It’s official. We’ve hit the halfway mark of an 18-hour season. And I can’t think of a better way to crest the hill than with the long-awaited Richard Alpert back story, Ab Aeterno, which not only fleshed out everything there is to know about this ageless stranger but also stands as easily one of the two or three best hours of this show. It was that good, and if the finale can come close to matching the emotional and mythological crescendos hit here, then we are in for a real treat.

Before moving into the meat of the show, I wanted to touch on one of my usual off-topic tangents. I was reading late last week that all signs point to this being the final season of 24. There is some chatter that it may move to NBC but I think that’s an outside chance – an audible that will only be called when NBC clears pilot season and sees how their deck is stacked for next year. The conventional wisdom seems to point to the show making the jump to the big screen.

I bring this up for two reasons.

24 is in the grip of yet another lackluster season – making me really count my blessings that ABC allowed the Lost producers to complete their show where the story directed them and not simply march on at the behest of ratings. And secondly, I hope that when we finally say aloha to the island, it is on the backside of that salutation. This has been a helluva’ journey and there’s no doubt that the show could continue to draw some ratings – and certainly a sizeable cult – meaning the producers and ABC are leaving a lot of money on the table. I’m all for allowing them to mine the property via alternative media (comics, games, books, etc) but I see no reason to ever pick back up with our castaways years later – on screens big or small. This has been one of those “once in a decade” entertainments, and for once, it looks like it may just end in a very satisfying manner. When the final page is turned, let’s let the story settle on the shelves of memory where every once in awhile we can dust it off and declare – “Geez, They don’t make ‘em like ‘Lost’ anymore.”

All right – enough with all that. Let’s get Lost.

Ab Aeterno is Latin for ‘since the beginning of time’, and while that doesn’t exactly triangulate Richard’s birth date (he appears to have been born on the Canary Islands somewhere in the mid-1800′s) it does underscore the entire theme of the show and really bring to light the very meaning of the island. Before we can dive head first down that rabbit hole, I wanted to chase the little tease of current events we got at the beginning of the show before the segue way to an all-Richard hour.

The episode opened by giving us a few additional moments of Jacob’s meeting with a mangled Ilana. We learned that Jacob directed her to guard the 6 remaining candidates – information that she later shared in that fireside chat at the beach. Now, Sun seems to think she’s the Kwon that’s mentioned but I think she’s wrong. I think it’s quite clear that it’s meant to be Jin as Jacob appears to believe running the island is a man’s job. Hey – he’s from a different time (perhaps the beginning of time). People and deities must not have been as enlightened way back when. Besides, is Jacob really going to tear Sun away from her child to act as stewardess to the island? My guess is ‘No’.