"We've got to give them more time!" Nikki and Paulo, that is. Because they're not dead.

Yeah. The creative team behind Lost actually went there. They had the heroes of the show inadvertently bury alive two unpopular guest stars. They buried them alive!

And that was only the tail end. The entire episode was bizarre. Billy Dee Williams popped up in a cameo playing himself. Four dead characters -- Boone, Shannon, Arzt, and Ethan, all being supremely good sports -- appeared to say hello. The episode played like a murder-mystery. Or a campy, self-aware ode to television guest stars. Or an inside joke. It was the most self-contained episode that Lost has ever had. It was either brilliant and entertaining, or it failed miserably.

Hey, that gives me an idea. Time for a little Point/Counterpoint:

Side A: Talk about jumping the shark. What did this episode add to the show? Nothing. In fact, its only redeeming quality is that it buried (literally) an entirely pointless subplot that took up precious Season 3 screen time and shouldn't have existed in the first place. It also showed how the writers are dangerous slaves to popular opinion. They take the time to (awkwardly) introduce two new characters, Paulo and Nikki, as two survivors who have been there all along but haven't been in the spotlight. But when they find out that fans of the show almost universally hate the additions, they go to elaborate lengths to appease the masses and get rid of them. This episode gave us no answers, did not tie into the overall mysteries whatsoever, and took us away from the suddenly-much-more-interesting plot on the other side of the island. Thanks for wasting our time.

Side B: This was a fun departure that took a risk. Let's relax. This is an episodic network television show. It's allowed to deviate from the main storylines. Every plotline doesn't have to reveal answers or Mean Something. And let's face it -- it was very clever and very entertaining. The bit of in-jokey dialogue in the beginning with Nikki and her producer about being a guest star set the tone for the episode and was quite funny. The entire Nikki and Paulo plotline essentially explained, with a wink to the audience, why we never seem to meet any of the other plane crash survivors. Splicing them into the plane crash scene and other past beach scenes was done beautifully, and it's always great to see Boone, Shannon, and Arzt again. The murder-mystery plotline was intriguing, and the whopper of an ending proved that the writers have a sharp, if twisted, sense of humor. It was black comedy at its finest.

There's no surprise here - I myself am much more aligned with Side B. Although I have to say, I had my surpreme doubts up until the ending. I figured the writers would pull a 180 on Nikki and Paulo and redeem them by tying them into the main plot, falling in with the Others and becoming sleeper cells or something. But no, they're just wildly self-involved bad people obsessed with stealing diamonds. Some viewers might have balked at their utter disinterest in their strange encounters on the island - finding the Pearl hatch, overhearing Ben and Juliet - but I found those moments to be quite telling of their characters.

Still, I was beginning to feel like the episode didn't quite earn its aberrancy until the aformentioned ending, when we realize that Nikki and Paulo are actually just paralyzed (thanks to Nikki), not dead, and her eyes open just as Sawyer begins to pour dirt on her face. It was horrifying and wickedly amusing at the same time, since the episode's well-put-together structure took pains to show just how unlikable Nikki really was. Paulo was a little more sympathetic - he actually seemed to believe in their relationship - but hey, they're both still greedy murderers.

That was driven home when Nikki put the final nail in her coffin - she decided to bury her precious diamonds before letting anyone know her and Paulo were just paralyzed. If she hadn't, she would've had not much, but still enough time to explain things to Sawyer and Hurley before she collapsed.

But no; as I previously stated but can't help repeating, the New Cast Members Who Weren't To Be were BURIED ALIVE by our unsuspecting heroes. Sweet.