Missing Pieces - "316"

Wait a minute - isn't there supposed to be an island on this show? "316" certainly spent its sweet time in Los Angeles with the Oceanic 6 this week, but it's not like I'm complaining. I don't think we've had an episode that has spent this much time off the island since "Meet Kevin Johnson", and even then, we were hanging around that gloomy old freighter most of the time. Let's take it from the top...

That first shot of Jack's eye certainly looked familiar, didn't it? I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought that Jack and crew not only made it back to the island, but had actually traveled back in time and landed right back into the shoes they had all filled on that fateful day of September 22, 2004. It wouldn't be too far out of the question, would it? Eventually they're all going to have to go back and fix whatever the hell they screwed up on their first go-around at surviving Craphole Island, so why not start at the beginning? That last shot of the episode with Jin in some rather unusual duds suggested that they might be going even further back than that, but we'll get to that in a while.

To pick up from where we left off last week, Mrs. Hawking rounded up all of her new recruits and took them down to the Lamppost, an off-island Dharma station masquerading as the basement of her church. Cool, right? Well, sure, but what the hell is that place? According to her, it was built many moons ago by Dharma scientists trying to track down the location of the island itself and the enormous pockets of electromagnetic energy that it is seemingly crowdsurfing its away around the globe on. However, the giant swinging pendulum winging its way through the room every few seconds and threatening to put poor Desmond through a wall with every pass is something else entirely. In Mrs. Hawking's words, the pendulum itself was built by a "clever fellow" (it's gotta either be Marvin Candle or her son Daniel Faraday himself, don't you think?) who constructed it as a way to track the island as it moves. Yes, the island not only moved, but MOVES. According to Hawking, the island is in a constant state of movement, and Faraday's pendulum is a device built to track not where the island IS, but more along the lines of where it's GOING to be. So in essence, the island has been moving through time and space all along, including the 108 days that the majority of the 815ers spent on it.

To expand on that, does anyone remember a scene back in the Season 4 episode "Confirmed Dead", the one that took place just a few days after Faraday arrived on the island? Well, check this out - in a scene from that episode, Daniel claims that the light on the island doesn't scatter quite right. At the time, that all sounded like Faraday-ian gibberish, but now that we know that the island was probably bouncing through time and space even then, way before Ben turned the donkey wheel and skipped the record, that statement doesn't sound so insane anymore, does it?

Anyway, back to the fun in the Lamppost. Desmond certainly didn't want much to do with that group, now did he? Nope, not at all. All he wanted to do was pass on the message from Faraday and get back to nautical bliss with Penny and little Charlie. With all he's been through at the hands of the very woman who is now insisting that the island isn't finished with him, you can hardly blame the man for just wanting to get the hell out of there while the getting is still good. However, what the island wants, the island gets, and I don't think we as viewers are done with Desmond either. Oh, he'll be back, but whether or not his return will have anything to do with why the hell Ben turned up at that payphone all bloody and wet remains to be seen. What was up with that scene, anyway?

A few more fun little tidbits about the Lamppost before we leave it behind and head off to the airport - anyone notice the date on the U.S. Army reconnaisance photo of the island that was tacked up on the bulletin board? 9/23/54, it read, 50 years less one day before the crash of Flight 815. What's more, 1954 is the same year that Faraday came across Jughead and the young version of his mother, John Locke caught up to Richard Alpert and passed on the compass, and the young Charles Widmore revealed himself to be just as much of an asshole in the past as he is in the present and future. Also, not only do the numbers in that date add up to 23 (9+2+3+5+4), but it was also about a year before Doc Brown discovered time travel in the first place.

So who do you think that guy was who expressed his condolences to Jack at the airport? The new Sayid, maybe? Speaking of the Iraqi peach, who the hell was that leading him onto the plane in handcuffs? Alright, let's back up a bit. After the history lesson at the Lamppost, Jack, Sun, and Ben made plans to meet up at the airport in 36 hours to make a flight on Ajira Airways, the only way back to the island through the "time window" as described by Mrs. Hawking. In order for that to work, she explained, the conditions of the flight would have to be re-created to resemble that of Flight 815 as closely as possible. I think this was probably one of the more fun aspects of the episode, actually - picking through the details of the boarding scene and trying to match them up with what happened back at the Sydney airport three years ago. Jack and Sun were pretty much themselves for this little impromptu performance (but what of Ji-Yeon, Sun?), but as for Kate, she took on a much more Charlie-esque vibe this time around, didn't she? Dark glasses, somber attitude, the whole bit. As for Sayid, sure, he was there, but didn't he and his armed accomplice take on a Kate-ish kinda vibe? Hurley was there with both a guitar case standing in for Charlie AND a Spanish-language comic book taking the place of our missing friend Walt (more on that libro de cómics in just a second), and if that wasn't enough, here comes Benjamin Linus. Sure, he wasn't on Flight 815, but that doesn't mean he can't replicate Hurley's almost missing the flight by running up the jetway and thanking the crew for holding the door, just like Hurley did the first time around. That wasn't all of it, though - did you check out the gate number at the airport? Gate 15, of course. What of the kid in the track jacket waiting to board? There was a big number 8 on that jacket, much like the kids' soccer team that Hurley ran past back in Sydney, the one with the numbers plastered all over their jerseys. Fun, right?

But wait a minute - Hurley, Kate, and Sayid weren't even to supposed to be there, remember? Hurley was in jail, Kate split with Aaron, and Sayid threatened to kick the ass out of whoever even thought about trying to track him down! How the hell did they all turn up there on the same flight? Well, as for Hurley, we weren't really told, but you know how the big man's been seeing ghosts lately? Charlie, Mr. Eko... Well, my idea is that the ghost of Libby showed up and told him that he HAD to be on that plane no matter what. We saw how resilient Hurley was to the idea of going back, even when Charlie was ghost-smacking him around and telling him how much he HAD to do it. I think Libby would be the only one with enough pull over Hurley to make him get on that plane, don't you?

As for Kate, I things got a bit darker. We weren't told exactly why she decided to ditch Aaron somewhere and join Jack's crew on Flight 316, and I think that was kind of the point. As she told Jack when she showed up in his bedroom looking rather dead behind the eyes, "Don't ask me what happened to Aaron." Gotcha. Show up in my bedroom in the middle of the night, Kate, and your secret would be safe with me, too.

Just to play Devil's Advocate here for a second, what DO you suppose happened to Aaron? I think she dumped him off with Claire's mom after feeling guilty about having him in the first place, but we'll see.

Sayid's appearance at Gate 15 was rather unexpected, and maybe even the most mysterious of all. Hurley and Kate showing up is something we can kinda talk our way through, but I really don't have any idea what could have happened behind the scenes that made Sayid show up with his armed guard in tow. I do have a theory, of course, and it goes like this - Ben did it. Yup, simple as that. Remember when Ben called Jack and told him to go pick up Locke's body from the his Other friend Jill's butcher shop? Well, he looked like he had gotten his ass kicked six ways to Sunday, and when I think ass-kickings, I think Sayid. Ben knew he had to get serious in order to get Sayid on that plane, so whatever he did to do that must've led to his bloodied face and busted arm. Also, consider the fact that Flight 316 was going to Guam, and maybe Sayid was en route to being deported for something he had done in the States. In fact, do we have any proof at all that Sayid is a legal American citizen? Think about it - he's a native Iraqi that is only in the United States because of what happened on Flight 815. Sure, he was en route to Irvine, CA to find Nadia, but yeah... that never happened. My bet is that Ben got Sayid busted for being in the US illegally, and what's more, I think the marshall who took him on Flight 316 was one of Ben's accomplices. Coincidences don't happen on this show very often, and for Sayid to just show up on Flight 316 is just too convenient.

As for who that Arab man was and all those other people in the back of the plane, I have no idea. Not yet, anyway. There's a theory floating around out there that while the Oceanic 6 time-jumped off of the airplane, everyone else on it (including Ben) landed safely on the runway that was being built over on Hydra Island. Remember that place? Where Sawyer and Kate were busting up rocks and trying not to get tased? Yeah.

Speaking of Ben, let's subtract Sayid from his ass-kicking for a moment. What if he didn't do it at all? What if was, say, Desmond? Let's not forget that Ben was soaking wet when he called Jack from that pay phone, and Penny and Desmond live on a boat. Remember what Ben said to Jack when he left him at the church? "I made a promise to an old friend of mine. Just a loose end that needs to be tied up." I really hate to say this, but what if that old friend is Charles Widmore and the loose end is Penny? We all remember what he promised Charles he was going to do to Penny, right? I'm sure I don't have to explain what might happen to Ben if he so much as laid a finger on Penny when Desmond was around, either, especially with the two of them happily reunited and in such parental bliss nowadays. Of course, Ben didn't look too happy with himself at the phone booth when he was calling Jack, so if he did spend the afternoon trying to live up to his promise, I'm not sure if he was successful or not. I'm hoping like hell that he wasn't, but you know Ben - whatever that slippery bastard wants, he usually gets.

On the topic of Desmond, it's not really any wonder that he didn't get on Flight 316, is it? Desmond got there in the first place by boat, not airplane. If he does end up back on the island, it's more than likely than he'll get there by sea, namely Penny's boat. Also, was anyone else waiting for Desmond to get nailed by the pendulum down in the Lamppost station? Maybe on the blooper reel. Anyway, I thought that Desmond's ease in walking through the pendulum's course was quite intentional and rather symbolic, given that according to Faraday, he exists outside of "the rules." Of all people, he wouldn't be affected by it.

Anyone think Kate is pregnant? She did have that one-night stand with Jack the night before the left to go back to the island, you know. Sure as hell would calm her baby blues and right the course of not bringing the equivalent of an unborn Aaron back to the island. Was that how Claire was represented on Flight 316? To further this theory, take a look at the book that Hurley was reading on the flight. It was Book Three of "Y: The Last Man", a series by LOST writer/producer Brian K. Vaughn. In the book, a female astronaut is revealed to have been impregnated in space by one of her male colleagues. Oh, yeah - Kate's pregnant.

Man, Ben lies just to keep himself active, doesn't he? His response of "My mother taught me" when Jack asked him how he could read was priceless. Um, no she didn't, Ben. Remember? However, I wonder if Ben's return to the island pre-815 will help him clear a few mistakes he made along the way. Maybe even save the life of his mother, if he can make it back that far? Maybe she really DID teach him to read. Power of positive thinking, Mr. Linus. Speaking of reading, Ben had his nose buried in 'Ulysses' while on the plane. Anyone recall what the last chapter of that book is called? Yup, that's right - 'Penelope'.

Anyone notice that a whole lot of the places mentioned and visited in the show are islands? Australia, England, Guam, Scotland, Manhattan, and Japan? Wow.

Hey, Lapidus is back! I barely recognized him, what with the shaved mug and all. I'm not sure how much I should be celebrating, though, what with the possibility that he just crash-landed an airliner into the ocean still lingering about. Hmm. Well, it was nice to see the Lawnmower Man back again, if only for a little bit. "We're not going to Guam, are we?" Classic.

We haven't even touched on Locke yet, have we? I think my idea from last week that Locke would be resurrected as Christian upon his return to the island came true, but I'm not entirely sure. I think the fact that he got Christian's shoes to wear a week before the elder Shepard finally showed up on the island wearing something other than those tacky white sneakers was a little more than a coincidence, though. Watch the end of "This Place Is Death" back again. Do Christian's shoes look familiar? Well, they should, as they're his. He finally got them back to wear again when Locke's coffin served as the world's biggest shoebox on Flight 316. Also, I'm guessing from the previews for next week that we finally get to see how Jeremy Bentham dies. Well, my question is this - was it really Locke's time to go when he died, or were there other circumstances? Was the island truly done with him at that point? Seems to me that that's the only way you can truly die once you get mixed up in all this island stuff. Just ask Michael. Anyway, if it was Locke's time to die, then I think the reason for that was because the island needed him to in order to become resurrected and return to the island anyway. Trippy.

How did Mrs. Hawking get Locke's suicide letter? From Ben?

Okay, time for the biggest payoff of the episode - JIN! What the hell was he doing riding around in a Dharma bus and wearing that uniform? Same thing Daniel Faraday was doing down in the Orchid station, I guess. It's strange to think that the 815ers might spend the rest of the season infiltrating the Dharma Initiative from the inside out and rectifying the course that was taken by their then-leader, Ben. You think that preventing the Purge might have something to do with all this? Or hell, maybe even the crash of Flight 815, too? I do. One more thing about Jin, though - do you think he was the one who taught Charlotte how to speak Korean when she was a little girl?

The Line of The Night has to go to Mrs. Hawking without question. "Stop thinking about how ridiculous it is, and start thinking about whether or not it's going to work," she said. "That's why it's called a leap of faith, Jack." Now, she was talking about the mission she sent Jack on to bring Locke back to the island with his father's shoes on, of course, but she could've been talking about the show itself, if you think about it. Yes, smoke monsters and resurrections and underground bunkers that save the world are kind of ridiculous, but is it all going to make sense in the end? I think the writers were daring us to stick with them for the rest of the season (and series) with that statement. Are you ready to take that leap? I sure am.

Until next week!

Missing Pieces - "This Place Is Death"

I really have to hand it to this week's episode, if only for the name alone. "This Place Is Death." Cool, right? Yes, very much so. We got Rousseau killing her husband Robert, Smokey tearing poor Montand limb from limb, our first look at the mysterious Temple, the lovely Charlotte biting the big one, Ben bitch-slapping the Oceanic 6, and Christ Figure Locke (now with kung-fu grip!) descending down the rabbit hole to do who knows what with Christian Shepherd's ghost. Fun! Let's take it from the top for a closer look.

It was strictly by chance that I caught the Season 1 episode "Solitary" on G4 a few hours before watching the new episode, and if you haven't seen that little gem in a while, I highly recommend going back and checking it out. Not only does it provide the history of the path Danielle Rousseau took to save herself from her own crew, but it also has her speaking a variety of different languages while trying to rouse Sayid. I'm certainly no trained linguist, but the first thing that popped into my mind as she rattled off various versions of "Wake up, Sayid!" was whether or not one of the languages she was using was Latin, the official language of the Others. I know there was French, Spanish, and maybe even some Portugese in there, but if I'm right, that would be an incredible 4-season crossover. I realize that Rousseau has claimed that in her 16 years on the island, she's never seen anyone else there at all. Well, while that may be true (although I doubt it), she is certainly quite privy to the mysterious whispering voices that may be of the various time-traveling entities making their way around the island. Additionally, it would put one more nail in the obnoxious "They're making all this up as they go along!" nonsense that plagues far too many message boards out there. Obnoxious messageboard denizens, you know who you are.

To get away from my harebrained theories and step a little closer to what we actually saw Rousseau go through this week, let's start with the fate of the strapping young Frenchman Montand. I've wondered how exactly he managed to lose his arm for quite a while now, and to actually get to see how and when it happened was a real treat for me. I'd theorized that it was the work of the young Widmore's maniacal hand-chopping crew, but in reality (or what passes for it on the island, anyway) it was the handiwork of a rather vengeful Smokey as it tried to pull Montand into one of its many lairs. It really was a cool sequence, and it is with great pride and satisfaction that I cross it off my lengthy LOST wishlist of things that I've been dying to see.

Speaking of that sequence, let's take a closer look. As the fate of Montand was determined as Smokey pulled him into the crack of the Temple wall (more on that place in a minute), we saw that Jin might have played a key part in not only getting his arm ripped off, but also in saving Rousseau's life, sanity, and the fate of the then-unborn Alex. Rousseau had every intention of going in after her crew as they ventured down into Smokey's lair to retrieve the mewling Montand, but Jin convinced her not to, and it was a good thing he did. If she had, not only would Alex probably have never been born, but Rousseau herself might have been subjected to whatever twisted fate awaited her crew as they made their way down into the creepy crack in the wall. You don't really think that was Montand calling for help down there, do you? Of course it wasn't, and with that, we got our requisite Smokey clue that comes standard with every viewing of that lovable cloud of death. See, Damon and Carlton have repeatedly stated in the official LOST podcasts that every time we see Smokey, we learn something new about it, and this episode was no exception. We learned not only that one of Smokey's main priorities seems to be guarding the Temple, but also that it has the ability to either mimic someone's voice or to actually inhibit their body and make them do or say whatever it chooses. Crazy LOST freaks like me know that it has long been theorized that many appearances of various characters on the island have actually been Smokey in disguise (Walt, Yemi, and perhaps even Christian Shepherd), so maybe our foggy friend was actually inhabiting Montand's doomed body and using his voice to lure Rousseau and her crew down into that hole for dessert. Assuming that's true, it comes as no surprise that the crew was quick to make their way down there. Robert's call of "no one gets left behind" made sure of that. However, as I stated before, it's a good thing Jin was there to convince Rousseau to think of her baby first (I love seeing Jin in overprotective Daddy mode, don't you?) and not make the trip down into the hole. Knowing that both Rousseau and Alex are very much alive on the island in 2004 (or were, anyway), it can be deduced that Jin had ALWAYS been around back then in 1988 to have the effect on those characters' timelines that he did. Faraday's theories about the time-skips are correct - there is only one past, and there is only one future. There is no version of that fateful day on the island in 1988 where Jin wasn't around to save Rousseau and Alex. If there were, the women wouldn't be alive in the future, and they never would have had any interaction with the 815ers in the first place. Got all that? Me neither.

Now, what of this 'sickness' that Rousseau tells Sayid about back in 'Solitary'? I'd previously thought that it was the time sickness that affects such characters as Minkowski and Charlotte, but now, I'm not so sure. I'm more of the mind now that interacting with Smokey in the ways that they did made them insane (for lack of a better word), and it is for this reason that Rousseau found the need to kill her entire crew. "You are not Robert!" she yelled at her doomed lover shortly before she unloaded both barrels on him as Jin looked on, and being that he took a shot at her the first chance he got (or at least tried to, not knowing that Danielle had removed the firing pin on his rifle, the same one that Sayid stole and attempted to use on her in 'Solitary'), I'm fairly certain that he wasn't exactly in his right mind. His plea to her to put her gun down in the name of their future together as well as their unborn child was nice, but his attempt at shooting her dead shortly afterward? Not so much. There was something clearly wrong with Robert in that scene, and my guess at it is either my aforementioned theory of 'Smokey makes you wacko' or maybe they were really dead all along and then reincarnated by Smokey. Hell, Yemi made an appearance on the island long after he had kicked the bucket, right? Remember what he said to Eko shortly before Smokey pounded him into a fine powder? "You speak to me as if I am your brother." Interesting. Hell, maybe ALL the Others have been possessed by Smokey this entire time. We've never gotten a reason why they seem to be so super-strong, have we? Ethan Rom was a bad muthafucka before Charlie's bullets came into the picture. Had Juliet been previously possessed before switching sides? Does that explain the 'branding' she got from the Others after she attempted to help Jack in the Hydra station? Maybe you're out of Smokey's glee club once you turn tail. Hmmm...

Geez, will I ever shut up about Rousseau and Smokey? Yes. Yes, I will. Well, maybe. For now anyway. Let's move on to the Temple, or at least what we got to see of it. Being that the wall we saw was practically covered in hieroglyphs that strongly resembled those on the columns in the donkey wheel room, the secret door in Ben's back room, and the counters on the clock in the Swan station after it passed zero, I'm waging a guess that all those things are intertwined. I don't think that what we saw was the ENTIRE Temple (if it was, that's lame), but it was certainly some sort of outer wall or remnant thereof. Robert told us on the beach that Smokey wasn't a monster, but more of a security system to guard the Temple, as well. (Interesting point, that - did the two of them chat it up over coffee or something?) Remember the blast door map in the Swan station? Well, if you do, you'll also recall the various points on it labeled 'CV' (confirmed later by the producers to mean 'Cerberus vents') and I'm guessing that the crack in the Temple wall that Smokey pulled Montand into was one of those. Kinda like the one that he almost pulled Locke into way back in Season 1 before Kate and Jack dropped a dynamite bomb into it to set him free. Speaking of which, remember what Locke said to Kate and Jack when that happened? 'Let me go, I'll be alright'? Was that also an instance of Smokey attempting to speak through someone?

There I go talking about Smokey again, though. Let's give ourselves a rest for a moment and touch on a few smaller things like the jubilant man-hug between Sawyer and Jin when the two finally meet back up again. Hurray! I love a bad-ass 'The Long Con'-era Sawyer just as much as everyone else does, but when he drops the facade for a moment and shows a little appreciation and love for his fellow castaways, I simply love him all the more. It's also a testament to Sawyer's growth and character arc to see him so distraught when Locke's descent into the well is broken up by a time flash, leaving him there standing above it with the rope still in hand. His instant attempt to dig his newfound friend out of his predicament was great, albeit pointless. That's gotta be 40 feet of solid rock, James!

One more bone to pick with Smokey before I move on - how DARE you kill Nadine, the smoking hot blonde French woman on Rousseau's crew before we got the opportunity to see her in a few different outfits? Not cool, big guy. Not cool at all.

Speaking of the well, I've got a doozy of a theory/speculation about it, but again, we'll get to that in a minute. For now, though, I have to give the line of the night to John Locke. When Sawyer asks him if he'd prefer to be lowered down the well rather than climbing down himself, his response of "Now where would the fun in that be?" was some CLASSIC John Locke self-involvement. I was surprised he didn't look around for something to blow up before he started down. To his credit, though, he did underline it with that great smirky grin of his, so you know he was taking just as much piss out of himself as he was out of Sawyer. Having Terry O'Quinn on my television every week playing such a unique, unprecedented character like John Locke is nothing less than a gift.

Now that we've had a bit of fun talking about the island, what of the Oceanic 6 back in LA? I have to say that my weekly "Line of the night" contest very nearly went to Mr. Benjamin Linus for his broad-brushed bitch-slap of Sun and Jack when they couldn't stop arguing over who was to going to kill him first. Attaboy, Ben. You do and you do and you do, and what do you get for it? Tied up in a gun locker, beat up six ways to Sunday, and then on top of all that, made to drive in the sheer hell that is LA traffic. Besides all that, though, Ben came through on his promise to prove to Sun that Jin was indeed still alive, and it came in the form of Jin's wedding ring. Jin gave it to Locke before he climbed down the well, and although Locke promised Jin that he wouldn't try and convince Sun (and the baby he still knows as being unborn, very much unlike the rest of us) to come back to the island, Locke slipped through the loophole he left for himself in that promise and made Ben do it instead. Not sure if that would be considered a cheat or not, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time Locke had taken a shortcut to get him where he needed to be. Just ask Anthony Cooper.

The endgame of the Oceanic 6 seemed closer than ever this week, what with their rendezvous with Mrs. Hawking at her lab/church. Nice little meeting of science and faith in that place, isn't there? Anyway, Ben's plan to get the band back together hit a snag when Kate & Sayid decided they were getting too old for this shit like their name was Danny Glover. What's more, Kate took Aaron with her and Hurley's still in the joint, so the O6 is now more along the lines of a skimpy little O2. (Well, three if you count the stiff in the back of Ben's van.) Luckily, Hawking didn't seem to be too disturbed by that fact, and told Ben that Jack and Sun were just going to have to do for now. So let's get started, shall we? But wait! Who else should show up at the church but Desmond, living up to his promise to find Faraday's mother. Ben looked a little shaken when Desmond asked if they were all here to find Mama Faraday, but why? I guess it all depends on whether Ben knew that Eloise was his mom in the first place. If he didn't know, then it might have meant that Eloise had been keeping something from him all along, something Ben doesn't take very kindly to. Pile Daniel's strong connection to Charles Widmore right up on top of that, and I'd say maybe that's why he didn't seem too bothered by telling her that he had only managed to round up 3 members of the Oceanic 6. Certainly a different attitude than the one he had a few weeks ago when Eloise was stressing the importance of the 70-hour time limit he had. Could this mean a future alliance between Ben and the Oceanic 6?

Alright, some quick weirdness about the well. Remember when I proposed that there was some odd time loop going on involving the compass that Richard and Locke can't seem to stop passing between them? Well, turns out there may be something similar going on with the well that leads down to the time wheel room. When it first appears to Locke and his crew shortly before he falls down in it and breaks his leg, the time period that the group was in was pre-Dharma Initiative. How do we know that? Well, mainly Because the Orchid station wasn't there yet and the well was the only way to access the time wheel. However, when the time flash happened while Locke was hanging in space halfway down the well, it sent him and his group back to a point when the well hadn't been built yet. Fine, but what of the rope that was now left sticking out of the ground? You know, the one that Sawyer had been holding on to? Well, here's where it gets tricky. I'm thinking the only reason the well got built in the first place was because someone came along and found that rope sticking out of the ground. Wouldn't you want to dig up something like that just to see what was on the other end of it? Hell, maybe that's what led to the discovery of the time wheel in the first place. It's basically a paradox, and I'm happy that time loop conundrums like this one are being kept in the background of the show and not exploited for attention or plot points. It keeps them much more interesting to analyze, and what's more, it keeps them from turning into ripoffs of 'Back To The Future'.

Anyone notice that the voice saying the numbers over Montand's radio sounded a hell of a lot like Hurley?

What of the column of black smoke that Jin saw way over on the other side of the island when he stopped for a drink of water? We know that the smoke means the Others are coming to steal your children (according to Rousseau, anyway), so I'm betting that Jin's sighting of it took place right around the time that Alex was taken by Ben.

Locke and Christian, Christian and Locke. So who the hell was it that we saw down at the bottom of the well? I realize that we saw the person we've come to know as Christian, but um... Christian Shepherd is dead. So could it have been Jacob instead? Sure, I guess so - being that Jacob is probably the spirit of the island, I'd say it's safe to assume that Jacob could appear in pretty much whatever form it chooses. However, here's another theory. What if it was a reincarnated Locke? If you listened to this week's official LOST podcast with Damon and Carlton, they fielded a fan question about Christian. In it, a viewer asked whether or not Christian's dead body on Flight 815 had anything to do with the plane making it to the island. In other words, maybe Locke isn't the only one that has been (or will be) resurrected over the course of the season. In response, Damon hinted that in the next episode, we might get a little insight into this issue. From what I can pull from all that is maybe Locke is being resurrected as Christian, and that's why we've been seeing him 'alive' on the island for so long. Could the iteration of Christian we saw in 'This Place Is Death' have been a reincarnated John Locke stepping into view and advising his counterpart on what to do next?

Alternatively, perhaps in the future of the island's timeline, Christian Shepherd's body was part of the required guestlist on the island (along with all the other Losties that are still alive) so that Jacob would have a vessel to inhabit. Perhaps that's why Christian's body wasn't in the coffin when Jack found it, and maybe it's also why we got such an unexpected cameo in the mobisode entitled 'So It Begins'. Once he acquired that body, Jacob/Christian would, um, 'shepherd' the goings-on of the island so that John Locke would eventually become its new leader, a path that was undoubtedly thrown askew when the Oceanic 6 left far before their dance cards were filled, and perhaps more importantly, when Ben turned the wheel instead of Locke. After all, as we heard from Christian/Jacob/Whoever down in the well, he wanted LOCKE to turn the time wheel and in effect move the island, NOT Ben. It doesn't matter now, what with Locke finally arriving at his destiny by turning the wheel and getting word from Jacob himself not to take any more of Ben Linus' shit no matter how pretty the wrapping paper is. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be keeping my eyes firmly peeled on Episode 507, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" coming up in a few weeks. Should be quite a hoot.

Which brings us to the dearly departed Charlotte. Oh, Charlotte... I miss her jeans already. Just in time for Valentine's Day, too. Charlotte hadn't exactly been having the time of her life on the island, was she? Not really at all, what with her nose running like a faucet every time the island decided to do the time warp again and scramble the poor girl's brains in the process. It's really too bad, too, seeming she grew up on the island and all. Not only that, but her father might still very well be there. Or is he? 'Charlotte' is the female version of 'Charles', you know. Hmm. Anyway, not only did her final moments on the island seem eerily similar to whatever brand of sickness Faraday's female friend Theresa back in England had, but she also seemed to have a pre-death vision of Daniel himself coming to her as a child and warning her never to come back to the island if she wanted to stay alive. What was all that about? Well, here's my idea - upon realizing that Charlotte was on the verge of death, Daniel got the idea in his head to go back in time and scare the young Charlotte into never coming back so that she wouldn't die. Nice sentiment and all, but doesn't that go against Faraday's theory that changing the future of the island is impossible? The future will turn out as its supposed to no matter what happens (Charlie will attest to that), and sure enough, the island course-corrected the passage of time to overlook Daniel's warnings and bring Charlotte back to the island no matter what. Anyway, the reason that Charlotte never remembered her meeting with Faraday in her past is because in theory, it hadn't happened yet. Daniel only got the idea to do it while kneeling next to her as she lay dying in the present/future, and as soon as he had that idea, Charlotte remembered it. The same thing happened to Desmond when he woke up in bed and retroactively remembered Faraday forcing a meeting with him at the Swan station. It doesn't seem as if Daniel is taking his own lessons very much to heart, does it? He knew that an exception to his rules lie in his future pal Desmond, but why didn't he realize that about Charlotte? Affairs of the heart don't often work that way, no matter how much he may have wanted them to.

In closing, my apologies go out to Bob Dylan and Manfred Mann for this, but it really must be said...

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Jin
Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Jin

Everybody's building ships and boats
Some are building monuments, others are jotting down notes
Everybody's in despair, every girl and boy
But when Jin The Korean gets here
Everybody's gonna jump for joy

Come all without, come all within
You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Jin


See you next week!

Missing Pieces - "The Little Prince"

My apologies for the lateness of this, first of all. I've had a fairly hectic week, and what's more, I haven't been able to sleep too well since seeing Hurley in a prison jumpsuit. More on that later, though - let's get to the good stuff.

Once again, big stuff first. Jin's alive! After being rescued by Rousseau, of all people! Crazy, right? That was a pretty nasty explosion that he somehow managed to escape from, so I'm looking forward to seeing how he managed that. There was a short period of time between the freighter exploding and the island moving, so assuming he survived the explosion, he theoretically had time to get himself back inside the radius of the island's time-bubble. And not only did he manage to get off the freighter unharmed, apparently he's been jumping around in time with the rest of the left-behind Losties, as well. Did he somehow swim inside the radius of the island's time-bubble, or is the island just keeping him alive because it isn't done with him yet? (Maybe that's why Christian Shepherd only appeared on the freighter to Michael, and not Jin.) I'm going with a little of both of those theories, because as the cliffhanger told us, Danielle Rousseau and her crew of Frenchies found the guy floating along in what must be around 1988 or so. Jin got a pretty raw deal, if you think about it. Not only does he find himself rescued by a bunch of people he's going to have a hell of a time communicating with, but he also had the misfortune to wake up back in the '80s. Ew. Relax, Jin. Don't do it.

Other things Jin shouldn't do - get on any more boats. Both of the ones he's stepped on over the course of his time on the island have been blown to smithereens. Doesn't seem to have much luck with airplanes, either. Or taxicabs, for that matter. That random jerk back in Korea still owes him a new phone AND a stuffed panda.

Not only did we get to see the young Rousseau at the end of the episode, and not only did we hear the numbers being broadcasted over the radio her team had, but we also managed a quick peek at Montand, Rousseau's fellow expeditionist who somehow loses an arm at some point in his adventures on the island. Remember Rousseau telling us about that way back in Season 1? You think maybe young Charles Widmore's crew of hand-chopping maniacs were the people who did that to him? Not only that, but Montand was also carrying a violin case. If my theory of little Charlie Hume (Desmond's son) growing up to be the musician that programs the musical keypad in the Looking Glass station was too crazy for you, well, then maybe it was Montand instead. In other news, who was the blonde cutie in the back of Rousseau's group? Wow.

Back to basics for a minute. What of the storyline with Claire's mother? Did you buy it? It's a classic LOST misdirection technique, but the only hole I can find in it is how she wouldn't know who Aaron is. Aaron's one of the Oceanic 6, and they're all famous the world over. Surely his name would've gotten out by now, right? Anyway, as holey as it may or may not have been, it set up one of the biggest reveals of the episode - Mr. Norton is Ben's private lawyer. Of course he is! He's dealing with ALL the Flight 815-related legal hooha, probably in an attempt to keep everything quiet as possible, and also maybe even to stay one step ahead of Charles Widmore. If you haven't noticed, Widmore's been trying like the dickens to get his hands on at least one of the 815ers, especially Sun and Sayid.

Boy, this time sickness might be more than what we've cracked it up to be, huh? I kinda understand how Miles and Juliet are getting the nosebleeds (excessive and constant exposure to these time jumps seem to have just as much of an effect on people as not having a Constant), but man, Charlotte's really getting the worst of it, isn't she? I explained it last week, but to put it bluntly, I think the actions being put forward by Faraday's team are causing Charlotte to become, well... erased. Faraday's deeds might be righting the course of the island and its timeline, but for Charlotte? Not so much. I'm thinking that somewhere along the line, we've seen actions being taken that very well might have prevented her parents from ever meeting. I don't know how, where, or who, but I'm betting dollars to Dharmalars that we've seen it happen right in front of our eyes. Is she going to have to be some sort of sacrifice to the island?

On the lighter side, Hurley in a prison jumpsuit looked like any or all of the following - the mascot of the Syracuse Orangemen, a citrusy version of Violet Beauregard, or someone in this commercial. Take your pick. Speaking of Hurley's short scene in this episode, anyone notice the prisoner coming in the door behind him that looked a hell of a lot like his invisible friend Dave? I don't think it was actually Hurley's abusive imaginary friend, being that a guard opened the door for him, but it was a nice little Easter egg anyway. Prison guards don't usually open the door for imaginary friends.

So who the hell were the people in the other canoe that started shooting at Locke's group? The Others? Well, I guess it could've been, but check this out - maybe it was the Oceanic 6. Locke's crew did find all that stuff on the beach at their camp, and among it all was a water bottle from Ajira Airways. I don't know if anyone out there had been paying attention to all the promotional weirdness that happened over the summer, but apparently, Ajira Airways is now very much a part of the LOST universe. Check it all out here. Anyway, what I think happened is the O6 crew landed on the island via Ajira Airways (remember the runway being built back on the Hydra Island by the work crew that Kate and Sawyer were once a part of?), took the outrigger canoes to the main island (remember Karl paddling one of them out to warn the Losties of Ben's crew making an early appearance to kidnap all the women?), and then split. When they came back to camp to find one of their canoes being stolen, they gave chase, and what's more, they started shooting. Juliet started shooting back, if you remember, and she actually hit someone. I'm just dying to know who it was. Maybe it was really the EVIL version of the Oceanic 6, and they all have goatees.

I'd mentioned previously that I hoped LOST wouldn't be venturing too far into 'Back To The Future'-type scenarios where people would be running into themselves or people they knew in the past, and judging from Sawyer's encounter with the past-Kate delivering Aaron from Claire out in the jungle, I'm not sure what to think. Sure, he saw her there, but could he have said anything if he'd wanted to? What's more, where the hell were Jin and Charlie in that scene? If you remember, both those guys were present when Aaron was born. It took place in the episode "Do No Harm" back in Season 1. Hell, maybe it was just selective editing, but my theory is this - you only get to see people in the past that have something to do with what happens to you in the future. Sawyer had no knowledge of Charlie and Jin's presence in that scene, right? What's more, he didn't NEED to know they were there, either. Kate, on the other hand, was apparently something else entirely. The island must've realized that Sawyer needed to see her deliver Aaron from Claire at that particular moment, so see her he did.

Speaking of that fateful night, it was the same one that Boone died on, and also when Desmond turned on the spotlight in the Swan to find out who the hell was banging on the hatch door upstairs. Coincidence? Probably not. This is the island we're talking about, after all. Seeing the hatch light off in the distance when Locke led his crew past it was just CREEPY.

Ben's carpet cleaning van has the names 'CANTON-RAINIER' on it. Mix 'em up, what do you get? "REINCARNATION." Speaks well for Locke's dead ass lying in the back of it, doesn't it?

Speaking of Locke, what's he going to do when he gets to the Orchid? Turn the frozen donkey wheel back to reset it? Will that stop the time jumps? Maybe that ties into why Mrs. Hawking told Ben he only had 70 hours to get himself and the O6 back to the island. I'm guess that at the end of those 70 hours is when Locke turns the wheel again, thereby re-hiding the island from the outside world. To bring in another donkey wheel theory into the mix, I'm alright with the concept of the polar bear turning the frozen donkey wheel (what a weird-ass sentence), but if that is the case, I think it was the Dharma Initiative fucking around with the wheel before they really knew what it was there for. How could they have known what it was without trying it? And who's to say that the island didn't start skipping around once the bear did turn it, and furthermore, who's to say that someone like Widmore didn't have to turn it again to make it stop? Maybe that's how he got booted from the island. I doubt his expulsion was that accidental and silly, but we'll see. However, it would explain what the hell that polar bear was doing out in the middle of the Tunisian desert. Same thing happened to Ben when he turned the wheel, remember?

"That's my lawyer" is yet another Ben-ism for the books, isn't it? It will sit comfortably alongside "You guys got any milk?" and "You know those crackers are fifteen years old." With his prowess for one-liners, Ben should drop all this megalomaniacal stuff and try his hand at stand-up comedy.

I think I've found a rhyme and reason to the island's time-skipping. It only happens after someone accomplishes something that needs to be done. Think about it - Daniel tells Desmond to find his mother. FLASH. Sawyer sees Kate and realizes how much she means to him. FLASH. Locke finds Alpert at his camp and gives him the compass. FLASH. The island is depending on these things being done so that its future timeline will be course-corrected, and it needs to put these people in the right time and place so that they will happen. This theory ties in with the season's theme of bringing the O6 back to the island so they can do what they were supposed to do all along instead of leaving. Mission fulfillment, as it were. All this theologic explanation of the island 'course correcting' itself so that time will play out as its 'supposed' to is nice, but I'm more of the mind that those changes can only take place if people bring them into existence. Maybe it's just the atheist in me saying that, but still - it has its logic. God can only exist if people believe in him, right? In any case, now that we've deduced that the flashes are signs that something has been achieved, it's going to be interesting trying to figure out what exactly that something was.

To jump away from the story being told for a moment, what of Libby's place in all this? I remain convinced that Libby's backstory will reveal itself to be intertwined with that of Faraday's. If he's going around making women crazy, then Libby very well could have been one of his "victims". Remember her creepy appearance at Santa Rosa Mental Hospital with Hurley?

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the book "The Little Prince" that this episode takes its name from, but did you catch all the hidden references to it? First off, the narrator of the story is a plane crash survivor who encounters a young, blonde-haired child who has left his home asteroid to learn more about the universe. However, once he has done so, he realizes that he cannot survive away from that asteroid and realizes that he needs to return to it. Aaron's young, blonde, and desperately needing to go back where he came from, isn't he? Additionally, the boat that Rousseau came to the island on was apparently named "Besixdouze" (see that painted on the can that Locke kicks over?), and translated from French, that reads "B612". B612 happens to be the name of the asteroid that the Little Prince came from. As various other LOST analyzers on the internets have pointed out, while it's enjoyable to make these kinds of connections between LOST and previous works of literature, I'm not entirely sure that they actually MEAN too much. In other words, I don't think a reasonable explanation for what the hell the smoke monster is is going to be found in any of the books that the writers have been referencing over the years. Thematic ties, sure, but answers? I doubt it. The creators of LOST have never been that obvious about anything, and personally, I'm quite happy about that.

Sun's got a gun! Remember the scene in the oft-maligned movie "Godfather III" where Al Neri receives his firearm in a candy box, too?

Line of the night goes, of course, to Sawyer - "Thank you, Lord!" "I take that back!"

Notes for next week - how does Ben know that Jin is alive, and how exactly the hell is he going to prove it to Sun to get her back to the island? Well, check this out. Maybe Ben has known about Jin washing up on the island for years. He had to have spent some time with Rousseau's team at some point, right? He did steal her baby Alex, too, if you remember. Anyway, as for how he's going to prove it to her, my money is on Ben having some record of Jin being alive and on the island way back in 1988 after being rescued by Rousseau. A photograph, a letter, fishing equipment... something like that.

I guess that's about it for this week. Again, I apologize for the lateness, but pretend you time-traveled back to Thursday morning and just finished reading all of this then. There. Isn't that better?

Missing Pieces - "Jughead"

Welcome back, everybody. Like I told you last week, this isn't a full recap of last night's episode of 'Lost'. It's just a handful or two of random thoughts bouncing around in my brain after watching 'Jughead'. Thanks so much to pandabear and Maisy for dropping me some emails and comments, by the way. Great to hear from the both of you. Without further ado, let's jump right into 'Jughead'. More hot not-recap action follows...

So let's get right to the 900-lb. gorilla in the room, shall we? Charles Widmore was on the island as some sort of Other back in 1954! I'd had a hunch about this since we first saw him last week threatening to chop off Juliet's hand, so I was glad to see it actually turn out to be true this time around. However, here's a question for you - being that the Widmore we saw on the island in the past was little more than a lowly Other under the firm rule of Richard Alpert, how exactly does it come to be that the present-day Widmore comes to believe that the island is his? Being that we've seen a lot of history repeat itself so far this season, I'm guessing that the young Widmore's rise to power will mirror that of Ben's a few decades later.

Widmore's reveal led to my favorite line of the night, and this time, it was from Locke. "Did you say your name was Charles Widmore?" "Yes, what of it?" "Nothing. Nice to meet you." Accordingly, my favorite shot of the night came right after Young Widmore claimed that Locke couldn't possibly have tracked him back to Richard's camp. How would some 'old man' know this island better than him, right? Well, wrong, apparently. The words were barely out of his mouth when we cut to a straight shot of the back of Locke's bald head staring down into Richard Alpert's camp, having just done what he does best - track a bunch of cocky motherfuckers who don't want to get tracked. Very iconic and very, very cool.

Besides the reveal of Widmore, though, I think my favorite moment of the episode had to be when Locke basically invited Richard Alpert to come visit him as a child. Why? Because it actually took place! Remember last season when we saw Alpert come to see Locke as a boy, presenting him with all kinds of random items and asking which of them he thought already belonged to him, one of which was the compass?

Let's talk Ellie for a moment. You know Ellie - the pretty blonde girl with the great big rifle that escorted Faraday out to the hydrogen bomb on the island. Wait... a hydrogen bomb? Yes, a hydrogen bomb, but we'll get to that in a minute. The most common chatter around the internets right now is that the name 'Ellie' is a shortened version of another name. Eloise, maybe? The first name of Mrs. Hawking, the older white-haired lady from Season 3's 'Flashes Before Your Eyes' and last week's creepy Illuminati-style meetup with our old pal Ben, perhaps? Yes, indeed - the very same. Let's look at the similarities and clues. First off, English accent. Sure, lots of people in the world have them, but how many on LOST? Not too many. Second, the tied-up braided hairstyle is very similar to that of the elder Mrs. Hawking. Third, Faraday commented repeatedly that she reminded him of someone, but he couldn't place exactly who. Now, I'm fairly certain that I'd recognize my own mother if I were to travel back in time and see her early on, but what if the two haven't spoken for a while? Torn apart by an argument about the ins-and-outs of time travel, perhaps?

Desmond and Penny's son's name is Charlie! Awwwww. Anyone who doesn't find that charming clearly has no soul. But wait, let's back up a bit here. Des and Penny have a son? Apparently so, as the episode started off with his birth. Didn't waste any time at all, did you Des? Good lad. On a different note, though, before we get too cutesy-pie in here remembering our old friend Charlie Hieronymus Pace, let us not forget that there is someone else in Desmond and Penny's world that their son might have been named after. Along with destiny, it seems that irony is very much of a fickle bitch, too.

Yet another Charlie Hume-based theory bouncing around out there is that the son of Des and Penny grows up, becomes a musician, and somehow winds up programming the musical keypad on the control panel of the Looking Glass station. Remember how the two ladies stationed down there told Charlie that it had been programmed by a musician? It's far-fetched, I know, but you gotta keep those good vibrations happening somehow.

The Others speaking Latin was quite interesting. Sure, it be construed that they only do so as a way to keep themselves unique and enlightened, but what if there's more? What if Latin is the island's native tongue? You think it's been around that long? If so, what if there are some ancient Romans wandering around the island, even to this day? Juliet did say that Richard Alpert had 'always been there', didn't she? The guy doesn't seem to age too quickly, so my guess is that he really IS an ancient Roman that made his way to the island somehow and staked himself out as a leader and island elder simply by sticking around the longest. Maybe he started teaching Latin to everyone he met in exchange for them teaching him English. In kinda-sorta related news, I read a rumor somewhere earlier this summer that we'll be seeing a barefoot Richard Alpert this season, so ancient Roman or not, if he's got four toes, he's going to have some 'splaining to do.

While we're talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the episode at hand, remember those food pallet drops? What if they only keep showing up because they're part of the time loops?

Okay, the hydrogen bomb. It was explained in the episode that it's there because some Army guys showed up on the island with it, right? Well, we can also assume that it got left there because it started leaking. That's all fine and good, but let me ask you this - where is it now? We saw it on the island back in 1954, but assuming Faraday was right in his assumption that it never exploded because the island hasn't gotten, like, blown up or anything, where the hell is it? Well, there was only a single clue in 'Jughead' that led us toward a possible answer to this question, and that clue is one word - 'concrete'. Faraday asked Ellie if her people had any access to concrete, because the only way they were going to be able to contain the danger of the leaking hydrogen bomb was to encase it in concrete and bury it. Well, keeping that in mind, remember the Swan? The original station that Locke found way back in Season 2? Of course you do. Well, remember in the outer hallway of the Swan, there was that one wall that was completely sealed over with (gasp!) concrete? Hmm. Interesting, right? Maybe the H-bomb is behind that wall of concrete, and what's more, maybe the H-bomb is tied into the 108-minute doomsday button in the Swan station. Hell, let's take it one step further. Maybe the bomb has something to do with 'the Incident' that Marvin Candle talked about way back in the Orientation video for the Swan. Maybe the magnetism in and around the Swan station is somehow keeping the radiation from the H-bomb contained, and for that to keep happening, somebody has to stay in the Swan station 24/7 and repeatedly press a button that will... Ah, you know the rest. But what of the failsafe key that Desmond turned? Hmm. Did that cause Jughead to release the last of its radiation, thusly setting off the electromagnetic explosion we saw at the end of Season 3?

I know Damon and Carleton are doing their best to keep us away from Star Trek-style time paradoxes, but check this out - where did the compass originally come from? Locke couldn't have given Richard the compass unless Richard gave it to him first. Conversely, Richard couldn't have given Locke the compass without receiving it from Locke first. Confused yet? Good. This is a classic example of an unending time loop paradox, but I think I might've cracked it. There are two compasses. One that Richard (or Locke) originally had, and one that entered this weird time-loop thingamajig. What will happen if they meet? Remember the bunnies in the Orchid orientation video that Marvin Candle was so insistent to keep apart? Hmm.

Why didn't Locke kill young Widmore when he had the chance? I know he said it was because he was one of his people, but I'm not buying that. Locke's very much in touch with what the island wants and needs, and when he raised that rifle, I'm betting dollars to Dharmalars that the island told him SPECIFICALLY not to pull the trigger. The island can't have a dead Widmore lying around 50 years before all of this Flight 815 business even starts to happen, can it? As evil as he might be, Charles Widmore has a very significant role in all of this whether we like it or not.

Also, did the scene where Locke couldn't shoot Widmore give anyone else flashbacks? Remember back when Locke couldn't bring himself to shoot the undercover cop who just busted him and his faux-family at the marijuana farm? Watch that scene again and tell me it isn't a direct mirror of the Locke/Widmore standoff from this week. This wasn't exactly the first time we've seen history repeating itself here in Season 5, you know. Remember last week when Sawyer got a thorn in his foot? Reminded me a lot of the time when he and Kate were walking back from the cages at the Hydra station and he got one of the Swan's dartboard darts stuck in his boot. Keep your eyes peeled for more moments like this, everyone. Since the Lostaways still on the island are basically wandering around in their own past and seeing history repeat itself FOR REAL, I'm sure we haven't seen the last of their kind.

On that topic, you know the voices that people on the island hear when they're lost in the jungle and something's about to happen? Well, I mentioned this last week, but given that the time-traveling Sawyer sees Kate in the jungle in the next episode, I'm willing to wager that those voices have been those of our castaways all along. Have the 815ers been watching themselves from behind the curtain of time since the very beginning?

What of the women in our friend Daniel Faraday's life? We'll get to the lovely (and bleeding) Charlotte in a minute, but who exactly is this woman he abandoned in England when she got deathly ill for unknown reasons? Her symptoms were rather reminiscent of this odd time-disparity sickness we're seeing on the island, isn't it? My guess is that she was Faraday's first human experiment for his time-travel work at Oxford, and after the results went completely pear-shaped, he freaked out and split. Not exactly a noble thing for Doc Brown 2.0 to do, to say the least, but that certainly would explain it. The fact that Charles Widmore was responsible for funding both Faraday's experiments AND his female guinea pig staying alive? Well, that's something else entirely.

As for Charlotte, oh boy. I just don't know. At first, I thought she had fallen victim to the time sickness, but it's clearly more than that. She's forgetting her mother's maiden name, having blinding headaches that keep getting worse, and above all, bleeding profusely from the nose before collapsing into Daniel's arms. I'd hoped LOST wouldn't be venturing too far into Back To The Future territory with their time-travel-based shenanigans, but I've gotta say it - something has happened in this new version of the past that isn't exactly agreeing with Charlotte's very existence. Maybe because of what Daniel and company have been doing on the island, Charlotte's parents don't meet anymore. Something like that. Remember in the Season 4 finale, she kinda sorta hinted that she had been born on the island? Interesting. Hell, maybe there's a Dharma-sponsored Enchantment Under The Sea dance to get to that might just solve everything. How cool would it be to have an undersea-themed dance down in the Looking Glass? That would rock.

Speaking of Charlotte, anyone else think that the only reason Faraday said he was in love with her was to reassure her that she had a Constant? I'm all for those two crazy kids hitting it off, too, but come on - Faraday seems far more occupied with what's happening to the island than getting into Charlotte's pants. For now, anyway. Besides, his declaration of love sounded a little hollow, didn't it? Nerds don't do that kind of thing very well, I guess.

That's enough for now. "The Little Prince" is next week, and because I didn't know what the hell the title of "Jughead" was referencing this week, it's no surprise that I don't know what the little prince is, either. Alright then.

Missing Pieces - "Because You Left/The Lie"

Hey, everyone. My regular recapping gig for "Lost" over at Recapist.com got shuttered thanks to the crap-ass economy, so in its place, I've decided to throw out some ideas regarding each episode right here instead. This is in no way a full recap (that would take entirely too much of my unpaid time), but merely a brainfart or two to get some discussion going. It might be only with myself, but for now, that's just fine. Alright, here we go.

So where exactly did the island go? Not in time, mind you, but in space. The actual geographic location of the island, I mean. Well, here's a thought - remember down in the Orchid station when Locke was watching the orientation video? Well, if you paid attention, it said that when the rabbit test subjects were subjected to the tests that moved them 10 milliseconds through time, it would appear for a moment as if they had disappeared. Well, I think that's what happened to the island, too. Jack and his crew up in the helicopter thought they saw the island disappear completely, but what if they actually didn't? Maybe the island subjected itself to the same kind of time-shifting that the Dharma people were testing on those rabbits, and as a result of that shift, it 'disappeared'. I'm not saying that the island doesn't move geographically, as it very obviously does. Remember when we saw Yemi's plane crash on the island as a time-displaced Locke watched it go by? Well, that plane took off from Africa, so at that moment in time, the island was located somewhere in that general vicinity. A tiny little plane like that wouldn't be able to make it all the way out to the South Pacific on its own from Africa, would it?

Speaking of islands magically appearing in random places all over the globe, wouldn't that kind of explain how the Black Rock got so far inland on the island? Land ho!

Why do the Oceanic 6 really need to come back? Well, one of two theories are running around in my brain. First, those six people need to be on the island for whatever reason so that time itself can play out as it is supposed to. Second, the Oceanic Six are the island's constants. Pick and choose either one of those you like.

I called this last season, but that baby we saw with Marvin Candle/Pierre Cheng/whatever the hell that man's name is has GOT to be Miles Straum. It HAS to be. And no, not only because he's Asian. Candle's dickish behavior towards his crew in the Orchid seemed rather familiar, didn't it? Also, not only was that opening sequence just about the coolest stuff ever, but it was practically a direct mirror of our introduction to Desmond back at the top of Season 2, don't you think? Nice to hear some Willie Nelson, too.

How bad-ass was that fight scene with Sayid and the two assassins? Death by dishwasher! It really had the feel of a Jason Bourne movie, didn't it?

So when do you think the scene where Juliet and Sawyer were captured by those soldiers took place? Right around World War II, maybe? The guns and uniforms those guys had on didn't exactly look current, and taking an enemies' hand off just for the hell of it doesn't exactly sound like anything any modern military outfit would do now that Bush & Cheney are out of office. Speaking of that scene, who do you figure the people shooting flaming arrows were? Some past incarnation of the Others, maybe?

Speaking of flaming arrows, fan favorite Neil Frogurt made another cameo! My favorite part about that guy's backstory is that his last name might not even be Frogurt. According to his Lostpedia entry, the only real reason anyone calls him Frogurt is because Bernard once referred to him as "that guy that makes frozen yogurt." Wondering why Steve Buscemi lookalike Neil kept getting so pissed off last night when people wouldn't call him by his first name? Now you know. "My name is NEIL!"

Anyone remember that 'Got Milk?' commercial with the Aaron Burr enthusiast? Watch it again and see if there's anyone in it that looks familiar.

My favorite internet theory right now is that Mrs. Hawking is Daniel Faraday's mother. Cool, right? What was even cooler was that Illuminati-type weirdness that she and Ben were up to at the end of the second hour. With all the physics calculations that she was running on that blackboard while Foucault's Pendulum clicked away behind her, it's easy to see how any son of hers might turn out to be someone like Daniel Faraday.

If Charlotte needs a Constant to stop those nosebleeds, I'm more than willing to volunteer. Man, is Rebecca Mader hot. Wow. I swear I can hear her jeans sigh contentedly every time she shows up on screen in them.

The look on Locke's face when Ethan Rom (ETHAN ROM!) showed up pointing a rifle at him scared the crap out of me. Probably out of him, too.

Whose side is Sun on here? Widmore's? Kate's? Her own? My money's on that last option, as the woman clearly seems out for blood. I think she's playing Kate like a harmonica, myself. As she pointed out this episode, it kinda-sorta was her fault that Jin never made it onto the chopper. Or was it Jack's? Or both? I'd say she's got more than a few targets to start picking through here, and her manipulation of Kate this time around was only the beginning. Once again, Yunjin Kim brings the goods.

Cheech Marin eating a caviar-and-salami sandwich while watching 'Expose'' is just about the best thing ever. You know what would be cool? If Hurley's imaginary friend Dave calls him up sometime. Dave's not here, man.

Ana-Lucia looking HOT! Wow! Boy, I bet they really had a hard time convincing Michelle Rodriguez to come back to Hawaii for a few days to have a couple drinks. Heh. I liked her advice to Hurley the most - "Whatever you do, don't get arrested!" Indeed. Cattiness aside, though, her mention to Hurley about Libby brought the tiniest of tears to my eye. Awwww.

This show's attention to detail never ceases to amaze me. When Candle woke up and put the record on, there was actually a single hair on the needle, thus initiating the skip.

Speaking of detail, anyone notice the pregnant woman walking behind Marvin Candle as he walked to work? Does that mean that the island's fertility problem only started taking place after the Purge?

I have to add that getting an up-close, in-person visual history of the island's past through these time jumps is very, very cool. I hope they use it to tell us about everything - the Dharma Initiative, the Black Rock, the four-toed statue, who and what has been on this island in the past, everything. I'm kinda hoping they don't take the 'Back To The Future' route and start having the castaways run into past versions of themselves, but we'll see. Although, I really wouldn't mind hearing Sawyer call Faraday 'McFly' sometime. Hell, I'd even settle for 'Butthead'.

Best part about seeing Hurley throw a Hot Pocket at Ben? Ben not even flinching. That's what.

You know the mysterious voices that we keep hearing out in the jungle? I'm thinking they might be the voices of the Others as they travel through time on the future version of the island. Thoughts?

There were a lot of them, but I'd say the line of the night would have to go to Sawyer - "Open up, it's the Ghost of Christmas Future!" Either that, or Richard Alpert getting all sarcastic on Locke with "It points north, John."

Obama is president AND Lost is back? Man, life is sweet.

Until next week!

It's Erection Day, Bitches!

Please vote today. I'm not going to try and convince you who to vote for, but please - vote for Barack Obama today.



Thank you!

Polly want a regime change?

Just in case you've forgotten, John Cleese knows a little something about parrots.