Breaking down characters on Lost, Part 2

Yesterday's entry was well-received, although, as several people pointed out, I omitted or left out some characters. Sorry! There are so freakin' many that one entry would have been about 2,000 words. But hey, if you want it so badly, I have no problem giving you the sequel... TODAY. And as usual, MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW IMMEDIATELY!!!

I'll follow a slightly different format today, just tackling some of the characters that others brought up and I missed. At the end of the entry, I'll address some of the questions and comments brought up by Kate, Amanda and Tom about yesterday's entry. And if there are still questions for me after that, I supposed I could do a Part 3 at some point. As one of my favorite radio show hosts, Dave Dameshek, would say, let it begin!

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- Desmond is freakin' awesome, and his romance with Penelope feels like the show's most genuine and sweet. Of course, this makes me nervous that they will be horrifically screwed with during the final season, because anything good on Lost eventually goes bad, but I'm hoping things turn out OK for those two kids.

Desmond and Penelope are responsible for what I consider to be the absolute best moment of the show: When they finally reunite. I didn't cry, but I must say, it did get very dusty suddenly while I was watching that moment. It was an incredibly slow burn on that plot across multiple seasons, and the story - making a promise to get together with the one who got away - resonates with just about everyone, I believe. To top it off, both Desmond and Penelope are incredibly likable; it was like watching two friends who are perfect for each other hit it off. In a show where everyone else has effed up relationships (Sun-Jin, Kate-Jack-Sawyer-Juliet, Nikki-Paulo, the gross Boone-Shannon stuff, Sayid-Anyone, Ana Lucia-Jack), Desmond and Penelope are a breath of fresh air.

That being said, I'm not even sure if we'll see them in the sixth season, outside of a cameo appearance or two. By Desmond refusing to go back to the island, he's sort of cast his lot outside of the show's main story arc. Oh, and also, I kind of like the last image we had of Desmond - Him shrugging off an attack from Ben, then almost beating him to death on the docks with his bare fists. Given all the misery Ben has inflicted on pretty much everyone else, it was sweet revenge to see him get his ass kicked.

- Frank is a cool character, although to a lesser degree than Desmond, Sawyer, Farraday and Miles. He's not as heroic as Desmond, as snarky and charming as Miles and Sawyer, or as smart as Farraday, but he has a sort of "everyman smarts" that appeals to me. I imagine that he might get his own episode that revolves around his substance abuse problems, which might change my mind; in one of the season four or five episodes, it is mentioned in passing that he's a drunk.

Also, unfortunately, Frank is an obvious candidate to get killed soon. He's not a main character, and his skills aren't really needed by most of the people on the island, since there isn't a plane or chopper there anymore, if I recall correctly. So, it wouldn't surprise me if he's the first death of season six, excluding a flashback.

- Richard is so ambiguous that I can't get a really good read on him. He is obviously connected to the diety-like Jacob that Fake Locke, Locke and Ben are all constantly trying to get in touch with. And he obviously has some sort of divine power himself, since he doesn't ever age. He predates the Dharma Initiative too, so he's not deriving his power from them.

However, he seems to be mostly benevolent or neutral for whatever reason. For example, if he really wanted to, I imagine he could have killed all the members of the Dharma Initiative without involving Ben at all. I don't think he's a ghost or anything, but there is some non-destructive agenda behind him, and thus, behind Jacob as well.

- Regarding Amanda's comment on Farraday, yeah, he does mention at one point that whatever happens, happens. However, at the end of season five, you find out he doesn't really believe this, and he was going along with a lot of this just to try to get into a position to save Charlotte and change time.

Miles smartly brings up to Hurley at the very end of the last episode that maybe they're the ones who create the anomaly that crashes the plane, but if that's the case, it seems like the writers have painted themselves into a corner, and Juliet, Jack, Sawyer, Kate and the others are all dead from the nuclear reaction. I suppose they could do a "left field" move and the blast could cause them to time warp into the future, but I think that would be too much of a cop-out, and the Lost writers are generally better than that.

- Regarding Amanda's comment on Kate, I think that's a much more succinct explanation than I offered: Kate really doesn't seem to have much substance to her. To compare her to one of my other television obsessions, she is like how Will from Glee chased after his wife through high school and bent over backwards to keep her because she was the head cheerleader and what not.

But, once he actually got to know her, he was surprised at how vapid and empty she is. This is how I feel about Kate. When you peel the layers away from Kate, she's essentially just some bland brunette from Tennessee, who wasn't really up to anything much, and so she decided to kill her mom's abusive boyfriend. Like, if you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you don't do that.

- Nikki and Paulo's episode would have been better if I hadn't guessed the twist of it. I think it's been used in a Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode too, which is probably why it seemed familiar to me.

... And I'm out of time, got to go see someone about some tickets to the Casey's holiday festival thing. Sigh! Looks like there will definitely be a part three at some point, where I tackle Rose, Bernard, Locke, Ben, Eko and Alex. My own cryptic hint: I like two of those characters, dislike two, and am meh about two.