Lost - "Namaste"

Before we begin, I just want to give a quick shout-out to Lost's new lead-in: Better Off Ted. 30 Rock its not, but I thought it was a charming half hour with some solid laughs and an inspired performance by Portia de Rossi (always the most underrated Bluth). With that out of the way, off we go.

This week's episode was mostly about doting the Is and crossing the Ts on some loose ends while sliding everyone into place for what's about to happen. We started with Ajira 316 again, as Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sayid flashed off the plane. Lapidus, meanwhile, guided the flight to a conveniently located landing strip (one that, if you'll remember, Sawyer and Kate helped the Others build during everyone's favorite storyline). It was nice to see that pay off, and we'll go into it a little more below.

Once Lapidus landed the plane and everyone settled into place, Ben decided to bail on the Hydra Island and head for the big one instead. Sun followed him and Lapidus followed her, giving us a series of scenes that felt a little rushed. The ultimate upshot of all of this was that Frank and Sun stole a canoe (confirming what we suspected from "Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham") while Ben got thwacked on the head by Sun and left to be put with the other sick people by the Ajiras de facto leader: Cesar.

Meanwhile, Lapidus and Sun made it to the island where they first seemed to run into the monster. But then the monster quickly bailed (perhaps it realized Sun and Lapidus are supposed to be there?) and so they made their way to Dharmaville to reconnect with an old friend: Christian Shepard! Christian told them they had a bit of a journey ahead of them (to the Orchid?) and showed them a picture of Dharma's Class of 77: a group that included Jack, Kate, and Hurley. How'd that happen? Well, that was what the bulk of the episode was about.

30 years earlier, we pick up with Sawyer's tearful reunion with the gang. He learns that Locke is dead (as far as everyone knows). They learn that its 1977, the Dharma Initiative is alive and well, and Jin's English has gotten demonstrably better. Jin bails when he learns that Sun was on the plane and heads to the Flame.

At the Flame we finally meet Radzinsky who's only previous Lost appearance was as a stain on the wall of the Swan. He's also the person who drew the map on the wall. Here, we finally learned a little more about him. It turns out that he was involved in the construction of the Swan (that little geodesic dome model he was building even turns up in the orientation film) and he worked in the Flame. Jin wants him to look for the plane but they're about thirty years too early. What he finds instead, is a hostile. That hostile: Sayid, still handcuffed and wandering around a Dharma zone.

Meanwhile, Sawyer and Juliet scheme to get the A3 into the Dharma camp by jiggering the sub manifest. This is easier to do since Amy is the one in charge of the subs and she's a little busy with her new son. Her new son named Ethan. Elizabeth Mitchell has really been on these last few weeks, but one of her best moments so far was the subtle shift in her mood when she realized that she may have delivered a kid who grows up to be Ethan, tormentor of Claire and recruiter of Juliet. More on this below.

Sawyer rushed off to deal with the Sayid situation, while Jack, Kate, and Hurley went through arrival and orientation. The golden moment of this whole thing: Jack's meeting with Pierre Chau, who informed Jack that because of his scores on the aptitude test, he would be a janitor. In the shed. In a moment that showed just how far Jack has come, he didn't stand up and scream "JANITOR! DON'T YOU KNOW I'M A DOCTOR! I CAN FIX THIS!!!!" Meanwhile, Kate almost got into some hot water when her name wasn't on the manifest and the comedian from Mad Men started interrogating her. Juliet swooped in at the last minute, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn if she left Kate off intentionally, to show her who's boss.

Meanwhile, Sawyer went to the Flame and managed to talk Radzinsky down from killing Sayid...by getting Sayid to declare himself as a Hostile (Sayid, playing the part perfectly, "we do not refer to ourselves as 'hostile,' but yes, I am one of them"). Sayid went back to Dharmaville (a code 14-J, which sounded familiar to me. Was that the same alert that tipped off Ben that the mercenaries were coming in "The Shape of Things to Come?") and Sawyer locked him in their brig (shades of Henry Gale in season 2, more on that in a moment) before curing up with a book and a drink on his couch. Then he got a visit from Jack, who wanted to know why Sawyer wasn't running around and screaming at everyone in order to get Sayid out. Sawyer said he wanted to think about it a little more before acting and cattily reminded Jack that not everything he did went perfectly. Jack seems content to slide into the background a little bit and let Sawyer take over the reins for a little bit. But how long will it last? Already, it seems like the cracks are starting to appear in Sawyer's Dharma life.

But bringing it back to Henry Gale, Ben popped back in at the end, by which we mean the young, sad Dharma-era Ben. He wore Harry Potter style glasses and seemed intrigued by the hostile in their basement. The look on Sayid's face when the kid identified himself? Priceless. Its taken us a while to get here, but I think we're finally off to the races.

A-

Two quick notes:
First, the finale has a date and title. Airing on May 13 will be The Incident (Holy crap!), the two part, two hour season finale. Start planning those parties!

Second, no Lost finale viewing party would be complete without your very own Dharma jumpsuit. I don't need one. I don't really have the money to buy one. And yet, two months is a long time and I have very little will power...Also, that article has tips on how to relabel your snack food with Dharma labels. Awesome! Now, onto the Theorydown!

The Theory-Down
5. Where's Faraday? I'm sure we'll find out in a flashback, but for now we have to make due with Sawyer's cryptic declaration that he's "gone." My guess, he darted off and joined the Hostiles after unsuccessfully pleading with a young Charlotte Lewis not to come back to the island.

4. Changing the Future! So, Amy's baby is probably Ethan, the Other. This means that Ben wasn't the only Dharma survivor of the Purge. It also means that Amy always gave birth to that baby, which means she always survived that conflict with the Others and always hooked up with Horace. So it seems that the stuff in LaFleur didn't change the past at all. But, most importantly, this also means that Ethan is 29. Let's think about that for a moment. Here's William Mapother's picture to remind yourself. Goofy mistake or more Others' aging weirdness?

3. It was nice to see the landing strip come back. It would certainly appear that whoever decided to build that did so knowing that it would need to be there for Ajira 316 to land on it. Does Ben have some foreknowledge of the future? When Sun and Lapidus make it back, will they tell young Ben about it? Did Jacob order them to build it?

2. WHO THE F%*! IS THIS??? Scroll over the other right side of that picture and you'll see a woman in the background, totally unnoticed by Sun and Lapidus. Who? What? The most common theory is Claire, but she actually looks a little more like Charlotte to me. Another theory is that its just an errant stagehand. Whoever it is, SHE'S IN MY EYELINE! YOU AND ME ARE DONE PROFESSIONALLY!!!!

1. I think young Ben has already started chatting with Richard Alpert/The Others. So does he know Sayid is lying? Is he gonna bust Sayid out? Also, worth noting, that three years ago Sayid was tasked with figuring out whether the man locked in a Dharma brig was an Other or someone else? Now, they've swapped places. Very interesting...