LOSTBLOG -- Midseason Report

No new episode of "Lost" tonight -- just an "enhanced" rerun of last week's fabulous Sawyer-centric episode, "LaFleur." So tonight let's take stock of where each of our main characters is, halfway through this most revelatory of seasons (in alphabetical order).

Ben -- He has figured into the show's main action ever since he was introduced as "Henry Gale" in Season 2, and Ben continues to loom large over Season 5. At first, I thought we could finally declare Ben to be one of the good guys, his promise to Charles Widmore notwithstanding. When Ben had his outburst in the van with Jack, Kate and Sun ("This Place is Death," 5x05), I was totally with him: "What I'm doing is helping you. And if you had any idea what I've had to do to keep you safe -- to keep your friends safe -- then you'd never stop thanking me!" But of course, nothing is as it seems with Mr. Linus, and by the next episode ("316," 5x06), it had been implied that he had kept his promise to Charles. The week after that ("The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham," 5x07), Widmore came off like the good guy and Ben killed Locke. So what should we expect from Ben from here on out? Not the truth, at least not as spoken by him. But young Ben will reappear next week for the beginning of a four-episode arc, so perhaps Annie's backstory will finally be revealed. I still believe in Ben, even if no one else does.

Charlotte -- I didn't expect to see her go so soon, especially not as she was just beginning to be interesting. But I think it's safe to say we haven't seen the last of Charlotte, even if we've seen the last of Rebecca Mader as Charlotte. She got to figure heavily into what was probably the best all-around episode of the season so far (5x05), and will again; she left us with a great deal of mystery surrounding her (as everyone on "Lost" does), including how it is that Daniel saw her as a little girl in 1974 ("LaFleur," 5x08) when Ben had previously said she was born in 1979 ("Confirmed Dead," 4x02). But what I really want to know about Charlotte is who her parents are, have we seen them before, and were they pivotal to what happened to the DHARMA Initiative. Considering where the show is now, it's reasonable to think we might get those answers soon.

Daniel -- Faraday is becoming increasingly important to the story, he's the most developed of the "Freighties," and Jeremy Davies plays him perfectly. But I'm still having trouble warming up to him as a character. Perhaps that the point -- Dan is our mostly emotionless guide through Season 5's quantum fun house, and his big emotional payoff will come when he encounters the young Charlotte. Whether that gives him closure or drives him further into catatonia remains to be seen. There's also the mystery of Theresa ("Jughead," 5x03), the bed-ridden woman whom Desmond encountered when searching for Dan's mother. Is Theresa a "victim" of Faraday's experiments with time? And did Dan suffer some ill effects as well?

Desmond -- Desmond figures to be out of the picture for a while. The Losties are back on the island in 1974, before Desmond arrived on Libby's boat ("Live Together, Die Alone," 2x23), so there are only two ways we'll see Desmond again: He will appear in a flashback (likely Ben's), or he'll show up on the island. I'm thinking we'll see both by the end of the season. In fact, One can easily imagine the season ending with Desmond reappearing on the island, asking whoever finds him where Benjamin Linus is, and then ... Boom! L O S T.

Hurley -- Aside from the two episodes that began the season ("Because You Left," 5x01; "Lies," 5x02), we haven't seen much of Hugo Reyes this year. His "centric" episode was one of the two weak spots all year, but gave Jorge Garcia two great scenes; first when he told his mother the entire story of the island, and second when he lobbed a Hot Pocket at Ben. The Hugo flashback episode that is inevitably coming will, I'm guessing, feature Charlie in some way. Who else would have told Hugo to get on Ajira Airways Flight 316, and why else would he have a guitar case? The biggest question mark hanging over Hugo remains -- three seasons after her death -- to be Libby, whom we know was once a resident of Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute ("Dave," 2x18).

Jack -- The show's de facto main character has been so annoying and so ... secondary for so long that I sometimes forget he's even on it. He just refuses to grow as a character, which I suppose is Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse's fault. He came to believe that he had to bring the Oceanic Six back to the island, so why was it so hard for him to believe what Ms. Hawking told him about how they would get back (5x06)? He seemed to recoil at the suggestion that John Locke would serve as a proxy for his father, but that came after he was told that his father was alive on the island (5x07). The show's title applies to no single character better than Jack, who is no longer merely lost in his own psyche; we, the audience, have lost him as an interesting character we feel invested in. Lindelof and Cuse have to fix this before Season 6 begins, as I suspect he and Kate will be the key players in the show's endgame.

Jin -- Discovering that Jin was still alive ("The Little Prince," 5x04) wasn't exactly a surprise, but learning that he is now fluent in English (5x08) was, and a happy one at that. When he and Sun finally reunite, there will no longer be any kind of language barrier between them, and Daniel Dae Kim will have a lot more breathing room as an actor. What remains unclear is how Jin figures into the show's big story; his wife certainly does, as she approached Charles Widmore off-island ("There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3," 4x13) and is the daughter of a man we all suspect has a history with the island. Jin's encounter with Danielle Rousseau (5x05) may still prove to have far-reaching consequences, but I am unsure how Rousseau could re-enter the story at this point. Surely that brief glimpse of her past isn't all we're going to get, is it?

John -- If Season 5 has been about one character, it must be John Locke, whose inner struggle continues to be the show's most fascinating aspect. "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" was a little underwhelming in its portrayal of Locke's encounters off-island, but perhaps that was the point -- he risked everything to leave the island and talk to his "friends," and they shunned him again. The emptiness of those meetings helped make that episode's climactic death scene perhaps the best in the show's entire run. Locke wasn't killing himself to make the sacrifice that Christian demanded (5x05); he was killing himself to finally end a life of disappointments and dead ends. And then Ben stopped him -- only to kill him after all. The resurrected Locke may come to appreciate what Ben did for him, but in the moment it seemed like the ultimate betrayal of a man who knows his share of betrayals. (See pretty much any episode with Anthony Cooper, or the flashback sequences from "Further Instructions," 3x03.) But now that we've seen how Locke left the island and how he got back, one huge question about that period of time still looms large: Why? Why did Locke have to die? We know why he left -- it was a by-product of dislodging the frozen wheel (5x05) and restoring continuity to the island's timeline. But why did he have to die to go back? Was it simply to prove to Jack that it is possible that Christian has risen from the dead?

Juliet -- A criminally underused character, Juliet's three flashback episodes have been highly intriguing ("Not in Portland," 3x07; "One of Us," 3x16; and "The Other Woman," 4x06), and much about her seems unclear. But last week's episode (5x08) promised big things for the character, as she and Jim "Sawyer" LaFleur are now living together -- which we learned just before Sawyer learned Kate had returned to the island. Juliet is not the kind of character I expect to see in a catfight over a dude, so I'm really hoping that's not what we get for the rest of the season between her and Kate. The more intriguing conflict could come from Ben, whom we know from 4x06 considers Juliet to be his. (I mean, come on. He baked her a ham.) I also have to wonder how much Juliet knows about the island -- she was an "Other" for three years after all -- and why she isn't sharing that information with Sawyer and the rest of the Losties. Could Juliet be just as duplicitous as Ben after all?

Kate -- "Lost's" most annoying character once again starred in the season's weakest episode (5x03) and fails to interest me in the slightest, even though there are some fairly big mysteries swirling around her. (What did Sawyer tell her in 4x13? Where did Aaron go? Is she carrying Jack's baby?) Lindelof and Cuse must know that she and Jack aren't exactly the most popular characters in the Lostiverse, and it will be a huge problem if that's still the case heading into Season 6.

Miles -- Speaking of Lindelof and Cuse, I hope they've assured Ken Leung that his character will be important at some point, because he's been a series regular for 21 episodes now and has contributed almost nothing to the show. He has some kind of connection to the afterlife and is on a time-skipping island full of reanimated corpses, but his "power" still hasn't been exploited for any larger purpose. The only nugget we have to hold onto is the popular belief that Miles is the son of DHARMA's orientation star, Pierre Chang (aka Marvin Candle, aka Mark Wickmund, aka Edgar Halliwax). Is this guy gonna get a flashback episode soon, or is he just sticking around to fulfill a contract he signed two years ago?

Sawyer -- If there were any female "Lost" fans left who didn't love Sawyer, I think last week's episode finally converted them. His happy home life with Juliet feels like a reward for his slow evolution from the con man who hated everyone in Season 1 to the guy who told John he'd kill him if he hurt one hair on Hugo's curly head ("The Shape of Things to Come," 4x09) in Season 4. Sawyer sure looked "at home" in his DHARMA jumpsuit, didn't he? Sawyer, like Locke, seems to be perfectly content to stay on the island, but Daniel's "course correction" principle tells us that won't be the case. (Unless, of course, those skeletons in the caves ("House of the Rising Sun," 1x06) turn out to be Sawyer and Juliet, and not Jack and Kate like everyone has assumed.)

Sayid -- The bad-ass we embraced in "The Economist" (4x03) now just wants to build homes and keep a low profile (5x07), but I'm sure the island has different plans for him. His story will almost certainly revolve around our two new friends, Caesar and Ilana, whom we first met on Ajira Flight 316 (5x06), but we still don't know why Widmore presumably had Nadia killed (4x09) and what role he will play in the endgame. Like Hugo, he is another character who has been in a holding pattern ever since the premiere, and I'm guessing he'll get a flashback episode before too long. Of course, Season 5 will always be remembered as the season Sayid killed a guy with a dishwasher ... (5x01)

Sun -- And finally a character who seemed to be going in an intriguing new direction as Season 4 ended, but who has been relegated to the background once again. The events of the season so far seem to suggest that Sun's only motivation to approach Widmore (4x13) was to find and kill Benjamin Linus, something she's not apt to do now that she'll find Ben wasn't lying about Jin still being alive on the island. She could turn out to be a double agent of sorts; perhaps she returned to the island with some sort of homing device that Widmore can use to find it. But what I'm most looking forward to are scenes between Sun and Jin that won't require me to read subtitles!

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We have nine hours of "Lost" left this year, beginning next week with "Namaste," an episode I hear will focus on everyone's favorite pathological liar, Benjamin Linus. I'll be back here every week; join me, won't you?