Channel Surfing: DirecTV Could Save Damages, Chris Fedak Talks Chuck, Lost Post-Finale Plans, True Blood, and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing.

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that the fate of FX's serpentine legal thriller Damages, set to wrap its third season in two weeks' time, is in the hands of DirecTV. "Multiple sources confirm to me exclusively that Sony is talking to DirecTV’s 101 Network about partnering on a possible fourth season of Damages," writes Ausiello. "The cost-sharing arrangement would be similar to the one DirecTV and NBC forged with Friday Night Lights, which means future seasons of Damages would air first on DirecTV with a second window on FX." An unnamed source further tells Ausiello that Sony Pictures Television began talks with DirecTV after it became untenable to maintain financing Damages on its own and the studio has engaged in talks with other outlets as well. Both FX and Sony refused to comment for the story. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan has a fantastic interview with Chuck co-creator/executive producer Chris Fedak about the remainder of the third season, the series' chances at a fourth go-around, and Brandon Routh's Daniel Shaw. "I’m very happy with [it]," said Fedak about Chuck's third season. "We’re very excited by the way we’ve structured this season. It starts out with some darks spots in the season, we have gone dark, we’ve tested the premise of the show, especially with "Chuck Versus the Final Exam," which aired last Monday. And [Monday's] episode, "Chuck Versus the Other Guy" -- all these episodes are really kind of testing the premise of the show, testing the idea of what we can do on the show. But from the perspective of the overall season, I think that we’re going to a really neat place and we’re having a lot of fun with it. We’re very excited that we’re able to tell such a dynamic story this season. But in truth, [it is] dynamic and also challenging." [Editor: It's a great and lengthy interview, so be sure to read through to the end. Lots of great moments.] (Chicago Tribune's The Watcher)

In other Chuck-related news, I was so sad to miss this weekend's Chuck panel at WonderCon in San Francisco. But if you--like me--missed out on the festivities, you can ready ChuckTV's in-depth panel report. You'll feel just like you were there, I promise. "Because they already had one season finale (3.13) written before learning that they had another six episodes, they essentially got to have two season finales in one season," writes ChuckTV's Mel. "Chris [Fedak] reiterated that no one is safe." (ChuckTV.net)

Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse will be sitting down with ABC's Jimmy Kimmel for an exclusive hour-long postshow special, entitled Jimmy Kimmel Live: Aloha to Lost, where they will be joined by many cast members from the ABC Studios-produced drama series, which is set to end its run on May 23rd. Plus, ABC has promised that they will be airing alternate endings to Lost on the special as well. (E! Online's Watch with Kristin, The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has an exclusive first-look at True Blood's werewolf Alcide, played by One Tree Hill's Joe Manganiello, shown in a shot from Season Three alongside Anna Paquin's Sookie Stackhouse. "There is definitely some [sexual] energy between the two of them," True Blood's executive producer Alan Ball told Ausiello. "It’s not like either one of them is looking for romance, but they’re thrown into several intense situations [and] it’s hard not to bond on a deeper level." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

The Los Angeles Times' Irene Lacher has an interview with Damages' Lily Tomlin, the latest in the paper's Sunday Conversations series. "I don't see any difference, really," said Tomlin about shuttling back and forth between comedy and drama. "It's just a matter of style or degree. And I've listened to Marty [Short, who plays the Tobins' devious lawyer], and he has the same point of view. You're just going to try to represent the human who's written on the page." (Los Angeles Times)

The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd takes a look at several "on the bubble" series at the broadcast networks, including ABC's FlashForward and V, NBC's Chuck, Heroes, Parenthood, The Marriage Ref, and Law & Order (Hibberd says that Mercy and Trauma are basically DOA), FOX's Human Target and Sons of Tucson, CW's One Tree Hill and Life Unexpected, and CBS' Cold Case, Numbers, Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Accidentally on Purpose, Gary Unmarried, and Old Christine. (Hollywood Reporter)

Pilot casting update: Tisha Campbell-Martin (Rita Rocks has been cast as a regular on ABC comedy pilot Wright vs. Wrong, where she will star opposite Debra Messing and will play the stylist to Messing's political pundit Evelyn Wright; Duane Martin (All of Us) has come aboard Paul Reiser's NBC comedy pilot Next, where he will play Reiser's best friend, a restaurateur; Jonathan Slavin (Better Off Ted) has been cast in CBS comedy pilot Team Spitz; Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris) has been cast in NBC comedy pilot Our Show; and Dejan Loyola (The Troop) has landed a role in the CW drama pilot HMS. (Hollywood Reporter)

For Slavin, the casting is formally in second position to "Ted."

The Futon Critic is reporting that TNT will launch Jason Lee-led drama series Memphis Beat (formerly known as Delta Blues) on Tuesday, June 22nd at 10 pm ET/PT, behind the second season premiere of HawthoRNe. Later during the summer, the cabler will launch Season Two of Dark Blue (in August, specifically) and Rizzoli & Isles. (Futon Critic)

BET is said to be close to a deal to resurrect canceled CW comedy series The Game and is expected to announce the pickup at its upfront later this month, according to The Hollywood Reporter's Nellie Andreeva, who writes that the majority of the comedy series' cast will be returning for this new iteration and that Salim Akil will take over showrunner duties from his wife, Brock Akil, now a consulting producer on ABC's Cougar Town. (Hollywood Reporter)

Universal Media Studios has signed a two-year overall deal with former My Name is Earl writer/producer Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, under which she develop new series projects for the studio while joining an existing NBC series. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Some People Are Not Meant to Be Together: The Great Divide on "Lost"

"A wise man once said that war is coming to this island. I think it just got here." - The Man in Black

One of the central relationships on Lost since the very beginning of the series has been the often turbulent (and sometimes tender) marriage between Sun and Jin.

It's no surprise then that the duo--linked by bonds of affection and fate--would be the focus of this week's episode, one that offers another facet of their relationship to explore. A what-if, in the Lost-X world, that dives into an examination of what might have been had Sun and Jin made different choices.

This week's episode of Lost ("The Package"), written by Paul Zbyszewski and Graham Roland and directed by Paul Edwards, offered one of the strongest "sideways" installments to date, focusing on the very different circumstances in which Sun and Jin find themselves in the Lost-X timeline... while, back on the island, the duo attempts to reunite themselves but are once again thwarted by circumstances beyond their control.

So what did I think about this week's episode of Lost? Grab yourself a fancy watch, don't stand too close to the pylons, take a sip of cocoa, and let's discuss "The Package."

I've been connected to Sun and Jin for quite some time, which might be why this week's episode resonated with me. The ups and downs of the marriage, both before they crashed on the island and afterwards, have offered the series a tenderness and emotional complexity by having a marriage to explore (and one that's not as seemingly idyllic as Bernard and Rose's). I thought perhaps the star-crossed spouses would be reunited in this week's episode but it clearly was not meant to be as third parties continue to intervene to keep these two apart. (In fact, the on-island versions of Sun and Jin haven't been together in nearly two seasons and have spent years apart in the timeline of the series.)

The Man in Black this week admitted that, just like Ilana, he too is unaware of whether the Kwon on the cave wall and the lighthouse refers to Jin or Sun and therefore which one of them is actually the candidate. I've maintained for quite some time that it isn't either of them specifically, but rather both: that these two comprise a single unit of being. It's vital that these two are reunited but also extremely dangerous as well. It's why forces beyond their control continue to separate them by barriers made from time and space. And it's why Sun wasn't send back in time to the 1970s with the other members of the Oceanic Six.

So who would keep them apart? Jacob. Given that the Man in Black knows where Sun is and wants to bring her back with him to unite his matching set of Kwons, he's clearly not the influence that's working hard to keep them apart from one another. Which would leave the obvious answer then as Jacob. If we believe the Man in Black's working theory: that he needs as many of the candidates as possible to travel with him in order to tip the scale to black and escape, then he needs both Jin AND Sun. Which means that there's a good reason Jacob has for keeping them separated; his efforts have been to keep the cork firmly in the mouth of the bottle and the Man in Black imprisoned on the island. Bringing Jin and Sun together means that another candidate would be up for grabs. Hmmm... (And the Man in Black also states what I wrote last week: he can't just glide across the ocean, otherwise he would have done so ages ago.)

Sun, meanwhile, flees The Man in Black when he appears in her garden (nice callback to the early days of Lost, by the way) and is struck on the head in the process. Her injury causes aphasia where she cannot speak English but is able to both understand and (later) write it. It's an interesting reversal of the first season of Lost where Sun could understand English but refused to speak it for fear that someone would learn that she was fluent in English, a secret she kept from her husband. (And, interestingly, neither Jin nor Sun can speak English in the Lost-X timeline. Which makes sense as the reason Sun learned the language was so that she could run away from her husband.) Her explanation for why she ran: she didn't trust him. (Smart Sun.)

Good to see that Richard has returned to the path of the righteous and, as Jacob had told Ilana, knows what to do next. He wants them to make their way to the Hydra Island, the site of the Ajira plane crash because he knows just what is coming next. But Sun doesn't want to go. She's the stubborn tomato in the garden, the one who escapes death and destruction and clings to life. She's not budging: she didn't come back to the island to save the world, she came to find her husband. But maybe those two things can never be. Maybe in saving the world, she'll have to sacrifice her marriage...

Amid all of the warring entities and metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, some of the most beautiful moments on the series have been the small ones: those tiny character interactions that don't necessarily advance the plot but speak volumes about the journey that these characters are on. This week's episode featured one of the best ones so far this season as Jack offered Sun a notebook and pen so she would be able to communicate with him. It was a thoughtful and tender moment that spoke of the bond between them and the level of trust that they've each earned with one another, a small moment that touched me for numerous reasons.

It was fantastic to see Jack in the role of caretaker once more: no longer a suicidal addict terrified that he had lost control of his life, but rather a leader, a healer, and... a believer. In fact, Jack's words to Sun and his Zen-like calm reminded me of the early John Locke. Could it be that this man of science has now finally become a man of faith? The way in which he offered himself and his friendship to Sun wasn't the typical Jack we've seen in recent seasons. And I'll admit that I got a little teary when he extended his hand to Sun (as he promised to find Jin and get them both on the plane) and she took it. Might Jack be stepping into the role he was destined for before our very eyes?

Kate. Unfortunately, Kate doesn't quite realize the full extent of the danger she is currently in. She might be living in the camp of the Man in Black but she's not loyal to him and he knows this all too well and likely that she and Sawyer are plotting against him. But the Man in Black needs Kate, even though she isn't a candidate. While her name was crossed off the wall, she's a means to an end: a way to lure the other candidates to the plane so that the Man in Black can use them to escape. Once he's able to get them, Kate loses all value to him... and he's quite willing to allow Claire to kill her at that point. (Uh-oh.) I'm glad that Claire wasn't genuine in her sudden reconciliation with Kate; she still seethes with anger toward the woman who raised Aaron and, while she's all smiles and hugs for now, she's got a knife with Kate's name on it.

Meanwhile, I'm still puzzling just why Kate lost her candidacy while the others did not. Was it because she raised Aaron? Or is it because she can't fundamentally change? Can't put her past damage behind her? Can't stop running? There's got to be an explanation of just what "crime" she committed that invalidated her place at the metaphorical round table but I'm intrigued by the fact that Team Darlton are withholding this from us for the time being. I think it could hold the answer to the entire candidacy process, in fact.

Sayid. Speaking of which, I'd be extremely surprised if Sayid's name hadn't been crossed off that list yet. After all, he died and was infected with the darkness. Now he's become a shell of a man, an emotionless husk whose sole purpose seems to be death and destruction. While many doubted Dogen's need to murder Sayid, I would say that it appears pretty clear now: he's definitely infected and once the darkness reaches his heart, he'll remain that way forever. The Man in Black claims that it's better for Sayid this way, however. But why? Because he has no connection to the other castaways? Because with no joy, pain, or happiness, he's more willing to follow the Man in Black into utter darkness?

Sayid might have physically died from a result of the gunshot wound and the drowning and come back to life but his soul died in the process. Yet his situation seems to be different from Claire's, despite Dogen claiming that she too was infected. Claire seems consumed by emotion: rage, anger, a thirst for vengeance. Sayid doesn't feel anything. Is it just a stop on the way to that place of darkness? Or are there levels of infection? Curious.

Lost-X Sun and Jin. In the alternate timeline, we saw a Sun and Jin who were together and yet weren't quite in the same situation they were in when we met them at the start of Season One. First, the two aren't married here, which is a significant change (and one mentioned by me back when "LA X" aired) of status quo for the Korean couple. Yet they would appear to be happy here; there's a playfulness to Sun that we haven't seen in the mainstream reality as well as a calmness to Jin as well. It was nice to see the two engage in some sensual behavior and not be at each other's throats. While the other Sun was seeking to run away from Jin, she has engineered a scenario in which they can run away together.

But it's not to be: her father has learned of her affair with Jin and wants to put a stop to it. This trip isn't a business trip: Mr. Paik has sent Jin to what he believes will be his death at the hands of Keamy, entrusting a brick of cash to Jin as payment for his own murder. (Which, I thought, was a very nice twist indeed.) What he didn't foresee was customs agents seizing the cash and therefore keeping Jin alive along enough to escape. (Another ironic complication: that Sun's secret bank account was closed, leaving her unable to pay Keamy's fee.) As Keamy puts it succinctly: "Some people are not meant to be together."

The Sun and Jin plot collides with that of Lost-X Sayid, who shoots Keamy and his men and gives Jin the means to free himself from the freezer. Keamy has survived Sayid's gunshot but Jin attacks Mikhail (more on him in a bit) in an effort to take him and Sun out of danger. A brutal fight follows in which multiple shots are fired and Mikhail is seemingly killed. But Sun appears to have been shot in the abdomen and she tearfully tells Jin that she is pregnant. Hmmm, might we see Sun and Jin meet up with Jack at the hospital very soon?

Lost-X Mikhail. Then there's the matter of the two-eyed Mikhail. I thought it interesting when we meet polygot Mikhail, here an associate of Keamy's who is able to talk to Sun in Korean, that he had both of his eyes, an important distinction from the mainstream Mikhail back on the island. But during the fight with Jin, Mikhail is shot right in the eye, bringing the two Mikhails more into line. While it's a small detail, it's a pretty momentous moment for the Lost-X timeline: we're seeing evidence of course-correction here as the universe attempts to push itself back into line. Just as the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 continue to cross paths with increasingly frequency, this too is a manifestation of that occurrence as the timeline attempts to reshape itself into the proper position.

I still maintain that this timeline isn't the epilogue of the series but something different altogether, a parallel world that affects the mainstream one and vice-versa. As I stated a few week back, I think that these castaways will have to "go back" to the island and raise it from the ocean floor. There needs to be a cork, after all, and the island has to exist not just in the mainstream reality but all of them, a space-time anchor that's consistent across the multiverse.

The Looking-Glass. Interesting too that Sun would notice something in her reflection in the mirror. It's the third time--after Jack and Sawyer--that one of the Lost-X castaways experienced a moment of frisson upon gazing at themselves in the mirror: a sense that something was wrong or troubling. Are we seeing more indications that these characters are becoming increasingly aware that their world is not right, that their surroundings feel off? If we think of Juliet's seeming awareness of multiple realities and Desmond as well, can it be that each of the castaways--or the candidates at least--will become aware of the other streams of time? Very intriguing. (And I still maintain that each of the mirrors here is connected to the looking-glass in the lighthouse which Jack smashed.)

Charles Widmore. While some viewers have wondered whether Charles Widmore was on the side of the Man in Black (despite his efforts to convince Sawyer that he wanted to kill him), this week's episode would appear to eradicate all possibility of that being true. Widmore is definitely on the side of the island. He wants to destroy the Man in Black or at least keep him contained and his plan involves locating the electromagnetic pockets on the island. (Wouldn't you know it? I brought that up in my write-up of last week's episode!) Which is why he needs Jin. Widmore is acutely aware of the fact that Jin traveled back in time and spend time with the Dharma Initiative and he wants geophysicist Zoe to have Jin show her where these pockets of electromagnetic energy are. Loved that Zoe and Widmore were keeping Jin locked up in Room 23, where the Dharma Initiative was studying subliminal messaging. (I'm loving the little details and callbacks that this season is offering, but I can assume that the Others changed over the message itself, given that it spoke of Jacob.)

Meanwhile, Widmore squares off with the Man in Black along the sonar fence line. He doesn't know the entity's name but is aware of his existence from myth, ghost stories, and noises in the jungle. (In other words: he knows he's the smoke monster.) Widmore has taken precautions against the Man in Black being able to come onto the Hydra Island and interfere with his own plan. But the Man in Black isn't there to kill anyone (at least not yet.) He wants Jin and demands that Widmore return Jin to him. But Widmore's no fool and he's not giving up his best chance and locating the electromagnetic pockets on the island. He lies and says that he has no idea what the Man in Black is talking about. And right there is the start of the war between Widmore and the Man in Black.

Just how did Jacob's Nemesis know that Widmore told Locke that a war was coming to the island? Does he have access to Locke's memories as well as his physicality? Widmore had prophesied that war was about to come to the island but there's no other way that the Man in Black could have known about that... unless he was able to watch that scene play out somehow. Hmmm...

The Package. Besides for his sonar fence and his island maps, Widmore has brought something else to the island as well. I always feel vindicated when I'm exactly right about something on the series, particularly when the naysayers tell me that I'm wrong. Yes, it was Desmond inside the sub's locked compartment, as I had predicted a few weeks back. He's the package that Widmore orders Zoey to have brought to the infirmary.

They're keeping him heavily sedated and I can't help but wonder just what Widmore wants from poor old Des, last seen recovering in the hospital after Ben shot him at the start of Season Five. Desmond, after all, has seen multiple timelines himself and has been the focus of course-correction at the hands of Eloise Hawking. Is his gift of multiple levels of awareness the reason why Widmore needs him on the island? Or is it the fact that he had once activated the fail-safe within the Swan Station and therefore was irradiated with massive levels of electromagnetism? Is Widmore looking to repeat the process again?

Or is he looking to use this energy to bridge the gap between the two realities and bring them back into a single file? After all, Eloise Hawking was or is a compere of Charles Widmore and she--as seen in "Flashes Before Your Eyes"--was aware of multiple timelines before. Could it be these two are working together to fix the divide between the mainstream reality and the Lost-X one? To bridge the gap and strengthen the island once more? Hmmm...

What did you think of this week's episode? Love Miles' bacon comment about Hurley? Agree with the above theories? Disagree? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Happily Ever After"), Desmond wakes up to discover he's back on the island.

Recorking the Bottle: "Lost" Questions, Series Finale Title Announced

I don't normally dive back into a single Lost episode twice in one week but after this week's episode ("Ab Aeterno") brought up many reader questions--and Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse announced the episode title for the series finale--I felt like it merited a second post this week.

While I discussed "Ab Aeterno" in full over here (along with quite a few mythology- and story-based theories I had about the bottle metaphor, the Dharma Initiative, the Man in Black, and more), I thought that it would be a good change of pace to answer some questions and concerns about this week's Richard Alpert-centric installment of Lost right here.

We'll also get to the issue of the series finale's title after the jump, so as not to spoil those who don't want to know. (Though, in all honesty, it's not at all spoilery.)

So without further ado, let's turn that bottle of wine over once more.

Hell. Over on Twitter, several readers seemed confused about Richard's belief that they were all dead and were in hell, taking his words at face value and believing them to be a validation of that old fan theory that had the island as purgatory or hell. Truth?

Not so. Richard's words stem from the Man in Black's century-plus-old manipulation of Richard, preying on his religious beliefs and attempting to push him into his service (as a recruit of the darkness) to kill Jacob, setting up his adversary as the Devil himself. Following the death of Jacob and Richard's inability to kill himself, these same thoughts and pressures reemerge and Richard reverts to his old way of thinking. But the castaways aren't dead nor is the island hell itself.

They are all very much alive and what is happening is happening in the real world, on Earth, albeit a quite magical corner of it where anything and everything is possible. This isn't hell but rather a place of containment for the world's evil, a Pandora's box that holds the true nature of evil and prevents it from spilling over into the rest of the world. Which isn't to say that there isn't already badness in the world because there is but it's a mere shadow of the true evil that the Man in Black would seem to represent.

So short answer: nope, it's not hell, and they're not dead.

The Cork. Seat42F asked, "If the Man in Black needs Jacob to die to leave the island..... why is he still there? Something just doesn't add up. Man In Black complains for hundreds of years about leaving and we learn last night (which we sort of knew already) he has to kill Jacob to do so... yet he doesn't leave. Why?"

It's a good question and I answered it briefly in Wednesday's write-up of "Ab Aeterno" but it's worthy of some longer thoughts.

As I said then, "The warden may be dead but he still needs to scale the prison wall." What I meant by that was that Jacob's continued existence meant that the Man in Black couldn't escape his island prison. The first step to escape would have to involve Jacob's death, thus removing one barrier from achieving his end. But while Jacob might be dead, it doesn't mean that the Man in Black can simply now swim off the island.

After all, it's extremely hard to come and go from this place. It took two plane crashes to bring the castaways here and the island disappearing from space/time for them to leave. Hell, the sub has to follow a specific trajectory just to escape the mystical "fog" that surrounds the island and keeps it hidden.

Ajira and the sub represent two possible escape routes, both for the survivors and for the Man in Black. He clearly can't just swim--or in the guise of Smokey, glide--over the ocean and therefore needs some sort of conduit. And he needs help or he wouldn't need to recruit an army of followers. Someone, after all, has to fly that plane or pilot that sub, if he has any chance of getting off that place.

Kate. Jonah Blue wrote, "Jace, you refer to Kate as a candidate. She was on the lighthouse wheel, and she was touched as a child by Jacob. But her wheel number (51) isn’t among the “six remaining candidate” numbers, nor was her name on the cave wall. You have great theories – would you mind sharing your theory on Kate’s unusual candidacy?"

Correct, Kate doesn't appear to be among the six remaining candidates that Ilana speaks of, nor was she assigned one of the so-called magic numbers (4-8-15-16-23-42) that have populated the series since the beginning. First, it's worth noting that Kate's assigned number (51), as shown from the lighthouse wheel, is a reflection of Sawyer's number (15), which seems very deliberate indeed. Second, while Kate isn't a candidate any more, she clearly was at one time and then had her name crossed off the list.

Which begs the question: just what did she do that got her invalidated from candidate-hood? Was it because she broke the prophecy of Claire alone raising Aaron? In taking Aaron--the first child born on the island in quite some time--away from that place, did she undo part of the greater plan? Was that her crime? Or is the fact that she still hasn't come to terms with the issues that she's shouldered since she first arrived on the island in 2004? Why is she still running, even after all of this time? Why hasn't she forgiven herself? Hmmm...

Lost-X. Usagi wrote, "I don't see how the Lost-X storyline could mean that MIB escaped. Apart from Sayid (and Kate, to a certain extent, but i so don't like her that i don't care, really), they all seem to have redeemed and obtained whatever they were after. So how is this hell? Could you explain?"

Certainly. I theorized in yesterday's post that with the island under the ocean, it appeared as though the bottle had been broken and the Man in Black may have escaped (or had somehow survived the flooding of the island). Given the metaphor that was used in the episode and the fact that the Nemesis smashed the bottle at the end, it seemed to be a clear indication that the Lost-X universe was the result of that bottle smashing. While it's true that some of the castaways have achieved their heart's desire, others have not (particularly those who seem to have sided with the Man in Black over Jacob).

But, to play devil's advocate here, achieving your heart's desire is a prison in itself. Remember, it's the Man in Black who is offering Faustian bargains to the castaways (and to Richard Alpert) seemingly without strings attached. Jacob's agreements inherently involve a level of sacrifice (Dogen's son is saved from death but he can't ever see him again; Juliet's sister's cancer is allegedly cured but she can't return to her; Richard is granted eternal life but as an act of repentance) while the Man in Black seems to make false promises, offering the castaways exactly what they want without seemingly asking for anything in return (save maybe their souls): Sayid to have Nadia once more, Sawyer to leave the island, Claire to get Aaron back, Richard to be once more with Isabella.

What if the Lost-X universe is one in which they have achieved whatever they wanted and the world is trapped in complacency and therefore unable to rise up against the Man in Black? It's harder to turn away from your heart's desire when you've achieved it, isn't it? It would, in fact, require an unearthly level of sacrifice, no?

(This also answers one of Frank1569's questions, "Maybe he has the power to send you to a timeline where 'dreams come true?")

Pylons. Rockauteur wrote, "There's the story of the pylons, but who's to say that it just keeps MIB out? It could also keep Jacob out - or his replacements - as well."

I still maintain that the pylons are either to keep the Man in Black/Smokey out... or, as I surmised last week, to keep him trapped on Hydra Island after they are activated, trapping him on the smaller island and keeping him away from the main island itself.

Magic Box. Frank1569 asked, "what ever happened to Ben's magic box, which promised the same type of things Smokey does?"

There's no physical magic box, just slight of hand here. Ben's magic box was a manipulation attempted to prove his power and supernatural abilities to Locke after he "magically" produced Locke's villainous father Anthony Cooper out of thin air. Of course, we learned that it wasn't at all magic that had brought him there but that Ben and several of the Others had the ability to leave the island at will, thanks to the sub. Ben himself later admitted that the magic box was a ruse as well as a metaphor for the entire island. Things do seem to appear here but they're more likely manifestations of the Man in Black (Yemi, Isabella, Ben's mother) or the island itself (i.e. Kate's horse).

The Others. Charlotte K asked, "Who built the temple, the statue, the underground vaults, if the Others didn't begin until after Richard came?"

Answer: others did. (Notice the lower-case "o" there.) It's clear that there have been people living on this island for centuries, if not millennia, and Jacob refers to people who have arrived on the island prior to Richard, all of whom are dead. When I said that we were perhaps seeing the birth of the Others with Richard's arrival, I meant the modern group of "Others" or "hostiles" that we've seen in the six seasons so far, those who had the benefit of Richard Alpert as an emissary for Jacob and the advice he offered as a spiritual adviser to them.

Given the structures on the island, it's clear that people did live there and construct such locations as Taweret, the Temple, the tunnels, the lighthouse, etc. These all predate Richard's arrival on the island by significant periods of time. Whether any of them survived or were killed by the smoke monster remains to be seen. Jacob certainly maintains to Richard that they all died out. Maybe because they couldn't reproduce? Hmmm...

Isabella. Ken wrote, "When Hurley told Richard that Isabella had said that they had to kill the Man In Black or they would go to hell, Isabella was no longer there. Is it possible that Hurley made this part up just to keep Richard on their side?"

No, I don't think so. I think the direction was such that we were allowed to see what Richard was seeing, which was that no one else was there from his perspective. I don't think Hurley made that up at all, just that we didn't need to keep Isabella there for that bit. That was the message she passed along to him, which Hurley then delivered to Richard.

Richard. Rustle asked, "If Richard is immortal, then in the "sideways" universe is he still alive, at the bottom of the ocean with the rest of the island?"

We've yet to see Richard Alpert in the Lost-X universe, so anything is possible: he's either under the ocean (did he and Jacob move into the Looking Glass Station?) or had left the island when he began to sink or at an earlier date. After all, we know that Richard was free to leave the island when he needed to: he met Juliet when she was recruited to the Others and visited John Locke when the latter was a child. So he could have been off the island when it sank...

Series Finale Title. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse yesterday announced the title for the series finale of Lost, which is--wait for it--"The End."

I think it's the absolute most fitting title for the end of a series that has produced so much speculation and theorizing and thoughts about the past, present, and future. This is the definitive end of the series and, regardless of what rights holders ABC Studios does with the franchise after this, this is how Team Darlton ended the series and these characters' struggles.

There's a nice simplicity and poetry to that title, coming as it does on the final page. Will everyone live happily ever after? That's highly doubtful, given that this is Lost, after all. With only eight episodes remaining (including "The End," the two-hour series finale), I think we're in for a final battle between good and evil that will likely kill off several beloved characters before the very end. Only time will tell...

Next week on Lost ("The Package"), Sun and Jin desperately continue their search for one another while Locke confronts his enemy.

The Cork in the Bottle: Eternal Prisoners on "Lost"

I have very mixed feelings about this week's episode of Lost, which is a rarity for me, as I'm usually on board with whatever Team Darlton and Co. throw at us from week to week.

But in an opinion that's likely to make me not very popular, I didn't love last night's Richard Alpert-centric episode ("Ab Aeterno"), written by Melinda Hsu Taylor and Gregg Nations and directed by Tucker Gates, which attempted to fill in backstory for one of the most enigmatic characters on the series, the seemingly immortal Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell).

My dislike for the episode comes with a few caveats up front. For one, I thought Carbonell did a fantastic job, delivering a knockout performance that carried the entire episode and portraying some very different incarnations of Richard Alpert over a stretch of roughly 150 years. I also give the producers credit for doing something risky in allowing the action to unfold mostly in Spanish, with English subtitles, and attempting to recreate period action off the island.

That said, I wanted more from the episode and from Richard's backstory, which struck me as being a little cliched and predictable. While we got a few answers this week, both about Richard and the island itself, it lacked the revelatory punch that I had anticipated. While I'm glad that we got to see Richard's past, I wanted something staggering rather than serviceable.

So what did I think of the episode? Unlock your chains, grab that half-empty bottle of wine, bury that cross, and let's discuss "Ab Aeterno."

Richard Alpert has been at the forefront of many viewer discussions. The spiritual adviser to the leader of the Others, he had been blessed--or cursed--with eternal life and the episode's title draws attention both to his condition as well as that of the island's battling entities, Jacob and his Nemesis, the Man in Black. Just who is Richard? What was he before he came to the island? How did he receive his gift from Jacob? And how much does he really know?

I wondered for a moment if the producers had pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch with the audience and would focus not just on Richard but also Ilana in this week's episode, given the way that the installment opened with the heavily bandaged Ilana being visited in a Russian hospital by Jacob. But this sequence seemed almost out of place, given the fact that we learned precious little more about Ilana and it didn't connect very much with the Richard plot. (The sequence involving the castaways at the campfire acted more as as a narrative framing device, with Hurley and Richard's scene at the end wrapping the Richard plot up as it were.)

But Ilana's story will have to wait for the time being as this episode was devoted almost entirely to exploring Richard's backstory and shedding light on the complicated rivalry between Jacob and the Man in Black, the latter of which I enjoyed thoroughly and far more than Richard's noble savage plot in Tenerife. With a nice bit of visual theatricality, Jacob explained the true nature of the island, the Man in Black, and his role in this eternal battle. (I'm hoping that this speech more than anything will finally silence those who believe that the Man in Black could possibly be good.)

Using the half-empty bottle of wine as a metaphor, Jacob explained that the wine itself is symbolic of a terrible darkness, which if it could flow from the bottle, would overtake everything, a viral infection of evil that could spread throughout the world if unchecked. The island itself is the cork in the bottle, a means of keeping it trapped and contained. I thought it interesting that Jacob didn't view himself as the cork, but gave that role over to the island itself, an eternal prison for the darkness that would consume everything in its path. Jacob, therefore, is the caretaker for the island, a tapestry-weaving prison warden whose mission is to protect the island and therefore keep the darkness at bay.

The Man in Black's attempts to escape, to find a loophole to kill his jailor and flee, would result in the scales tipping towards black for the entire world. If the island has sunk to the bottom of the ocean as it has in the Lost-X timeline, then it could mean that the wine has flowed out of the bottle. Despite people getting their heart's desire (or close to it) in that world, it might just point towards the Man in Black having escaped from his prison and roaming freely. Which would be very bad indeed. In detonating the hydrogen bomb and altering the timeline, did Jack and the castaways smash the bottle? Have they freed the djinn and unleashed unspeakable horror on the world? Or is the Nemesis still there, at the bottom of the sea, biding his time and plotting his escape once more? Hmmm...

To use the cork and bottle analogy further, the Man in Black's efforts to find a loophole to escape take on greater significance. He and Jacob are opposing forces whose respective strengths have resulted in an even scale and stasis. The cork in place, the wine can't get out of the bottle. But there's more than one way to get out of the bottle, one that doesn't involve removing the cork: simply smash the bottle. Which is exactly what the Man in Black does here after Jacob makes a gift of his lesson to Richard by giving his Nemesis the bottle as "something to pass the time."

So why bring people to the island? Jacob is not only looking for candidates to replace him but also to allow the eternal game between him and the trickster to continue, a moral Skinner box in which those who find themselves on this island can choose to become repentant for their past sins or choose to become corrupted, to select between the light and the dark. Prior to Richard's arrival, everyone who has come to the island has been killed but Jacob isn't there to force them to act one way or the other--that is the Nemesis' style, given his gift for manipulation--but rather he wants people to figure out right and wrong on their own. Jacob's whole modus operandi is to foster free will, then.

Richard's arrival on the island is a fortuitous one as it seems as though we're seeing the birth of the Others before our eyes, a race of people who have chosen to protect the island, to fortify the prison, and keep the cork firmly in the bottle. So why might they have sought to purge the Dharma Initiative? My theory: the Dharma Initiative's experiments into the electromagnetic energy properties of the island were creating a situation from which the Nemesis would be be to make his escape. They were effectively weakening the cork and allowing the darkness to seep out into the rest of the world. They saw the island as something that needed to be dissected, examined, probed, and categorized rather than what it was: a prison with them as the jailers. (The same held true of the U.S. Army, which is why the Others slew them in order to prevent others coming there and giving the Nemesis further opportunities to escape or to allow the scale to tip the other way.)

Richard's need for contrition places him on the path to righteousness. His crimes were accidental but crimes nonetheless. While he sought to help his wife, he murdered and stole but he turned towards redemption rather than destruction. Did it matter whether Jacob had spoken to him before he plunged the knife? Or was Richard's fate decided the moment he turned towards the light, towards divine forgiveness for his past misdeeds? It's not Jacob's ability to offer absolution. If we can move past our issues, our damages, and transgressions, we can be forgiven it seems. At the very least by ourselves.

Richard Alpert's Backstory. We saw this week just where Richard--or Ricardus, as Jacob calls him--came from: namely, 19th century Tenerife. (Incidentally, itself the site of one of the world's most deadly aviation accidents, as mentioned earlier this week on Breaking Bad.) Richard is a Spanish Catholic whose wife Isabella is dying. Traveling through a terrible storm to try and find help, he's refused by a greedy, mercenary doctor who finds that Richard does not have enough to pay him for his services and throws Isabella's beloved cross on the floor. A struggle ensues and Richard pushes the man, accidentally killing him. (I called that one straightaway.) Then he pockets the medicine and rushes back to Isabella's side, only to find that she's died. (Ditto.)

He's then seized by soldiers and imprisoned, where he learns English by reading the Bible. A priest denies him absolution for his crime (only a life of penance can remove his cardinal sin) but before Richard can be executed, he's purchased by Jonas Whitfield, a man working for Magnus Hanso (!!!), who explains that he is now a slave and the property of Hanso. And, sure enough, he ends up shackled aboard the Black Rock and, in the midst of a terrible storm, winds up in the middle of the island.

Whitfield ends up slaying most of the slaves because they have limited supplies and they will try to kill him... but the remaining officers are instead massacred by the smoke monster, who flits through the Black Rock in a fantastically cool visual before killing Whitfield and sparing Richard's life. Richard's dead wife Isabella appears and she tells Richard that they are both dead and in hell. But she runs off and is seemingly menaced by the smoke monster. (It seemed fairly certain to me that this was a manifestation of the smoke monster, appearing in the form of the dead Isabella. The monster had previously taken the form of someone else who died off-island: Ben's mother.)

Later coming to Richard in the guise of the Man in Black, he offers him freedom from his shackles (offering a nice callback to his line earlier this season about it being good to see Richard out of his shackles), and manipulates him into helping, preying on his fears of eternal damnation and his need to find his wife, setting up Jacob as the devil to who took her. His mission for Richard: to slay Jacob with a ceremonial knife (just like Dogen gave to Sayid) and to not allow Jacob to say a word before he plunges the knife into his chest (just like Dogen told Sayid).

But, when faced with the possibility of regaining his wife (his heart's desire) or performing a life of penance for his sin, Richard chooses the latter, placing himself into Jacob's employ and receiving a gift: eternal life. Unlike the Man in Black, who claims to be able to return his wife to him, Jacob asks for sacrifice, for penance, for an act of contrition that will set the scale within Richard to the side of the just. He's baptized by Jacob, who plunges him into the ocean waters and then is given a choice: he can take the position of representation or intermediary, a sort of moral guide to help others where Jacob cannot. Richard accepts and Jacob gives him eternal life.... and then Jacob gives his Nemesis a white stone. Score one for Team Jacob. Richard, meanwhile, buries Isabella's cross.

Black Rock and The Statue. We learned that the Statue of Taweret was destroyed by the Black Rock in the tsunami that deposited the ship in the middle of the island. (Looks like Arzt was right after all.) I was a little confused by the storm, given that it seemed from "The Incident" that the Black Rock had arrived in the middle of a sunny, tranquil morning rather than during a hurricane gale (just like Oz, in fact), but perhaps that boat we saw Jacob and his Nemesis arguing over last season wasn't the Black Rock but one of the other ships that had previously arrived on the island and whose occupants had been killed. (I was also confused as to the 1867 date for the Black Rock, given that we had previously been told it set out from Portsmouth in 1845; the entire timeframe of events here seemed a little later than they should have been, really.)

Did the breaking of the statue result in any negative effects on the island? That remains to be seen. But it clearly isn't the cause of the pregnancy-related deaths plaguing the Others as it happened years before there even was a tribe of Others on the island. Just what caused their reproductive failure remains a mystery. It was serious enough that Ben had Juliet brought to the island but it would appear to be something that occurred fairly recently rather than in the distant past. Hmmm...

Ilana. We still don't know much about Ilana other than the fact that she is loyal to Jacob, knew him, and accepted her own commission from him: to protect the final six candidates from coming to harm. At the campfire, Sun believes that she is one of those six but I don't think we have a definitive answer there as Ilana just last week indicated that she was sent to protect "Kwon" and didn't know if that referred to Sun or Jin. Nothing has changed since then to indicate that she's been swayed one way or the other.

Ilana is waiting to receive her next instructions from Ricardus but he has no idea what they're meant to do next: Richard, still suffering his crisis of faith from the previous few episodes, believes that everything Jacob has said is a lie and that they are all dead, echoing a fan-favorite theory from Season One that had the island as purgatory or hell. (Not so, of course.)

Jacob brought Ilana to the island but didn't tell her everything she had to do; he's leaving things still to free will and to her being guided by Richard in a way that he cannot. Jacob seems to set things into motion--pushing people into the game--but doesn't intervene when it comes to their choices, even going so far as to allow himself (I believe) to be killed by Ben in "The Incident."

Richard. So just what are they meant to do next? Richard has no idea and he's had it with his bargain with Jacob. He wants to switch sides, to change his decision and his alliance. He returns to the spot of his past decision, the place where he had buried Isabella's cross, and digs it up as he screams out to the Nemesis that he has changed his mind, echoing the offer made by the Man in Black to come over to his side whenever he wanted. But before that can happen, Hurley turns up with a message from Isabella, acting as a bridge between Richard and his dead wife and passing along two important messages: one, that they are already together, always, and two, that they must stop the Man in Black or they will "all go to Hell."

All in all, I thought this was a serviceable episode that didn't totally fulfill the promise of Richard Alpert's backstory. Things did pick up once Richard arrived on the island and was forced to enter the game between Jacob and his Nemesis but I found the Isabella elements to be really contrived and forced and didn't have the emotional impact that it really should have. (I especially felt that the scene at the end between ghost Isabella, Richard, and Hurley wasn't really earned, given that I didn't care about Isabella and she remained little more than a pious cipher at the end of the episode.) I did, however, really enjoy the flashback elements that dealt with the Man in Black and Jacob as we got to see much more of their relationship and those scenes crackled with energy and tension.

What did you think of this week's episode? Am I being too harsh? Were you let down or excited by this installment? Did you fall for Richard and Isabella or moan when they were on screen together? Just what was the deal with that blue butterfly at the Black Rock? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Next week on Lost ("The Package"), Sun and Jin desperately continue their search for one another while Locke confronts his enemy.

The Daily Beast: "15 Reasons to Watch TV This Spring"

Looking for something to watch this spring?

Head over to The Daily Beast, where you can read my latest piece, "15 Reasons to Watch TV This Spring," where I round up fifteen new and returning series airing this spring--from Doctor Who, V, Nurse Jackie, and Fringe to Treme, Peep Show, and Top Chef Masters, among others--as well as some major events like the end of ABC's Lost in May.

What are you most looking forward to this spring and what's caught your fancy as your latest television obsession? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Channel Surfing: Michael Trucco to "Castle," More "Doctor Who" on Tap, Nestor Carbonell Talks "Lost," Skeet Ulrich Returns to CBS, "24," and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing.

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Battlestar Galactica's Michael Trucco--next seen on ABC's V this spring--hs signed on for a multiple-episode story arc on ABC's Castle. Trucco will play a new love interest for Stana Katic's Beckett in the final four episodes of this season and is described as a "charismatic cop in the homicide division." Ausiello also indicates that, if the character clicks with the audience, he could return next season. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

BBC has ordered a sixth season of sci-fi series Doctor Who, which will once again feature Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor. The broadcaster confirmed that Smith will return for Season Six of Doctor Who and that a Christmas special, written by new head writer/executive producer Steven Moffat, is on tap for this winter. (Broadcast)

TVGuide.com's Natalie Abrams talks with Lost's Nestor Carbonell, slated to get his own Richard-centric episode of the ABC drama series on Tuesday. In a video interview, she asks him whether Richard Alpert will team up with Ben, whether the Man in Black can really be trusted, and more. (TVGuide.com)

Skeet Ulrich (Jericho) is headed back to CBS, this time set to star in the network's untitled Hannah Shakespeare medical drama pilot, about a medical team that travels the country helping the less fortunate. Ulrich will play Billy Jost, described as "a Harvard-educated brilliant cardiologist with rock star looks who embraces the tumult of frequent volunteer missions to escape the hell of his personal life" who is "still in love with his ex-wife, now a hopeless junkie, and is holding out hope that she may clean up and come back to him and their six-year-old daughter." He joins a cast that includes Amy Smart, Janeane Garofalo, Rachelle Lefevre, Jay Hernandez, and Michael Beach. (Hollywood Reporter)

Looks like these are indeed the end times for FOX's 24, according to Entertainment Weekly's Lynette Rice, citing a recent casting call for the 20th Century Fox Television-produced drama series, which read, "These are the final episodes, so if some of your name people would like to do something on the show, this is the time for them to do it." [Editor: that sure seems final to me.] (Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider)

Beau Bridges (My Name is Earl) has been cast opposite Dermot Mulroney in NBC drama pilot Rockford Files, which is being overseen by House creator David Shore. Bridges will play Rocky, father to Mulroney's Jim Rockford, who is described as "a truck driver for thirty years who always helps his son in a tough situation, though he tends to offer a commentary that Jim doesn't always appreciate." (Hollywood Reporter)

In other casting news, Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical) has signed on to star opposite Aly Michalka in the CW drama pilot Hellcats, where she will play Sierra, described as "the peppy and fiercely intense captain of the Hellcats who, after an initial clash with Marti, her new roommate, realizes that she just might be the godsend the Hellcats need to win the championship." (Hollywood Reporter)

The Wrap's Josef Adalian explores why viewing figures have fallen off so sharply for once mighty tentpole series... and why no new series have risen up to take over for them. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck is reporting that Jesse Williams will be returning to ABC's Grey's Anatomy, where he will be reprising his role as Jackson Avery during the 2010-11 season. (TV Guide Magazine)

Oprah Winfrey's April 7th episode will feature the cast of Glee as Winfrey interviews the cast and co-creator Ryan Murphy. The episode will also feature backstage videos and a musical performance from the cast, who are slated to appear at the White House the day before. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Sayonara, CNN. Longtime cable news network correspondent Christiane Amanpour is heading to ABC, where she will join the network's This Week as anchor beginning in August. (Variety)

Sarah Palin's Alaska is inching its way closer to reality, with A&E and Discovery Communications said to be interested in acquiring the rights to Palin's reality series, which is executive produced by Mark Burnett. (Hollywood Reporter)

Modern Family's Sofia Vergara wants Italian icon Sophia Loren to play her mother on the ABC comedy series. "My mother should be Sophia Loren, don’t you think?" Vergara told TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck. "She would be perfect. I met her for the first time at the Golden Globes this year. I arrived to rehearse the day before and we ended up waiting together backstage. I was dying. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I couldn’t say anything." (TV Guide Magazine)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that How I Met Your Mother producers are looking to cast an actress to play a TV-movie actress who is herself playing Sarah Chalke's Stella. "Recall last May’s 'As Fast As She Can,' where Future Ted told us what happened to the woman who left him at the altar: She and Tony (Jason Jones) moved to California, where Tony wrote a hit movie The Wedding Bride," writes Ausiello. "Well, that hit movie is coming to the Mother ship — and Ted is not going to be thrilled with how he comes off." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Lucy Gaskell (Being Human) has been cast in BBC One medical drama Casuality, where she will play Kirsty Clements, a mental health nurse who "brings a breath of fresh air--and a bucket of attitude--to Casualty's beleaguered emergency department." (BBC)

CBS Television Studios has hired former FOX current programming executive Beth Miyares as VP of drama development. She will report to Julie McNamara. (Variety)

Cabler VH1 has promoted both Noah Pollack and Kristen Kelly to VP, series development and original programming, where they will jointly develop unscripted programming for the network. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

No One is Perfect: Shattered Glass on "Lost"

"If you live your life based on what's going to happen, before you know it your life is over." - Charles Ingalls

This week's episode of Lost ("Recon"), written by Elizabeth Sarnoff and Jim Galasso and directed by Jack Bender, placed its focus squarely on James "Sawyer" Ford as the one-time con man embarked on what might just be his most ambitious and dangerous double-cross ever as he attempts to play two very different men against each other. Will his gambit pay off? Will he be able to escape the island? Should anyone ever take Sawyer at his word? We'll have to wait to find out.

But before his latest stratagem kicks into place, Sawyer was sent on a mission of great importance, one that forced him to retrace his steps and return to a place he hoped he would never have to see again, a place that awakened feelings long thought dead, and he came face to face with someone who is either the savior or the villain in the final battle to come.

So what did I think of this week's episode? Heat up a microwave dinner, snag a single sunflower, don't open that drawer, and let's discuss "Recon."

I have to say that I really enjoyed this week's episodes and felt that the two sides of the episode--the mainstream reality and the Lost-X alternate reality--held up equally well. Some viewers have complained that the so-called sideways universe has lacked weight, given that we don't know yet how it connects to what we're seeing unfold on the island.

To me, that's never been the case. I feel that these two realities are inherently interlocked and connected in an intrinsic way; I don't buy into the current theory that what we're seeing in the Lost-X world is an epilogue to the series itself. That, to me, is a overly simplistic way of looking at the dual reality structure of this season. I don't for a second believe that this is an afterlife, a second chance, a reset timeline, purgatory, heaven, or any number of theories currently circulating around the Internet.

Instead, my feeling is that the sideways universe is a shard of a fractured universe, the result of some event--whether Jack and Co. detonating Jughead in 1977 or another--that caused the timeline to splinter. What we're seeing in the Lost-X timeline is a universe where we're seeing the results of a shift in causality, where certain character-defining actions were different, where things turned out differently for some of the castaways, and where they were spared the results--or are forced to come to terms with--of some of the issues they've been struggling with their entire lives.

Ironically, isn't that exactly what the Man in Black told Kate this week? Sitting on the beach with Kate, Jacob's still-unnamed nemesis told Kate that he had experienced "some growing pains, problems that [he] was still trying to work [his] way through." Problems that could have avoided should things have turned out differently.

Which, isn't that exactly what the Lost-X timeline is then? It's a look at the characters through a prism of shattered glass, where things turned out differently for them. Where Jack is able to put aside his father issues in order to be a better father for his own son, where Hurley sees himself as good luck for everyone around him, rather than a cloud hanging over his head, where Sawyer chooses to be a cop rather than a criminal, despite his need to enact a Biblical vengeance against Anthony Cooper.

But while these characters may be living under different circumstances and have had various aspects of their backstories changed, I still believe that each of them will be drawn back to the island, which in this world is underneath the ocean. As Eloise Hawking once told Desmond, the universe has a way of course-correcting and, as the season wears on, I think we'll begin to see this happen. The Lost-X passengers of Oceanic Flight 815--and other people who visited or lived on the island--are being drawn together tighter and tighter as their paths continue to cross.

In fact, it's my belief that before the season is over these characters, bound by invisible threads of fate, will raise the island from beneath the ocean.

Lost-X James Ford. This week's episode focused on Sawyer in the two timelines: our con man Sawyer on the island, who engineered an elegant double-cross designed to protect himself from the coming war, and Detective James Ford of the LAPD, an undercover cop we meet when he poses as a con man in order to entrap the confidence man husband of Ava (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe). In a nice callback, he uses not only the Pigeon Shoot to lure Ava in to the con but then reveals his true identity by alerting the police that he needs backup by uttering a single word: "LaFleur." (LaFleur, of course, being Sawyer's alias during the Dharma years on Season Five.)

James' choice of profession is an interesting one. After feeding Charlotte Staples Lewis--his blind date, organized by his partner (!) Miles--a line about wanting to become a cop because of Steve McQueen in Bullit, she forces him to be honest with her, to stop lying. (Something that our Sawyer can't do; hell, the Man in Black even says that he's the best liar he ever met.) James then tells her that he came to a crossroads in his life and could have become a cop or a criminal. But in both cases, James is after justice. Not the justice of the law but the Biblical justice of vengeance; he's still looking for Anthony Cooper, the man who conned his parents and caused their deaths, but is doing so from within the police department. He looked into the abyss but he wasn't claimed by it; he never became the man he was searching for.

James' obsession took him to Australia, just as it did for Sawyer, but James can't--or won't--open up to anyone about his mission. Certainly not Charlotte, whom he kicks out of his bed at 3 am after she looks in the wrong drawer and finds his Sawyer folder, nor his partner Miles, who is suspicious enough that he runs James' credit cards and discovers that he lied about going to Palm Springs. But James finally does open up to Miles and tells him that he intends to find Anthony Cooper and kill him. (Which makes me wonder just how much Lost-X Locke knows about his father, given that they're on good terms.)

He also attempts to apologize to Charlotte but she slams the door in his face. (Can't blame her, really.) There's a nice callback with the sunflowers to Season Five before James heads back to his monastic existence, a life that includes microwave dinners, Little House on the Prairie reruns, and books like Watership Down and A Wrinkle in Time. (Aha on that last one!)

There's also a nice moment where James looks in the mirror and seems to hate the man he sees looking back at him (he's just been "broken up" with by partner Miles after he wouldn't open up) and he punches the mirror, shattering it. There's a slick parallel here to Jack smashing the lighthouse mirrors in "Lighthouse," as both men are forced to contend with what has been done to them and who they are today. The shattered glass, as mentioned earlier, can also be looked at as a metaphor for the splintering of the timeline... which makes me wonder if there aren't shards of other realities hanging about as well.

The final scene brings James and Kate together once more as Kate literally collides with the car in which James and Miles are sitting in. There's a pursuit and then James unmasks the fugitive and is extremely surprised--and maybe more than a little bit pleased--to see Kate Austen, the woman he helped escape police at the airport. Given that James is a cop, just why did he let Kate go at LAX? Because she was hot? Because somehow he recognized her? Because he sensed a simpatico soul within her? Curious...

Lost-X Miles and Charlotte. I'm glad to see the scientific team from Seasons Four and Five playing a role here. Loved that Miles would end up being James' partner in this world and a detective to boot. Could it be that his supernatural gifts come in handy in this line of work? Or is this Miles free from the burden of communicating with the dead? He seems to be a human lie detector in both worlds, however... but in this world Miles is walking the path of the angels rather than that of a lowlife, a man who fraudulently takes the money of the willing to "speak" with their lost ones.

After all, in this reality, Miles was raised by his father--who I'm assuming is still Pierre Chang--and chose a different path. His father now works at a museum with the beautiful archeologist Charlotte Staples Lewis (who, like Miles, was born on the island in the mainstream reality). Which made me wonder if Faraday wasn't also working there himself. Hmmm...

Loved Miles' admonition to James that he would "die alone," a haunting callback to the oft-used phrase "live together or die alone" that has been at the heart of the series since the beginning.

Charlotte claims to be rather like Indiana Jones, or at least jokingly agrees with James on their blind date when he suggests it, saying that she gets to travel to far-off and exotic places. In our reality, she was motivated by returning to the island so that she could see where she was born. But if the island doesn't exist in the Lost-X reality--or is at least underwater--than her motivations have changed. She's still connected to uncovering the past but in a very different way. Plus, was it just me or did it seem like she was snooping in James' drawer for a reason? She did uncover his past but in a way that made her one-time lover very, very angry.

Sawyer. Back on the island, Sawyer was sent on a reconnaissance mission by the Man in Black and traveled to the Hydra Island to meet up with some people who were not going to fall in line with the Man in Black's plans to leave the island. On the other island, Sawyer retraced his steps and came face to face with the bear cages, where Kate's pretty dress (the one given to her by Ben at the beginning of Season Three) still fluttered forlornly in the breeze. While Sawyer is still mourning Juliet, touching that dress seemed to bring back memories of Kate and reawaken romantic feelings towards Kate. More than anything, it seemed to bring him alive again, to push him towards another person. He won't die alone.

Sawyer found the Ajira plane which the Man in Black claims that they will use to leave the island but he also encountered a clearing filled with the bodies of redshirts that arrived on the plane. Just who killed them? Widmore's men? The Man in Black in his incarnation as the smoke monster? Curious, that.

He also meets Zoe, who claims to be the last survivor but who is in fact conning Sawyer himself. She works for Charles Widmore and she issues a signal--a whistle--to her team, who quickly surround him and take him prisoner. Despite the fact that Sawyer already has a deal in place with Jacob's Nemesis, he quickly makes another deal with Charles Widmore, agreeing to bring the Man in Black to him so that he can be killed. In exchange, he wants his group to be spared in any bloodshed and he wants safe passage off the island.

Revealing that Sawyer isn't on anyone's side, he tells the Man in Black of the plan, setting both sides against each other. He's not on Jacob or his Nemesis' side, after all, he's on Team Sawyer and always has been. Fortunately, he's not just looking out for himself and wants to get his friends home as well. With Widmore and the Nemesis battling each other, what better time to steal the sub and use it as their means of egress from the island. It's a plan that he shares with a surprised Kate. They're going to get off this island together.

Claire. Claire, meanwhile, is out of control and seems to be borderline psychotic at this point. Loved that she took Kate's hand at the encampment as the Man in Black shared his plans... and then attempted to stab Kate when his back was turned. I understand that Claire has been lied to and she has become a wild, feral thing after years of living in the jungle by herself but I don't understand why her anger is directed at Kate, considering she's the one who wandered off into the jungle in the night at left Aaron on his own. (Likewise, though, it's driving me mad that Kate hasn't told Claire that Aaron is with Claire's mother. It's sort of an important point to be making to her that he's with family.)

Loved that the Man in Black tossed Claire around like a rag doll and then slapped her before apologizing to Kate for her behavior. Claire herself seemed to come around and apologized herself to Kate, embracing her and sobbing, while thanking her for looking after Aaron. All a little too easy, if you ask me. Why is Claire suddenly lucid and emotionally grounded? And is she, really?

Kate. Kate, meanwhile, had to contend with a hell of a lot this week, from reluctantly joining Fake Locke's group, seeing Sawyer head off on a secret mission, and having not one but two heart-to-hearts with the Man in Black. (Loved that she didn't take his hand when he offered it to her but instead stood up on her own.) She's clearly not one of the Man in Black's recruit and is wary of everyone she encounters, save Sawyer. Hell, wouldn't you be after you saw the squirrel baby in Claire's crib? She also seems to not trust the Man in Black instinctively, despite his platitudes and kindness towards her. Like Sawyer, she's had to rely on her wits, and regardless of her emotional breakdown in this week's episode, she maintains her trademark flight-or-fight stance. She's no fool.

The Man in Black. Interesting that the Man in Black would be so persuasive. In fact, he seems to know just what to say to keep his followers calm and docile. He showed a rare paternal streak when he talked to Zach and Emma (and flight attendant Cindy) and he was extremely forthright with Kate as well, telling her that he had to tell Claire that the Others had taken Aaron because giving her an enemy gave her something to fight--and therefore live--for. (It also made her more easy to subvert to his will and mission, but that's beside the point.) Plus, he had the best retort to Kate calling him a dead man: "No one's perfect."

Echoing the beach scene in "The Incident," The Man in Black takes Kate to the beach to gaze out at the Hydra Island and he reveals some pieces of his backstory... or at least claims to. In his human life, he had a mother who was mad (hmmm, so did the real John Locke in fact!) or "disturbed" and he revealed that he had "some growing pains, problems that [he] was still trying to work [his] way through." (Just like the castaways!) And that his mother was crazy and now Aaron's mother (Claire) is crazy too. (So was Alex's mother Rousseau.) Is he telling the truth? Or is he attempting to make himself appear more human, more vulnerable, and more relatable in order to win Kate over to his side?

Loved that he told Kate that Claire's behavior was "completely inappropriate." After all, isn't Kate a candidate and therefore not allowed to be killed under the rules?

Sayid. Sayid is now one step away from complete catatonia. Whether he's in shock from murdering Dogen and Lennon or is slipping further into the darkness remains to be seen but he's nearly non-responsive and all but just stares blankly as Claire jumps Kate and attempts to stab her. Poor, poor Sayid. Is the next step full-on feral attitude as Claire as his infection progresses?

Widmore. I was glad to see that we were getting more of Charles Widmore, this week appearing in some stylish adventurewear in the sub. I thought it interesting that he said it's "sad, really" that Sawyer didn't know more about him besides for the fact that he sent the freighter to the island to kill them all. His position here seems to be slightly at odds with what we've expected from Widmore throughout the series as he claims to be against the Man in Black, which puts him on the side of the island and of Jacob. He wants to kill the Nemesis--or at least Sawyer interprets it that way--and agrees to Sawyer's demands in exchange for Sawyer bringing him the Nemesis. Sawyer's feelings would seem to be correct, given that the sub team is seeing setting up pylons that would keep the smoke monster out. But if they turn them on, how would the Man in Black get over there? Unless, of course, once the pylons are turned on, they're meant to keep him in, to keep him imprisoned on Hydra Island and off of the main island. Hmmm...

And then there was the matter of the locked room aboard the sub. Just what--or who--is locked away behind those two locks that Sawyer spies? While it could be something as simple as a weapon, the fact that the locks were on the outside of the door made me believe that someone was inside. Perhaps even Desmond returned to the island. After all, Eloise Hawking said that the island wasn't done with him yet, despite his disinclination to return. And Widmore would have no problem kidnapping his son-in-law and forcing him to return...

What did you think of this week's episode? Agree with the above theories? Think I'm totally off the mark? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Ab Aeterno"), it's a Richard Alpert-centric episode as Richard faces a difficult choice.

Televisionary Heads to AOL's Instant Dharma

It's time for some Instant Dharma.

Last night, I had the extreme pleasure of being invited on AOL's weekly Lost-centric show Instant Dharma, where I joined host Maggie Furlong and IGN's Dharma Initiative-jumpsuited Matt Fowler to discuss this week's episode of Lost ("Recon"), where we talked about--SPOILER!--Sawyer's many cons, Charles Widmore's return to the island, Smocke's mommy issues, and much more.

You can catch my appearance on this week's episode of Instant Dharma below.



Lost airs Tuesdays at 9 pm ET/PT on ABC.

Exile: The Redemption of Benjamin Linus on "Lost"

"Imagine how our lives would have been if we'd stayed... Who knows what you would have become?"- Roger Linus

The notion of redemption and of exile hovered over last night's episode of Lost ("Dr. Linus"), written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horotwitz and directed by Mario Van Peebles, as in the Lost-X timeline, Dr. Benjamin Linus, now a doctorate of European history, teaches his class about Napoleon, the doomed self-made Emperor who was stripped of his power and exiled on a tiny island. An island called Elba.

Since he was first introduced in Season Two, Michael Emerson's Benjamin Linus has proven one of Lost's most complex and dynamic characters, a schemer willing to deploy all manner of slight-of-hand, manipulation, and intrigue in order to achieve ends that someone else has dictated. A man all too willing to kill his own father and massacre the people who took him in in order to wield the power that had been denied him his whole life.

At the end of last season, Ben raised a knife and murdered the entity known as Jacob, the puppetmaster who had seemingly been pulling his--and all of our characters'--strings. At that point, it seemed as though Ben had made his alliance with the darkness, content to punish and destroy, rather than turn the other cheek. Or did he? Could it be that there's hope yet for Benjamin Linus?

What did I think of this week's episode? Fire up your email account, prep your microwave dinner, and light a stick of dynamite as we discuss "Dr. Linus."

This week's episode marked a major turning point in both the plot of Season Six of Lost and that of Benjamin Linus himself. Ben has been a fairly enigmatic character throughout the series' run, participating in plots that he had engineered, reverting to manipulation and subterfuge, and attempting to use others as pawns in his larger war with Charles Widmore, a war which might just echo that fought over the centuries between Jacob and his unnamed nemesis.

I'm glad that the writers brought back the motivations behind Ben's decision to murder Jacob. Much was made of the fact that Ben acted out of rage and frustration at the end of last season, stabbing Jacob in an act of defiance and anger that spoke volumes about how he felt manipulated and used by this entity but had been ignored by him. Yet, as we found out last night, there was more to Ben's impulse to punish Jacob. After all, Jacob had placed him time and time again in a series of no-win situations, where he was forced to choose the island over his own personal desires. It was this Catch-22 where Ben was forced to watch his daughter Alex be murdered... and Jacob did nothing to intervene or protect the girl. Ben's murder of Jacob wasn't just about anger, it was also about a keening sense of loss over the one true, beautiful, and perfect thing in his life.

But as much as Jacob forced onto Ben, one can't shake the feeling that it was all a test in the end. Jacob knew just what he was doing to Ben, what he was requiring of him, but he needed Ben to be forged by the fire, to emerge as steel and not break under the pressure. As Miles tells Ilana and Ben, Jacob's last thoughts, even as Ben's knife pierced his heart, were that he hoped he had been wrong about Ben, that Ben wouldn't commit to the darkness within him, that he had a soul.

While Miles says that Jacob must have been right about him, I don't think that's entirely true. This week's episode proves that Benjamin Linus has the ability to change and the capacity for true redemption. His efforts to claw his way to power have resulted in his abandonment by everyone around him. He is in exile on Elba, just as Napoleon was. Despite the fact that Ben managed to find a loophole, a way back to the island (against all of the rules that existed about him coming back), he did return, only to find that his power had been vanquished and his people had moved on.

Ben could find Jacob's Nemesis and join his cause, though his rationale isn't that he craves power or wants to be on that side but because he believes no one else will have him. He's shocked when Ilana, trembling, tells him that she will have him. It's an important turning point for both of them; for Ilana to let go of the hurt and loss she had been feeling and for Ben to receive the grace of forgiveness.

It came down, for both of them, to a choice. Ilana, whether to avenge or forgive; to enact a Biblical vengeance or to turn the other cheek. Ben, whether to kill Ilana and escape or explain why he did what he did, to unburden himself and ask for forgiveness. A pair of mismatched metaphorical rather than biological fathers and daughters. (Just as Ben had lost adopted daughter Alex, so too had Ilana lost Jacob, the closest thing she had to a father.)

Free will is a funny thing. Ben acted to murder Jacob but without doing so, it's entirely likely that he would have remained on the path of destruction he was on. Having killed Jacob, he is instead set on a path of redemption, blessed by the spirit of forgiveness. Could it be that things are unfolding just as Jacob had foreseen? That Jacob knew he had to sacrifice himself in order to push Ben onto a different path? Hmmm...

Lost-X Ben. In the Lost-X timeline, Ben is a doctorate of European history at a budget-affected Los Angeles public school. But rather than craving power for himself, Ben cares more for his flock, the souls in his care. Faced with choosing between power (the position of principal), a potential role he engineered through blackmail (a trick forever in the arsenal of our Benjamin Linus), and protecting the future of his protege Alex Rousseau, Ben chooses the path of righteousness. Despite having power within his grasp, he chooses to acquiesce and instead safeguard Alex's future, a reversal of the decision he made on the island, where he was faced with choosing between saving Alex or saving the island.

While Ben speaks of Elba, he could really be talking about our island, that site of mystery and miracle, over which so much blood has been shed in the name of... Well, we're still not quite sure just what the eternal battle has been over just yet. But Ben's history lesson might as well be about Benjamin Linus himself: his constant need to hold onto power at any cost, his Machiavellian instincts, and his fall from grace as he's banished from the thing that he fought so hard to control. Napoleon may have been exiled to Elba but the main timeframe's Benjamin Linus was cast out of the island.

(But there are other entities that have been exiled as well: both Charles Widmore from the island and, seemingly, the Man in Black to the island. For Jacob's Nemesis, the island is his Elba: a prison from which he cannot escape, jailed against his will, and stripped of his power but not his vestments.)

Interestingly, the relationship between Ben and his father Roger is inimical to that on the island. Here, Ben cares for the sick man, replacing his oxygen tank where on the island he had killed his father by gassing him. (Ironic, that.) But it's the conversation between the father and son that's even more significant. Roger wonders just what would have happened had they remained with the Dharma Initiative and stayed on the island, how their lives would have been different.

It's an important exchange for several reasons: (1) It's the first Lost-X mention of the island and the first time it's been addressed at all since Oceanic Flight 815 flew right over it, and the first Lost-X mention of the Dharma Initiative. (2) The island must then have been sunk beneath the ocean after Ben and Roger left, as they couldn't have left someplace that's under the water. (3) Roger and Ben seemingly chose to leave, rather than were forced to. It wasn't the Swan Incident that precipitated their departure as Roger wonders what would have happened to them had they stayed... and had the circumstances been at all dangerous, I don't think Roger would wonder in that fashion. (4) It would seem that, due to Roger's wondering about what might have been, that Ben wasn't ever shot, so therefore wasn't ever brought to the Temple, and therefore never under risk of losing his soul in the Temple pool. And he wouldn't have been shot as Sayid had never been in 1977 to shoot him because the plane never crashed on the island.

In detonating the hydrogen bomb, Jack and Co. created an entirely divergent timestream, one in which events played out entirely differently because the plane never did and never would arrive on the island; their actions create ripple effects but for the future and the past. Alex's presence here in Los Angeles supports this theory as well. Danielle Rousseau's team additionally doesn't crash on the island, so that Rousseau raises Danielle in Los Angeles and Rousseau never changes the looped message on the radio tower. (As for why Rousseau's team never found the island, it's because it was already underwater at that point, so it definitely sank before 1988... and likely after 1977, given that Ben was on the island as a child at that point.)

Siege Perilous. I believe that the Lost-X universe is just as real as the main timeline but represents a sort of cosmic what-if exploration of the characters, placing them in similar situations but granting them their hearts' desires, erasing old wounds, and mending broken relationships. To slip into nerd speak, it's the equivalent of the Siege Perilous, itself named after the empty seat at King Arthur's Round Table. (In Arthurian legend, the vacant seat is fatal to anyone who sits in it, save for the knight who would return the Holy Grail. In other words: the worthy candidate.)

In the X-books, the Siege Perilous was a multi-dimensional gateway that appeared like a jewel. In looking through it, one could see various alternate incarnations of one's self (huh, just like the Lost-X alterna-verse). Activating the gateway and stepping through it, one was judged by cosmic entities who then transformed the user in some way, returning them usually without memory of their previous life. Which is a way of looking at the Lost-X timeline as a whole. Each of the characters still must deal with their issues but in the context of having gotten what they always wanted. Do they still make the same choices? Or do they fix them this time around? Which makes me wonder: if the characters are faced with choosing between this seemingly perfect world, one in which they've attained what they always wanted or needed, will they be willing to sacrifice it, should the need arise?

Richard Alpert. We finally got confirmation this week that Richard Alpert was aboard the Black Rock and arrived on the island when the slave ship crashed onto the island. And we also learned for certain that his longevity is the result of Jacob bestowing this gift onto him... though we're still not entirely sure why or how Jacob managed to do so. (Other than the fact that he willed it.) But, given Jacob's death, Richard comes full-circle to return to the Black Rock, to see the shackles that had once held him and to attempt to end his life with the help of Jack and Hurley, seeing his long life as a curse rather than a gift.

But, ironically, it's the skeptical Jack who is able to re-instill a belief in a higher purpose in Richard Alpert. The attempt to blow them up using dynamite backfires as the fuse goes out just before the big boom. Which means that Jacob's influence is still being felt here and is still active. Both Jack and Richard were recipients of Jacob's gifts, both touched by Jacob, and received his blessing. They can't be killed until their purpose is fulfilled, until they are released by Jacob. Richard isn't a leader; he's a counselor who is best used when he provides guidance to the chosen leader. Here, he turns to Jack to tell him what to do next, placing Jack in the role of leader once more. Funny how Jack's own belief in a purpose only came after he reached his own breaking point, smashing the mirrors of the lighthouse, and had to come to terms with the larger picture on his own.

Ilana. I was surprised that there wasn't a reunion of sorts between Ilana and Richard Alpert at the end of the episode, where the Ajira survivors encountered Richard, Jack, and Hurley. Could it be that these two don't know each other, after all? Ilana's role as bodyguard--not to Jacob necessarily, but to his candidates--is an interesting one and speaks of a close bond between Ilana and Jacob. But if Ilana isn't from the island (since Richard didn't recognize her, it seems likely), just where is she from and how long has she known Jacob? Hmmm...

Ilana reveals several things:

-Her job is to protect the candidates who have been selected to potentially replace Jacob, which again confirms that the candidates are Jacob's, not the Man in Black's.
-There are only six candidates left, which could correspond to those who are identified with 4-8-15-16-23-42. But wouldn't Locke and Sayid have fallen off of that list, given Locke's death, Sawyer's recruitment, and Sayid's darkness?
-She doesn't know who Kwon refers to: whether it's Sun or Jin or both of them that she's mean to be protecting.
-The one who is "elected" to replace Jacob will then find out what the position entails.

Given the group's presence on the original beach, I think we're about to see just who was shooting at Sawyer and the time-tossed castaways back in Season Five when they stole a canoe off the beach. Answer: Ilana and crew.

Charles Widmore. And then there was the final scene of the episode, which depicted a sleek periscope emerging from the waters just off the shore of where Ilana and the others have gathered, right by the original fuselage wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815. Said periscope would belong to a submarine carrying none other than Charles Widmore, a reveal that would have been more surprising had Alan Dale's name not been listed in the opening credits.

Widmore's appearance on the island makes me wonder if he wasn't the person arriving on the island whom Jacob mentioned to Hurley a few weeks back. If so, is it possible that Widmore is in fact the mysterious Wallace indicated at the 108 degree mark on the lighthouse compass?

Additionally, I can't help but wonder just what side Widmore is on in this power struggle. After all, he is the one who sent Locke on the path to return to the island, a decision that resulted in the Man in Black taking his form and using a loophole to kill Jacob. Widmore said that a war was coming to the island and that if Locke didn't return, the wrong side would win. Given all that, doesn't it seem as though Widmore is on the side of Jacob's Nemesis, come home to finally free the imprisoned entity by giving him a way off the island, with the submarine?

And just how did Widmore manage to find the island, given that it was so tricky for the Oceanic Six to return and that they had to specifically use the brief window allotted by Ajira Airlines Flight 316 to make their return possible? What's on that laptop that Widmore is toting around?

Best line of the evening: "Uh-oh." - Miles to Ben. (Miles, as a whole, was on fire last night. Loved that he dug up Paulo and Nikki's diamonds from their grave.)

What did you think of this week's episode? What is Widmore's endgame? Is he Wallace? How much of all of this has Jacob foreseen and/or planned? Has the redemption of Benjamin Linus begun? Discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Recon"), Locke entrusts Sawyer with a mission.

Channel Surfing: "Lost" Producers Talk Candidates, Nolte Circles HBO's "Luck," Cavanagh Lands "Edgar Floats," Delany Deal Done for "Body," and More

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing.

TVGuide.com's Natalie Abrams talks to Lost executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about candidates, numbers, and the flash-sideways. "The concept of the candidates is really central to the final season of the show," Cuse told Abrams. "Jacob is dead so that leaves a significant problem for the people on the island. Who is destined to be the person who is protecting this place?" Lindelof went further, stating that we'll get answers in the next few weeks about why these particular people have been brought to the island. "One of the big questions of this show is: Why were these people brought to this island?" said Lindelof. "At least now we have some sense — if Jacob is responsible for bringing them there — that it has something to do with the fact that he's been observing them for quite some time. We now have information that he had this lighthouse, that he was able to see these people, look into their lives. For some reason, he chose them. We'll find out what that reason is in the coming weeks." (TVGuide.com)

Nick Nolte (Tropic Thunder) is said to be in talks to come aboard HBO's horseracing drama pilot Luck from executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann. Project, which will begin shooting in a few weeks, stars Dustin Hoffman, John Ortiz, and Dennis Farina. Nolte would play one of the country's top racehorse trainers. Meanwhile, Kevin Dunn (Transformers), Kerry Condon (Rome), and Tom Payne (Waterloo Road) have also been cast in the pilot, which will be directed by Mann. (Variety, Hollywood Reporter)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Tom Cavanagh (Ed, Trust Me) has been cast as the titular character in Rand Ravich's NBC procedural drama pilot Edgar Floats, opposite Alicia Witt, Derek Webster, and Robert Patrick. Cavanagh will play Edgar Floats, a police psychologist who also works as a bounty hunter. "Edgar understands everyone but himself," Ravich told Ausiello. "Because of a personal financial crisis, Edgar is forced to leave the safety of his office and enter the dangerous world of fugitive recovery." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

[Editor: Cavanagh landed the role over former Friends star David Schwimmer, who was also reportedly up for the part of Edgar.]

TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck is reporting that a deal has closed that will enable Dana Delany to depart Desperate Housewives and star in ABC drama pilot Body of Evidence, with Marc Cherry writing Delany's Katherine Mayfair temporarily out of the series so Delany can have time to shoot the pilot, which also stars John Carroll Lynch, Geoffrey Arend, and Jeri Ryan. "The networks have become like the old studio system where they have their stable of actors," Delany told Keck. "They want to hold on to them and see what else they can do with them, so (ABC president) Steve McPherson said, 'Would you consider doing another show,' and I said, 'I love Housewives, but this is the lead role and something different.' It’s one of those bountiful things. I love the show I have, but they’re offering me the lead." But don't say goodbye to Katherine just yet: Cherry told Keck that he's leaving the door open for her return, should Body not get ordered to series. (TV Guide Magazine)

Rob Morrow (NUMB3RS) has landed the lead in Jerry Bruckheimer's ABC pilot The Whole Truth, opposite Joely Richardson. Morrow will play Jimmy, described as "an exuberant, larger-than-life, extremely successful defense attorney who is frequently pitted against Peale (Richardson), with whom he shares a fierce competitiveness, a passion for the law, and a mutual respect that has them carpooling together to sit on various panels even as they're duking it out in court." The casting on the pilot is said to be in second position for Morrow with CBS' NUMB3RS, which the network hasn't yet made a renewal decision on. [Editor: though it's thought extremely unlikely that NUMB3RS will return next season.] (Hollywood Reporter)

ABC's Castle won't be getting a trial run on Sundays after the network reversed its decision about giving the Nathan Fillion-led crime procedural the 10 pm timeslot on Sunday, March 21st after Desperate Housewives. "An ABC insider says that with the new Dancing with Stars cast getting good buzz, the network wanted to maximize the number of original episodes of Castle on Mondays," wrote The Wrap's Josef Adalian. "Airing a first-run hour on Sunday would've mean an extra Castle repeat in the show's normal timeslot." (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

In other Castle-related news, Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that former Nip/Tuck star Kelly Carlson will guest star in an upcoming episode that's loosely based on NBC's latenight wars. Carlson will play actress Ellie Rose, a love interest for Nathan Fillion's Castle who is desperate to land a role in the film adaptation of his book. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Academy Award nominee Gabourey Sidibe has signed on to Showtime's upcoming dark comedy The Big C as a recurring guest star. Sidibe, who appeared in the pilot, will play "a smart-alecky student" in a class taught by Laura Linney's Cathy, "a repressed suburban wife and mother who reclaims her life after a terminal cancer diagnosis." Oliver Platt also stars. (via press release)

Brittany Snow (Gossip Girl) has landed a lead in David E. Kelley's NBC legal dramedy pilot Kindreds, opposite Kathy Bates. Snow will play the assistant to Bates' former patent lawyer now working a storefront law firm. Elsewhere, Sarah Wynter (Damages) has joined the cast of ABC dramedy pilot Cutthroat, opposite Roselyn Sanchez. She'll play a "Hollywood mom whose life is in shambles." (Hollywood Reporter)

Fancast's Matt Mitovich is reporting that Heroes' Sendhil Ramamurthy has been cast in USA's upcoming drama series Covert Affairs, where he will play Jai Wilcox, described as "the aide-de-camp to the CIA’s Director of Clandestine Services, Arthur Campbell (played by The O.C.'s Peter Gallagher)." Ramamurthy joins a cast that also includes Perabo Piper, Christopher Gorman, Kari Matchett, and Anne Dudek. "Considering Ramamurthy’s new gig and the conspicuous lack of screen time for Mohinder," writes Mitovich, "even if Heroes were to be renewed for one more season, he is not expected to return." (Fancast)

Jean Smart (24) has been cast in CBS' remake of Hawaii Five-O, where she will play Hawaiian governor Pat Jameson, described as "'a local Hawaiian with a Washingtonian's backbone' and a completely honest politician." (Hollywood Reporter)

Former Third Watch star Coby Bell has signed on as series regular for Season Four of USA's Burn Notice, where he will play Jesse Garcia, described as a "cocky, smooth, and sexy counter intelligence expert who has a chameleon-like ability to assume different aliases. He’s also able to read people instantaneously and come up with a character perfectly suited for preying on their vulnerabilities." Season Four is set to launch on USA this summer. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Dania Ramirez (Heroes) has been cast in a recurring role on HBO comedy series Entourage, where she will play a new love interest for Jerry Ferrara's Turtle. Lennie James (Jericho) will recur on HBO's Hung as love interest for Jane Adams' Tanya. Kenny Johnson (The Shield) will reprise his role as Kozik on Season Three of FX's Sons of Anarchy, where he will recur. (Hollywood Reporter)

UK fans of Doctor Who may get a chance to attend a regional premiere of Season Five's premiere installment, hosted by new series leads Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, in Belfast, Inverness, Sunderland, Salford, and Northampton, part of a BBC Outreach tour that will visit under-served communities by the BBC. "This is a great opportunity for the new Doctor and his Companion to interface directly with the people who matter most to Doctor Who: the fans," said executive producer Piers Wenger. "The chance to visit them in their hometowns will ensure that the 11th Doctor's maiden voyage is an utterly magical one." (BBC)

Spencer Locke (Cougar Town) has been cast in a guest starring role on the CW supernatural drama series Vampire Diaries, where she will play Amber Bradley, a contestant in a beauty pageant that also happens to feature Elena and Caroline. (Hollywood Reporter)

Starz's gladiator drama Spartacus: Blood and Sand is heading to the UK this summer, following a deal with Virgin Media's Bravo. (Broadcast)

NBC and Donald Trump have renewed their Miss Universe/Miss USA franchise rights for three more years, keeping the beauty pageants on NBC through 2013. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Channel Surfing: Adam Scott Heads to "Parks and Rec," "Rome" Heads to Big Screen, "Smallville Renewed," "Lost" Returnee, and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing.

Los Angeles Times' Denise Martin is reporting that Party Down star Adam Scott is heading to NBC's Parks and Recreation, where he is slated to turn up in the final episodes of the season... alongside Rob Lowe, in fact. [Editor: could their sudden appearances in Pawnee be linked?] Scott, who will serve as as a series regular for Parks' third season, has also signed a first-look deal with NBC and Universal Media Studios, under which he will develop new series projects. Parks and Recreation co-creator Mike Schur described Scott as "brilliant and funny -- and he's funny in a lot of different ways. There just aren't that many people with a comedic range that spans Step Brothers to Party Down." As for Party Down fans worried that this would mean the end of Henry Pollard, Martin reports that "Scott said he'd be open to coming back to reprise his role should "Party Down" be renewed." (Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker)

[Editor: Variety, meanwhile, reports that Scott would appear in up to three episodes of Party Down if it is renewed for a third season, per his deal with Starz.]

Good news for fans of HBO's much-missed period drama Rome. Entertainment Weekly's Lynette Rice is reporting that a feature film sequel to Rome is finally in development and creator Bruno Heller--who went on to create CBS' The Mentalist--has finished a script for Morning Light Productions, which will finance the film, set in Germany four years after the events of the HBO series. Rice reports that Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson will reprise their roles as Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo in the feature film... which could be difficult as the end of Rome seemed to depict the death of McKidd's Vorenus. "The next step for Morning Light is to find a director and a studio, since HBO Films won’t be involved," writes Rice. (Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider)

The CW has renewed superhero drama Smallville, picking up the Warner Bros. Television-produced drama series for a tenth season. Move comes after the netlet previously picked up The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, 90210, Supernatural, and Top Model for the 2010-11 season. (via press release)

SPOILER! Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Michelle Rodriguez will reprise her role as Ana-Lucia on ABC's Lost later this season, appearing in at least one episode. Rodriguez--most recently seen in Avatar--was last seen in Season Five, when she appeared as a ghostly visitor to Hurley. "There’s no word where or exactly when Ana-Lucia will resurface this time around," writes Ausiello, "but, come on, this has 'flash-sideways cameo!' written all over it!" (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Chuck fans had better keep tuning in to the NBC action-comedy, following comments made by the Peacock's Angela Bromstad, when asked by The Hollywood Reporter about Chuck's shot at a fourth season renewal. Despite saying that the series' performance on Mondays was a "pleasant surprise," Bromstad went on to say that Chuck's likelihood of being renewed depended on ratings. "It's got to maintain," said Bromstad, "and it depends on development." In other words: keep buying those Subway sandwiches and keep tuning in... (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

[Editor: meanwhile, Bromstad said she was "hopeful" that Community would return for a second season, though wouldn't confirm or deny that it would or wouldn't.]

E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos has a rundown of what was revealed at last night's Paley Festival panel for Showtime's Dexter, an event which she moderated and which dealt heavily with the reveals of the Season Four finale and what lies ahead for Dexter and Co. next season. (E! Online's Watch with Kristin)

Scott Caan (Ocean's Eleven) has been cast as a guest star in CBS cop drama pilot Hawaii Five-O, the remake of the classic television series. Caan will play Danny "Danno" Williams in the CBS Studios-produced pilot, which hails from executive producers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Peter Lenkov. Caan's role is being considered a guest starring role for the pilot, due to his commitments to HBO's Entourage; should Hawaii Five-O be picked up to pilot, he'll be bumped to series regular. (Hollywood Reporter)

NBC has confirmed that the 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards will air live coast-to-coast this year on August 29th. Move marks the first time in over 30 years that the Emmys will air live across the country (the last time was in 1976). (Broadcasting & Cable)

Pilot casting update: Jeri Ryan (Leverage) has joined the cast of ABC drama pilot Body of Evidence; Nate Corddry (The Pacific), Jonathan Sadowski (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Dan Bakkedahl, and P.J. Byrne have been cast in NBC comedy pilot presentation Our Show; Robert Patrick (The Unit) has come aboard Rand Ravich's ABC drama pilot Edgar Floats, where he will play a bond bailsman who is the ex-father-in-law of the titular character, a bountu hunter; Allison Miller (Kings) has scored one of the leads in CW drama pilot Betwixt; Alan Ruck (Drive) and Scarlett Johnson (EastEnders) have joined the cast of CW's untitled Amy Sherman Palladino Wyoming project; Matt Lauria (Friday Night Lights) and Devin Kelley (Tease) have come joined the cast of FOX cop drama pilot Ridealong. (Hollywood Reporter)

TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck is reporting that producers of ABC's Modern Family are currently looking to cast the Tuckers, the parents of Eric Stonestreet's Cameron. Stonestreet told Keck that Kathy Bates was originally considered for the role but she's no longer in the running due to her recent turn on NBC's The Office. Stonestreet, however, has one hell of a suggestion for who should play his mother: former Designing Women star Delta Burke. “We like that idea," said Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan. "We think that could be good.” (TV Guide Magazine)

Tom Bergeron, Fred Willard, French Stewart, Yeardley Smith, and Bill Bellamy have signed on to guest star in the April 26th episode of ABC's Castle, which offers a satirical look at NBC's latenight situation with Conan and Leno, according to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello. "Sources confirm to me exclusively that Dancing with the Stars emcee Tom Bergeron has signed on to guest as Bobby Mann, a late-night talk show host who gets permanently shut up by... Well, the prime suspect is his would-be successor, a rival chatterbox (played by Bill Bellamy) who’s long coveted the victim’s timeslot," writes Ausiello. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Strictly Ice Dancing is heading to the US. ABC is developing an untitled US adaptation of the BBC Worldwide-produced reality series will feature celebrities training with ice skating professionals and then performing on ice and which will air as a six-week series likely between cycles of Dancing with the Stars. Project shouldn't be confused with FOX's short-lived 2006 effort, Skating With Celebrities. (Variety)

Over at NBC, the Peacock unveiled its summer programming--or at least parts of it--with America's Got Talent returning Tuesdays and Wednesdays, beginning June 1st and Last Comic Standing returning on June 7th. International acquisition Persons Unknown will air Mondays at 10 pm, beginning the same night, while long-delayed comedy 100 Questions will launch Thursday, May 27th. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Martha Stewart and Mark Burnett are shopping eight-episode reality series Help Me, Martha, which will feature Stewart and a team of experts "help the show's subjects with everything from wedding near-distasters to planning last-minute parties," to network buyers. (Variety)

HBO is said to be developing an untitled telepic based on Andrew Sorkin's nonfiction book "Too Big to Fail," about the 2008 economic meltdown. Project will be written by Peter Gould (Breaking Bad) and may also use material derived from an upcoming book by Joe Nocera and Bethany McClean as well. (Hollywood Reporter)

Comedy Central has promoted David Bernath to EVP, where he will oversee program strategy and multiplatform programming. He reports to Michele Ganeless. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Hard Bargains: Darkness Falls on "Lost"

"For every man, there is a scale." - Dogen

The concept of good and evil has been explored in every episode of Lost, both as the external conflicts of individuals and the interior battle raging within every one of us. Every single action we perform tips the scale one way or another: an altruistic act, a noble sacrifice, tip the scales towards good. Murder, steal, or make a selfish or self-serving decision and you tip the scales in the opposite direction.

This week's episode of Lost ("Sundown"), written by Paul Zbyszewski and Graham Roland and directed by Bobby Roth, focused on the darkness festering inside Sayid Jarrah, both in terms of his infection on the island and in the flaws in his soul itself, flaws which propel him not to make the right decision, to walk the difficult path of the light, but to choose darkness and death, to rain vengeance down on those who have injured him or his family, to prove that he is essentially a killer at heart.

So what did I think of this week's installment? Fry up some eggs, finish your game of Solitaire, pay off your debts, and let's discuss "Sundown."

I have extremely mixed feelings about this week's episode. While I thought the final minutes ramped up the tension and kickstarted the island plot once more, I thought that the majority of the episode lagged considerably and that the Lost-X storyline that had Sayid visiting his family in Los Angeles lacked the emotional punch that the other flash-sideways stories have offered. (I also seem to be less of a fan of Sayid these days than I used to be for some reason. While I loved Sayid in the early days and when he served as Ben's assassin, I realized that I haven't been as invested in his character since he returned to the island.)

I was quick to defend last week's episode of Lost, which I felt did offer us both some intriguing answers and new questions as well as allow us to explore the character of Jack Shephard in a very different way, using the Lost-X universe as a sort of variation on a theme, turning Jack's father issues into something different than we've seen before by forcing him into a very different role: that of a father himself. So far the Lost-X universe has been a means by approaching these characters in very different ways as their lives seem to be free of the complexities of the island and the characters themselves seem to have almost achieved their heart's desire: Jack comes to terms with his father issues, Claire has regained her lost child, Locke faces reality and stops looking for miracles that may never come, Hurley is able to help rather than harm people.

But Sayid doesn't quite manage to achieve his heart's desire. As he tells the Man in Black, he lost the one thing he loved above all else and held it in his arms as she died. But in the Lost-X universe, he hasn't quite regained the love of his life, Nadia, who here is married to Sayid's shifty businessman brother Omer. While they are once again separated, Sayid is at least a part of Nadia's life and clearly harbors a deep attraction to his sister-in-law.

Which made me wonder that if, as I surmised last week, the flashbacks are Jacob's tool to seeing into the souls of the castaways--weighing their past actions to see which way the scale tips--what if the flash-sideways storylines in fact serve a similar function to the Man in Black? What if Jacob is limited to see what the castaways have done--their real-life actions and decisions, forged in the fires of reality--but the Man in Black is somehow able to see how they WOULD behave in some other reality?

Could it be that the Lost-X universe is in fact a vast Skinner box that puts the castaways once more in morally complicated situations, but where they are free from Jacob's guiding influence? If you achieved your heart's desire, would you still make the same mistakes? Are you the same person you were before, doomed to repeat your actions? Or do you have the capacity for change and emotional/psychological progress?

Perhaps Sayid has been infected all along, not by what happened in the pool, but by the first time he tortured someone or extinguished their life... But I believe that the series instead places a heavier weight on redemption. These characters can throw off the shackles of their past to step into the light and that the choice between good and evil is a personal one that each of us must make. Sayid was infected in the pool because he never believed himself to be a "good person." The notion is echoed in the Lost-X universe, where he realizes that he does not deserve Nadia because he is not worthy of her love.

Her pleas to choose goodness over evil, to care for the children rather than punish the men who hurt Omer, fall on deaf ears, in the end. Kidnapped by the men who arranged Omer's mugging outside his dry cleaning business, Sayid faces a choice when he comes face to face with Martin Keamy (Kevin Durand), now an egg-chomping loan shark with a penchant for violence. He could offer financial restitution in order to protect his brother's family but he chooses the way of the gun, resorting to violence and slamming down the hammer of vengeance on Keamy and his men.

Sayid isn't good; he's a man who is forced to make hard bargains but who chooses the path of destruction. His brutal murder of Keamy and his enforcers might have been provoked by their actions but they also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sayid has always had darkness in his soul... and that in slaying Keamy he may have awakened a larger enemy.

The fact that Jin is being held inside the restaurant's walk-in (which, by the way, is the same restaurant where Naomi Dorrit recruited Miles for the Kahana expedition) points to a grander adversary. The purpose of Jin's trip appears to be to pay off a debt of his employer, Mr. Paik... but the fact that the money that was in Jin's luggage was seized by airport customs officials has made this more difficult and Keamy likely beat up Jin and held him prisoner for failing to deliver the funds. But Paik, being a prominent business man in South Korea, wouldn't need to pay off a small-time loan shark in Los Angeles... which means something else is going on here. We know Keamy worked for Charles Widmore in the mainstream reality, so who is to say that he doesn't work for him here... and that Widmore is still a major player in this reality, even without the island. Hmmm...

(Lost-X Sayid of course also briefly crosses paths with Jack at the hospital where Omer is taken, leading me to believe that their divergent lives will continue to intersect increasingly over the next few episodes.)

Sayid. Back on the island, Sayid makes the same decision as his alternate reality counterpart. Faced with a decision between choosing the path of light over darkness, he chooses to unleash hell and work with the Man in Black. There are a number of intriguing plot points that lead us to this point. Claire's appearance at the Temple brings a message from Jacob's Nemesis to Dogen and the message is clear: the Man in Black wants Dogen dead, one way or another.

Dogen, meanwhile, wants Sayid killed but can't do so himself. He can't get his hands bloody; he's unable to kill Sayid himself--and most likely Claire as well--so he attempts to get Jack to do it for him by telling him that the poison is medicine that will help Sayid. When Jack is unable to do this, Dogen attempts to banish Sayid from the Temple, knowing that he will eventually betray them... but fate presents a different route, another test for Sayid to pass: Dogen knows that the Man in Black can't kill Sayid as he is a candidate and therefore off-limits. He can be his emissary and travel out to see the Nemesis... and slay him.

But Sayid's attempts to stab the Man in Black--the same way, incidentally that Ben slew Jacob--backfire. Perhaps it is because the MiB speaks to Sayid first (which Dogen advised him against) or before Sayid is already infected and therefore has no moral leverage over the Man in Black. In any event, Sayid quickly becomes one of his recruits, lured by the possibility of reunion with Nadia (a reunion possibly glimpsed in the Lost-X universe) and regaining the one thing that made him truly happy.

But to achieve this end, we see the Man in Black's methods: Sayid is tasked with first delivering a message to the Others, that those who stay in the Temple after sundown will be killed and those who leave can join his side. Sayid then brutally murders Dogen, an act that removes any protection holding the monster back from the Temple. The fact that he drowns Dogen is significant, a reversal of positions when Dogen had Sayid held under the water earlier this season. Dogen is killed in the very thing that he had fought to protect: the healing capabilities of the Temple pool. And Sayid then viciously slits the throat of Dogen's translator, Lennon, casting him into the pool. These actions bring the Temple down around their heads, inviting the monster into this sacred space, causing it to become the site of a brutal massacre, a site of death and destruction.

Dogen. Before his death, we get a quick glimpse into the backstory of Dogen himself and learn that he was a Japanese businessman who inadvertently killed his twelve-year-old son in a drunk driving accident after he had been out celebrating with his co-workers at the bank where he worked. But he, like Juliet before him, was given a choice: he could save his son by turning his back on the rest of the world and traveling to the island but he could never leave and never see his son again.

Like his Nemesis, Jacob offers hard bargains but those who take him up on his offers are willing to sacrifice something personal, something dear, to save those that they love. Dogen's baseball--which he sees and which stops him from killing Sayid earlier in the episode--represents the sacrifice he had made, an effort to tip the scale towards good, to willingly imprison himself to save another.

I wish that Dogen's death had been more unexpected. But as soon as Sayid returned to the Temple, I knew that he would murder Dogen, though I had incorrectly assumed it would be with the sacrificial knife he had given Sayid earlier. This was one element of the episode that really irked me: so much of the action seemed telegraphed in advance. It was entirely obvious that Sayid would kill Dogen so his transition to the darkness wasn't at all surprising.

However, I did think that the monster's assault on the Temple was absolutely stunning to watch as it made its way through the Temple hallways, killing everything in sight... and then reforming itself as John Locke outside the Temple walls, where the Man in Black was joined by a number of recruits, as well as Sayid and Claire.

Kate. I can't help but wonder whether Kate will fall into darkness as well, which I hope doesn't happen. If the other characters are all experiencing moments of clarity or psychological growth in the Lost-X universe, why do both Sayid and Kate seem stuck in the same rut? Kate glimpsed in the alternate reality is still running from her problems, a felon on the lam who is fleeing punishment and therefore the consequences of her actions. If Lost-X Kate can't change, does it mean that our Kate can't either? That she's doomed to fall into darkness somehow?

Kate made a major mistake telling Claire that she had taken Aaron and that he's off-island (though she did neglect to mention that Claire's own mother has him) as Claire is going to be looking to enact revenge against Kate. Though Kate's logic was sound: Claire wandered off in the middle of the night and they couldn't find her; Kate wasn't about to leave Aaron alone on the island and jet off to safety. But what concerns me more are the tentative steps Kate takes as she walks out of the Temple. Is she aware of what she has gotten herself into? Will she know instinctively that this man isn't John Locke? And will she be able to fight the infection?

Cavalry. I'm not sure where Ilana, Ben, Sun, and Lapidus came from or how (though the Temple rather strangely seems very easy to walk into/out of) but I did like that they showed up at the height of the battle and managed to rescue Miles from the carnage... though they were too late to save Kate, who attempted to save Claire. (Little did she know that she didn't need saving.)

But as Ilana activated the secret passageway in the hallway (the same one through which Hurley and Jack left last week), Ben ran off to find Sayid. Which is rather interesting as his quest took him right to the Temple pool, the site of a catalytic change for Benjamin Linus himself. Like Sayid, Ben was healed by the Temple pool but a hefty price was predicted: his soul. Was Ben infected then? Did it allow darkness to enter his soul?

How ironic that these two should end up face to face standing over the pool. After all, Sayid shot Ben as a boy, which in turn led to him being brought to the pool. Ben's father shot Sayid, which necessitated him being placed in the pool. Much of the darkness in Sayid's soul was put there by Ben who hired him as an assassin off-island. These two seem intertwined by bonds of fate and it's only fitting that they should come face to face over the pool. Does Ben remember something in that moment, an inkling about who Sayid is and what happened to him? Or does he see the darkness that has overtaken the former torturer? What was Ben hoping to accomplish by rescuing Sayid? An attempt to tip the scale the other way, to undo some wrongs, and possibly sacrifice his own skin to save another? Could it be that the redemption of Benjamin Linus is already under way?

Man in Black. Dogen describes the Man in Black as "evil incarnate." His actions in this episode seem to fulfill that description. He wantonly murders everyone at the Temple, recruits Sayid to murder Dogen, and seems hell-bent on killing everyone on the island, as Dogen predicted. Additionally, his offers seem to be the equivalent of Faustian pacts: there's always a price to pay. He promises Sayid a reunion with Nadia, promises Sawyer a way off the island, and promises Claire she will get her son back. In exchange, he receives their soul. It's an inversion of the bargains driven by Jacob, who offers salvation in exchange for sacrifice. And it makes me believe that there is no goodness within MiB nor moral balance. He is pure, unadulterated evil, contained within the prison of the island but looking to corrupt the entire world.

All in all, a lackluster episode of Lost that spent way too much time at the Temple and offering a look at Sayid that wasn't too markedly different from the ones we've seen before. Additionally, so much time was spent establishing Dogen and Lennon as additional characters this late in the game, that I feel a bit cheated that they were then killed off so quickly after they were forced into the narrative. Yes, we're moving beyond the Temple but the Temple storyline so closely mirrored that of Season Three's imprisonment by the Others sequence that it felt frustratingly obtuse at times.

I'm hoping the end of the episode at least points towards some narrative progress in the coming weeks as the battle lines are drawn and sides in the Final Battle are taken. I didn't hate this episode but I didn't love it either and I don't usually find myself somewhere in the middle with Lost, yet that's just the sort of ambivalence that "Sundown" provoked within me. While I'm not part of the camp demanding answers with every episode, I do want something resembling narrative progress and I think that the Temple storyline definitely overstayed its welcome and the castaways are so fragmented and all over the place that it's hard to get a bead on what's going on with the big picture.

What did you think of this week's episode? Do you agree that it was an unexpectedly lackluster installment or were you just as captivated as always? Any further thoughts on the significance of the Lost-X universe and whether it is directly connected to the Man in Black? Discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Dr. Linus"), Ben deals with the consequences of an uncovered lie.

Channel Surfing: Jason Isaacs is "Pleading Guilty," "Game of Thrones," Trio Joins Matt LeBlanc in "Episodes," Michael Imperioli to "Detroit," and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing.

Jason Isaacs is heading to network television. After several years of offers, Isaacs (Green Zone and the Harry Potter films) has signed on to star in a broadcast network pilot. Isaacs, who last starred in Showtime's Brotherhood before it ended in 2008, has come aboard FOX legal drama pilot Pleading Guilty, based on the Scott Turow book of the same name. Isaacs will play the lead, Mack, a former cop and current attorney who is described as "a big handsome Irish lunk" and who investigates the disappearance of his firm's star litigator. Isaacs' attachment removing the casting contigency on the project, which hails from 20th Century Fox Television and Chernin Entertainment and which is being shepherded by Bones creator Hart Hanson. (Hollywood Reporter)

HBO has given a series order to fantasy drama Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin's beststelling novel series. Project, written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and directed by Tom McCarthy, will head to HBO in spring of 2011. (Televisionary)

Looks like Matt LeBlanc has some company in his upcoming Showtime/BBC comedy series Episodes, which has been ordered for seven installments. Claire Forlani (CSI: NY), Kathleen Rose Perkins ('Til Death), and Stephen Mangan (Green Wing) have been cast opposite LeBlanc in the comedy series, which revolves around a British husband-and-wife writing team (Forlani and Mangan) who travel to America to produce a US version of their hit UK series. Series, from executive producers David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, is due to begin production in May. (Hollywood Reporter)

Michael Imperioli--last seen as a series regular on ABC's short-lived Life on Mars--has been cast as one of the leads in ABC cop drama pilot 187 Detroit, where he will play Fitch, described as "a smart, tough-minded veteran detective with a short fuse who has a near-perfect record for clearing cases and putting murderers in cages." (Hollywood Reporter)

Lost fans will have the opportunity to become part of Lost history by participating in a promotional contest that could have an original promo air on ABC. Participants can visit ABC.com to create and submit their own original 35-second promo, which will then vie for the opportunity to be broadcast on-air in the week leading up to the final episode of Lost and the Grand Prize winner will receive a trip to Los Angeles to attend the series’ special finale party. (via press release)

Entertainment Weekly's Lynette Rice is reporting that ABC has passed on Mark Gordon's small-screen version of post-apocalyptic film 2012, which would have revolved around survivors of the global disaster. "Future production costs may have been a factor in ABC’s decision, though the status of the network’s other high-concept genre shows (FlashForward, V) could have played a role, too," writes Rice. "Both shows struggled in the ratings last fall and have yet to receive a second season pickup. A spokeswoman for ABC declined to comment." (Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider)

Pilot casting news: Jon Seda (The Pacific) will star opposite Roselyn Sanchez in Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters' ABC dramedy pilot Cutthroat; Jesse Bradford (The West Wing) has come aboard NBC's untitled John Eisendrath drama pilot (a.k.a. Rough Justice); Jason Behr (Roswell) and Merle Dandridge (24) have joined the cast of ABC drama pilot The Matadors; Lindsay Price (Eastwick) has landed one of the leads in ABC comedy pilot Who Gets the Parents?, opposite Jane Kaczmarek and Adam Arkin; Eliza Coupe (Scrubs) has joined the cast of ABC comedy pilot Happy Endings; Missi Pyle (Grey's Anatomy) and Johnny Sneed (Unhitched) have been cast as the leads in ABC comedy pilot How to Be a Better American; and and Diedrich Bader (Bones) and Jessica Gower (Blade: The Series) have boarded NBC comedy pilot Outsourced. Meanwhile, CBS has rolled over its untitled Redlich/Bellucci drama (a.k.a. The Rememberer) to next season due to difficulties casting the lead. (Hollywood Reporter)

In other casting news, Jason George (Grey's Anatomy) has been cast in Shonda Rhimes' ABC medical drama pilot Off the Map, where he will play Dr. Otis Abbot, described as "a brilliant ER doctor at the clinic who likes women, cigarettes, and the occasional dirty joke and works closely with the clinic's founder, Ben Hanley (Martin Henderson)." (Hollywood Reporter)

Comedy Central has given a series order to comedy Workaholics, ordering ten episodes. Series, from writer/executive producer Kevin Etten, revolves around a group of twenty-somethings who are poised between college and adulthood. Cast includes Blake Anderson, Anders Holm, and Adam Devine. (Variety)

In other Comedy Central-related news, the Viacom-owned network has pulled all of its programming off of Hulu, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Viewers will be now only able to watch episodes of both series on the Comedy Central website. (Variety)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Caterina Scorsone (Crash) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc on ABC's Private Practice. Scorsone will play as Dr. Amelia Shepherd, the younger sister of Patrick Dempsey's Derek Shepherd, who gets a job at Oceanside Wellness. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Production is slated to begin this month on Season Two of Syfy drama series Warehouse 13, which will launch its second season on Tuesday, July 13th. Eddie McClintock, Joanne Kelly, Saul Rubinek, Allison Scagliotti, and CCH Pounder will all reprise their roles next season. (via press release)

TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck has an interview with new Melrose Place cast member Nick Zano and a first-look video at Zano's Dr. Drew Pragin, who will make his first appearance on March 16th. (TV Guide Magazine)

Looks like ABC's The Forgotten will be heading out the door a little earlier than expected. The network has opted to pull the March 23rd episode from the schedule, making next week's episode the season finale... and, barring some unforeseen development, the end of the series. (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

Universal Media Studios has signed a two-year deal with Jon Pollack (Community, 30 Rock), under which Pollack will oversee two comedy pilots for next season: romantic comedy Perfect Couples (which he co-wrote with Scott Silveri) and the untitled Adam Carolla comedy pilot. (Variety)

History will spin-off its reality series Pawn Stars into a franchise, launching version of the series in New York and Miami. (Hollywood Reporter)

Access Hollywood is coming to daytime via a new hour-long series Access Hollywood Live, which will be stripped beginning this fall in such markets as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. (Variety)

NBC Universal has acquired exclusive global pay TV rights outside of North America, France, and Germany to ABC/Global cop drama Copper from E1 Entertainment. Series, which stars Missy Peregrym, Gregory Smith, Enuka Okuma, and Travis Milne, is slated to air sometime this year on ABC. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Paley Festival: Team Darlton Speak About Final Season of "Lost," Water, Returning Characters, and More

With only 13 episodes of Lost remaining before the series wraps up its iconic run, the series' cast and crew united on stage to talk about the final segments of the ABC drama series, offer a few hints about what's coming up for the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 (and their alternate reality counterparts), and celebrate Lost potentially one last time before the final credits roll.

Appearing at the Saban Theatre as part of the 2010 Paley Festival, executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, cast members Nestor Carbonell, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, and Zuleikha Robinson, writer/producers Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis, Elizabeth Sarnoff, and director/executive producer Jack Bender gathered on stage with moderator Paul Scheer to answer some questions, deflect some others, and offer a taste of what lies ahead in these next batch of episodes.

I had the opportunity last night to attend the Paley Festival's Lost panel, thanks to a very generous reader who donated her ticket after I was unable to get off of the press waitlist for the event. I tip my hat to her for allowing me to attend what was a fantastic evening of talk, conjecture, and intentionally vague teasing. (Those of you in the know followed along as I live-tweeted the evening's events here.)

So what did the cast and crew have to say? Let's discuss but be aware that there are some (light) spoilers for upcoming episodes below. You've been warned, candidates. [Note: as always, please do not reproduce the following on any other websites or forums. Linking and excerpting are fine but wholesale copy-and-pasting is not.]

The evening began (after a "Treehouse of Horror" clip from The Simpsons, in which Homer travels through time and alters the future by killing a mosquito) with a sneak peek at a scene from this week's episode of Lost ("Sundown"), set at The Temple.

Sneak Peak: I don't want to say too much but it featured Sayid preparing to leave and Miles telling him that he was dead for two hours and that his resurrection took the Others as much by surprise as it did them. But before Sayid can leave, they're interrupted by the arrival of Claire, who demands that Dogen go see "him." Dogen refuses, saying that if he steps foot outside the Temple, he will kill him. Claire's solution? "Send someone he can't kill." (Which would be... Sayid.)

A far too brief glimpse at the episode but a tantalizing one nonetheless. Can't wait to see just what The Man in Black has to say to Sayid and what his message is for Dogen....

Team Darlton revealed that they will begin writing the series finale of Lost next week. They're about to shoot episode 615 and are prepping episode 616. (It makes me both excited and sad to know that Lindelof and Cuse are about to put pen to paper--or fingers to keyboard--to write the final chapter of this amazing series.)

But, despite the fact that Lindelof and Cuse have had the series' ending in mind since nearly the very beginning, doesn't mean that it will end up exactly as they had planned all of those years ago.

"We have an architecture to the end of the show but... there's room for discovery as we put our characters together and find those scenes as we write them," said Cuse. "There's a destination we're getting to but.. there will be moments that [will change]."

SPOILERS! Here's what Lindelof and Cuse had to say about some upcoming plot points for Season Six:

• Just what happened to Desmond aboard the plane--and whether or not he was actually on the flight--will be revealed very soon.
• Libby's connection to Hurley will be explored and revealed this season.
• Lindelof refused to answer whether we will or won't learn this season why women can't get pregnant on the island.
• Lindelof said that Jacob was telling the truth this week: someone is coming to the island.
• There's more Charlie in the works as Dominic Monaghan will once again be returning as everyone's favorite former Driveshaft rock star.
• Darlton tiptoed around the identity of Jack's ex-wife and David's mother though they did say that it is someone we know. Lindelof said that it was Sarah (who was previously played by Modern Family's Julie Bowen) but Cuse shook his head, indicating that Lindelof was in fact lying. (Which means that my theory that it's Juliet Burke is still possibly valid.)
• Vincent the dog will be back this season and we'll find out what happened to him. However, Lindelof and Cuse declined to reveal whether we'll learn what happened to Rose and Bernard on the island. (They did say that we'll see Bernard in what I like to call the Lost-X universe but they're not saying anything more, leaving me to wonder once more if Rose and Bernard aren't the Adam and Eve corpses in the cave.)
• Wondering just who or what Ilana is? Lindelof said that "Ilana and Richard will have some things to say to each other and about each other."
• Another iconic Jack Bender painting (he did the one in the Swan station) will be showing up later this season and may hold additional clues.
• WALT! Despite his massive growth spurt, Walt may return at some point this season, if the producers can figure out a way to bring him back that makes sense as Cuse said that they were looking for a way to bring him back before the end.

So, what else did Team Darlton and Co. have to say? Here's the breakdown of some other topics of note from last night.

Lists of lists: Lindelof and Cuse did address a fan's question as to why there were so many lists over the years and why Ben said that Jack Shephard "wasn't on Jacob's list." Their answer: whether Jacob actually ever furnished a list of candidates to Ben or the Others is open to speculation... and might have been Ben lying.

Hurley bird: Remember how Hurley claimed that the bird in the jungle said his name? Remember how we all thought it did too? Looks like we may have been right. Lindelof said that the so-called Hurley bird is "on our list of things to explain."

Hitmen drama: Terry O'Quinn didn't answer a question posed to him about the potential hitman series he's allegedly shopping to networks that would pair him with fellow Lost co-star Michael Emerson as suburban hitmen. Emerson was also less than forthright: "It's a thing we might do on a street corner, or in a church basement with the idea that we'll eventually move it closer to Broadway," he joked. Hmmm...

O'Quinn, meanwhile, had the audience in stitches as recounted a hilarious story about a Lost fan in Hawaii who sort of kidnapped him in his truck and took him to meet his estranged wife. Scary and funny at the same time. Michael Emerson, meanwhile, was asked by Scheer which Lost cast member threw the best punch. His answer? "The younger the actor, the more inflamed their performance... and the more likely you are to get hurt."

Not everything will be answered: Cuse and Lindelof were blunt about the fact that not every mystery will be solved, especially those that aren't important to the castaways. For example: "We won't learn who the Economist was that Sayid shot on the golf course," said Cuse. (Me: In all fairness, that was Peter Avellino, not the Economist, whom Sayid killed on the golf course and who provided Ilana with her cover story. The Economist was Elsa's employer and was on a list of people Ben wanted Sayid to assassinate.)

Will we get to see Ben's childhood sweetheart Annie again before the end? "Probably not," said Cuse. And don't hold your breath for another appearance from Matthew Abaddon (Lance Reddick) because he won't be back.

Richard Alpert: Nestor Carbonell on his favorite bit from the series: "Finally finding out who the hell I am." Which means that, yes, Richard Alpert's backstory and origin are coming up very soon on the series. I still maintain that he was aboard the Black Rock but still can't figure out why he was cast in the role of Jacob's mouthpiece and seemingly given the gift (or curse) of immortality.

Backstories or lack thereof: Zuleikha Robinson passed on answering a question about whether Ilana is really old like Richard Alpert or not. Robinson said that it was incredibly freeing as an actor to not to know Ilana's backstory ahead of time, though she did admit to begging Jack Bender for some information about her character's past last season.

Likewise, O'Quinn wasn't told about the truth behind Locke's resurrection last season, nor that he was playing a different character. The scene on the beach between him and Ben after the crash of Ajira Flight 316 was played with O'Quinn playing Locke as though he were "indestructible" as opposed to the vulnerability we're seeing from the Lost-X Locke this season. (O'Quinn said that, as a fan, he would be "heartbroken" if old Locke were truly dead but as an actor, he doesn't care so long as he has a character to play.)

Lindelof said that the directions for O'Quinn while filming "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" were pretty vague and that was the point, rather than give O'Quinn a ton of convoluted information. "Remember when you had that orange in your mouth?" joked Lindelof. "Do that again."

Similarly, Bender told Carbonell to play the scene in the season premiere where the Fake Locke comes out of Jacob's sanctuary as "your 9/11," though he didn't have much more to go on than that.

And Alan Dale never seems to know just what is going on. "Alan Dale says, 'What the f--- am I doing on this show? What am I talking about?'" recounted Bender. "And you give them just enough to have them play it beautifully."

Disney ride: Asked about a potential ride at Disneyland (where Tom Sawyer's island currently resides), Lindelof said, "You don't have to build a ride. Put them in a darkened room, spin them around a few times, punch them in the face and say they've had the Lost Experience."

Damaged people: Elizabeth Sarnoff described Lost as being about "a collection of people who are deeply flawed and are trying to find their way out of it." It's a description that hews closely to my own and sums up the entire thrust of the series outside the mythology.

Full circle storytelling: "We talked a lot about how we wanted to bring the show full circle," said Cuse, while Lindelof said that they intended that the first and last seasons would effectively function as bookends for the series.

Daddy issues: Lindelof said that Star Wars was a huge influence on the series, as well as the writers' own father issues. For himself, Lindelof's father died a year before the Lost pilot was produced and the project was a way for him to process some of his own feelings about the death of his father.

Mr. Eko: Mr. Eko was intended to play a much larger role in the overarching plot of Lost than he ended up having because the actor portraying him, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, wanted off the series and producers wrote Eko out of the series by having him be killed by the smoke monster. Cuse said that the death of Eko allowed them to give more time to other characters and shift the focus in other directions. (Still, I can't help but wonder just what they had in store for Mr. Eko had Akinnuoye-Agbaje remained on the series.)

Chronological DVDs: Nope. Lindelof and Cuse debunked a popular rumor that indicated that the studio would release a version of the full series of Lost with all of the flashbacks and flashforwards placed in chronological order. Not so, said Team Darlton: "There will be no chronological DVD release of the show."

Open to interpretation: Cuse said that once the final credits roll at the end of the season, they're going to be keeping mum and won't be commenting on Lost after it ends in May. (As Fancast's Matt Mitovich pointed out to me via Twitter, that's what David Chase said about the end of The Sopranos as well, but that didn't end up being the case.)

Final words: Lindelof's final word about the rest of the final season of Lost? "Water." The jury's still out on just what that means but Lindelof promised that it will become very clear once you watch the remaining episodes of Season Six.

And with that, it was a wrap for the Lost panel at the 2010 Paley Festival. Many thanks to the cast and crew for an insightful, fun, and memorable evening and to the gregarious Paul Scheer for moderating the discussion with the requisite flair of a true Lost fanatic. (If you were there and got to see Scheer read a list of fan-submitted questions he wouldn't be asking, you know how much he nailed it.)

The final season of Lost airs Tuesdays at 9 pm ET/PT on ABC.

To the Lighthouse: Through the Looking Glass on "Lost"

I wonder what Kitty and Snowdrop would say about all of this...

Last night's evocative and compelling episode of Lost ("Lighthouse"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender, offered an intriguing--if somewhat polarizing--exploration about the nature of perception, blending together the fantasy of Lewis Carroll with the modern psychology of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse."

While several critics have expressed their frustration with this installment, I have to say that I was just as captivated as I have been throughout this season and I thought that this episode provided some further answers while also bringing up some new questions. It was also a throwback to a simpler time on Lost, when the characters could wander the jungle on a specific mission without the stakes seeming quite so dire. Yes, even then they were caught up in the war between two cosmic individuals, but they didn't perceive it as such. For them, it was about survival and about getting home; little did they know that their actions were part of a larger battle between good and evil, or efforts to balance the moral scale.

As Jack and Hurley retraced their steps from the first season and came upon a mysterious new location on the island, the Lost-X Jack grappled with the responsibilities of fatherhood and the burden his own past as his father's son placed upon him and Jin discovered that living in the jungle by yourself for three years does not make you a rational or sane person.

So what did I think of this week's episode? Get a pen, whip out your Chopin sheet music, sharpen that axe, and let's head to the "Lighthouse."

While not my favorite episode of the series, I felt that the thought-provoking and engaging "Lighthouse," the series' 108th installment, offered a unique opportunity to take a look back and forward at the same time, to again remind us that we are the sum of our experiences and that our pasts, presents, and futures are inexorably connected. We're given three means of exploring the themes of experience and perception: the journey that Jack and Hurley embark on to the lighthouse, Jin's encounter with a much-changed Claire, and the struggle between Lost-X Jack and his son David.

Lost-X. In the sideways storyline, Jack is a divorced father of an estranged teenage son David. He only sees his son once a month and their relationship is about as close as any father and teenage son, built on misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and perceptions of thwarted potential. While Jack blames himself for not being around for his son, for not knowing him, David carries the burden of not living up to his father's potential. But Jack isn't Christian and David isn't Jack: He won't tell his son that he doesn't have what it takes.

The two are able to break the cycle that Jack and Christian were in as Jack goes on a journey to find his son (both literally and figuratively) and discovers that he hasn't quit piano but is auditioning for a place at a prestigious musical conservatory (the audition sign fittingly reads "welcome all candidates") and Jack is able to see his son play Chopin's "Fantaisie-Impromptu," before confronting his errant son and telling him that he loves him unconditionally and that his son could never fail him, a reversal of his relationship with his father Christian.

It's interesting that this Jack would prove to be an unworthy father attempting--and achieving--a positive relationship with his son. In the mainstream Lost universe, Jack's efforts to be a father to his nephew Aaron completely imploded and resulted in him splitting from Kate and leaving Aaron. Could it be that the Lost-X universe is a place where people are able to achieve their heart's desire? A place where the psychological damage witnessed via the flashbacks is undone, where they have a second chance to get things right?

The presence of David also raises some interesting issues, a smoking gun indicating that this universe is vastly different than the one we've been watching all along. The changes made by The Incident didn't just result in Oceanic Flight 815 touching down. Rather, the foundations of the castaways' lives have been rewritten dramatically: Locke and his father are on good terms and he and Helen are about to be happily married, Hurley has good luck rather than bad, and Jack is the father of a teenage son. (Which itself raises the question: who is David's mother? My guess: Juliet Burke.)

But there are other differences here as well. Lost-X Jack also had his appendix removed, but as a child rather than as an adult on the island. (Christian himself wanted to perform the surgery, when Jack was "seven or eight.") The scar is there, he vaguely remembers the surgery, but something is off, something at the back of his brain screaming at him that this isn't "right." Like Juliet back on the island, this Jack would seem to have some inkling about the other world...

And then there was Lost-X Dogen, appearing at the audition, himself the father of a teenage son who offers Jack some sage wisdom: both that it is difficult to watch and be unable to help their offspring (succeed or fail) and that David has a "gift." (In other words: he's special, potentially just like Walt was.) Interesting them meeting like this and I couldn't help but wonder just who the well-tailored Dogen is in this world... and how it's connected to his role as temple master on the island.

Jack and Hurley. Back on the island, Hurley receives another visit from the ghostly Jacob, who gives him explicit instruction for a mission that he and Jack are to attend to, a mission that gets them far away from The Temple and the visitor who is due there. (Which, we can assume, is Smokey.) Together, they retrace their steps, visiting the caves from Season One, the corpses of Adam and Eve (yes!), and the site of Christian's coffin. (Also making an appearance: Shannon's inhaler.) It's only fitting that Jack should have to confront the specter of his dead father (and the lack of a corpse) as his Lost-X counterpart does the same in his world. Echoing many fan theories, Hurley questions whether the bodies of Adam and Eve could in fact belong to the castaways and that, if they hurtle through time again, they could end up being buried in the cave.

The Lighthouse. Jacob's mission has lead them to a stone structure on the edge of the island, a lighthouse that Jacob intends them to use to bring someone to the island by turning the lighthouse's mirrors (more on them in a bit) to 108 degrees, the sum of the repeated numbers, the episode number, and the time lapse between pushing the button in the Swan station. Given the fact that the visitor is a "he," my first instinct is that the man destined to arrive will be Desmond Hume, despite the fact that the 108 degree mark reads "Wallace" (which happens, however, to be a Scottish name).

The fire bowl is surrounded by names at each of the 360 degrees, which reveals that the numbers themselves correspond to a perfect circle, with each degree relating to a specific individual, likely all candidates sprinkled through time. Austen is represented here (at 51), as are the other names we saw in the cave, as well as many, many others that hadn't yet been seen. The presence of the names makes me wonder if the lighthouse belongs to Jacob while the cave--with its darkness and chaotic lists--belong to the Man in Black, representing once again the duality of light and darkness. Here, there is a methodical orderliness to the list, a crisp logic that's at odds with the haphazard nature of the list in the cave. Hmmm...

I don't believe that Jack was brought there to turn the lighthouse on but rather to see and understand that he does have a purpose. He might have been broken after leaving the island but he is meant to be there, meant to be a part of something larger, something profound and ancient that is bigger than just him. Jacob knew that Jack would see the reflection of his childhood home at the 23rd degree... and would smash the lighthouse looking-glass. He's finally understanding that he has a part to play and he must come to his own conclusion about what that is, a sentiment echoed by the ghostly Jacob to Hurley. Jack will come to his own course of action after he "look[s] out at the ocean for a while," according to Jacob (and echoing Virginia Woolf). You can't just jump in everyone's cab and tell them what to do, after all...

Claire. Living on her own in the jungle--or nearly on her own, anyway--has resulted in a feral Claire who looks and acts rather like Danielle Rousseau. Just like Rousseau, she is trapped in a battle with the Others, whom she believes has taken her baby, although they're obviously not to blame. She's descended into madness and likely infection and she was treated by Dogen at the Temple, injected with needles and branded (like Sayid) before she escaped.

Which makes me wonder several things: Why did Claire wander off into the jungle, leaving Aaron behind, in the first place? Where was she in her time before her jungle living? Why would her "father" and her "friend" tell her that the Others had Aaron when it was Kate who had taken him and raised him off-island?

We learn at the episode's very end that Claire's "friend" is none other than the Man in Black, whom she knows isn't John Locke. I can't help but wonder if she's able to perceive him in his true guise or if she just recognizes him even wearing Locke's body. I can understand why Smokey would look to create chaos by tricking Claire into thinking that the Others had her child but why would Christian do that. Unless...

Christian. We believed that "Christian" was good based on the fact that he appeared to be helping Locke and the others and told Locke that he was appearing on behalf of Jacob. But that's very convenient and Christian's advice lead directly to Locke turning the wheel... and being killed by Ben before his body was brought to the island and the Man in Black was able to use his loophole to kill Jacob.

That Christian would be telling Claire that the Others have Aaron and whispering lies to her makes me believe that the Christian we've seen has been either the Man in Black directly or working in his employ. The fact that Christian's corpse is still missing, even after six seasons, seems vitally important, as does the fact that Claire differentiates between Christian and Smokey. If Smokey wasn't using Christian's appearance, then is it possible that Christian is a recruit for Smokey? And just where is he now? Hmmm...

Jin. In an effort to save Justin's life (pity Claire killed him anyway), Jin attempted to tell Claire the truth about Aaron and reveal that Kate had raised him, thus subverting the prophecy that Claire had been told about not allowing Aaron to be raised by anyone else. But demonstrating her new streak of cruelty, Claire killed Justin anyway and then forced Jin to recant his statement, saying that he lied in order to protect harm from befalling Justin. Which is probably a smart move as Claire is now completely mad and told Jin that she would have killed Kate if that had been the truth. Which presents a real problem as Kate is headed right for them and will likely come clean to Claire as soon as she sees her. Not very good for Kate Austen, that.

The Looking-Glass. It's only fitting that Lewis Carroll's fantasy masterpiece "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" should hover over the action here. Both adventures tell the story of an individual who finds themselves in a fantastical world where they cannot manage to comprehend the rules that exist around them, rather like the castaways on the island. Like "Through the Looking-Glass," we're given a portrait of a world that on the surface is like ours (the Lost-X universe) but with some distinct differences, a topsy-turvy universe where not everything is "right."

Lost has dealt with "Alice" before: two episodes were given titles straight out of Carroll's work ("White Rabbit" and "Through the Looking-Glass") but the Victorian novels are decidedly important to this specific episode, which--like the others in question were--was a Jack-centric installment. In the Lost-X universe, Jack's son David is rereading "Alice in Wonderland," a book that Jack had read to his son when he was a child. Mention is made of Alice's two kittens, Kitty and Snowdrop, a pair reflecting the white-black duality so prevalent on the series.

Jack locates a key to his ex-wife's house under a statue of a rabbit and David plays Chopin's "Fantaisie-Impromptu." (The latter is fitting given the fantastical nature of both "Alice" and Lost.) But the references to "Alice" don't just play out in the Lost-X world. As Jack and Hurley retrace their steps, Jack remembers how he found the cave: led by the ghost of his father Christian, the figurative white rabbit, down the rabbit hole and to the location of his coffin.

And, even more significant, is the actual looking-glass that exists within the mysterious lighthouse to which Hurley leads Jack at Jacob's behest. While the building appears to be a working lighthouse, albeit one without electricity, the angle to which the mirror is turned reflects not the light but rather someplace else, someplace other. We're given glimpses of the temple where Sun and Jin were married, the church where Sawyer's parents funeral was held, and Jack's childhood home.

Jacob has long maintained that each of the individuals assembled has a purpose and was brought to the island for a reason. He visited several of them at key moments in their lives, appearing as if by providence to offer his guidance and offer his blessing. The reveal that the lighthouse is able to display places off-island is perhaps a very important and significant one. Jack is frustrated by the fact that he has been observed all along, been watched, and perhaps been pushed into place. Jacob's knowledge of the castaways is built on years of surveillance.

But why display Jack's childhood home? A sign of a formative time or something deeper? While he may not have lived in that house since he was a child, the foundation of his character was built there and his defining traits forged in the fire of conflict with Christian. Additionally, the house is an important stop on the journey this week of Lost-X Jack, as he returns to help his mother Margot track down his father's will... and learns about the existence of his sister, Claire Littleton.

My current (and possibly off-the-wall theory) is that the flashbacks we've seen over the years were in fact the moments that were seen by Jacob at the looking-glass. I've long wondered if Jacob either exists outside the boundaries of time and space (thus able to manifest as both his past incarnation--the bloodied teenage boy--and his ghostly adult self and appear off- and on-island) or is able to perceive the world through the veil of time, perhaps aided by the looking-glass. Just as Smokey was able to scan the castaways upon coming upon them (as seen when he "reads" Mr. Eko way back when), Jacob is perhaps able to watch these key moments unfold. Which would therefore make the flashbacks not only key plot points but also integral to the larger narrative, giving us an plot-based explanation for why they exist within the series and making Jacob not just a player in the larger game but also one of us as well: a viewer, privy to these characters' pasts in a way that only an omniscient narrator can be. Curious...

As I mentioned before, Virgina Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse" also plays a significant role here beside for the obvious overlaps of titles. Woolf's novel concerned the ways in which we perceive both the universe around us and our selves. Like Lost, Woolf's novel unfolds in a non-linear fashion, with characters offering shifting perspectives and stream of consciousness: the past blends into the present, which blends into the past. Likewise, the flashbacks aren't just relegated to the past of the castaways but connected concretely to their present experiences, as if they were unfolding concurrently.

Woolf's novel has three sections, the first of which is "The Window," which corresponds to the lighthouse's looking-glass (and to Carroll's as well) and Jack and Hurley's travel. It's a means to view something separate, a portal to somewhere else, but it's the means of perception that's just as important for each of us sees and perceives the world around us--and ourselves--in very different ways. The second section, "Time Passes," deals with the matter of temporality, a subject very key to Lost itself, as characters die, change, and are altered. (In other words: the Claire section.) The third and final section, "The Lighthouse," deals with the actual journey to the lighthouse, a journey that is based around a shared experience between a father and son (much like Christian and Jack and Jack and David), in which the son is praised rather than scolded. Much like Jack encourages and supports David, telling him that he loves him unconditionally, instead of castigating him. (The Lost-X Jack section.)

Lost's Lighthouse functions in a similar fashion to Woolf's, offering a means to perceive the world outside the island and--quite potentially--the other possible worlds as well. It's fitting perhaps that Lost-X Jack is aware of something being "off" about his world just as our Jack stumbles onto a means of otherworldly perception. Coincidence?

As for why the castaways never saw the lighthouse before, Hurley offered a succinct explanation: stating that they couldn't see it because they weren't looking for it. If that's not a thundering example of the power of perception, I don't know what is. In other words: seek and you will find your answers, just as Jacob knows that Jack will have to find his own path to understanding.

The Temple. Something bad is about to befall the current inhabitants of The Temple and I can't help but feel that it involves Smokey in a bad way. He's been recruiting followers and now has Sawyer, Claire, and (reluctantly) Jin with him and I dare say that the ash that Dogen has placed around the Temple gateway will matter little, especially if Sayid is in fact infected. I can't help but feel that the infection will spread the closer that Smokey gets to the Temple and that, quite possibly, everyone in those walls, including Sayid and Miles, are utterly doomed.

All in all, another intriguing and emotionally complex installment of Lost that offered some answers, raised some further questions, and made me anxious for next week already. Now where did that white rabbit get to?

What did you think of this week's episode? Agree with my theories? Curious about Jack's ex-wife? Who is the visitor arriving on the island? Discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Sundown"), Sayid is faced with a difficult decision, and Claire sends a warning to the temple inhabitants.

Channel Surfing: FX Renews "Archer," Team Darlton on "Lost" Partnership, Hiroyuki Sanada Speaks, Jim Belushi Suits Up for "Defenders," and More

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing.

"Danger zone!" FX has ordered a second season of its animated action-comedy Archer, from creators Adam Reed and Matthew Thompson. The cabler has commissioned 13 episodes for the series' second season, which is set to launch next year. The order is up from the seven installments that comprised Season One of Archer. [Editor: while Archer started off rocky and is somewhat hit-or-miss, I'm actually quite enjoying its off-kilter madcap action now that the season is set to wrap in a few weeks' time.] (Variety)

The Los Angeles Times' Maria Elena Fernandez talks to Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about their partnership on the show. And thanks to a video interview, you can get the words from Team Darlton themselves as they recount the events back in 2004 that lead to the duo forming one of Hollywood's strongest creative partnerships. (Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker)

SPOILER! Meanwhile, TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck has an interview with Lost's Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays the mysterious temple master Dogen on the ABC drama series' final season. Look for the March 2nd episode to reveal more about Dogen's past. "I believe Dogen and Sayid will experience some kind of friendship in the end," Hiro told Keck. "Temples are built for peace and saving people." Hmmm... (TV Guide Magazine)

No, it's not a joke: former According to Jim star Jim Belushi has landed one of the lead roles in CBS legal drama pilot The Defenders, from writers/executive producers Niels Mueller and Kevin Kennedy and director David Guggenheim. Belushi will play Nick, described as "as Las Vegas attorney with marital and drinking issues." (Variety)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that the cast of FOX's Glee will perform at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 5th, after being invited by First Lady Michelle Obama. "Rumor has it Mrs. O and her daughters are big fans of the show," writes Ausiello. "And since a White House gig is an offer that’s pretty darn hard to refuse, Glee’s producers did some lickety-split schedule rejiggering in order to honor the request." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

PBS' Masterpiece has signed a co-production deal with BBC Worldwide that will encompass several international co-productions, including a new production of period drama Upstairs, Downstairs, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' Sherlock--starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, and Rupert Graves--and three mysteries based on Michael Dibden's Aurelio Zen novels starring Rufus Sewell. (Televisionary)

Pilot casting roundup: Jane Kaczmarek (Raising the Bar) and Adam Arkin (Life) have been cast in ABC comedy pilot Who Gets the Parents? (Also cast: Greek's Andrew West and Men in Trees' Derek Richardson); Leah Remini (The King of Queens) has landed a lead in ABC comedy pilot It Takes a Village; Zeljko Ivanek (Big Love) and Ian Anthony Dale (Taken) have joined the cast of NBC drama pilot The Event; Ben Koldyke (Big Love) has snagged the lead in NBC comedy pilot This Little Piggy; Romany Malco (Weeds) has been cast in ABC superhero drama pilot No Ordinary Family; Wayne Knight (Seinfeld) has been added to the cast of Ant Hines and Larry Charles' untitled CBS comedy pilot presentation; Olivia Munn (Attack of the Show) will star in NBC comedy pilot Perfect Couples; D.J. Cotrona (Dear John) has come aboard ABC cop drama pilot 187 Detroit; Julian Morris (24), Daniella Alonso (Friday Night Lights), and Kelli Garner (Lars and the Real Girl) have been joined the cast of Noah Hawley's ABC drama pilot Generation Y; Kaitlin Doubleday (Cavemen) will play one of the leads in FOX comedy pilot Most Likely to Succeed; Taran Killam (Scrubs) has joined the cast of ABC comedy pilot Freshmen; and Malcolm Goodwin (Leatherheads) has been cast in Matt Olmstead and Nick Santora's FOX drama pilot Breakout Kings. (Hollywood Reporter)

Lionsgate Television has signed a new two-year overall deal with Weeds creator Jenji Kohan that will keep her at the helm of Showtime's Weeds for a sixth season as well as develop other projects. First up is an untitled musical comedy for Showtime that Kohan is writing with Stephen Falk. "Having gotten to second base with Lionsgate in my former 'under the shirt but over the bra' deal," said Kohan, "it's a thrill to now be in bed with them and going all the way." (Kohan is also executive producing the studio's Epix drama pilot Tough Trade.) (Variety)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello has a first look at Cynthia Watros' upcoming arc on FOX's House, where she will play the first ex-wife of Robert Sean Leonard's Wilson beginning April 19th. "There can be great comfort in the past," Leonard told Ausiello. "He wants his blankie. And there’s the extra benefit of familiarity and, in a way, a lack of drama." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Comedy Central has ordered six episodes of an untitled comedy showcase, from executive producers Russell Simmons and Stan Lathan, which will air this summer and will be hosted by Curb Your Enthusiasm's JB Smoove. (Variety)

Bristol Palin, eldest daughter of former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, is set to play herself on an upcoming episode of ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager that will air this summer. "Bristol Palin is the most famous teenage mother in America," said executive producer Brenda Hampton in a statement. "We're thrilled to have her join us, and I think she will bring additional attention to the issues facing teen parents that we've been exploring for a couple of seasons now." (via press release)

Cabler TLC has ordered a third season of docuseries The Little Couple, with 20 episodes set to launch in June. (via press release)

MTV has promoted Chris Linn to executive VP of MTV Production, where he will continue to oversee development and production of telepics as well as physical production and planning for pilots and series. Linn will be based in New York and will report to MTV programming chief Tony DiSanto. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Stay tuned.

Channel Surfing: Sackhoff Lands ABC Pilot, FOX Circles Arnett/Hurwitz Comedy, O'Quinn Talks Smoke Monster, Kreuk Gets "Hitched," and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Loads of headlines to get through today!

Former Battlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff (currently co-starring as Dana Walsh on FOX's 24) has landed the lead in ABC's untitled Richard Hatem drama pilot, which revolves around a female detective (Sackhoff) who teams up with a disgraced former cop who has been framed and gone underground. Together, they solve crimes and attempt to unmask the conspiracy that ensnared him. Sackhoff, who last season starred in NBC drama pilot Lost & Found, had received multiple offers this pilot season before deciding to jump into Hatem's drama pilot. Sackhoff's casting doesn't shed any light on a possible Day Nine of 24, with producers saying that she could take this role should it go to series, even if 24 returns next season. (Hollywood Reporter)

Want a frozen banana with that? FOX is said to be thisclose to giving a pilot order to an untitled single-camera comedy starring Arrested Development's Will Arnett, who wrote the script and will executive produce alongside Arrested's Mitch Hurwitz and Jim Vallely, as well as Eric and Kim Tannenbaum, Peter Principato, and Paul Young. Arnett will star as a wealthy Beverly Hills resident who falls in love with a woman who can't stand him. The project nearly didn't go ahead at all after Sony Pictures Television stepped away from the pilot, citing cost concerns, but Lionsgate Television has stepped in to provide the deficit financing. Once that deal closes, FOX is expected to order the project to series. [Editor: I already have the script so will let you know what I think.] (Variety)

Entertainment Weekly's Dan Snierson has a Q&A-style interview with Lost's Terry O'Quinn about playing the Man in Black and the smoke monster. "It’s fun to play," O'Quinn told Snierson when asked about playing ol' Smokey. "I mean, it’s just totally different from whatever John Locke was. Bad guys have better secrets. And if he’s a bad guy, he’s got a lot of secrets. And that’s what frustrates people. When [Sawyer] says, 'What are you?' and Smokey says, 'What I am is trapped,' okay--you don’t pursue that question. Everybody else will go, 'Well, what the hell does that mean? Who are you? Come on, man!' But we’re going to have to wait until another week to find that out." (Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch)

Kristin Kreuk (Chuck) and Jack Carpenter (Sydney White) have been cast as the leads in Josh Schwartz and Matt Miller's CBS comedy pilot Hitched, about a newlywed couple who deal with their friends and family after their wedding. Project, from Warner Bros. Television, will also star Eugene Levy. [Editor: clearly, Schwartz liked working with Kreuk during her Chuck story arc this season.] (Hollywood Reporter)

Ugly Betty's Becki Newton received no less than eleven pilot offers this season but ultimately settled on NBC's romantic dramedy anthology Love Bites, from writer/executive producer Cindy Chupack (Sex and the City). Newton will play Annie, described as "an optimistic, infectiously bubbly social worker who is a virgin," in the series' loosely connected stories about love, sex, and marriage. (Hollywood Reporter)

Pitch perfect casting alert! William Shatner (Boston Legal) will star in CBS multi-camera comedy pilot Shit My Dad Says, executive produced by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick (Will & Grace). Shatner's attachment lifts the casting contingency on the pilot, which hails from Warner Bros. Television. (Hollywood Reporter)

Meanwhile, Bill Pullman has come on board NBC comedy pilot Nathan vs. Nurture, where he will play Arthur, the biological father of Jay Harrington's titular character, a heart surgeon who reunites with his birth father and siblings. Project hails from Sony Pictures Television. (Hollywood Reporter)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Saturday Night Live is nearing a deal with Betty White to host the live comedy show for the first time. But there is one caveat: White wouldn't host by herself but rather would appear as a part of a "Women of Comedy" episode that would include several other comediennes, including Molly Shannon and potentially Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Nicollette Sheridan (Desperate Housewives) has been cast as the lead in Ant Hines' untitled CBS pilot presentation, opposite Paul Kaye. Kaye will play a British sleazebag who moves to Los Angeles to reconnect with his estranged daughter after she has become famous. Sheridan will play the girl's stage mother. Elsewhere, Neal McDonough (Desperate Housewives) has been cast opposite Virginia Madsen in ABC's dramedy series Scoundrels, based on Kiwi series Outrageous Fortune. He'll play the patriarch of a family of career criminals who is sentenced to a prison term, which prompts his wife (Madsen) to push her family onto the straight and narrow. (Hollywood Reporter)

More pilot castings: Rachael Leigh Cook (Psych) has taken the female lead in FOX comedy pilot Nevermind Nirvana; Sean Faris (The Vampire Diaries) has landed the lead in Amy Sherman Palladino's untitled Wyoming project for the CW; Jere Burns (Surviving Surburia) will star opposite Laurie Metcalf in FOX comedy pilot Strange Brew (also cast: Aya Cash, Skylar Astin, and Mo Mandel); and Charles Dutton (Oz), Lea Thompson (Caroline in the City), and Jeff Davis have joined the cast of TBS pilot Uncle Nigel, opposite Gary Cole and Matt Jones. (Hollywood Reporter)

Variety's Jon Weisman explores the graduation hurdles facing Glee, given its locked-in high school timeline. "From the moment it became clear the Fox musical comedy would survive its first season, another dilemma emerged," writes Weisman. "Set in high school, Glee now faces a ticking clock that some in its genre have found energizing, others confounding." Weisman looks at other series that have faced the same situation, including Friday Night Lights, One Tree Hill, Beverly Hills 90210, and Gossip Girl. (Variety)

Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City, Men in Trees) has joined Showtime's upcoming Laura Linney-led comedy series The Big C as an executive producer/showrunner. Also coming on board: Michael Engler as co-executive producer. (Hollywood Reporter)

Take with a (very large) grain of salt: British tabloid The Sun is reporting that Gavin & Stacey's James Corden has been cast in a role on Season Five of Doctor Who, citing an unnamed source within the production. (via Digital Spy)

ABC Family has renewed drama series Greek for a fourth season of ten episodes, set to air later this year. (Variety, Hollywood Reporter)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Jake McLaughlin (Crash) has been cast in an upcoming episode of ABC's Grey's Anataomy, where he will play Aaron, the estranged brother of Justin Chamber's Alex who arrives at Seattle Grace as a patient. "The family reunion is rather momentous," writes Ausiello. "This will mark the first time viewers will be meeting a member of Alex’s troubled clan." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

FOX has yanked reincarnation drama Past Life off of its schedule, effective immediately. The low-rated drama will be replaced on Thursday nights with new episodes of Kitchen Nightmares for the next three weeks and then repeats of Fringe beginning March 18th. (The latter returns with new episodes on April 1st.) FOX, for its part, says that it will air the remaining unaired episodes of Past Life at some point during the season, most likely during summer... but seeing is believing, really. (The Wrap's TV MoJoe)

Elsewhere at the network, FOX has given a pilot order to animated comedy Brickleberry, which revolves around a group of forest rangers at a struggling park. Project, from 20th Century Fox Television and Fox21, will feature the voices of Dave Herman, Tom Kenny, and Carlos Alazraqui. it is written/executive produced by Waco O'Guin and Roger Black of MTV's Stankervision. (Variety)

Lack of casting has prompted ABC to shelve its comedy pilot Women Are Crazy, Men Are Stupid, based on Howard Morris and Jenny Lee's book. The project was picked up to pilot in December but lack of movement have led ABC to roll over the project to next year's pilot season, at which time it could resurrect the project. (Hollywood Reporter)

And 20th Century Fox Television has pulled out of FOX drama pilot Worthy, leaving the status of the project up in the air. (Futon Critic)

Scripps Networks' Fine Living will morph into the Cooking Channel at the end of May and will present culinary-themed programming featuring the likes of Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, and Emeril Lagasse. (Variety)

NBC has teamed up with Procter & Gamble on two-hour telepic The Jensen Project, which would star Kellie Martin, Brady Smith, Patricia Richardson, and LeVar Burton. "Set in 1988, it revolves around 12 geniuses who move to an isolated spot in the Allegheny Mountains to form the Jensen Project," writes The Hollywood Reporter's Nellie Andreeva. "For 20 years, the group spend their time inventing ways to fix the world's problems and then share their discoveries freely and anonymously with the world. But when a few decide to take their latest invention, cash in and make names for themselves, it launches a cross-country race as the others try to stop them." (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Channel Surfing: Ex-Castaway Returns to "Lost," NBC Targets "Nine Lives," Jay Harrington is "Nathan," CW Spies "Nomads," and More

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing.

SPOILER! Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Jensen and Dan Snierson are reporting that Maggie Grace is set to reprise her role as Shannon Rutherford on ABC's Lost later this season in an unspecified number of episodes. "We’re really excited about having her back on the show," showrunner/executive producer Carlton Cuse told EW.com, "and we have a good story for her." Grace joins fellow former cast members Ian Somerhalder, Harold Perrineau, Cynthia Watros, and Rebecca Mader, all of whom are set to return to Lost this season. Sadly, Malcolm David Kelley will be the only original cast member not returning. [Editor: Grace has been the center of several conflicting reports about her possible return or non-return, so this confirmation should finally put those to bed.] (Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch)

Looks like Nine Lives found another one. The twelve-hour mini-series from executive producer Steven Spielberg and writer Les Bohem had been set up at Syfy back in 2007 but has now found another shot at NBC, where it will be rewritten as a direct-to-series project. Nine Lives, which will be executive produced by Spielberg, Bohem, Justin Falvey, and Darryl Frank, follows "a group of people who find a way to reunite with their loved ones in the afterlife through near-death experiences, but those journeys unleash an evil force." Could NBC be viewing this as a possible replacement for Heroes? Hmmm... (Hollywood Reporter)

Bad news for Better Off Ted fans: there's another nail in the series' potential coffin as series lead Jay Harrington has signed on to topline NBC comedy pilot Nathan vs. Nurture. Harrington will play the titular character, a heart surgeon who uncovers his biological parents and a group of low-aiming siblings. Project, from Sony Pictures Television, is written and executive produced by David Guarascio and Moses Port and directed by James Burrows. Harrington's casting is said to be in second position to Better Off Ted, but it's sadly thought unlikely that the ABC workplace comedy series will be renewed for a third season. (Variety)

The CW has ordered a pilot presentation for action-adventure drama Nomads from writer/director Ken Sanzel (NUMB3RS) and executive producers Ridley and Tony Scott. Project, which will be jointly produced by CBS Television Studios and Warner Bros. Television, follows "a group of young backpackers who find a way to make some extra money by doing secret missions for the C.I.A." (Variety)

NBC has ordered single-camera romantic comedy pilot Friends with Benefits, which had previously been set up at ABC. Project, from 20th Century Fox Television, (500) Days of Summer writers Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, and Wedding Crashers director David Dobkins, revolves around five friends in search of love who settle for friendships with benefits. (Variety)

Pilot casting round-up: Ben Rappaport has been cast as the lead on the NBC comedy pilot Outsourced; Donald Faison (Scrubs) has come on board CBS comedy pilot The Odds, where he will play a lead homicide detective; Autumn Reeser (Entourage) has joined the cast of ABC superhero drama pilot No Ordinary Family, where she will play a lab assistant; Todd Stashwick (The Riches) has been cast in ABC's untitled Dana Gould comedy, where he'll play a "former college football superstar now married with four kids and down on his luck"; and Natalie Martinez (Sons of Tucson) has joined the cast of ABC drama pilot 187 Detroit. (Hollywood Reporter)

Courtney Thorne-Smith has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc on CBS comedy Two and a Half Men. She'll play Lindsay, described as "a girlfriend for Alan (Jon Cryer) who is a deeply neurotic, recently divorced mother of a rotten 16-year-old boy." (Hollywood Reporter)

While Top Gear isn't heading to NBC, it could still be headed for US screens... on the History channel. History is said to be in talks to acquire the US format for the hit British series, according to The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd. (Hollywood Reporter)

Spike has ordered a pilot for single-camera comedy Back Nine, which will star John Schneider (Smallville) as a former U.S. Open champion who has hit rock bottom and "travels the country competing in small-time tournaments with Tiger, his sex-addicted longtime caddy, in order to qualify again for the PGA Tour." Project is written and directed by Jason Filardi and Mark Perez, who will executive produce with John Lynch. Miguel Nunez is currently in talks to come on board in the role of Tiger. (Hollywood Reporter)

Verizon FiOS subscribers will be the first to check out HBO's new online streaming service, HBO Go, which offers more than 600 hours of programming, while Comcast subscribers will be able to access the same programming via the cable provider's Fancast service. (Hollywood Reporter)

UK viewers will be able to finally see the Nathan Fillion-led ABC crime dramedy Castle, thanks to a deal between ABC Studios and UKTV crime channel Alibi, which has picked up the exclusive UK rights for the first two seasons of Castle. (Broadcast)

The CW is developing two reality projects, including an untitled docusoap from Ryan Seacrest Prods. that will follow celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson as she keeps celebrities fit. [Editor: While Anderson's client roster includes Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson, and Courteney Cox, I'd be amazed if any of them opts to appear on screen.] Also in development: Lost Weekend, a scavenger hunt-style competition series from executive producers Brett Ratner and Justin Hochberg. (Hollywood Reporter)

Cable network TLC has reached an undisclosed settlement with Jon Gosselin for the breach of contract lawsuit they had brought against the former Jon & Kate Plus 8 star. (Gosselin later countersued the network.) The terms of the settlement are being kept confidential. (Variety)

Nickelodeon has ordered a second season of kid-focused game show BrainSurge, with 40 episodes on tap for this summer. (Variety)

More layoffs at Sony Pictures Television in the current department: VP Debra Curtis and manager Rose Lee have been let go as part of a corporate restructure under which 450 employees will be let go from across all of Sony Pictures Entertainment divisions. (The sole remaining current executive? John Westphal.) Many are taking the layoffs as a sign that the studio will shift current responsibilities to the development teams. (Hollywood Reporter)

The Daily Show's Stewart Bailey has been named the new executive producer of NBC's latenight talk show Last Call With Carson Daly. He replaces David Friedman, who has left to take a position with CBS' The Early Show. (Variety)

Warner Horizon has signed a deal with John De Mol's Talpa Media to develop reality series for US broadcast and cable networks that are based on the shingle's Dutch formats. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Balancing the Scales: The Allegory of the Cave on "Lost"

"Don't tell me what I can't do!" - John Locke

Last night's powerful and evocative episode of Lost ("The Substitute"), written by Elizabeth Sarnoff and Melinda Hsu Taylor and directed by Tucker Gates, focused on two very different incarnations of John Locke, one that has been co-opted by the enigmatic Man in Black and the other who never crashed on the island and therefore never gained his defining faith in the mysteries of the universe.

Last night's installment not only offered us a study of Locke in life and in death, but also provided some tangible answers about some of the series' most enduring mysteries, including the nature of the recurring numbers, the relationship between Jacob and the Man in the Black, and why these specific people have been brought to the island.

So, what did I think of last night's episode of Lost? Turn on some Iggy Pop, pour yourself a whiskey, hold on to that rope ladder, and let's discuss "The Substitute."

With the end of Lost fast approaching, I thought that last night's episode provided perhaps the single most illuminating episode in quite some time, paying off the promises made by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about answering some of the big questions that the five seasons of the series have kicked up.

One of the central conflicts within the series has been that between Jack's man of science and Locke's man of faith, a struggle in itself between free will and fate, and between coincidence and design. Did the castaways crash on this island for a particular reason? Were they called forth for a purpose? Is it part and parcel of their larger destiny?

John Locke has been a character at the heart of these discussions, a man who received the blessing of the island and was brought back to life by a spiritual resurrection that saw the island give him the returned use of his legs. This gift was proof of a larger miracle, the miracle of the island itself, and Locke was its central believer, the keeper of its mysteries, and the prime candidate for the role of protector.

It was, after all, no accident that these particular people ended up on the island. Jacob selected several of them, approaching them at difficult times in their life and bestowing his blessing with a touch. As we've already seen at the end of last season, Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid, Locke, and Jin and Sun each received a calling from Jacob (along with Ilana, it was revealed earlier this season, though she was specifically not touched by Jacob). It had been divined that these people would make their way to the island and had been claimed by Jacob as possible candidates.

Candidates for what exactly, though? We'll get to that in a little bit. Last week, I brought up Aristotle's Four Causes and this week it's Plato's teachings that hover over the action here this week on Lost, vis-a-vis his Allegory of the Cave. (Rather funnily, I discussed just Plato's Allegory of the Cave with The Prisoner screenwriter Bill Gallagher here in regard to the AMC miniseries, which also dealt with layers of reality, perception, and the subconscious.)

Plato had offered an allegory or metaphor for the clouding of perception as it relates to the world around us. Here's a very simplified breakdown of the allegory: a group of men are imprisoned within a cave and are forced to watch a series of shadows on the wall. These shadows are produced by a fire but the prisoners begin to describe the forms that the shadows take and begin to believe that they are real, given that they have no means of seeing the truth. Like the castaways, these prisoners are able to escape the cave but when faced with the reality of the world, they believe that the shadows are "real" and the objects that cast them are not. The sunlight would be blinding as the prisoners' eyes had grown accustomed to see in the darkness of the cave. But the prisoners would adapt and eventually see the truth of the world around them... and would then have to return to the cave to tell the others of the truth and to force their eyes open.

Hmmm... Like in the allegory of the cave, several of the castaways were imprisoned, released, and returned. Some of them still believe in the shadows and others are determined to reveal the foolishness of their beliefs. But this is Lost and some of those shadows are very, very real, and very dangerous.

Smokey. I thought it was a brilliant stroke to have the opening of the episode unfold from the perspective of the smoke monster. Lost, after all, deals quite a lot with the nature of perception, with the way that we view our pasts and our destinies. Only fitting then that the Man in Black/Smoke Monster would get an episode that begins with his journey through the island landscape as we see the world through his/its eyes, as it pauses outside Sawyer's old house at the Barracks (loved the reflection in the window) before finding a machete with which to cut down Richard Alpert.

It's interesting that the Man in Black feels the need to open Richard's eyes in particular... and that while he has no compunction about injuring Richard, he doesn't seem to want to kill him. He believes that Richard has been foolishly following all of Jacob's commands without knowing WHY, trusting in the shadows of the cave wall without seeing just who and what is casting them. But Richard, like Locke, is a man of faith, trusting in the instructions he's been given without needing to know the reasons behind them.

Which makes me wonder just how and why Richard Alpert has been kept alive this long and by whose hand. He has served Jacob faithfully for centuries and would appear to have been "recruited" by him to advise and guide the Others, a group of people who live on the island but who recently, through an as yet undisclosed reason, are unable to reproduce and therefore need to recruit new members to their ranks through other means.

Was Richard a former candidate turned chalice-bearer for Jacob? Had he too been selected by Jacob before he arrived on the island? Is he protected from action against him as seemingly the other candidates are? I'd say... no to both.

The Boy in the Jungle. Just who is it that Smokey sees in the jungle and why can't Richard Alpert see him? Answer: another incarnation of Jacob. Unlike the Man in Black, who appears to be confined to the island, Jacob exists in multiple incarnations and within multiple levels of time and space, able to appear on the island, off-island, and in various guises, such as the teenage boy (his arms covered in blood) glimpsed here and the old man that Locke saw within the cabin. Smokey can see him because he is aware of Jacob and has already seen him in various guises.

Sawyer, likewise, can see the boy because he had been visited by Jacob and had been blessed by him. (I'd also guess that the others whom Jacob had visited would also be able to see this presence.) Given that Richard can't, I'd therefore say that Richard isn't a candidate and didn't receive Jacob's "blessing." He isn't within the circle of protection that's afforded to those in Jacob's coterie.

Even more interesting is that Smokey appears to be quite afraid when the boy appears. Since Smokey has often been the one casting the shadows, isn't only fair that he's on the receiving end for a change? And couldn't it mean that some of the spirits we've glimpsed on the series might not be manifestations of Smokey but of Jacob? Hmmm...

What Can't He Do? Only fitting that the man wearing John Locke's skin should yell at the figure, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" But the response is in reference to the boy's statement that the Man in Black can't "kill him." So who is the him in this sentence? Sawyer, of course. The Smoke Monster has killed many people on the island but has never lifted a hand against those candidates whom Jacob selected. Given that Saywer is one of those candidates (and is protected by the numbers), he's untouchable and killing Sawyer is off limits to the Man in Black...

Yet the Man in Black DOES move to save Sawyer's life when he nearly falls off the rope and bamboo ladder on the cliffside. Could it be that he can't kill him but also can't let him die either? If that's the case, why is it so essential for the candidates to be protected within the Temple? Not because they'll be killed by the Man in Black but because they might be recruited by him?

Locke-X. While the Man in Black is using Locke's form on the island, we're also given a glimpse into another version of John Locke, one who never had the chance to claim his destiny. Returning from Sydney without having convinced the excursion company to allow him on the walkabout, Locke comes home to his fiancee Helen and some very different circumstances in his life. For one, Anthony Cooper doesn't appear to be the cause of Locke's paralysis as he had been in the other reality. (Otherwise, Locke wouldn't have been so open to inviting him to the wedding or their possible elopement, nor would Helen have suggested it in the first place.) It also appears that he never split from Helen and the two were planning their nuptials... and that he went to Sydney on the pretense of attending a conference and used his company's money to finance his airfare to Australia, where he promptly ditched the conference and attempted to go on a walkabout.

This fact is quickly discovered by the loathsome Randy, who fires Locke. But despite the fact that Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed, these castaways are still bound by invisible strings. While he ultimately decides not to call Jack for a free consult, Locke nevertheless crosses paths with two other would-be castaways in the form of Hurley, who owns the box company where Locke had been employed, and Rose, who oversees a temp agency (also owned by Hurley) where Locke is sent for a new job. (Rose, meanwhile, still has terminal cancer but is attempting to live the life she has left. It's a moment of epiphany for Locke when she reveals this.)

Locke is so focused on proving everyone wrong about his condition that he isn't thinking about what is right for him, what's suitable, and what will be worthwhile. The job that Locke eventually gets is that of substitute teacher. Given the episode title, it's not only a fitting employment prospect but also refers to several other current situations currently ensnaring John Locke in multiple realities. There's a man with his face running around the island but he's an impostor, a substitute. Likewise, Locke would have appeared to have been the prime candidate for ascending and replacing Jacob but his death has axed him from the running, leading the PTB to find a substitute, another candidate. Curious that.

I'm also intrigued by Locke's decision not to seek a cure for his condition. He wants Helen to accept him for who he is, in the state he's in, and says that he doesn't believe in miracles. It's a diametrically opposite position to the Locke in the mainstream reality and one that will likely have some severe consequences down the road.

Ben-X. The real stunner, however, is that Ben is a teacher at the school where Locke receives his substitute teaching gig. First of all, I think it's absolutely perfect that Benjamin Linus would be an anal European History teacher at a high school and would chastise his colleagues for not cleaning out the used coffee grinds from the machine. (How absolutely perfect.) But I am scratching my head about how Ben is in this reality as he should have drowned on the island when The Incident occurred as he wasn't one of the children aboard the submarine when it departed before The Incident. Hmmm... Could it be that Ben himself is somehow protected and that someone--or something--course-corrected in order to ensure that Ben would be alive within this divergent reality? Or is it that the castaways' actions produced many significant changes under the surface? Curious... Let's hope these two become fast friends.

Ben. The Ben in the other reality, however, offered a few words at the impromptu burial of John Locke in the little cemetery by the castaway's old beach home. (Interesting that the men here--Ben and Frank--were wearing white shirts, while the women--Sun and Ilana--had on black shirts. Balance, as always.) He admitted that Locke was a better man that he would ever be and that he had murdered him, an admission that doesn't seem to shock the others too much. Does anyone else feel that Locke and Ben were perhaps the two men most suited to taking over for Jacob and the Man in Black? Notice that he's less than forthcoming about the fact that he killed Jacob, instead pinning the blame on the Locke lookalike.

(Aside: am also intrigued by the fact that Ilana scooped up the ash that was left behind after Jacob's corpse went up in flames. Is this the same ash--the remnants of the protector--that they have been using to block out the Man in Black from certain locations?)

Sawyer. Poor Sawyer, meanwhile, ends up stuck with the Man in Black after he's been living in his own filth and swigging whiskey for days in the home he once shared with Juliet. But Sawyer's no fool and the Man in Black should know better than to con a con man; Sawyer knows straightaway that he's not John Locke and asks "what" he is. While he doesn't get an answer, he's willing to embark on a journey to get some answers about why he's on the island, even when he's warned otherwise by Richard Alpert. Loved that he pulled a gun on Fake Locke but I'm also glad that he didn't fire, given what happened to Ilana's team.

But the Man in Black would seem to share some qualities with Sawyer himself. He says that he was a man once too, a man like Sawyer, and that he too lost someone he loved. (Hmmm...) It would therefore appear that both Jacob and the Man in Black didn't always serve in their positions and had taken over for people before them. Which made me think once more of the corpses that have been described as "Adam and Eve." (Remember the black and white stones accompanying their bodies?) Were these failed candidates? Previous protectors whose bodies seemingly decayed at an infinitesimal rate over time? (Or, under the same circumstances, the loved ones of Jacob and the Man in Black?)

The Cave. On the edge of the island, there lies a cave (aha, Plato again!), which I thought might have been the home of the Man in Black but it's something else entirely. It's here that the MiB takes Sawyer to show him the truth about his purpose on the island and it contains a scale on which sit a large white stone and a large black stone but the scales are tipped over to the black side when the Man in Black throws the white stone into the sea, an "inside joke" that nonetheless could also represent Jacob's recent death at the hands of Ben. But the front room with its Libra-like scales isn't what he wants Sawyer to see... Rather it's the walls of the darkened cave behind, which contains many, many crossed-out names, some unknown and some quite familiar.

The Candidates and The Numbers. Among those not crossed out, several passengers aboard Oceanic Flight 815, including those who were visited by Jacob: Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Kwon (though whether it was Jin or Sun is unclear), Hurley, and Locke. These individuals would seem to be candidates to replace Jacob, to take his place on the island and serve his purpose: to protect the island from harm, to keep the scale balanced and preserve the delicate relationship between good and evil. Jacob can travel off-island and wants to protect it; The Man in Black is bound to the island and wants to leave. Their cross-purposes once more create an equilibrium, maintaining the balance. Jacob's death however has tipped the scales towards the black. So, will one of these people succeed Jacob now that he's died? And what makes them more or less a better candidate than the others?

Each of the castaways whose names appear on the cave wall have a number assigned to them:

4 - John Locke
8 - Hugo Reyes
15 - James Ford
16 - Sayid Jarrah
23 - Jack Shephard
42 - Kwon

Those numbers, of course, correspond to the so-called cursed numbers that have encircled the story since the very first episode. The Man in Black said that Jacob had "a thing for numbers" and, interestingly, the names that are crossed out (other than Locke's, which the Man in Black draws a line through) correlate to numbers that aren't these cursed (or perhaps blessed numbers). Curious, that.

A few things jumped out at me here. For one, it's interesting that the Man in Black isn't sure whether Kwon refers to either Jin or Sun. I'm thinking that might be because it could refer to them as a single unit and that their duality represents a sense of balance, their fates inexorably bound together. Which could mean that something is intentionally keeping the two apart and that there was a specific reason why Sun did not travel into the past with the other members of the Oceanic Six, a reason that is connected with keeping the couple as separate as possible. There's also another possibility: that Kwon doesn't refer to them at all but rather their offspring, Ji-Yeon, who is also a Kwon... but isn't on the island. (Neither is Aaron, though, and I'd think he'd be a prime candidate.)

I'm also concerned by the fact that, despite Jacob contacting both Kate and Ilana in the same fashion as the others, neither of their names is glimpsed on the wall and neither has been given a number that correlates with one of Jacob's favored numbers. While the Kwon entry is vague and ambiguous, the other names all refer to men rather than women. It is possible that only men can act as substitutes for Jacob and the Man in Black once they are released from their obligations, despite the fact that Kate and Ilana were seemingly selected for a purpose by Jacob. Unless, of course, they have another position to fill... Ilana, as mentioned above, was visited by Jacob but not touched, which means she could be a foot soldier in his employ but not a candidate. But what does that mean about Kate? Hmmm...

Which brings us to the crossroads at the end of the episode. Sawyer can take one of three possible paths: he can do nothing and see how things turn out; he can take over for Jacob and protect the island (which the Man in Black says doesn't need to be protected); or he can leave the island with the Man in Black.

Sawyer chooses the latter, which makes me very nervous indeed because if leaving the island were simple, the Man in Black would have done so a long time ago and he would appear to be imprisoned here. Does he need the choice of one of Jacob's candidates in order to flee? And what would his arrive off of his floating island prison mean for the rest of the world?

All in all, a fantastic episode that provided some much needed answers to some central mysteries on the series and made me anxious for next Tuesday evening already. Especially intriguing: next week's episode marks the series' 108th hour. Given the importance of the numbers (which, as we all know, add up to 108), I can't help but feel that next week's episode will be a hell of a ride. Buckle up, Lost fans.

What did you think of this week's episode? What are your theories about what's going on? Agree or disagree with the above. Discuss.

Next week on Lost ("Lighthouse"), Hurley must convince Jack to accompany him on an unspecified mission and Jin stumbles across an old friend.

The Darkness Within: Claimed By Another on "Lost"

Lost has always been about patterns: the causality of our actions and who we become (seen via the series' trademark flashbacks), the sense that a group of strangers are connected by invisible threads linking them together, and the sense that we might be locked into various behaviors, regardless of the timestream.

Last night's episode of Lost ("What Kate Does"), written by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis and directed by Paul Edwards, points to this very phenomenon as the castaways are once again captured by the Others and held against their will (this time at the Temple rather than the bear cages) while certain events are once more coming together for what I've dubbed the Lost-X group members.

Destiny is, let's remember, a fickle bitch and clearly has a sense of humor as well. While Kate might be determined to flee Marshall Edward Mars, convinced of her innocence, she's once more pulled back into the orbit of those who were on Oceanic Flight 815, whether or not the plane crashed or landed safely in Los Angeles. Try as she might to go it alone, she finds herself connected once more to her fellow castaways. After all, just because you didn't crash, doesn't mean you're not cast adrift.

So what did I think of this week's episode? Get out your mortar and pestle, heat up an iron poker, cuddle with your stuffed orca, and let's discuss "What Kate Does."

The episode's title is clearly meant to recall the Season Two episode "What Kate Did," in which we learn just what crime Kate is guilty of and in which she would appear to be "haunted" by a vision of a black horse. In this week's episode of Lost, however, Kate's past actions--whether they be murder, assault, and theft--matter less than her actions in the present. Throughout the series, we've been told that we are the sum of our actions, a very Aristotelian belief that posits that our state at any given time is comprised of our past actions, a moral equation that takes into account every single behavior that has come before.

But Aristotle also posited that there were four causes that comprised causality itself: a material cause (what an object is made out of), a formal cause (an idea or thought about an object; its shape and essence), the efficient cause (an agent of change or movement or rest), and the final cause (the object's purpose). The change effected by causation could be intentional or accidental.

It's interesting, however, to note the importance of the agent of change itself in a series that deals with metaphysical entities such as Jacob and The Man in Black. If we choose to use Aristotle's Four Causes as a way of investigating Lost itself, it provides a rubric for taking the characters through their journey, however intentional the causes would be. After all, Jacob selected these specific individuals for his mission: he has a purpose in mind for them (the final cause) and has intervened on their behalf to push them into place (the efficient cause), moving them about the board with a grand purpose in mind.

But while Aristotle may have believed that we are the sum of our past actions, that's not entirely true when looking at the Lost-X universe. Because certain elements of the equation have been changed (Oceanic Flight 815 didn't crash), the outcome appears on the surface to have been altered. But the final cause of any object--its intrinsic purpose--may affect all of the other causes, after all. It's not the past actions that matter here but the ones unfolding in the present tense. (It's a sentiment echoed by the title. What's important is not what Kate did, but what she does now.)

In other words: Kate's sole purpose in life is to flee, regardless of which reality she's in. Her status as international fugitive hasn't changed, even if the circumstances of her crime have been altered. Her mission is to get away: from her small town, from the law, from herself. But in the Lost-X reality, she doesn't flee. Faced with the identity of her hostage (a very pregnant Claire) after seeing the contents of her suitcase (which contained a stuffed orca identical to the one Aaron had in 2007 Los Angeles), Kate does something uncharacteristic: she goes back. Despite her circumstances, Kate is therefore a "good" individual, one whose moral compass points to true north, even if she's forced out of self-preservation to do something that might go against her moral code.

But it's not self-preservation that compels Kate to find Claire once more and return what she took from her: it's a sense of altruism and perhaps a tug on that invisible thread connecting them. Just as Kate helped Claire through her difficult pregnancy on the island, so too does Lost-X Kate help this world's Claire. (Every good turn receives another in kind: Claire shields Kate, or "Joan Hart," from the police when they question her in the hospital.) Likewise, Claire still does cross paths with Ethan, here OB-GYN Ethan Goodspeed, who is just as interested in the health of Claire's unborn baby but here appears altruistic and benevolent, worried about injecting her with drugs in a way that the regular timestream Ethan had no compunctions about.

Claire names her baby Aaron for no other reason than the name popped into her head and she "knew" it was his name. (Interesting that, it seems to be generated by the same sense of frisson that passed between Kate and Jack as he stood on the pavement outside LAX. Aside: also loved Artz's shout-out to Midnight Cowboy with "I'm walkin' here!") Kate tells Claire that she should keep Aaron and raise him herself, echoing the prophecy that warned Claire about letting someone else raise Aaron. These are patterns that echo but don't reproduce those on the island. Claire and Aaron aren't separated--at least not yet--but the fact that Claire has crossed paths with Ethan is also interesting. (I was waiting for Dr. Juliet Burke to show up as well, but it's far more likely that Kate will have to deliver this baby herself.)

In other words: there are many, many similarities between these two worlds but there are also many differences. It's also clear that these two timelines aren't unfolding at precisely the same points in history; Claire's ultrasound reads October 22nd, 2004, which is a month AFTER Oceanic's crash in the other timeline. Things have been altered; Ethan escaped the island on the sub before "The Incident" and was never raised by the Others. The plane didn't crash because there was no island for it to crash onto. If that's the case, then I can't help but wonder if the timelines will become increasingly similar or increasingly dissimilar, given the lack of influence Jacob and the Man in Black hold over the castaways.

Back on the island, Jack and the other captives of the Others at the Temple struggle to figure out just what happened to Sayid after he was placed in the murky pool and regained consciousness after being, well, dead. I'm still intrigued by just what Miles "heard" during the moments before Sayid was seemingly resurrected; his behavior towards Sayid is odd and standoffish, as though he knows more than he's letting on. Sayid is tortured by Dogen, who calls blowing ash on him, electrocuting him, and burning him with a red-hot poker a "test" that he claims Sayid has passed. (The ash here is also extremely significant, given its propensity for keeping the smoke monster at bay.)

But not quite: Dogen attempts to convince Jack to give Sayid a pill containing "medicine" that will make him better. He says that Sayid has become "infected" (that word again!) and that a darkness is growing within him. But the pill isn't medicine but poison, a fact that Jack learns after he calls Dogen's bluff and attempts to swallow it himself. Clearly, Dogen is afraid of what Sayid has inside of him and wants to kill him once more before the infection spreads. If it reaches his heart, he will no longer be Sayid... and Dogen has seen this happen before: to Claire.

The return of the infection is interesting and significant. Dogen spoke of great risk involved in attempting to heal Sayid using the pool, which wasn't clear but rather murky and tinged with red. We know that this was the same method by which Ben was saved as a child after Sayid shot him and Kate and Sawyer took him to the Temple to be saved. What if the pool isn't just a pool with mystical healing abilities but a form of cosmic judgment: the inverse of the black smoke? It saves but with a cost: the victim's soul, should its actions be judged more bad than good. After all, Sayid was a torturer, an assassin, and a would-be child-killer. Could it be that the pool judged him and the darkness claimed him?

One problem with that theory: Dogen says that Claire herself had been "claimed" by the darkness as well. Back in Season Four, it did seem as though Claire had been mortally injured when Keamy's men attacked the Barracks and before she wandered off into the night, leaving behind Aaron and eventually turning up with her father in Jacob's cabin. But was Claire ever placed in the pool? Not that we had seen but how else would Dogen know about the darkness within Claire? And, after all, Claire's past actions didn't involve murder or torture. Hmmm...

But Claire does seem to have undergone a massive transformation of her own. The final shot of the episode finds a wounded Jin, pursued by Aldo (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Rob McElhenney appearing for the first time since Season Three!) and Justin, gazing up at a mud-smeared Claire, looking for all intents and purposes like Danielle Rousseau. Given that Rousseau has been dead for three years, it's clear that the many traps that pepper the island belong not to her but to Claire. Is her behavior motivated by the darkness within her or was she able to fight against this infection, just as Danielle did before her? After all, it's Rousseau who says that her team--Montand and the others--were infected after they went into the wall of the Temple. Did they find the pool? Were they infected by the smoke monster? Intriguing...

Meanwhile, Sawyer fled the Temple to head back to the Barracks, pursued by Kate, Jin, Aldo, and Justin under Dogen's orders. Dogen wants all of them safe behind the Temple's walls--after all they were chosen by Jacob for a special purpose--and sends them out to retrieve Sawyer. Jin and Kate have different motives for going. Kate wants to escape (that old story) and Jin wants to find Sun, as she was aboard Ajira Flight 316 when it crashed on the island. Loved that Aldo was furious that Kate didn't remember him after she knocked him unconscious with the butt of her rifle... and proceeds to do the same this time around. But Jin's question, "Who do you care about, Kate?" leaves Kate with little choice: she has to find Sawyer.

Sawyer, for his part, has returned to the closest thing he can call "home," the house he shared with Juliet, where secreted beneath the floorboards is an engagement ring he intended to give to Juliet. I loved the scene between Sawyer and Kate on the ferry dock, in which Kate expressed her guilt for Juliet's death (if they had escaped on the sub, none of this would have happened), but it's Sawyer whose guilt is greater, as he says that he convinced Juliet to stay. He throws the ring into the ocean and tells Kate to get back to the Temple before nightfall.

It's interesting that Kate says that she came back to the island to find Claire and reunite her with Aaron, given that her actions in the Lost-X timeline result in Claire and Aaron not being separated in the first place. Could it be that the Lost-X timeline is more connected to the main timeline than we thought? Is it an opportunity to undo wrongs and put things into the proper places, a metaphysical tabula rasa where old ideas and actions matter less than the choices we make in the present?

What did you think of this week's episode? Did you find it frustrating not to catch up with Locke, Ben, Sun, and the Fake Locke? Were you happy to explore more of the Lost-X universe? Just what is going on with Sayid and Claire? And how does Dogen fit into the bigger picture? Discuss.

Next week on Lost ("The Substitute"), Locke goes in search of those who would help his cause.