Idol Chatter

Tonight's Lost promises to be so good and enlightening that I'm watching Idol first so that I can pay attention to what promises to be mediocre. Jamie Foxx (with his tattooed head) is a bad mentor, especially compared to Harry Connick last week, who was far and away the best ever. You're going to have to tell me if Foxx handed out any of the "contestant" shirts (I'm assuming he did not), because I'm fast-forwarding through his segments. So:

• Lee DeWyze, singing Seal's "Kiss from a Rose": I do not have high hopes for such a difficult song. Yep, rough beginning. His voice just isn't strong enough. He's going to win this thing, but this was not good. Not good at all. This performance was totally Batman and Robin.
• Michael Lynche, singing Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There": This is the theme song for that alleged killer whale in Sea World. I'm going to San Diego next month and trying to decide whether or not to go to the zoo. Sea World was suggested instead. Look, I'm already skipping Tijuana because I don't want to get shot. Fine performance from Big Mike. He's doing well the last few weeks. Too bad that the Idol voters, much like George Bush, don't care about black people.
• Crystal and Lee, singing Glen Hansard's & Marketa Irglova's "Falling Slowly": Dude, Crystal left Lee in the dust here. She's a much better singer and performer. Much better. He's still winning because he's lame enough, but this was pretty eye-opening. I wonder if they put these two together because they have some weird inkling that they'll be the final two.
• Casey James, singing Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson": I'm sure it's a coincedence he's singing this after all the cougar jokes earlier in the season. Did I point out at some point last week that Kara said that Casey sounded like a lamb when I've been calling him "Goat Boy" for months? Well, if you ever wanted to hear Goat Boy sing "Mrs. Robinson," you were in luck tonight. Very cool arrangement, not so great performer.
• Crystal Bowersox, singing Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright": I thought the audience shot was weird.
• Casey and Mike, singing Bryan Adams' "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?": If they were going to a Bryan Adams song from a movie, I wish they had done "All For Love" by Bryan Adams, Sting, and Phil Collins, from Three Musketeers. Or, you know, Robin Hood comes out this week and I'm sure we're not still sick of that song, right? This was decent. The duets cover up the singers' individual faults.

I'm hoping Casey is out. I'm guessing it will be Big Mike.

Lost:

• As I said earlier, this week's episode promised to be enlightening, so I sat down to watch it and it flew. We got halfway into it and it was interesting, but I couldn't totally tell where it was going. Three-quarters of the way through and I understood a little better. And then they showed Jack open the bag and pull out the stones and I said in a quiet and matter-of-fact tone, "Oh." And so the two biggest remaining questions from Season One are answered and I get it, all of it, except for what's left in the final two episodes. Let's see if I can recount it all.
• It turns out, as we probably could have guessed, that the identity of "Adam and Eve" was quite a bit more important to the show's narrative than we would have thought when Jack first found them in the caves in the first season. You can throw that info, Locke's backgammon speech from the first season (I pointed it out during my rewatch), and that dumb spin-off book that I never read, Bad Twin, as signs that Lindelof and Cuse really did know what was going on from the very beginning.
• In the sixth season premiere, Locke informed Ben that he is the smoke monster. So I was excited because I knew what the monster was, it was the Man In Black. So wrong. If "Adam and Eve" was one of the two great remaning mysteries before tonight, the other (whether we still knew it or not) was what the monster is. And now we know. The monster is the power under the island. It's not the Man In Black at all.
• Jacob's brother (I like how they never gave him a name, especially since that name wasn't Esau) is dead. Sort of. When Jacob threw him into the light, his body died and his spirit became one with the island. He can appear as dead people and, therefore, can appear as Jacob's brother. He's obsessed with "going home," but he doesn't even know where "home" is. It's just off the island.
• Jacob, protector of the light, isn't protecting it from the monster. He's protecting the world from the monster (essentially the light) getting off the island. Their "mother" said that once people get a taste of the light, they fight over it. The light leaving the island would bring war across the sea.
• Jacob is dead. Period. He appears to Hurley because Hurley can talk to the dead. Similarly, he appears to Locke as he was as a boy because Locke/ the brother's spirit also has that same power. It's why Richard couldn't see the boy earlier in the season. Much like older Jacob is directing Hurley to have Jack realize his destiny as Jacob's replacement, younger Jacob is directing Locke in the rules of the game.
• The rules, as we already know, are that the monster can't kill Jacob (thanks to the "mother") and that the light can't leave the island as long as there is someone to protect it. So Jacob found the candidates to be his successor and the final one needs to be established, alone, so that there is nobody left to kill him. Because people are prone to fight over that power. Just like the monster couldn't kill Jacob, he can't kill any of the candidates. Those are the rules that Jacob set up because Jacob was finally able to make rules for his own game.
• I think that does it for the explanation, but what's left? Two questions remain, both from the sixth season. Every other important question has been answered, if not explicitly. The two questions?
• One, the most important: Who will be Jacob's successor? It has to be either Jack, Hurley, or Sawyer. My pretty educated guess is that Kate is no longer a candidate because she raised someone else's baby. You'd think Jacob would be pretty sensitive to that.
• Two: What is the sideways world and how will that be resolved into an answer for Question One? The title of next week's penultimate episode is "What They Died For". The final answers are almost here.