Lost “The Substitute” (6.04) – Review

Last week in this space I did my usual recapping thing. No big deal, right? WRONG. You guys gored me like a bull in Pamplona. So this week, to punish you, I’m going to review the episode rather than recapping it. I’m also going to compare the whole Jacob/MIB kerfuffle to 43-Man Squamish. Get at me, dogz.

Let’s say this at the outset: GREAT episode, one of the best so far. I’ve heard people bagging on last week’s Kate-fest, calling it so-so, but it was actually very helpful in terms of seeing things open up on both sides of the Singularity. Now we get a Locke/Not-Locke jam that builds on last week’s ep and starts to actually, dare I say, get us closer to the end. Part of this is clever writing, part of it is the unutterable coolness of Terry O’Quinn as The Two Lockes. Dude nails it down all the way through, in both roles, and I can’t say enough about what this revitalization (even if he’s not playing John Locke half the time anymore) has done for the show.

And we get some cool Locke/Not-Locke surprises in the show. Loved the Smoke-Monster’s-eye-view clanking and whooshing through the forest and the abandoned town, especially when he/it was reflected in the window; loved the reveal that in the non-crash world Helen doesn’t die after all but is actually engaged to John and really loves him; loved the Rose and Hurley reveals as well. All these were literal gasp-out-loud moments, and all were intrinsic to the way the episode played out. Also, and this is kind of a guilty pleasure, the freaked-out Richard Alpert is much more fun than the implacable one.

What I didn’t like so much: well, Sawyer, who at this point might as well be called Logan and have an adamantium skeleton and mutant healing abilities, getting a little tired of his act even though he was blasting “Search and Destroy” instead of “Sweet Home Alabama” or something like that. And the Locke funeral, aside from Ilana’s and Ben’s surprising emotion at the gravesite, was more trouble that it was worth. (Glad they finally got that body buried, though.)

But come on, gotta love the parallelisms all over the place here. Locke is dead, but a version of his body, or SUBSTITUTE, is now inhabited by the infamous Man in Black. Non-crash Locke serves as a SUBSTITUTE teacher. The two realities are SUBSTITUTES for each other’s existence. There are a lot more but I am too tired to list them here.

But so much non-substitute awesomeness abounded here, especially when we went on the perilous journey to the Cove Cave. The funky graph tags, the numbers, the challenge to Sawyer; all of these things came fast and furious right at the end of the episode, and each one was better than the last. Until now, many people have worried about whether or not this show was just a glorified, prettified version of  Mad Magazine’s “43 Man Squamish” or maybe even TEGWAR in Bang the Drum Slowly, both of which describe the rules of fictional games in impossible incredible detail without actually being able to, y’know’ PLAY for a long time. (Never seen BtDS? TEGWAR is a card game called The Exciting Game Without Any Rules.) I would even have been okay with that, kind of, more or less, but a lot of people would be extremely pissed off, and I guess rightly so.

So we get a bunch of revelations all stacked up. BOOM! Jacob brought everyone to the island to find a replacement (SUBSTITUTE!) for himself. BOOM! The infamous numbers correspond with the names of our favorite Losties, and all but six names have been crossed out — but by whom, really? BOOM! Jacob (let’s assume this at least for now) has crossed out the ones that turn out NOT to be his substitute. Now only six remain. Dope. BOOM!  Not-Locke is Trapped (on the Island? somewhere else?) through no fault of his own, and is trying to enlist Sawyer to help him escape. Gee, think this is the loophole talking?

So this is probably the most relevatory mid-season show “Lost” has had since, um, ever. This is okay, as they have a lot of ground to cover. So let’s let them get to it.