Lost: Open Mike Night

While last night’s episode wasn’t really what I expected, it was still a very solid outing and a nice way for the show to go out until it returns in a little over a month (ugh).

The show delivered in its promise to show us how Michael ended up as Ben’s spy on the freighter. While the events were almost disappointingly straightforward — turns out Harold Perrineau IS playing Michael, not Walt, and I kept waiting for a huge twist that never came — they were presented in a way that deftly dovetailed with many things we’ve see on the show before.

I also like that Michael’s story was presented in a fashion usually reserved for Desmond’s stories — the uninterrupted extended flashback. (How long was the guy that had been in the engine room with Michael/Kevin and left to go get a tool when Sayid and Desmond showed up gone?)

Before I get into that, I want to talk about the strong scenes on the Island. Locke, Ben and Miles revealed to the rest of their group that the freighter people had, indeed, been instructed to kill everyone on the Island once they corralled Ben. Do we believe them? I think it’s entirely possible that Ben and the equally rescue-phobic Locke concocted that story with Miles to keep them alienated from Jack’s group, the other freighter people and possible rescue. I know Miles said his mission was to kill everyone on the Island (and we saw the freighter was pretty heavily armed), but I don’t really see Faraday, Frank or even Charlotte as killers.

Either way, Ben convinced his "daughter" Alex, an especially dorky-looking Karl and Rosseau to seek refuge in some sanctuary he had supposedly hidden away for a rainy day. Just writing that out now makes me realize how unbelievable and how obvious of a setup this whole scenario was, but for some reason I, like every other character on the show, actually went along with what Ben said. Ben is, quite simply, the man. As Miles pointed out, they had a gun to his head and two days later he’s eating pound cake.

Anyway, let’s get into the Michael stuff which was really a great showcase for Perrineau, probably the most underused actor in the show’s run. Sure, his character had become tiresome, but I blame the writers for not giving Perrineau more to do than run around the jungle like a maniac screaming "Waaaallllttt!!!" That being said, when the "previously on ’Lost’ segment" basically recapped Michael’s history on the Island, I realized how much I’d missed the guy.

I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t see him actually being rescued, but I understand that it would be difficult to have actor Malcolm David Kelley (who’s probably taller than I am now) appear in scenes where he’s supposed to look much younger as Walt. So all we got was a silent cameo in a window, because his voice is probably just as deep as mine too.

Well we caught up with him last night and he was in Manhattan and acting almost as suicidal as Beard-face Jack. As his flashback unfolded, we learned that he’s estranged from Waaaalllttt!!! after revealing to the boy how he’d killed two fellow castaways to get him back. Seriously — how crushed is Michael’s soul that he HAD to tell his young son about murdering two people? Personally, I’d like to think that that would be something I would be able to shield my young son from.

Now THIS was much more interesting stuff for Perrineau to play, and he brought it last night. With all the head-trippy twists and turns on this show, it’s important to remember that it also features some top-notch acting and last night was no exception. Perrineau’s portrayal of a man in deep despair was just as effective (and a hell of a lot less cartoony) than Matthew Fox’s in last season’s finale.

After trying and failing to kill himself by crashing his car — and on the verge of another suicide attempt — Michael was visited by Tom, who offered Michael a chance to redeem himself.

I can’t be the only one who gets a kick out of seeing dead characters come back in these flashback stories, and last night we had a quite a bit with Tom, Naomi, Minkowski, and Libby, whose first appearance in the hospital with those blankets was a LOT creepier than her second appearance on the freighter.

Tom’s scenes with Michael offered a treasure trove of information, namely that Michael can’t die. I’m making the leap and assuming that this is true of anyone who’s been on the Island and is now off. I hate to keep revisiting last season’s finale, but think of the scene where Jack was about to jump to his death — wasn’t it a little fishy that a car accident occurred right at that moment and had the doc spring into action and forget about offing himself? I guess you could say Sayid was almost killed during his off-Island life as an assassin-for-hire, but maybe he was in a lot less danger than we thought. (How cool was it to have Sayid be SO offended and angry at the thought of Michael working for Ben given what we know about his future?)

The show’s original Beard-face also set Michael on his course to the freighter. He convinced him that Charles Widmore was the man who faked the Oceanic wreckage (I don’t buy his story or his "evidence" for one second) and that he needed to stop Widmore’s freighter and kill the crew to save his friends. It gave Michael the opportunity to redeem himself and, as we all know, redemption is a huge theme on this show.

Unfortunately, it would’ve turned Michael into a hired gun again though, as Ben cruelly pointed out, he never ordered him to kill Ana Lucia and Libby. What a grand way to mess with his head! Have him kill a large number of people to save a large number of people (and to make up for killing two people). Of course, when the time came, instead of going boom, the bomb revealed a note that said "Not Yet." Sure, eternally-cruel Ben soon phoned (claiming to be Walt) and told Michael he was out to prove that he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer like Widmore (the people of the Purge beg to differ), but "Not Yet" implies that the bomb may come into play later.

Another way this episode nicely-paralleled a previous Michael outing were the "shocking" deaths at the end. Ok, it wasn’t so much shocking that Karl died. In fact, since the promos REALLY played up the death of a character, it was actually a little disappointing (seriously, who cares about Karl?) Rosseau is another matter. The same way Libby was surprisingly shot, I didn’t expect her to go down in such an unceremonious way. She’s been there since the first season and, although her story was mostly complete as she was reunited with her daughter, I was a little sad to see her go down.

So what’d you think of this episode? Were you surprised to learn that Tom was gay? (I guess his comment to Kate that she wasn’t his type meant exactly what we thought it did.) Who shot Rosseau and Karl, and are they definitely both dead? (At first, I thought it was Alpert, maybe Dr. Harper, and the rest of the Others who’ve been missing for a while, but they don’t kill people, right?) Finally, what the hell am I supposed to do with myself on Thursdays until "Lost" comes back? (Answer: "The Office" returns April 10!)