Even more answers on LOST!

There was a lot of bellyaching on the Internetz about last week's episode of LOST. Not surprisingly, I liked it - I sometimes think I'm too easy on the show because I crammed all of my viewing into a year, as opposed to stretching it out over multiple years. However, I think this week's episode will be much better received, and of course, I frickin' loved it all.

For once, LOST actually provided plenty of answers, mostly in the form of a campfire question and answer with Jacob. Why does FLocke walk around when he can just Smoke Monster'it around? Well, because it reminds him of being human to walk around. Who's the candidate? Jack volunteers. Why are they potential candidates? Because all of their lives were crappy on the mainland, an assertion they all reluctantly accept. Why was Kate's name crossed out? Well, because she got a life and became a mother, and as Jacob bluntly points out, that's just chalk on a wall.

It is this sort of bluntness that I love the most about LOST. Like South Park, it isn't afraid to basically shoot the middle finger to its fans and stick to its guns. In a show where the throbbing masses who watch it want to assert meaning to every little thing that happens, sometimes, as the saying goes, a cigar is just a cigar.

Is there still a lot for LOST to wrap up in its final episode? Absolutely! However, they are running toward the finish line now, whereas most of the season I felt like they were crawling. (Especially since pretty much everything that happened in the Temple seems dated and silly now.) My rough predictions for the final episode:

Desmond on the Island being a "last resort", I think his power works roughly like it did in the hatch - He has the power to reset things, which might work by making the Bizarro LAX real, or making the Island surface in Bizarro LAX. Regarding Bizarro LAX, I think that's the actual reality, while everything happening on the Island is a sort of shell game that decides humanity's fate. FLocke will definitely fail, because I can't imagine the show ending with the bad guy winning, not when the creators are adamant that they have no interest in continuing the show in the future. Ben will be the one to kill FLocke, but not before Ben kills another fan favorite, with my money being on Hurley. I think there is a good chance that Sawyer sacrifices himself to save the life of Jack or Kate. And Miles is definitely the one who saved Desmond from the well, because deep down, he does have a bit of a heart.

Grade: A

The picture comes from the always excellent Lostpedia entry for tonight's episode, "What They Died For."