'Lost' recap: Well, Well, Well

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We needn't be so deep. Notes From The Underground — considered the first existentialist novel — was an ironic choice for an episode that saw Desmond get tossed into the Island underworld. (It seems Desmond's Island fate is to always end up in some kind of hole in the ground.) But it was also an apt choice for an episode that offered a comic take on Dostoevsky's tale of a not-so romantic date from hell, and also illustrated the author's philosophy of the mind: tortured and tumultuous, torn between action and passivity, a riotous collection of conflicted voices that's close to could be called neurotic and has been often likened to schizophrenia. In other words: chaotic. Or: ''highly unstable.''

And that may not be a bad thing. Existentialism would have listened to Libby's description of her fractured, flooded mind and agreed with her when she said: ''You mean I'm not crazy?'' Existentialism would say: ''Nope. Actually, you're more 'sane' than a normal person.'' I might suggest that Libby's discombobulating, vertiginous reaction of suddenly being filled with memories of her Island life is equivalent to Jean Paul Sartre's concept of ''Nausea,'' an almost sickening hyper-acuity to the true nature of her reality and painful first glimmerings of elevated consciousness. On the turbulent flight from being to becoming, existentialism might say, ''Pack a barf bag. You'll need it.'' As you read the following excerpt from critic Richard Pevear about Notes From The Underground, think of Spiritually Numb Sayid and Spiritually Alive Hurley — points on an upward arcing curve of existential heroism, from sleepwalking to waking life, from lost to found:

''The one thing that [Dostoevsky's] negative characters share, and almost the only negativity his world view allows, is inner fixity, a sort of death-in-life, which can take on many forms and tonalities, from the broadly comic to the tragic, from the mechanical to the corpse-like... Inner movement, on the other hand, is always a condition of spiritual good, though it may also be a source of suffering, division, disharmony, in this life. What moves may always rise.''

Chaos reigns. And chaos may be good. Because I'm beginning to think that the world of Lost, there is no such thing as ''the right move to make,'' no such thing as ''a master plan.'' Such was the theme of ''Everybody Loves Hugo.'' See: Hurley's go-with-gut Sideways romance; Hurley's making-up-as-you-go-along approach to castaway leadership; and Fake Locke's Parable of the Stick, which left me wondering if Lost was actually confessing something about its own creative process. In life, in art, and on The Island, there is just trial and error, mistakes and fixes, blunders and recoveries... and somehow, someway, something happens, something is produced, something you never intended, but something that never would have happened unless you tried, and the most heroic thing you can do is move into that something when you finally see it — and hope that something will allow you to do so.

Then again, I can be completely wrong.

NEXT: All work and no play?