Works been crazy busy, so I've fallen way behind in doing my usual LOST episode reviews. In lieu of doing a mass catch-up, I thought I'd post a few thoughts here:

the Flash-sideways

I'm still not completely sold on the "sideways" world. I think the storytelling is strong, but it's been a little...boring. So island Locke is this bad-ass mystical warrior and is on this quest, but sideways Locke is picking out colors for his wedding. I think it works well for the story, but it's not exactly the most soul gripping stuff.

That being said, I think that's kind of the point. And not only is it the point, it's also (I think) a big sleight of hand that will reveal something substantial about the island and the reason the people are there. Yeah, I think we could be headed for some kind of Shyamalan like twist that throws everything for a loop.

By my estimation, and this became clearer after Sayid's episode, FLocke/MIB made an overt promise to Sayid that he'd get to see Nadia again if he'd come with him. Well, I think that with Sayid's flashback showing him seeing Nadia again, I think that we're actually seeing that promise fulfilled. So there's a part of me that thinks that the alternate timelines is actually a timeline caused by MIB/FLocke and less about Jack's exploding the bomb.

MIB/FLocke

At the beginning of the season, I was about 50/50 on whether the MIB is actually a "good" guy or a "bad" guy, although I don't think LOST will actually do use such black and white terms to describe MIB/Jacob. But as the season has progressed, that percentage has dropped considerably to about a 20/80% ratio. There's still a chance that MIB is actually in the right with what he's doing, but mass murder, even in the service of "good" ends, is pretty effed up. <----- understatement of the year? For MIB to be a "good" guy at this point, they're going to have to straight up paint is as the fate of the world is at stake.

LOST in general

I really dig what LOST is doing this year, but this is such a completely different show than it was in the 3 seasons. Part of the reason I fell in love with that show in the first place was because of how awesomely everything kind of tied in together. So you had season 1 Locke banging on the hatch in desperation and having the hatch light turn on, and then the show would have that simple light turning on turn out to be because of something that was going on with Desmond. And you had all these trippy alternate viewpoints of significant things, like Juliet seeing the plane break up after her book club party. But the show now is a little more straightforward. I still love it, it's just a little different.

more on this later.

Matthew