I’ve made no secret of the fact that Locke is my favorite character on Lost, and in fact, on television. My second favorite? Benry. Man, I loved this episode.

I’m going to say right now that this episode seems to have a lot of literary and historical references that will warrant more thought than I can muster right now, so I’ll be looking more at those for the Pre-Game. There’s still more than enough to deal with tonight, including some surprising background on Timeline X.

We begin on the Island, which is unusual these days. Benry hooks up with Ilana and her merry band again after fleeing the temple. And then, it’s off to Timeline X, where Dr. Linus is giving a lecture on Napoleon. “It was on this Island where everything changed”, he says of Elba, and truer words were never spoken. He also mentions how Napoleon kept his title, but was exiled with no real power. Who do you suppose that refers to? I think it’s an allusion to Smokey – he wants off the Island, after all. You could also make the case that it’s supposed to invoke Jacob, though.

All right, the Oscars are over, and we can get back to what’s really important – Lost. Still, congratulations to Evangeline Lilly. Kate did, as I mentioned a couple of weeks back, have a small role in Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker. I consider that a win for Team Lost.

Before we get to the big points, let me cite spunkybuddy Jackie, who thinks it’s significant that we haven’t seen Richard “Batmanuel” Alpert in a couple of weeks now. He was running for the Temple last time we saw him, and it seems like he should have gotten there by now. And yet, we didn’t see him at all. I have to think Richard has some kind of plan, or at least a really good hiding place. As I mentioned before, Lost is cyclical, but now the major players all know that the cycle is broken and it’s heading to some kind of ending. Jacob and Silas had centuries to play Spy vs. Spy, and now Jacob’s dead, and Silas is stuck in Locke’s form. The Lighthouse is broken, the Temple laid waste – for the first time, they have doubts about the outcome of their conflict. Maybe Richard has an “In Case of Apocalyptic Emergency Break Glass” task of his own. In the next few weeks, he’s getting a flashback episode of his own, which kind of sounds like the best thing ever.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about this week…