'Lost' Recap: The New Long Con by Jeff Jensen

Let me begin by guessing what most of you were thinking at the very end of last night's Lost: Harry Potter. Right? Add a lightening bolt scar and a British accent to that bespectacled pasty white cherubic mug, and young Benjamin Linus would have totally been the spitting image of J.K. Rowling's boy hero. Which is a rather provocative connection to make. Quick! Write me a mini-essay on all the ways Ben Linus = Harry Potter. Be sure to work in the words ''Parselmouth,'' ''chosen one,'' and ''I seem to recall a lot of people wondered if Harry might go bad, which is kinda like Ben, at least in the sense that so many people wonder if Ben is a good guy or a bad guy.'' Send your homework to JeffJensenEW@aol.com. Meanwhile, allow me to forge other connections between ''Namaste'' and Harry Potter that are probably totally irrelevant but somewhat amusing to consider. Didn't Jack, Kate, and Hurley's Dharma orientation feel very Sorting Hat to you? And didn't Sayid's incarceration have a certain Prisoner of Azkaban whiff? (Hey: That book had a time travel hook, too!) And now that I'm really going down the rabbit hole: Hippyish Horace Goodspeed = Professor Dumbledore by way of Michael Gambon; Snippy Radzinsky = Snappy Snape; Body-challenged Jacob = reincarnation-questing Voldemort. And are The Others = Death Eaters scheming to facilitate his reincarnation?

Oh, wait: You came here to actually read about Lost, not Harry Potter, didn't you? ''Namaste'' in a nutshell: Time travel trio Jack, Kate, and Hurley got assimilated into 1977 Dharma society. Time traveler Sayid was suspected of being a ''Hostile'' and got thrown in the Dharma detention center. And back in the present — which in Lost time is the year 2007 — Sun and Lapidus paddled to the big island and learned from Christian ''Dead Man Walking'' Shephard where and when the other castaways are. It was a transitional episode of Lost — an installment that cleared up some unfinished business and put everyone where they needed to be for the episodes to come. Coming out of the two-week break, ''Namaste'' was good for reminding us where we are in the larger season 5 saga.

Continue Reading