Tuesday, February 2nd at 8:00pm. The beginning of the end.

During last week’s season finale, we got a chance to see Pala Ferry, along with a few other oddities that set up quite a hefty third season.

Independent of the scurring about that so many of us are doing all over the interweb looking for tidbits of fact and fiction about LOST (I swear I get somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 google search referrals for LOST-related phrases every weekeday), my co-worker Dwayne has been on this Aldus Huxley reading kick lately. Specifically, he’s been reading the aptly titled novel Island. See if any of this sounds familiar…

Island is the story of Will Farnaby, a journalist who is shipwrecked on the island of Pala. On the island, he discovers a civiliazation born from a Scottish Secular Humanist medical doctor, shipwrecked on the island in the 19th century, and Pala’s original Mahayana Buddhist inhabitants. In other words, Huxley’s perfect combination of east and west. Other vaguely familiar traits of the island’s culture include drug use for enlightenment, self-knowledge, and pacification, separate group living for children (to avoid the inevitable damage their parent’s issues might inflict on them), group living for the elimination of individuality, and trance states for advanced learning.

Oh, and since the island’s inhabitants were avid Buddhists, they often made huge statues. (No word from Dwayne on whether any of them were FOUR-TOED statues, though.) In other Buddhist-related meanderings, a “dharmapala” is a type of wrathful deity. The name means “Dharma-defender” in Sanskrit, and “defenders” or “protectors” of the law (or, literally, of the Dharma) in English. In Buddhist iconography, they are depicted as fearsome beings, but they are all bodhisattvas or buddhas – embodiments of compassion that act in a wrathful way for the sake of sentient beings. Like, perhaps, The Others.

How do you keep a show like LOST interesting and continually moving? The same way creative works have survived for centuries… you rip off as many seemingly disassociated sources as possible, and you meld them into something that feels fresh and new. (At least they’re mining from top-notch literature. I’m still waiting for Shakespeare references to start popping up.)

I am amazed by the way they have continued to crisscross so many storylines without losing much dramatic steam. It keeps morphing into new genres (and almost a completely new show with every major revelation.) I love LOST more now than I did when I started watching it a few episodes into season 1.

Three words again, only this time with addition caps-fueled emphasis as the events that just unfolded sink in: OH MY DANG.

Also, did you catch the Hanso Foundation commercial? New website and all. Sneaky (well, sneaky in a broadcast a commercial to millions of people sort of way.)

Next week, Hurley goes BANANAS.

I programmed until 10:00pm. So sad.

Go read Paul’s recap while I get one of my pirate coworkers to find and download last night’s episode for my viewing pleasure.

Bonus points for Clancy Brown as a US soldier (you will always be The Kurgan to me), a cameo of Kate’s step-dad, a Wizard of Oz reference, and the hatch countdown counting down to… Egyptian hieroglyphics? I took Egyptian in college (don’t ask) so I need to pull my textbook off the shelf and get to translating. That last glyph didn’t look familiar.

I love that they’re throwing in so many cultural references. Confusing, wonderful, etc.

It’s odd to me that i’m more drawn to an inherently flawed “bad” (though honest, at least when he’s not conning… if such a state of being exists for him) character than to the “good” characters. I suppose i’ll choose honest depravity over misguided, controlling pseudo-righteousness. I’m sure this says something deep and dark about my personality, but it is far too early in the morning for me to think hard enough to articulate it.

There were also a few nice nods to the obsessed fans, like Ana confusing Steve/Scott and the Bad Twin manuscript Hurley was reading (you can pick it up on Amazon soon. Talk about tie-ins.)

It’s getting soap-opera-ish, but it’s still the only thing worth watching on TV for me.