LOST: Busy, Busy Worlds

  There's only five hours left for Lost to tell the rest of it story, and one of them is apparently going to focus on Jacob and the Man in Black.

 That meant "The Last Recruit" was a busy, busy episode, with a lot going on in both the island and sideways world.

 It was the first episode this season not to have a POV character -- unless you want to count Jack -- which meant it gave pretty much everyone something to do. (Between the two worlds, everyone was present, except for Richard.)

 And, like the Monster said to the group, "It's so nice to have everybody back together again."

 At least for a little while. The reunion between the two camps was pretty brief, broken up by the arrival of the woman folks on Twitter refer to as the Poor Man's Tina Fey. She wants Desmond back, and gives the Monster until nightfall to make it happen. Miss the deadline, and Widmore's going to rain hellfire down on the island. The Monster has no intention of complying, and decides it's time to leave, and marshals his forces for various missions.

 In the midst of all this, we get a lot of nice mini-reunions -- plus the big one at the end -- as characters get to say and hear things we've wanted them to say and here for some time.

 Jack meets with the Monster, who tells him what we already knew: he can look like dead people. 

 "Who else have you looked like?" Jack asks, and gets the answer he expected: your father. It was the Black Smoke that guided Jack to the caves in season one, allowed him to find water. All in the name of helping, he insists. 

 He also gives Jack the same pitch he gave to Ben about Locke: he was a sucker who died for nothing.

 Quick digression: Remember back when it seemed like Locke would be Lost's main villain? Way back, before we'd ever heard of Jacob, or Ben or Charles Widmore, before it ever occurred to anyone that the monster in the jungle might actually some day have dialogue.

 "If we survive tonight," Jack tells Kate at the end of season one, "we're going to have a Locke problem."

 He would've made a really interesting bad guy: kind of a schlub back home, he goes mad with power on the island, and does evil things in the name of "protecting the island." We'd already seen him do something to that effect, allowing Boone to die as a "sacrifice."

 I'm thinking all of the Monster's talk about how pathetic Locke was is going to end up being pretty significant, that somehow, Locke -- either in the Sideways world, or somehow resurrected on the island -- will lead to the Monster's downfall.

 At the same time, I like what Jeff Jensen at Entertainment Weekly has to say on this point: that it's hard to disagree with the Monster Locke WAS duped, and his quest to find meaning on the island serves as a "cautionary tale" about faith, as he puts it.

 (I know I said last week that I'd just refer to the character played by Terry O'Quinn as "Locke" all the time, but I realize now that it's not feasible, especially when I'm discussing how the fake Locke feels about the real one. I'm still sick of cutesy Internet nicknames like Flocke and Smokey, so I'll go with the Monster.)

 Already, things are falling apart for him. Bombs are coming out of the sky, he's lost Sawyer, Kate and Claire, and it's clear Sayid disobeyed his order to kill Desmond. (As a friend of mine put it, no way that was going to happen, especially not off screen, and I'm inclined to agree. This isn't No Country For Old Men).

 Meanwhile, Desmond is pulling things together in the sideways world, where nearly every scene tonight featured two -- or more -- island characters together: Claire meets Illana and Jack (note that they traveled to the 15th floor); we see Sawyer with Kate and Sayid; Jack operates on Locke, who arrives at the hospital at the same time as a still conscious Sun, who shrieks "it's him!" when she sees Locke. No big moments on the level of the Desmond and Hurley episodes, but it's all coming together. 

 The episode ends with Sawyer's escape party landing on the beach, dealing with Widmore's troops. We get the big Jin/Sun reunion. Her sudden recovery of English was a little corny, but the scene would've lost any impact it had if someone had to step in and explain that Sun could only speak Korean. Then again, why not just have her speak Korean right away? Did someone explain to her that when she found Jin, he'd know English? The bottom line: Sun's "aphasia" storyline ended up being kind of a waste.

 Reunited, they promise to never be apart again, which gave me a sinking feeling. Maybe that would be the moment that one of the Widmore folks but a bullet in Sun's back. But they survived the episode unscathed. The same can't be said for the Monster's unnamed followers, who get shelled on the beach. The Monster pulls Jack to safety, offering words that are supposed to comfort. "You're with me now." 

 That's what you think, man.

 Other thoughts:

• At the AV Club, Noel Murray makes a lot of good points about the episode, but my favorite is the way the positions of all the players at the start of this episode mirror season one: the survivors are divided into little factions, Ben and Richard are off in the Others village, and Desmond is in a hole in the ground that only Locke knows about.
•  Another good scene: Kate talking Claire down, convincing her to leave with them on Desmond's old boat. Maybe if she's away from the Monster, she gets a little more sensible.
• An even better scene: Desmond, at the bottom of the well, convincing Sayid that Nadia wouldn't want him to commit murder to be together again. Too bad Desmond didn't show up before "Sundown."
• Jack and his son really seem like friends now, don't they?
• Speaking of the well...I guess it wasn't that deep.
• Even when he's defying the Monster, Sawyer's pop culture reference machine goes strong. "That pilot who stepped off the set of a Burt Reynolds movie."
• He's not, however, attuned to Hurley's own references, as evidenced by Hugo's Sayid/Anakin comparison.
• Not sure I buy Claire's "If the Monster talks to you, you're with him" theory. Actually, I totally don't. Sawyer's chatted him up, and he's still not on his side. Same thing with Kate and -- hopefully-- Jack.
• Next week: Read a book, or watch Glee or Frontline or something, because Lost isn't on. Actually, they're rerunning "Ab Aeterno," so you'd be forgiven for watching that twice. The final four episodes resume May 4.

Tom Coombe