Lost ... Coincidence is King

I've been saying for more than a year that the inexplicable coincidences in Lost's backstories hold the keys to what's really going on. Desmond and Jack meeting on the steps of the stadium, Kate's father meeting Sayid in Iraq - there is just no way such intersections of lives could have happened to a group of people whose only connection is they all wind up on a crashing plane. Such inexplicable coincidences point to some other, deeper reason, some other crucial component, for which the plane crash on the island is just the piece that is visible to the survivors and us, the viewers.

But what is this deeper reality?

Tonight's episode of Lost did not really provide any answers, except to point us, again, to the significance of inexplicable coincidence by giving us perhaps the biggest coincidence so far: Locke's father, the evil guy who stole his kidney and pushed him out of a window, is also the swindler responsible for the deaths of Sawyer's parents - the con-man Saywer went to Australia to kill.

What the explanation is for this and the other coincidences we still do not know - but now, more than ever, it is clear that such coincidence is the fabric that bundles together the characters and the story and what is really happening on the island. Tonight's story about Locke's father brought the inexplicable backstory coincidence to our maximum attention by literally placing it on the island itself - that's why there was no need for flashbacks off the island tonight.

We learned some other important details in this episode. Jack and Juliet are definitely in cahoots about something. And Naomi - the woman who fell from the sky - is clear that she was told that Flight 815 is at the bottom of the sea, seen there with all the bodies aboard and dead.

Locke's father clearly believes - or wanted Locke to believe - that they are all in Purgatory. I don't buy it - it's just what the producers want us to maybe think, because Purgatory has all along been the most easy, likely explanation. And that's precisely why it isn't the explanation.

The next few weeks should finally give us some, if not all, answers ... starting when Locke sees what is in that room...

Useful links:

essay: Lost: Keys to What Is Really Going On

4-min podcast of this review at Levinson news clips