In this week's episode, we finally got to see the back story of the mysterious Richard Alpert. Was he an ancient god? An eyelinered member of Andy Warhol's Factory, out on a 35-year bender? Not quite.

He was actually a devoutly Catholic Spanish colonist on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. His wife got sick and while he was trying to get medicine for her, he accidentally killed the jerk doctor who didn't want to go out in the rain. So he was thrown in jail, bought and sold, and ended up on Hanso's ill-fated Blackrock sailing boat, a worthy vessel that can apparently fly?

Yeah, what exactly was that last night? I mean they're sailing along in a storm, and then all of a sudden they're being lifted up into the inky sky and flying right at the giant statue. Next morning, boat's in the middle of the jungle and the statue's broken. How exactly did that happen? Did Jacob use his Prospero wizard magic to make the boat fly? And can a wooden boat really do that much damage to an enormous crocodile statue? Mysteries all. Probably ones I shouldn't be focusing on, but there it is.

I suppose the real mystery of the episode was just what game Jacob and Smoky are playing, and who, if anyone, is the good guy. I'm of the mind that it's not about good vs. evil, but rather something a bit more ambiguous, the old faith v. science trope perhaps. What did you glean from the whole wine bottle analogy thing?

Props should be given to Nestor Carbonell, who was giving us some acting last night — in many ways he was a completely different character than the one we've been watching the past couple of years. It was a meaty, juicy, weepy script, and he bit into it with gusto. Suddenly Susan did not do much to illustrate his talent.

Props also to the Lost writers and producers, and to ABC, for never being too scared of having filthy foreign languages feature prominently on a network television show. Last night's episode was pretty much half in Spanish, which is pretty cool.

Oh and another thing. Do you think there was any winking significance to Richard/Ricardo being from Tenerife? It, like Losthaven Island, is a warm-winded paradise that suffered its own air disaster, the deadliest in history, actually. (If you don't count September 11th.) Also, the weird Lost connections spiral outside of the show, as Tenerife was mentioned on Breaking Bad on Sunday. Which means either this is all some vast, terrifying TV conspiracy or I just need to turn of the television set and get out of the house a little more.

What'd you think of the episode? Satisfied by the Ricardo plotline? I pretty much was. Though, you can't bury something in the dirt and then, 130 years later, find it in pretty much the same place. It doesn't quite work like that, I don't think.

But then again, it is Lost.