"There's No Place Like Home" ranks among the best episodes of LOST that there's been. While I have mixed opinions on the overall effectiveness of LOST's fourth season, the finale made good on all of the promise that season 4 had going into it.

What I liked most about the finale was that it felt like there were pieces of every season sprinkled throughout the episode. It had the cool surprise ending that season 1 perfected, the hatch exploration of season 2, the return of the season 3 Others, and it touched on all of the flash forward characters and gave them direction for the rest of the series. And not only that, but every single character in the finale had MAJOR, game changing moments.

With an episode in which so much happened, it's hard to know where to start...

How cool is it that LOST is just so friggin' WEIRD? What other show would have the balls to wave its sci-fi flag so prominently as to have one of its main characters crawl through the island to a sub-zero temperature room where a "donkey wheel" spin would cause the island to disappear???????? WTF? That scene really hinted at a lot, with its frozen in the tropics environment, its frozen donkey wheel mechanism that controlled the time/location of the island, and its implication that whomever performed this task could never return to the island.

It's probably going to take LOST fans all summer to really get to the bottom of what the "orientation video" said with its talk of ... shit, I'm going to have to go back and read what it said, it's that complex. Something about "negatives," "sub-atomic particles,"... or something. But UGH!!!! How frustrating was it when that video started rewinding before the narrator could say the "why" of it all????? Typical LOST. Just when you think you're going to get an answer... That being said, it still fits in line with the notion that this is some kind of Rube Goldberg device and that the video had to rewind like that for a very specific reason.

Sawyer has officially become the hero of the show. I never would have guessed that based off how his character acted in the first couple of seasons, but the man is just a flat out hero now. His dive out of the helicopter was probably my favorite part of the finale. I love those sappy moments and seeing Sawyer tell Kate that secret (probably to look after his kid in the states), their kiss, and then his jump out the window was easily one of my favorite parts of last night's episode. Very goosebumpy. Kate and Sawyer are SOOO hooking up.

Was it just me, or did they massively hint at a Juliet and Sawyer hook up. Would anyone other than me be surprised that Kate returns to the island to a hooked up Sawyer and Juliet? Maybe even with kids?

Kate's encounter with Claire was great as well. First there was that creepy backwards voice. Fans have reversed that clip and the voice says "the island needs you, come back before it's too late." Then there was the ghost(?) of Claire telling her to not bring Aaron back to the island. I think this was further proof that the spirits on the island don't always work for the benefit of the island itself. They're free agents, if you will.

Jeez...SO much happened in this episode that deserves mentioning.

Sayid vs Keamy was the best fight this show has ever had. That shit was DOPE! I know some people have had complaints about how post-island Sayid is now a bad ass assassin, because they feel it goes against his character to be a cold-blooded killer, but I think it's been great for his character to go through this character arc. Because we all know that he's going to get back to the island. And once he does, you know that this kharma island is going to do a number on Sayid. That should be interesting to see.

I really liked the Walt segment too, but I wish that there was more to it. It felt like a bit of a re-introduction and set-up for coming up seasons instead of a scene that was crucial to last night's episode. But holy crap, Walt has gotten huge. The producers really handled Walt's growth as well as they could have. He came to Hurley three years after he left the island, so it makes sense he'd be the size he was. And he still looked kid enough in the S3 finale that it wasn't too jarring when he appeared to Locke in the Dharma pit.

Hurley was great last night. You can kind of see that he is now a firm believer in the magic of the island. He regularly talks to his dead LOSTies (checkmate, Mr. Eko....classic!) and schooled Jack after the island disappeared. You just know that he's going to play heavily into the mythology of the show as well as how they get back to the island.

Jin and Sun had some great moments tonight also. I'm pretty convinced that Jin is not dead, but I'm not so convinced on Sun's motives anymore. Her discussion with Widmore has me thinking; either Widmore is not the evil person we thought he was, or Sun is selling a bit of her soul to get near the devil. Either way, I can't wait to see how this plays out.

Jack has really sunken to a low point, but I like that at the end of the episode, you could see that the fallen leader is going to have a chance to redeem himself by getting the band back together. Post-island Jack is a leader without a mission and I think he's going to come alive in getting the O6 (and body) back together.

And you can also tell that Jack's man of science ways are slowly being replaced with a man of faith way of thinking. He can no longer deny the power of the island of "miracles." And that's going to be interesting to see in S5 and S6.

Thematically, I loved the V formation of this season. S4 really began with the flash forward in the S3 finale. And season 4 ended with the O6 getting off shore. So for the V, think of one arm of the V as the flash forwards and the other arm as the on-island events. And throughout the season, both the flash-forwards went chronologically backwards until it met up with the on-island events at the focal point of the V. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

And last but not least, we get to John Locke. I had got a mixed reaction about Locke. On the one hand, he is now the sage that the Others are going to look up to. So he has his purpose. But on the other hand, per the last shot, we see Locke in the coffin and Ben says that things "got bad" on the island.

So what has me worried is that we're going to see yet another instance of a false-start with Locke, where he's set to become the leader, but is going to fail...again. So we had S3 Locke kill his father and we think that he's going to become a part of the Others, if not their outright leader. But then we see him still clueless and being dicked around by Ben in season 4. So then last night, we see him finally, officially become what appears to be the leader of the Others. But then the final scene from last night made it seem as if we're going to see a little bit more of lost-Locke.

I guess time will tell.

I was going to do a S4 wrap up, but over the course of writing this finale, I think that I can wrap up this review and the season with a couple more paragraphs.

The season 4 finale and season 4 itself served a pretty profound purpose for the story arc of the show. Much of my gripe about S4 was that it felt too much like a set-up for the final two seasons of LOST. And the finale fit right in line with this. But the finale really set it up that there are going to be some major events happening both on the island and off the island. So for a set up, I think both the finale and the season itself worked perfectly. But time will tell on whether the set-up is going to lead to more answers or to more "set-up" for the final season.

So for the finale, I give it a solid "A". For the season, I give it a B+.

See y'all again in December when we get ready for SEASON 5!!!!

:-( Boooo to another long hiatus. :-( :-(