SPOILER ALERT FOR JAMES (or anyone else who hasn’t seen every episode of Lost and is planning to at some point in the future)

The final season and complete collections of Lost have arrived on DVD and Blu-Ray this week, and the special feature that is being dissected the most is the 12 minute epilogue mini-episode, “The New Man in Charge.”  The feature was teased as a way that the show could address some of the questions that weren’t answered in the final season in a fun, interesting, and canonical way.   I finally got a chance to watch this feature, and below are my thoughts.   Last chance to turn away if you don’t want to be spoiled.  And if you do want to see the video now, just click here – until the video is forced down, of course.

The New Man in Charge gives a glimpse of how Hurley and Ben run things in their time as stewards of the Island.  Unfortunately, we don’t actually get to see them on the Island at all, just taking care of some loose ends elsewhere in the world.  The first scene shows Ben shutting down the outpost that has been providing the DHARMA food drops.  So we pretty quickly learn how and why those drops kept occurring.  The show makes light of how fans were frustrated and demanding of answers by way of the DHARMA employees demanding answers from Ben.  A flurry of answers come by way of an old DHARMA training video.  The video provides a few answers about things that  took place on the Island, but also, in the grand tradition of the show, raises more questions as it answers old ones.  OK, so we know what the Hurley-bird was, and why there were polar bears on the Island, but the meatier reveals about the infertility issues and the purpose of Room 23 intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more.  If the electromagnetism caused the fertility problems, were they always there, or could women safely give birth before the Incident at the Orchid station?  And why was DHARMA experimenting on Hostiles and risking their wrath by violating the truth?  I mean, Chang explains why, but it just seems foolish.  Still, knowing that they were experimenting on humans does explain the psychological experiments going ion in the Pearl Station, and it just makes DHARMA that much creepier in general.

The second scene is all about the character that people were whining about throughout the final season – Walt.  I was interested in learning more about him, but I was OK without him playing a huge role in the series’ endgame, as his character did get some degree of closure, albeit not in the context of what he could do for the Island. Well now we see that his special-ness can be used to help his father, and possibly the other dead people whose spirits are trapped on the Island, to move on. Again, an answer that is intriguing and makes me wonder how exactly Walt would be able to do that. Is that the “job” Hurley was offering him? And how did Walt, who was living in New York, end up in an institution in LA? And why does he look older than me?

Overall, I enjoyed this epilogue, and it was nice to get a glimpse at what Hurley was up to when he was in charge of the Island.  I would have liked to have seen he and Ben actually on the Island, maybe checking in on Rose, Bernard, and Vincent, or cleaning up some of the wreckage of 815 or 316, or burying some bodies on Boone Hill, or something like that.  And while I choose to believe that Hurley got Desmond home to Penny and Charlie, a verbal confirmation of that would have been nice.  And yeah, I can see how people who were expecting a laundry list of answers might be disappointed by TNMIC.  But for people like me who are just happy to get more new Lost and get a few old mysteries resolved at the same time, it’s a pretty nice way to add a little more to the Lost universe.

Clearly, there are Lost spoilers below, but if you are a year and a half behind (cough, cough, James) I don’t feel that bad if you do end up getting spoiled.

• So the Sideways world was a sort of Purgatory, a place that was important in helping our characters move on, but not necessarily “really real.” Already people are griping about it online, but I think it was a cool and unexpected twist. It also makes sense in the fact that it doesn’t undo everything that happened on the Island. It was a bold choice, it was emotional, and I didn’t guess it. So what more do people want?
• There are some questions about Sideways world that do linger.  Like, David is just totally a figment of Jack’s imagination?  And wasn’t Nadia the true love of Sayid’s life?  It would seem to me that Sayid would be reunited with Nadia in the afterlife.  And it would have been nice to see more familiar faces there – Walt, Eko, hell, even Frogurt!  Don’t they get to “move on” with our guys, or were they so unimportant  to this last phase of the story they just have to move on on their own?
• Walt in particular could have used some clarifying, but last we saw him he had moved on, and was living life as best he could in the real world with his grandma.  Oh well.
• On the Island, things were intense and amazing.  Seeing Rose, Bernard, and Vincent again was a great treat, and I knew I would lose it if FLocke killed them.  There were some action-movie cliches that were a tad on the hokey side – the fight on the cliff, the “I saved a bullet for ya!” quip, etc., but it still all managed to work for me.
• It was also nice for the show to acknowledge that jack being the next Jacob was an “obvious choice,” and Hurley’s words of “I’m glad it’s not me” did in fact to be pretty ironic.  It’s too bad that he doesn’t get home, because he did have parents who loved and missed him.  But hey, better him than Linus, right?
• So what happened in the lives of our characters after Jack died?  In my humble opinion, it seems like we are meant to assume Lapidus, Miles, Richard, Sawyer, Claire, and Kate escaped the Island, and go on  living in the real world.  I wonder how Kate will explain having survived two plane crashes.  Actually, how will Lapidus explain coming back without nearly everyone he left with?  These are small concerns.  Kate and Claire likely go on to raise Aaron,  Richard goes gray and dies naturally at the tender age of 204, Lapidus mows lawn for a living, and Miles and Sawyer enroll in police academy and become partners.  Maybe not that last part.)  Meanwhile, on the Island, Hurley is the  new Jacob, Ben is his right hand man, they have lunch with Rose, Bernard, and Vincent every once in a while, and maybe they hang out with Cindy and the two kids she’s been raising.  Hurley also is able to send Desmond home, possibly on the boat, possibly using magic, but he and Penny and Charlie live happily ever after.

I’m still processing the finale, but overall it was an emotional, satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest TV series ever.  There are questions that still bug me – like how Smokey appeared as Christian to Jack off the Island, and why Desmond told Charlie he saw Claire getting on a helicopter with Aaron, and why were Jack and company blamed for the time-jumping because they left, when it was all Ben’s fault for turning the wheel?  I do like the fact that we now know that Jughead did NOT split the timeline – that was the Incident, and that was that.

Bottom line, Lost succeeded where The Sopranos, The X-Files, and Quantum Leap failed – it provided a great ending to a great show.  Lost’s ending will be debated for years to come, and some people will always hate it.  But it worked for me, and I think a lot of other people out there, too.

Lost, you will be missed!

The last regularly scheduled Lost episode has come and gone, and all that remains is the series finale. A lot happened last night, so let’s get to it.

• In Sideways world, Desmond is still trying to get his Island buddies to remember their other lives. It sorta kinda worked on Ben, Ana Lucia “isn’t ready,” he didn’t really try with Sawyer or Miles, but he clearly has a plan for Kate and Sayid. It seems like the big Sideways showdown will take place at David’s concert, and not Locke’s wedding as I previously thought. Either way, I’m looking forward to the resolution of this whole arc.
• On the Island, the body count keeps on rising.  Alpert, Widmore, and Zoe all met their ends, and I’m especially bummed out about Widmore.  Will we ever find out what his real plan was?  Why did he plant explosives on the plane?  And why was he worried that FLocke would kill Penny if he left the Island?  he told Jin that if he did leave the Island, all life on Earth would cease to be, so wouldn’t that threat not hold much weight?  And how is Desmond a fail safe?
• And what – Desmond can destroy the Island?  That’s a bummer. And Jacob said that FLocke wants to go back into the cave – why didn’t he do that right after Jacob was killed?  Is that his way off the Island?   And now FLocke wants to destroy the Island, too?  Is that what happened in Sideways land?  Hmmmm.
• I loved that Jack is the new Jacob.  Sure, it was the safe choice, but it’s also the most logical, and it feels like what the series has been building towards.  Sawyer’s quip about the G-d complex was also a nice moment of comic relief.
• So now Ben is evil?  I don’t buy it for a second.  He has already had his redeeming moment, and I think he is exacting revenge against FLocke for using him.  Widmore was a necessary casualty, and since he didn’t really like him anyway, an acceptable loss in his (buggy) eyes.

Just four more days until Lost ends.  I simultaneously can’t wait and am dreading not having any more Lost to look forward to!  After this episode, last week’s looks better in hindsight, and I am totally confident the finale will be amazing!

Last night, we got the Lost episode we had been waiting for – and it provided… just a couple of answers, and a ton more questions. Well, consider yourself SPOILER WARNED and let’s get down to it, shall we?

• Jacob and Man in Black -still not named for some annoying reason – are brothers, fraternal twin mothers.  And their adoptive mother killed their birth mother by bashing her head in right after they were born.  So first Claudia, then Rousseau, and then Claire, all came to the Island pregnant, gave birth, and then had their babies taken from them.  Home births don’t sound so bad now, do they?
• Seriously, why didn’t we get names for MiB and his and Jacob’s “Mother?”  Can their names be THAT significant that we STILL can’t find out that they are, even with such precious little time left on the show?  Clearly Mother had been imbued with some kind of mystical powers, right?  She, like our buddy Richard Alpert, didn’t appear to age a day while her sons grew from babies to teenagers to men.  And there must have been something in that wine she made Jacob drink.  And she “made it” so that the two would never be able to hurt each other.  Except she might have screwed the pooch on that one, as Jacob did sorta-kinda-from a certain point of view kill his twin when he pushed him into the Light Tunnel.  I mean, clearly he lives on as the Smoke Monster, but he did kill his human self.  Does that mean that Jacob, MiB, and Mother were all somewhat supernatural, in that they could live for a really long time without aging, but not immortal, as a dagger in the chest would still kill them?
• Mother’s view of men is the same as MiB’s: “They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt.”   Also interesting is that she told Jacob he didn’t have a choice to become the Island protector, but Jacob’s whole motto is “You do have a choice.”  Interesting…
• So, let’s look at the questions that were answered: MiB and Mother are Adam and Eve.  This despite the fact that Jack estimated the bodies were about 40-50 years old based on their decomposition.  Well, maybe bodies just decompose in weird ways on the Island or something.   But the cutaways to Jack and Kate finding the bodies was completely gratuitous, forced, and unnecessary.  We got it, thanks!  We also found out that the boy who has been haunting MiB is in fact young Jacob.  So why is it that everyone (except Richard) can see young ghost Jacob, but no one (except Richard) ever saw the real Jacob when he was alive?  We also saw MiB starting to build the donkey wheel, but we didn’t get much of an explanation as to how it would work, nor do we know who finished it after Mother sabotaged his first efforts.
• Now onto the questions  NOT answered by this episode, many of which really bugged me.  First and foremost, I was hoping to get a better sense of THE RULES that Jacob and MiB play by, and all we learned was that they can’t kill each other directly, which we already knew.  But also pretty big is the question of how is MiB now pure evil, that must be contained on the Island?  WHY can’t he be allowed to leave?  Because he absorbed the Light’s powers?  Could he have left before that moment?  If so, why didn’t Mother just let him go?  If she only needed one replacement, and Jacob wanted to stay and MiB wanted to leave, why not just let him go?  Because he’s “special?”  How so?  What does that mean?  Why could he see his dead real Mom and Jacob couldn’t?  In regards to Jacob’s analogy to Richard about the Island being a cork to contain evil, is the Light itself the evil, or is it MiB now that he’s absorbed it’s energies?
• Before last night’s episode, something had been bugging me: When the Oceanic 6 were trying to get back to the Island, Ben and Eloise Hawking told Jack they had to bring Locke’s body back to the Island.  I know believe that Ben was just spouting gobbledy-gook – that he really had no deep understanding of the Island, Jacob, MiB, etc.  But Eloise seems to know A LOT.  About everything.  Even in different timelines.  So shouldn’t she know that the MiB could use Locke’s form if they brought his body back to the Island?  Shouldn’t she have said, “Whoa, hey there Jackie boy, what ever you do, DO NOT bring any corpses to that Island – they can be used against you by an evil supernatural force!”  My working theory is that she – and perhaps her ex Charles Widmore – are in cahoots with MiB.  To what end?  Well, if Widmore does in fact want to exploit the Island, to use the Light in the cave for all sorts of evil purposes, and MiB wants to leave, then they both have a vested interest in killing Jacob and all of his candidates.  Perhaps their whole feud is a ruse?

It was nice to get some backstory about the Island and its key players, but the episode still felt somewhat frustrating by the way it answered a few questions but continued to throw even more questions at us.  There’s only three and a half hours left in the show, dammit!  Still, I can’t help but feeling that I will like this episode more when I rewatch it later, after the series wraps up.  Maybe it will make more sense in the context of what is still to come.  Despite being somewhat disappointed by last night’s episode, I remain confident that Lost will still end on an incredibly high note.

Oh, and if you haven’t already made an Empire Strikes Back movie starring you, go do it now.  There are 2 versions (two!) of the Noah family playing the various roles on my Facebook page – check them out.  I may be biased, but this new cast make Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams look like terrible choices.

SPOILER ALERT – DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE OF LOST.

Whoa.  I mean, seriously, wow.  Last night’s Lost was huge, and epic, and it contained one hell of a twist at the end.  So let’s get analyzing, shall we?

• In Sideways world, we got a version of Jack that we know well – the compulsive fixer.  Even when Locke told him that he was not interested in surgery that would help him walk again (that he was a perfect *candidate* for), he kept on digging.  Apparently in this world, Locke injured his father in a plane crash, and he felt so guilty that he wouldn’t allow himself to “let go” and heal himself.  Quite a twist on what happened in the other timeline, when Cooper paralyzed Locke and never looked back.  I wonder what Sawyer would do if he discovered this Anthony Cooper was a vegetable – would he still want to kill him for what he did to his parents?  And along those lines, how was Jack able to track down this Anthony Cooper so easily, while Sawyer – a cop – couldn’t?
• Claire and Jack’s meet up in the hospital was interesting; what was the significance of the music box?  Other than the fact that it contained a mirror which they both looked into, and that it plays “Catch A Falling Star,” a song that Claire and Kate have mentioned/sang before?
• Also interesting was Jack getting an Apollo bar from the vending machine – the same candy that Jacob gave to him when he touched him and said that all it needed was a little push.
• Neither Sideways Jack or Locke said out loud that they remembered their Island selves, but we did get several hints that Locke was having some (perhaps subconscious) memories, the most obvious example being when he said “Push the button.  I wish you had believed me,” while he was asleep.  He also said “I know you” when he first saw Jack.  Jack assumed it was from their meeting at the airport, but could it also have been from the Island?  Jack is at least noticing that an awful lot of people he’s coming into contact with were on Oceanic Flight 815.
• The most obvious thing about this Sideways story is how it is the opposite (or mirror image) of what has happened before in the show, and what was happening on the Island in this episode.  In Sideways world, Jack is trying to get Locke to trust him, so he can save him.  On the Island, Locke (or FLocke, actually) is trying to get Jack to trust him, so he can kill him.  And even though Sideways Jack is still a man of science, he wants Locke to have faith that he can be healed, and is trying to convince him of something he will not accept.  The line he yelled to Locke down the hospital hallway, “I wish you believed me,” was what Locke wrote in his suicide note to Jack.
• But who are we kidding, this episode was all about what happened in the Island timeline.  The deaths of Sayid, Sun, and Jin were incredibly shocking and sad.  Jin and Sun were JUST reunited, only to die so soon thereafter.  Courtney was saying that Jin should have left Sun because of Ji Yeon.  Why would they want her to be raised by Sun’s evil father?  But I understand why he couldn’t leave her.  Their deaths were tragic and horrifically sad, not just for us as viewers, but for their friends as well.  I can’t remember the last time any of our castaways cried so much after a death of one of their own (excepting Sawyer after Juliet’s death, but even that was more full of rage than sadness.)  Sayid’s death, while also sad, was noble, and served to redeem him after he killed a LOT of people in a very short period of time.
• Oh, and where’s Lapidus?  Did he survive?
• OK, so now we know that FLocke is evil.  There is no doubt about that anymore.  He wants all the candidates dead.  He has succeeded halfway so far – only Hurley, Sawyer, and Jack remain.  His long con of everyone worked – including Sawyer.  And speaking of Sawyer, if we assume that Jack was right, and the bomb wouldn’t have gone off unless it was tampered with, then isn’t Sawyer responsible for Sayid, Jin, and Sun’s deaths in the same way that Jack was responsible for Juliet’s?  The show may never address that, nor does it really need to, just an interesting thought.
• But what of Widmore?  What are his intentions?  Maybe keeping our Losties in the cage WAS for their own good.  But why threaten to kill Kate?  Even if you don’t need her, that’s not gonna win you any friends with the rest of the gang.  And why plant explosives on the plane?  Assuming that it was really he who did it.  Could it have been Richard, Ben, and Miles?   Still, Widmore must have some sort of plan for killing FLocke, right?  Otherwise, why come back to the Island?  With a whole team of scientists and mercenaries and all that.  So what is his plan?  And why won’t he tell the Losties what it is?

Overall, this was an amazing episode – one that hit you in the gut and really moved the story along.  Quite a bit.  The teaser for next week’s show looked equally promising – will we finally get more clarification on the “rules” of Jacob and Man in Black’s game?  This show is almost over forever, but in the mean time the wait between each new episode is oing to be pretty tough to take.

SPOILER ALERT – SPOILERS BELOW – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

This was yet another set-up episode in a season that seems like it has been full of them, but we also had  a lot of movement and a lot of things happening, which really served to increase the momentum of the season.  Let’s star dissecting, shall we:

• In Sideways world, more of our characters came face to face, but I was hoping for a scene where everyone was all together, in the same room at the same time.  The hospital seems like a likely place for that to happen, with Sun recovering, Locke in surgery with Jack (you all caught that mirror moment, right?), and Claire expecting.   Of course, Kate is in jail, and Sawyer just arrested Sayid, so maybe a jail scene?  Hurley could walk in to fight a parking ticket, I suppose.  Either way, more and more paths are crossing in Sideways world in a meaningful way, and things there will surely be coming to a head soon.  We were given two hints at people there being aware of their Island selves – with both Sun and Jack remembering Locke.  Now it’s no surprise that Jack recognizes him, as they chatted at LAX (or should I say LA X?), but I think he were meant to believe that there was more to it than that.
• On the Island, we got some very interesting developments.  Jack the believer joins Sawyer’s group, only to realize that he doesn’t want to leave the Island again.  He thinks that if FLocke wants them all to leave the Island so badly, maybe that alone is a good reason to stay.  There’s our thinking leader!  Of course, when FLocke tells him “You’re with me now,” Jack didn’t offer up much resistance.  Then again, he was just nearly blown up.  Which begs the question: Why did FLocke save Jack?  He can’t kill the candidates directly, but surely he doesn’t have to necessarily save them if they’re getting shot at, right?  And he is planning to kill them all eventually (or so we’ve been led to believe), so why not just get him out of the way now?  Maybe he’s planning to use him to get the rest of the candidates back.  Either way, it has to be Jack who is “the last recruit,” and it also seems more likely that Jack will be Jacob’s replacement.
• And speaking of killing people, I think its pretty clear that Desmond was finally able to get through to Sayid, albeit after he’d already killed  a heckuva lot of folks for FLocke.  So did Sayid rescue Des?  That would explain what took him longer than expected.  Sayid seemed fairly confident that he could bluff FLocke into not checking to make sure he did his dirty work – it seems like there are multiple cons going on at once…
• …Like for example Widmore changing his deal with Sawyer and company.  I was getting a vibe akin to Vader altering his deal with Lando, but maybe that’s just me.  Why would he want them executed?  If he wants to stop FLocke, doesn’t he need the candidates?  And how was he able to get a fix on FLocke’s location without Zoe there to track him?  And does he think he can blow up FLocke to kill him?  Shouldn’t he know that won’t work?  Or will it?
• And what about the big reveal in the episode, that Christian was Smokey in disguise?  Like I said last week, it seems odd to me that the show would be giving out fake answers to big mysteries at this point, so let’s just assume that every time we’ve seen Christian, it was Smokey.  How is that possible, if Smokey is confined to the Island?  We’ve seen Christian off the Island twice (I think) – he appeared to Michael on the Freighter before it blew up, and he appeared to Jack at his hospital.  The Freighter appearance could be reasoned that it was close to the Island, so Smokey could get there, but he has said that he can’t just fly over the ocean.  And the appearance to Jack was a big motivator to get him back to the Island, so why would he want Jack to come back to the Island if now his whole mission is to help him off it?  I am utterly vexed by this.  Also, Claire referred to being kept company by her father and her friend, FLocke.  Yet she knows they are one and the same?  Even for a crazy lady, that seems weird to me.  It did also seem to be revealed that Smokey needs the body of the dead person he is inhabiting to be on the Island, which makes sense for how he could assume the forms of Christian, Locke, and Eko’s brother.  But how and why he was off the Island as Christian I do not get.

And I will have two weeks to ponder, as there is no new Lost next week – BOOO.  I guess that just gives us more time to theorize – anyone got any brilliant insights?

A Hurley episode – woo-hoo!  And it contained one big answer!  Sort of, maybe, anyway.  Anyway, SPOILER ALERT – James, you really should get caught up already…

• In Sideways land, Hurley is the opposite of cursed – he is beloved, as Pierre Chang begins the episode by telling us.  We knew that Miles’ dad worked in a museum, but Chang didn’t look much older than he did in 1977.  And he still had his hand.  I guess none of that is all that important, but interesting to note anyway.  On a  blind date that never came, Hurley meets Libby and she “remembers” him.  So, picking up from last week, the sideways world and Island worlds are starting to merge.  Many people are probably thinking it’s about time.  I’m intrigued, but I think it’s a little weird that people in the Sideways timeline can “remember” what happened in the other timeline.  Hopefully we’ll get a better explanation of what’s going on in the parallel universes soon.  Still, it was nice to see Libby and Hurley go on the date they never got to have on the Island, though I did think they really spelled that out for the viewers, which was overkill.
• Desmond’s tactics to show the members of 815 their other lives are certainly inconsistent; he has a chat with Hurley, and he runs over Locke?  I get what he’s going for with his vehicular attack – a near-death moment – but still.  Really, running over a guy in a wheelchair to prove a point?  Yikes.
• On the Island, Hurley saw Michael, but was it really him?  I can see arguments for and against “Michael” being the Smoke Monster.  We know that Smokey can appear as dead people, and because of Michael’s advice, all of the Black Rock dynamite is gone, and the last bunch of candidates just waltzed right over to Fake Locke’s camp, all of which is good news for FLocke.  Still, it could have just been Michael’s ghost. Ilana said that Smokey was going to be stuck in Locke’s body now.  And it seems like if Smokey could have appeared as anyone to tug on Hurley’s heartstrings, he would have picked Libby.  Also, it seems weird that the reveal about the whispers being what they are would be a lie at this stage in the game for the show.
• And speaking of the whispers – so they are just dead people talking?  I can understand that, but we’ve also seen them be associated with the Others, as well as the Smoke Monster.  When a young Ben kidnapped Alex, he told Rousseau to run anytime she heard whispers.  Why, if it’s just some deceased folks having a chat?  It seems to me like there’s more to it, but I’m also guessing that’s all the explanation we’re likely to get on that mystery.  Maybe the dead people whisper to warn you that the Others/Smokey are coming?  And why can’t some of these dead people “move on?”  Where are they supposed to move on too?  Sideways world?  Heaven?  Hell?
• Ilana went boom!  I didn’t see that one coming.  So does that mean we won’t get anymore of her backstory?
• We got more of the creepy kid in the jungle.  Who is he?  Why does FLocke hate him so much?  Why can Desmond and Sawyer see him, but Richard couldn’t?  And why chuck Desmond down that well?  Will Sting be able to dig him out?  (“We’re sending our love down the well… All the way down!”)
• I love Hurley’s role as leader, and it was nice to see Jack admit what’s been on his mind.  The look between him and FLocke was amazing; FLocke had been waiting a long time for that moment, and it really hinted that there was going to be a big throw-down between these two.

This week, if there was a mirror-moment in the Sideways world, I think I missed it.  Did anyone else catch it?  Just four more regular episodes before the series finale!  I wasn’t able to glean/guess who will be the focus of next week’s episode.  We still haven’t had a Claire or Miles episode this season, though they were both featured in Kate and Sawyer’s Sideways story, respectively.  Lapidus maybe?  Seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

SPOILER ALERT!

A Desmond episode – yay! Well, we didn’t get many answers – again – but we did get a new perspective on the Sideways world. A few thoughts:

• Desmond was whisked to Sideways world through an electromagnetic thingamababob.  Des also saw flashes of his other life while in a MRI, which also involves magnets.  Not sure why this is significant, but there seems to be a connection.  Also, as Widmore pointed out, Desmond has survived a previous catastrophic electromagnetic event; the hatch imploding, after which Desmond was able to see into the future and his consciousness could travel in time.  So, in other words, Desmond + electromagnetism = funky mind tripping.
• Right before Juliet died, she thought “It worked.”  As Charlie’s life flashed before his eyes as he gagged on a bag of heroin, he saw the love he shared with, presumably, Claire.  As Desmond’s lungs were filling with water, he got a mental image of Charlies “NOT PENNYS BOAT” message.  So do you get a glimpse of your other life as a sort of near-death experience?  So hypothetically, before Keamy dies in the restaurant, did he have visions in his head of killing Alex on the Island?  Daniel Faraday (actually, Widmore) got a glimpse of his feelings for Charlotte just from seeing her, so that confuses the whole near-death theory, but I still think there’s something there.
• And what is up with Eloise?  What does she know?  Her interaction with Desmond was eerily similar to the one in Flashes Before Your Eyes, where she told Des that he would not be proposing to Penny, because it was not his destiny.  At least in that timeline, she was a little nicer about it.  But the question in both timelines remains the same: How does she know so much?
• On to Daniel’s notebook.  I freeze-framed the shot, and there is a line in there that says “Real space, imaginary time.”  Any physicists out there care to interpret that for us?  That, coupled with the line from Desmond that “none of this is real” makes me wonder more just about what the Sideways world is.  It can’t be *totally* bogus, right?  What would be the point of it then?  I was hoping for more of a connection between the two timelines, but now we see Sideways Desmond on a mission to inform the other 815′ers with what he knows.  How will he convince them – nearly killing them all?
• Oh, and Island Desmond – when someone says he is going to explain things, please, LET HIM!  Even if you don’t care, just let him have a go, it would mean so very much to those of us at home.  And what is that Des up to?  Does he really trust Widmore?  Why?  And if he does, why would he just go along with Sayid so willingly?

Did everyone see not one but TWO of Desmond’s reflections; one in the arrival screen at LAX, and the other as he walked into the police station? Oh, and I have to admit that I knew that George the driver looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him where he was from in the Lost universe.  (I just remembered him from Short Circuit 2…)  But Courtney insisted we’d seen him on Lost before, and she was right – he was George Minkowski, the freighter’s communications man who had his own flashes of time travel and died without having a constant.  Next week, we get a Hurley episode – about time!

SPOILER ALERT

Well, the Sun and Jin reunion we were all hoping for did not come to pass last night, but Jin did at least get away from “that thing” posing as Locke.   So lets get down to some fast thoughts:

• I felt like this Sideways story took a long time to get us to a place we knew was coming – Jin tied up in Keamy’s fridge.  Still, we got some interesting twists on the Jin/Sun relationship.  They’re not married!  Their affair is illicit, and it pissed off Mr. Paik!  Sun is pregnant – is it Jin’s?  Remember, Island Jin was sterile before he came to the Island.
• It was great seeing Mikhail, a.k.a. Patchy, again, and it seems no matter where he is, he’s bound to end up a  Cyclops.
• Sun looked into the mirror in her hotel room, while Jin barely noticed his reflection in the restaurant’s fridge.
• Cuse and Lindelof have said that the question of why Sun didn’t go to 1977 will not be specifically addressed, but that we may be able to infer it.  I was looking for some clues last night, but nothing struck me overtly.  Anyone?
• On the Island, we found out a little bit more about FLocke’s plans – he intends to use Jin as a tool to get Sun, and he wants to use Kate to get Jack and Hurley in his posse.  Based on what we learned last week, he wants to get all of the candidates together so he can kill them.  Widmore threw a wrench in the Jin part of the plan, but I do agree that Kate makes for strong Jack bait.
• And I still do not trust Widmore.  Does he *really* acre about reuniting Jin and Sun?  Doubtful.   He wants Jin to help him, but how?  By identifying pockets of electromagnetism?  Will that kill FLocke?  Jin needs to talk with Desmond to make that happen?
• As for Desmond, it’s good to see him again, although I was secretly hoping that he, Penny, and their son Charlie would get to live out their happily ever after.  But Eloise told Des the Island wasn’t done with him, and apparently she meant that her old flame Widmore was going to drug him and bring him back.  Desmond vowed he’d never return to the Island, and that he’d never leave Penny again.  So where are she and Charlie?  Did Widmore kidnap Des from the hospital where he was recuperating from Ben’s gunshot?
• Back to Widmore – this guy tried to kill everyone on the Island with Keamy and his men.  What if Widmore had my theory of how the Island should work – that it should just be Jacob and Smokey, without any other people that could be manipulated by the two of them.  And now that Jacob is dead, his plan has changed?  Do both he and Ben really want to do right by Jacob, they just have differing ideas on how?

So the lines continue to be drawn, and the upcoming “war” seems to inch closer.  I was getting annoyed at how Jack’s crew just kept sitting around on the beach, but they now appear to be headed to Hydra Island, which is good to have some movement.  I guess next week’s episode will be Desmond-centric, based on the fact that he was just revealed as “The Package,” and the fact that the promo was playing bagpipe music.  Desmond episodes tend to be pretty awesome, and you know what would it make it even better?  NOT having a giant bug for “V” in the bottom right of the whole damn episode.