When this season of Lost started it looked like this universe was a much happier one for our beloved passengers of flight 815. There was no plane crash, Hurley has had only good luck since his lottery win, and there is no Shannon (sorry girl but your attitude is not wanted). However, first episode aside, this season has been filled with moral dilemmas that seem to be testing the characters to see if they will revert back to who they were on the island or to see if they truly are better off having never crashed.
In last week's episode we see that Ben Linus is no longer an evil mastermind, but a lowly high school History teacher who cares more about the students than the principal. With a helpful suggestion from substitute teacher, John Locke, Ben tries to go after the principal position. Now while the Ben we are more familiar with would have no problem manipulating people to do what he wants, this Ben does. Even when he finds out from his favorite student/former island daughter, Alex, that the principal is having an affair with the school nurse, he's hesitant to go through with the blackmail. The major difference in the two Ben's is that alt world Ben actually thinks of others before himself. He very well could have had that principal position like he wanted, but he chose Alex's happiness over his own. The episode is very bittersweet because while he does seem to be a better man in this universe, he's not happier. If anything, what we've learned from this season so far is that all of these people have problems no matter what universe they're in.
While in hindsight it looked like the island was nothing but a crazy dysfunctional island of chaos, it actually did a lot of good. Without the island, how can Jin become a loving and caring husband? Is he now doomed to be a stressed, angry, sterile husband? Locke will never be able to walk again, Rose will continue to have cancer, and what will happen to Walt?
In this week's episode we finally see a positive change for a character in the alternative universe. We first see Sawyer in bed with a woman once again running his money con, but the twist here is that he's not trying to steal her money, he's trying to arrest her. Ladies and gentleman, Sawyer is now James Ford the cop. In this world he's on the right side of the law with Miles as his partner making this a great buddy cop TV series. While he's a working class citizen now, he's still not happy because he's still plagued by the trauma of his parent's murder suicide caused by the con man Sawyer got his name from. On the island he was able to get his closure and finally kill his demon like he always planned to, here he's still hunting for Anthony Cooper/Sawyer/Locke's dad. So is he better off being a lonely cop still on the hunt for revenge or a surly con man devastated by constantly losing the people he loved?
Well what is happiness anyway? Maybe the whole point of all of this is to show that all of these people can never be happy. They're doomed to be miserable and changing details around isn't going to make a difference. Aww now doesn't that just warm your heart? Maybe they should just release the polar bears again to kill them all.
