Another Season 6 episode, which means another episode that’s quite good on all fronts, but never quite attains Outstanding status. Still, character development and character interaction against the backdrop of mythological resolution continues to be the name of the game, which is a good thing indeed.

Jacob appears to Hurley yet again, so he and Jack traipse off through the jungle. I’m having a lot of trouble thinking of an episode in which just these two characters were sharing screentime, but it’s great stuff. Hurley is playing the audience proxy again, seemingly the only person on the island who is interested in speculating about all the weird s*** and what makes the characters tick. And Jack reveals where he is right now, after the failure of The Incident, he’s back to being skeptical that the island can fix him. Along the way, there’s a brief encounter with Kate, then it’s off to the caves where Adam and Eve get a shoutout, and Jack finds Shannon’s inhaler.

The two arrive at a lighthouse, it has this really awesome magic mirror that Jacob used to look in on potential candidates. I was just wondering, do you suppose Mikhail was a candidate at some point? And if so, do you think Jacob looked in on him during his childhood? You know what that means, Jacob really CAN see Russia from his house! Jack, meanwhile, is not nearly as enamoured with the mirror as I am, and smashes it to pieces. Classic Shephard, suddenly getting angry and doing something really impulsive, but this time, I completely emphasize with his frustration.

That was a really long way to go for a pretty lame Sarah Palin joke in that last paragraph. I’m sorry about that.

“…Fourteen ladders a snappin’…”

I may wind up changing my tune on Season 6. I’ve already experienced that subconscious disappointment of, “Hey, Lost may not be going in the right direction.” Now, I know Darlton’s intentions, and all I can do is share my opinion on how well they tell their story, not my expectations of what I thought the story would be. And my dissatisfaction at certain loose ends, as you’ve been seeing, is now distributed throughout every season. For example, I used to hate how Season 6 failed to address Libby’s backstory or the outrigger, but now I put those down as failings of Season 2 and 5, respectively.

It’s easy to forget, but Season 6 actually does address a the big picture mysteries. LA X 1 confirmed the Monster’s identity, LA X 2 gave us the Temple, WKD gave us the Sickness, and The Substitute answers possibly the question of the series… why these characters? As annoyingly dismissive as Darlton can sometimes be (specifically, the “Oh, fans are obsessed, they still want to know about Kate’s plane” type comments), it’s getting easier to see their perspective. They actually do advance the story and mythology a lot, and our newfound knowledge becomes really easy to take for granted. If anything, it’s the mysteries confined to Season 6 that dissatisfy, the long term mythology may actually hold up.