It may have ended well – and really, that’s all anyone is going to remember when people gather around the water cooler to discuss the episode tomorrow – but the first half was dreadfully boring. Granted, we now know approximately how old Richard is, as well as where he comes from, but did they really need to spend so much time on the death of his wife, his inadvertent murder of the local doctor, and his eventual incarceration? Just get him to the damned island already, because while it may seem important that he got there by way of the Black Rock (and as a slave no less), none of it really matters once he meets Jacob and the Man in Black.

Their feuding relationship is far more interesting than anything in Richard’s history, namely because the writers still haven’t given us a reason to believe that one is good and the other is evil. Obviously, the Man in Black is being set up to be the villain of the pair, but for someone who so desperately wants to get off the island, he sure has the patience of a saint. Okay, so maybe he doesn’t always tell the truth (I don’t believe for a second that Jacob is the Devil), but why didn’t he kill Richard along with the rest of the Black Rock survivors? It can’t be because Richard is a candidate, or Jacob wouldn’t have to worry about finding a successor. And if all the Man in Black wanted was someone to kill Jacob for him, couldn’t he have picked someone that was more likely to do the deed? (Like, say, that crazy officer who started stabbing all the slaves.)

Then again, maybe he just needs to prove to Jacob that Richard is capable of killing again. That’s certainly Jacob’s theory, who tells Richard that he brings people to the island to challenge the idea that it’s human nature to sin. But how does that make him any better than the Man in Black? He may not be asking anyone to kill for him, but he’s still interfering with their lives by dragging them to the island. The island, of course, isn’t Hell like Richard thinks. Instead, Jacob likens it to a cork on a wine bottle that acts as a barrier to Hell. So essentially, it’s like a Hellmouth, only instead of Sunnydale, it’s located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

All kidding aside, I think the island is like some sort of Purgatory. Not in the religious sense (that theory was debunked as far back as Season Two), but rather as a gateway between the two realities I’ve come to call Earth-1 and Earth-2. Prove yourself worthy of atonement and you’ll be rewarded by being sent to the reality where Oceanic Flight 815 doesn’t crash. Fail to repent for your sins, however, and you’ll be stuck on the island for eternity; or at least, until you can find a loophole of your own. I know it’s not a perfect theory, but it’s the best I’ve got.

The two of them have quickly assumed leadership of the B-Team since, well, Jin still can’t talk very much English, Miles is a total slacker, and Faraday is mourning the death of Charlotte. With Locke gone and no sign of the well even having been built yet (though did anyone notice the four-toed statue being erected in the background?), the island is moved one final time before, as expected, it stops for good. From here, the episode shuffled back and forth in time from their newest location to three years into the future, where they currently exist when the Oceanic 6 return to the island.

Over those three years, the B-Team somehow managed to warm their way into the hearts of the Dharma Initiative and become full-fledged members. Granted, we never actually find out how that happened (which was probably why I felt so lukewarm about the episode when it ended), but we do know that they’re stuck sometime in the 1970s and that Sawyer in particular (now going by the name Jim LaFleur) has become somewhat of a leader in the camp. He’s not the leader, mind you, but after saving the life of a woman named Amy (played by Reiko Aylesworth, who will now be referred to as Michelle Dessler) and smoothing out a broken truce between Dharma and the Others, Sawyer wins his place among them.

I loved that when Richard Alpert arrived at the camp, the first thought out of everyone’s mind was “Uh oh,” but not nearly as much as when Sawyer made a reference to Alpert as “your friend with the eyeliner”; no doubt an in-joke by the writing staff about Nestor Campbell. I can’t remember exactly when it was that the Others took over, but you can be sure that Sawyer and the rest of the gang know that it’s only a matter of time when they do. Curiously, while the Dharma workers have always seemed to be less hostile than the Others, Michelle Dessler turned out to be one sneaky bitch. One minute she’s tricking the B-Team into walking through the activated pylons, and the next minute, she’s telling Juliet to slice her belly open in order save her baby. Oh, what a few years can do for the soul. (On a side note, how great is it that Jin can now speak decent English?)

We may not have learned how Sawyer and Co. managed to finagle their way into a long-term position working for Dharma, but we did get to experience the island’s first-ever successful baby birth (prompting the question, “What the hell went wrong?”) and the inevitable coupling of Sawyer and Juliet. The writers have been hinting at this for quite some time now, but now that it’s finally here, are they really going to break it up so soon? I actually prefer those two together than that ungodly mess of a love triangle between Jack, Kate and Sawyer. In fact, when Sawyer delivered that speech about how he barely even remembers what Kate looks like, it gave me hope that his new relationship might not be tampered with. And then she had to come back, and well, it’s looking awfully certain that Juliet might become a dumpee yet again. Oh well, I guess there are worse things that could happen.

Those familiar with the man who plays Richard Alpert, advisor to the inscrutable Benjamin Linus, have pondered this question for quite some time, and millions more wondered about it after seeing Carbonell playing the Mayor of Gotham City in “The Dark Knight,” but Cuse’s fellow “Lost” producer, Damon Lindelof, swore to an audience of TV critics that Carbonell is not guilty on all charges.

“When we first saw dailies of Nestor, we were, like, ‘Someone’s gotta talk to him about the eyeliner situation,’” Lindelof said. “And he does not wear any mascara, no eyeliner, nothing. He is completely 100 percent sans makeup. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

And, yet, there are those who still refuse to believe it.

Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to talk with Carbonell in connection with the DVD release of “Killer Movie” (he has a small but hilarious part as a Hollywood agent), I figured that this was the perfect opportunity to get confirmation straight from the horse’s mouth. Word of the TCA tour had clearly gotten back to Carbonell, however, since the mere mention of the event led him to start laughing (“My brother told me about it,” he explained), and the laughter increased dramatically, however, when I told him that the changing of my status to indicate my impending interview with him had immediately resulted in one of my friends – okay, it was Mekeisha Madden Toby, who writes for The Detroit News’ TV blog – replying, “OOOH! Ask him if he uses eyeliner!”

So I asked him.

“Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not. I do not wear make-up, and I do not wear eye-liner,” said Carbonell, still laughing. “My brother sent me that article (about the “Lost” panel), and I just laughed so loud. This is something I’ve had to deal with my whole life. When I was a little kid, I was about five years old and living in Mexico, and I remember my mom’s friends would come over and say, ‘Oh, look at his eyelashes!’ I got such a complex about it that I ended up taking scissors to them once, and my mom stopped me and said, ‘What are you doing?’ But they were talking about them, and I got a lot comments about my eye-liner. Eventually, I got over it and was, like, ‘What are you gonna do?’ But I definitely had a complex when I was a kid about having dark eyelashes.”

Sadly, the complex would come back to haunt Carbonell a few years later.

“When I was in college in Boston, I had a commercial agent who sent me out for some print commercial stuff,” he said. “But they called me into the office and said, ‘Look, we called you in to talk to you because we just want you to know that…well, we don’t think you need to wear eyeliner.’ And I’m, like, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, it’s okay, you don’t have to wear it for print ads.’ ‘No, I’m not wearing eyeliner!’ And I kept dabbing my eyes and saying, ‘Look! No eyeliner! I’m not wearing any!’ And, finally, they started laughing.

“So, yeah, it’s something I’ve dealt with it in the past, and sometimes, makeup artists are able to diminish it…and they’re doing it on ‘Lost’ more and more…by putting a base on my eyelashes so it makes it less dark. But I didn’t know it would be a question at the TCA tour, that’s for sure!”

Stay tuned for the full interview with Mr. Carbonell on Bullz-Eye next week, with more “Lost” talk, plus conversation about the “Dark Knight” / “Tick” connection, his regrets over the too-quick departure of “Cane” from the airwaves, and…yes!…his work on “Suddenly Susan.”

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