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It's difficult, at the best of times, to decipher what in the hell is happening on Lost -- not just the title of the series, but the state its producers intend each episode to leave you in. But if we can assume that the season finale was seeded with various clues, perhaps the biggest was the one actually named Ms. Klugh, and played by April Grace.

If you've watched TV since 1990, you've seen April Grace before. She's guested on everything from The Sentinel to The Shield to Without A Trace to Empty Nest. You can find her in all sorts of locations -- Boston Public, Chicago Hope, The O.C., NYPD Blue, China Beach, Boomtown, Fantasy Island, Promised Land, and even Deep Space Nine. She's practised Family Law, opened The X-Files, been Touched By An Angel, prescribed Strong Medicine; you might have even spotted her Crossing Jordan.

Grace excels at playing characters who exude steadiness and calm -- often in professions in which it is advantageous to use one's gentle speaking voice to lull unco-operative listeners into making uncomfortable admissions. In a recurring role on Joan Of Arcadia, Grace did just that as a detective, her face as lovely and sad as a Madonna's, the pain of the crimes she had investigated all over it. In Magnolia, playing an Oprah-esque interviewer, we hardly need to see her face at all as her questions for Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise) slowly devastate him, unravelling his constructed identity. (If only the actual Oprah still had the balls to treat her celebrity guests that way.) In the pilot of Medium, as an investigator with the D.A.'s office, her skeptical rudeness toward a psychic (Margo Martindale) may not inspire said psychic to confess herself a fraud, but it is enough to convince Allison (Patricia Arquette) to tell her boss about her own gift. Good thing, or else there wouldn't be a series. Thanks, April Grace!

Grace is tall and elegant, lean and muscular; she looks like she could kick your ass just as soundly on a squash court as in a civil court. Which is why seeing her in rags, in the hardscrabble "Others" camp on Lost, would have convinced us that they were shamming even if we hadn't already seen Mr. Friendly (M.C. Gainey)'s faux beard months ago. That Michael (Harold Perrineau) could have believed these people were leading primitive lives when a woman walked among them who is clearly a behavioral psychologist or a PhD. in gifted education proves once and for all that he's nowhere near as smart as his son. The question is, what is the clue in Ms. Klugh? Does the presence of a woman who always stands for righteousness and common sense mean that, when Henry Gale (Michael Emerson) says that he and his crew are "the good guys," they...are? Or are they the bad guys but she is a mole who's good, like Alex (Tania Raymonde)? Or is Ms. Klugh totally bad to the bone, and the producers purposely cast April Grace to play her so that when the depths of her depravity are revealed, we'll be all the more devastated that the former better angel of Will Girardi's nature could ever do something worse than litter?

DAMN SHOW!

Anyway: April Grace is awesome. All therapists should be outfitted with those Mission: Impossible III throat strips to make their voices sound like hers.