I’ve liked Said Taghmaoui in everything I’ve seen him in since his great performance in “Three Kings.” If he’s dead, it’s a shame… I was excited to find out he was joining the cast this season because–like Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Lance Reddick (Matthew Abbadon), Fionnula Flanagan (Eloise Hawking), Francois Chau (Dr. Chang/Candle/Halliwax, Andrew Divoff (Mikhail), April Grace (Bea Klugh), Alexandra Krosney (young Eloise) David S. Lee (middle-aged Charles) and a slew of other supporting characters–he was a total LOST casting choice. His presence just FIT, you know. As far as I’m concerned, casting is of the utmost importance when it comes to a show like this in order to continually draw the audience into the mystery, the intrigue, the surrealism. Lost has hit and miss.

I’ve written on this site before about many of the misses… I can’t reiterate enough how let down I was in season 3 by most of the casting choices for the Others. These were the whisperers, the omniscient beings, the island natives, the babystealers! the pirates, the walt kidnappers! the torch bearers, the beard-wearing doublecrossers, the signalers of black smoke… they had this unbelievable cachet, their motives–cloaked in secrecy–made their actions all the more frightening and unpredictable. And when it came time to actually meet them what did we get…? Not the cold calculating masterminds we had imagined but something closer to the cast of Desperate Housewives!! We got book clubs!! We got the milquetoast Danny Pickett and Wife and Mary Poppins and Juliet and that guy with the beard?! Tom?!! He’s not so bad afterall! He’s hospitable and accommodating and he vacations in New York with his off-island booty call Rico, isn’t that so terrifying? Godd@mn… all those casting decisions left me furious.

Okay, breath… i’m ranting… The point is, it won’t be the first time I’ve been upset about an interesting character dying… Mr. Eko got killed off prematurely, Walt had to go, Abbadon dead this season… And I’m sure it won’t be the last… But like I said, who said he’s dead? This is Lost…

Because of all the sick Ben-Lovers out there the writers changed course a bit to keep Emerson on the show.

But that’s okay. In the end the only way Ben Bad Bad Ben can redeem himself for all his slaughters and machinations is to do, a “sacrifice” like John.

It’s still a mistake, though. Lost will be forever off-kilter because of this cave-in by the writers.

Danielle was always meant to die young, it was simply a matter of when — by dying when and how she did, she acted as a catalyst for Ben to develop as a character by owning his guilt and correcting his path, a parallel to what happened with Boone and Locke in Further Instructions.

I am guessing the war that Widmore said is coming will be the center of Season Six and the resolution of the war will be the finale. The remainder of this season will be to establish who is on which side in the war, and what the war is being fought over.

One thing Lost isn’t and that is predictable.

One of the unique things about this season is they are way to far ahead in production (actually they are totally done now) to be reading fan comments and making decisions based on that.

Also, we just had three back to back character driven episodes so I don’t understand your statement about going to fast. They have always given the fans at least 2 mythology heavy episodes in every season.

Plus we had scenes, a lot of scenes, were Ben and Locke were walking to were they needed to go, on the dock then through the jungle, which seemed to slow the pace of the show done and gave us some very intriguing dialogue.

I think your major complaint is with Caesar and the fact that he got killed, also you don’t seem to like that people are raving about the episode. that is fine, but just about all the characters are expendable, like reading a Stephen King book, and don’t get confused with the reason he got killed, it had nothing to do with fan opinion (unlike nicky and paulo).