LOST
Season 3 Episodes 22 & 23
(WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Through the Looking Glass” 1 & 2

Gentlemen, I asked you to dazzle me after enduring “Stranger in a Strange Land.”
Well, I’m officially blinded.
That has to go down as not just the best Lost season finale thus far, but also one of the most kick-a$$ season finales in all of TV history. When they said that this finale would change everything, that wasn’t just hyperbole.
I could go on about the twisty-turns of the episode itself (and it had that in spades), but the ultimate twisty-turn is that brilliant climax, of Jack, by the airport, as Kate drives away, because “he” might be wondering where she’s gone to.
Once again, Lost deftly toys with the show’s story structure, as what we assume to be the flashbacks (of a depressed and suicidal Jack hooked on prescription meds), turn out to be the present, and all the Island stuff is actually the flashbacks.
I said there were spoilers, didn’t I?

So it seems as if the Flight 815 crash survivors were indeed saved and rescued from the Island (at the cost of Charlie, who drowned in the Looking Glass station, just as Des saw in his flashes*).
Just before the off-screen rescue though, three crucial points:
1) Ben says that Naomi is “one of the bad guys,” and that she’s part of a group that’s been looking for the Island for a really long time, and that they would kill Jack and the survivors, not rescue them.
2) When Charlie gets the transmission from Penny at the Looking Glass, she does not know who Naomi is, and has no idea about any boat.
3) Locke actually kills Naomi and threatens to shoot Jack, since contacting Naomi’s people is the wrong thing to do.

And then of course, in the “flashbacks,” Jack is clearly a lost soul, and in his clandestine meeting with Kate, he says they should never have left the Island, and that they need to go back.

This is such a crackerjack finale, “brilliant” seems like an understatement. That ultimate twisty-turn opens the door to a whole host of possibilities, and raises all sorts of questions. (My head is doing a Linda Blair even as I type this.)
Whose viewing did Jack attend? A viewing apparently no one else from 815 went to. Locke’s? Michael’s? (Yes, I still hate the a$$hole’s guts.) Ben’s?
What happened to all the rest of the 815ers? Is Jack the only one who feels something is wrong, or are some of the others “lost” as well? (Heh. “Others.” “Lost.”)
Rousseau said she would stay on the Island since that was where she belonged. Is she still there? Is Alex? Is Locke? (If he wasn’t the one in that casket.)
As Jack suffers, where is Juliet? They did do the kissy-face back on the Island, so where is she in Jack’s time of need?
And did Kate really end up with Sawyer?
So many questions…

And of course, the other reality here is, Lindelof, Cuse, and company have again (for the time being) managed to evade addressing long-standing Island questions, among them one from all the way back to the Pilot (What is the Monster Alternately Known As Smokey?), to ones of more recent mint (Who is Jacob?), to the Mother of all Lost questions (What is the Island?**).

Having said that though, I cannot deny the guts it took to make that leap. I also cannot deny the skill with which that leap was made.
That was explosive television, gentlemen. The storytelling on this show continues to be some of the best on the cathode ray horizon, and as Carrie Fisher said over On The Lot, “My hat, wherever it is, is off to you.”

And thanks for not having Sun die horribly in labor on the Island. (Of course, for all I know, she and her baby have been abducted by Dharma or some other mysterious organization to undergo insidious tests. Her baby, after all, is the first child to have been conceived on the Island in what I guess is a very long time, assuming of course that the baby is alive and well.)
Speaking of babies, when exactly will Jack find out that Claire is his half-sister and that Aaron is his half-nephew? I mean, wasn’t that bit of info in the files the Others had on the 815ers? Didn’t Juliet read that? Surely Ben did.

Let’s just toss that on the massive pile of Lost questions, shall we?
I’ll admit it: I love this show, but it’s the biggest tease on television.
Onward ho! Season 4!

* Incredibly moving, but couldn’t Charlie have squeezed through that porthole, once the room was filled with water? And did he really need to shut the door in the first place?

** I’ve got a theory which grew over the course of season 3, and burst into my consciousness as I watched the 2-hour finale. But somehow I’d still feel like a raving lunatic if I voiced it here.
Tell you what. When Lost finally does that reveal, I’ll admit whether I was right or wrong.

COUNTDOWN: 48.
COUNTDOWN TO RESUME IN 2008.
THE DHARMA INITIATIVE NEEDS YOU.

(Season 3 promotional image courtesy of atnzone.com.)

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Season 3 Episode 20 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Crossroads, Part 2”

“`There must be some way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief…”

Oh, man, what a way to end the season and leave us for at least nine months…
After an impassioned testimony by Lee (which almost got me convinced), Baltar gets a Not Guilty, and is spirited off by some mystery females. (Presumably, these are the people who think he’s some sort of divinity… Either that, or some people pissed off he didn’t get blasted out of an airlock and are about to go all Death and the Maiden on him.)

“`There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief…’”

Then, four of the Final Five are revealed, as is the sinister reason for that song Tigh and Sam and Tory were hearing last episode (which turns out to be Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”!).
Slyly, they saved the Chief for this episode.
Man, I’m really sad that the Chief is a skin job (making all of that anxiety he felt after the whole “Boomer is a toaster” thing horrifyingly justified). And, hey! That means his rugrat with Cally’s a hybrid. Well, at least Hera’s got someone to play with now. And if they get it on when they grow up…
I’m upset about the Chief. That doesn’t surprise me. What does, is my reaction to Tigh.
As I’ve said ‘round these parts before, I’ve never been a big Tigh fan, but what he said, to the other three, about wanting to be the man Saul Tigh is, and getting out there to do his job, that was moving, and as much as I think he can be a bull-headed pig sometimes (now, he’s a bull-headed toaster pig!), the level of respect I have for him has risen. Of course, ironically, now I have to keep a closer eye on him, now that his true nature has been uncovered.*
Maybe though, this is exactly what Tigh needs to pull himself together: the knowledge that he needs to deny his Cylon nature (just as Caprica Sharon/Athena has done). Here’s hoping.
Funny, for a character I never really took a shine to before (and who was behind the whole suicide bomber thing), Tigh made this stunning, gradual turn-around in my eyes, over the course of this season. Fantastic job, guys, making me give a frak about a character I once couldn’t have cared less about (and at some points, even hated).
And, before I leave the subject of Tigh, could he have been the Cylon D’Anna apologized to in “Rapture “? (They did, after all, torture and put out one of his eyes back on New Caprica…) Or was she apologizing to the still unknown Fifth Cylon?**

“`No reason to get excited,’ the thief, he kindly spoke,
`There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.’”

Aaaaand… voila, Starbuck’s apparently back, claiming to know the way to San Jose (which is on Earth, right?).
Either that, or Lee, not having fully purged himself of his guilt on the witness stand, was so distraught he took some chamalla extract off-camera and was hallucinating like mad.
From CAG to junkie. Them’s the breaks.

“Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.”

Frak, this may not have the balls to the wall immediacy of Season 2’s cliffhanger, but this one left us with so much dizzying potential and a frakload of anticipation.
Ooohhh…

* Actually, there’s so much irony here, it’s not even funny.
It’s ironic, given the Chief’s dalliance with Boomer and the fact that his job demands a certain affinity with machines to begin with, and it’s ironic given Starbuck’s resistance to Leoben’s pervy and twisted idea of “Happy Families,” when all long, she’d fallen in love and married a toaster! (Not to mention campaigning really hard to get back to Caprica to save Sam’s toaster a$$.)
I so cannot wait for the other characters to discover who’s a naughty toaster…
(Of course, given that Starbuck got whisked off to see “… the space between life and death,” she may just have already seen who the Final Five Cylons are, and thus, already know that her dear hubby is a skin job. Good luck, Sammy boy…)

** And considering the auditory switch for the sleepers turns out to be “All Along the Watchtower,” maybe Bob Dylan’s the Fifth Cylon!!!

(Quotes in italics from Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.”)

Parting shot: For the lyrics to “All Along the Watchtower,” go to bobdylan.com. And for a great blow by blow account of how Bear McCreary approached the song, go to Bear’s Battlestar Galactica Blog.