What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "There's No Place Like Home": The man with the plan
"There's No Place Like Home" was bursting with emotion, and with payoffs to character arcs dating back to season one: We had Sun taking out her righteous widowed(*) fury on her dad by buying out his company(**). We had Sayid reunited with his beloved Nadia (even though we know she'll be dead within a year). And, in maybe Matthew Fox's single best moment in the history of the show, we had Jack finally find out that Claire is his sister -- after he's already left her behind (and very possibly dead) on the island.
To have Jack find out that way -- and after the Oceanic Six had, for reasons that I'm sure will be explained in two weeks, had agreed to a cover story that included Aaron being Kate's biological kid (which means no Aaron-grandma bonding, or the cover's blown) -- was a cruel, powerful twist on the part of the "Lost" writers, and Fox played Jack's anguish beautifully. Of all the members of the Six, he was the only one who seemed at peace with what had happened for most of the episode, and that just destroyed him. I knew Jack's "and you're not even related to him!" rant from "Something Nice Back Home" meant that Jack knew he was an uncle; I just didn't imagine it would come out this way.

(*) I'm still on board with the idea that Jin dies while the Six escape (which would make the season finale Daniel Dae Kim's last episode as a regular, unfortunately). Too many things about the way Sun carried herself both here and in "Ji Yeon" suggest a widow and not a woman separated from her husband by thousands of miles (and maybe years, depending on what The Orchid does), and there's no reason for her to tell her father that two people are responsible for Jin's death(***) if he's not dead. She's got plenty enough reason to hate the guy. Plus, I feel like there needs to be a payoff to Jin extracting the promise of Sun's safety from Charlotte, and we didn't get that here.

(***) The answer nice, treating the begged question as obvious (which I suppose it is), Who is the other of the two people Sun says are to blame for Jin's death?could turn out to be Ben or Widmore or Keamy or Michael or lots of other people, but I have a feeling the other person Sun blames is herself. that's what I thought too.

When "Lost" is at its best -- I'm talking "Walkabout" or "Through the Looking Glass" best -- it manages to balance revelations (shocking and otherwise) with great character moments. I don't know that I'd put this one in the pantheon (again, a lot of it was set-up for the finale, for which I have extremely high hopes), but it was definitely in the spirit of what I love about the show. We managed to flit around all these different locations and groups of people (including Richard and The Others coming back on the board and suddenly looking like they are, in fact, the good guys) without ever losing sight of them as people. The show is as much about Sun's relationship with her father as it's about the Numbers, as much about Sayid's globe-trotting quest for the woman of his dreams as about who's in the coffin, or as much Kate not having anybody to greet her on the tarmac as Jacob's true identity, etc.


can not figure out how Sun and Aaron are going to wind up with the rest of the Oceanic Six, who are all converging at The Orchid...
Again, how is Sun going to get from the explosives-laden freighter to the location of the rest of the Six?