blackmail Principal Reynolds for both his job and a glowing letter of recommendation for Alex? Three months of kinky nurse-diddling e-mails seems like more than enough extortion material to pull that off.
One demand per blackmail threat only! There's a code to this kind of criminal behavior. Look what happened to Keamy last week, when he continued to extract money from Sayid's brother even after he'd paid off his loanshark debt.
When Arzt was asking Ben about how the blackmail thing turned out (he really wanted that parking space next to the big maple tree!), and Ben explained how it played out, was that look he gave the nearby Alex a little pervy?
Nobody on television can pack a stare with as many unsettling layers of prurient possibility than Michael Emerson. (It's OK, she's not his daughter in the flash-sideways. We think.)
How is Arzt going to die in the flash-sideways? He has to die. Has. To.
His grisly death will come via an accident involving the new science lab equipment, with an explosion splattering meaty Arzticles all over a horrified AP Chemistry class.
What's the name of Charles Widmore's submarine?
The S.S. Running Out Of Time To Tie All This Stuff Together So Here Comes The Mysterious Rich Guy Who Was So Important Last Season. Not exactly catchy, but like we said, they're running out of time.
Where's Sawyer? We're getting worried, he's been missing for three weeks.
Don't you worry your pretty little head, Bloggycakes. Good ol' James still has some grievin' to do before he comes back and starts kickin' some smoke-ass all over the Island.