PREVIEW: ''LAFLEUR''
That's the title of tonight's episode. ''LaFleur.'' Which is flower in French. Which reminds me of Ulysses, the James Joyce novel that Lost dropped into its mix o' hyperlink literary references two episodes ago. In the book, there's a pathetically poignant bit of business in which Everyman mock hero Leopold Bloom — painfully aware that his wife is having an affair with another man — tries to get into the infidelity game himself by trading correspondence with a would-be mistress using the pseudonym ''Henry Flower.'' We learn all this while the Irishman wanders around his island town, lost in a daze, deliberating whether to open his potential lover's latest letter and pondering his father's suicide.
Application to Lost: Letters? Pseudonyms? A character with a father who committed suicide? A character who may or may not be on the verge of romance with another woman? Hmmm: Sounds like Sawyer to me. Maybe we'll see if he's grown any closer to his would-be gal pal, Juliet — and how Kate's return to the Island might affect all that.
The intersection of Lost, ''LaFleur,'' Flower, and Ulysses leads us to another suggestive possibility. Each chapter in Ulysses correlates to a chapter in Homer's The Odyssey. The aforementioned Bloom chapter is modeled after ''The Lotus-Eaters,'' in which voyaging Odysseus and his crew discover an island community of peaceful, blissed-out people hooked on lotus flowers. Many of Odysseus' men get addicted to the narcotic plant themselves and lose their desire to go back home. Odysseus must resort to drastic measures to force his comrades to wake up and get back on point.
Application to Lost: I'm getting a strong castaways-in-Dharma-times vibe from this. But it also sounds like another iteration of a recurring theme this season: heroes who fall off the path of destiny (or are just hopelessly lost) and must be brought back to their senses. It's just like the story of ''The Good Shepherd'' from the Gospel of John in the Bible. Not for nothing did last week's episode give us that seemingly random moment with Matthew Abaddon and Locke in the car, right at the start of their journey, getting stopped by sheepherders wrangling their flocks across the street. Symbolism, people! Season 5 is all about shepherds and sheep. The burning question: Who's a ''good'' shepherd...and who's a ''bad'' one? (Speaking of Dharma-era intrigue, here's a shout-out to reader Molly Lee, who believes, as many of you do, that the voice the French scientists heard reciting the Numbers on the radio belonged to Hurley. Are we about to find out that time-traveling Hurley recorded the very broadcast that contributed to his cursing?)
NEXT PAGE: Ben's bloody flip-flop: Theory No. 4, and puzzling over the name ''Ajira Airways''
