Still with me? Good.

Man, John Locke has really gotten the shaft. I knew confident answer-knowing Locke was too good to be true! The man has gotten so monumentally screwed in the course of this series that you just absolutely feel sorry for him.

Abandoned by his mother, his kidney conned from him by his father, his spine shattered & the ensuing paralysis, the death of Boone, his loss of faith in the hatch, Ben’s continuing undermining, the shattered leg from falling into the well, and ultimately his murder.

Really makes you not want to be a man of faith.

I have to say I also find it quite funny that at least two what’s-in-the-box reveals have been Locke’s corpse. Never has a corpse been a more integral plot point.

Also on the silly side: Juliet’s chains of death! I have really never seen somebody (fail to) die in quite such a silly way that wasn’t a Final Destination film. Looking back on it, Juliet’s been quite the recipient of the shaft too – Goodwin snuffing it, creepy Ben, never getting to see her sister again…

While I’m criticizing, the incident itself was kinda a let-down. Seriously, this is the event so terrible that the Dharma initiative has to push a button every 108 minutes for the next 24 years? Has to be said though, Radzinsky is such a prick I’m glad I know he kills himself down there.

Right; onto things a little less bad. The Jacob reveal! This is kinda a game-changer, because it means a lot of what we assumed about Jacob isn’t so. Was he ever in the cabin? If it wasn’t Jacob he was speaking for, where exactly was Christian Shepherd getting his instructions? Jacob’s enemy / faux-Locke? Who was in the chair for a second, if it wasn’t Jacob? Why did Richard Alpert grow his hair long in the early 70s? Why did Jacob visit all of the O6 at pivotal moments in their lives? Enquiring minds want to know!

I think the biggest question arising from all this is: Who’s the bad guy? I really just don’t know any more.

All in all, it was a good episode, and it was nice to see Rose and Bernard again, but in my opinion it felt too long, and the shocks just didn’t live up to some of the more epic mind-fucks they’ve pulled in the past.

This got me to thinking in general of how easy it is for your enthusiasm for something to be crushed by the process of actually having to study it – sometimes you read about things the great scientists of the past discovered and you wonder how they could bring themselves to work on anything quite so dull!

Makes me wonder if perhaps we get our knowledge too easy; the things which were the life’s work of some of our greatest minds, taught in a lazy afternoon.

Obliquely, this led me on to thinking about Lost. I’ve just seen the 4th season finale, so it’s on my mind, but I’m going to avoid spoilers here! I realised they’d got their characterisations of the characters completely and utterly wrong!

Jack is the man of faith, and Locke is the man of science! Jack believes so thoroughly in “reason” that he totally ignores the things he can see with his own two eyes – like giant columns of black smoke that can kill people. Locke has the use of his legs restored, and immediately comes to the conclusion that something awfully odd is going on. Locke’s attitude is clearly the more scientific. The writers obviously have no idea what they’re talking about.

This could be just because I’m feeling a tad hostile towards them right now – anyone who’s seen the finale can probably guess why!