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Pictures courtesy of LOST Easter Eggs.

This was a stellar episode.  It's been a year since we saw Locke and Ben go into Jacob's cabin in Season Three.  Every since this new season started, I kept waiting to see when Locke would return.  Now that he's found the cabin, it just opens up more and more mysteries.

Christian and Claire are in Jacob's cabin.  I expected Christian to be there, based on the freeze frames posted on LostEasterEggs back in January.  When Claire disappeared in "Something Nice Back Home", I predicted that she would be in the cabin with Christian.  Are Christian and Claire alive or dead?  I think they are dead and somehow the island manifests the dead in order to speak with the living.  I just cannot imagine Claire willingly leaving Aaron to Sawyer.  Christian's situation is more complex.  In the Season Three finale there was that famous scene in the future where Jack said, "Go and get my father...".  In last week's Jack-centric episode, Christian appeared fleetingly before this mystery could be solved.  I'm still betting that Christian is dead, but I think it is pretty cool that this ties back to an episode in Season One where Jack follows his father around the island.  We thought Jack was hallucinating but now we know he wasn't.  Gotta get the Season One DVD set and watch that one again.

Locke has been "chosen" by the island since his birth.  I almost fell out of my chair when Richard Alpert showed up at the hospital where baby Locke was being incubated.  Again, this ties back to Season Three, where Alpert gives Locke a suggestion to have Sawyer kill his father.  I had the feeling that Alpert favored Locke over Ben and was trying to help him.  Now we learn that Alpert has been trying to help Locke since he was born!  Mittelos Bioscience is the company associated with Alpert; they recruited Juliet to do research on the island.  All Lost fans have been wondering why Alpert seems to be ageless, appearing in the past as young as he is today.  Is Alpert immortal, or is he using portals on the island to travel back/forth through time?  As for Locke himself, is the process of being "chosen" resemble how the Dalai Lama is selected?  It was eerily that Locke drew a picture of the smoke monster as a kid.  I love the moment when Locke says to his teacher "Don't tell me what I can't do!"

Matthew Abaddon tells Locke he should "walkabout".  If there's any character besides Alpert that I need to see more of, it is Matthew Abaddon.  I was stunned to see him pushing Locke's wheelchair.  How many of us thought he was going to dump Locke's paralyzed body over the stairwell?  It seems like Abaddon has a connection to the island as well.  Yet he apparently works for Widmore, having organized the Freighter expedition.  Genius casting by hiring Lance Reddick from the Wire.

Keamy's device on his arm.  What is that thing?  I am betting that is a smaller, portable version of the sonar fence that kept the smoke monster away from the Others.  Keamy is truly the Big Bad this season.  He's just slaughtering people left and right to get back to the island.  Did you notice that when Keamy pulls the secondary protocol out of the safe, it has a Dharma logo on the cover?  Maybe Widmore backed the Dharma bums.

I can't wait to hear this episode discussed on my favorite LOST Podcasts:

LOST: The Transmission

LOSTCasts

Just thought of a weird LOST connection to Jack Kerouac. When I was in high school, I read Kerouac's books and was in that whole mindset of takin' off on the road and having adventures.

We've learned in Season Four that Ben uses the alias "Dean Moriarty" when he travels off the island.  As many LOST bloggers have noted, Dean Moriarty was the alias used for Neal Cassady in the famous beat novel by Jack Kerouac , On the Road.

And just today, my ancient stony mind remembered my second favorite Kerouac book, The Dharma Bums.  I liked this book because it took place in Northern California and one of the characters was based on Grass Valley poet Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder), who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Kerouac also describes hearing Allen Ginsberg perform his famous poem HOWL (Wail in the book) in San Francisco.

Can't see any other LOST connection than the title, can you?  Nuff said.

Let's not waste any time: as a videogame, LOST Via Domus completely sucks.  I have learned this because I have played the game to 100% completion, not once, but twice, on two game consoles.  Yet there may be a small minority of people out there who will enjoy playing the game.  Crazy people.  Like us.

Reading the previews about this game, I was very excited.  The LOST writers contributed a lot of good things to the game, helping to create a brand new character, Eliot, a survivor of Oceanic Flight 815 that we've never seen before.  The main problem is that Eliot has amnesia and people are trying to kill him.  This is really cool, because Eliot has his own flashbacks that you play through and his own mysteries that will be uncovered.  He has connections to Locke and the Widmore/Hanso conspiracy.  Eliot will explore many key areas of the island that we've seen in the first three seasons of LOST, from the Black Rock to the Hatch to the Others camp.  Due to what he learns about the Hanso foundation, Eliot is driven to escape the island and triggers a wild ending that appears to be approved by Damon and Carlton (Lost's showrunners).  Damon remarked on an ABC podcast that the Via Domus ending is not a dream sequence.  It echoes some of the time-bending island aspects that we've seen in Season Four.

However, the game play really sucks in LOST and it won't be worth it for most people.  Eliot really does not have very many moves in the game.  He shoots a gun, very briefly, in 2 scenes toward the end.  He runs through the jungle a lot.  Eliot can interact with the famous LOST cast members (Jack, Locke, Ben, Juliet, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley), but only a few of them are voiced by the real actors.  In order to barter for things like torches, lamps, guns, etc., Eliot has to collect stupid things like coconuts, papayas, and candy bars.  There are many levels in the game that are extremely frustrating, such as navigating through waypoints in the forest and ducking into banyan trees whenever the smoke monsters is around.  Navigating through dark caves, which you do twice, is also miserable, because there are no clues of where you need to go.  In order to get through the flashbacks, Eliot has to take pictures with his camera, at exactly the right angle and the right moment in time.

I am such a die-hard LOST fan that I just had to play it as soon as possible.  Gamefly had it readily available for the Playstation 3 and I received it a few days after it came out.  It was frustrating, but with the help of an IGN strategy guide, I made it to the ending.  Then I realized, this game may be one of the few that I can get 1000 achievement points on XBox 360.  I rented it for that console and in a few hours did receive the magic 1000 point achievement of my dreams.

Bottom line: if you are not crazy, don't buy it.  If you have to play it, then rent it.  Nuff said.

LOST Via Domus ending on YouTube

IGN LOST Via Domus Review

IGN LOST Via Domus Strategy Guide

LOST Via Domus XBox 360 Achievement Guide