In the alternate-Los Angeles timeline — becoming known among Lost fans as a “flash sideways” — Sayid arrives at the home of his brother, Omer, who has married Sayid’s beloved Nadia. At first it appears we’re headed toward a scandal and a confrontation between the two brothers, but instead it turns out that Omer has borrowed money from a loan shark who insists on interest payments in perpetuity. After Sayid refuses to use his mad torture skills to intervene, Omer is brutally attacked outside his store. Sayid reconsiders getting involved, but Nadia asks him not to. She blames Omer for the mess, and for that matter, why didn’t Sayid marry her instead of pushing her off on his brother? Sayid pleads that he doesn’t deserve Nadia, and never will.

After putting his niece and nephew on the school bus the next day, Sayid is accosted by men in a black S.U.V. — the official vehicle of bad guys and diplomats — and taken to a restaurant where Martin Keamy is frying up some eggs. Turns out he’s the shark. Sayid kills everyone, then discovers Jin trapped in a freezer.

You see? Sayid is a stone cold killer. That’s all he’ll ever be. He knows it. That’s why he didn’t marry Nadia (in this reality). Back in “real” 2007, Sayid did marry Nadia, but she was hit by a car. Did Jacob have something to do with that? Did MIB suggest to Sayid that Jacob had something to do with it? If he did, we didn’t hear him say it. Which seems odd to me.

Before meeting MIB in the woods on his ill-begotten hunting expedition, Sayid bursts into Dogen’s office/greenhouse and demands to know why Dogen wants him dead. Then they get into a ridiculously gratuitous martial arts battle that ends with Dogen banishing Sayid from the temple. When Claire arrives, however, and says MIB wants to have a chat with Dogen, the tribal chief retracts Sayid’s banishment and directs him to find MIB and stab him in the chest. Maybe the writers have painted themselves into a corner with this whole temple thing, but I’m starting to get whiplash from all the people coming and going and escaping and sneaking back in. Why is there a secret entrance to the temple that only people who don’t actually live at the temple know about?

Sayid finds MIB and stabs him as requested it, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. MIB offers Sayid anything he wants, and apparently it’s a convincing speech because Sayid returns to the temple and tells everyone MIB will kill them unless they go to the appointed location and meet him there. And that’s pretty much what happens. But first, Sayid drowns Dogen in the holy pool (so much for its life-saving powers, I guess) and then cuts Lennon’s throat. MIB barrels through the temple in smoke form and kills everyone whose names we don’t know.

Ilana, Frank, Ben, and Sun arrive — would someone please reunite Jin and Sun already? — and immediately leave, though we don’t actually know where Ben went. Kate dazily joins up with MIB’s crew, which also features crazy Claire, as well as an unseen Sawyer and Jin (though for the latter supposedly under fear of getting an axe in the chest).

This episode reminded us that we don’t actually know how Sayid was resurrected, and the look he gave Ben when the former leader of the Others told him there was still time was wonderfully demonic, so maybe there’s more going on with Sayid than meets the eye. But this episode couldn’t have made me care less. The flash-sideways was about as interesting as a Kansas highway and only half as suspenseful. That Sayid felt he didn’t deserve Nadia was the one notable thing to come out of those scenes — notable given that after spending time on the island in the original reality, Sayid ends up marrying her — but it could have been wrapped in any number of subplots. Why choose the most predictable formula available?

Part of what makes Sayid such a compelling characters is his sense of loyalty. It’s a shock for Sayid to double-cross anyone, but he feels no loyalty to Dogen, so the murder scene isn’t powerful. In fact, Dogen has already tried to kill him three times (if you believe he thought MIB would retaliate for stabbing him), so you can argue that it’s self defense! The show has always played with ideas of light and dark, but I wonder if we’re getting too literal about it. In any case, it’s starting to feel more and more biblical … or at least mythical. And that focus on mythology, I think, is detracting from what made the show so strong in the first seasons: the strength of the characters.

By replacing Locke with MIB, by reducing Sayid to … whatever he is now, by not knowing what to do with Jin and Sun apart from keeping them separated, the show is demonstrating greater concern for the “mysteries” we’ve been teased with these past five seasons than for the people whose lives the solutions to those mysteries were supposed to illuminate. As this season progresses, the whole thing is starting to feel more and more like a game. Follow the map on Hurley’s arm to the magic lighthouse. Smash the lighthouse mirror. Wait on the cliff. Stab MIB with dagger. Take message back to temple. Drown Dogen. Unleash smoke monster. Run from smoke monster! Use secret passage to escape temple. End of level.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Honestly, I’m pretty sure the script was a first draft.

I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that Locke is dead, murdered — as he blithely declares in this episode — by Ben Linus. I’ve always thought of him as a central character, really the antagonist to Jack’s protagonist. White to Jack’s black, or vice versa. “The Substitute” reminds us about the role of opposing forces in Lost’s mythology, and culminates with the Man In Black removing a white rock from a set of scales and throwing it into the ocean. “Inside joke,” he says. So things are now out of balance between the opposing forces. Well, of course they are. Forget about Jacob. John Locke is dead!

Continuing on the idea of opposing forces, the cast of Lost tends to be divided into two groups. In the first season, the castaways were split between the beach and the caves. Then in Season 2, we met the survivors from the tail section. Then we spent time with The Others. And on and on. This season — so far — we are generally divided between the group which followed MIB to the statue and are now headed to the temple, and everyone who is already hiding there. Presumably those groups will merge at some point, only to splinter apart as the MIB convinces more people to follow him. His first recruit: Sawyer.

MIB first strikes out with Richard, who clearly fears and hates him. The feeling seems mutual. MIB suspends Richard from a tree, but the threat of torture and death isn’t enough to convince Richard to spill any secrets. The appearance of a mysterious blond boy with blood on his arms spooks MIB, and he leaves Richard with a promise to eventually show him what’s what. He then hunts down Sawyer in his New Otherton house. Sawyer immediately recognizes MIB as “not Locke”, but this doesn’t alarm him. When MIB promises to explain why Sawyer was brought to the island, the latter agrees to go with him.

Meanwhile, everyone is still in mourning at the statue. Ilana takes a collection of ash from the fire where Jacob burned away. Then they dig a grave for Locke — I don’t know where they got the shovels — before setting out toward the temple. Before the burial, however, a spider crawled down from the bald head of Locke’s corpse. Remember that the Medusa spider leaves its victims paralyzed and apparently dead for eight hours. I’m not speculating that Locke’s death is less than real, but the presence of the spider in that scene has to be deliberate, and could be foreshadowing.

Finally, MIB takes Sawyer to a cave in the side of a cliff, requiring a perilous climb down a series of poorly constructed ladders — Jacob’s ladders? — where he shows him a wall covered with names. Most of the names are crossed out, but a few — including Sawyer’s — remain, preceded by The Numbers. MIB claims that these names represent “candidates”: people Jacob believed could potentially succeed him in protecting the island. MIB claims that the island doesn’t need protecting, however, and offers Sawyer the opportunity to leave the island forever. Sawyer responds, “Hell yes.”

Assuming MIB is telling the truth about the names (which is hardly certain), why would Jacob have sought a successor? Did he know MIB would eventually find a way to kill him? And what about the names that are apparently missing from the wall completely, most notably Kate’s. If Kate wasn’t a candidate, why did Jacob intervene in her life and bring her to the island?

I’ll come back to that in a moment. But first, let’s talk about John Locke’s life in alternative 2004. In this reality Locke is still paralyzed and things still don’t always go his way — he’s still rejected for the walkabout, the lift on his van is shoddy — but his life seems immeasurably better. He and Helen are engaged and happy together. His father is a valued part of his life. And even though he loses his job at the box factory, “Lucky” Hugo Reyes quickly hooks him up with a new job through his temp agency, where he’s placed into a well-fitting job as a substitute teacher.

Why is Locke well-suited to be a substitute teacher? I’m not sure. It’s been sort of a running joke with the show that every time we’ve seen Locke in a flashback, he’s had a different profession. So maybe it’s appropriate that he’d belong in a job where he has to be a chameleon — teaching P.E., then health, then maybe math. But other than being generally more mentally stable in this reality, Locke is also distinguished by his stark lack of faith. After briefly considering taking Jack up on his consultation offer, he declares flatly to Helen that he doesn’t believe in miracles. Was Locke so manipulated by the presence and power of Jacob and the island that they managed to completely reverse his natural worldview? Is he really as better off now as he seems?

Last week I complained that the alternate 2004 scenes had yet to show that they mattered. Well, this group of scenes demonstrated the quality of “mattering”, making this a much stronger episode. I enjoyed the introduction of new mythology and, as always, the heavy focus on Locke. I was a little irritated at the multiple instances of “convenient knowledge” — Sawyer knows MIB isn’t Locke; Ilana knows MIB can’t take the form of any other human now (why?!) — but on the whole, I thought this was a strong entry with lots to chew over.

Let’s look at the use of substitutes. MIB, of course, is a substitute for Locke. Locke is a substitute teacher. According to MIB, Jacob was looking for a substitute for himself. And in a way, everyone in 2004 is a substitute for their “real” selves. The question, I suppose, is whether or not these substitutions are permanent. Case in point: MIB as Locke. When the blond boy warns (or scolds) him, saying “You know the rules. You can’t kill him,” MIB responds with the very outburst he previously ridiculed Locke for saying: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” Now that he is — according to Ilana — stuck with the physical form of Locke (or smoke), will the MIB become more and more like Locke?

And how about this: maybe the list of names on the cave wall aren’t Jacob’s at all, but actually MIB’s list of candidates to replace himself. He claims he has been trapped on the island all this time (and that he used to be an ordinary man), but if he’s really free to go, why would he bother trying to “recruit” people? Why doesn’t he just go? I suspect he needs someone to take his place, and he’s eying Sawyer to become that person — Sawyer, after all, was able to see the blond boy. Though really, I don’t see how Sawyer can end up as one of the final two. It’s got to be Jack and John at the end, somehow. Though if the MIB becomes John, then I guess that’s a reasonable expectation.

Dogen says that Sayid has been claimed, but his name hasn’t been crossed out yet. Claire’s has, assuming “Littleton” refers to her and not to Aaron.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

In her final scene, while embracing Locke, Helen’s fingernails are painted black. I’m not convinced it’s a coincidence.

Is Sayid’s body possessed by Jacob? Or Juliet? It appears not. Sayid seems to still be Sayid, though with a twist. And in addition to this, we got a provocative hint about something from last season that bears discussing. And though she appeared briefly last week when Kate hijacked the taxi, this episode more or less marks the official return of Cleer to the series.

The episode title “What Kate Does” is a callback to the Season 2 episode “What Kate Did”, wherein we learned that Kate killed her step-(or so she thought) father by burning his house down. She doesn’t do anything nearly as dramatic this time around: she steals Claire’s purse and luggage, drives to an auto shop where the proprietor (Jeff Kober, recognizable to Buffy fans as both one of the more menacing, drug-dependent vampires from the series … and Rack) helps free her from her handcuffs. She then feels guilty for stealing the possessions of a pregnant girl, and drives back to the airport to ask Claire if she wants a ride.

I want to go on record as saying that I enjoy Kate as a character, and always have. But Kate-centric episodes invariably kind of suck. It’s not always easy to figure out why this is, but it’s very easy to pinpoint where this entry in the Kate-o-pedia goes off the rails: despite the fact that she’s repeatedly had a gun waived in her face by this crazy broad, Claire not only accepts the offer of a ride from Kate (in a stolen taxi cab), but she asks Kate to join her at the door of the prospective adoptive parents of her unborn baby, and then shields her from police in the hospital after having contractions. This is nonsense, and I don’t see how anyone watching could have done anything less than smack their heads at the incredulity. Are the two cosmically connected because of the island and because Kate helped deliver Aaron before everything got turned back? I don’t know, but that kind of development was not earned.

Oh, the OB-GYN who treats Claire at the hospital is Ethan. You may remember that he once stuck her with a bunch of crazy needles, but now he doesn’t want to poke her with needles unless it’s absolutely necessary. Claire doesn’t have her baby today.

Meanwhile (or three years later, actually) on the island, Dogen takes Sayid into his office and tortures him. Sayid pleads that he doesn’t understand, isn’t withholding information, and would gladly tell him whatever he wants to know. I’m not sure whether or not we’re supposed to take this scene at face value, and it seems to me a distinct possibility that none of this torturing actually occurred. But Sayid certainly believes it did. It seems a just dessert for someone who tortured people for a living. Sawyer gets off a wonderfully bitter line to this effect: Sayid tortured children. Why shouldn’t he get another crack at life?

Sawyer takes advantage of some commotion to present his pistol and make his escape from the temple, despite Dogen’s urging. Kate agrees to go after him, and Jin goes with her. They are escorted by two Others, Justin and Aldo, who apparently can’t keep straight which information is secret and which isn’t. When Kate almost steps on what looks like a Rousseau-trap, Aldo remarks that the French woman has been dead for years (three, in fact), before being hushed by Justin. Kate springs the trap, and she and Jin take off alone into the jungle. Jin, who only wants to find Sun, leaves Kate, and she continues her pursuit of Sawyer.

When she finds him, he’s mourning Juliet in their old house. He blames himself for her death because he convinced her not to leave the island. He throws the engagement ring he planned to give her into the ocean. And then Kate cries. Have you noticed that Kate has spent most of her time on the island just following people around, either immediately behind them or tracking them through the jungle?

Dogen diagnoses Sayid with The Sickness (I guess), and prescribes one green capsule. Jack smells a rat and refuses to give it to him, and actually tries to swallow the capsule himself. Defeated, Dogen reveals that the capsule is full of green poison. Why would you want to kill Sayid? Jack wants to know. And then Dogen explains that there is a darkness growing within Sayid that will eventually overtake him, leaving nothing of the original Sayid behind — a process which has already claimed Claire!

And sure enough, while trying to escape Justin and Aldo, Jin steps in a bear trap. Before they can dispatch with him, Claire emerges from the foliage brandishing a shotgun and a hairstyle very reminiscent of Danielle Rousseau. And here’s the interesting question posed by tonight’s episode: Was Rousseau really the only member of the French party to avoid infection, or was she actually the only one that was infected? Is that why Ben took Baby Alex — to protect her?

As for the rest … blah. I’m getting really tired of seeing Sawyer storm off alone into the jungle (knowing Kate will eventually follow him). And Kate’s whole L.A. adventure just didn’t move me. As for Cleer, I’m certainly curious to know what happened to her over the past three years on the island, but like with Kate, I didn’t care all that much about what happened to her or her baby in that hospital. I wonder if the writers might not be in a real quandry here. These new and improved 2004 scenes aren’t going to be worth a damn to viewers unless we become convinced that they matter. Right now, I don’t see how they matter in the slightest.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Despite some shallow writing, Josh Holloway and Naveen Andrews give nice performances in this episode. But once again, “what Kate does” turns out to be “brings everything to a screeching halt”. And it’s too early in the season for that.

I guess it could possibly be true. “LAX”, the season premiere, opens with Jack making that same old joke about how “it’s not a very strong drink.” Then the turbulence happens, and Rose tells Jack how Bernard always tells her that planes want to stay in the air. We’ve seen it all before. We know the plane is about to snap in half. But this time it doesn’t. The turbulence ends and the guy from Heroes tells everyone that everything is fine, including the weather in Los Angeles. The plane lands safely. Apparently the bomb worked. Insert tasteless joke here.

But then we discover that Kate has somehow landed in a tree. She’s still on the island. And so are Miles and Sawyer. And Jack, whom we recently saw on a plane bound for the Southland. So did the bomb work or not? Well, apparently this is the new conceit of Season Six: the bomb both worked and did not. The castaways are both on the island as if they never left (though apparently back in 2007) and off the island as if they never crashed there in the first place. It appears we have alternative, parallel realities.

So what happens off the island? Well, Charlie tries to kill himself, apparently by choking on a bag of heroin. Jack saves him (with an assist from Sayid), and Charlie is hauled off the plane in handcuffs. Boone is on the plane, but this time has failed to convince Shannon to come with him. Hurley is still a lottery winner and owner of Mr. Clucks, but now he’s “the luckiest man alive”. Jin neglects to declare his big bag of money to customs officials, and Sun remains afraid to admit that she has learned English. Kate manages to escape from the federal marshal and hijacks a taxi, in which the other passenger is Claire. And both Jack and John have their luggage misplaced — John loses his knives; Jack loses his father’s coffin. But Jack gives John his business card, with the promise of a possible cure for his paralysis.

Back on the island, Sawyer hears Juliet crying for help at the bottom of the hole and climbs down to rescue her. Of course, he reaches her and she promptly dies, but not before cryptically suggesting that they meet some time for coffee, and that she has to tell him something important. When Sawyer later demands of Miles that he find out what she wanted to tell him, he returns with “It worked.” Was Juliet bouncing back and forth between realities the same way Desmond* bounces through time?

* Oh, Desmond is on the plane too, for some reason. But he disappears before the plane lands.

Having failed to keep Juliet alive, Jack tries to save Sayid (who ended last season by being shot). When he decides there’s nothing he can do, Hurley declares his plan. Earlier in the night, the “ghost” of Jacob appeared to Hurley and told him to take Sayid to the temple. Jin knows the location of the temple, having seen most of the French Party chase the smoke monster into it, so he, Hurley, Jack, and Kate head in that direction. Once they arrive, they’re immediately captured by a new group of Others, who threaten to kill them until Hurley produces a guitar case with a wooden ankh inside. The group’s leader — a man who only speaks Japanese because he hates speaking English — breaks the ankh open and produces … a list! It’s enough to keep our heroes alive, except for Sayid. They try to save him by drowning him in the pool, but it doesn’t work. He dies.

But then later, he’s alive again! Is it really Sayid though? Is his body actually inhabited by the spirit of Jacob — maybe Jacob needed an empty, purified (in the pool) vessel in order to save himself. In any event, there’s trouble on the horizon because Jacob’s nemesis — the creature wearing the form of Locke — kills several of the “good guys”, and punches Richard Alpert in the throat (after telling him he’s glad to see him “out of those chains”). He explains to Ben that while the real Locke was the only person who wanted to stay on the island, he — who is apparently the smoke monster (“I’m sorry you had to see me like that.”) — only wants to go home. Where is home? Is it the temple? The people in the temple are certainly acting like it is, spreading ash around and lighting off fireworks.

So what’s the deal with the split realities? I’m not sure, but I’m reminded of an earlier thought I had: that rather than being about eschatology as most early theories speculated, Lost is a show about religious belief. And if you extend that line of thought, maybe it’s about all beliefs, all mental processes. The one thing that has appeared clear from the start of the series is that all of the castaways left behind lives that were lacking (if not outright awful). Maybe the plane crash was always metaphorical. Maybe it was the moment when their lives, as they previously knew them, ended. Maybe it was the moment when they felt they began to feel the most abandoned and lost. Perhaps some turned to logic (Jack) or faith (Locke) or each other (Jin and Sun). It will be interesting to see if the progression of the characters off the island mirrors their progression on the island since Season 1.

I really thought it was kind of cheap to reveal that Juliet survived the explosion, but then kill her off anyway. But I’m looking forward to seeing if the two realities cross in any other ways — I think they have to. I enjoyed the episode, and there was a lot to take in, as usual. It’s kind of amusing to imagine Jack and Locke chartering a plane to go look for their knives and coffin, but in all seriousness, those two characters have always been the keys to each other. Jack might be destined to give Locke his legs back — perhaps it was always their proximity to each other rather than the island itself that did it initially. What will Locke give Jack in return?

I’ll withhold judgment on the parallel universe mechanism until I see where they’re going with it. And it was good to see some of the old characters again. But I actually found the episode — two hours, by the way — to be a little slow. But I’m excited for the season to follow. Let’s get on with it.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

What am I forgetting? I don’t know. Probably nothing important. Oh, Jack’s neck was bleeding on the plane. What’s that about?