Lost - Now We're Cooking With Gas

Lost is really sailing now. "Par Avion", last week's episode moved the plot along at high speed and confirmed previous suspicions.

The back story featured Clair and revealed that her father was Christian Shepard, Jack's father. That revelation, along with Mikhail's extensive knowledge of Kate, Sayid and Locke, seems to assure that our Losties were all some how manipulated into being on Flight 815.

Mikhail also revealed that some, and only some, of the survivors were on a list of those capable of understanding the Others perspective and activities. We were also showed Jack apparently happily tossing a football around with the Other, Tom. Is this an indication that he is on that famous list?

As for John Locke, as I said last week, he is clearly following his own agenda. In fact, he seemed to be perfectly willing to kill Mikhail to avoid him revealing that Locke could not walk before crashing on the Island. Next week's Locke-centric episode promises to reveal much about John Locke and his former paralysis. Just how far will Locke be willing to go in order to protect his own objectives?

Lastly, I love the constant hints at the underlying philosophy of the show. In this episode we see Sawyer reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". What role will that novel's main character, Howard Roark, and his and Rand's insistence that the artist must follow only his own instincts, regardless of the wishes of others. Is there a connection with the thought of the seventeenth century British philosopher John Locke?

In this regard, check out the most interesting Lost Blog I have so far seen. Powell's, the famous San Francisco book store maintains the sight on which J. Wood issues his weekly ruminations. Here is a sample from this weeks note:

What we get, then, with the introduction of figures like Rand, Bakunin, Locke, Rousseau, (Hobbes and Marx implied), Hume, Burke, and others, are possible paths for social organization that the Lostaways may take, and we're slowly getting glimpses of the path the Others took. Furthermore, there's a weird mirror-twinning aspect that's occurring with the audience, as we convene and discuss ideas in various virtual social settings — in blogs like this, in forums, in wikis like Lostpedia, in podcasts, and in watching the show itself. Each has its own virtues; some foreground the individual voice, some the collective voice, others and interaction between the individual and collective. We're living lost right along with the characters.