Michael gets an adorable little note from his boss. / ABC: MARIO PEREZ
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, unpack the crate in your room, open the suitcase inside, press the red button and watch Lost.
So we found out what Michael is doing on the boat and who got him there, but, as Hurley said of an earlier revelation in this episode, “We kinda knew that forever ago.” We also know how he got there and what his purpose is, but again, there doesn’t seem to be much mystery to discuss. No, what I want to ask is this:
What is the Island?
I mean yes, island: a body of land surrounded by water, in this case most likely a volcanic formation somewhere in the South Pacific. That part of “island” I get. But how does “The Island” extend its influence to the island of Manhattan and keep somebody from getting killed when he crashes his car at 90 mph into a dumpster? Or prevent him from blowing his brains out in an apartment in Tribeca? (A very TV thing, by the way, to show a character who is supposedly living in squalor, and put him in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York.)
Tom—and good to see you again, Mr. Friendly!—tells Michael that “the Island” won’t let him kill himself, because he “has work to do.” (That’s Walt’s injunction to Locke. And Christian’s to Jack in the Missing Pieces “Vincent” mobisode. Or was that The Island talking?) As a concept, what is this Island? From whence does it get its power? Is it a being? An idea? Is it conscious? What is this “work” it’s so insistent that various people accomplish? And why is it such a hardass about it?
As for the rest of “Meet Kevin Johnson”: A bit of a cheat, isn’t it, that it wouldn’t reveal what we, and presumably Michael’s audience Sayid, want to know, namely, just what “rescue” got Michael and Walt (anonymously) from their little boat to New York? I’d think they weren’t picked up by Ben’s people, or Michael wouldn’t have been so stunned that Tom showed up to “check up” on him. Did they just sail off into the mist and reappear in New York Harbor?
But t was good to see an entire episode for Harold Perrineau (seriously, that was one loooooong trip to the supply room), one of Lost’s best actors. I know people don’t like Michael, the character. But I like how well Perrineau commits to playing Ben’s Man on the Boat as unlikeable—and not monstrous either, but just weak and overmatched. And yet—maybe this is just me—he’s understandably so; not that Walt excuses everything, but it’s not like he killed two women and betrayed the Losties for a suitcase of cash or something. Perrineau, though, resists playing him either as a villain or as a good guy gone wrong. He’s just Michael, and for all Lost’s bizarreness, that’s a level of character realism you don’t often see on network TV.
Where does he, and everyone else, go from here? We get to wonder about that for most of April. You been cliffhung! In the meantime, the hail of bullets:
* So can we assume now that Michael, or “Kevin Johnson,” is the body in the casket, now that we know he was living in New York and trying to kill himself? (The corollary: so does he therefore make it off the island? And why does the Island let him die?)
* Speaking of dead, does everyone else assume that Karl was the Someone! Will! Die!, and that Rousseau is about as “dead” as Locke was after Ben shot him? Does she still have work to do? (If so, do we finally get a Rousseau flashback? I would kill for a Rousseau flashback.) Extra credit: who was shooting?
* And speaking of Tom: I don’t have this comprehensive a handle on Lost’s timeline, but was there a sufficient stretch of days, post-season-2, in which Tom’s whereabouts were unaccounted for and he could have been in the penthouse in New York? Because he was around an awful lot during Jack/Kate/Sawyer’s captivity. Is this one of those “island time” freakinesses?
* Miles, on Ben getting his money: “He wants to survive. And seeing as how a week ago you had a gun to his head and tonight he’s eating pound cake, I’d say he’s a guy who gets what he wants.”
* LibbyLibbyLibby! So was Michelle Rodriguez not available, or is Michael’s subconscious simply not tortured about having killed Ana Lucia?
* Speaking of which, do we believe Ben that he has scruples about killing innocents, or is he working an angle?
* So nice to see that Tom found a nice young man. “I don’t get to the mainland very often, so when I do, I like to indulge myself.”
* Easter egg: as Michael is about to off himself, a game show is playing, on which one of the answers is “Kurt Vonnegut.”
* What does Charles Widmore want? You’ve got a month or so to think that one over.