SPOILER ALERT (for James)
Another great episode of Lost last night.  Once again, we didn’t get a lot of answers, but we got some more things to ponder, and some really great character moments as well.  Such as:

• I was totally expecting Sideways Ben to once again throw Alex to the wolves, and let her not get into her dream college (Yale?  really?) while he made his power play.  But this Ben decided to do the right thing.  Whoa.
• And what was up with Sideways Ben and Roger?  They get along?  They’re buddies?  They live together?  They WERE in fact on the Island, but they left?  How?  When?  Are we to assume that the Others’ camp and Dharmaville were both sufficiently far enough away from the blast site that everyone survived?  I mean, it was a hydrogen bomb, but at the same time, it did go off underground.  Or maybe, in Sideways world, Ben wasn’t even at the Others’ camp.  Try to follow the trippy logic: If Oceanic 815 never crashed on the Island, then our time-traveling Losties would have never ended up in the 1970’s, and Ben wouldn’t have been shot.  But then, how could they have been there to detonate the bomb?  It all makes your head hurt to think about.  Anyway, I love how on the Island, Ben gassed his father to death, but in Sideways land, he changes his dad’s oxygen tank.
• One could make the claim that Jack was fully transformed into a man of faith last season, but him sitting there with a lit stick of dynamite because he *knew* he wouldn’t die was still pretty shocking.  The man certainly calmed down after his “Jack smash!” moment in the Lighthouse.  Not only that, but Jack hasn’t seemed to be in the least bit surprised to hear that Hurley is communicating with the recently deceased Jacob.  Richard’s acceptance of it I can believe, since he’s been on the Island for so long.
• And speaking of Richard, why did he tell Jack “not yet” when pressed for answers, if he was planning to blow himself up?  And what did he mean when he told Hurley not to listen to Jacob?  I interpreted it at the time to imply that he suspected the man posing as Jacob to Hurley was in fact Smokey.  But now I think it might have just been a reference to Richard’s disillusionment with Jacob, since he never got the explanation on Jacob’s plan that he craved.  That’s another character (after Man In Black and Ben) who have become totally fed up with Jacob and his mysterious ways.  Although Ben and Richard both seem to have come around.
• I want to know more about Ilana.  How was Jacob her father figure?  How does she know about the candidates?  How does she know Miles can talk to the dead?  Who are the six candidates that are left?  Is she still counting Sayid?  Or is she counting both Kwons?
• And Richard doesn’t age because Jacob touched him?  He touched little girl Kate and little boy Sawyer, and they aged.  There must be more to it than a simple touch.
• The call-back to Nikki and Paulo and their diamonds was hysterical and fantastic.  Did Miles call them “jablonis?”  I’ve heard “jabroni” before, but never “jablonis.”
• Widmore found his way back to the Island?  Cool!  Why?  How?

I’m sure there is more that I’m neglecting now, but oh well.  Oh – and there was another mirror in the Sideways world – Ben saw his reflection as he microwaved his dad’s turkey dinner!  I still don’t know what it means, but after seven straight episodes, it can’t be a coincidence.