My DVR most likely hates me. It does its duty, and does it well, but I just keep adding more and more shows to it. I wouldn’t be surprized if it slides itself off the television one night and strangles me in my sleep.

JJ Abrams can do just about anything and I will tune in with fangirly glee. I am that easy. I do, however, have the sense to expect a big pile of crap along with my glee. No point in having wild expectations, only to have them dashed against The Rock.

Three episodes of Alcatraz have aired so far, and I am finding it pretty entertaining. We have a secret lair (which is mighty inconvenient with all that water surrounding it, if you ask me), some kind of selective time traveling, Hurley being the smart one, Sam Neill just being awesome by being Sam Neill, and for all of you out there who miss Lost, some potential numbers shenanigans. Personally, I don’t think the numbers mean anything this go around, but I thought Fringe was just gonna be a X-Files rehash, so what do I know?

Looks as though each episode will be the appearance of one of the inmates , and our heroes tracking them down. The first two reappeared inmates seemed to have some sort of directive to get something done. Sylvane got a big-ass key from some poor guy, and Cobb shot whatsherface (what? I don’t know names yet!) totally on purpose. This last guy, while insanely CREE-PEE, didn’t seem to have a job to do, and he ended up dead, dead, dead. I wonder how many people thought, like I did, that when they brought that dead guy back to NewAlcatraz, and handed him over to the apparently perpetual Alcatraz doc, that there would be a shot to the neck or something, and the guy would be brought back to life. Anyone? Just me?

Much like Fringe in its early days, Alcatraz seems to be only okay with the MOW stories, but really interesting with the set up of its mythology. I love this kind of storytelling, and I hope that the audience has the patience for us to get to know these characters and find out what the hell is going on.

I love New York City. I lived in Brooklyn for 12 years and I miss the damn place on a regular basis.

I adore Kiefer. I own all eight seasons of 24 (including the TV movie, ‘Redemption’). I even sorta, kind of stalked the man not once, but twice on the streets of NYC.

So Fox, a network I keep wanting to hate, handed me me a shiny new show that not only takes place in my beloved city, but stars a lovely and awesome (as usual) Kiefer. Touch.

Now this show made me nervous. I want to laud anything Kiefer is in, but this sucker is from Tim Kring who gave us Heroes, which started out as a fantastic show, and devolved into one hot mess.  The man has great ideas, but seems to have trouble following through.

As far as I’m concerned, so far so good. Was the twisty, turny-ness a little convoluted? Yup. Do I care? Nope. Give me something fantastical to believe in and I will happily jump on board. I was worried that this was gonna be an hour of SadDadKiefer, but there were some nice, light moments, and Kiefer had plenty of edge to keep the character from falling over into self-indulgent woes-is-me’s. And the moment at the end, in the rain, on the cel tower? I teared right up. Well played, sirs!

I liked Touch, and am excited to see if they can pull this off week to week. Unfortunately, we’re gonna have to wait until March(!!) to get our next taste. But you know me, I will sit patiently for another dose of Kiefer-ness.

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By Stu Robinson,

I’ve been busy with the day job this month, so I have to play catch-up on Season 2 of CBS’ new Hawaii Five-0 – starting with Episodes 3-5, a an arc that could be titled, “Oh no, Kono!”

I’m going to limit myself to a quick overview.

The Plots

Episode 3: A Navy SEAL is found dead while camping, an apparent suicide. McGarrett and the team must prove that it wasn’t, and then find the killer.

Episode 4: Five-0 must figure out why somebody killed a diver who specialized in treasure hunts.

Episode 5: Why did somebody kill the University of Hawaii’s women’s volleyball coach?

The Backstories

Booted from Five-0, Kono starts hanging out with shady ex-cops in Episode 3. Chin Ho tries a couple of times to intervene, but she basically tells him to buzz off. By Episode 4, she’s part of their team; in Episode 5, she finds herself driving the getaway car for a mortally wounded hit man.

In a challenge to the space-time continuum, after Chin Ho and Lori ambush the hit man and Lori shoots him, Chin Ho returns to the office and gets yelled at by McGarrett, who then manages to join Danno and Lori in time to arrest Kono, who still is fleeing in the car with the dead hit man.

While McGarrett and Chin Ho interrogate her, Vince Fryer (Tom Sizemore) bursts in and confirms what some of us guessed back in Episode 3 — that Kono was working under cover in an Internal Affairs investigation.

You knew the writers wouldn’t let Kono go bad. Her relationship with cousin Chin Ho is too integral to Five-0′s dynamics. And while she looked deliciously bad in a clingy black dress, all those colorful bikinis in the show’s wardrobe department wouldn’t “fit” a woman who had turned to the dark side.

In the McGarrett saga, Steve’s Navy mentor, Joe White (Terry O’Quinn) puts in for transfer to Pearl Harbor to oversee SEAL teams there … and be a recurring character. He tells McGarrett that he’s sent the video of McGarrett’s father with the late governor and Wo Fat to the Defense Department for an attempt a sound extraction – then puts off McGarrett every time he asks about it. After McGarrett learns, in Episode 4, that it was a lie, he confronts Joe.

McGarrett: “Know what? I know he was your friend. But he was my father. Whatever it is you’re trying to protect me from, I can handle. You understand me?”
Joe: “Did you ever think that maybe you’re not the only one I’m trying to protect?”
McGarrett: “What are you talking about?”
Joe: “Risk vs. reward, Steve. How much damage are you willing to do to your family, to your family’s name? ‘Cause whatever’s on that video is not going to bring your father back.”

Guest Stars

Is that a Baldwin brother? Yes, that’s William Baldwin, the pretty one, playing Frank Delano, leader of the crooked ex-cops.

Sara Roemer (Disturbia) plays the murdered SEAL’s widow.

Patty Duke, Oscar winner and 1960s TV star, turns up in Episode 4, playing the victim’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother.

And, yes, that was Peter Fonda in a throw-away role as a high-profile treasure hunter who’s real quest is for investor dollars. I’m sure CBS invested a few dollars in his appearance.

The star volleyball player in Episode 5 is played by Tania Raymonde (Lost). I didn’t watch Lost, so I don’t know if/how here character interacted with Daniel Dae Kim’s. The woman on the run is played by Meredith Monroe, who has grown up since playing Andie McPhee on Dawson’s Creek.

Romance

Episode 4 introduces a potential new love interest for Danno in the lovely form of Autumn Reeser (Entourage). She plays a museum curator who assists Five-0 by analyzing some evidence. Though Scott Caan also was on Entourage, it’s also unclear if those characters’ paths crossed.
McGarrett: “You should ask her out for coffee.”
Danno: “I don’t want … I’m not looking for a relationship.”
McGarrett: “Coffee’s not a relationship, it’s a beverage.”
Danno: “That’s not true. Every single relationship starts with a cup of coffee. Then it’s dinner. Next thing you know, you’re divorced and you’re moving to Hawaii so you can see your daughter every other week.”
(Are we supposed to recall the coffee talk between McGarrett and Lori during a stakeout in Episode 2?) Near the end of Episode 4, Danno waits outside the Bishop Museum after dark for the curator to emerge. He asks her out for a cup coffee, and she agrees. In real life, of course, he’d probably end up with a whiff of mace and a stalking charge.

Later, McGarrett needs a notebook decrypted. Enter his Season 1 girlfriend/plot advancer, Navy Lt. Catherine Rollins (Michelle Borth). But the magic appears to be gone. As he joins her on a park bench and gives her a freshly picked flower, she asks: “What do you need this time?”

Subsequently, McGarrett walks into Five-0 HQ with Lori, and they spot Catherine waiting in Steve’s office.
Lori: “Who’s that?”
McGarrett: “That is an old friend.”
Catherine is in her dress uniform, which McGarrett finds odd. “Orders came in today,” she says. “My flight for the gulf leaves tonight.” Awkward, but it does clear the decks for a potential romance with Lori – and for Borth to star on another season of ABC’s Combat Hospital if it’s renewed. Before leaving, though, Catherine informs McGarrett that the Defense Department hadn’t received an intel request from White.

But it’s not just viewers speculating about a potential attraction between McGarrett and Lori:

Danno to McGarrett about Lori: “Listen. She follows orders. She likes sports. If she was into blowing stuff up, romantic getaways at the DMZ, I’d say we are looking at a love connection.”

During Kono’s walk on the wild side, lab technician extraordinaire Charlie Fong (Brian Yang), last seen flirting with her late in Season 1, expresses his concern to her cousin, Chin Ho.

Chin Ho, meanwhile, appears to have something developing with his ex-fiancée, Malia Waincroft (Reiko Aylesworth). When he meets her for lunch at Kamekona’s shrimp truck, we find out it’s at least the second date they’ve had recently. Later she tries to talk sense into Kono – implying more of a past relationship between the to than viewers had been led to believe.

Additional Snappy Dialogue

Oddball coroner Max Bergman (Masi Oka), is giving giant shave-ice guy Kamekona (Taylor Wily) a run for his money as the show’s comic relief. In Episode 2, he enters Five-0 headquarters wearing dark glasses, a khaki trench coat and matching hat – and carrying a large manila envelope.
McGarrett: “Hey … Creepy, why are you dressed like inspector gadget?”
Max: “Ropening a closed case without authorization is considered risky. So I took precautions.”

Danno needles McGarrett about his SEAL background: “So, what, you’re not going to tell me about Operation Strawberry Fields?”
McGarrett: “No.”
Danno: “No, no. Of course, you’d have to kill me. … I’m just curious, though: Was there an Operation Abbey Road? Were you The Walrus?”
He looks at Joe, who has stopped at a locked door.
Danno: “Time to shut up?”
Joe: “Roger that.” [Opens the door.] “Are you ready for the Magical Mystery Tour?”

Product Placement and Hawaiiana

The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, named for the last descendant of Hawaii’s Kamehameha royal family, is where Danno meets, and is smitten by, curator Gabrielle Asano in Episode 4. The Bishop Museum is home to an extensive collection of natural, cultural and historic artifacts from the islands.

The episode then offers a history lesson of its own when Charlie Fong identifies a piece of evidence as a $5 bill with “HAWAII” stenciled across the back. Such “Hawaiian overprint notes” replaced regular U.S. currency on the islands during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the authorities opted for the overprint currency because it could simply be declared worthless if the Japanese invaded.

Max is like a kid in a candy store on a visit to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam (JPAC), the largest forensics lab in the world.

Episode 5 showcases University of Hawaii athletics. It opens at a women’s volleyball match, after which the coach is murdered. NCAA rules prevented the actual players from being on the show, but producers asked the crowd from a real UH volleyball match to stick around afterward and cheer on the actors. Local actor Joe Toro plays the ill-fated coach.

The getaway car driven by Kono is a Cadillac, in keeping with the show’s car credo: Chevys good; other makes bad.

Notes

In another bending of the space/time continuum, McGarrett finds out that a different SEAL is on his way to becoming a skydiving accident and inexplicably gets into the air with his own parachute in time to pull off a mid-air rescue.

###

Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

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By Stu Robinson,

It took me a few days to recover from whiplash following the season premiere of CBS’ Hawaii Five-0.

No, not really. It just seemed like it.

I went into the Season 2 premiere wondering how the H50 writers could resolve last season’s cliff-hanger in a remotely plausible fashion. While I keep the emphasis on “remotely,” they did come up with a narrative to get the band back together for a second season — even if it involved brand new characters, suddenly revealed back stories and those whiplash-inducing reversals.

Last season’s cliffhanger left the Five-0 team in an existential crisis. McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) was under arrest, accused of shooting the governor; Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) was the Honolulu Police SWAT commander who arrested him; Kono (Grace Park) was being booked in the $10 million heist from last season’s Episode 12; and Danno (Scott Caan) seemed powerless to do anything about it all.

Cue the children’s choir at the governor’s funeral. To the sound of the choir, we see a montage of:

• Actor Terry O’Quinn, Kim’s former castmate from Lost, walking off military cargo plane wearing camouflage fatigues and being greeted by Danno;
• Kono sitting on a surfboard looking pensive (in a red bikini — yeah writers!);
• former CIA analyst and Five-0 ally Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik) scrolling through evidence pictures on a laptop;
• McGarrett doing push-ups in a jail cell.

Back at the funeral, Chin Ho stands in a police honor guard scanning the mourners. He makes eye contact with Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos), and afterward accosts the criminal mastermind in the requisite macho confrontation.

Summoned to meet a visitor, McGarrett finds Danno waiting. Their initial exchange recalls two of Season 1′s running gags, their bickering and Danno’s attire:

• Danno: “Why are you you smiling at me?”
• McGarrett: “You’re not wearing a tie. It suits you.”
• Danno: “No, I’m not wearing a tie, because there’s no dress code for an out-of-work cop.”

Danno then yields to O’Quinn, whose first line to McGarrett is,“Let me guess: The governor had it coming.” O’Quinn’s character, Lt. Cmdr. Joe White, is identified as the man who trained McGarrett. Our hero dutifully calls him “sir.”

Next we see McGarrett in the jail’s exercise yard, where he is confronted by Victor Hesse (James Marsters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Caprica and Smallville), the man who killed McGarrett’s father in the Season 1 premiere. After a lengthy fight, Hesse stabs McGarrett in the gut, then speaks to him urgently, though his words are inaudible to the audience.

Cut to boffo theme song.

Confronted later in his cell by Danno and Chin Ho, Hesse explains that he stabbed McGarrett in a non-lethal way so he could escape. There is a quick cut and, sure enough, we see a bleeding McGarrett escape from an ambulance. Turns out Hesse is employing the same strategy tried by Sang Min (Will Yun Lee) in the penultimate episode of Season 1.

• Hesse: “I may be a soulless bastard, detective, but I’m no fool. Wo Fat is making one last deal. Then he’s going to disappear. But he’s not going to do that without tying up loose ends.”
• Danno: “Loose ends. By that you mean you, right.”
• Hesse: “Unless McGarrett kills him first.”

Filling Some Blanks

Among the evidence from Papa McGarrett’s toolbox, White recognizes a photo of a military decoration. He recognizes it as having been awarded to a Japanese pilot for bombing Pearl Harbor. White relates that the pilot later became wealthy and moved to Oahu hoping to make amends. He gave the medal to McGarrett, and later hired him to investigate corruption in the Honolulu Police Department.

With information from the old man, Kaye determines that another item from the toolbox, a key, fits a storage locker at the airport on Molokai. It had been reported that Five-0 would go beyond Oahu this season, so here are two quick scenes on Molokai (that could have been filmed anywhere).

Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) is confronted in the dead governor's office by the lieutenant governor (Richard T. Jones).

The locker contains grainy, black-and-white video from the private office at the governor’s residence, the very same place where McGarrett was framed for her murder. Danno and Chin Ho race to the residence and find a camera in an old clock before they are interrupted by the lieutenant governor (Richard T. Jones). At least he is identified as the lieutenant governor throughout the episode; wouldn’t he be the governor since his predecessor is dead?

Turns out the newly discovered camera captured a figure appearing behind McGarrett, tasing him, shooting the governor and placing the gun in McGarrett’s hand. Though viewers know it is Wo Fat, the video doesn’t show his face – so he can’t simply be arrested.

But the lieutenant governor does reconstitute Five-0, with two exceptions:

1. The team no longer will have blanket immunity to break the law; and
2. Kono must be cleared by HPD’s Internal Affairs Division before she can return to the team.

Finally, in another whiplash inducing scene at the end, it is revealed that there is, in fact, a mole attached to the Five-0 team. It’s just not Chin Ho, as I speculated in my Season One recap.

Subplots

It also was reported over the summer that character of  Dr. Max Bergman (Masi Oka), the oddball coroner, had been upgraded to a regular. This was confirmed in the Season 2 premier. Max finds an unconscious, bleeding McGarrett in his home and proceeds to treat him and alert Danno and Chin Ho.

“Max,” McGarrett says after regaining consciousness, “the least you can do after patching me up is call me ‘Steve.’”

Max quickly displays his sci-fi geek credentials.

When he suggests a brief car exchange with Danno, we see a tiny model of the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek on his keychain. Perhaps it’s an homage, since the father of Oka’s character on Heroes was played by George Takei, Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek.

A VW Thing

Then there is his car: Danno ends up behind the wheel of a VW Thing with the license plate “WARP9.” [Kim occupied the Star Trek universe as well, guest starring on an episode of Voyager. And the actor who plays Papa McGarrett in flashbacks (William Sadler) was a recurring character on Deep Space Nine.]

Max ends up driving Danno’s macho Chevy Camaro.

Yes, the advertisers must have been happy, because product placement is back for Season 2. An early commercial tells us that, “Chevrolet is proud to power Hawaii Five-0.” Later in the episode, a Hawaiian Airlines jet figures prominently in the background as McGarrett climbs out of a helicopter at the Molokai airport. CBS also used the commercial breaks to promote the season premieres of some of its other big shows, such as CSI and Criminal Minds.

Danno’s ex-wife and daughter, last seen boarding a plane to the mainland after Danno failed to show up at the airport, were only referenced in the Season 2 premiere. In discussions among characters, we learn that Rachel’s pregnancy was further along than she’d realized — and that the father is “The Stan,” not Danno. We’re told that she and Grace are returning to Hawaii so Rachel can give her second marriage another chance.

Notes

• Not much is revealed about O’Quinn’s character, other than that he trained McGarrett in the military and was friends with Papa McGarrett for years. He’s unflappable: Told McGarrett escaped from jail, he responds that, “Patience was never his strong suit.” He also shows that he is good with gun, backing up Kono in a chase scene. (And what man wouldn’t back her up, since the writers had her wearing a snug pair Daisy Dukes.)
• While Wo Fat got away, the team did prevent the “last deal” Hesse mentioned – the sale of “dirty bomb” materials to a Eurotrashy dude who Kono shoots dead. But Hesse’s larger plan fails, leaving him dead in his cell.
• On a personal note, I was happy to see McGarrett dispatch one of Wo Fat’s henchmen with a “Book ‘im, Danno.”

###

Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

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By Stu Robinson,

A few weeks ago, I posted a recap of Hawaii Five-0‘s season finale. Now that I’ve had a few weeks to reflect on it, here are my big-picture thoughts on the show’s plot and character developments.

The team faces an existential crisis following the season finale. McGarrett and Kono are under arrest; Chin Ho appears to be their jailer; and Danno seems powerless to do anything about it. It’s hard to imagine how our heroes will get out of this mess (but obviously they will so there can be a second season).

In the days following the finale, a couple of questions formed in my head:

Whose side is Chin Ho on? Much as I hate the thought, could one of the show’s primary characters be a rat? McGarrett never really checked out Chin Ho in the pilot; he just took the ex-cop at his word that he wasn’t dirty. Chin Ho knows a lot about McGarrett’s father and says it’s because he was a mentor, but we don’t know if that is true. Perhaps he was onto Papa McGarrett for the bad guys. And it was never really explained how Victor Hesse managed to get the drop on Chin Ho and wire him up with explosives in Episode 12 – the event that led McGarrett and Kono to rob the Honolulu Police asset-forfeiture locker for ransom money. Chin Ho’s situation vis-à-vis the HPD took a number of odd turns during the season, with him going from shunned in the pilot to leading a SWAT team in the finale. He also made some inexplicable decisions in his go-arounds with Internal Affairs officers. And in the season finale, he stormed out of the Five-0 office moments before it was raided by HPD, only reappearing in the penultimate scene with the SWAT team.

Where is the money? The $10 million in cash that McGarrett and Kono “borrowed” to ransom Chin Ho was burned by Hesse. McGarrett and Kono saw it burn, as did viewers. But the team later was told that no money was missing. How could that be? My thought during the season was that Wo Fat had somehow replaced it, for reasons unknown. But after learning in the finale that Gov. Pat Jameson (Jean Smart) was in league with Wo Fat, I realized that the team only thought the money was there because the governor said so. It might not have been. Was the cash recovered in the finale the remnants of Hesse’s bonfire, or did the mysterious Wo Fat singe another load of cash and plant it for HPD to find?

Beyond those questions, the mystery behind the murders of McGarrett’s parents only became murkier, while Danno’s family life became sappier.

Daddy issues dominated the season – McGarrett’s questions about his absentee father contrast with Danno’s moving to Hawaii to remain in his daughter’s life. Weekly plots included fathers’ sacrificing so their sons would have better lives, fathers losing children, even fathers being victimized by their offspring. Whether a child can be proud of his or her father is a central theme. Even the characters acknowledge the show’s daddy issues, with Danno at one point asking McGarrett: “Why is it that every time somebody’s father is involved, you get all goofy? … You lose all objectivity.”

Season One Character Analyses

Steve McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) – In my review of Hawaii Five-0‘s season premiere, I noted that McGarrett carried an icy, brooding anger that could get old quickly unless he warmed up to the other main characters. He did that to an extent: His comic “carguments” with Danno have become legendary among fans, and he has an almost empathic link with Chin Ho during action sequences.

But he never really relaxed. His father’s murder had brought him home to Hawaii, only to find that his mother’s death in a car explosion was no accident. Though he identified and arrested his mother’s killer in Episode 13, the man was killed before McGarrett could learn his motive.

Even though the writers gave McGarrett a beautiful girlfriend, she appeared in only three episodes and didn’t do much to soften him up. Danno’s daughter, Grace, had better luck, with McGarrett becoming a surrogate uncle – so much so that she was okay with him picking her up from school after Danno was injured in the season’s second-to-last episode.

Ultimately McGarrett remained fixated on finding out why his father was murdered and became angrier when he discovered that his mother’s death in a car explosion was no accident either. Unfortunately, this inner rage led him right into Wo Fat’s trap in the season finale.

Danny “Danno” Williams (Scott Caan) – After the first few episodes of the new Hawaii Five-0, critics hailed Caan as the show’s breakaway star for his portrayal of McGarrett’s partner. But Danno seemed to lose his edge as the season progressed. The New Jersey cop who bickered constantly with his ex-wife and hated living in Hawaii mellowed out, even learning to surf at one point. Sure, he continued to wear a tie – a running joke among the Hawaiian characters – and held up his end in the carguments, but it seemed like he turned into a bit of a marshmallow in the second half of the season. Perhaps the turning point was an odd episode in which he let his criminal brother, Matt (Dane Cook in a ridiculous bit of stunt casting) escape at the end of a melodramatic airport scene.

On the upside, Danno’s relationship with ex-wife Rachel moved from open hostility to a rekindling of their love. He remained an attentive, devoted father to Grace throughout the season.

Unfortunately, “Book ‘em, Danno” – McGarrett’s signature line in the original Hawaii Five-0 – appeared to fall by the wayside. If this was an attempt by the show’s creators to separate themselves from the original, it was unnecessary. Those throwback elements – the theme song, the boxy black Mercury Marquis and “Book ‘em, Danno” – were what kept Hawaii Five-o in the American consciousness for the three decades it took CBS to bring it back.

Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) – Daniel Dae Kim didn’t have to leave Hawaii following the last Lost. He just exchanged one beach for another to become Chin Ho, an ex-Honolulu cop mentored by McGarrett’s late father. Bounced from the force after being accused of stealing money, Chin Ho, we later learn, was covering for his uncle, a veteran cop with a very sick wife. Yet the details remain murky. McGarrett trusts him implicitly, and the two seem to share an uncanny telepathy during action sequences. During the first half of the season, at least, Chin Ho was the character who always had the others’ backs.

In the later episodes, however, Chin Ho made a number of questionable decisions at the intersection of his personal and professional lives. These seemed out of character, and gave rise to my suspicion.

Beyond his relationship with HPD, the show revealed very little about Chin Ho’s personal life. His ex-fiancée shows up in Episode 14 amid questions of who dumped whom. Though that set the stage a possible subplot concerning them, the writers apparently passed on that option. In Episode 16, Chin Ho exchanged smoldering glances with a beautiful federal witness he was protecting, but it already had been established that she was headed for the witness-protection program. And in the season finale, McGarrett and the governor implied separately that Chino Ho and Laura Hills, the governor’s public safety liaison, had eyes for each other – which came as a surprise to views who’d seen no evidence of that whatsoever during the season. Not that it mattered, since Hills was killed with a car bomb moments later.

Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park) – A former professional surfer who graduated the police academy during the season, Kono is Chin Ho’s young cousin. Though she would appear to have made the Five-0 team through pure nepotism, she displayed talent and toughness as the season progressed. During chase scenes, she excelled in cutting off the fugitive at the pass. She displayed sharpshooting skills when picked off Hesse from a hillside overlook before he could detonate Chin Ho.

This is the second time Park has appeared in a series update in a role originally held by a man. She played Boomer/Athena on Syfy’s updated Battlestar Galactica. She is a talented actress, but the H50 writers won’t free her from gender stereotypes. Kono’s surfer background provides a pretext for her be in a bikini on a regular basis (something she does very well), and she is the team’s go-to member whenever a child must be interrogated, reassured or otherwise nurtured in the line of duty.

Kono also was the untainted voice of common sense to her cousin, particularly in regard to resolving his past with HPD, but Chin Ho ignored most of her advice.

Aside from a brief flirtation with a former surfing buddy in Episode 6, Kono didn’t find a potential love interest until Episode 22. He was a smart-aleck lab technician named Charlie Fong (Brian Yang). Witty, handsome and claiming to know her, he wouldn’t say where or when they met. She didn’t remember him, and it became a running gag as she subtly attempted to get the information from him. Fong also appeared in the season finale, linking Hills to McGarrett’s anonymous weekly clues via handwriting analysis. We’ll have to see if this goes anywhere in Season 2.

Secondary Characters

Kamekona (Taylor Wily) – The giant shave-ice vendor appeared in 13 episodes, usually bringing some much-needed comic relief to balance the show’s tightly wound tone. He is the show’s go-to utility character: Need a tip, a ride, a babysitter, a gun – even a shave ice? Kamekona’s your guy. It’s implied that he has a history with McGarrett, but Season 1 never explained it.

Grace Williams (Teilor Grubbs) – Danno’s cute, precocious daughter appeared in 12 episodes. The reason Danno left his beloved New Jersey for Hawaii, her main role was to be … cute and precocious.

Rachel Edwards (Claire van der Boom) – Viewers got to know Danno’s ex-wife as the unseen party to angry telephone arguments. Remarried to a wealthy businessman who Danno and Grace call “The Stan,” she took Grace away from New Jersey, prompting Danno to relocate. Danno’s portion of the phone conversations painted Rachel as a screaming shrew always looking to block his access to Grace.

When Rachel finally appeared in Episode 10, she was not at all what viewers had been led to expect. It quickly became clear that she and Danno were getting tired of bickering and retained some fondness for each other. Though Rachel enjoyed the affluent lifestyle of her new husband, she hadn’t forgotten all that she learned as a cop’s wife, the good as well as the bad. And when Danno was in jeopardy, she showed cunning and resourcefulness to help him escape.

The rapprochement continued. By the season finale, she was carrying Danno’s second child and they were planning to return with Grace to New Jersey.

Gov. Pat Jameson (Jean Smart) – After recruiting McGarrett to create Five-0 in the season premiere, the governor gave him a seemingly unlimited budget for equipment and guarded his back in jurisdictional disputes. It was a shocking twist, then, to learn in the season finale that she was in league Wo Fat. Turns out she created Five-0 so she could keep tabs on McGarrett, and hopefully control him. That didn’t work out so well, as Wo Fat shot her dead and planted the murder weapon on an unconscious McGarrett.

Dr. Max Bergman (Masi Oka) – The oddball coroner appeared in four episodes. Expect more from him next season, as Oka told Entertainment Weekly in June that Bergman will be upgraded to a series regular. “They were kind enough to offer me more regular work,” he said. “I don’t know yet if it I will be needed for every episode because they are writing the next season now, but Dr. Max Bergman will be more involved. … I hope they delve into his personal life more. Max Bergman is a nut and I’d liked to know more about who he is and what he does with his time.”

Mary Ann McGarrett (Taryn Manning) – Mary Ann may have more emotional issues than her brother. Papa McGarrett sent her to live on the mainland years earlier, evidently to protect her from whatever shenanigans cost him his life. It was implied that she is a bit of an L.A. wild child, yet she is the only other member of McGarrett’s immediate family still breathing.

Because Mary Ann disappeared after Episode 5, I started to joke about mid-season that her photo was going to turn up on a milk carton. Six episodes later, we found out that she really was kidnapped, but big brother was able to rescue her because the dumbest kidnappers ever failed to confiscate her iPhone.

Whether Mary Ann returns to the islands in Season 2 is anybody’s guess. I hope she does, because she was an interesting character with a lot of potential for new story lines. The answer might rest in what else is going on in actress/singer Manning’s career when it’s time to start filming.

Navy Lt. Catherine Rollins (Michelle Borth) – McGarrett’s girlfriend is in the same boat. (Naval officer in boat, get it? Hahahaha, I slay myself.) Borth has the lead role in ABC’s recently debuted Combat Hospital, playing a Canadian military doctor in Afghanistan. Work schedules are likely to play a major role in determining whether Rollins is back for H50 Season 2.

In terms of plot utility, she’s not crucial. Her primary function was to give McGarrett access on demand to U.S. spy satellites whenever he lost track of a suspect.

Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik) – A CIA analyst on personal leave, Kaye turned up in Episode 19. She shares McGarrett’s obsession with Wo Fat, whom she said had her fiancé killed. Her knowledge of Wo Fat is matched only by her ineptitude in the field. After a frosty start, she and McGarrett join forces, and by the season finale she seems like an adjunct member of Five-0.

Executive Producer Peter Lenkov told Screenrant.com in June that Five-0 would get a new member in Season 2. Kaye would be my first guess, since she probably wouldn’t have a future with the CIA after pursuing Wo Fat on her own. Of course, it also could be Bergman or another character.

With her fiancé out of the picture, Kaye could become a romantic interest if she returns. Though she strikes me as a bit mousy for McGarrett, she shares some personality traits with Chin Ho.

Laura Hills (Kelly Hu) – Once one gets past the fact that the writers actually killed off a hot chick, one realizes how expendable she really was.

The governor’s public safety liaison appeared in only three episodes and never really needed to be there. It was like the producers stunt cast a name costar but didn’t know what to do with her. At first, it looked like she might become either a love interest or the team’s bureaucratic nemesis, yet neither materialized. The show muted her beauty with boxy business suits, and her plot contributions were random.

Granted, Hu is nowhere near A list, but she’s been the lead in a couple of movies and a TV sitcom and has some talent to go along with her looks. Having her under contract for no good purpose might be the real-life reason the character had to go.

Bad Guys

Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos) – Will McGarrett’s nemesis return for Season 2? My guess is yes,because there still is so much that viewers don’t know about Wo Fat. The question likely will be answered in the season premier. Even if the writers get McGarrett off the hook for the governor’s murder, a necessity for there to be a Season 2, it doesn’t mean the crime will be traced to our lead villain.

Victor Hesse (James Marsters) – The man who killed McGarrett’s father in the series pilot and rigged Chin Ho with explosives in Episode 12 was last seen receiving a prison visit from Wo Fat. He knows what got Papa McGarrett killed and might use that information as a bargaining chip.

Sang Min (Will Yun Lee) – My guess is that the human trafficker and jailhouse snitch, who appeared in four episodes, will be back for Season 2. He is valuable to the writers as a utility bad guy who can be useful in advancing a plot line. He is sort of an evil twin to Kamekona, except that one is big and tall while the other is short and slight.

What Worked; What Didn’t

↑ Kamekona really brought some needed levity to the tightly would members of Five-0. But he wasn’t simply a clown; I found that I really enjoyed the lighthearted yet loyal character and how he interacted with the team.

↑ The “carguments” between McGarrett were highly entertaining, though I wouldn’t want to be driving on the same road.

↑ The theme song: Boffo!

↓ Audio quality was consistently poor the whole season. The background noise was too loud, too often drowning out the dialog. That’s especially harmful to a show such as Hawaii Five-0, which depends upon quick, witty banter among characters and subtle clues to its various mysteries. I often found myself rewinding the DVR to try and make out key pieces of dialog.

↓ The pacing of large fight scenes was a problem too. Quick video cuts made it tough to follow who was doing what to whom. More exercise for the rewind button on my remote.

↑ Casting actors of Asian and Pacific Island descent. The folks on the show look like the people of Hawaii, though perhaps a bit more buff. Ric Young, the actor who played Gen. Pak in Episode 9, appeared in a 1976 episode of the original Hawaii Five-O as “Chinese travel agent.”

↔ Guest stars ran the gamut from good (Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Robert Loggia), to adequate (Kevin “Hercules” Sorbo, Rick Springfield) to awful (Dane Cook, Greg Germann, Nick Lachey/Vanessa Minillo).

↓ Inconsistent treatment of “Book ‘em, Danno” – the classic line from the original Hawaii Five-0.

↑ The show does a nice job of incorporating its Hawaiian locale. It taps the local culture and exploits the islands’ breathtaking scenery in ways that really make it stand out from other network procedurals. It’s been reported that Season 2 will get Five-0 off Oahu to some of the other Hawaiian islands.

###

Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

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By Stu Robinson,

Episode 19 of CBS’s new Hawaii Five-O finds the team investigating why a man in a superhero costume took flight off a hotel  balcony and, lacking actual super powers, met his end pool cabana below.

The episode is structured around an investigation, but the audience never has a chance to figure things out for themselves. Heck, the team only solves it though the coincidences and dumb luck that one finds only on TV. That said, it still was pretty engaging. Once the team deduces that the man was tossed from the balcony of the room above his own in a case of mistaken identity, it becomes a question of who was staying in that room and why somebody would want that person dead.

The secondary plot advances the McGarrett family mystery, particularly the relevance of the mysterious Wo Fat. CIA analyst Jenna Kaye turns up in McGarrett’s office and tries to steamroll him into turning over all his information about the deaths of his parents. McGarrett stalls for time and somehow obtains her CIA personnel file through personal connections. Turns out she’s the foremost expert on Wo Fat but was removed from the CIA’s investigation after the failure of an operation she planned, which led to the deaths of an agency strike team that included her fiancé. Like McGarrett, it’s personnel for her – and she’s been conducting her own investigation while on leave from the CIA.

When they start to compare notes, Kaye shows McGarrett a picture of his father’s killer, Victor Hesse, receiving a prison visit from Wo Fat – an event the television audience saw in a coda to Episode 12.

In the series’ pilot, McGarrett captures Hesse’s brother in a military operation, only to learn that Hesse is holding a gun to his father’s head back in Hawaii. When the brother dies moments later in a firefight, Hesse kills Papa McGarrett. The audience, and McGarrett, are left to assume that Hesse pulls the trigger in retaliation for his brother’s death, as he had threatened to do moments earlier. Now CIA analyst Kaye suggests a scenario in which Wo Fat brought Hesse to Hawaii and ordered him to to kill McGarrett’s dad. I have trouble with both scenarios: How could Hess or Wo Fat possibly have known that McGarrett’s Navy SEAL team would capture the brother – much less the exact day and time.

Product Placement

While it has been clear from the start of the new Hawaii Five-O that good guys only drive Chevy’s, it’s become apparent that bad guys only drive Fords. I wonder if the good folks at Chrysler feel left out?

Speaking of the Chevy’s, Episode 19 offers another “cargument” between McGarrett and Danno. It’s comparatively short, but does give us this gem:

• “You are a devourer of dreams,” Danno tells a skeptical McGarrett. “You know what I mean? Like … you eat them. You’re like a little Pac-Man in cargo pants.”

Also, the coroner, Max Berman (Masi Oka), uses Bing to search the Internet for information.

Guest Stars

The theme for Episode 19′s guest stars is actors from 1990s teen movies who pretty much disappeared while their costars went on to greater fame.

Kaye is played by Larisa Oleynik, who portrayed the younger Stratford sister in 1999′s 10 Things I Hate About You. That remake of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew set in a Seattle-area high school also starred Julia Stiles (the Bourne trilogy), the late Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight, Brokeback Mountain) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, 500 Days of Summer and Inception). D.B. Sweeney, who starred opposite Moira Kelly (One Tree Hill) and Terry O’Quinn (Lost), in The Cutting Edge (1992), plays a robbery victim. [To appease the TV Tyrant, I should note that Sweeney also guest starred in five episodes of Jericho, one of her favorite shows.]

Outside that theme, the Sweeney character’s wife is played by Perrey Reeves, Mrs. Ari from Entourage.

And last, but not least, Episode 19 gave us a “Book ‘em, Danno.”

###

Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.

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After false lead after false lead, I finally found a version of the 12-minute Lost “epilogue” floating around online and I’m very glad I did.

If you want to wait for the official DVD/Blu-Ray version to find out what happened, stop reading now. In other words: SPOILERS AHEAD, DIVERT DIVERT DIVERT!

OK, so if you’re still reading, you either have watched the video or you want to know what’s in it (I won’t link to it here, as I don’t want to contribute to the takedown hunt — plus, for all I know, the version I saw has been taken down anyhow.)

So … were there answers?

Sorta. But enough more was settled that it made me feel even more comfortable with the ending as it was. Except I’d have loved to have seen Lapidus rappelling out of a helicopter or something. Not that it would have had ANYthing to do with ANYthing, but c’mon, that would have been great.

(Note: If you’re as big a Lapidus fan as myself, check out FYeahLapidus.)

OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system.

Here’s what I got out of the 12 minutes:
• Hurley and Ben have completely adapted to their island protector roles. Hurley’s at peace more than he’s ever been. He’s happy, I dare say. Ben, I think, is actually happy to not be running around deceiving and killing people.
• How much did you want to run in, grab that binder filled with DVDs that Ben had and run away?
• Polar bears were on the island due to their ability to withstand electromagnetism and their intelligence. Not of huge importance, but at least it explains why, specifically, polar bears.
• The Purge happened a pretty short time after the Incident – at least in outside world time. Those guys in the warehouse were hired 20 years ago to set up the food drops, and the Dharma Initiative ended soon after. The food drops were due to the Incident.
• Better for those two warehouse guys to think the food drops had been unnecessary for 20 years than to have to explain that there were, indeed, two guys on the island pressing a button, yada yada yada.
• Ben and Hurley are tying up all the loose ends created by the Dharma Initiative’s incursion onto the island.
• Poor Walt. Though the epilogue doesn’t exactly explain WHY Walt is special, it does explain that he is, and that he’s important to the island. I’d love to understand more of why, but at least it brings that full circle – a plotline that was so integral to the island for the first two years, at least getting its due. He obviously has some sort of ability to help the lost souls on the island move on to whatever it is they need to move on to?
• Obviously, the Dharma folks understood why women could no longer carry babies to term on the island – the Incident & the electromagnetism it unleashed. Why didn’t the Others understand this? They obviously didn’t, because they brought Juliet in to help. And if they did, they sure as hell didn’t explain it to Juliet.

So, what did I miss? Did it satisfy any of your burning questions? How much would you pay to see a Lapidus spinoff? Or a Hurley/Ben spinoff? I’d watch either. I’d love to see one-off episodes, a mystery of the week-type thing.

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Before I get into the meat of the matter, I have to ask this of the folks out there who didn’t like the finale of Lost last night:

You didn’t like the Battlestar Galactica ending either, did you?

I ask that not to accuse you of just not liking finales to shows you’ve loved. I ask that because in both cases, I believe the ending was absolutely the culmination of everything that came before.

The endings MADE SENSE. Yes, you can nitpick and complain about little things here or there that didn’t make sense. When you’ve unraveled as much string as both of these shows did, it’s hard to get it all back into a neat little ball of yarn.

Not all questions were answered, and in some cases that was infuriating (from both shows).

But, in the end, the show was what it was always about: The people. Love. Fate. Free will. The afterlife.

The only way to tackle last night’s action-packed ending is by bullet points. I’m emotionally exhausted and I still have two hours of 24 to watch tonight, and that promises to be as equally emotionally wrenching.

The afterlife

Let’s get one thing straight: The island wasn’t purgatory. Not for our Losties, at least. Sure, there are some people who are stuck there forever, running around whispering stuff, like Michael. But our Losties’ Purgatory or waiting room or whatever you wanna call it was the alternate universe. The flash-sideways.

The island was real. The Losties were absolutely alive.

The flash-sideways was a place where these people who had become a family could come together and finally find peace. And once they finally all came together, it was time to go into the light.

OK, that moment was totally hokey. But did you notice the statues of Vishnu and the Buddha in the rectory? Did you notice the stained glass window that had symbols from Judaism, Islam, Jainism, every religion, practically?

This wasn’t about a Judeo-Christian afterlife. This was a recognition that every religious or spiritual practice in the world has some sort of belief system about what happens after life on this world is over. If you were Buddhist, you could believe that the island and their tests there were their final tests before enlightenment. Or maybe the flash sideways was, and now they don’t have to be reborn again.

Love

Omg, when Juliet and Sawyer met again and recognized one another and kissed, I was bawling like a baby. (KNEW that the baby doctor was gonna be Juliet and that she was going to be Jack’s ex-wife.) And Jin & Sun, too. Like. A. Baby.

This show has always been about love and loss. From Day One.

And you know what? Team Darlton made us love these characters. Even the ones who annoyed you, you had moments of loving. Don’t deny it. Denial is ugly.

Jack/Jacob/Hurley/Ben

It made so much sense to have Hurley be the new Jacob. He was always the one who took care of people, made them feel better.

Jack’s job was always to fix things. In the end, he fixed the island. He sent Desmond down there to break it – but that was only, really, so he could kill Flocke. Flocke couldn’t be killed until the island was broken. When Des pulled the cork out of the island, Jack and Flocke became mortal.

By the way, how freakin’ awesome was that flying punch-down that Jack did to Flocke on the cliff? Cut to commercial. WOW.

So, anyway, Flocke could be killed. He couldn’t leave the island and bring his evil with him. He couldn’t end life, the universe and everything by leaving.

That was Jack’s job. He was always the fixer. Only when he gave up the idea of having to fix everything was he actually able to fix the thing he’d been working toward his entire life.

Once that was done, he wasn’t the person to keep the island safe. It made so much sense for it to be Hurley. The second Hurley went back with Jack to save Des and the Island, it became exceedingly obvious that was what was going to happen.

And bravo to Ben, in the end, doing what was right. Even telling Hurley that he could send Des back to Penny and his son, Charlie. Indeed, if Hurley was the new Jacob, couldn’t he make his own rules? Why couldn’t people leave the island?

Fine job, Ben. I liked that they invited Ben inside the church to come with them, but that Ben chose more time in purgatory, to atone for what he’d done, to make things right with Alex and Danielle. He’d redeemed himself and was “eligible” to move on, but he chose not to. Which redeemed him even more.

Desmond/Penny

Thank you.

De plane! De plane!

Who else let out a yelp and applauded when Miles and Richard found Lapidus bobbing in the ocean! That. Was. So. Awesome. I don’t know, I had a feeling he was still alive.

And Richard was still alive, too – was it his brush with death with Smokey what made him mortal again, or was it the cork being pulled out of the island? Probably the latter.

So Lost to have him find a reason to live again, once he knew he could die.

Duct tape fixes everything.

When Kate, Sawyer and Claire come upon the Ajira plane just about to taxi and Frank gets ‘em on, total sigh of relief, but also an intake of breath. Would they still escape the island? Nothing was ever certain on Lost, and they’d killed almost everyone else by this point, so it could have happened.

Questions:

Why wasn’t Miles in the church? And Richard, too? What about Frank?

Dharma initiative? Um, totally confused about that. How did they ever get to the island? Obviously, they were trying to find Elvar Hanso’s ship and did, but how did they even find it? Did Jacob allow them to come? Or did the MiB allow them to come, knowing the destruction they’d reign down on the Others.

WTF were the Others? Just people gathered by Jacob over the years to protect the island? Were they candidates? Were some candidates?

Why couldn’t babies be born on the island? Was it the nuclear bomb? I assume that, but it was never made clear.

Why did the Others have that superhuman strength? Did the exposure to the radiation make them all Hulk-like, except not green and huge?

What was Widmore’s backstory? We never really got that. We never learned how he got to the island, why he was there (Eloise, too). And who was Penny’s mother? How did that all transpire that he met some woman off-island whom he loved and had a child with? And how did Eloise and Faraday end up off-island? Did she leave when she found out she was pregnant so her child would live? (They hadn’t had Faraday yet when Widmore was forced to leave, right?)

Who in the hell was Matthew Abbadon? I know he worked for Widmore, but wtf? Ilana, too.

I’m sure I’ll come up with more questions and more thoughts.

_____

But I do want to say this:

Thank you to the entire cast and crew of Lost – you provided excellent entertainment and diversion for six years. The acting, the writing, the music, the editing, the cinematography – it was all better than we’ve seen on television in, maybe, ever. OK, a close tie with The Wire and Battlestar Galactica, but in a totally different way.

Thanks for being my Constant.

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We’re down to the last 2.5 hours of one of the best shows in the history of television (1- that’s not hyperbole and 2- even if it were, I’m allowed). If you haven’t watched Tuesday’s ep yet, LEAVE NOW.

So, we had two very distinct sets of stories going on last night and they’re hurtling toward one another, faster and faster, ready to culminate in … what?

The Island – Jake & the candidates

• Kate was still a viable candidate. Her name being crossed off had nothing to do with her being killed (though that could still happen) – it had everything to do with her having a purpose in life. Once Kate became mom to Aaron, she no longer was a viable candidate, because she had someone who needed her. Once she chose to get Claire back to Aaron, she became viable again.

• Jacob was visible to the candidates now, not just Hurley. Why? Could he always have made himself visible, but only let Hurley see him because Hurley wouldn’t freak out at being able to see him?

• Jack! I was never a Jack hater, but I’ve really grown to love him the last few episodes. He has finally accepted his place in the world and he’s much more enjoyable to watch. And now he’s the new Jacob and needs to find a way to destroy (or, at least, bottle up) the MiB.

• How long does it take to burn a bag of ashes? Jacob was still there for a long time, no?

• Who was Sawyer trying to kid, saying he was doing just fine until Jacob came along? None of the final candidates was doing OK. All four were all behind bars – either jail or the crazy farm.

• DESMOND! Where are you, brotha? Are you going to save the world in both timelines? (Note to Team Darlton: Remember what I said about Desmond and Pennah!)

The Island – Ben & Flocke, together again for the first time

• What did Widmore tell Flocke?

• Ben, you bastard! I knew you couldn’t be all good, but I didn’t realize you had all that bad left in you, either. I guess when faced with the man indirectly responsible for Alex’s death, however, that was bound to happen.

• Miles: The smartest man left on the island. RUN, MILES, RUN! Don’t answer Ben if he calls you on the walkie, btw.

• Will Flocke still kill Pennah if he manages to leave the island? Oh, wait, if he leaves the island, everyone and everything comes to a screeching halt, so, kind of, yeah.

• Bye Zoe. We hardly knew ye, but you weren’t very important anyway.

• So, Widmore’s dead. Wow. Just when I was starting to maybe kind of like him.

• Is Richard dead? He was released by Jacob from living for all eternity, right?

Off-Island

• Sawyer’s an honest cop. Go figure. But that’s OK, Kate got away anyhow.

• Ana-Lucia! Wow, you’re a crooked cop. Somehow, I was glad to see that Ana-Lucia was a bad one. I never liked her. Love that Hurley and Desmond were basically being like Starsky and Hutch or Laurel and Hardy, maybe.

• Ben, in the haze of Desmond’s beating, saw his other life. Did he see what he did to Danielle? What if she suddenly flashes on her other life? That’ll end her fondness of Dr. Linus. It’s interesting to see, though, the happy, non-crazy Danielle.

• I realize that most of the Losties are happy in the alternate timeline. Only Kate and Sayid are pretty frakkin’ miserable still. What’s going to happen this weekend at the Concert?

Random questions remaining that somehow were raised by this ep

• Why couldn’t women have babies on the island? It’s not the MiB preventing it, as we know of at least once baby conceived and born on the island – Ethan. Was it the detonation of Jughead?

• In the alternate timeline, with the island at the bottom of the ocean, is that an alternate way of keeping MiB from getting off the island? Can we have our happy Losties and leave the Island at the bottom of the sea or do they have to go back to the original timeline and all die?

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Didn’t watch? Get the frak outta here!

OK, so this episode answered soooooo many questions, even as it raised others. The biggest question it answered (and theory it put to rest) was the identity of the island’s “Adam and Eve” – Jacob’s adoptive mother and his brother, the actual MiB.

Loved that it flashed back to that scene from Season 1 where Jack and Kate found the skeletons in the caves and Locked dubbed them Adam and Eve, reminding anyone who may not be keeping detailed notes about the show (all five of you). The “Rose and Bernard are Adam and Eve” theory was shot to hell there. (Also, nice foreshadowing of Flocke; he was still the Locke we knew and loved at that point.)

No time warp, no one we knew – but extremely important to the history of the island.

By the way, remember when Locke was dragged into the ground by Smokey in Season 1 or 2, but was dragged back out and said he’d seen the heart of the island and it was beautiful? Yeah, he was doomed all the way back then.

Here’s what we learned and questions I have:

• What is MiB’s name? Drove me crazy that he was never named, but somehow appropriate. Obviously, he had a name. Wouldn’t have been raised for so many years without one. But in true Lost fashion, his name was never uttered. Even though, as I said, it drove me crazy, I loved that detail. His name isn’t important. He’s Smokey. He’s Flocke. He’s Smocke. He’s Christian Shepherd. He’s the Man in Black.

• MiB could see dead people. Jacob couldn’t. Does this mean, somehow, that Hurley is more like MiB? We saw from his background that he wasn’t a bad person/being. Didn’t start out that way, at least. He discovered the ultimate betrayal – that he’d been lied to his entire life about his parentage, about there being things in the world besides the island, about everything. But if he had been told the truth earlier, would he have tried to leave the island earlier? I think so.

• MiB instinctively knew how things worked. He knew how to play that game he found on the beach. He knew how to build the Frozen Donkey Wheel. He knew how to use the light – the source – for his own purposes. How did he know these things? Obviously, he had shared how to use the wheel with those he drew close to him – Ben, for example. Did Widmore use the wheel to get off the island before? And if so, how did he get back? I thought one of the side effects of using the wheel was that the island moved in time and space. And if he didn’t use the wheel, how, exactly, did he get off? The submarine? Was it that it was easier to leave through the correct coordinates underwater? And why? (Wow, this bullet point ended far from where it began.)

• MiB was far more intuitive and “special” than Jacob. Jacob had no guile, but didn’t seem particularly bright. He was totally an annoying mama’s boy. By the time he decided to rebel, it was too late, and he was the only option for protecting the island, so he did it. He never cared about leaving the island, had no natural curiousity.  I found his talk with MiB about the people in the settlement interesting – MiB, having lived among them, found them deeply flawed. Jacob, by watching them only from afar, really saw nothing wrong with them. MiB’s knowledge of man comes from experience, while Jacob’s comes from ignorance. The problem is, MiB had a very small group to study, and was discounting the good things he found among them – all the clever men who helped him find the places on the island where metal acted funny. MiB so desperately wants to leave the island that he doesn’t care that it will eliminate all everything.

• MiB is not just some evil smoke monster. Smokey is not just a manifestation of evil, or the devil. MiB IS The Source. He went into the cave and came out as Smokey. His body died (which confused me, as I thought that the boys could not kill one another – interesting that MiB could not kill Jacob, but Jacob could kill MiB, or was that only because it was an accident that MiB died?), but his essence came out as Smokey. The crackling in the cloud is part of the Source light. Does some of The Source remain inside the island?

• The Island isn’t Purgatory or Hell. It is, in a sense, Eden – the Source of all life. To destroy the light is to destroy everything – it will all cease to exist. Jacob accepted that he had to keep MiB on the island in order to keep the Light from going out. MiB doesn’t even particularly care about that. He has always wanted to leave the island, to see what else is out there. He doesn’t seem to care/realize that if he were to leave the island, there would be nothing/nowhere to see. Why do I suspect that, in the end, he’s going to realize that and become the island’s protector – as he was meant to be all along?

I’m glad the show isn’t just a matter of good and evil. I suspected Team Darlton had some game-changer in their pockets, but couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that is. Once again, they’ve shown that Good and Evil aren’t simply a matter of Good and Evil. Nothing (and no one) is pure good. Nothing (and no one) is pure evil. Jacob beat the crap out of his brother more than once; MiB never raised a hand at Jacob, even to protect himself.

This is my prediction: All our candidates are going to die, but MiB will realize that he truly needs to protect the island, or else he’ll have nowhere to go anyway. And so he’ll stay. And because he can see dead people, he’ll get to hang with Jacob and their “mom” and all the others who’ve died and run around on the island. It will be a sad ending, because these people we’ve followed and traveled with for so long will be gone, but a happy ending, because the world will be saved. (Also interesting: Locke was probably the best candidate for saving the island because he believed in it so strongly, so with MiB manifesting as Locke, how will that affect things?)

Oh, and Desmond and Penny had BETTER be together, or else I’m gonna be really pissed. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before. DO NOT KILL THEM OR KEEP THEM APART, DO YOU HEAR ME DARLTON? kthxbai.

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I had a sudden moment watching Lost tonight (first chance I had to sit down and watch!) that made a whole heckuva lot of things make so much more sense.

(Insert usual spoiler alert, blah blah blah.)

The cabin that Ben used to visit Jacob at wasn’t Jacob’s cabin at all. Jacob had trapped Smokey there.

Before I continue, I want to say two things:

1) Bear with me; I know that there are some inconsistencies with this, as we saw Smokey around the island anyhow in this time. But I may have the answer to that. Or, at least, a partial answer.

2) I am just not that smart sometimes. This theory is more than likely all over all the message boards and blogs already, but I haven’t been reading the lately because I really have been trying to absorb Lost myself this season. So apologies if my epiphany is a bunch of, “Really? You just recognized that?” I may very well be pathetically slow to pick up on certain things.

OK, so: Why Jacob’s Cabin was really Smokey’s Cabin, by Amy Vernon:

We know that Smokey pretended to be Christian Shepherd. That’s how he got Claire to come with him and kind of made Jack crazy, thinking he was seeing his dad.

Remember how when Ben took Locke to see Jacob in the cabin? “Jacob” was in a rocking chair, “help me,” he implored Locke. And then, the screenshots seen around the world: “Jacob” was Christian Shepherd.

So from that episode, we all assumed that Jacob was in trouble. His cabin was surrounded by ash (which we now know keeps Smokey out — or in), he begged Locke for help. I posit that Jacob had trapped Smokey in this ever-moving cabin, in hopes, maybe, that Ben wouldn’t be able to find it and be swayed by him.

See, I think that Ben THOUGHT he was visiting Jacob all that time. And all the anger he had toward Jacob was, in actuality, toward Smokey. Smokey told him to kill all the Dharma folk. That’s not Jacob’s style.

Jacob’s a pretty hands-off kind of guy. But The Others have been, for years, manipulated by Smokey, even as they thought they were serving Jacob.

But wait! you say. Didn’t Jack see “Christian” the third day on the island? Didn’t we see Smokey multiple times before the episode where Locke visited? Didn’t Eko see his brother and face down Smokey?

Didn’t Locke himself face down Smokey?

Well, remember how when Keamey killed Alex, Ben rushed to the basement of his house in New Otherton and did some weird things with heiroglyphic panels and Smokey suddenly rushed up and killed Keamey and his men?

Ben had control over Smokey through whatever that interface was. He could leave the cabin whenever directed to by that, though had to do what he was directed. He may, actually, have been directed to kill Locke, but I think Smokey saw his future self there and was unwilling to kill his future vessel.

Once Jacob’s cabin was burned down, Smokey was freed. He no longer was kept to a single spot on the island, let out only like a dog to do his master’s bidding.

And so he convinced Ben to kill Jacob by reminding him of all the things that he – Smokey, NOT Jacob – had done to Ben, had gotten Ben to do without ever caring a whit about him.

Everyone who really knew Jacob knew he lived in the statue. So why would he have ever lived in that cabin? And it does not appear by any stretch of the imagination that Jacob was ever captured by Smokey and kept prisoner.

So that’s my brilliant insomniac insanity.

As for the rest of the episode tonight, it’s very clearly building toward something big. Was the episode in and of itself better than the last couple weeks? No. But did it very deftly set the stage for the awesomeness of the coming four final episodes? Yes.

Everyone is being moved ever closer together in our flash sideways. Even Ilana’s there. Jack’s operating on Locke, who was accompanied to hte hospital by Ben. Claire is outed as Jack’s sister. Jin and Sun are together and are gonna have their baby. Miles and Sawyer captured Sayid, and it seems likely they’re gonna bring him back to the police station, where Kate is being held. Not sure where Desmond is, but he’s definitely lurking somewhere. Hurley’s gonna pop up, too.

The timelines are bleeding through even more, as Sun is extremely aware that Locke is no good. (Speaking of, the reason Sun couldn’t speak English anymore was because flash sideways Sun couldn’t.)

It was sweet to see Sun and Jin together again, but with the specter of Desmond and Penny potentially not being together for the rest of their lives, I just can’t feel the love. I’m a bit stressed out that the best couple ever in the history of television may not be together in the end.

DO YOU HEAR ME, TEAM DARLTON?

And speaking of Desmond: No way Sayid killed him. Seriously. Sayid dared Flocke to check on him because he knew Flocke couldn’t imagine that one of his zombies would actually not do what he said.

Desmond pierced Sayid through the heart when he asked what his lady love would think when she learned what Sayid did to be with her once again. And, as we know, love is powerful on this show. It’s what’s making the two timelines begin to merge. And it’s what kept Sayid from killing Desmond.

And love also is what got Claire to give up Danielle’s life and agree to put down her weapon. She realized that Kate was telling her the truth. And her love for Aaron is stronger than any hold Flocke could have over her. To know that she could raise her own baby and that Kate’s sole purpose in coming back to the island was to get her and reunite her with Aaron – the love dissolved just enough of Flocke’s hold on her.

Just in time, because Jack may or may not be under Flocke’s thrall. What I’m not certain of quite yet is whether Jack came back to the island because he is Jacob’s replacement and feels the pull of the island so strongly or because he is one of Flocke’s zombies.

Thing is, if it were as simple as that – as simple as Flocke talking to you that “captured” you, why wouldn’t Kate and Sawyer be his zombies, too?

Or is it because Claire basically died. Sayid died. Jack just died from the explosion (though he didn’t know it), and so freshly dead people Flocke can turn into his zombies, so he does?

So many questions; so few hours left to answer.

I’m so curious, though, whether you all think I’m just basically crazy or maybe onto something. Or, even, WAY late to the game.

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