Lost Season 6, Episode 6: Sundown

My spoiler-ho review of the latest episode of LOST is up at smartpop. Here is a sample you can click to read the whole thing.

The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie for a pretty obvious reason: as the second act of the story, the bad guys are winning. As Dante learned writing the Divine Comedy, it is always more fun to hang out with bad guys than good guys. This far into season 6 of Lost we are clearly in the second act of the final season, and, right on schedule, the bad guys are in glorious form. I can only assume that while I am writing this a series of Youtube clips are being thrown together, scoring the final moment of “Sundown” — The Man in Black’s bad-ass slow-motion walk away from the temple with his crew — to any number of songs, including “Damn it Feels Good to be A Gangster” and “Little Green Bag” from Reservoir Dogs.

Something I did not say over there:

Neil has a theory that the Alt-U is not a different timeline but the result of some time travel mojo that has yet to happen -- that basically we are witnessing how everything will resolve for our characters, the ending engineered for them by Jacob and The Man in Black after the events of the island play out. The fact that a late episode is called "Happily Ever After" supports this, as does the fact that Sayid is in the thrall of The Man in Black, and his Alt U story does not take such a happy turn as the others have. A punishment perhaps, and an appropriately ironic one: the Man in Black said he could see his true love again, and indeed he does -- in the arms of another man.