A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

A RECAP OF A SHOW I BARELY REMEMBER: Previously on Lost:

The attractive front-half of a photogenic airplane fell out of the pretty blue sky onto a postcard-perfect tropical island. Survivors included lithe Sawyer, a tortured con artist; pulchritudinous Boone and Shannon, tortured step-incestuous Abercrombie models; pretty Sun, a tortured housewife; chiseled Jin, her tortured kneecapper of a husband; charismatic Sayid, the most tortured Indian man in the Iraqi army; cute Opie Taylor, a tortured fugitive; radiant Claire, a tortured expectant mother; adorable Walt, a tortured boy; handsome Michael, a tortured yeller of “Waaalt”; rugged Locke, a tortured ex-paraplegic piner for kidneys, dads, and Peg Bundys; charming Hurley, a tortured Powerball prisoner; will-do-in-a-pinch Charlie Hobbit, a tortured falsetto-singer; and handsome Charlie Salinger, a dick. Also: Rose, a non-tortured cancer-sufferer with perfect diction, Arzt, a readily-liquefiable science-teaching interloper; Agent Weiss, an edible pilot; and 30-35 mutes.

The ass-half of the airplane fell to the nether regions of the island. Ass-half survivors included short-tempered Ana Lucia, a terrible cop; dour Eko, a likeably murderous, drug-dealing fake priest; petulant Nathan, a red herring; irritable Cindy, a flight attendant; and whiny pessimist Bernard, a chumpy white guy. Also, irrepressibly cheerful Libby, an insane person.

The passengers are all interconnected, and were all chosen by the island. Or it’s just a coincidence. Just about everybody was responsible for somebody’s death. But aren’t we all?

Also living on this deserted island: a French lady with heavy weapons, baby issues, and a penchant for Bobby Darin; an ex-torturing button-pusher and his stair-climbing, boat-racing apprentice; and the Others, a rag-tag band of oft-shoeless industrial minions who live in gleaming underground tubes but nonetheless run an orphanage that apparently sponsors recreational barefoot teddy-bear-dragging island hikes. Key Others: Zeke, a lobsterman; Alex, a daughter; Miss Clue, a guidance counselor; Ethan Rohm, a cousin of famous scientologists; Rene Auberjonois, an interloper; and Not Henry Gale, a punching bag. If Other-life gets too boring, Others are encouraged to wear fake beards and knit caps. For various reasons, the Others choose to let interlopers believe they live at Disneyland's California Adventure.

Already dead on this island: the real Henry Gale, the skeletal cave-dwelling survivors of an earlier flight, and some paramilitary French scientists. We must not speak of them again.

The photogenic survivors quickly rallied around the pout-and-snit leadership of Charlie Salinger, who immediately declared Soviet-style communism upon the scavenged-suitcase economy. Salinger almost single-handedly turned a unified group of 47 well-fed, enthusiastic air-crash survivors into a fractured group of 30-something, terrified, suspicious, and frequently-captured malcontents. Salinger saw his dead dad in a clearing, and later found his dad’s empty casket. This was extremely important. We must never speak of it again.

Locke walked away from his wheelchair, hunted boar with his bare hands, cured Charlie Hobbit of his heroin addiction by identifying his luggage in the tree-line, hypnotized Boone with hallucinogenic mud, stared down an island monster, built a hybrid trebuchet-backhoe, blew open a secret underground hatch with dynamite, made a working diaper genie for Claire out of sticks and sand, and then became completely confounded by the metaphysical implications of a TRS-80.

Boone survived a fall in a moving jet plane from 30,000 feet, but could not survive a fall in a stationary plane from 30 feet.

Shannon survived a fall in a moving jet plane from 30,000 feet, but could not survive her Iraqi torturer’s forbidden love. Walt magically appeared to Shannon speaking backward, but maybe he was just tired of hanging out with his imaginary ghost friends, Charlie Salinger's dad and Hurley's buddy Dave.

A monster ate the pilot, scared the living hell out of the beach dwellers, almost chased down Charlie Salinger, Opie, and Charlie Hobbit, and ate Shannon in Boone’s mud-induced dream. We must never speak of this monster again.

Some smoke chased Charlie Salinger, Opie, Hurley, Locke, and Eko. You heard me. The smoke, it stage-whispers.

Sawyer came up with irritating nicknames, disregarded his shirt-buttons, stole everybody’s medicine, gave it back, stole Sun, gave her back, stole everybody’s guns, gave them back, stole a roll in the hay from Ana Lucia, kept that, stole somebody else's name, kept that, read juvenile fiction, had temporary vision deterioration that didn’t affect his ability to aim a gun, carried around a 20-year-old piece of notebook paper that survived plane crashes and dousings, and shot a polar bear.

A polar bear, you say? Walt apparently conjured it up after seeing a polar bear in Hurley’s Spanish-language comic book, just as he conjured up and killed a rare bird after reading about it in an encyclopedia. The Others were so impressed with Walt that they shrewedly allowed Michael to build a rickety raft to rendezvous with them. Walt is the key to the whole island mystery. We must never speak of him again.

Michael built the dumbest raft known to man, ran into the woods shouting “Waaalt,” got captured in 0.1 seconds, shot some nettlesome dead-end plot problems dead, hatched a plan to lead the other losties into a trap by doth-protesting-too-much, succeeded in his harebrained plan even though nobody believed him, and was rewarded with a rusty tug (note: not a euphemism) and a half-tank of diesel. This will be a good thing until Walt conjures up a Loch Ness monster to eat them.

Claire was told by a psychic not to let her child be raised by others, promptly got kidnapped by Others, agreed to give her baby to Others, was dumb enough to let both heroin-addicted failed rock star Charlie Hobbit and knife-wielding senior nutjob Locke look after her baby, and gave her baby to a wild-eyed French woman with split ends. Claire’s baby is the key to the whole island mystery. We must never speak of the magical importance of Claire’s baby again.

Rousseau gave Sayid a set of detailed maps, about which Sayid, Charlie Salinger, Kate, Sawyer, Jin, and Sun promptly forgot when planning their attack on the Others' camp. The maps did not depict the large foot-of-Homer-Simpson statue on the shoreline just before California Adventure.

Hurley’s numbers caused all of the woe and damnation known to man. Unless it’s just a coincidence.

Libby loved Hurley. Or maybe she was duping him. She was committed to Hurley's institution. Or maybe she was faking it. She gave Desmond a boat. Or maybe it was just a loan. She only had a glass of wine, ossifer. Or maybe it was six. We must never speak of Libby again.

Opie loved a boy, then she loved her fake dad, then she loved Charlie Salinger, then she loved Sawyer, maybe, then she loved her toy airplane in a box. She saw a horse, and immediately loved it. Opie infiltrated a top secret underground medical facility run by the Others and discovered their disguises, but forgot to mention it to anybody.

Sun taught Jin to love the Black man. Jin taught Spacewoman to love the Korean man.

John Locke, it turned out, was not a free will guy at all -- he was a determinist. Kelvin was neither an empiricist like the First Baron Kelvin nor a determinist like Calvin. Rousseau was quite the noble savage, except when torturing Sayid or stealing Claire's baby, when she was more of the ordinary variety of savage. Desmond David Hume was not so much an empiricist as a drunk.

The losties quickly discovered a cave with a fresh-water source a mile inland from the beach, into which the losties quickly moved, then neglected, then forgot in favor of their porous, bug-infested makeshift beach shanties at the high-water mark under the wet tropical sky. The losties found a large, comfortable underground facility with showers, a commode, running water, a laundry machine, books, music, a projector with a somewhat-limited film library, a black-light painting of the island, and a breakfast bar. What, and leave our beach shanties? The facility had a secure door completely buried under the dirt (with a light aimed squarely at the window in that buried hatch, but we will not speak of that again) that could not be opened without the aid of antique dynamite stored in the hull of a 400-year-old ship (which, by the way, ran aground several miles inland, but we will not speak of that again). It also had a back door a few yards away guarded by what appears to be a Yale lock.

Locke and Eko discovered the pneumatic tube room. Charlie Salinger, Sawyer, and Opie discovered the pneumatic tubes in a pile at a vacant lot. The system has a few kinks.

The losties captured Henry Gale, beat him, ascertained that he was a liar and an Other, beat him some more, acted condescending and sanctimonious, then let him go. Henry Gale captured the losties and rebuked them mildly. The barbarian.

Locke turned on the magnet and the trembly white light. Desmond turned them off. Does this mean no more smoothies in the Hatch blender?

The 80s-hairstyle lady is looking for Desmond, but does not have the resources to hire competent help.

Tune in Wednesday to resolve exactly none of these mysteries.