Another live-blogged Lost experience here on Thinklings. Warning: This post contains spoilers.


The previouslies on this week's show go WAY back. All the way back to the heroine plane.

And, cool . . . This looks like an Eko show!

Flashback: The scene is Eko as a little kid, breaking into a trailer to steal food for himself and his brother. Until a nun catches them, that is.

Now in church, the nun is asking Eko to ask God for forgiveness. We don't get to find out if little Eko is going to confess to God but based on the expression on his face, I'd say no.

Back in real life - we get a closeup of Eko's closed eye. Sayid and Charlie are examining his unconscious body.

"Stay alive dude, OK?" - I love Hurley

I sense a flashback coming on.

Wait, we've seen this one before . . . They are starting to rerun flashbacks! This is the one that recounts Eko's drug scheme with the faux-priests and the plane, and his brother, the real priest, getting shot.

Back to real life! I think. Maybe not, because the guy waking Eko up is his dead brother.

"It is time to confess" . . . awesome.

Somehow the vision of his brother's ghost sets Eko's hut on fire. Charlie and company rush in and save Eko though. They lay him off to the side.

And they turn their back and - Eko's gone! That dude rocks. Pure and simple.

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Jack is doing chin ups in his cage. And in walks Ben, dressed like John the Baptist for some reason.

I gotta admit, I like Ben. They have him looking very holy right now. He wants to take Jack for a walk.

Jack is trying to get Ben to admit that he has a tumor, an aggressive tumor. Ben's playing innocent.

(OK, for all the Jack lovers out there, he just took off his shirt.)

Ben just denied being sick. But there's an interesting look on his face. They both know the truth.

This is weird. The others are all dressed in white robes. Like some kind of a cult or something.

Oh, it's a funeral. For Colleen. They are all there, and schmaltzy music is playing while they get her burning bier going out in the water.

"Why did you show him my X-rays?" - Ben does have a tumor! But he doesn't want Jack to know.

Back to Lostaway Beach. They are talking with Desmond about the Hatch.

And now Locke is going to go find Eko.

Eko is stumbling around in the jungle. He looks horrible, by the way.

Flashback: In the aftermath of the killing of his brother and the taking off of the doomed drug plane, Eko is being dropped off at the church by the soldiers who think he is his brother, the priest.

Eko stares at the cross for a few minutes, and then picks up a Bible. It's his brother's bible, which has a picture of them both when they were kids.

A parishoner walks in with her little kid, and Eko realizes he has to take his brother's place.

Back to the jungle, he has just picked a new pounding stick as we get a glimpse of SmokeZilla zipping by in the background.

Weird. He's being attacked by bleeding guys - I'm suspecting they are past enemies of his. Since one threw a knife at his face, Eko decides to fight back, and is about to stab his victim, who is pleading for his life, until the victim turns into the little kid from the church scene we just left. The kid says "confess".

Commercial . . .

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Locke is inviting everyone to go along to the Pearl station. Hurley can't believe it.

"Um, Jack would always do things on his own, or take Kate or Sayid".

Locke: "Well, I'm not Jack".

I'm keeping my mouth shut. But inside, I'm doing cartwheels.

Privately, Locke knows that Eko is going to the Pearl station. "Two birds with one stone", he tells Desmond.

And here's Eko, alone in the jungle, drinking from a river, and here's another flashback.

The little kid from the previous scene is an altar boy, who notices that Eko doesn't know much about being a priest.

Enter the toughs, with machine guns, driving up in a truck and wanting to talk to Father Yemi. These guys scam percentages off of shipments of vaccines, in exchange for "protection".

Eko is standing up to them, "I am not afraid of you". In answer the head tough SHOOTS AN INNOCENT WOMAN in total cold blood. I hate these guys!

We're back to Eko and the river, and here's Lostzilla! The column of smoke from back in the early days of Lost. It is not a tame column of smoke.

But it retreats just when Locke and company show up.

"Hello Eko!"

Commercial

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Back in the aquarium: Juliet has cooked a cheeseburger for Jack. How sweet. They seem to be getting along well (I'm not sure why Jack doesn't attack her anymore and escape. There are probably guards outside the door). I think he is starting to like her.

Ben barges in and claims "Doctor/Patient confidentiality" as a way of shooing Juliet off. I find this funny, for some reason.

"We had such a wonderful plan to break you, Jack". Ben is being deliciously evil.

"Has it not occurred to you that Juliet bears a striking resemblance to your ex-wife?" Well, if Jack hasn't thought of that, I SURE HAVE! But I think almost every new blond character on this show looks like Jack's ex-wife.

Ben admits that he brought Jack here to operate on him.

Jack: "You want me to save your life?"

Ben: "No, I want you to want to save my life"

Ben is being surprisingly vulnerable. Seems that their plan was to break Jack down and get him invested in their well-being, so that he would want to help Ben of his own free will. Ben doesn't think that will work now that Jack knows he has cancer.

Ben: "Do you believe in God, Jack?"

Jack [not answering the question]: "Do you?"

Ben: "Two days after I found out I had a tumor on my spine a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky. And if that's not proof of God, I don't know what is"

That's some cool dialog.

Eko and Locke are walking through the jungle. Locke makes the mistake of speaking Yemi's name and almost gets the scripture stick shoved up an orifice. Watch it, Locke.

Back to flashback: Eko is still pretending to be a priest.

I just missed th rest of the flashback because Jill and I got to talking. Oops.

Now Eko, Locke, and everybody else - woohoo! No cliques now! - are looking at the heroine plane and the underlying Pearl station. By the way, "everybody else" includes the two new characters, Raul and whats-her-name.

Eko is back in the plane. I think he's wondering where the body of his brother went.

Yes: "My brother is gone"

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Back at the drug-plane. Locke is coming up with reasonable explanations for the loss of Yemi's body, none of which are helping Eko out much. You notice that dead bodies don't stay put long on this island?

Locke did find Yemi's cross. Well done, Locke.

Flashback: Eko, staring at the cross in his church. He looks angry. And now, to make matters worse, here are the hoodlums, walking right in. Do they know who they are dealing with?

The leader is threatening Eko with this huge knife, and he is going to cut off Eko's hands. What follows is some amazing, amazing Eko arse-kicking. They did not know who they were dealing with.

But Eko, walking out of the church wide-eyed and bloody, carrying both a knife AND a gun might not have been the best idea, if the looks on the faces of your parishoners is any clue.

Back in Pearl. Sayid, Desmond and Locke are playing the video of the Dharma Doc, trying to figure out if the comm goes both ways.

The new chick (WHAT IS HER NAME?) just stated the obvious - there are six TVs, probably six stations, why don't we look at them?

Raul just had his scene this ep. It was him going to the bathroom. I feel for this character, because he's getting some terrible scenes.

Sayid is fiddling. They are seeing a view of another station. A computer is rolling on the monitor. And Raul is being a jerk.

In the meantime, a guy with an eyepatch that I thought was an alien last week just noticed they are prying and has turned off the video feed to whatever station he inhabits. This was scarier in the previews.

Back in Jack's aquarium. Juliet wants to watch To Kill a Mockingbird with him. He's not interested. But she's apologizing, which is sweet, unless she's just playing games, which means she's evil.

Or not. The video is of her sending secret messages to Jack on posterboard - "Ignore everything I'm saying". "Ben is a liar". "He is a very dangerous man". Basically, in the video she's playing, she's asking Jack to kill Ben so they can make a new start. All the while in real life she is talking to Jack, pretending to try and convince him to save Ben.

Jack is noticeably shaken, but he's playing along.

Her plan: It's a complicated surgery, no one would ever know if he messed up on purpose.

I wonder if she realizes that it's not in Jack's nature to purposefully mess up in surgery. I have a feeling this isn't going to work, even though everything in Jack's mind is probably screaming that she's right.

I don't think Jack will do it.

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Back to the church.

"Are you a bad man?" - I like this little kid.

Eko: "Only God knows"

The kid's mom is now berating Eko. "Those men will be replaced by other men." And the church is being boarded up, because it is "not sacred anymore".

And this explains why Eko is building a church on Lostaway island. He owes Yemi a church.

And here Eko and Yemi are, back in the jungle. Eko is looking for Yemi, who has run off. He chases Yemi into a rather beautiful part of the island, heretofore not seen.

There's Yemi. "Are you ready Eko"

Eko: "Yes, I am ready"

Eko: "I ask for no forgiveness father. For I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive". Evidently Eko is not repentent. In spades.

"When I was a young boy, I killed a man to save my brother's life. I am not sorry for this. I am proud of this."

Eko on his knees. "I did not ask for the life that I was given, but it was given nonetheless. And I did my best."

Yemi's ghost is having none of this. "You speak to me as if I were your brother!"

Eko is chasing after him again. And there's the Lostzilla smoke darting right behind him.

Whoa! Now it's in front of him. Yikes!!!!

Eko is praying Psalm 23. Pretty cool. But that's not stopping Smoke-monster from beating the living crud out of him.

Locke hears the racket and runs out to see what's going on.

I really, really hope Eko doesn't die here.

Oh no.

He's whispering something to Locke but I can't tell what it is. (anyone help me out here?)

This is NOT good!

Eko has just died in Locke's arms. This stinks. Sayid, new-chick, and Desmond look on.

Sayid: "What did he say John?"

Locke: "He said, we're next."

Comforting . . .

I wonder if Eko had confessed and asked forgiveness, and not been so darn defiant, perhaps the Smoke wouldn't have killed him. Was that not an unsatisfying end to Eko? It was for me. No redemption, no confession, his dead brother disowns him, and he dies. Crud.

I give this show a C.
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The previews for next week (the finale of the first six shows) look pretty good, except for the flashes of Sawyer and Kate bumping boots. Bleaugh.

Also, Jack is standing up to Ben. And for that he gets my respect.