'Lost' Recap: Settling Into A Groove

If Jack is the Man of Science, and if John Locke is the Man of Faith, then I nominate Sawyer as Man of Heart. To hell with it: Can we just say he's the effin' man?!' Because in last night's Lost, he certainly was all that, plus a bag of Dharma chips. The kind of dude all the boys want to be; the kind of hunk that all the girls wanna get with — provided they're cool with his new slightly shorn and less stubbled look. Stepping up as leader, savior, and super-cool boyfriend — and succeeding wildly at all three — Sawyer found himself born again in the Dharma Initiative past. He seemed perfectly at home, perfectly at ease, perfectly self-realized within the confines of the trippy-hippy Utopian commune. Making the ex-con the head of Dharma security? Genius. Coupling him with fertility doc-turned-motor pool mechanic Juliet? Totally worked for me. Kudos to Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell for selling us on the best romance Lost has ever given us. Consider my membership in the Skater/SawKate/Kateyer 'shipper club resigned, chopper kiss be damned. But bliss is fleeting on Lost, and so, after Sawyer told Dharma's troubled uber-nerd Horace Goodspeed that he could barely remember the face of the girl that got away, we got the moment the entire season had been setting us up for. As Sawyer locked eyes with his former (?) fugitive dreamgirl, newly returned to the Island, I heard Sawyer's internal monologue say ''Oh, yeah. I, like, totally love you. Er, I mean, loved you. I mean: Crap!'' If they gave Emmy nominations for meaningful gazes, Holloway should start ironing his tuxedo T-shirt and best ripped jeans, because he'd be going to the ceremony.

The timing of the episode couldn't have better. As much as I dig trippy time travel puzzles and heady riffs on religion, reason, and existentialism, Lost's fifth season has very much lived inside its big old brain. ''LaFleur'' — flower in French — felt as if the show decided to open up some windows and let some fresh spring air chase away the stuffiness. I laughed, I teared up (Juliet delivered a baby! She's not the Passover angel, after all!), I got goosebumps. ''LaFleur'' reminded me that Lost is at its best when the show is an emotionally-charged adventure story that keeps its geeky mysteries in the background — not invisible at all, but rather turned away from the drama lest they overwhelm us and the story. You know: Exactly like last night's long-awaited return appearance by Four Toed Statue (Complete Edition), which loomed in the horizon, back turned to us and the castaways, standing like some Statue of Liberty scanning the horizon and beckoning lost, huddled masses to come to it shores...so Smokey can eat them. Decoding the visible details demands a Doc Jensen column of its own. But briefly: Looks Egyptian. Skirt, but no shirt — so despite the long hair, I'm thinking male. Those appear to be ankhs in the hands — symbolic of life in general and eternal life, specifically. And on the head, two pointy ears (Cat? Greyhound? Pig? Spock?) and a rectangular headpiece, like a crown or Jughead's beanie. These clues could link to any number of Egyptian deities (Bast, Set, Anubis, and Horus will be popular guesses), though given how the Island's wormhole exits into a different North Africa nation — Tunisia — I'm mulling Ba'al and Moloch, too. In that spirit, I would like to cover my ass and note that...we never actually saw that famous foot, did we? Was this really Four Toed Statue — or some monolithic companion? For now, let's stick with the general vibe the Statue gives us: The Island appears to have once been home to an ancient civilization; and that Egyptian connotation reminds us that Egyptians were fixated on the afterlife and the possibility of resurrection. Both themes were detectable in ''LaFleur.''

NEXT: Seasonal parallels