in defense of locke

I got something to say to all you Locke-haters out there: You guys are a bunch of tailies. Yeah, you heard me. Tailies. Indeed, you are very much not unlike the tail-end survivors. Extraneous and peripheral characters with no real purpose except to be killed or kidnapped.

What's with all of you fair-weather Locke fans?

The first season, everybody thought Locke was the bee's knees. He was throwin' knives, hunting boar, building trebuchets, and trying to figure out how a plane crash managed to heal a spine that was 8 floors worth of broken.

Now it's the third season, and all my peeps is like, "yo - Locke's a busta!" Just because he blew up the Swan station, the Flame station, and a submarine (allegedly), killed a guy with a fence (allegedly), briefly joined the Others, and then coerced Sawyer into killing the guy from "the box".

Let me tell you why Locke is still awesome: He's the only character (or survivor at least) who still sees the big picture. They crash-landed on an island that heals broken spines, cancer, and infertility. People see vision of dead relatives and livestock. It's got Polar bears, pilot-devouring smoke monsters, and it's own magnetic field that's strong enough to bring down a commercial airliner. And John FREAKING Locke is the only one still wondering, "what the heck is up with this place?"

All of the other survivors are piddling around with their own nonsense problems like they crashed into General Hospital. Aaron's fussy, do I love Jack or Sawyer, who's my baby-daddy, my billionaire ex-girlfriend is coming to rescue me, stop joking about my weight, check out our ping-pong table, we don't like the new girl with the angelic visage and ample bosom...

If that's all the survivors are going to occupy their time with, I'm glad Locke ditched them to, as we say in 24 verbage, go rouge. Because ultimately, LOST is about The Island. It's not about the Others, or Dharma, or kidnapping pregnant womens. And ABC needs to move the whole Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliette thing over to Grey's Anatomy where it belongs.

The show is about The Island. And if Locke is the only character still trying to figure it out, then everyone else can get washed out to sea for all I care.