"Lighthouse"

Five hours in and I still have no idea where this season is heading, but I am, for the most part enjoying the ride! After a great episode last week, I was expecting a bit of a let down, but was very pleased with this installment.

STOP READING NOW TO AVOID SPOILERS!!!!!

As discussed last week, this episode's flash-sideways followed in the pattern of Season 1 by focusing on Jack. I'm mixed on my enjoyment of Jack-centric episodes but on a whole I liked this one. So parallel Jack has a son. I might be reaching here but since Sarah's name was never mentioned I was expecting David's mother to be revealed as someone else we know like Ana Lucia...perhaps in a future episode. I was completely unsurprised to learn that parallel Jack is a crappy absentee father. Also, his mom is a worse drunk than his dad...apparently she didn't even look for Christian's will before calling Jack because it sure didn't seem hard to find. At least Jack made an effort with David by watching his audition for the music academy. I found the scene between the two of them after the audition to be very touching. But what are we to make of Dogen and his son being in LA at the same audition. Does this mean that Dogen hasn't been on the Island since the days of the Black Rock and that he might have only arrived sometime after the Incident? Very strange.

Back on the Island, I thought Hurley was in top form; funny as hell and taking charge thanks to help from Jacob. But what's the deal with Jacob? Is he just f-ing with Hurley or what? Making him take the sad, pathetic Jack across the Island for a task that he knew Jack wouldn't be able to do correctly? Seriously? Island Jack needs an attitude adjustment and fast! He is a tremendous contradiction. He never listened to Locke in the past and went out of his way to do the opposite. Fine. But then after he left the Island he want back on faith (not just because he was "broken and hoped to be fixed" but also because Locke told him Christian wanted to say hello) and was zapped to 1977! He set off a hydrogen bomb and didn't die but rather zapped forward to 2007! He saw Sayid die and then come back to life! But(!) he thinks it's strange that his childhood home could be seen from the mirror in the Lighthouse?!? We all want answers but he needs some damn anger management! When he broke those mirrors my stomach just sunk (and I don't think it was from the flu that I'm getting over). He is so pathetic and selfish it hurts. Jacob told Hurley that Jack has an important job to do and as long as it involves messing something up, Jacob's picked the right guy!

I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to find out whose name is at 108 degrees on the Lighthouse bearing. My first guess would be Kate since she was conspicuously absent from the list we saw in the cave last week as was the number in question. But this number is supposed to correspond to someone who needs to come to the Island. In that case, I'm thinking it belongs to someone like Desmond or Charles Widmore. No sense in worrying about it now though; we'll find out when they want us to find out. I loved the callbacks to Season 1 as Jack and Hurley were trekking to the Lighthouse. Not only did they find Shannon's long lost asthma inhaler but they actually mentioned Adam & Eve! I loved Hurley's time-travel theory about the identities of the skeletons. I only hope this scene serves as a reminder to LOST fans who may have forgotten (is that even possible?!?) about the skeletons in the caves and is not the last we hear about Adam & Eve. I suspect it is the former.

As we all thought, Claire has been living in the woods like Rousseau for the past three years and trying to find Aaron who she is sure was kidnapped by the Others. Apparently her father and her "friend" told her that's who took him. So again, I can't help but think that whatever is now taking the form of Locke was taking the form of Christian Shepard for a long time, perhaps even since the beginning. What's perplexing is that Claire seems to forget that she left Aaron when Christian appeared to her towards the end of Season 4. What gives? She was also apparently "tested" by the Others like Sayid. When Jin told her that Kate took Aaron, I knew that would be trouble for Kate and was confirmed by the end of the episode. So what's Jin's game here? Does he think he'll stay alive by bringing Claire to the Temple? And does Claire see someone else when we see Locke? It seems like she'd call him Locke instead of her "friend." It'll be interesting to learn more about that. So I guess Locke and Claire heading for the Temple are what Jacob warned Hurley about. That doesn't bode well for Sayid and Miles not to mention all the Others hanging out there.

I'm looking forward to more as long as they maintain this pace of story-telling and don't tell us any more about what Kate might do!