Lost Review: Better Late than Never

There are various legitimate reasons for why this review is so overdue, why I have skipped Sunday Nunday and Tuesday Newsday this week (sigh), and why my life is mildly ridiculous right now, mainly revolving around some torn ligaments in my ankle (don't ask) and far too much homework.

However, I figure that since Lost is tonight and I will not get to watch it, I might as well console myself by writing a heinously overdue review.

Spoiler alert: I highly doubt there are people who have yet to see last week's episode, but if you haven't, stop reading, for obvious reasons.

Our episode opens with Dharmaville in disarray. Horace, acting like the crochety old woman he is, is yelling at everyone; the flames are dying down from tiny Ben's hippie-van-on-fire diversion; and, of course, Hero Jack has Important Questions for Everyone.

"If he was locked up, how did he start the fire?" he asks, directing several piercing gazes at Horace and managing, miraculously, to come across as both mind-numbingly dull and in cahoots with the enemy. Nice one, Jack.

Horace just flips back his flowing locks, shoots off a condescending remark about how it must have been an inside job, and looks grumpy, as usual.

Meanwhile, Kate meets tiny Ben's loser dad -- who is one of those people you could feel bad for until you catch a glimpse of tiny Ben's taped glasses and bruises, and then you hate them again -- and Jin rolls in with a dying tiny Ben in his arms.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're off.

Juliet tries to operate on tiny Ben, but her forte is babies, not tiny dying future megalomaniacs, and so, naturally, she sends Sawyer to ask Jack for help. As much as I hate Jack, there are several things he is useful for, and one of them is saving people from imminent death (sorry, Boone).

But we're dealing with New Jack now, the one who seems to have forgotten all about the seminal moment that was his "live together, die alone" speech in Season 1, the one who only recently shaved the Jeard, the one who, apparently, couldn't care less about DYING CHILDREN.

Dying children, Jack! You once pumped your own blood into a tool who ran a wedding business! For shame, sir.

Instead, Jack decides to make sandwiches while Hurley and Miles have one of the more amusing conversations in recent Lost memory, in which Miles tries to explain time travel to Hurley, who espouses the well-regarded "Back the Future" theory of time travel, which is basically that when you change the past, you cease to exist.

Miles, obviously an adherent to the Daniel Faraday school of time travel theory, tries to tell him that what's going on is All Part of the Plan, because you can't change time. There is really no point to this conversation except to allow the audience to feel better about themselves for asking the same frantic time-travel questions last week, but I adored it, mainly because Hurley worrying that he will disappear is just. too. cute.

Meanwhile, Kate yells at Jack about tiny Ben, Jack whines about how he already saved Ben once and how Kate still doesn't love him, Kate gives him a Look, and Jack returns to making sandwiches and whines that he can't fix things and that the Island will take care of everything. (Juliet also yells at Jack as he gets out of the shower and gives him a very critical once-over. Burn.)

Actually, Jack's moaning about how The Island Will Fix All is rather Lockian, come to think of it. Perhaps if Undead Locke ever gets back to 1977, they can build a smoke hut and drug people together.

In the face of Jack's crushing lack of any sort of common decency, Kate and Juliet decide to be awesome together and take tiny Ben to the Others in hopes of getting him fixed. As Kate prepares to cross the Hostiles' truce line, Sawyer shows up, hair blowing in the wind, and offers to help.

After some posturing by a group of Hostiles, Richard Alpert emerges, eyeliner gleaming, and agrees to take tiny Ben, but warns that he'll lose his "innocence" (?) and all memory of the event.

Which leads to this episode's shocking-but-kind-of-predictable conclusion, which is this:

a.) If Jack had agreed to operate on tiny Ben, tiny Ben would have lived without having to be magically cured by the smoke monster or whatever Richard Alpert is planning to do to him. Therefore,
b.) if Jack had cured tiny Ben, tiny Ben would not have "lost his innocence" and become the skeevy little creeper we all know and love. Ostensibly,
c.) if Ben was not so evil, he would not have given the Losties so much trouble. Ergo,
d.) everything that happened to the Losties at Ben's hands is entirely Jack's fault. (And maybe Sayid's. A little.)

To quote my fellow copy desker and Lost addict, one Brandon B. Taylor, I can't believe I once believed in Jack. Sigh.

Some other points:
- Horace continues his tradition of stating the obvious when he discovers keys left in the lock of Sayid's empty jail cell: ""He didn't break out, somebody let him out." O RLY?
- The flashback this episode is about Kate and Aaron, and what happened to Aaron before Kate left for the Island. It's sad and sweet and actually managed to win back a lot of my respect for Kate, which is nice, because I've been annoyed with her for a while.
- Sawyer tells Kate they would "never have worked out." HE CAN BE WITH JULIET FOREVER NOW, HOORAY.
- We also find out that Sawyer told Kate to find his daughter Clementine just before he jumped off the helicopter last season. My love for him knows no bounds.

We Are Stardust; We Are Golden

I was planning on writing a post tonight about studying for my imminent and massive astronomy test and how astro always sends me on a massive philosophical kick about what it all MEANS, which got me thinking about Dylan "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" Thomas, who in turn got me thinking about poetry in general, which usually always brings me back to my favorite poet of all time, the great John "No Man Is An Island" Donne.

I want to marry John Donne for many reasons. For one, he spent most of his life madly in life with his wife Anne and wrote gorgeous poems for her. Secondly, he was sort of a poetic Renaissance man -- his work ranges from intense theological musings like "Batter My Heart" to still-fairly-bawdy love poetry for Anne like "To His Mistress Going to Bed," which requires no explanation. Ernest Hemingway owes him big time for his "for whom the bell tolls" sermon. And just look at his picture. He's adorable.

He was also a sucker for ridiculous puns and metaphors, which makes a lot of people want to tear their hair out but which I absolutely love. This is especially evident in my all-time favorite John Donne poem, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," which I am posting in its entirety because it is awesome.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls, to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

"The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;

Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refin'd,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begun.

I still get chills when I read this poem, usually because of the last line, which gets me every time. Donne wrote this for his wife just before he left on a trip to France, to make her feel better about him leaving, which is just. too. adorable. I can just imagine Anne making lunch or something and finding a little note from John Donne on the counter, and instead of getting some sort of generic "Love you, see you in a few weeks, take care of the kids," she gets the best poem ever.

Forget a red, red rose -- Donne compares his love to gold, to the planets, to geometric compasses (who even thinks of that?). In anyone else's hands, it might have been ridiculous, but John Donne makes it work. Working in some awkward puns ("And grows erect, as that comes home"?) could have gotten really awkward, but John Donne makes it work.

Also significant is the fact that he never published a poem during his lifetime, which means that this was meant pretty much solely for Anne. Writing a love poem for your wife is one thing. Writing a thorny, complex poem that employs one of the most famous metaphysical conceits of all time for your wife indicates a huge level of intellectual respect for her, which was kind of in short supply in the 16th century.

When you're studying astro at highly unreasonable hours, it's fun picking out Donne's little astro references, too -- "trepidation of the spheres" refers to planetary motion, and "dull sublunary lovers' love" has to be one of my favorite phrases ever. Overall, well done, Mr. Donne.

(And yes, I acknowledge that John "I Write Puns In My Sleep" Donne is probably rolling in his grave over that one.)

Songs on Repeat: Love Ain't Far

As much as I hate to admit it, I am a secret Motown junkie. I adore the Supremes, I am a sucker for the Temptations, and Martha Reeves is one of my personal heroes.

I attribute this mild obsession to something akin to Stockholm syndrome — back in the day, I rode an hour-and-a-half-long bus to high school every morning, and my bus driver, Socks (who is another story entirely), insisted on playing our local "oldies" station, Sunny 104.5, over the bus radio. At full volume. For the entire ride. After months of attempting to fight the powers that be (earmuffs, headphones, and various pleas to turn down the music proved futile), I gave in. I can pretty much sing the entire Sunny 104.5 repertoire from memory now, which is kind of pathetic.

Thus, when I found a song called "You Can't Hurry Love" by a Swedish band called the Concretes, I went in expecting some indie cover of the Supremes' hit. I couldn't have been farther from the truth.



There is no reason, really, why I should enjoy this song as much as I do. It has about three lyrics, it's over in two minutes, and it's mildly repetitive. But it's catchy as hell, man, and as far as my repeat songs go, that's usually all that matters.

Of course, now that I've spent several paragraphs waffling about my minor Motown obsession, I feel I should include a video of The Supremes' seminal "You Can't Hurry Love" as well.