Now THAT was a good show...

Wow – Lost last night was just… wow. I was losing faith in the show at the beginning of the season, and was actually starting to consider Heroes a better show – but after watching both of the season finales, Lost took a giant leap over Heroes and has regained its place at the top of my “must watch” list. I was really disappointed in the Heroes finale on Monday – after spending the entire season talking about the “bomb” that would decimate Manhattan and how the heroes had to “save the cheerleader, save the world,” the whole thing came down to a little thirty-second face-off between Peter and Sylar. And then Nathan flew Peter out to the stratosphere so he could blow up without destroying the city. Yippee yahoo.

But Lost last night… I was glued to the TV from the first few minutes. It was easily the best episode of the season. Not only were we left with plenty of questions (it just wouldn’t be Lost if I wasn’t totally confused at the end of the show), but there were also plenty of satisfying scenes that were long overdue. I mean, there was so much that was great in the episode last night… Jack led most of the Losties away to find the radio tower, while Jin, Sayid and Bernard stayed behind to execute the “shoot the dynamite” plan. (By the way – why have we not seen a thing about Rose and Bernard this season, and NOW they pop up all of a sudden?) And when the Others show up, Sayid and Bernard are perfect shots, and BOOM! Others scattered everywhere! Yes!! Unfortunately Jin was not as accurate, and the three remaining Others capture the three Losties.

And Ben – stupid, evil, lying Ben – shows up to block the exodus to the radio tower, where he takes Jack aside and allows him to listen to the radio transmission from back at the beach, where the Others are holding the Losties at gunpoint. Ben tells Jack he has one minute to hand over Naomi’s satellite phone, or Jin, Sayid and Bernard are all dead. Jack (obviously struggling with his status as leader) refuses, and we hear three gun shots on Ben’s radio. And this is where it got REALLY good – Jack lunged at Ben, and finally, FINALLY, gave him a much deserved face-beating. I was literally sitting on my couch saying, “just kill him! Kill him!” Who knew I had such homicidal tendencies? But it was like Jack was finally getting out some of that frustration all of us Lost viewers have had all season…

But I think my favorite scene had to be after Sawyer and Juliet made the decision to go back to the beach to see if they could figure out what happened to Jin, Sayid and Bernard. Hurley comes running (well, “running” is a bit of an overstatement) up to them, and says he wants to help. And for the second time in two episodes, someone reminds poor Hurley that he’s fat and will only slow them down. So a dejected Hurley returns to join the rest of the Losties – or so it seems. After Sawyer and Juliet get to the beach (where Jin, Sayid and Bernard are still alive – I kinda figured they would be, so that wasn’t TOO much of a surprise) they realize they have no weapons to fight the three gun-totin’ Others. And it’s at that moment that Hurley comes barreling through the jungle in the old beat-up van he fixed – he plows right into one of the Others (yes! One down!) which causes enough of a distraction for Sawyer to rush over and pick up a gun. Sayid, with his hands tied behind his back, trips the second Other and snaps his neck with his ANKLES (that was hot – yes! TWO down!!). And we’re left only with Tom – the original Other, the one who used to wear the fake beard, the one who once said, “this is OUR island” and walked around like he owned the place – lying in the sand, Sawyer and Juliet holding him at gunpoint. “I surrender,” he said. But what does Sawyer do? Shoots him anyway – “that’s for taking the kid off the raft,” he says. YES!! Three down!!! And when Hurley questions why he shot him after he said he surrendered, Sawyer says, “I didn’t believe him.” Finally! Somebody has figured out that the Others always lie…

We also got to see Walt in this episode (I was practically jumping up and down with glee – I mean, I half thought the writers were just going to ignore the fact that Walt and Michael left the island a zillion years ago and we’d never see them again), and Locke, of course, wasn’t actually dead. He crawls out of that mass grave just in time to kill Naomi as she’s making a call on her satellite phone – because apparently, Naomi wasn’t who we thought she was. Locke then threatens to kill Jack if he continues making the call, but Jack makes it anyway… and Locke just walks away, back into the jungle. Locke’s bizarre commune with the island is starting to get a little creepy… And Jack DOES manage to contact someone, who says they’ll “be right there” to pick up the Losties. But it can’t be THAT easy to get off this island, right?

Especially since Charlie, down in the Looking Glass underwater station, intercepted a message from Desmond’s girlfriend Penny – who revealed that she did NOT, in fact, send a ship to look for Desmond as Naomi had said. And then everything got crazy – that one-eyed Russian guy (who Desmond had just speared through the chest – that guy just wouldn’t die…) managed to swim outside with a grenade and waved to Charlie through the porthole. And for some inexplicable reason, Charlie closed the door to the little room he was in so the whole station wouldn’t flood – even though Desmond was outside getting scuba gear. The Russian detonates the grenade (is it safe to say he’s dead NOW?) and Charlie’s little room starts to flood, just like in Desmond’s vision. But before he drowns, he manages to write “not Penny’s boat” on his hand, so Desmond can see the message. I don’t get the whole “Charlie had to die” story – he obviously could’ve made it out of the station, but apparently chose to die because he believed Desmond’s “vision.” For some reason, he felt that if he DIDN’T die, Claire would never be rescued… doesn’t make sense to me, since he managed to turn off the transmitter and everything. They’d better explain that next season…

All this, AND Crazy French Lady was finally reunited with Alex… AND Jack finally told Kate he loves her – which is exactly what every girl wants to hear right after they see you kissing someone else. And the flashbacks in this episode turned out to be flash-FORWARDS. Now THAT was a twist I didn’t see coming… All in all, there was so much in this episode that to write a real, decent recap would take several more pages. Seriously, I only covered major points here. I could keep going. The show was THAT good last night.

And I only have to wait eight months for the season premiere. Sigh…