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"[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/blogs/the-q/Dogan%20and%20Sayid.jpg)\n\nThis week, Ana Marie Cox, Zach Dionne, Dan Fierman, and Alex Pappademas gather to email about their favorite show. Make fun of them, and they'll detonate an a-bomb on your ass\n\nDan: Okay guys, let's get this shit started. I have a feeling there is gonna to be LOTS of disagreement this week, just based on the emails and tweets I've been seeing. So I'll put myself out there first:\n\nI was 100% behind this episode. Terry O'Quinn continues to kill as evil Locke. The flash sideways was actually worth watching. Death and destruction. Claire's look to Kate when she told her she had her kid. Brutal smoke monster attack. It had exactly the pacing and action I was looking for from the final season\u2014and we are finally (FINALLY) learning more about the relationship between Jacob and the MiB. And again, I was left reflecting on the fact that no one influences Darleton more than Stephen King. No one. At this point, is there any doubt that this show really IS The Stand. Sides are being chosen, FLocke is leading the insurrection. Sayid has gone dark. A rag tag band of flawed good guys are fighting their way past their own dysfunction to rally. Plus, Trashcan Man in the form of Claire! (And may I point out: they already had the nuke.) It's really reassuring to see them falling back on good old fashioned storytelling at the very end.\n\nAnd before we go any further, a moment of silence for Dogan: Your character was kinda racist. We were never really clear on why you were there. And you didn't speak a lot of English. Six episode arc was about right. Rest in peace.\n\nAlex: Holy crap, the Smoke Monster straight-up murdalized a bunch of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR extras whose fate we've been given no reason to care about! After way too much buildup, Sayid turns out to be evil, or at least Man in Black-ified, and after way too little buildup\u2014seriously, she looks into the Smoke Monster for two seconds and she's down for the cause?\u2014Kate picks up an M1 and falls in step with Team Locke.\n\nDon't get me wrong\u2014Sayid being a throat-punching sumbitch is one of my favorite things. And I guess it's sort of formally audacious from a TV-storytelling standpoint to take the work of explaining why the events onscreen have dramatic import and entirely subcontract it to the Internet, but at this point I feel like the recappers are covering this show's ass.\n\nAna: I am simply popping for a moment while in line at the airport (more later) to note that the guy in the sideverse who \"made good eggs\" got almost immediately Sayided.\n\nThis may mean nothing but as a big fan of all fertility mystery/plot, I was amused.\n\nAlso: I want to register a formal protest against comparing the Jacob/Flocke plot to The Stand. In The Stand (and I think in King's own personal universe) I think there's not much debate about destiny versus free will. Free will wins. People can choose between Flagg and the old lady, even Nadine realizes she doesn't HAVE to go to Las Vegas, and Harold dies a good guy.\n\nZach: _\"Holy crap, the Smoke Monster straight-up murdalized a bunch of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR extras whose fate we've been given no reason to care about!\"\n\n _\n\n Seriously. Remember when this happened, um, five episodes ago, guys?\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/blogs/the-q/Flocke.jpg)\n\nDan: So I'm assuming that when Indiana Jones used his whip the second or third time in Raiders you were sitting in the audience going BOOOOORRRRRRRIIIINNNNGGG! And man, WHY DO THEY KEEP USING THOSE LIGHTSABERS IN STAR WARS!\n\nSorry, that just doesn't wash with me. I hear what Alex is saying\u2014that the mythology of this show is now so dense that it needs to be decoded by scads of third-party nerds every week. But is that really a new phenomenon? I mean, this is a show that has had separate treasure hunts, fake books, viral videos, easter eggs, hidden clues since season two. It is what the show is and (pretty much) has always been.\n\nTo me, this was an episode that:\n\nHad action as opposed to Jack moping about his miracle kid or Kate trying to act.Revolved around the characters I care about (minus Ben)And actually moved the plot forward and gave answers, particularly about the nature of the relationship between Jacob and the MiB, which now seems to clearly be about free will (MiB: \"You're free. You can leave.\") and destiny (Jacob and his creepy interventions in the lives of all our main characters). The nature of this fight is starting to become clear, and the fact that it isn't straight good/evil is 900 times more interesting to me than if it was.\n\nZach: It's true that action has very little to do with the strength of an episode, for me, but I wasn't BORED. Just frustrated, much much more than usual. The problem is, we don't know if what Dan's talking about are answers or not. Maybe MiB needs a bunch of bodies to use to make his escape. Maybe no one's free. Maybe Jacob's interventions were self-serving and absolutely devoid of benevolence. Until we know who's good and who's bad\u2014or exactly how the shades of gray are filled in\u2014and until we know what the nature of these flash-sideways is, I can't really get into it.\n\nAlex: The Temple people are red-shirts, Dan. Period. A bunch of Nikkis and Paolos in turbans and tunics. The massacre was boring because the only people in real jeopardy were a non-characters. John Hawkes' Temple-hippie? Red-shirt. Dogen, even though he got a flash-sideways cameo and that baseball speech? Captain, over here, I've found something!\n\nIt's not the density of the mythology that I mind. I love dense mythology. If I had a problem with dense mythology, I wouldn't be watching this show. It's my understanding that there are a great many shows about law and/or order out there, each less demanding backstory-wise than the last.\n\nMore importantly, though, I've also never been one of those viewers sitting there with a plot-thread checklist getting huffy about the lack of \"answers.\" I know how TV shows work, I know that storylines and characters get discarded once they've served their purpose or failed to thrive, and I'm totally at peace with that. At this point, if anyone's still seriously hoping this show will cross every T and dot every I and offer dramatic payoff for every Verizon mob-isode and build its finale around plot points drawn from Gary Troup's Bad Twin, I've got a tetraology of extracanonical Star Wars novels set on the Wookiiee homeworld to sell them. I am fully prepared for this show to strand a whole lot of Russians out there in the Pine Barrens when it's over, if you know what I mean. I have actually argued with people about this, the \"answers\" thing. I have actually stopped watching this show with friends\u2014hey, Lara!\u2014because I find their frustration vis-&amp;amp;#xE0; -vis the \"answers\" thing frustrating from a social-viewing standpoint.\n\nMy problem is that in addition to being dense, this show's mythology is as rich and vast and original and interesting as anything we've ever seen on television and so far this season has barely made use of it. I mean yeah okay the Smoke Monster is part of that and Jacob is part of that, but so are DHARMA and Charles Widmore and Daniel Faraday\u2014the off-island world they've sketched in so tantalizingly over the last few seasons\u2014and honestly if these aspects of the story are the ones Darleton don't plan to revisit, this season's going to be a tough fish-biscuit for me to swallow.\n\nDan: I'm with you on the lack of Dharma. I love Dharma. I would wear a Dharma Jumpsuit to work. That said, they've got ten episodes to get there, and FWIW I think you're gonna get your Widmore, Alex. My guess is that the guy Jacob keeps saying has to come to the island IS Widmore. Because really, who else could it be?\n\n[\n\n](http://blog.gq.com/blogs/the-q/Kate%20and%20Miles.jpg)\n\nAna: You know, if I were the Lost writers, I'd take the internet over Lilly's acting any fucking day. But her blank face/soul at this particular plot point is especially frustrating because we really have no idea what she's thinking... and one possibility is she's NOT THINKING AT ALL. As Poniewozik points out, in that scene Sayid's expression is sort of, well, expressionless too\u2014but Sayid is played by an actor, so presumably it's supposed to be that way. I don't think this is a sign of some kind of Smokie mind-control (interesting wrinkle for free will theories though) but could it be some other influencing power? Is Kate \"infected\"? Is she thinking about being a double agent?\n\nOr, as is probably the case in real life, is she simply confused?\n\nBTW: Lost writers could do worse than invent some kind mind control/zombie device as a workaround Lilly's acting. Which reminds me of a maxim that my husband devised: The only good Keanu Reeves movies are the ones where he plays someone who is supposed to be some kind of robot/human robot hybrid/stoned person (I suspect him to be one or all of these IRL). The exception is The Devil's Advocate, but in that case Al Pacino does enough acting (ACTING) for the both of them.\n\nLooking at IMDB, I see that Keanu has been in plenty of terrible movies where he plays some version of that (Johnny Mnemonic, anyone?). In math this is known as a proper subset. (Feeling like I need to nerd some more, being my first day and all.)\n\nDan: Well, according to my GQ actuary tables, we have exceeded our Kate bashing quota for the week, so it's time to wrap this up. Tune in later for our MIND-MELTING LOST PODCAST with Raha Naddaf and Jesse Lee."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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