Do I Sound Like Someone Who has a Plan?

Since this is the first episode that focused entirely and solely on one character since I don't know when, let's dispense with everything else quickly and effortlessly. Now all the folks on Team Smokey know they're candidates, except for Ben and Lapidus. And we reiterated that Ilana needs to protect them. In fact, only one thing bugged me about this whole setup.

Richard: We're all dead and in hell. I'm leaving and joining the other team. Good day.
Ilana: But you, Richard, are the one who knows what to do --
Richard: I said good day!
Ilana: (Waits twenty minutes) I'm going after him.

GODDAMNIT. Why didn't you try to stop him when he was leaving? Why did you just sit there? Good Lord. You need to stop taking the How to be Stupid Classes from Jack.

Richard: We finally learned the story of Richard "The Ageless Wonder" Alpert. Well. Kind of. I would have loved to have learned what the balls he has actually done on the island beside walk out of the jungle with his hands up every other day. I have to say, though. As origin stories go, this was a pretty nifty one.

We open on Zorro Richard riding a horse through the lowlands of Tenerife in 1867 Spain. And then he goes into his house and says something -- and I couldn't believe this -- in SPANISH.

I DON'T HAVE TO READ THE SUBTITLES THAT FLOAT UNDER THE FOREIGNERS. I FINALLY UNDERSTAND SOMETHING IN THIS SHOW.

I have to say, Richard speaks pretty good Spanish. In fact, his Spanish accent as he speaks English is better than my own. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.

We learned that there was eyeliner in mid-19th century Spain. We also learned that Richard is trapped in a telenovela. Oh, you thought Kate episodes were the Mexican soap operas of Lost? Well, they have nothing on this.

"Ricardo!"

"Isabela!"

"Mi amor!"

"No te mueras!"

"Ricardo!"

"Isabela!"

We have the dying wife. The long-haired hero. The evil doctor eating noisily and alone. The only priest in the world who would refuse to absolve a truly penitent man (and for manslaughter, no less). All we were missing was Locke in an eyepatch. For a second, I thought I was watching this.

And, in a stunning turn of good timing, we learned what happens when you don't have universal health care. SUCK IT, 1867 TENERIFE.

After killing the doctor, watching his wife die, being sentenced to die, and being damned to hell, Richard's day keeps getting better. He has received a presidential pardon and gets to go to the New World! The catch? He's a slave. Well.

On the ocean, Richard and Co. run into The Perfect Storm, which throws them hundreds of feet through the air, straight into the face of a huge stone statue, which their wooden ship pulverizes and somehow uses as a propeller to launch itself into the middle of the jungle. And in all of that, somehow, the dynamite that would later turn Arzt into Pieces of Me does not explode.

Well, we bought time travel, didn't we?

(Two more notes. Was that Captain Hanso, as in the Hanso Foundation? Also, the Tenerife-New World route, unless you get wicked lost, goes through the Atlantic. And yet the castaways landed on the Island after their Sydney-L.A. plane crashed. I thought the Island only moved through time, not space. Or are they the same thing? Gar. I'm confused.

Normally, in moments of confusion I retreat into an analysis of how attractive the women are on the island. But we only really got Isabela this episode. When I first saw her, I totally thought it was Salma Hayek. But it was really dark. When we saw her in the light, we saw that she was definitely no Salma Hayek. So now my real life is being reflected on the show. Awesome.)

But I digress. Richard's on the Island now. So let's keep the story moving.

The guy who bought Alpert comes in and puts all of the slaves out of his misery. Charming fellow. He is rewarded with Death by Smokey, which makes sense, because Karma rhymes with Dharma.

Smokey sure goes out of his way to save Richard. In fact, Richard seems to pass the moment of judgment, just like Mr. Eko and Ben Linus once passed their moment of judgment. Does this mean Mr. Eko and his Jesus Stick was seen as a potential Jacob-murderer by Smokey? I know he's dead, so who cares, but worth mentioning.

As Richard tries to escape his chains, he is visited by the ghost of his wife, who then goes and gets eaten by the Smoke Monster. This was a very weird sequence. Was the ghost a manifestation created by the Smoke Monster? Or was it actually Isabela the friendly Ghost who 140 years later would talk to Hurely? Or was it a mere hallucination?

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this episode is how much the Man in Black behaved exactly like Jacob. Clearly, he also has the touch, and every time he touches the castaways, something happens. Chained Richard is revived just like Thrown out of a Tall Building by Daddy Locke.

And then the Man in Black told Richard to kill Jacob in exactly the same way Dogen told Sayid to go kill the Locke-ness Monster. So it seems the recipe to kill demi-gods involves a knife and their silence in exchange for a deal with the devil.

This all underscores the duality Lost heavily hints at, and Jacob personifies free will and Smokey represents corruption. It seems clearer every day that Jacob and Smokey are two sides of the same coin. The reason they each recruit beach volleyball teams? They have a bet. They bet that people can't be corrupted, even though Smokey is allowed to meddle and Jacob is not. And this bet has been going on for centuries. And it involves scores of people, all of whom are now dead. And they keep making the same bet with different groups of people, rolling the dice again, hoping people won't end up killed again.

And you say I have a gambling problem.

Richard actually let me down a little bit. When he made his deal with the devil, the Man in Black had the worst explanations I've ever seen a devil make. "But you killed my wife." No, Jacob took her but I was too late. "But you killed all those people." Do you want to save your wife? "This makes no sense." This makes plenty of sense. "OK, then."

The fact that Richard bought all of these, the most unconvincing explanations in the world, is disappointing, as Smocke would say.

Instead, Richard got his ass kicked by Jacob and then made another deal with the other devil. He can't have his wife back and he can't be absolved of his sins. So he says, "then I want to live forever," just kind of throwing it out there. And Jacob jumps on that, "OK!" he says and touches him.

Did anyone else kind of get the vibe that this was totally not an informed wish? Like I said, Richard kind of threw it out there without thinking, almost like he was being sarcastic. And Jacob, like a genie in a bad joke, jumped all over that. I guess there were no take-backs in the 19th century.

And so Jacob got his prophet, the intermediary, the consiglieri, the one who can preach his word and prod the candidates in the right direction, just so he'll finally win his bet.

Why do I say prophet? Because they might as well have said that on the show. This episode was heavy with the religious undertones. I don't for one second buy the idea that the Island is actually hell and that they're all dead. Rather, I believe that, over the years, Alpert became more secular and uses the word hell to describe the Island much in the same way I use hell to describe the law tower. Yes, there are classholes there, but I don't think I'll run into Hitler and Stalin.

The reason it's not hell? They're not dead. The Island ain't a fun place to be, but it's not hell, no matter how much Jacob and Smokey come to resemble God and Satan.

So that's our battle. The Blind Watchmaker vs. the Lord of the Flies, and woe be unto all if the latter gets out.

And who would go to an Island Wine-Tasting with me? From the look of the weather on the Island, I bet you that the wine is terrible, though. No wonder the Man in Black smashed the bottle.