Lost Lover at Law: "The Cost of Living"

As a “programming reminder,” due to my attendance of the Kings-Penguins game tonight, I will not be able to watch tonight’s Lost episode, “The Cost of Living,” until tomorrow, which will delay my recap. To make it up to all of you (who are probably reading this post after you watched the episode, but before I did), I invite you to post your questions about the episode as comments to this post, which I’ll try to respond to in the recap.

On to other tidbits…

As I’ve said before, one of my main sources is ew.com’s resident lostologist, Jeff Jensen, whose weekly essays and theories about the show are often insightful, though frequently “out there.” This week’s edition deserves a special shout-out. Some highlights:

Jensen clearly has regular contact with Lost show runners Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse, and, for the second Wednesday in a row, Cuse has given Jensen a “tease” to keep in mind heading into tonight’s episode (I don’t consider Cuse’s teases “spoilers” because the producers are far too tight-lipped about their creation to actually reveal any substantive information before it shows up on screen). Here’s the tease: “It's judgment time. Yemi. Eko. What does the island want?”
Jensen promises he knows who the Others really are, and will tell us next week.
It’s no secret Lost is riddled with references to pop culture and literature. Last week’s reference to Of Mice and Men was pretty obvious. But there was another reference last week to a non-fiction memoir by avowed Lost fan Steven King (entitled On Writing). The quote from Jensen (quoting King, who posits that writing is in fact telepathy):

“’Look — here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot stub which it is constantly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.’

It's King's belief that upon reading that, and reflecting upon the bunny, we would all agree that ‘the most important thing here... [is] the number on its back.... This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room... except we are together. We're close. We're having a meeting of the minds.’”

How fitting that Steven King would use one of “the Numbers” …

Jensen reiterates his belief/wish that Lost and NBC’s Heroes will at some point cross over (and that the eclipsed helix symbol that recurs on Heroes will turn out to be a Dharma logo, with the “heroes” themselves the product of a Hanso experiment). At least we know Lindeloff watches Heroes.
The latest of Jensen’s master theories, the “redemption of television” theory, is far more interesting and thought-provoking than some of his whackier ideas. I can’t do it justice here, so I’ll just refer you to Jensen’s column:http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1553147_3_0_,00.html.