Okay, I was wrong. It’s still stupid not to know the difference between Thai and Chinese, but I’m ready to give the creators the benefit of the doubt even at that point. There really is more going on here than meets the eye. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that what I took to be a “filler” episode was actually part of an elaborate set-up. In fact, the structure of each episode of all three seasons of the show have been a set-up leading us to this season-finale payoff.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I won’t rehash the plot or talk about who died — we all knew that was coming, anyway. Hugo had his finest moment, ever, coming to the rescue in his VW van. The previews showed us who Jack was saying “I love you” to, but it was still a surprise. I assumed the preview was giving us clever editing to fake us out. Nope.

Of course, the big clincher was the “flashback” sequence which turned out to be a flash-forward. Or maybe it’s the real time sequence, and everything we’ve seen on the island has been a flashback. Either way, wow.

Here’s a question to work on over the summer…whose funeral did Jack go to? He said he was “neither a friend nor family” yet he seemed pretty upset when he found the death notice in the newspaper. Kate seemed surprised that he would even consider the possibility that she would go to the funeral.

Was it Michael? Locke? Ben?

Also, who was Kate with? “He’s waiting for me.” For some reason, I’m thinking it isn’t Sawyer.

Anyhow, I’m intrigued once again. And I look forward to getting answers to some of these questions…years and years from now.

Okay, I was wrong. It’s still stupid not to know the difference between Thai and Chinese, but I’m ready to give the creators the benefit of the doubt even at that point. There really is more going on here than meets the eye. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that what I took to be a “filler” episode was actually part of an elaborate set-up. In fact, the structure of each episode of all three seasons of the show have been a set-up leading us to this season-finale payoff.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I won’t rehash the plot or talk about who died — we all knew that was coming, anyway. Hugo had his finest moment, ever, coming to the rescue in his VW van. The previews showed us who Jack was saying “I love you” to, but it was still a surprise. I assumed the preview was giving us clever editing to fake us out. Nope.

Of course, the big clincher was the “flashback” sequence which turned out to be a flash-forward. Or maybe it’s the real time sequence, and everything we’ve seen on the island has been a flashback. Either way, wow.

Here’s a question to work on over the summer…whose funeral did Jack go to? He said he was “neither a friend nor family” yet he seemed pretty upset when he found the death notice in the newspaper. Kate seemed surprised that he would even consider the possibility that she would go to the funeral.

Was it Michael? Locke? Ben?

Also, who was Kate with? “He’s waiting for me.” For some reason, I’m thinking it isn’t Sawyer.

Anyhow, I’m intrigued once again. And I look forward to getting answers to some of these questions…years and years from now.

Wow, what can I say? Is J. J. Abrams beclowning only himself? Or is he beclowning an entire viewing audience?

I think it ended for me tonight. I can put up with a lot, but the (pointless spoilers ahead) Thai tattoo artist played by a Chinese actress who marks people with their true identity…in Chinese…is really pushing it. I know that Californians like to use the politically correct term “Asians” to refer to Chinese people, but Abrams and company need to understand that just because a Chinese person is Asian, that doesn’t mean that an Asian person is Chinese. Remarkably, Thailand is like its own little country or something. With its own language!

Anyhow, all that to tell us that Jack is “among us, but not one of us?” Does anybody care about this? Is anyone interested?

This show had a lot of possibility early on, with the polar bears on the tropical island and the mysterious creature and the hatch and the back stories and so forth. And even as recently as a week ago, I was touched by Desmond’s very sad story.

But enough, already. Explanations are due. Overdue. WAY overdue. There are people in these episodes who could answer questions, but they just say stuff like “it’s complicated” and “we make people’s lives better.”

Well, I think I’m getting a pretty clear idea about how I can make my life better — by freeing up a one-hour slot every Wednesday night and letting this meandering drivel die its own quiet death.

On Lost, the real nut of the strangeness is not the technology — although there are some peculiar things going on — but just the sheer audacity of the coincidences that drive the story. The longer the show goes, the more outrageous these become. Alias, on the other hand, gets deep enough into the technology that we can see that it’s preposterous. I’ve got nothing against the whole Rambaldi story arc; an ancient manuscript with secrets relevant to a modern crisis is a fun plot device. (Full disclosure: it’s something I’ve used in my own fiction.) Silly, but fun. Now, the business about implanting one person’s mind-map onto another person’s brain, or giving this woman a bath in some pink DNA-diffused substance and having her come out looking like this…well, it’s all a bit much. The show probably jumped the shark somewhere in the middle of last season, so it’s probably just as well that they’re wrapping it up.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Another major difference between these two shows and the kind of fare that used to make up prime time viewing is the tendency to kill off major recurring characters. (I noted this tendency in 24 a while back.) So last night, we got to see Nadia and Renee die gruesome deaths on Alias followed by Ana-Lucia and Libby getting blown away at the end of Lost. I don’t know whether there’s any significance to the fact that they were all women. But I would suggest that, for one night’s viewing line-up, four was something of an excessive body count.

Also, from the previews, it looks like Mr. Eko might be killed next week (but of course you can’t believe too much of what you see either in previews or the actual show.) If he dies, they will have killed off all but one of the major characters from the tail section of the plane. Actually, this is probably a pretty good strategy for Lost. Since we aren’t likely to get to know many of the other survivors very well, they can just keep introducing new characters at the beginning of every season whom they can kill once we get to know them. That way, the show stays hard-edged and gritty, but we don’t have to worry about losing Kate or Sawyer or Jin.

Anyhow, I have this idea about how to wrap up Alias. Now that Sloane has accidentally killed his daughter while trying to protect page 47 of the Rambaldi manuscript — this was his Anakin to Darth Vader transitional moment, btw; he’s more machine now than man, twisted and evil — I think we have an opportunity for an interesting end to the show. This cabal of Rambaldi enthusiasts that Sloane has joined up with — maybe they’ve been working on a long-term super-secret project related to Rambaldi technology. Maybe the project involved animals and a series of numbers and isolation on a remote island. Maybe it went by a code name…like Karma or Dharma or something like that.

Just a thought…