I (basketball) Liked (basketball) This (basketball) Episode (basketball)

You'll have to excuse me, but I've been a bit distracted from LOST this week due to the fact that the greatest sporting event in America began this week. I am extremely grateful that LOST is on Tuesdays this year, however, as it sucked the year that it aired Thursday night - which coincides with the first day of the NCAA Tournament. Like a good son-of-a-basketball coach I took the last half of the week off to go soak in the action at Oklahoma City's Ford Center, where we got to see one of the biggest upsets in tournament history Saturday:

Proof, bitches!

Everytime I try to wrap my mind around LOST, all I can think of is Northern Iowa's Ali Farokhmanesh taking the stupidest/ballsiest/most amazing 3-pointer I've ever seen to beat the #1 team in the country.

Ok, FOCUS! I didn't think this episode was as bad as Pearl kicked off the week, but it certainly wasn't as great as the episode that it had to follow. I think it's important to remember that LOST Season Six will basically be judged on two fronts. #1 - Did they solve enough of the mysteries that they spent five years weaving together? #2 - Did they complete the telling of an extremely riveting story?

I think we can be so caught up in the mindset of "If I don't get an answer in the next 30 seconds I'm going to kick someone's ass!" that we forget that, at its essence, LOST is a story. A damn good one. To me "Recon" did a good job at pushing the storyline closer to the finish line. We all know that "a war is coming" and now we know that it's going to basically be a battle royale between Widmore, Ben, Monster, Jacob, and Macho Man Randy Savage. I think. We don't know who hates whom and who is on whose side. Hell I don't even know if I used the words "who, whom, and whose" correctly in that previous sentence. But "Recon" did push us closer to the fight that the past couple of seasons have been leading to.

I do have to say that I got a little nervous when they introduced the character Zoe to us, if that's your real name. Like an abused pet I immediately started thinking back to when our LOST owners rained blows upon us with the introduction of Nikki and Paolo back in Season 3. I was not ready to commit to the idea of "Hey I've just been hangin' out here for the past five years....what did I miss?" again. Fortunately these fears were quickly put to bed when they reminded us that Widmore was coming to the island with his sub.

And what the hell are they hiding in that compartment in the sub? This is immediately the most pressing issue on LOST right now. I'm usually really bad at picking up on LOST's subtle introductions of the most important thing on the screen. I went through all of Season 5 not realizing that the Ajira survivors were carrying around that box until they showed its contents to Frank during the finale and I thought "I wonder what's the big deal about that?" So I'm not falling for it this time, LOST. What the hell's in that compartment?

The LAX timeline failed to live up to Ben's story, but I'm willing to give it a pass. Ben's alternate story bought this timeline some extra time in my book. Right now we're still in that boat of just having to have faith that the payoff will be satisfying for watching some otherwise uninspiring scenes. What they will not be excused for is that disgusting shot of Charlotte's naked back after "An Evening With Sawyer." I am curious, however, as to why Sawyer let Kate go at the airport. Since when do cops help people in handcuffs circumvent the authorities? There's something fishy about that one...

Other than that, tonight's episode looks pretty epic, guyliner and all.

- The Arrow