Sawyer and Hurley had some great lines, some interesting randomness in the form of Billy Dee Williams as himself, and yes, I got a kick out of Paulo's $%&#-taking ways finally being explained.

In terms of humor and cleverness, this was no 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space,' or 'Small Potatoes' (to cite some of the classic 'quirky' X-Files episodes). 'Nikki's dead.' 'Okay, but who in the hell is Nikki?' That oddball sense of humor set the tone for the rest of the episode, although the quirkiness and humor was never really maintained throughout. His opening exchange with Hurley was classic. Luckily, we had the present-day mystery of N and P's apparent deaths, and in these scenes we got Josh Halloway in rare form as Sawyer. And since they weren't especially compelling characters, and since their motives on the island weren't all that interesting (finding a sack of stolen diamonds), many of these flashbacks kind of dragged. Now, while this retcon did give us a few cool scenes, and brought back fun characters like Shannon, Boone, and good ol' Artz (and who knew Artz was such a horndog?), it wasn't exactly subtle in its premise that Nikki and Paulo had been key players in the Lost mythology all along. Look! It's the Lost pilot justl ike you remembered it the first time, except that this time, Nikki and Paulo are there! See, they WERE there all along! This is what comic book fans commonly refer to as a 'retcon,' a retroactive alteration of a story's continuity for the sake of making new plot elements fit into an already established backstory. My one big complaint with these types of scenes though (and I had the same issue with Smallville a few weeks ago) is that we are often forced to re-view long sections of past episodes just for the sake of inserting these new characters into them. Especially interesting was the scene of Paulo listening in to Ben and Juliette's machinations in the hatch (except, remind me again why The Others at times dress like they're in a school play of Robin Hood?).

In doing so, we got a few cool new insights into prior plot points. I will say though, that it was pretty clever how the show's new favorite power couple was woven into many of Lost's 'greatest hits' moments. Nikki was never really shown as anything more than a conniving, D-list golddigger, and Paulo was, well, I really have no idea what Paulo's deal was, why he hid the diamonds, or why he ever agreed to go along with Nikki's con to begin with (other than her obvious, um, assets. Some of this ambiguity about the characters has to be attributed to the actors, who never really elevated the writing in any meaningful way. Okay, she didn't kill him, just threw a paralysis-inducing medusa spider at his jugular. Sure, there's only so much fleshing out that can be done in one hour, but I just never really 'got' why, even after being stranded on an island for months, Nikki was willing to kill Paulo over a bunch of diamonds. Still, this episode felt like it had too much padding, and never quite broke through from the realm of merely 'entertaining' into the category of 'brilliant.' Part of it was that Nikki and Paulo just weren't that great a pair of characters. I loved the Twilight Zone / Alfred Hitchock-ish ending, and I appreciated the attempt at being quirky in a Daren Morgan-on-X-Files kind of way. On one hand, I really, really admired what this episode was trying to do.

How do we sleep when our beds are burning?' How can we dance when our earth is turning Should I ask her if opposittes really do attract?ДЄs 80's one-hit wonder band Midnight Oil sang: Outside, the entire sky is obscured by smoke.ДЇinally, all of this is made all the more surreal by the fact that PAULA ABDUL is in our office. The air right now is filled with ashe, and even from inside my office I can smell the smoke from outside. Wow, I mean, I've never seen a fire of this magnitude up close and personal like this before. what!?!? As I drive closer to NBC, I could see a fire raging along the hilltops surrounding Burbank and crossing into Universal City and Hollywood. I was seeing a gigantic ploom of orange-gray smoke rising up from the hills behind the famous Warner Bros. I ran out at lunchtime to grab some Subway, and as I've driving back towards NBC on Hollywood Way I look up and see what almost looked like a mushroom cloud sucked into a tornado. What a weird day! Right this second, an enormous fire is raging RIGHT HERE IN BURBANK.

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