T.G.I.L.D., or Thank God It's Lost Day!

After so many pieces on "Lost", which, as you would have gathered by now, is just my favorite television series ever (right there at the top with "CSI" and, if you want to be really technical about it, "McGyver"), I figure it's about time for yet another one. "Lost", after all, is an episode away from its second season ender-and yet, the island and its residents are as mystifying as ever.

As if last week's episode, where Michael shot Ana Lucia and Libby and set free their "The Others" prisoner Henry (who is, by the way, very skilled at pushing their buttons, especially John Locke's), wasn't gripping enough, last night John and Eko found a new hatch, taking us deeper into the mystery surrounding the island.

Next week, if spoilers are to be believed, we will see the return of Desmond, whom Jack first met years back, at one of the crucial moments of his medical profession, and bizarrely met again in the island. This time around, we will also be privy to his shocking back story.

Now, like any other "Lost" follower, I've had my own theories about the island. I, however, do not have a fantastic imagination, so if my own theories are indeed true, then I'm in for major disappointment. There are plenty of sound theories out there, though. They have, however, already been discredited by the main players behind the show.

So, from what fanatics already know and what's out there to be found in fan listings and websites, the island is not any of the following: Purgatory (and the characters are not dead), a time warp, alien territory, versions of a fictional reality as seen in one or more of the survivors' minds, and a reality TV show with the survivors as unwitting participants. And the black smoke that some of the castaways have encountered is not a nanobot cloud either.

What we do know, from watching the show, is that it has recurring thematic motifs: the colors black and white and their yin-yang correlation, dysfunctional families (think Sawyer, Jack, Kate, John, and Ana Lucia, who all became who they are-and got where they are-because of their parents), literature (Sawyer, for instance, has been seen reading Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; other books seen include The Brothers Karamazov, and The Third Policeman, which, according to Craig Wright, one of the episode writers, would give viewers more ammunition as they theorize about the show), and, philosophy.

A number of characters are named after famous thinkers. John Locke is named after the English philosopher who declared that men were born with a blank slate (those of you who remember your philosophy would recognize this as the term tabula rasa). The (crazy-looking) Frenchwoman Danielle Rousseau carries the surname of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Franco-Swiss philosopher who pushed the Noble Savage theory, and said that "man is born free, but everywhere, he is in chains". And Desmond bears the complete name Desmond David Hume, after the philosopher David Hume, who, interestingly, wasn't a believer in miracles unlike Desmond.

There are also references to Eastern philosophy. The acronym for The DHARMA (Department of Heuristics And Research Material Applications) Initiative refers to dharma, the "way of higher truths" in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Their logo, on the other hand, uses a bagua, the wheel of balance in feng shui.

All these, I hear, is part of the mythology of the series. It makes you wonder, don't it?

This show, by the way is very, very, very intertextual, so much so that Hyperion Books has released "The Bad Twin", a book supposedly written by Gary Troup, one of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815. If I'm not mistaken, that's the manuscript Sawyer was reading.

Check out the official ABC website and the Wikipedia.com entry on "Lost" for what would seem like a very satisfying "easter egg" hunt. This should tide us over until Season 3.

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