So the Oceanic 6 are Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and Aaron? So I was wrong about Aaron not counting? Ahh, big deal. One time, I thought that flight 815 was abducted by aliens and they were all transported to another planet on which they were subjects in an experiment by an alien race. While I don’t know what alien race it was, I am pretty sure that it had something to do with John Travolta. So, I have been way off before.

“Meet Kevin Johnson” was one of those “Lost” episodes that brings about more questions than answers. Sure, we got to find all about Michael’s life off of the Island but there are still plenty of new questions and we also got quite a few answers. I’ll start with Michael in New York.

It sure looked like Michael was living the Ratso Rizzo dream didn’t it? The only thing Michael was missing was a redneck male prostitute and he’s in “Midnight Cowboy”. We first see Michael pinning a note to his chest and crashing his car dead-on into a dumpster. When Michael wakes up in the hospital, he sees Libby. Talk about some good morphine! Of course, Michael murdered her on the Island when he busted Ben out of the hatch. Was Libby the smoke monster? Abbadon? Who knows…it doesn’t matter at this point. Freaky stuff is happening to everyone that leaves the Island.

Michael goes to his mother’s house to try and see Walt. Man, if you wanted to see Walt, just have Ben shoot you and fall into a ditch, you’ll see him for sure. We learn from his mother that she has been forced to keep Michael and Walt’s arrival secret. We know that Michael won’t tell anyone about the Island because he’ll then be held accountable for the murder of Ana Lucia and Libby…which he told Walt about. Walt now refuses to see Michael and this is what is driving Michael’s suicidal thoughts. So much so, that Mike goes to a pawn shop and trades in the watch that Jin gave him way back in season one for a gun. Mike plops down in an alley and tries to kill himself but who shows up to stop him? Big gay Tom!

Tom tells Michael about Charles Widmore, the freighter, and the faked 815 wreckage. I truly believe what Tom told Michael is the absolute truth. He also tells him that he can’t kill himself because the Island won’t let him. Hmm…more on that little tidbit later.

Tom uses Michael’s guilt against him and gets him to go on the freighter. Throughout all of this, Michael is driven by one thing: the approval of his son. He feels that by going on the freighter and saving the 815ers, he will earn redemption in his son’s eyes. Wow…father and son redemption issues…that never happens on “Lost”.

So Michael gets on the boat, tries to blow it up, and the bomb Ben sent him is more of a Carrot Top prop than an explosive device. When you really think about the fact that the bomb gave Mike a message reading “NOT YET”, all it really is yet another message from Ben. That message is “I am running this show and I own you”. Instead of blowing up the ship, Ben wants yet another list of who is on the freighter from Michael. That brings us up to…

…Sayid ratting Michael out to Cap’n Whup-Ass! This just goes to show that the people on the boat that Sayid is already suspicious of don’t hold a candle to Ben and Michael in his mind. All in all, everything involving Michael was pretty wild. Although it seemed hurried, it was still effective and I definitely see the parallels with Michael off the Island and Jack off the Island. Umm…don’t read that last sentence again. Sure, the Island seems to be running the show but I don’t think it could get Jack to…umm…you know what to it. That would be way too weird, even for “Lost”.

There are two things that I will take away from this episode. The first being Jack and his attempted suicide in last season’s “Through The Looking Glass”. How many times do you think Jack had unsuccessfully tried to kill himself up to that point? Was the bridge his first attempt? Did the car crash right before he jumped so that it would stop him? The failed suicide attempts are no doubt more proof that, as we have learned with Desmond, the universe finds a way to correct itself. It’s not that Jack and Michael aren’t supposed to die, they were never supposed to leave the Island and the universe is doing its job by getting them back there in any way possible. That is amazing stuff and really a credit to the “Lost” writers for having such a brilliant vision of what this show is about.

The last thing I want to write about here is Benjamin Linus. If you don’t think he has a 100% handle of every single thing going on, you haven’t been watching “Lost” enough. He gets Locke to let him go and then, gets Rousseau to take Karl and Alex to “The Temple”. Apparently, they are Jewish. I kid I kid. So once the three of them get close, Karl and Rousseau are shot and killed. This was completely unexpected and delivered the goods in a way that only “Lost” can.

The ending brings up numerous questions. Did Ben send them there, knowing that Rousseau and Karl would end up dead? Were Ben’s people instructed to kill anyone with his “daughter” so that he could once again have Alex back? Were the killers not The Others, but in fact a group of people from the freighter? That is a definite possibility. Michael saw the muscleheads firing automatic weapons on the boat so we know they are definitely armed to the teeth. The people from the freighter would definitely not have shot and killed Ben’s daughter, knowing she could be valuable in their pursuit of him.

Wow. That’s a long recap. I sure hope you have the stomach for that fight.