Locke and Roll - Lost

Lost – The Substitute

SPOILERS

In the alt-verse, Locke is fired and goes job hunting - don’t worry it’s 2004, long before the Great Recession, so he’ll find a job easy. He’ll just lose it in 2007/2008, then his home in 2008/2009. Until then, No worries!

On the island (in 2007) Fake-Locke/MIB (should that be MIS: Man in Smoke?) takes a boozing Sawyer from his home and goes house hunting, or rather hunting for Jacob’s summer home. Sawyer doesn’t have to worry about the Smoke Monster since Fake-Locke IS Smokey (though Sawyer doesn’t know this); he just has to worry about climbing down a sheer cliff with rickety old bamboo and rope ladders. No worries!

Today being Ash Wednesday, Illana thoughtfully scoops some of Jacob’s ashes from the pit that Fake-Locke pushed him into. And Ben gives a great off the cuff eulogy at Locke’s island funeral.

I’m still not sold on the flash-sideways alternate universe storylines. It just seems to be a lot of set up. The general consensus is the two storylines/universes will converge at some point and become one story, one timeline. I know, when sideways Locke looses his home in the mortgage crisis, he’ll end up in a van down by the river, and the river will remind him of the island and BAM! Emeril Lagasse will show up as the REAL Jacob and take Locke back to Gilligan, I mean, Jack and company.

The Smokey Monster/MIB/MIS/Fake-Locke (Jesus!) POV shots as it raced all over the island were very reminiscent of Sam Raimi’s energetic camerawork on Evil Dead. I wonder if the crew even did it the same way Sam did by screwing a camera to some 2 x 4s and careening around with it. Have to wait until the DVD to find out I guess.

The cursed numbers make another appearance, matching up with most of our island-bound heroes (except for the numbers’ sum, which could mean Kate or the missing half of the Kwons, Jin or Sun). Though why there was a scale and two matching stones (one black, one white) in Jacob’s in-cliff retreat was a little puzzling. Isn’t that just too “on the nose” with the scales of justice and the balance of good and evil and all that good stuff? How will the writers turn that inside out? And we get ANOTHER freaky person/apparition in the jungle. It’s been a while, but what the hay.

So far, everything seems peachy in the sideways universe. Kate is still wanted for murder, but she helped Claire, and is on the lam. Claire - who’s cries of “My bay-bee!” was the second most irritating thing after Michael’s near-constant cries of “WAAAAALT!” (which made up 87% of that character’s dialogue while on the show) – is still in one happy piece. Jack’s daddy issues don’t seem to be as weighty. And Locke is now friends with a multimillionaire chicken franchise owner and is successfully working as a substitute teacher. Perhaps sideways Sawyer’s still stuck in the LAX elevator, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough what his “new” life is like.

Dudes, we've only got 14 episodes left. Let's kick this sucker into high gear, shall we?