'Lost' recap: Sunk

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In the wake of ''Happily Ever After,'' I tried to convince you guys that the Sideways world was the ultimate destination for the Island-world castaways, that their minds/souls will ''transmigrate'' into their Sideways world bodies and create super-plus-good idealized composites of their joined-world selves. Many of you gagged and barfed. Your biggest quibble was your belief that the Sideways world itself is phony — a fraudulent, even profoundly evil reality akin to The Matrix, a temptation to be resisted rather than embraced. I stand somewhat corrected. I don't share your cynicism, but after ''The Candidate,'' it really does seem that there's something fundamentally ''off'' about the Sideways world. I come to this conclusion not because of what anyone said in the episode, but because of Jack's reactions to the increasing pile-up of incredible post-Oceanic 815 coincidences. Fellow passengers Locke, Bernard (who came off to me as totally Island Enlightened, especially when he told Jack, ''I hope you find what you're looking for''), and then another encounter with Claire — all of these moments made Matthew Fox do that weird blinking thing when he gets flustered. In the context of the Sideways world, it gives the impression of a man trying to wake up. Maybe that's going to be the key to Jack's Island Enlightenment: a slow, steady, gentle pounding of meaningful coincidences that will finally cause the wall between his Island world and Sideways world selves to collapse. More likely, all these little moments are probably setting him for One Big Moment, a head-spinning Synchronicity, that will finally seal the deal.

But first, I think he'll have to surrender his Sideways world attachments. That includes his newfound relationship with his half-sister, Claire, who may or may not be Island Enlightened; I really can't tell. I waited for Jack to become ''activated'' when he and Claire shared that mirror-moment together. But per my new making-this-up-as-I-go attachment/detachment theory, perhaps the reason Jack didn't blaze into self-awareness was that Claire represents a stronger, even reinforced attachment to the Sideways world. (After all, he did ask her to move in.) Jack's biggest obstacle to becoming linked to his Island mind is his son, David. Through his boy, Jack has experienced the reconciliation of his father issues — the resolution of Island Jack's ''white rabbit'' angst. If we are correct with this whole ''the Sideways isn't real'' conjecturing, Jack could be headed toward a Through The Looking Glass ending. (The Lewis Carroll book, not the season 3 Lost episode.) And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can either hit the library... or enjoy this long and pretentious essay I wrote about the Lost/Alice In Wonderland connection a few months back.

It's time for me to shut up. And I didn't even give you my theories about the significance of Dr. Bernard's prosthetic teeth (false teeth: a dream symbol for insincerity and insecurity; a clue to Sideways world inauthenticity?) and how Locke's story about flying and falling with his father could be an allusion to the Daedalus and Icarus story. And I wanted to impress you by quoting from ''The Second Coming'' by William Butler Yeats and linking the poem to Sawyer's recklessness, Jin and Sun's death, anti-Christ FLocke, and mounting Sideways world fragility!

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…

That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Maybe I'll get to all that stuff on Friday in my Doc Jensen column.

Three more episodes, peeps. Three more. And we still haven't gotten the answer to the Dharma notebooks! I am really, really worried…

Namaste!