Tailgating Lost

So this week is the big 100th episode of Lost and since I am a) beyond excited and b) in possesion of some time to kill, I figured I might as well do a little preemptive speculation. First, here's a classic:



Lost fans will remember this video from "Orientation" as our first insight into the Dharma Initiative. Given that the Swan is under construction right now, and given that the finale is titled "The Incident," it would sure seem like this is germane to what's going on. A couple thoughts:

1.) A lot of fan speculation has focused on Pierre Chang's (nee Marvin Candle) immobile arm, seemingly indicating that he lost it. Will that pay off?

2.) How exactly did Dan, who seemed to have a low-level construction job, get shipped off to Ann Arbor to pal around with the Dharma braintrust? Did he use some science or did he let them know that he's from the future and has some knowledge of what's going on?

Next, rumor has it there's a death coming soon, and with just three episodes and four hours left, I wouldn't be surprised. So now seems as good a time as any to bring back the death pool:

Juliet - 4:1 - Juliet's always been a little more expendable than some of the A-team and this season has had a lot of Skate (although all the Lost fans I know prefer Sawyer and Juliet to any other pairing out of the four of them). It depends on where season six is heading, but its easy to see her as being less important than other characters.

Miles - 6:1 - Now that we know his deal, Miles becomes a little more expendable. There could surely be use for a ghost whisperer on an island littered with dead people, but then again, I thought they'd need an anthropologist too.

Lapidus - 9:1 - Lapidus is expendable, likeable, and in danger, so its possible. However, they haven't spent a lot of time with the present day and it seems like any sort of death would be kind of rushed.

Ben - 10:1 - Speaking of the present day, is Ben really going to be able to quit trying to kill Locke cold turkey? His life is depending on it. Still, I think Ben's going to stick around until season six.

Faraday - 15:1 - He's the only person we know with a flashback episode (tonight's!) and, once he explains the time travel stuff and yells at Charlotte he's probably expendable. Still, he's a fan favorite and there's still so much Faraday story left to tell that I think he could be safe.

Rose/Bernard - 20:1 - Hey, remember them? Honestly, if they're still alive I'll be shocked.

Desmond/Penny - 25:1 - Awkward news about the actor's alleged activities aside, Desmond was last seen having been shot by Ben. Still, he seemed okay enough to get up and kick the shit out of Linus, so I think he's probably fine. And Penny doesn't seem to be in any danger anymore.

Eloise Hawking - 30:1 - I wouldn't be surprised if she's up for some kind of Matthew Abaddon style death, but she seems kind of out of play (in the present...)

Sayid - 35:1 - Hey, where's he been?

Richard Alpert - 40:1 - Not until we catch up to the point on the timeline where he patches Locke up and gives him the compass.

Radzinsky/Horace - 45:1 - They're probably safe thanks to time travel too, but we know they both die at some point.

Hurley - 50:1 - I doubt they'd kill Hurley. That would be awful.

Jin/Sun - 65:1 - Not until they reunite.

Kate - 70:1 - Please? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

Sawyer - 80:1 - Doubtful.

Locke/Jack - 100:1 - They're in it until the end.

All right guys, that'll just about do it. Enjoy "The Variable" and I'll see you back here afterwards.

Lost - "Some Like It Hoth"

This is the kind of Lost episode I love. There may not have been a lot of big picture movement (although we'll dig into some of the very interesting tidbits we got), but we got a lot of insight into one of the show's most interesting characters, mixed with some genuine humor and pathos. I think back on episodes like "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" or "Greatest Hits," and I'd put this one in the same realm as those.

"Some Like It Hoth" was all about Miles, the mysterious ghost whisperer from the freighter. In flashbacks, we learn that he was being raised by his single mother when his power first manifested himself, creeping out a seven year old about as much as he could take. Meanwhile, on the island, Miles has to put his gift to use. But, to back up a step or two, it started when LaFleur gave him a call to dispose of the incriminating security tape of him and Kate taking Ben to the Others. Miles is on it when he gets interrupted by Horace. Horace wants Miles to deliver something to Radzinsky, after taking him into his circle of trust (dirty hippie!). Miles makes the trade and gets a deceased body, who, Miles finds out through his mojo, died when a filling shot from his teeth and through his head. I guess those "unique electromagnetic properties" are causing trouble for the workers on the Swan (but more on that later). Miles has to deliver the body to Dr. Chang at the Orchid, which is also where Hurley is going (delivering lunch!) so he hitches a ride and quickly surmises the additional passenger in the back.

Meanwhile, when Miles was an angry teen, he went to visit his mother to try and get information about his father, in order to better understand his power. Mom isn't terribly forthright, because Dad wasn't interested in the family or raising a child or anything. Meanwhile, on the island, we, along with Hurley, find out that Dad is none other than Pierre Chang. Miles said he figured it out when, on his third day with Dharma, his mom got in line behind him in the cafeteria. This sets Hurley off on a mission to get father and son to reconnect. Despite the horrifying revelation that Pierre Chang enjoys country music and general awkwardness, Miles and Chang do connect, kind of, in an oblique sort of way. But not before Miles and Hurley fight, leading to the big reveal of the episode: Hurley's been writing the screenplay to The Empire Strikes Back (with a few changes) to help George Lucas. They also stumble upon the construction site for The Swan and Hurley watches as Dharma engraves the numbers onto the Hatch, meddling with powers they cannot possibly comprehend.

Meanwhile, in flashback world, adult Miles goes to see Hank from Breaking Bad and lies to him about his dead son. Then he runs into Naomi, who's looking to recruit him and tests his skill on a dead man who was delivering the receipt for the fake plane and the photo of exhumed graves to Widmore (confirmation that Widmore's behind the cover-up? Or proof that Ben's the one who planted it? More on that later). Miles gets 1.6 million dollars to go to the island, but someone doesn't want him to go. That someone? Ilana's friend from "Dead Is Dead" and assorted others. They tell Miles that he can't handle the island's many secrets (including what lies in the shadow of the statue). Miles only cares about money and wants 3.2 million (double Naomi's amount) not to go. They respectfully decline and go their separate ways. Then Miles goes to Hank and tells him he was a bad father (letting out some of his own issues).

In the week's C-story, Kate takes too much of an interest in reassuring Roger Linus, which makes him very suspicious. So, its up to Jack Workman to calm Roger Workman, using his power of disdain for those who drink on the job. Jack talks Roger down and saves the day, but its a hollow victory because Miles dropped the ball on the cover-up and Jimmy Barrett (or whatever he's calling himself these days) found the videotape. He's not too bright, so he goes to LaFleur first, demanding an explanation. Instead Sawyer clocks him in the head.

Miles gets a well-earned catharsis when he stands outside the window of Chez Chang, looking in at Pierre reading to little Miles. Its a poignant and moving character moment. Then he goes to the dock to welcome the island's newest visitors from Ann Arbor...including Daniel Faraday!

All in all, it was a very strong episode that felt a lot more like older Lost episodes than anything they've been doing recently. It was also a nice pitstop before the mind-bending craziness that looks like its coming in these last few weeks.

A-

The Theory Down:
5. What lies in the shadow of the statue? I'm guessing its Jughead.

4. What has Faraday been up to for the last three years? I'll bet it involved looking up his Mom and probably warning little Charlotte about not coming back to the island. Either way, "The Variable" looks like its going to be insane.

3. Not to seem Jughead happy, but I'm pretty sure that the bizarre electromagnetic properties of The Swan are related to the nuclear warhead that the Others presumably encased in concrete and buried deep underground. Its clear that the bomb is going to come back at some point, and given that everything seems to be leading up to The Incident that's referred to in The Swan orientation film, I'd bet that's going to be coming back into play very soon.

2. So why would someone be delivering physical evidence of the Oceanic cover-up to Charles Widmore if he ordered it? Proof that its happened? Because wouldn't the worldwide newsstory be proof? Perhaps it was Ben who was behind the whole thing. Either way, I'd bet it was one of Ben's men who killed the courier.

1. We got a little more insight to the Shadow of the Statue people and its clear that they're anti-Widmore. I've been trying to work out some inconsistencies with the workings of the Widmore-Linus war and I've come up with an answer: they're actually on the same side. Both Ben and Widmore are ultimately on Team Jacob or what they'd call "the good guys" while Ilana et. al. are "the bad guys" who have come to take over the island. So, while Widmore and Ben have been bickering with each other and scorching the Earth, they ultimately want the same thing. Either way, I think what we're seeing is the show laying the groundwork for its Season Six endgame.

Lost - "Dead Is Dead"

Hey everyone! Sorry about the two week sabbatical, but I'm back! Let's start by looking at what happened while I was away.

Previously on Lost, Sayid was being held in the Dharma brig for being a Hostile, and there he hung with sad, young Ben. Ben engineered a distraction to break Sayid out and help him escape. Sayid went along, but unfortunately he did so because he just realized what his reason was for coming to the island: to shoot and kill Ben Linus. Sayid was only 1 for 2 though, popping a cap in Ben's chest and leaving him for dead. Ben was rushed back to Dharmaville where he needed some kind of miracle-working, expert surgeon. But Jack was not interested in operating on Ben, even though if Ben died the universe could explode or something, so Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet snuck him off to Richard Alpert, who offered to take him to the Temple, where his memory would be changed and his innocence would be lost.

So with that out of the way, let's get going with a question: What lies in the shadow of the statue? The answer is probably not Ben Linus, bedcause he seems to lie everywhere else too but with that awkward segue, let's delve into Dead Is Dead, another Ben episode, and a damn good one, even if its really hard to decode. Making Ben, especially freaked-out season 5 Ben, the center makes it especially tough to figure out the truth from the lies, but let's try. Before we get into that, however, we start with a flashback to Ben's post-Temple experience, where an irate Other wants to know why Richard went ahead and healed Ben. Richard says its because Jacob wanted it done (meaning Jacob was at least around since 1977). Then the Other goes to have a conversation with Ben and we learn that the well-coifed adventure man is none other than Charles Widmore.

Meanwhile, in 2007, Ben sees Locke, still alive and well, and does his best to play it off as part of the plan, playing the part of misunderstood hero with a side of Doubting Thomas. "Believe is one thing, John, but actually seeing it" explains Ben well enough to keep Locke from selling him out to Cesar and the Ajira braintrust, even if he's way past the point of trusting Ben. Meanwhile, Ben made nice with Cesar, more to keep his options open I think, and recovered a picture of him and Alex from the Hydra.

Its there where Locke finally confronted him about the whole murder thing and Ben's explanation was pretty much what we'd all surmised. Ben needed the information he got from Locke and then "didn't have the time to talk you into killing yourself." I'll buy that, although it also seems like there was something about that information that made Ben want to kill Locke (maybe he wanted to keep Locke from meeting Eloise Hawking?). Locke, however, just wants to help Ben do what he came here to do: summon the monster.

See, Ben claimed to Locke that he has to be judged for returning to the island, even though its against the rules. The judge? "I believe you call it the Monster." However, I think Ben was just trying to tell Locke what he wanted to hear in order to get help getting back to the island. We'll revisit that later, since their excursion got cut-off by Ben's new BFF (that would be Cesar) and a couple lackeys. Ben pops Cesar after stealing his gun and he and Locke get away.

Meanwhile, the flashbacks gave us a few juicy bits of backstory. First, it turns that Ben was the Other who came and stole Alex from Rousseau, warning her to run away whenever she hears whispers. However, that wasn't the plan, since then-leader Widmore wanted Ben to kill Rousseau and any children she may have lying around. Ben couldn't bring himself to do it (which makes sense, given his own mother-issues) and questions whether that's really what Jacob wants. Meanwhile, Richard watched with interest, the same way he did when Ben and Locke squabbled back in Season 3. We skip what looks to be a few years to when Widmore left the island and it turns out...Widmore's a damn liar. Instead of being tricked into turning the wheel, Widmore was exiled by Ben and the Others for crimes including leaving the island too much and having a child with an outsider (both things that Ben did). I'm beginning to get the feeling that leading the Others kind of sucks, what with the people always trying to take your job and the fickle ghost-deity you have to answer to.

Back in the present, Ben and Locke arrived in the remains of Dharmaville where they found Lapidus and Sun, who were told by Christian to wait for John Locke. Ridiculous, right? Because of the whole dead thing! But there they all reunite and Lapidus roundly decides that he's had just about enough and guns it back for the Hydra Island. Sun sticks around, because Locke's going to reunite her with Jin, but "Ben has something to do first."

We finally get to see how Ben summoned the monster and it involves going through the secret passage in his study (it ultimately connects to the conservatory) and into a chamber with a large puddle of water. He reached in and pulled some kind of plug and the water travelled down the hole. I really wish I had something more to add here, but I've really got nothing. While he's waiting, Ben tells Sun something very different from what he said to Locke earlier: that he had no clue Locke would come back to life. "Dead is dead," said Ben, giving the episode its title, "you don't get to come back from that." Given Ben's freaked out behavior and what we'll learn later from Alex/The Monster, I'd tend to believe that this is the truth. There's something very special about John Locke and the attention hog/control freak in Ben doesn't like it one bit.

So there's some russeling in the bushes and out comes...John Locke. A subtle nod at the theory that the Monster can manifest itself in the form of dead people on the island? More on that below. Locke gets impatient and decides to take Ben to where it lives. Ben doesn't know, but viewers will remember from "This Place is Death" that the monster resides in a little cavern underneath some old looking walls. Those walls? They keep outsiders away from The Temple, that mysterious Others home-base that we've heard so much about. Locke shows Ben the hole and guides him down it, but before heading down, Ben tells Sun to tell Desmond that he's sorry.

Sorry for what? Well, in the flashbacks we learn that Ben did indeed pay a visit to Our Mutual Friend, the boat that Penny, Desmond, and Charlie live on. Ben, classy guy that he is, calls Widmore to let him know that he's about to murder Penny and return the island. Then, as he heads to the boat, he runs into Desmond and pops him one in the chest (its somewhat confusingly staged, but I'm pretty sure Desmond was hit by that bullet). Then he goes up to Penelope and gives her his big spiel when...he catches sight of Charlie. And Ben's heart grew three sizes that day (or something) and he decides not murder Penny. Seconds later, Desmond arrives and beats the everloving shit out of Ben, before tossing him in the water, thus explaining the blood and bruises and arm.

So Ben goes down to the cave and soon finds himself in a room covered in hieroglyphics (did anyone else get a Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe?) including one that would seem to depict Smokey. Speaking of the devil, the puff of smoke creeps into the room and surrounds Ben, showing him scenes of his past with Alex. See, although Ben didn't want to do this at first, he eventually came around to the idea because he still feels incredibly guilty over Alex's death. I was convinced that Ben was getting the Eko treatment and Lost and I would no longer be on speaking terms, but somehow, Ben survives. Then Alex appears in the room (or maybe its still the Monster). Ben apologies and says its his fault, to which Alex responds that she knows. Things then take a violent turn when Alex slams Ben up against the wall and tells him that she knows he's planning to kill Locke again and if he doesn't follow every order the bald one gives him, he's dead. So we end with Ben, looking up at his new leader with a mix of awe and loathing, saying "it let me live." The control freak now forced to quit cold turkey (shades of the Jack-Sawyer reversal?).

So that about does it for this episode, which was filled with mythology and pathos, as Ben episodes tend to go. It was also one of my favorites of the season, thanks to the show finally giving us a strong character episode and a strong story episode. I know this season's been kind of different and, at times, wonky, but its really been hitting its stride and I'm excited to get back to the time travel craziness next week (Miles episode!)

A

The Theory-Down:

5. WHERE THE HELL ARE ROSE AND BERNARD? I have to assume that they aren't dead, because they could have shown us the bodies or even had a line or something if they wanted to go in that direction. I know some people think they're Adam and Eve, but while that would be endlessly awesome, I think we'd have seen them die in Jughead (remember Jack said they were probably 40-50 years old, although Jack says a lot of things). My theory for now is that they're living with the Others, but whatever it is, it had better be good.

4. So, I missed recapping the whole Ben thing, but I think we have pretty definitive evidence now that the Losties are not changing the past, they were always there. Sayid always shot Ben and Juliet, Kate, and Sawyer always took him to Alpert.

3. So, does Ben remember being shot by Sayid? I know Alpert said that he'd forget things, but in the post-Temple flashback he remembered Dharma and his father and he later talked about being taken there. I, for one, think and hope that he does. First of all, its the most logical way for Lost's time travel to be taking place. Second, it makes Ben that much more messed-up of a person if he was actually training and shaping Sayid into the person who would later shoot him. Finally, I think it explains a lot about how Ben knows so much about the Lostaways. And is it really that hard to believe that Ben was able to play it cool for three seasons and not divulge to these people he remembered from his past that he remembered them?

2. We're still just getting bits and pieces of Widmore vs. Ben, but I think this episode pretty much set up Team Ben as being aligned with the island. Why? First of all, he was allowed to return. Second, the island had the chance to kill him and didn't, so as long as he follows Locke I think he'll be one of the "good guys." And third, Ben was unwilling to kill children, so he seems to have at least a scruple or two more than Widmore. We also learned Widmore lied about his exile, even if the exact whys and hows are still unclear.

1. Time for a couple Temple theories (which I bet we'll see before the season's end). My frontrunner, right now, is that the Temple is going to be some kind of awesome, futuristic (or at least anachronistic) building, which would just be awesome. But Noel Murray at the AV Club had an alternate theory that behind the wall is basically the "backstage" area and that Ben et al really are just putting on a show. There's some legitimately magical things about the island that they don't understand (the monster, the healing), but everything else (like Jacob) is a show meant to give them authority. Its interesting, but for now I'm sticking with futuristic building.

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...

Breaking Bad - "Seven Thirty Seven"/"Grilled"

We're two episodes into the second season of Breaking Bad and for the sake of ease/catching up, I'm going to combine these into one super review. For those of you just looking for the headline, its this: you should drop what you're doing right now and catch up with Breaking Bad. As far as I'm concerned, it ranks with Mad Men and Lost in the upper echelon of current television.

For those who are unaware, the show focuses on Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher whose shitty life gets even shittier when he finds out he has lung cancer. Faced with a growing pile of medical bills and the dire financial situation of his family after he dies, Walter decides to put his chemistry skills to use...by cooking crystal meth. The premise most immediately reminds one of Weeds, but that's where the similarities end. In a way, the difference in the shows reflects the difference in the drug they deal with. Weeds is a goofy, winning show that deals with humor and satire (at least until things went off the rails a little in the third season). Breaking Bad is bleak and desperate; crystal meth does indeed destroy lives.

The second season of Breaking Bad starts with the arresting image of a stuffed animal that's been kind of blown up and charred floating in a pool. Its detached eye floats towards the pool trap. We don't come back to that image (I imagine we won't get there until the finale) but it was definitely a stunner. From there, we go back to the closing moments of season one, as Walt and Jesse's new drug dealing partner, Tuco, pounds away on an underling. Walt and Jesse then run off to their car where Walter does some quick math, realizing that he needs to do 11 more deals to get the money his family needs. 11 weeks. That should be doable, right?

Of course, things don't go according to plan when Tuco stops Walt and Jesse from escaping. That underling? He's dead, despite Tuco's insistence that Walt use his science skills to save him. Now, suddenly, Walt and Jesse are loose ends that Tuco may need to tie up, leaving them to spend the rest of the episode in a paranoid stupor. Its Jesse who first suggests that they kill Tuco before he kills them, in a fantastic scene where Walt picks apart the flaws in Jesse's plan to shoot first and hope for the best. However, once Walt realizes he's being followed too, he comes around and decides, once again, to fight Tuco with science. The plan is to lace some meth with ricin, which will poison Tuco but allow them to escape suspicion.

Meanwhile, Skyler's barely hanging on, as she shows in a scene where Hank comes and tries to get her to bury the hatchet with Marie. Instead, Skyler explodes, in what may have been her best scene of the show. The weight of Walt and Walt Jr.'s distant and mysterious behavior is taking its toll on her.

All of this comes to a head in the first episode's bang-up final moments, where Hank shows Walter the body of Gonzo, Tuco's other lackey, at the junkyard. Walt and Jesse assume that means Tuco's decided to kill everyone and that means its time to go. Walt rushes home with the gun, but just as he's getting ready to tell Skyler everything, Jesse pulls up into his driveway, with Tuco in the backseat holding a gun to his head.

But Tuco didn't kill Gonzo and, in the second episode, we find out that Hank and the DEA are kind of closing in on him. Left with no options, Tuco kidnaps Walt and Jesse to whisk them away to Mexico. Well, Walt anyway. Jesse's expendable and Tuco gets ready to kill him when Walt sweeps in and saves the day.

Meanwhile, with Walt missing, Skyler somewhat patches things up with Marie and distributes missing person flyers around the neighborhood. She's also brought in Hank and a friend of Hank's from the police to help. All in all, this subplot kind of distracted from the awesome of Walt's story (which we'll get back to in a moment), but it let Hank, Skyler et. al. learn that Walt has a second cell phone. It also put Hank on the trail of Jesse and his Monte Carlo.

But, back to the desert, where Tuco and his hostages are holed up with Tuco's sick uncle. Jesse and Walt try and fail to give Tuco the poisoned meth (which seems like it would have been too subtle to work fast enough for them) and time is running out before Tuco's cousins come and sweep them all away to Mexico. Fortunately, opportunity presents itself when Tuco makes lunch for everyone. Walt and Jesse get a chance to slip the poisoned meth into Tuco's burrito, but his uncle sees them do it. This set up the second most awesome scene, where Tuco's uncle successfully gets the poisoned burrito away from Tuco and off the table.

If that scene was tense, it was nothing compared to the one where he tried to warn Tuco of what his hostages had just attempted. The bell that he used to communicate was an especially Hitchcockian touch and it made the scene so much more suspenseful. It was an absolutely brilliant touch and it really drew out Tuco's interrogation/realization. Once he put all the dots together, Jesse went back to plan one - bum rush Tuco. But not before Walter got in one of his finest lines to date: "we tried to poison you because you are an insane, degenerate piece of filth, and you deserve to die."

That led to the first big fight, where Jesse got the better of his captor and ended up busting him one in the gut. But before they could get away, they heard a car coming. But that car did not bring Tuco's cousins, as expected, but instead Hank. He and Tuco got into a massive firefight that ended with Hank killing Tuco.

So after two episodes, Hank and Jesse are stranded in the desert, once again without someone to sell to. Meanwhile, Hank now knows that Walt has a mysterious second cell phone and Jesse was cavorting with Albuquerque's number one meth dealer. This season's definitely humming along and I am totally hooked.

Seven Thirty Seven - A
Grilled - A-

AV Club Interviews Bryan Cranston

I'll be blogging about the premiere of Breaking Bad in a couple days (and then every episode after that in a more timely fashion), but in the meantime, enjoy this interview with Walter White himself, Bryan Cranston.

Lost - "LaFleur"

Back in the heady days of seasons 2 and 3, Lost would begin each season by devoting entire episodes to tracking each individual cliffhanger. So, for example, Season 3 started by showing what happened to Jack/Kate/Sawyer, then followed Sayid/Jin/Sun, and finally went back to the beach for everyone else. They dropped this structure in season 4, mercifully, since that structure slowed things down, frustrated everyone, and contributed to the now mythic Slump. However, in a way, it made a reappearance as the last three weeks basically tracked what happened to the three separate groups (O6/Locke/I5) to bring them all to the same point. However, I'm pleased to report that, while they've all been generally good, this last one was especially awesome.

We begin with the Island crew at the well again. We see the flash that sent Locke tumbling down and it turns out that they went back. Way back. We know this from the fact that the camera revolved to show us A MASSIVE STATUE!!! The four-toed foot statue? I'm thinking so. It looked vaguely Egyptian, which fits the with heiroglyphs and stuff. Frankly, if you didn't gasp when that happened then you're watching the wrong show. So then we saw Locke turning the wheel (again) and it turns out that finally locked the island into one time. That time? We're not quite sure yet, but Sawyer says there's going to stay there as long as it takes. Cut to a graphic that says three years later, where there are two low-level Dharma employees (including the comedian from Mad Men) watching their fearless leader, Horace Goodspeed, drunkenly blow things up. So that means they've got to get Lafleur, the head of security, who looks a lot like Sawyer. All in all, it was a stellar, mind-blowing opening sequence that made me exclaim that I wanted to take this episode behind the middle school and get it pregnant.

"Lafleur" confirmed that the Islanders who were left behind were stranded in the Dharma era (1974-1977 to be exact) and that they assimilated into the Dharma Initiative. We found out all this through two separate, but connected stories. The first took place in 1974, as the gang tried to figure when they were and what was going on. They encountered a woman who was being threatened by some Others and saved her by killing them, inadvertently messing with the Dharma/Others truce. The woman, Amy, takes the gang back to Dharmaville, where Sawyer meets with Horace and tells him the islanders' variation on The Lie, an interesting parallel with the O6. According to Sawyer's story, his people were on a salvage vessel looking for the Black Rock when their ship crashed and they washed up on the island.

At first, it doesn't seem like this lie has bought them anything more than the right to escape the island to 1974 America with their lives (where they'll presumably become cops who are frustrated by the 1970s low-tech policing methods and lack of respect for rights of the accused), but then Richard Alpert storms into camp looking for answers (the sonic fence, it seems, can stop "other things" but not the Alpert-style Others). Sawyer goes out to deal with him (after a nice meta-joke about Alpert's eyeliner), which he does by tipping Alpert off to the fact that his people aren't like the Dharmas and namedropping Jughead and John Locke. Thus, the day is saved and Sawyer et al can stay. If they want to.

Meanwhile, three years later, Sawyer retrieves Horace, but there's a problem. He's now married to Amy and Amy is going into labor, right now. They're supposed to take people off the island to give birth, but because its premature, they couldn't do it. The doctor is pretty much useless, which means its time to haul Juliet out of retirement. Despite her understandable hesitance, Juliet does it, and Amy gives birth to a baby boy. So this is apparently pre-birthing issues. Oh yeah, and Juliet and Sawyer are happily shacked up, in what is clearly the most stable and mature relationship this show has ever produced (I am officially on Team Suliet). Sawyer's also over Kate, which he tells to Horace when the latter asks if three years is long enough to get over somebody (Horace worries that Amy still has feelings for her dead hubby).

But, alas, all that's about to come crashing down when Sawyer gets a phone call from Jin. Sawyer goes out to an open field where we get the reunion we were all waiting for: Sawyer and Hurley, together again! Oh, and Kate and Jack are there too.

Some may complain that we didn't get many answers this week, but I'm beyond pleased with this episode. After all the mind-bending weirdness, it was nice to slow things down and spend an hour with these characters again. It was also a thrill to see the real, functioning Dharma Initiative and the prospect that we're actually going to get to live in it and spend some time there is a promising and exciting one. But mostly, as Noel Murray pointed out, it was nice to get some stories that end kind of happily. Sawyer was clearly thriving in the DI and Juliet had carved out a nice life for herself. If there was a sad point, it was the ending, since it seems like the return of some old friends will send them back into chaos.

A

P.S. Next week, there's no Lost (boo!), but in two weeks, we're getting "Namaste," which looks to be very exciting. In the meantime, don't be surprised if some kind of Lost-related essay pops up in lieu of a recap.

The Theory Down
5. Everyone's speculating about who Amy's baby is? I'm going to go out on a limb and say its somehow we haven't met yet or someone who's inconsequential. I think there's plenty of other stuff to worry about. Or maybe its Sawyer!

4. Since Amy successfully gave birth (and presumably conceived her child) on the island, that means we're pre-baby issues. Yay! Any guesses about what's causing it? I think it may pertain to Ben's rise to power, his own parental issues, and maybe the fact that he took power through corrupt/questionable means.

3. Speaking of Ben, where was the young, sad version we all remember from "The Man Behind the Curtain?" I imagine he's going to show up at some point, but it would seem like at least one of the Losties had to have run into him during the three years they spent together in the Dharma Initiative.

2. Crazy Egypt stuff this week, huh? That statue definitely looked like an Egyptian god of some kind. And Horace is a homophone for Horus, an Egyptian god. So what do all these ties to Egypt mean? Are the original Others travelers from Ancient Egypt? I haven't got much here, but its some food for thought.

1. Changing the future, week 7. Sawyer and Juliet decided to intervene and help Amy, even though Faraday thinks you can't change the past. So was she always going to be saved? Or did they change the timeline? Did Sawyer's pow-wow with Alpert change anything? Or is this actually planting the seeds of the Dharma purge? I think we're getting to the point soon where people are going to start trying to reshape the past. All this stuff feels like its starting to come to a head.