First, you should know that I have not really watched Lost since back in the 2nd season or so, seeing maybe a quarter of that season and at best one or two episodes from season 3. I have no frakking clue what is happening on that gorram island ( ).

However, tonight I had no real choice to but to watch the show (was at a friends who is bonkers for this show and thinks it is innovative and original as well as interesting enough to be addicted (like it is some sort of BSG or X-Files or even to the level of Babylon5 or Firefly). These are qualities I cannot testify to one way or another.

So I humored Mark, and we half-watched last weeks episode while him and another friend tried to fill me in. I figure I got enough to understand some of what was happening in the new episode.

That episode, about this Ricardo dude, first made me think of Highlander the series. Sorry, but when suddenly he is riding ahorseback I expected him to stop and reach for a sword. Yeah, I know, the show has been using flashbacks since the first episode, and that this guy's story went back a ways. Fine.

But what got me was towards the end, when the conversation turned to the fact that the island is the cork over the Evil's prison, and the whole idea of that shot of the "MiB" smashing the bottle. I just couldn't get the Wheel of Time out of my head, the image of Rand holding one of the Seals over his head ready to smash it.

Am I alone in seeing the similarities there? Have I finally cracked? Did I get super intoxicated and just imagine it (I doubt that, pretty good tolerance)?

Or are the writer's of Lost just not as brilliant as all these Lost-heads (or whatever they call themselves) seem to think they are?