Week 11: Veronica Mars 6; Lost 5.

It's been a month-and-a-half since the last Lost vs. Veronica Mars face-off, but finally we're back on track. In fact, Veronica Mars is airing from now until season's end with no weeks off or repeats, so there should be a number of these little contests to come.

Tonight's showdown goes to Lost. I've always been partial to the Sun/Jin episodes in the past, so right away, this episode had that going for it. There were a number of great comic touches in there: Sawyer reading "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret," Evil Charlie's interplay with Ana Lucia, Hurley's lame attempt to explain himself when caught sneaking food. And we had very interesting advancement in the Henry Gale "is he an Other or not?" plot.

But to me, the biggest thing about this episode is that it managed to do what only some of the seasons two episodes have done so far -- it offered flashbacks that told us background on the characters we didn't already know. Sun learned English from her arranged husband? Jin foolishly thought having a child would help improve their relationship? He's not able to have children?

Which now leads us to an interesting question. Was Sun lying when she said she hadn't been with anyone else? (The look on her face as she hugged him seemed to leave room for that possibility.) Or was there some sort of strange "Island Healing" going on, perhaps of the type that restored Locke's ability to walk?

Oh, which reminds me... Locke got put down some more in this episode. Loving that. I used to like Locke a lot. I still like watching the character on the show. But I feel he's gone a bit high-and-mighty lately, and I've enjoyed watching him be taken down a few notches. I suppose many could make the same arguments about Jack (and I wouldn't disagree), which has made this whole "Jack vs. Locke" theme in the last several episodes entertaining.

So, lots to like all around.

Veronica Mars was certainly good tonight as well, it just had a high mark to beat set by Lost. You could tell a lot was going to happen this episode when the "previously on..." recap was nearly three minutes long. And indeed, there was forward momentum on every major plot line -- the bus crash, Logan's upcoming murder trial, Beaver's business with Kendall, Aaron Echolls' incarceration. All that, and they had time to tell a stand-alone mystery too! An impressive feat.

Still, you could argue that the progress on the uber-plots was all incremental at best. Or at worst, that they told a story, only to have things end back up in the same place as they began. (For example, we still don't really know if Terrence Cook set the explosion or not.) I suppose in the end, that's why I gave the nod to Lost.

If South Park was involved in the competition, though, I'd have to score things for them this week. Tonight's episode was dedicated to writing Chef out of the show following Isaac Hayes' insanity.

All the Chef dialogue, cobbled together from previous episodes, was very funny. It was especially humorous to make the "brainwashed Chef" deliberately sound like somebody was using an internet soundboard to create his voice. From there, they brilliantly parodied their own "This is what Scientologists actually believe" episode that reportedly caused the split in the first place. Then they killed Chef more violently and thoroughly than Kenny ever suffered. Then they delivered the nice speech (damn touching, by South Park standards) saying we should remember all the good times we had with Chef, not his crazy behavior in the last few days -- and that we shouldn't blame him for the way he acted, we should blame those jerks who brainwashed him. Brilliant.

And the cherry on top of the sundae? The "Birth of Darth Vader" parody that saw Chef rise as some Dark Chef of the Sith. If only he'd screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the end, it probably would have been the best South Park ever. I suppose they didn't have that clip of Isaac Hayes from a previous episode.

Anyway, quality night of TV overload.