Hello Lamppost, whatcha knowin'?

Mrs. Hawking loves to gossip and tell secrets. Jack makes a stop at the butcher’s for some meat. Ben looks like raw meat. Locke gets some fresh kicks. Frank J. Lapidus is the new spokesman for the Schick Quattro razor. Hurley dropped coin on several dozen plane tickets and takes a swim. And Jin gets a new job, proving Obama’s stimulus package is working.

Lost 5x06: 316

Let’s start with the obvious. An episode titled 316 has to be a Biblical reference…and it’s a doozy:

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Locke, anyone?

On the island:
Episode opens as the series opened: Jack’s eye close up and Jack on the jungle floor. But this isn’t 2004. They’ve made it back.

Jack runs toward Hurley’s voice and makes it to the lagoon. Hurley’s floating on a guitar case. Jack saves him in chest-deep water (ha) and sees Kate on the rocks on the shore. He wakes her up and they begin recounting how they got there. Yes, they’re back!

In Los Angeles, 46 hours earlier:
Mrs. Hawking is lighting a candle in the church as Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond arrive. She’s in front of a painting of Thomas the Apostle, The Indcredulity of Saint Thomas. She takes them downstairs to the pendulum chamber. She tells them…well…everything! The DHARMA Initiative built this structure and called it the Lamppost. The station’s purpose is to find the island in time, though it can find other points of energy on the planet as well. More specifically, they used the station to try to figure out where the island is GOING TO BE.

Geek alert: There’s a US Army photo of the island from Sept. 23, 1954 in the Lamppost in the binder Hawking gives to Jack. The US Army photo was taken exactly 50 years plus a day from the crash of Oceanic 815. (Though on the other side of the International Date Line, the 23rd would still be the 22nd in the US, perhaps making it 50 years to the day of the crash.)













She tells them that they have to take Ajira Airways flight 316, as that will fly directly over the coordinates at the exact moment in time necessary and they need to be on that flight.

Desmond confronts her for ruining four years of his life, and she tells him that the island is not done with him yet. But he storms off telling Jack and the others that they should ignore whatever she says. (Felt like Sayid telling Hurley to do the exact opposite of whatever Ben told him to do…)

Mrs. Hawking gives Locke’s suicide note to Jack and explains that John is going to be a proxy for Christian Shephard. Jack chooses not to read it though. She tells Jack that he needs to get something of his father’s and bring in on the flight and asks him if he believes it will work. She tells Jack that he has to take a leap of faith. Faith continues to be a strong theme and, at least for now, working in tandem with the science of the Lamppost Station.

He talks to Ben in the church who tells Jack that he needs to believe and not be like Thomas, the apostle, who was best known for not believing that Jesus was resurrected saying he needed to touch Jesus’ wounds to believe. The Caravaggio painting again drives the point home. (It’s not like the writers of Lost to be so blatant with their metaphors and clues. Though there is a limited amount of time left in the series, so perhaps they feel compelled to start blurting out the answers.)

Ben says he has a loose end to tie up – we can assume this meant killing Widmore’s daughter, Penny, as he promised he would.

Jack visits a retirement home. Turns out he has a grandfather, Ray. (Seems an odd thing to never have come up in any flashbacks or forwards that he was still alive.) Ol’ granddad is watching a magic show with a white rabbit with a black spot. (Allusion to Ben’s rabbit?)

In a suitcase he’d packed, Ray had a pair of Christian’s shoes Jack’s mother had mistakenly given him. (Questions: Isn’t that convenient that the home would call Jack to come talk to Ray and Ray would have a pair of shoes his dad owned handy? And Couldn’t Jack have just taken Ray who hated the retirement home anyway along with him? He’s related to Christian? Just a thought.)

Back at Jack’s place, it turns out that Kate is there and miserable about what she had to do with Aaron. She tells Jack he cannot ask about him. (The guess my wife had, which makes total sense: Kate gave him to Claire’s mom, which works considering she was in LA for the seemingly unnecessarily long trip to pick up a check from Oceanic Airlines.)

Kate and Jack spend the night together and the following morning, Jack tells Kate that the shoes that are there were his dad’s and the he was the one who put the white tennis shoes on Christian’s body, since he didn’t think his dad was worth a good pair of shoes.

Geek alert: White shoes on Christian; Black shoes on Locke. Is this a good/evil allusion? Or is Locke actually worth the good shoes, meaning he’s the rightful ruler of the island as he’s been led to believe?

Ben calls Jack in a panic. He’s been badly injured and is a mess. Ben tells him that he needs to pick up Locke’s coffin at Simon’s Butcher Shop.

Geek alerts: Several Simon options here… Simon Peter was Jesus’ key apostle; he denied Jesus three times the night before he was crucified and upon whom the Church is built. There is also Simon the Zealot, an apostle about whom little has been written. Also, Simon was the name of one of Jesus’ stepbrothers.

Jack speaks with Jill the butcher who gets Ben’s van for him and Jack puts Christian’s black shoes onto Locke and tucks the suicide note into his pocket.

At the airport and aboard Ajira 316:
Jack is checking in and explaining the transport of Locke’s body to the ticket agent. A strange man offers his condolences. He sees Sun and Kate there and we see Hurley in the gate waiting area.

Geek alert: Hurley’s reading a Spanish comic book called “El Ultimo Hombre”, a translation of “Y: The Last Man”, a comic series about the only man to survive the simultaneous death of every male mammal on earth. (Similar to the problem of all pregnant women on the island dying…)


The gate agent makes an announcement about standby and Hurley wigs out and says that he bought 78 seats and doesn’t want any of them filled with standby passengers.

When Jack boards, he sees Sayid in custody and is confused. And he’s similarly confused that Hurley is on board. Who told Hurley to get on that flight. (My guess – with the guitar case he’s carrying, it was Charlie who told him he needed to go.)

Ben boards the plane just before they’re closing the door and he’s shocked to see Sayid there. (Is this because Sayid is the one who kicked the crap out of Ben? My guess: Ben turned in Sayid for the crimes Ben had him commit over the last 3 years off the island, knowing that he would be extradited for them on a flight that would take him to or through Guam.)

The freaky guys behind Jack is the only other passenger in first class with the rest of our Oceanic Sixers, Sayid’s marshall and Ben.

The pilot makes an announcement and it’s Frank Lapidus. He comes out to say hello to Jack and realizes the Oceanic Six (well, five without Aaron) and Ben are all aboard and says to Jack, “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”

The flight attendant gives Jack the suicide note which was found during the inspection of the coffin. Ben’s reading Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Jack asks Ben how he can read. Ben replies, “My mother taught me.” (However, his mom died giving birth to Ben.) Jack tells Ben about the note and Ben gives him some privacy to read it. It simply said, “Jack, I wish you had believed me. JL.”

Theory: Whether trying or not, they did simulate Flight 815 in several ways – Locke was in the coffin (like Christian), Sayid was in cuffs (like Kate was), Hurley had a guitar case (like Charlie), and most interestingly, Ben was injured (like Locke). Is Ben even supposed to be there? If not, is he simulating the role that Locke did on 815 in order to try to re-gain control of the island?

Back on the island:
We return to the arrival of Jack, Kate and Hurley, and as they are in the lagoon, a DHARMA van in near-mint condition drives up with the 8-track blasting. Out pops a DHARMA member with a gun pointed at them…and it’s JIN! They yell out his name, and he smiles.


And cut to LOST.
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Despite giving us tons of answers, we were spoon-fed most of them in this episode, no? Yes, we have a limited number of episodes left in the series and yes, people want answers, but there was so much detail given and not much was left to the imagination. Notice the painting in the church? In case you missed it, we’ll show it to you again. Oh, still missed it, no worries, Ben will give you the significance of it. And Hawking’s over-exposition of every detail of the Lamppost station was interesting, but so not what we’ve come to expect of Lost.

So what did you think? Like this pace? Or do you agree it might have been over-the-top?

And a leftover Geek Alert: The net was aflutter this week with this speculation: Was that actually Hurley reading the numbers on the 1988 transmission from the radio tower that Montand was listening to on his radio in the beginning of This Place is Death last week? And if it was, does that mean that Hurley set into motion the insanity of the patient in the hospital, Sam Toomey, who repeated the numbers which Hurley used to play the Lotto, which he won and cursed him, and forced him to go to Australia to find Toomey’s wife, and then back on 815 which landed him on the island…like a big crazy loop?