Keep Locke away from COMPUTERS!

One thing we definitely learned from this week's LOST is that Locke is far too entranced with computers and with all things Dharma. He also is just curious enough to push what shouldn't be pushed.. and is apparently quite good at chess. OR.... there's another possibility - one I've tossed around in my head almost since Lost's beginning.

I think it's quite possible that Locke is a Dharma Initiative member himself. He's of the right age, "boomer-ish", AND he positively becomes transfixed every time he sees a message from Dr. Marvin Candle, the star of every Dharma instructional video. Remember when they found the first tape? Locke was transported... practically in a zone. We know from his flashback that he has been looking for a place to belong for a long time and is certainly one that is easily susceptible to a cult-like mentality.

I also remember several scenes where he acts in a knowing way about things they encounter on the island. He did not seem at all un-nerved, for example, when they found the "Swan" station and learned that it was a surveillance station for the other hatches. "Eye-Patch-Guy", who we met again this week, stared back at them from one of those surveillance monitors and while it freaked out everyone else... Locke was pretty un-moved, just as he was when we re-met the guy this week. He didn't seem surprised that he could suddenly walk.. or that Rose was cured either... And she spoke to him of their magical cures as if she knew he was aware of it all from the beginning.

Sayid, Kate and Locke stumbled upon "Eye-Patch-Guy"'s station, complete with livestock and a kitty, as they went back to try to spring Jack from "Others-ville." While Sayid and Kate were pretty determined to get to the bottom of who this guy was and what he was doing there, Locke was not all that concerned. He was wandering around the dude's place unsupervised (and Eye-Patch-Guy didn't seem to notice or mind, at first.) AND even had enough time away from Kate and Sayid to sit down and play several rounds of chess vs. the computer he found there. Now, I don't know about most people.. but I don't like people messin' with my computer.. not even people I know well. I certainly wouldn't let some stranger I've never met sit down and start hitting buttons randomly. Especially... if there's a command out there that COULD blow up the whole damn place. Unless... hmmmmm.... your endgame WAS to blow up the whole damn place from the start.. and make it look like you just stumbled on to that command as an INNOCENT LITTLE ACCIDENT while playing chess.... Locke seems rather prone to these innocent little accidents, and I'm just not buying that they really are innocent anymore.

The best news coming out of this episode is that it's gotten all us LOST fans speculating again. Probably all that Eye-Patch-Guy said about a fight between the "hostiles" and the "others" was true... but are Ben, Juliette and his gang one or the OTHER? (tee-hee!) And what about Rousseau? Was she a "hostile" or an original Dharma member herself? Maybe she and her team were sent to the island by Dharma after communications went down.. or when the "illness" happened - to re-staff the project?

Other highlights of this episode were the ping-pong match with Sawyer's stuff as the prize. I agree with other fans I talked to that I wish we had seen more of the match. It would have been fun to see Hurley clean Sawyer's clock in a "Forrest Gump"-level smackdown. Best moment?... A Sawyer line once again. Sawyer says what we ALL have been thinking when he sees Paolo for the first time and says, "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" IMHO, making Paolo and Nikki more plants of "the OTHERS" is the only way their arrival into our core group would make sense... and killing them in grisly fashion, as they did to ETHAN (Tom-Cruise-Cousin) ROM is the only satisfying way to get them off the show. Which, I think, we ALL wish they would just DO already.

The bad news for LOST, besides the continuing and futile attempts to get us to like Paolo and Nikki, are that ratings just don't seem to be rebounding. Being a fan of puzzles myself, I'm beginning to think that while we puzzlers love to ponder and speculate, we also want to SOLVE.. and feel good that we figured something out. When all you get is questions and more questions.. for awhile anyway, it's fun to go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. But eventually, you either want to start feeling smart .. or you give up and move on. Between the long time off and the lackadaisical plot movement up till this week, I think many of we puzzlers have tuned out.. or tuned IN... to something new and currently more intriguing... LIKE HEROES.