Recapping 5.06: "316"

Check out Doc Jensen's episode recap, which is called Keeping the Faith. The literary references keep coming. He probably has one of the most in-depth analysis of the show out there.

They're back. Back where they belong. Back where we want them to be. Nearly 21 months after Jack first bellowed ''We have to go back!'', the Oceanic 6 (minus Aaron, and don't ask why, or else Kate won't kiss you) finally undertook the perilous journey back to the place they never should have left — back to The Island, back to their ''mythic estate,'' to borrow a phrase from James Joyce's Ulysses, which last night's episode had the audacity to namedrop. For now, we only know of three who successfully fell to Earth — all the way to The Island's Dharma Initiative past, no less. There's Jack, blinking awake as he did in Lost's very first episode, this time looking not hopelessly lost, but gloriously born again. There's Kate, whose motivations for making the return trip were deliberately kept from us (all the better for a future flashback episode, my dears).

And here's what E! Online's Watch With Kristin had to say: (At the bottom of the page after you click the link, there are a few spoilers. Don't read anything after the notable quotes section, if you prefer to view Lost with virgin eyes.)

• Easter Eggs: (Attention, English professors: Next time you're trying to explain "intertextuality" to your students, just bring up Lost, and they'll get it right quick...)


• Ben was reading James Joyce's Ulysses, which is, of course, a psychedelic Irish novel that had a few Easter Eggs of its own and was based on the ancient myth of Odysseus, a lost sailor who is kept from his love, Penelope, by a series of wildly unbelievable but nonetheless thrilling adventures.


• Commenter Jules tipped us off to a C.S. Lewis nod: "Did anyone notice The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reference with the Lamppost Station? They came out of the wardrobe at the lamppost, and it was where they knew they could get back to their world."


• Christian Shephard's white shoes/black shoes situation continues the show's flirtation with those constrasting colors.

And The Washington Post has this analysis. (They have a chat at 2 p.m. Central Time. Will post when it ends.)

A little prep work for viewing 5.06, entitled "316"

I wouldn't exactly call it homework, but this essay by Doc Jensen at Entertainment Weekly provides a bit of insight into what we'll be seeing tonight.

The C.S. Lewis connection continues with parallels being drawn between Lost and The Chronicles of Narnia. Check out this excerpt from the sequel to Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian.

''I felt just the same,'' said Edmund in a breathless voice. ''As if I were being dragged along. A most frightful pulling — ugh! It's beginning again!... All catch hands and keep together! This is magic — I can tell by the feeling. Quick!''

Here's more from the article:

From the book The Magician's Nephew:

In this mythology-revealing installment, the book's child heroes find a pair of matching magical yellow rings in an ancient box from Atlantis. The kids think that the rings give them the power to transport themselves to Narnia — and they do. But the story reveals that the rings belong to Narnia, and because they do, they want to return there.
LINK TO LOST: Thematically, the off-Island castaways are like the rings, wanting/needing to be returned. In ''This Place Is Death,'' Sun received a gold band — Jin's wedding ring — which inspired/compelled her to return to the Island.

THE LAMP-POST
From the books
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew (SPOILER ALERT!) One of the most iconic landmarks in Lewis' Narnia saga, the lamp-post is an eternally lit street light located in the enchanted woods of the Lantern Wastes. After Lucy pushes her way through the wardrobe closet that leads into the Lantern Wastes, the lamp-post is the first marker she encounters. It literally lights her way into Narnia.
LINK TO LOST: As you will learn tonight — unless you've already had this spoiled for you in the teaser clip ABC has posted online — ''The Lamp-Post'' is the name of an off-Island Dharma station that the weird science enclave used to find the Island. It is certainly located in an unlikely place — you know it better as the computer lab underneath Ms. Hawking's church.