Milton blog

The Jin Game: Sun may only be pretending that her husband is dead

In an episode with both a flash-forward and a surprise flashback, Sun and Jin deal with her infidelity and the Island’s pregnancy curse

They never made it to Albuquerque in the flash-forward future (at least, not yet), but Jin and Sun landed somewhere deeper in last night’s moving, deviously tricky installment of Lost. Back on point after last week’s subpar Juliet-centric episode, ”Ji-Yeon” had me dabbing my eyes repeatedly. You’re always going to get me watery with a story about the sometimes perilous road of bringing new life into the world; it’s a personal thing, and Lost tapped it well enough, so there you go: I’m sold.

Even better, I loved how this story, unexpectedly, dealt with resolving Sun’s sin against her husband — her infidelity with Jae — yet also completed Jin’s redemptive reconstruction into a husband worthy of his wife’s faithfulness. I’m not sure if Jin really is destined for death, as the final moments of the show seemed to suggest, but in many ways the episode felt like a valedictory for the character. Recognizing his own moral failure during his fishing-boat heart-to-heart with Bernard (a kinda corny but altogether effective scene), the former underworld strongman was able to forgive his Sun and recognize his role in pushing her away. But the beautiful moment came when he said he would follow her to Locke’s camp — this, from the man who just a couple months ago in Lost time demanded his wife obediently trot after him. The role reversal closed the circuit on Jin’s redemptive arc and had me searching for tissues anew. When he asked, with great vulnerability, if the baby was his, and Sun assured him that it was, I grabbed more. Well played by Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim, this was Jin and Sun’s finest hour since season 1.

But we’re going to rumble over that flashback fake-out, aren’t we?

”Ji-Yeon” seemed to contain a shared flash-forward that seemed to reveal that both Jin and Sun had made it off the Island. More, it appeared to tell the story of the birth of their child, a daughter named Ji-Yeon (which means either ”delay” or ”flower of wisdom”), and how Jin missed the blessed event because of a comic episode involving his frustrated quest to buy a giant stuffed panda. But then the show pulled the rug on us. Hard. Lost had given us an episode with both a flashback (that panda business was part of an errand Jin was running for his mobster boss, Sun’s father, Mr. Paik) and a flash-forward (we learned that Sun, a member of the Oceanic 6, got off the Island in time to successfully duck its anti-pregnant-lady curse and give birth). But I dig narrative gamesmanship, especially when it’s supported by a strong, compelling character idea. Jin’s flashback served as a touchstone that reminded him (or just us) of the morally flimsy man he used to be. He needed to feel that anew — and we needed to see that again — in order for him to be able to (very quickly) reach reconciliation with his wife in the Island present. Iit worked for me.

Also, debate this: Do you think Jin’s really dead in the flash-forward future?

In the last scene, we saw Hurley travel to Seoul and join Sun in visiting Jin’s grave and introducing Ji-Yeon to her father, at least in spirit. But the marker indicated the date of death as 9/22/2004 — the day Oceanic 815 crashed. As the episode reminded us, wreckage of Oceanic 815 was found in the ocean, along with corpses of all the passengers. Some possibilities:

1. The marker was erected when Jin and all the other passengers were declared dead. But Jin really isn’t dead. He’s on the Island, or somewhere, for some reason. Hurley and Sun — who clearly have secrets to keep regarding the fate of their friends — merely went to Jin’s grave site for the sake of keeping up appearances. After all, they’re super-celebs in the future, their movements and choices are being tracked by the press — and, possibly, their enemies.

2. Nope: Jin’s dead. He’s gonna bite it in the unfolding Island story. So while the marker bears the wrong date, it’s all the same to Sun: Her husband is gone.

Thoughts?

Oh, and I can’t finish my Jin-Sun riffing without noting how my jaw dropped when Juliet spilled the beans about Sun’s affair to Jin in order to prevent them from skipping off to Locke’s camp. The balls on Juliet! That was ice cold. Awesome!

Other thoughts:

The Love Boat, this is not
Not that he needs the money, but Charles Widmore should rent the Freighter out for Halloween parties, because man, is this boat one freaky place! We got roaches, suicidal crew members, and blood splatter on the walls. (I loved the deadpan doctor’s line: ”That shouldn’t be there.”) And we got a heartless Aussie captain named Gault who likes to tell spooky stories about people who should be dead and yet are very much alive. Finally deciding to grant Desmond and Sayid an audience, the gruff Gault brought out the black box of Oceanic 815, purchased, he explained, at great cost and through secret channels by his boss, Widmore. (The mention of his name caused Desmond’s peepers to pop out of his sockets in surprise.) Gault told the castaways that the world thinks all 324 passengers were found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Clearly, this was staged — but how? ”Where exactly does one come across 324 bodies?” Gault asked. Then he put this conspiracy right at the feet of the man he and his freighter thugs had come to nab: Benjamin Linus. Our freighter questions mount: Why does Widmore have his ascot in a bunch over Ben? And what was that secret midnight mission Lapidus, a self-proclaimed castaway ally, went on?

Three small things about the freighter before we get to the big fourth thing:

Is there any special significance to Captain Gault’s name? Glad you asked! Just so happens that there’s a John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, written by Lost-cited author Ayn Rand. In Shrugged, Galt is a mystery man who has invented a powerful new source of energy and has vanished off the face of the earth. Turns out he and some other ”captains of industry” (Wikipedia’s phrasing) have formed a secret society in Colorado. I’m not a Rand guy; never read the book. I’m certain that connections could be made here to Dharma and the Others, Ben and Widmore. Feel free to comment on your dissertation on the book’s significance to Lost…

Late addition: I just woke up from a nap after submitting this recap to my editor and received an e-mail from reader Tom, who points out that Captain Gault is also the name of a maritime adventure hero created by writer William Hope Hodgson. According to Wikipedia, Captain Gault is a ”captain for hire” who is ”highly placed in a secret society….In general, he reveals himself to have surprising reservoirs of specialized knowledge. Where he got all this knowledge is generally not revealed; we get only these tantalizing hints at the character’s past.” Says Tom, ”This last sentence seems to sum up all of Lost, doesn’t it?” Nice catch, dude! And this gives me a chance to make a connection I’ve always wanted to make: Hodgson also wrote stories about a spectral investigator named Carnacki (think: Miles Straum?), who lived at 472 Cheyne Walk, in London — just down the street from where Penelope Widmore lives!

What was the book that the troubled Regina was ”reading” upside down? It was Survivors of the Chancellor, by Jules Verne, an 1875 novel of psychological suspense about — get this — the castaways of a grounded ship who start killing themselves from madness and despair. Interestingly enough, the books that Verne published before and after Survivors of the Chancellor have some powerful Lost resonances: Mysterious Island (also 1875) is, of course, considered an essential text, but then there’s Michael Strogoff (1876), about a spy on a mission named…Michael. His lady love? A woman who shares the name of Sayid’s Iraqi sweetheart, Nadia.

Why did Regina kill herself? Because she was inconsolable over the death of her lover — the late, Locke-knifed Brit Naomi. Remember the inscription on her bracelet? ”N, I’ll always be with you, R.G.” Yep: I’m thinking Regina is ”R.G.”

And now, for that big fourth thing:

Hey — don’t I know you from someplace? Oh, yeah! You’re the guy who sold out my friends and killed those two Tailie girls just to get your weirdo psychic son back! I loved this scene. Doc Freighter was showing Sayid and Desmond to their bug-infested quarters when he summoned freighter janitor Kevin Johnson to scrub that brain paint off the wall. (Shades of Radzinsky, Kelvin’s former partner in the Hatch and originator of the blast-door map, who blew his brains out and left some stain on the Swan’s ceiling.) Pushing his mop bucket down the hall, K.J. emerged from the shadows and revealed himself to be Michael, looking both meeker and buffer than we last saw him at the end of season 2, sailing away from the Island with Walt. He and Sayid shared a tense moment (Pleasepleaseplease don’t bust me!) — and that was that for this episode. The promos for next week’s episode promise a major download of Michael intel.

Two things:

1. Despite my theories explaining Michael’s return, I’ve become quite taken by the suggestion offered by others that actor Harold Perrineau isn’t playing Michael but rather a grown-up version of Walt. I gotta tell you I really dig that idea.

2. I know many of you felt that Michael’s return was anticlimactic, the surprise spoiled by ABC’s promos and Perrineau’s presence in the credits in recent weeks. In an ironic turn of events, my coverage of those complaints wound up functioning as a spoiler for those of you who weren’t aware of Perrineau’s return. My apologies for my role in ruining the surprise; I should have been more careful.

The Oceanic 6 is set. Right? Right?
Sun’s flash-forward fake-out seemed to close out the first act of Lost’s future-time story line: identifying the members of the Oceanic 6, the celebrity miracle survivors of Oceanic 815. To recap, they are Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Aaron, and Sun. Now, I know what some of you are saying: Aaron can’t be a member of the Oceanic 6 because he wasn’t born prior to the crash and therefore was not technically an Oceanic 815 passenger. To which I say, Please. Don’t be so literal. In the Lost world, the Oceanic 6 is clearly a media-coined term, pinned on these six souls by some clever headline writer or newscaster. And being in the business, I can tell you that tiny little facts like Aaron’s non-passenger status would never, ever get in the way of a easy, catchy piece of phrasing. We journalists are exactly that lazy. So let’s call it: The Oceanic 6 is settled. Now, let’s move on to the next act of their story, which I’m betting will cover two big points: the backstory behind Jack’s downward spiral into boozy, grizzly-bearded, we-gotta-go-back-to-the-Island mania, and more context for Ben and Sayid’s secret war with their list of mysterious off-Island foes.

I now turn the space over to you. What did you think of ”Ji-Yeon”? Did you like it as much as I did? Gimme your Michael and Jin theories, Milton Lost nation! Go!

– by Jeff Jenson of Entertainment Weekly

After Juliet turned Ben down, he arranged for her lover’s death

Juliet flashes back to when she was the object of the head Other’s unrequited love, but then she obeys his orders to stop the freighter folks’ mission

This is the time in the ”Lost” season when we begin to feel the first tingle of antsy-pants impatience — where a simmering feeling blossoms into full awareness that nothing has really happened since the exciting, season-launching events of the premiere. Consider last year. As we entered the sixth episode, the Jack-Kate-Sawyer Hydra story line had advanced by baby steps, while back on the beach, Smokey had just bashed Mr. Eko to death. Not exactly a fruitful yield on a five-hour investment. For certain, this fourth season of Lost has been more interesting (thank you, flash-forwards) and focused (thank you, freighter folk and plot-driving end date), but let’s be honest: Since the introduction of the freighter folk in episode 2, the Island-set drama has been stuck in neutral. And so, at the risk of sounding downright ungrateful following last week’s instant-classic Desmond outing, I approached ”The Other Woman,” last night’s Juliet-centric affair, itchy for some action. After three weeks of set-ups, I wanted an episode with at least a few payoffs.

Well, be careful what you privately wish for. The best thing I can say about ”The Other Woman” is that it tried hard to deliver the goods I wanted — maybe too hard. The whole thing felt forced to me — the sudden transformation of Charlotte and Faraday into Mission: Impossible secret agents; the overheated melodrama of Juliet’s flashback; the groaningly contrived kiss between Jack and Juliet (Juliack?); the cliché ticking-clock climax in which catastrophe is averted with a proverbial second to spare. The story was kinda all over the place, as if trying to find something, anything to hook us — and fortunately, it managed to nab me with its Ben and Locke scenes (always killer, in my opinion) and the über-Other’s mythology-expanding claim that the Big Bad behind the freighter (and maybe all of Lost) is none other than Penelope’s father, Charles Widmore. It was almost enough to salvage the first truly subpar episode of the season. Some thoughts:

Stormy weather
”The Other Woman” began with the Jack pack discovering that Charlotte and Faraday had disappeared into the jungle on an unusually rain-soaked night. According to the clues Lost has given us, this episode would seem to coincide with the tsunami that struck on December 26, 2004, an event that would only be relevant to Lost if you believe (as some do) that the Island is located in the Indian Ocean, not the South Pacific. So the severe rain shower that pounded the Island during the opening scenes could be a wink at the tsunami — or at least, tsunami theorists. But did the episode offer another coy allusion to that natural disaster? I refer to:

A Tempest by any other name (part 1)
”The Other Woman” gave us a new Dharma facility, a power plant known as the Tempest. Much can be said about the name assigned to this station — The Tempest is, of course, a famous play by William Shakespeare and that Lost seems to have much in common with that masterwork: It is a comment on the Renaissance pastoral genre, in which the natural environment is often characterized as a restorative, magical force. In the play, the troubled royals are washed up on a strange island and find that they must grapple with the social and political problems of their normal lives, but within a strange new context of magic and disorientation. Sound familiar? Sure does! Keith thinks of Ben as Prospero, ”the magician at the center of the island’s seductive madness,” though he declines to say who’s the equivalent of Prospero’s imprisoned fairy, Ariel. Maybe he thought making a connection to Juliet was too obvious.

A Tempest by any other name (part 2)
Of course, there are some of you who, when they hear The Tempest, don’t think ”Shakespeare!” but instead ”Robby the Robot!” I refer to the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, loosely based on ”The Tempest” and long-suspected of being a secret Lost text. In Forbidden Planet, astronauts from our time happen on a planet where a wise scientist and his daughter have harnessed the energy of the planet and are living in relative comfort. But it turns out that in harnessing the planet’s energy, the scientist’s ‘id’ becomes expressed through a strange monster. In Lost, we have an island with strange powers, harnessed somehow through the Hatch, but with violence erupting through the black smoke. I leave it to you, my friends, to excavate further meaning out of the film. I have an episode to recap.

Omniscient Ben strikes again!
The plot kicked in when Juliet encountered an old foil in the jungle: Harper, the Others’ psychotherapist (”it’s very stressful being an Other,” Juliet later explained to Jack) and wife to Juliet’s old Other lover, Goodwin. Harper — whose entrance and exit was accompanied by a choir of creepy jungle whispers (long time, no talk!) — had an urgent message from Ben. He wanted Juliet to track down and kill Faraday and Charlotte before they completed their mission of unleashing the deadly chemicals housed inside the Tempest. By episode’s end, we learned Charlotte and Faraday were actually conspiring to do the exact opposite: Their mission all along was to neutralize the chemical stockpile in order to prevent Ben from pulling another Purge. Ben’s mobilization of Harper raises many questions, not the least of which is ”Where are the rest of the Others hiding?” It also suggests that either Ben can telepathically communicate with his people, or the surviving Others are executing orders Ben gave them prior to the events of last year’s season finale, orders undoubtedly based on insight supplied by his freighter spy. As Ben told Locke, ”I always have a plan.”

A Good(win) man is hard to find
I was really looking forward to this flashback. The first two peeks into Juliet’s past — ”Not in Portland” and ”One of Us” — were all-time keepers, in my book, and I thought they still left plenty to be explored, particularly the reluctant Other’s romantic relationship with Goodwin and her turbulent rapport with Ben. But I was a little let down by what we got. I wasn’t fond of the performance by Andrea Roth as Harper, nor was I fond of the lines written for her; she came off as too arch and unreal. I didn’t like the revelation that the Juliet-Goodwin romance was an adulterous affair; it was a needless, underdeveloped twist that rendered Goodwin murky instead of complicated. And it ultimately didn’t tell me anything about Juliet that previous flashbacks — and Elizabeth Mitchell’s layered performance — didn’t already establish or suggest. That said, I totally dug Ben’s creepy loverboy act, culminating with the revelation that he had Goodwin infiltrate the Tailies in the hope that he’d get killed and thus be eliminated as a rival for Juliet’s affections. I loved the part where Ben took Juliet to Goodwin’s corpse, told her ”You’re mine!” then graciously allowed her to grieve by saying, with apparent sincerity, ”Take as much time as you need.” If I haven’t said so before, Michael Emerson is just genius in this role.

See? They haven’t forgotten the kids!
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the passing reference to abducted Tailie kids Zack and Emma during the scene in which Juliet and Ben ”enjoyed” a ”romantic” ham dinner together. Ben commended Juliet on her care for the kids. But it was the disclosure that they were kidnapped strictly because they were ”on the list” that struck me. I used to have a theory that the Others swiped kids either because of their fertility problem or because kids tend to develop a magical, powerful rapport with the Island that isn’t easily controllable (see: Walt) and the Others know that and try to manage that lest it become a problem. But if we are to believe Ben, it was merely a matter of faith — faith in Jacob’s will, as revealed by the holy writ of the list.

Penelope’s dad: Devil or scapegoat?
Ben continued to get under Locke’s skin by needling him anew about his shaky leadership, which this week got tested in the unlikely form of Claire, who asked if she could have a go at interrogating MIA Miles. (Is he still gumming that grenade or what? I want to know already!) The Claire moment was another example of this episode’s forcing things; the scene seemed to have been written just to give the actress something to do. (And I know this is an overdue, off-topic complaint, but I have to clear my conscience and say this: In retrospect, I think the show owed Claire one or two Charlie-grieving scenes. Anyway, I digress.) Locke got challenged once again, and Ben tried to work it once again, saying, ”Have they started the revolution yet?” (How does this man know so much about what Locke is going through? Intuition? Psychic powers? Or just previous experience of being a disliked leader of faithless, impatient people?) But Locke managed to turn the tables on Ben by revealing he knew about the deal Miles presented him. This prompted Ben to play his supposed trump card: his claim (supported with surveillance videotape and dossiers) that they are united by a common enemy, alleged freighter master Widmore, who Ben says is desperate to find the Island so he can ruthlessly exploit it. Here’s my question for you: Do you believe this? (I do.) And are you with me that Michael is going to be revealed as Ben’s spy, or do you think we’re being set up for a twist there? (Personally, I’m not completely sure.)

The (ugh) kiss
I liked everything that led up to it. I liked how Juliet pulled this frustrating episode together with her final speech to Jack. In the end, this was really a story about Ben and the lengths he will go to protect himself and the Island from his enemies. And the bad news for Juliet is that those extreme lengths might include manipulating her any way Ben sees fit, even leveraging her feelings for Jack, because after all, in Ben’s mind, she belongs to him. If only Juliet had walked away after this speech, everything would have been okay. But no: Jack had to kiss her. Part of me can believe it: Juliet represents exactly the kind of Girl That Needs Rescuing that totally gets Doc Messiah hot — and ultimately leaves him burned. Look, I can buy the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle; this dynamic makes sense to me. But adding a fourth party — even in the form of Juliet, a character I like very much — just doesn’t work for me. I just don’t think Jack would complicate his life with that kind of thing — not right now. It also seems to me that the last thing Juliet needs is more man trouble. Hasn’t she learned anything from her backstory? Doesn’t she know it never ends well for ”the other woman”?

It’s time I turned this space over to you. Am I being too hard on the episode? What have I missed? And what are your Widmore theories, Milton?

– by Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly

After last week’s time-tripping Desmond episode, it’s probably good we spend some more time with it, given the intensity of passion and interest that many fans continue to have in the episode, arguably the best single outing since season 1’s ”Walkabout.” And to help us understand the story’s noodle-cooking intricacies, I have some crucial insight from exec producer and ”Constant” co-writer Damon Lindelof that I think you’ll wanna know. To wit:

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO DESMOND?
In ”The Constant,” Desmond became ”unstuck in time” after flying through a thundercloud crackling with strange electricity. He experienced something like time travel, though not bodily time travel; instead, his consciousness shuttled between two different time periods, Island present 2004 and Desmond’s past 1996. But here’s the tricky twist: Desmond’s Island-present mind wasn’t the one doing the time traveling. When Desmond got hit with Island magic, his consciousness got knocked off-line and was replaced by his 1996 self. It was this older Desmond consciousness that toggled between present and past throughout the episode. Once Desmond ‘96 completed the errand of getting Penny’s phone number so he could call her on Christmas Eve 2004, Desmond’s present-day mind came back online, but rebooted with the new memories created by his time-travel adventure. I know: tricky stuff. But I had the chance to run all this by Damon Lindelof — and he says this interpretation is correct.

THE MINKOWSKI EXCEPTION
Desmond had the time-warp blues, but freighter freak Minkowski had Marty McFly Mania: Due to his own exposure to electromagnetic magic, he began psychically commuting back to a pleasant day on a Ferris wheel. He died desperately trying to zip-line back to this happy day one more time. Coldly poignant, I thought. Notice: Unlike Desmond’s time-travel story, Minkowski’s present day consciousness was making the trip. Lindelof says this difference was designed to make a very important point: ”As Faraday explains in the episode, the effect is random. Sometimes a person can be displaced by minutes, other times, years. And the direction of the effect is equally unpredictable. Our way of demonstrating this was to give Minkowski a wildly different experience than Desmond was having.” Lindelof says none of this is arbitrary; exposure to electromagnetism or radiation plays a role. But he adds: ”Looking for specific rules for how all this works will lead you down the path of insanity.”

PARADOX R/X, or ”HOW COURSE CORRECTION WORKS”
To be clear, Desmond’s past was different before ”The Constant.” Before his time-travel adventure, Desmond never met Faraday at Oxford, never got Penelope’s digits. As a consequence of changing the past, Desmond’s personal history has been ”course corrected” by The Powers That Be, beginning from the moment he walked away from Penny’s apartment. Lindelof says this interpretation is also correct. But here’s a Big Question: since scoring Penelope’s phone number, has Course-Corrected Desmond lived his life knowing that on Christmas Eve 2004, he MUST be on a freighter in the South Pacific in order to make a call to Penelope if he wants any chance of having a future with her? Lindelof says this is indeed a matter we should be mulling. Perhaps in the future, Lost will give us an episode that replays Desmond’s backstory (getting the boat from Libby; killing Kelvin; meeting the castaways) from the point of view of this knowingness.

THE LIPS OF TURBULENCE
Desmond’s ”unstuck in time” nightmare began when Frank flew the helicopter into that monstrous thundercloud. The chopper was buffeted by intense turbulence. Lightning flashed. Frank pulled up and out of trouble. So what was that weird weather all about? Well, I don’t think it was a passing storm. In, fact, I really don’t think you can call it weather. As I explained last week, I think the Island is located inside the mouth of a wormhole, a possibly volatile anomaly in the time-space fabric. The chopper was passing over the rough-and-tumble boundary that exists between the anomaly and the outside world. (That wormhole has seriously blistered lips.) Another way of thinking about this is to think of a curtain hanging around the Island at a certain point offshore. This curtain extends from the sky to the ocean floor — hence, why The Sub also encounters turbulence when traveling to and from the Island. (See: Juliet’s backstory in ”One of Them.”)

The problem with wormhole theory is that wormholes don’t stay open on their own. Theoretically, they require a constant (and literally astronomical) supply of energy to stay in business. This past week, popularmechanics.com (which frequently ruminates on the science of Lost) speculated that this could have been why The Button had to be pushed every 108 minutes — to harness and discharge wormhole-sustaining electromagnetic energy.

Of course, now that the Hatch is gone, does that mean the wormhole is closed? Here’s my theory: I think the failsafe key protocol (initiated by Desmond in the season 2 finale) called for one last blast of energy designed to keep the wormhole open for an extended period of time so that final business could be conducted. But when that time elapses, it’s hasta la vista time-space anomaly. And maybe, bye-bye Island, too.

TIME PASSAGES
The chopper left the Island at dusk, but didn’t arrive at the freighter until afternoon the next day, even though the flight lasted about 30 minutes. This bit of weirdness inspired the following question in my mind: Do different trajectories away from the Island lead to different points in time? Lapidus flew a trajectory (A) that took just 30 minutes; the chopper landed about 18 hours later. If Lapidus had flown a slightly different trajectory (B) that took roughly the same time, perhaps he might have arrived sooner. Or even later. Or possibly never. Why might this be important to season 4? Because if I’m right — if every different route away from the Island leads to a different point in time — then you have to wonder about those coordinates Ben gave Michael and Walt at the end of season 2. The question isn’t just ”Where did Ben send them?” — it could also be ”When?”

TIME DIFFERENTIAL: BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD?
For a couple weeks now, we’ve been trying to figure out the significance of Daniel Faraday’s rocket experiment, which seemed to establish a 31-minute time differential between the Island and the freighter. However, ”The Constant” suggested (at least to me) another possibility: it could be that the Island and the freighter are in synch, and that the rocket gained the extra time while flying through the turbulent perimeter of the anomaly. This is all to say, I think we need to reconsider the idea that ”time passes more slowly on the Island” until we get more data.

MINKOWSKI GOT ”THE SICKNESS”
It seems most likely that the time-travel illness that killed Minkowski is the same mythical ‘’sickness” that killed The French Lady’s fellow scientists wayyy back in the day. I really love this idea. I was never fond of the idea that ”the sickness” was a Dharma hoax. It just didn’t feel right. But this — this feels right. And if it is right, I love it even more for the way this answer was basically left for us to puzzle out, as opposed to having some dude explain it all to us. I expect that in the coming episodes and seasons, more Lost mysteries will be resolved this way.

Ok Milton, what do you think?

- By Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly

Is Ben one of the Oceanic Six? ”Who’s to say he isn’t?” Damon Lindelof teases

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse tell Doc Jensen of Entertainment Weekly what they’ll answer this season, how they’re handling the time/space plot, what’s relevant (or irrelevant) to the story, and more

THE TEASE!
If I had to sum up tonight’s episode in one word, it would be ”Kate.” If I had to choose two, it would be ”Dharma bums.” Three words? They would be ”Deals with devils.” And if I had to pick four or more, I’d say, ”Let’s just ask executive producer Damon Lindelof.”

“Remember last week when you were left wondering if Ben was a member of the Oceanic 6? Well, the last line of dialogue of this episode will cause the fans to ask a very similar question.”

Okay, since you brought it up, Damon: Is Ben a member of the Oceanic 6?

”Nothing precludes him from being a member of the Oceanic 6 — other than he wasn’t on the plane,” says Lindelof. ”But he does have a room full of documents and passports. He could have just, you know, done some research and doctored some records and adopted the identity of someone on the plane — someone with no family or friends who would know otherwise. So who’s to say he isn’t?”

So…when will we know for certain?

”By the end of the seventh episode, the audience will now know who the Oceanic 6 are.”

Guess what?

We’re just getting started…

DAMON AND CARLTON: A SEASON 4 INTERVIEW
No cheat sheets this week. (Though may I suggest you bone up on Philip K. Dick’s ”Valis Trilogy” in preparation for tonight’s episode?). And no crazy theories from me, either. Now that the strike is finally over, it’s time we heard from the majordomos of Lost themselves, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with the producers for a wide-ranging conversation about the new season. Check out the new issue of EW for their thoughts on getting back to work after the strike, the return of Richard Alpert, and why you won’t be getting answers to Charlotte’s Tunisian polar bear this year. But in this space, you will hear the producers speak out on a variety of issues: the structure of the season; the big mysteries that will — and won’t — get resolved; the relevance of extracurricular stuff like the recent ”Find 815” alternate reality game; and the proper way to ”read” the show’s flash-forward stories. But perhaps most provocatively, the producers offer their rules for time travel and alternate realities — rules that many of you currently engaged in wild theory-making about the interpretation of time/space on Lost will find interesting, even challenging.

We pick up the conversation with Damon and Carlton discussing one unforeseen advantage of the recent writers’ strike: being able to respond to audience confusion. (Note: Teases and spoiler stuff are at the end. Veggies before dessert, you know.)

CARLTON CUSE: If we were sitting down with you right now, and there hadn’t been a strike, we would be in the middle of writing the finale. The entire season would have been done and the audience would have only seen two or three episodes. Now, we actually have an opportunity to react and adjust to how people are feeling about everything.

DAMON LINDELOF: Naomi’s bracelet in the Sayid episode is a key point here. I got some e-mails from people who wondered if there was a connection between Naomi’s bracelet and the bracelet worn by the woman Sayid killed in his flash-forward. There is no connective tissue. Sometimes a bracelet is just a bracelet. We just thought it would be a cool emotional touchstone for Sayid; Elsa’s bracelet reminds him of Naomi. But some people interpreted that, ”Is there something more there?” We might need to address that.

CUSE: But this is a commentary on how the flash-forwards work. We were very concerned if the flash-forwards would have the same emotional resonance as flashbacks because people naturally, easily understand flashback storytelling as a device. The bracelet is one example of where people, I think, can get lost.

DOC JENSEN: Some people are even wondering if the flash-forward stories in each episode are being presented chronologically. For example, did the opening sequence of Sayid’s flash-forward — in which he killed the Italian guy on the golf course in the Seychelles — actually occur after his ill-fated Elsa affair?

LINDELOF: There was originally a line in that episode where Sayid said, ”I’ve just returned from the Seychelles,” which would have cleared all that up. But we lost it in editing because the scene went on for four minutes. When we’re presenting you with a narrative, it’s always happening in chronological order.

CUSE: Lost is complex and dense, but we are very conscious of the limits. If we are going to jump time, we’re not going to jump narrative order within the time jumps, too.

LINDELOF: We wrote the Sayid episode before the Boston Red Sox won the World Series a second time. So when Jack said to Frank Lapidus, ”Did the Red Sox really win the World Series?” and Lapidus says, ”Please don’t remind me,” certain subsets of the Lost audience began asking, ”Is it possible Lapidus is actually from 2008?!” But you have to understand: we are not writing the show for now. We are writing the show so that when you put it in your DVD player 20 years from now, you don’t have to understand the nuances of the Red Sox winning the World Series, only they hadn’t won it in a long time.

CUSE: But you won’t have a DVD player, Damon.

LINDELOF: It’ll just be downloaded into your brain.

DOC JENSEN: Another popular theory making the rounds is that we’re dealing with alternate realities. For example, there are people who think the flash-forwards are merely possible future scenarios, not written in stone.

CARLTON CUSE: We want people to believe in the stakes of the show. The problem with alternative realities is that you never know when the rug is going to be pulled out from under you. We want the audience to believe that the jeopardy is real. Postulating alternative realities would be an escape valve that would be damaging that as a narrative value.

DAMON LINDELOF: You can get away with it in Heroes, where there is an apocalyptic future you want to avoid. But we’re doing the opposite. We want to work toward a future where Jack is absolutely miserable and wants to go back to the Island. Everything we present to the audience has to be factual.

CUSE: We want the audience to believe that is THE future. We don’t want people thinking, ”Well, since there are five iterations of this, I’m not going to invest in what’s happening to the characters.”

LINDELOF: We’re not going to tell you that we’re against bending the time-space continuum. We are very for it. Carlton and I are PRO time-space continuum bending! But we’re ANTI-paradox. Paradox creates issues. In Heroes, Masi Oka’s character travels back from the future to say, ”You must prevent New York from being destroyed.” But if they prevent New York from being destroyed, Masi Oka can never travel back from the future to warn you, because Future Hiro no longer exists. Right? So when we start having those conversations at Lost, we go, ”This show is already confusing enough as it is.” To actually have characters traveling through time has to be handled very deftly.

CUSE: For example, the fifth episode of the season [airing next week] deals with time travel and operates in different time periods. It was a tough story to break. But we adhere to our rule: no paradox.

LINDELOF: It’s been weird, though. When we got back from the strike, we had to put up a master timeline of the future, from the point where the Oceanic 6 will end up leaving the Island all the way up to where the flash-forwards will end.

CUSE: And the hard thing was charting a timeline when there’s a bend in space-time: How do you illustrate that kind of timeline when time isn’t entirely linear? That took us an entire morning —

LINDELOF: — just to debate the quantum physics of it all.

CUSE: We needed to bring in a professional illustrator. [They smirk.]

I have a sneaking suspicion you’re pulling my leg on some of this stuff.

LINDELOF: Maybe.

CUSE: But we do feel this is a place where we can challenge the audience to create a chronology — where Sayid’s story happens in relationship with Jack’s story, etc. We’ll be adding pieces of that mosaic over the course of these five hours that should hopefully leave you with some fairly clear understanding of what happened between the time the Oceanic 6 were rescued or returned to the real world and Jack and Kate’s final scene in the season finale.

DOC JENSEN: How would you describe the general structure of the season?

CARLTON CUSE: This year, it’s all about the castaways’ relationship to the freighter folk. Since day one, their goal has been to get off the Island. Now our heroes will find themselves defending the very island they wanted to leave. The future hints at the fact that these folks have a deeper connection to the Island than they themselves realized.

DAMON LINDELOF: The big mystery looming over this season is, how did some people get off the Island and what happened to the people who didn’t? That’s the mystery that we owe the answer to at the end of the season, in addition to who’s in the coffin. We could be winky about the coffin all the way through season 5. But that was one of the first things we talked about when we got back to work on the new episodes: We definitely have to show who was in the coffin. That’s the primary superstructure of the season. As a result of that, certain thematic elements — the element of fate or supernatural elements as they relate to the monster and Jacob — are certainly in play but not as interesting to us this season as these questions: Why do some of the characters leave? How do they leave? What are the circumstances under which they leave? Why do some stay? Is it a choice? Is it an accident? Both?

CUSE: There are larger cosmic questions involved in that. Daniel Faraday’s rocket experiment in the Sayid episode, which established a time differential on the Island, was a very important scene in that it sets the table for things that come into play in the future of the show. We’ve learned a lot about our characters’ relationship to the Island, but now we’re going to learn their relationship to the outside world once they’ve been on the Island. This is an important new idea to the show.

What’s the deal with Jacob’s shack? It keeps moving. Then Hurley saw Jack’s father rocking in Jacob’s chair.

CUSE: You will definitely see more of the cabin and it was very observant that many fans noted the presence of Jack’s father inside the cabin. We’ll shine a little bit more light on that later this season. This is stuff that is a big part of the show going forward, but in terms of the final five episodes of the season, those are not the kind of questions we’ll be answering.

Hurley also saw an eyeball looking back at him. Should we be wondering about the identity of the owner of this eyeball?

LINDELOF: You should be wondering, certainly.

CUSE: One of the definitions of omniscience is to be in more than one place at a time.

LINDELOF: I always thought that word was pronounced omni-science.

CUSE: Well, you’ve learned something new today.

My annual inquiry: Will we be dealing with the Adam and Eve skeletons this season?

LINDELOF: No. But they will be addressed.

More Dharma Initiative intrigue this season?

LINDELOF: You haven’t seen your last station. But the larger mythos, like ”The Purge” — that’s more season 5.

CUSE: We showed the Orchid video orientation film at Comic-Con — that is important for this season.

Someone at my office wants an answer to this question: Wasn’t it just a little too convenient for Penny to be calling the Island at the exact same moment Charlie killed the dampening field in the season finale?

LINDELOF: Good question. Here’s how we always thought of that: What we always imagined was that Penny has an auto dialer in the bedroom of her house and in various places that is constantly sending some sort of transmission to the coordinates that were revealed at the end of season 2. So when Charlie turned off the dampening field, her auto caller indicated that her call could go through.

Now that they have a satellite phone, why doesn’t Desmond just call Penny?

LINDELOF: Lapidus explains the rules of the satellite phone and what calls it can and can’t make in episode 5.

The Sayid episode established that Ben’s got this list of bad people that need executing. What can you say about these people?

CUSE: We’ll know by the end of the season that there will be two alternative explanations for why Oceanic 815 is in the trench at the bottom of the ocean. It will not be clear which story one should believe. [To be clear, Cuse is saying the mystery of Ben's list is linked to this wreckage.]

LINDELOF: Both stories will be presented and both stories will have legitimate facts presented on their behalves.

CUSE: The act of taking a plane, filling it with dead bodies and putting it at the bottom of the ocean connotes a group that is pretty freakin’ powerful. You should be worried about the people involved in either scenario capable of doing something like that.

Is one of these groups ”The Maxwell Group,” a mysterious outfit introduced via the ”Find 815” alternate reality game?

LINDELOF: We cannot say that any of that stuff in ”Find 815” is in canon. The Maxwell Group is something that Hoodlum came up with. Last fall, we presented them with the idea that, at the beginning of the second episode, a salvage ship was going to find wreckage of Oceanic 815. From there, they came up with a story — and backstory — that led up to that event. [Some background: Prior to the strike, the producers and ABC's marketing team hired a company in Australia called Hoodlum to execute ''Find 815.'']

CUSE: We provided the creative framework but didn’t oversee the execution.

LINDELOF: I’ll sign off on this idea: The Christiane 1, which in the show was responsible for finding Oceanic 815, was in fact looking for the Black Rock. We established that in the show — but the people who owned the ship may have been up to a little bit more than just looking for the Black Rock.

So what’s official and what’s not? What’s ”canon?”

CUSE: The mobisodes are in canon. The Orchid video is in canon. The videogame is not in canon. It’s unfair for the audience to go to ancillary sources in order to really understand the show. Even the things like the mobisodes, which are in canon, aren’t essential to your understanding of the show. These things are just added bonuses.

LINDELOF: The only true canon is the show itself.

DOC JENSEN: You’ve certainly picked some interesting names for your freighter folk. How should we be interpreting them?

DAMON LINDELOF: With Miles Straum, we just thought it would be cool if his name sounded like ”maelstrom.” Charlotte Lewis was an obvious reference to C.S. Lewis and an important clue to places we’re going at the end of the season.

CARLTON CUSE: And an important clue to Charlotte’s own, as-yet-untold important backstory.

LINDELOF: One of our producers, Eddie Kitsis, has been pitching to us ”Frank Lapidus, Helicopter Pilot” for years. Daniel Faraday is an obvious shout-out to Michael Faraday, scientist and physicist.

CUSE: As is Minkowski, who’s on the freighter. Those names are clues related to the space-time issues that will become more significant downstream.

For the record, is the official lingo here ”the freighter folk”?

LINDELOF: I like ”freighter folk” because you wonder if there’s an album cover out there somewhere with all of them, and they have the Mamas and the Papas outfits on.

CUSE: ”Freighter folk” is more benign. And they’re not the only people on that freighter. You’re going to meet some other people on the freighter who have another name, and in contrast to those folks these freighter folk are very…uh, folkish.

How about Matthew Abbaddon?

LINDELOF: ”Abaddon,” we dug that one out of Wikipedia. When we name people, we often do Web searches on certain verbiage or if we want to pull something out of Greek mythology or Native American mythology, like, ”Who was the god of wheat?”

CUSE: I can’t believe you’re telling Jeff about the god of wheat now! The entire second half of the fourth season is about the god of wheat!

LINDELOF: Wasn’t your nickname at Harvard ”the god of wheat?”

CUSE: No, it was god of rye.

LINDELOF: You see how I get confused.

[Sigh.]

– By Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly

Scots Honour: Desmond kept his promise to call Penny

In a romantically moving episode, Desmond’s 1996 consciousness takes over his mind now, but his connection with Penelope saves him

I’m going to outline some talking points for your discussion either here or in the MiltonSearch.com forums… Then, next week, I’ll post more thoughts on “The Constant” right here….

”Unstuck in time”
That phrase, cited in last night’s episode, comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, in which Billy Pilgrim finds himself toggling between time periods of his life, including a trip to an alien planet. In the process, Pilgrim nearly loses his mind. It’s a good touchstone for Desmond David Hume, who began tripping the time fantastic after Frank Lapidus flew his chopper into an ominous (electromagnetic?) thunderhead, part of an offshore ring of weird-science weather that seems to encircle the Island. This is my interpretation of what went down: Desmond’s Island-present consciousness was displaced by his Island-past consciousness. Then, that 1996 mind toggled back and forth through the entire episode while Island consciousness remained MIA until the end of the show. Am I getting this right? I’m counting on you to help a “brutha” out here.

The anti-love boat
We finally got to go aboard the freighter last night. Turns out it’s not exactly a Carnival cruise ship. Sayid and Desmond were greeted by two creepy-tough deckhands, whose smug smiles were about as cryptic as the Mona Lisa’s. What secrets do these two hold? After being thrown into sick bay, Desmond met a man strapped to a bed and also suffering from the time-warp blues. His name was George Minkowski — we’ve heard his voice on the satellite phone since the season premiere — and he shares the same last name as Hermann Minkowski, an egghead physicist who introduced the fourth dimension of time into standard 3-D models of reality to create ”Minkowski space-time.” One last thing about the freighter: It appears Ben’s spy (my bet: Michael) recently sabotaged the communication systems. No wonder everyone’s a little paranoid. What do you think the freighter’s true agenda is?

1996
Desmond’s flashbacks took place in 1996. We finally got a peek into his military days, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of that story; we still don’t know how he wound up in military prison. After receiving some cryptic instructions from Daniel Faraday, Desmond sought out the Island-past version of the quirky freighter physicist. Their encounter had a Marty McFly-Doc Brown meet-cute vibe to it. Faraday, we learned, is obsessed with time travel, and with Desmond’s help, he was able to fine-tune his consciousness-transfer/time-travel device. One unfortunate side effect: death by brain aneurism. Oxford-era Faraday told Desmond that in order to keep sane amid this uncontrollable quantum leaping, he needed to tether himself emotionally to something that bridges the past and present — a constant. Desmond, natch, picked Penelope, giving the episode an unabashed romantic vibe that had my wife in tears…

Poor Minkowski: He went the way of Faraday’s lab rat, Eloise, and died from a killer nosebleed. And I was looking forward to the Fisher Stevens experiment, too.

The Black Rock ledger
Continuing Lost’s renewed interest in everyone’s favorite beached slave ship in season 4, Desmond sought out Penelope’s father, Charles Widmore, in order to learn her whereabouts. He found Widmore at an auction house, bidding on the ledger to the Black Rock. Why was Widmore so interested in the ledger? I don’t think it’s a simple matter of treasure hunting. I think Widmore thinks the ledger includes info on the Island’s location. He wants either to find it or to prevent others from doing so. Another theory: Buying the ledger was designed to create the appearance of being interested in searching for the Black Rock. I wonder if he was setting that salvage vessel up to find the (faux) wreckage of Oceanic 815. Yes, I am saying that Widmore is one of the main puppet-master villains of Lost; he has traded off of forbidden knowledge of the future to build his wealth. In other words, he’s Biff from Back to the Future 2.

”The constant”
The show ended with an emotional climax as Desmond made good on his promise to Penny to call her on Christmas Eve, 2004. (I guess that means next week’s installment will be the very special Christmas episode of Lost. Also, isn’t there supposed to be a tsunami occurring in the Lostverse about this time?) Yet as I watched Des and Pen declare their love for each other, I couldn’t help wondering if we’re being set up for a tragic finale. Wouldn’t it stink if, in the end, just as Des and Pen were about to reunite, he suddenly collapsed from a killer nosebleed?

Okay, that’s all I got in me, (for now). Some other burning questions: What’s up with Faraday’s own spotty memory of his Desmond encounter? And what do you think his note about making Desmond his own constant meant?

What do you think, Milton?

Trial by perjury: Kate walked after Jack lied on the stand.

The mystery man in Kate’s flash-forward future turns out to be little Aaron; plus, she reaches an impasse with Sawyer and future Jack, and Locke goes crazier.

I usually jot down notes when I watch Lost. It’s pretty necessary when you do a job like this. Take last night’s episode, ”Eggtown.” As John Locke, not-so-benevolent dictator of Old New Otherton, prepared Ben’s breakfast during the opening sequence (two eggs, fruit, a copy of Philip K. Dick’s Valis), I wrote the following:

”Other books on the bookshelf: The Sheltering Sky and something by Arthur C. Clarke.”

”Interesting: Locke is now sleeping in Ben’s (hospital) bed — and here’s Ben mocking the former invalid for being more helpless (’lost’) than ever.”

”If Locke ran a bed and breakfast, what would he call it?”

But as I reviewed my chicken scratches after the episode was over, I realized that I had accumulated far more questions than observations, ideas, theories, and/or lame jokes. Why didn’t Kate want to bring her son to court? Is she trying to hide him from the world? Why did Jack tell the jury that only eight people survived the crash of Oceanic 815? According to the cover story of the Oceanic 6, who were the two who didn’t make it? Who does Miles really work for? How does Ben know him? What was the significance of Daniel Faraday’s guessing game with the cards? What happened to Frank Lapidus’ helicopter? Why doesn’t Jack want to see Kate’s child? Speaking of said child, how did Aaron (!) become Kate’s kid? What happened to Claire? And most of all: Why was the episode called ”Eggtown”?

It was one of those episodes of Lost where a few big answers came at the price of many, many more questions. If you’re keeping score at home, this is what we can scratch off the Active Mystery List. Island Kate isn’t pregnant. (I have to admit that I kinda forgot that was even a question.) The mystery man that Flash-Forward Kate referenced in the season finale last year was actually a mystery boy, Aaron. We now know — or at least reasonably assume — that Aaron is the fifth member of the Oceanic 6. And we now know what Hurley sounds like when he’s going number two.

”Eggtown” was technically a Kate flash-forward that revealed that the Oceanic 6 are nothing short of super-celebs. (Didn’t Ms. Austin look Hollywood glam? Evie cleans up nicely, doesn’t she?) But it was really all about bargaining and bartering, proposals and ultimatums. Perhaps the best way to recap the plot is by following the deals.

THE KATE-MILES PACT
Kate — perhaps truly enticed by Sawyer’s proposal of making the Island their permanent address — asked freaky freighter dude Miles Straum for info about what kind of life waited for her off the Island if she went back. The caustic ghost whisperer agreed to help her — if she could arrange a meeting with Ben. Kate accepted his terms. But to pull it off, she needed to secure Sawyer’s help, which led to some flirtatious banter between the two former Hydra humpers. Transaction status: Completed. Kate busted Miles out of his boathouse cell and into Ben’s basement cell. In exchange, Miles informed her that yep, the freighter folk knew that she was a wanted lass and that a long prison sentence loomed in her future. Miles’ suggestion: She should stay on the Island.

THE MILES-BEN PROPOSAL
The hotheaded hustler — tasked to track down über-Other Ben — told the Man With 1000 Passports that for exactly $3.2 million, he would tell his mysterious employer that he had found Ben dead. Ben asked the obvious questions: Why $3.2 million exactly? Why not 100 grand more? Heck, why not round it up to $3.5 mil? Miles dodged the question. When Ben clucked about not being able to scrounge up the dough, Miles got huffy: ”I know what you can do!” Transaction status: Pending. Given his being a prisoner and all, Ben asked for a week to figure out how to fulfill his end of the bargain.

JACK-KATE: WINK-WINK, NUDGE-NUDGE
Kate’s flash-forward dealt with her trial for her long list of crimes, beginning with killing her abusive father by blowing up their house. To help her cause, Kate’s lawyer asked Flash-Forward Jack (pre-grizzly-beard edition) to testify as a character witness. Curiously, Jack’s Bible-sworn testimony was a bunch of lies. He told the jury that only eight people survived the crash of Oceanic 815 and that Kate was a lifesaving Wonder Woman. Apparently, this fib is part of a larger cover story that the Oceanic 6 have agreed to stick to. Transaction status: Aborted. Kate cut Jack’s testimony short. Interesting how Kate had no problem using Sawyer to get what she wanted in the Island story but was unwilling to similarly exploit Jack in the flash-forward tale. Perhaps this was her way of loving Jack: Maybe she understands how painful it is for him be ”living a lie,” as Jack said in the season finale.

KATE AND HER MOTHER: GRANDMA’S GAMBIT
Kate’s ailing yet clinging-to-life mother — the key witness for the prosecution in her daughter’s trial — told Kate that she had no interest in testifying against her, though she seemed to suggest that the offer was contingent on being able to see the grandson she had never met. Transaction status: Spitefully rejected. Kate was still smarting over how Mom called the cops on her the last time they hooked up. But Kate’s mother seemed to suggest that she had forgiven her because of her ”castaway hero” part in the Oceanic 6 cover story. So much for unconditional love or forgiveness.

KATE’S PLEA DEAL
Give Mom a little credit: With Kate promising her nothing, she still backed out (or wheeled away) from testifying. Screwed, the prosecution offered a deal: 15 years in jail. Kate got panicky. Clearly, doing time would take her away from Aaron. But didn’t you get the sense that there was more to her resistance than just motherly attachment? I have this theory that the Oceanic 6 know something about future events and, more, know something about the role that they must play in them. Being in jail would obviously really screw that up. Just a theory. After Kate’s lawyer successfully spooked the prosecution with the prospect that a jury would probably side with her, the plea deal was knocked down to a mere 10 years’ probation — and a promise that Kate would never leave the state. Transaction status: Accepted. Kate jumped at the deal. Case closed — and stakes established for when she ultimately changes her mind and joins Jack in his ”We gotta go back!” quest. (At which time, I also predict that Kate will entrust Aaron to…her mother, finally completing their reconciliation.)

KATE AND JACK: THE DATING CONTRACT
In one of the episode’s final scenes, Jack confessed to Kate that his I-don’t-love-you stance on the stand was a lie. Kate got all weak in the knees and asked if he wanted to come back to her place. But Jack chickened out and said he had to get back to the hospital. Kate called him out: She said the real reason he was backing away was that he can’t deal with Aaron. Transaction status: Deliberating. Jack didn’t deny Kate’s claim. What’s up with that? I bet it either has something to do with the fact that Kate’s child is his — what? — half nephew? Maybe Jack can’t deal with Aaron because he reminds him of Claire — and if Claire met an unfortunate end on the Island, no doubt Doc Savior Complex blames himself.

All in all, I thought ”Eggtown” was the Lost equivalent of a sacrifice bunt. It was all about moving all the simmering subplots forward so the next episodes can drive them home. (Prime examples: the allegedly-MIA-chopper intrigue; the Jin-Sun discussion about their post-Island home — both set up for future episodes.) For our indulgence, we were treated with some tantalizing new questions and some payoffs on some long-standing Kate mysteries.

Some quick hits:

Philip K. Dick’s Valis In this trippy novel, one of Dick’s best and most personal, ”Valis” stands for ”Vast Acting Living Intelligence System.” Sounds like the way Locke or Ben might regard the Island.

Locke putting the grenade in Miles’ mouth Pretty cool — and kinda ridiculous. Locke suffered some challenges to his leadership in this episode, including a crisis of self-confidence. I guess stuffing an explosive into a bad guy’s mouth is one way to feel like a man again. Sawyer is right: Locke is going Kurtz on us. The horror…the horror…

The Faraday-Charlotte card game The task involved Daniel correctly guessing what three overturned cards were. But the key line there is C.S. Lewis asking him, ”What do you remember?” My interpretation: Daniel Faraday is a time traveler — or thinks he is a time traveler — and he’s recovering memories of his past experience on the Island. Speaking of time travel:

The meaning of the title ”Eggtown” I researched many options, include the significance to mythological ideas like the ”world egg” and the ”cosmic egg.” There could be a connection to the book Cracking the Cosmic Egg, too. But inspired by Locke’s conspicuous mention of killing a chicken, I decided to investigate the Wikipedia write-up on the chicken and the egg. It has some interesting things to say about the theory of causality and ”the Grandfather Paradox,” two important ideas in time-travel lore — and that’s where we’re headed next week.

Kate and Sawyer making out I think that was the last time. Don’t you? How can she crawl back to him after he called her out like that?

I turn this over to you, Milton: What did you think of ”Eggtown?”

– by Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly

The Other Sayid: His past life as a soldier and torturer still haunts him. In another devastating flash-forward, Sayid, who has become an assassin working for Ben, kills a woman he loves; on the Island, Kate goes back to Sawyer.

Lost is not kind to lovers, especially on Valentine’s Day. For the second straight year, our beloved crypto-drama has aired an episode on February 14. And for the second straight year, Cupid was kicked in the nuts. Last year, in the trippy time-travel tale ”Flashes Before Your Eyes,” Desmond toggled back to his breakup with Penelope, just to break up with her all over again. Last night, in ”The Economist,” Flash-Forward Sayid fell for a woman he shouldn’t have, and ultimately broke her heart — with two bullets to the chest. (To be fair, the femme fatale shot him first.) These things happen when you play secret-agent assassin for Germany’s most morally ambiguous veterinarian — Benjamin Linus. Yes, you read that right. In his off-Island future as a member of the Oceanic 6, the former Iraqi torturer smokes European fat cats for über-Other Ben, who in his off-Island future has a croaky, low phone voice (All the better to delay the last-scene reveal of my true identity, my dear!), runs a pet hospital in Berlin, and manages a global conspiracy on the side. The Man With 1000 Passports has a whole list of bad people he wants dead, ”people [who] don’t deserve our sympathies,” as he told Sayid. Note to Ben’s customers: Pay that doggy-grooming bill on time!

The episode’s title, ”The Economist,” was a reference to the job allegedly held by Sayid’s current target, a powerful mystery man whose name went conspicuously unmentioned. It also suggested a key for reading the story. This was an episode about ”bosses” and ‘’senior management” and the minions who toil for them; about trade negotiations and merger proposals; about recession fears and hostile-takeover threats. It was a snapshot look at the information economy that shapes everything on Lost, one where secrets and inside information are valuable currencies, with hostages and guns running close behind. It was also an episode about the internal corruption that occurs when romantic idealists are forced to become cutthroat businessmen. (Literally.)

Who’s The Boss? Or where’s the boss?
That’s what Locke was asking as he led his tribe of freighter fraidy cats to where Jacob’s cabin should have been, only to discover that his house of sprits had disappeared from its circle of ash/salt/kitty litter. Abandoned by his Island god, Locke looked, yes, lost, and banged-up Ben was quick to jump all over that: ”He’s looking for someone to tell him what to do next,” the devilish Other told Locke’s disgruntled flock. With Hurley showing signs of instigating a shareholder rebellion over the Charlotte-hostage issue, CEO Locke squelched the dissidence and shored up his office by playing the fear card, brow-beating Hurley with some tough talk about the cost of compromise. Did Flash-Forward Hurley’s regret over choosing Locke over Jack begin here?

The Negotiating Committee
Meanwhile, in Happy Helicopter Valley, the Jack Pack negotiated the terms of rescue with freighter fellas Daniel Faraday (twitchy physicist), Frank Lapidus (bushy-faced pilot), and Miles Straum (angry young ghost whisperer), who, of course, may not be there to rescue them at all. The shifty trio made it clear they weren’t flying anywhere without C.S. Lewis (Charlotte edition), so Sayid stepped up and said he’d hike to the Dharma barracks and negotiate her release. Jack wanted to come, but given how the good doctor tried to shoot Locke in the face the last time they squared off, Sayid thought he should stay behind, lest the deal-making devolve into one of those protracted bargaining battles marked by phlegmatic rhetoric, heavy-handed tactics, and unreasonable demands over digital downloads.

Control Freak Jack got a proxy at the table, however, by sending Kate with Sayid and Miles. He felt her presence would give Sayid more leverage, as Locke wouldn’t dare attempt any underhanded knife-in-back stuff, not with moony Sawyer there to play bodyguard. Yeah, you could say it was a contrived way to set up the possibility of more sex scenes between the old Hydra humpers. Still, it felt like classic Jack emotional dunderheadedness. You could tell Kate wasn’t thrilled with Jack treating her like a pawn on a chessboard, and my hunch is that what we really saw in the moment was the beginning of her dawning realization that as much as she may dig Jack’s cheese, he’s got a lot more getting over himself to do before they can have a flash-forward future together, much less swap valentines and spit.

Acquisitions…
Arriving at the Dharma barracks — or, more recently, New Otherton — Sayid, Miles, and Kate found Hurley tied up in the closet, allegedly left behind by Locke. It was a trap, one that exploited Sayid’s soft spot for his friends and loved ones, a fatal flaw that makes both him and Hurley the most easily manipulated of the castaways. I thought Sayid should have seen through this ruse, and his failure to do so continued a dubious tradition of super-soldier Sayid not living up to his Republican Guard pedigree. (No wonder we beat those guys in three days.) Maybe I’m selling him short. Sayid was probably content to let Locke play and win his little mousetrap games, just as long as he sealed the deal he had come to make. I think he knew he would: His package was much too appealing. He offered Locke a hostage swap — Miles for Charlotte — plus himself. Sayid had come around to Locke’s belief that the freighter people are nothing but bad news. His master plan, he told Locke, was to infiltrate the freighter and gather intel — corporate espionage. Locke was sold.

…and Mergers
Meanwhile, as upper management haggled in the billiard room, Kate and Sawyer caucused in Ben’s bedroom. The shaggy rogue explained that he has no intention of leaving the Island because there was nothing but a prison sentence waiting for him back in the real world, and since Kate was looking at the same fate, hey, why not stay with him? Kate was dubious: ”How long, Sawyer? How long do you think we can play house?” Saywer was bold: ”Why don’t we find out?” I was impressed with the former con man’s risky emotional frankness. I was also intrigued by the fact that this scene took place in Ben’s bedroom, with all those tribal masks all over the place. Hmmmm…honesty and masks — hey, that sounds like a possible allusion to another work by Charlotte’s namesake, C.S. Lewis: Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the mythical Cupid and Psyche love story, told from the point of view of Psyche’s jealous sister. In the book, Lewis argues that you can’t commune with the divine or experience supernatural possibilities until you drop your corrupt false self — your mask — and get your moral character in order. (Yo, Locke: Now you know why you keep losing your mystical connection to the Island. You’re just not good enough.) Anyhoo, Sawyer’s you-complete-me pitch may have swayed Kate, because she didn’t return to Happy Helicopter Valley with Sayid and Charlotte. The ”I blew it” look that passed across Jack’s face when Sayid told him the news was pretty priceless; it reminded me of House of Meetings, Martin Amis’ novel about brothers in love with the same woman, who go from being stuck in a Soviet gulag to struggling to return to ordinary life — very Oceanic 6. But I’m probably digressing.

Petty Cash Drawer
I’m betting that the scene you’ll be talking about the most on the message boards — besides the Ben flash-forward reveal — is the nifty moment when Sayid discovered Ben’s secret stash of passports, foreign currency, and suits. Clearly, Ben does a lot of traveling for work. (Remember, the Others do have that off-Island company, Mittelos Biosciences; presumably, Ben is the boss.) Long ago, I wondered if the Others had an airstrip on the Island, so I wouldn’t be surprised to discover Ben has a corporate jet, too — plus a hangar full of old Oceanic airplane parts. You know, leftovers from the false evidence that the Others planted in the Sunda Trench. (Just a theory.) Now, if you’re going to go all crazy on me and claim that the multiple passports and husky-voiced Flash-Forward Ben are evidence that there multiple Bens in the world thanks to alternate universe/wormhole theory, I’m in! (FYI: The name on the Ben passport Sayid examined looked to be Dean Moriarty — a character from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Moriarty is also the name of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis. Just so you know.)

Deficit Spending
Another scene I bet you’ll be going nutty over was the one where Daniel Faraday did his rocket experiment, which concluded with his admittedly ”beyond weird” discovery of an apparent 31-minute time differential between freighter reality and Island reality, where time seems to pass more slowly. What does this mean? I don’t know — but I immediately went to barnesandnoble.com and purchased Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time so you guys can borrow it, read it, and then summarize it for me while I eat grapes and watch Big Brother. Seriously, I’m crunching theories, but it takes time for me to do quantum physics. It takes me mere seconds, however, to do some cheap biblical analysis! Did you see the numbers on Daniel’s clocks? One said 3:16, while the other said 2:45. As it happens, Daniel 2:45 is the culmination of the story in which exiled Daniel earned an exalted place in King Nebuchadnezzar’s court by interpreting a dream concerning the future of Babylon and how ”the fourth kingdom will be a divided kingdom.” Hey — that sounds like the fourth season of Lost! Meanwhile, Daniel 3:16 is part of the famous story of how Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in the fiery furnace but were saved by God. How might that apply to Lost? Well, thematically, the story deals with three men who refused to abandon their spiritual beliefs and bow down before a false idol — a story that stands in stark contrast to Sayid’s flash-forward arc.

The Sell-Out
In the opening scenes of ”The Economist,” we were given two quick, quiet moments that re-established two very important things about Sayid. First, we saw him praying. Sayid, if you recall, is a spiritual man, a Muslim. Second, we saw him tenderly shut dead Naomi’s eyes and examine her bracelet, inscribed with ”N., I’ll be with you always, R.C.” Sayid, recall, is a romantic (see: Nadia; Shannon), and I bet that his desire that Naomi be sent home for a proper burial appealed to his religious convictions and sentimentality. Yet in his flash-forward future, Sayid ain’t exactly living according to those ideals. In fact, like James Bond, his license-to-kill existence makes a mockery of the sanctity of life and love. Sayid remains sufficiently decent in the future that when it was finally time to move against the Economist, he came clean with Elsa, as he had genuinely fallen for her. But then she pulled a Casino Royale on him: It turned out she was an undercover lover, too, seducing him in hopes of smoking out Ben’s identity. Elsa was Sayid’s mirror twin, and to make sure we got it, Sayid smashed a mirror reflection of his Lady From Shanghai doppelgänger before popping some caps into her.

After Sayid stumbled into Ben’s safe house/vet office for some first aid, his boss mocked him for his weakness. Then Ben dropped this intriguing tidbit: ”Need I remind you what happened the last time you thought with your heart instead of your gun.” Sayid’s response was even more mysterious: ”You used that girl to recruit me into killing for you.” But Ben the master manipulator hit him where it hurts the most: the bottom line. ”Do you want to protect your friends or not?” Sayid looked like a man over a barrel. What did he say about Ben earlier in the episode? ”The day I start trusting him is the day I sell my soul.”

Welcome to Hell, Sayid. Now get that game face on — there’s work to be done.

That’s what I got. Do you have a theory about the identity of the Economist? Who is the ”R.C.” on Naomi’s bracelet? (Regina the freighter chick?) Who are these names on Ben’s assassination list?

What do you think, Milton?

– By Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly

WHIZ KIDNEY: Locke survived a bullet thanks to his missing organ

Chute First, Ask Questions Later: As Locke flees with his rebel tribe, four crew members from the freighter land, each with a mysterious past and dubious motives

I have been told by people who also received preview screeners that they thought last night’s episode of Lost, ”Confirmed Dead,” was flawed. The opening-sequence flashback — in which the wreckage of Oceanic 815 was found on the ocean floor — was a narrative cheat because it relied on perspectives not known to its character. Similarly, the moment when sisterless secret agent Naomi recalled receiving her Island infiltration orders from castaway-denier Matthew Abbaddon played fast and loose with flashback logic because…well, because Naomi was dead. (Maybe consciousness seeps out slowly on Soul Trap Island.) If Frank Lapidus really landed the freighter chopper as he claimed, how come he woke up so far away from it? (Maybe there’s a story to be told there.) And come on: Isn’t the whole business of Ben manipulating Locke with the promise of Island secrets getting just a little bit old? (Maybe…nah, you’re right about that one.)

Bah! Mere quibbles. For me, ”Confirmed Dead” was downright alive with fascinating new characters, mind-blowing new possibilities, and exciting new theory fodder. Like this one: I am utterly convinced Charlotte Staples Lewis has been to the Island before. Maybe it was her giggly delight as she splashed about in the Island’s inland waters. True, the would-be freighter savior (or devil) could have been celebrating the mere fact that she had survived her harrowing arrival. But there was something more to her reaction — something that reminded me of another fantastical tale about an enchanted homecoming. The book is Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis, the sequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The story starts with a chapter called ”The Island,” in which the Pevensie kids return to Narnia via a mysterious island marked by ancient ruins and odd creatures. First thing they do: play in the water. Maybe I’m just fishing again. But if you think I’m wrong, then you owe me a better explanation why Charlotte Staples Lewis has been assigned a name so conspicuously similar to the author’s unfurled handle, Clive Staples Lewis.

(Don’t roll your eyes at me — especially since we’re only getting started! I spent 90 minutes researching Apocalypse Now and by extension the complete canon of Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad for Lost resonance thanks to Sawyer’s snarky ”Colonel Kurtz” crack. I found some, too: Check out The Shadow-Line, Chance, The Inheritors, and The Secret Agent. And for those who want to take me up on my C.S. Lewis challenge, consider investigating The Space Trilogy. C’mon, people! Support your local library!)

But for the more casual, less geeky Lostophiles who’d rather not engage the show with their English degrees (what else are they for?), the episode was equally worthy of watercooler kibitzing. For example, it looks like a monster more troublesome than Smokey might be setting its sights on the castaways — a certain green-eyed bugger named jealousy. The Jack-Kate-Juliet love triangle began to simmer anew. Ben mercilessly taunted Sawyer by poking at his I’m-not-as-good-as-Jack sore spots. And Locke was quietly rocked by Hurley’s disclosure that he, too, could dial up Jacob’s ghost shack. I don’t think Mr. Mystic likes having to share the office of Island high priest with anyone. Hurley’s recent flash-forward hinted at a looming rift with Locke; might a disagreement over properly interpreting Jacob be the cause?

But topping the talking points list: that WTF? opening sequence, in which remote-controlled cameras belonging to a salvage vessel called Christiane 1 stumbled upon Oceanic 815 — plane, passengers, and all — in the Sunda Trench of the South Pacific. (The backstory for Christiane 1 — which was actually hunting for the Black Rock — was recently told in an online story called ”Find 815.”) Does this wreckage prove that powerful forces are trying to hide the existence of the castaways — or does it prove that we’re dealing with alternate-reality theory?

Then there’s the Freighter Four, whose imminent arrival in last week’s season premiere divided the castaways into two tribes: the Jack Pack, cautiously confident that the freighter is their ticket off the Island, and the freighter-fearing Locke Lot. (Or the Ben Bunch, if you share Sawyer’s belief that the seemingly leashed Other is still pulling the strings. Killer line: ”It’s only a matter of time before he gets us, Johnny. And I bet he’s already figured out how he’s gonna do it.”). The Freighter Four fell to earth, like the castaways [or Icarus? Lucifer? David Bowie? Pick one — we're interactive!]; they had to bail after their helicopter encountered electromagnetic turbulence in the airspace around the Island. Lost has sometimes fumbled the needle when injecting new blood into the narrative. (See: the Tailies in season 2, Nikki and Paulo in season 3.) But here, the show has seemingly scored some primo plasma. The casting of Charlotte (Rebecca Mader), Lapidus (the Lawnmower Man himself, Jeff Fahey), Daniel Faraday (an appealingly quirky Jeremy Davies), and Miles Strom (Kenneth Leung, making a strong impression) totally worked for me, while their intriguing backstories left me jonesing for more. And did you notice that each one corresponded to a member of the Fantastic Four, another quartet of curious characters who fell from the heavens after bumping through a weird-science squall of cosmic rays? For purposes of both analysis and recap, let’s take each of them in order of appearance:

Name: Daniel Faraday
Island introduction: Discovered by Jack and Kate in the jungle shortly after Strom shoved his chicken butt from the chopper. (”Hey, genius! Go!”) J&K were clearly puzzled by Daniel’s jittery quirkiness — and deeply alarmed by the poorly hidden pistol on his belt and the gas mask in his luggage.
Occupation: Socially awkward physicist, though ”physicist” is too small a word for the eccentric egghead. ”I guess you could call me a physicist,” he later told Sayid. ”I don’t like to be pigeonholed.”
Fantastic Four analogue: Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), socially awkward physicist, whose body is as elastic as Faraday’s view of himself.
Name game: Daniel was an Old Testament prophet who survived the lions’ den and interpreted dreams for Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. Michael Faraday was a pioneering scientist in the fields of electricity and magnetism. Remember when Daniel noted how the sunlight ”doesn’t scatter quite right” on the Island? Exactly the kind of anomalous phenomenon Michael Faraday might have noticed.
Backstory intrigue: According to Naomi, Faraday is a ”headcase.” We got a taste of that in his flashback. While watching news coverage of Oceanic 815’s (faux?) discovery, Faraday, dressed in jammies and robe, began to tremble with emotions he couldn’t explain — as if experiencing a deeply disturbing bout of déjà vu. It reminded me of ”Flashes Before Your Eyes,” when Island Desmond projected his mind through time and left Flashback Desmond feeling seriously discombobulated. Is Daniel destined to dance the time-warp shuffle, too?

Name: Miles Strom
Occupation: Ghostbuster + hustler = Ghosthustler! Miles can commune with the spirits of the deceased; he vetted Jack and Kate by psychically interviewing Naomi, whose mortal remains he dismissed as mere ”meat.” I wonder what Miles is going to make of the holy trinity of Island spectral entities: Jacob, Christian Shephard, and Ghost Walt.
Island introduction: Found on the windswept rocks near the shoreline by Jack, Kate, and Faraday. He appeared to be unconscious but was playing possum and popped up with gun drawn. Remember Naomi’s dying words last week? According to Strom, ”Tell my sister I love her” was code for ”Ugh! They got me! Bring weapons!” Hence, Strom’s haughty guardedness.
Name games: ”Strom” is an anagram for ‘’storm,” which befits his blustery personality. But ”Miles Strom” sounds very close to ”maelstrom,” a wickedly strong whirlpool. (Shall we plum Edgar Allen Poe’s ”Descent Into the Maelstrom,” about a whirlpool that destroys a fishing vessel?) (No, we shall not.)
Fantastic Four analogue: Johnny Storm, the hotheaded Human Torch, as fiery as Strom’s temper and wit. When Sayid suspiciously inquired as to why Miles and Daniel weren’t surprised to find the castaways alive if the outside world considered them dead, Strom sarcastically responded, ”Oh my God! You guys were on Oceanic 815! Wow! That better?” Even Sayid seemed to smirk at that one.
Backstory intrigue: Strom was hired to scare away the ghost of a murder victim (a drug dealer, it seems) who was haunting his grandmother’s house. The eerie exterminator plugged in a portable cold generator (chilled air flushes out lurking spirits, according to poltergeist lore), meditated himself into a twitchy state of mind, and then shook down the specter for his secret stash of cash. Surely Dr. Stantz would not approve, though Dr. Venkman might. Creepy, hilarious, so very cool. (Is Scammy Strom greedy enough to resort to grave desecration if Nikki and Paulo blab to him about the diamonds buried with them? Would Lost risk provoking our N&P-hating wrath to tell us that tale?)

Name: Charlotte Staples Lewis
Occupation: Cultural anthropologist.
Island introduction: After her splash-about, Charlotte was discovered by Locke’s crew as they were hiking to the old Dharma barracks. She was stunned to find them alive — or at least pretended to be — but then grew weary of Locke’s third-degree and bossiness. ”Me Tarzan. Me survive Ben bullet because of missing kidney, convenient plotting, and Magic Healing Island. You White Devil Freighter Woman come to ruin my good thing. You be prisoner and clean the Dharma latrine.” Then Ben grabbed Karl’s gun and shot her. So much for the homecoming party!
Backstory intrigue: Bribing her way onto a hush-hush archaeology dig in the deserts of Tunisia, Dr. Lewis discovered a polar bear skeleton (!) and a Hydra Station collar buried in the rocky soil. Charlotte’s face lit up; clearly, she had a hunch — and perhaps feverish hope — about what she was going to find. (My skeleton theory: Dharma was using the polar bears as guinea pigs for teleportation and/or time-travel experiments. Why? To invalidate the God-killing theory of evolution by planting false evidence in Earth’s fossil record, of course!)
Fantastic Four analogue: Susan Storm, the FF’s token female, whose ”hard light” powers were handy for conjuring bullet-repelling shields and making herself invisible. Wanna bet Charlotte is hiding something about herself — something that’s right in front of us but we can’t see? Something besides a bulletproof vest? More on this in a minute.

Name: Frank Lapidus
Occupation: Pilot; also ”a drunk,” according to Naomi. And since he sports the required accessory for spiritually wasted TV boozers — a scruffy beard — she must be right. (But since it’s only a small beard, maybe he’s only a little boozer.)
Island introduction Found by Jack’s crew. Despite the electrical storm, Lapidus managed to land the helicopter, the sight of which caused Jack, Kate, and Sayid to beam like kids on Christmas morning.
Name game: Lapidus is a type of granite.
Fantastic Four analogue: Ben Grimm, who piloted the team’s ill-fated spaceflight through a storm of cosmic rays and was transformed into the sad-eyed, rock-encrusted Thing for his trouble.
Backstory intrigue: While watching coverage of the Oceanic 815 salvage, Lapidus became convinced the corpse in a pilot’s uniform couldn’t really have been the plane’s pilot because he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Of course, we have reason to know he’s correct. After all, we saw the pilot get eviscerated by the Monster in the first episode. But how could Lapidus be so certain? Because he used to work with Capt. Seth Norris (Heroes’ Greg Grunberg in a still-photo cameo) at Oceanic Airways. Lapidus, in fact, was originally scheduled to sit in Oceanic 815’s captain’s chair. (Did you try calling the number on Lapidus’ TV screen? It’s 888-548-0034 — and it works.)

Clearly, the Freighter Four have more secrets to spill, not to mention their own private agendas. But we were told their primary common objective for coming to the Island. Their job — initiated by Abbaddon, the creepy suit who last week harassed Flash-Forward Hurley at the mental hospital — isn’t to rescue the castaways but to abduct Ben. (”Their mission is a man,” to borrow the tagline from Saving Private Ryan, which featured a brilliant performance by Jeremy Davies as a courage-challenged soldier.)

While the Jack Pack wrapped their mind around that revelation, the Locke Lot was on the verge of screwing things up for the Freighter Four by assassinating their quarry. The über-Other begged for his life by pulling the old I’ll-tell-you-secrets trick, but Locke called his bluff with a dead-serious question encoded with a slight wink at the audience: ”What is the Monster?” Ben looked baffled, then said, ”I don’t know.” Locke cocked the gun, and with no choice but to come clean, Ben blurted out Charlotte’s complete résumé. How does he know so much about Freighter Girl? ”Because I have a man on their boat!”

So who could it be? The safe bet would be ex-castaway Michael: If you’ve been reading the press about the new season of Lost, you know that at some point Harold Perrineau will be returning to the show. But what if Ben’s lying? What if his spy isn’t a man but a woman — the same woman he just tried to kill? What if he and Charlotte are in cahoots and that shooting business was all a ruse — another move in Ben’s 20,000-steps-ahead-of-everyone Island chess game? Theories! I have tons more of them, including the logic-tortured argument that Charlotte is the daughter of Ben’s Dharma-days gal pal Annie. (Do the research — they look a lot alike!)

But it’s time for me to turn the space over to you for your thoughts and quibbles. Did you dig Superhero Jack as much as I did? (”I don’t know, Miles — how stupid are you?”) Do you think something dark is brewing inside Sawyer? How did you like Locke’s disclosure that he’s taking orders from Ghost Walt?

Your thoughts, Milton?

By Jeff Jensen