That’s right- Our beloved Jin will be reprising the role of Chin Ho Kelly in the upcoming remake.

Perhaps Kim wanted to stay in Hawaii close to his burger joint… The reboot will be brought to us by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci from Fringe Fame and also from CSI NY.
It is too soon to speculate on the show as the part of Detective Steve Mcgarret has not been cast as of yet… With all our castaways taking jobs on new shows it solidifies the reality of the end of LOST.

Whats worse is that none of these shows can really give us LOST fans what we’ve been obsessing over about LOST. Let’s hope Disney doesnt make a mockery out of the best show in TV history when LOST is over- and lets also hope we can watch our Lost actors play parts that wont disappoint simply because they aren’t on the Island…

http://www.TheSanatorium.com

The latest installment from entertainment’s resident spoiler queen gives us some insight into what to expect from relationships formed and forming. Here is a rundown of what we should expect and  :

1- APPARENTLY IT IS DOUBTFUL WE WILL SEE A JACK/KATE REUNION THIS SEASON

2- WE WON’T BE SEEING A JACK AND JULIET REUNION EITHER

3- WE MAY SEE SOME LONGING LOOKS BETWEEN KATE AND SAWYER BUT WE WON’T BE SEEING ANY TRYSTS

4- JULIET AND SAWYER WILL REMAIN A COUPLE AND WE WILL BE APPARENTLY BE SEEING A LOT MORE OF THIS

5- THE WEDDING WHICH WE HAVE HEARD IS TAKING PLACE IS SUPPOSEDLY GOING TO BE A FLASHBACK TO THE WEDDING OF JIN AND SUN, WHO WON’T BE REUNITING UNTIL CLOSER TO THE FINALE

Source : Eonline

But, with “He’s Our You” looming mere hours away, I do think I have a few keen insights to glean from “Namaste,” impacting Lost’s past, present, and future and very much befitting a show with time travel at its core.

Like for example, notice that the ever-instructional Dr. Chang is seen wearing a Swan-logo lab coat in the new-DHARMA-worker orientation video in an episode in which we see Radzinsky actually designing the not-yet-constructed Swan station? Mere continuity blooper or…something more? (*dum-dum-DUMMMM!*)

That’s why I’m paid the big bucks…oh, wait, I’m a volunteer here. Blast!

It’s a big rock finish, a big finish…the plane is going down. It’s a Tin-Pan Alley grande finale, just seconds from the ground!

There are so many things on Lost we still don’t know, but one thing of which I’m 100% certain is that, if I’m ever in aeronautical peril, I want Frank Lapidus at the controls. Can that man fly or what? Notwithstanding the freak “leaf on the wind” outcome of his Ajira copilot, has he ever lost a passenger…even one? Not that we’ve seen in two completely insane chopper landings and one deeply adverse airliner set-down. Not since Catch-22′s bomber-pilot, Orr, have we seen any pilot so adept at crashing without casualties.

I mean, OK, he got the assist from the Others’ foreknowledge in building the runway on Hydra Island back at the beginning of Season 3, but it’s still pretty damned impressive. And, by the way, that suspenseful landing sequence gave us confirmation for the slow about said runway which the astute among us had picked up episodes ago.

Which, in turn, also verifies that the Others have had the aforementioned foreknowledge of the landing of Ajira 316 for several years…which we also already knew. I’ve been banging on about it for weeks now.

See what I mean about these bridge episodes?

Still, that was one exciting landing sequence. Serious kudos to Jack Bender for directing a scene that actually had us on the edge of our seats even though we knew exactly how it would end. That’s talent right there. There’s a reason he’s this show’s go-to director, you know?

(Side note: Anyone wanting to see more excellent work from both Mr. Bender and Lost’s own Kelvin Inman, the inimitable Clancy Brown, could do far worse than to spend about 24 hours of their life watching the brilliant—but tragically killed mid-cliffhanger—HBO series, Carnivàle. Layered storytelling, rich symbolism and allegory, slow-building creepy wrongness…it’s a Lost fan’s delight!)

And, in all fairness, we did get one tantalizing detail out of the landing sequence: hearing the Numbers on the plane’s radio as they were coming in to land. Someone at some point between the Lostaways finally stopping Rousseau’s recording in “Through the Looking Glass” circa 12/24/04 and Ajira 316′s landing in early 2007 actually turned back on the repeating broadcast of the Numbers that’s caused so much mischief over the years since the DHARMA Initiative started the broadcasts. I’ve seen some recappers say that it was either a continuity goof or else proof that some major alteration had occurred in the Lost timeline, but I’m not buying it when such a simple explanation functions at least as well. I like to keep my Occam’s Razor sharp.

Moles and trolls, moles and trolls, work, work, work, work, work. We never see the light of day. We plan this thing for weeks and all they want to do is study. I’m disgusted.

At long, long last we finally got to meet the storied Radzinsky…he of Blast Door Map fame, responsible for one of the biggest “TiVo moments” in the history of television. And he’s kind of an ass. The way he was acting toward Jin kind of makes feel OK with knowing that the station he was designing would eventually become his prison, then his mausoleum. It also makes one wonder if being moody was a requirement to staff the Flame station given the proclivities of its subsequent Other inhabitant, Mikhail.

But, clearly, the man had a grade-A cranium or else he wouldn’t have been designing a station with the ability to harness sufficient electromagnetic energy to cause an implosion large enough to leave this crater, cause passing jetliners to crash, and actually unstick the triggerer of its fail-safe mechanism in time.

Also, clearly, Radzinsky is going to be completely instrumental to the plot at least until the end of this season. If anyone’s going to be able to help (the seemingly MIA) Faraday and Chang beam a message to the future with 1970s technology, it’s Radzinsky. Likewise, he’s also obviously going to be the recipient of a hefty dose of future knowledge one way or another. Jin already piqued Radzinsky’s suspicions by asking about mysterious plane crashes that never happened, and both Sawyer (er, ‘scuse me, LaFleur) and Radzinsky isn’t dumb enough to fail to notice that both “LaFleur” and Jin were treating their captured “Hostile” in a rather unorthodox manner.

He’s onto ‘em and he’s going to get to the bottom of things, mark my words. And hey, if anyone’s going to be able to grok something as quantumly-insane as time travel, it’s going to be the biggest of the big brains among the DHARMA Initiative, don’t you think?

Only someone with foreknowledge would have designed the protocols of the Swan Station exactly the way they ended up, complete with fake quarantine procedures and a blacklight-rich lockdown mode, the better for Locke to see his mysterious map about 27 years later. This guy is going to be up to his eyeballs in “The Incident,” even if he appears to survive it long enough to recruit and train Kelvin before finally having his spirit crushed by the inexorable gears of predestination.

Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.

And speaking of predestination, poor Sayid hasn’t gotten the memo about the Grandfather-Paradox-free nature of time travel in the Lost universe quite yet. Our unlucky hero had the misfortune to be placed far enough away from Jack, Kate, and Hurley that he wasn’t getting rounded up by Sheriff LaFleur and passed off as a new DI recruit. The Island is being a perverse little land-mass in this, just as it is in seemingly-capriciously separating Jin and Sun by a few decades.

You can see it in Sayid’s eyes the second young, comparatively innocent, Ben Linus introduces himself while rather sweetly bringing Sayid a sandwich…even if he forgot the mustard. He’s going to go all Sarah Connor and try to prevent his dire future from happening, and thereby become extremely frustrated when he’s inevitably unable to do so thanks to the fact that we know Ben Linus manages to live at least until early 2007.

It’s actually enough to make me fear for Sayid’s safety. Team Darlton has a way of knocking off a major character or two every time we get to a season finale and trying to kill off DHARMA brat and the Others’ answer to Harry Potter isn’t likely to endear him to either of the major factions on the Island as of 1977. What’s more, Sayid’s story is looking more and more tragic and closer and closer to an end. Literature has never been kind to those who struggle against prophecy, now has it.

It also would explain why 2005-vintage Ben is so very keen to use Sayid as a killer catspaw later in his subjective timeline, but tragically earlier in Sayid’s. Time travel, as the man said, is a bitch…and this particular bitch has been spilling her guts to young Ben so that he “always has a plan” by the time he meets the still-clueless 815ers shortly after their crash.

Mephistopheles is not your name. I know what you’re up to just the same. I will listen hard to your tuition. You will see it come to its fruition.

So, much like Richard Alpert knew about John Locke and Eloise Hawking knew about Daniel Faraday for a good half a century, Ben Linus has known about several figures he would “meet” decades later since childhood.

Suddenly, the “her” to whom Juliet bears the striking reseblance commented upon by Harper Stanhope in “The Other Woman” might not be Annie or Ben’s mother after all, but rather Juliet herself. Suddenly, the selection of Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer as the group to be rounded up by Michael for the Others in trade for Walt in “Three Minutes” makes a lot more sense.

And over the rest of Season 5, we’re only going to see more and more examples of foreknowledge being given to Ben and to any other DI Purge-survivors who later become Others. I’m totally on board with the theory that elderly Other Amelia is Amy 30 years later now that we know her son—quite possible the last human actually conceived and born on the Island—would grow up to be none other than Ethan Rom.

And by the way, is it possible that the story of the intervention of a Juliet mysteriously (to Amy) wise in the ways of obstetrics and appearing in the nick of time would inspire young Ethan to take up medicine? He was the Others’ surgeon before Charlie shot him, don’t forget.

Watch out for Christian…he’s a dick!

Exhibit number 42 that the Island isn’t very nice: whooshing all the rest of the Oceanic 5 back to 1977 while leaving Sun, the one person with an actual spouse among those living in the past, stuck in the present and then telling her she had “a bit of a journey” ahead of her. And why? No doubt she’s got “work to do.”

I mean, I get that the stakes are high in this game. “God help us all,” as Ms. Hawking, among others, is so very fond of telling us. But still…to tantalize poor Sun and Jin like that? What’s more, separating them both from Ji Yeon. That’s just mean.

And that kind of cruelty still looks rather petty when stacked up against the Island’s rather impressive body count…the soldiers back in 1954, the vast majority of the DHARMA Initiative, all the 815 casualties to date, Charlotte, Danielle & Alex, the French science team, Karl, who knows how many Others, the real Henry Gale, the entire crew of the freighter Kahana, one can only assume the crew of the Black Rock, and John Locke (well, sorta) that we know of.

There have been actual wars worthy of the name—and even Arnold Schwartzenegger movies—with lower casualty numbers. If the stakes are anything less than the very fate of the world, I kinda hope that Jughead the bomb blows the hell out of the Island in the series finale…but only after all the remaining characters have cleared off of it.

In further Christian Shephard news, some eagle-eyed viewers managed to catch a glimpse of what looked like a blonde-haired woman crouching behind some furniture during the conversation beween Christian, Sun, and Frank. Could it be Claire? Or is it just a careless Production Assistant lucky enough to be nowhere near Christian Bale while getting into a camera’s sight line? Odds are we won’t find out anytime soon, given that Emilie de Ravin is unlikely to be seen before Season 6. But then, we’re going to need plenty of questions to occupy us for the final season, yeah?

Sonya’s “Aww, Yeah!” Moments of “Namaste”:

1. Sawyer laying the verbal smack down on Jack and proving he’s a better leader than the dithering Doc ever was.
2. Sawyer sticking Jack with Work Man duty. *snerk*
3. Ben snarking, “And how’d that work out for everyone?” at Frank after he’d reminded Sun that a whole team of commandos was sent after Ben.
4. Sun belting Ben with an oar. He had it coming for withholding the info that Jin was in 1977, which we know he knew!
5. Just seeing Sayid (reasonably) safe and sound after the Ajira crash. I’m such a mark for Sayid.
6. Seeing some good, old-fashioned Monster-based deforestation to greet the newcomers.
7. Hurley asking Sawyer why he wasn’t going to tell the DI about the impending Purge.
8. Sawyer’s reply that he wasn’t there to “play Nostradamus to these people.”

PS: Note to Darlton: More Desmond please! We’ve had too many episodes without hide or hair of our favorite Scot. And ditto Locke. You can’t resurrect a guy and leave us hanging regarding him for so long. It’s just not cricket! OK…I feel better for having vented.

Well, that was a cheery name for a cheery episode, wasn’t it? Not that it wasn’t an adrenaline-pumping little slice of awesome like the rest of Season 5 to date, but wow was it ever dark. Poor Daniel, poor Charlotte, poor Locke, poor Jin, poor Danielle, poor Montand, poor “infected” (or is it re-programmed?) French Science Team…and things aren’t exactly looking peachy for the O6ers, Ben, or Des either.

If ever there was an episode showing us just how cruel a mistress the gears of time can be as they crush everyone unfortunate enough to fall into the machinery, this was it.

OK, let’s do this thing…

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there’s no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

In my recap of last season’s finale, I went for broke on a Watchmen metaphor. And, now that the reference is all timely what with the big-screen adaptation of that most excellent of all graphic novels about to hit a megaplex near you, I find it timely (*rimshot*) that we get yet another reminder of just how hard the Island is on its toys. Much like Dr. Manhattan in the quote above, the Island seems indifferent to suffering and death of the humans ensnared in its causal web.

(Spoiler warning! If you haven’t read Watchmen and don’t want to be spoiled, you might want to click away now…)

It’s been noted before that Watchmen has a very strong parallel with Lost in that it also features a secret Island full of supremely talented individuals being used in the service of a daring plan for the greater global good, and involving science so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic, who are thanked for their efforts with an untimely end (on an exploding ship, no less!). And that, furthermore, said plan involved the death of millions and the traumatizing of the entire human population of the planet in order to save us all from otherwise-inevitable extinction and give us World Peace™…tough love, to say the least. 

But more and more I also see Dr. Manhattan as an analog to the Island itself—capable of seeing past, present, and future simultaneously and of manifesting anything according to their desires. Dr. M does it through direct manipulation of matter, while the Island seems to do it by mapping causality backwards far enough and tweaking things to ensure that something or someone is in a certain place at a certain time (and that, kids, is “The Magic Box“).

Both could save or destroy their respective worlds. And, much like Dr. Manhattan needed to be persuaded first by Silk Spectre to involve himself and prevent humanity’s “mutually-assured destruction” by nuclear holocaust (*cough*“Jughead“*coughcough*), and then by Ozymandias to keep the secret of his deception in the service of the greater good to humanity, so too does the Island need persuading.

But I’m not convinced that it’s gotten that yet from Ben, Alpert, Widmore, Locke, or anyone else. Someone needs to be the conscience that keeps the Island’s own agency in check. Who’s going to be our Silk Spectre?

But the Island has also shown the spoiled-prodigy arrogance of Watchmen’s resident schemer, Ozymandias, as well. Our much-discussed, four-toed statuary foot even calls to mind the “trunkless legs of stone” of Percy Shelley’s famous sonnet, “Ozymandias,” with its ironically hubristic declaration, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

Like Ozymandias, who engages in a merciless beat-down of all the other main characters mainly to show how powerless they are to stop his machinations, the Island and its manifestations have often seemed petty in reminding its catspaws who’s in charge…most notably zombie-Christian. (Zombie-Yemi and zombie-Ana were no great shakes either. “Libby says, ‘hi!’” indeed.) It’s not enough that he makes you do things whether you want to or not without regard for broken bones, hearts, or minds because you “have to,” but he’ll be all snarky to you as he does it.

Ben’s tumor and exile…Locke’s numerous leg-wounds (the nastiest of which by far was this week’s protruding-bone special!), exile, and death…Michael’s denied release, then frigid dismissal…Claire’s separation from Aaron…Jin’s separation from Sun…the French team’s “re-programming”…Charlotte being the victim of a Cassandra-like prophecy of doom…the numerous worst-possible-moment time-skips preventing important questions from being answered. The list goes on and on.

It’s enough to make you bang on a hatch in the middle of the night screaming your frustration at cruel fate.

(Aside: While it would probably be futile to attempt to draw direct correspondences between the ensembles of Lost and Watchmen characters for a variety of reasons, one does seem very clear: that of Jack to Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II. Like Dreiberg, Jack was all too willing to lay down his burden of heroism, only to find himself impotent and adrift in “normal life” before being reluctantly called back into action. And no, that doesn’t make Locke Rorschach! )

(***END OF WATCHMEN SPOILERS***)

“Did it hurt?”
“I felt my back break. What do you think?”

As both fellow DocArzt & Friends recapper Fishbiscuit and EW’s Doc Jensen (among others) have aptly pointed out, descents played a very key role in the proceedings of “This Place is Death.” And the place of the journey into the underworld in the great Western monomyth is pretty well established by now. Locke crashes to the bottom of the well and almost meekly accepts his role as wheel-axle-righter and soon-to-be-corpse. Robert and the rest of the French Science Team chase after Montand (well, most of him anyway). Charlotte falls into the well of her own timeline. Danielle begins her long descent into solitary madness. Ben, Desmond, Jack, and Sun prepare for their own descent into the time-witch’s lair.

And, as always, you do not return from the underworld unchanged…if you return at all. Charlotte didn’t, succumbing at last to a particularly nasty case of Time Travel Sickness™, but I’ll get back to her. Robert and crew seem reprogrammed or replaced by smokey pod-people (providing us with an unexpected answer to the question of the “sickness” which made Danielle gun her team down like rabid dogs, and showing us a new ability of Smokey’s). Danielle becomes the “crazy French chick” we all came to know and love before her brutal slaying by the mercenary team. The off-Island folk will presumably return from their descent ready to cast away the outside world once and for all and return to the Island for the end-game.

Which leaves Locke, the miracle man. Locke, the Island’s answer to the Hero With 1,000 Faces™. But also Locke, the eternal patsy.

Look at the expressions that adorn John Locke’s face as he survives another nasty fall and confronts yet another broken part of himself, then interacts with zombie-Christian. He looks just like a whipped puppy as yet another father-figure uses and abuses him. We also know that Locke will end up giving his life during his particular trek through the underworld, which for Locke would also include his time off-Island. Anything that takes him away from the Island that let him walk again could only be considered a form of purgatory or hell for John Locke.

But, despite that, and despite knowing that certain doom awaits, Locke struggles on one good leg with help denied him by Christian and puts the wheel back on its “axis” (which struck me as odd…shouldn’t it be “axle?”), while yet again being denied an answer by the Island.

And, once we see the clearly-impending story of his time as Jeremy Bentham which culminates in his death, will we have seen the last of gullible, approval-seeking patsy Locke? I think we will. Somehow, some way, our monomythic hero will rise as they all do and win the day, providing his hard-acquired boon to his people (both the Others and the Lostaways) and to the world.

Wheel of morality, turn turn turn! Tell us the lesson we must learn.

But, before we leave Locke’s portion of this episode, let’s look at one very key exchange between Locke and Christian:

CHRISTIAN: You came to see me in the cabin. You asked me how to save the island and I told you you had to move it. I said that you had to move it, John.

LOCKE: But Ben said he knew how to do it! He told me that I had to stay here and lead his people.

CHRISTIAN: Since when did listening to him get you anywhere worth a damn?

This segues us very nicely into Ben, since this dismissal by the Island’s mouthpiece provides a very stark contrast to the Ben of “This Place is Death” who has to pull his Reincarnation Van full of ungrateful brats over to tell them what’s what about how he’s been shielding them from forces far worse than he. (And, really, how cool was that, eh?) Here we see one of Ben’s few truly unguarded moments of sincerity on the show to date, right up there with his rumination on what kind of girl Destiny is and his assertion to Juliet that she’s his. It’s clear that he truly believes he’s “one of the good guys” and that he has, in fact, protected the Oceanic 6 from evil.

Having seen the Island’s callousness on numerous occasions now, it really is enough to make you wonder if perhaps Ben’s assertion of being on the side of the angels might not have some merit. Granted, Locke has been strung along by Ben quite a bit, but the Island’s manipulations of Locke have been, if anything, far crueler. It demanded the sacrifice of Locke’s follower, Boone, only to subsequently ask the ultimate sacrifice of Locke himself and it played “Indian giver” on several occasions with Locke’s legs. All the Island’s gifts seem to come with some rather nasty strings attached.

So here’s a question to bake your noodle: what if the Island has exiled first Widmore, then Ben, and finally Locke to ensure that no one with a strong enough will or talent could challenge its plans, and its plans are decidedly not good for humanity? We know that the DHARMA Initiative was supposed to harness the Island to “save the world,” after all.

Or, conversely, are the plans of both Ben and Widmore perversions of the natural order so grand as to force the Island’s hand to the degree that it has to break quite this many eggs in the making of a light and fluffy global omelet? On the one hand, the Island is part of nature. Well, sorta. On the other, it meddles with natural processes like healing and pregnancy to serve its ends.

Obviously, this is a question whose answer is going to remain unclear right through the end of Season 6.

Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not

Am I the only one wondering if Lost: The Next Generation (that is to say, Aaron, Ji Yeon, Charlie the Younger, and possibly Walt) are intentionally being left off of the manifest of returnees?

The action of getting the O6 back to the Island is happening at far too breakneck a pace to allow for wee Ji Yeon to be flown in from Korea. Desmond is at Lady Hawking’s Temporal Oracle without the wife and child in tow. And why do I get the distinct presentiment that Aaron’s going to become similarly inaccessible?

While we’re at it, weren’t children born or conceived on the Island supposed to be somehow special? What about Waaaaaalt’s magical mystery abilities to affect probability and/or causality and project himself into places he’s not?

To me, this raises the broader question of what role in the show’s endgame the outside world will play…will people question the O6′s flimsy story after they suspiciously all disappear together, leaving even their children behind? Will the world find out about this bizarre Island on which no less than the fate of all humanity seems to rest?

And last but least, am I the only one who find’s Sun’s whole vengeance storyline’s apparent end more than a little perfunctory? Just askin’.

Invisible airwaves crackle with life. Bright antennae bristle with the energy. Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength…bearing a gift beyond price, almost free.

I know I’m not the only one to say this, but count me in among the chorus of voices saying that the voice the French Science Team overheard on their radio rattling off the Numbers was none other than Hurley’s.

If I’m right, this will create the fifth confirmed predestination loop on the show:

1. That the time-skipping Lostaways themselves assured the crash of Oceanic 815 by giving the Others 50 years to plan for it and ensure its occurrence. 

2. Locke was the one who first made Alpert interested in Locke, eventually precipitating his arrival on the Island and his seeming ascension to Others leadership. 

3. Daniel cemented his own grooming as a temporal troubleshooter by demonstrating to his future mother, Eloise Hawking, that time travel was possible. 

4. Charlotte confirms that it was Dan Faraday whose warning to stay away from the Island on pain of death no doubt had the reverse effect, guaranteeing it. 

5. It was Hurley’s own voice heard by Leonard Simms and Sam Toomey at their listening station broadcasting the Numbers which found their way to Hurley, allowing him to win the lottery and secure his place on flight 815.

This would also strongly imply that 1) the O6 will get back to the Island, and 2) that they’re going to spend some time with the DHARMA Initiative in the past. I’m also betting that we’ll see at least a few more of these loops before we’re done.

Again, I put it to you that the big question we all need to be asking about time travel is, “from how far into the future have time travelers come back, leaving a warning of their existence?” I’d be willing to bet that at least the Island and Eloise Hawking have knowledge from farther in the future than the O6′s departure on their return trip to the Island.

Came the last night of sadness and it was clear she couldn’t go on. Then the door was open and the wind appeared. The candles blew then disappeared. The curtains flew then he appeared…saying, “don’t be afraid.”

Which brings us at last to a moment even sadder than Locke’s compound fracture and death-march to off-Island Jeremy Bentham-ness…Charlotte’s death in Daniel’s arms.

Going back to my initial premise, this has to be one of the crueler examples of the Island’s “ends justify the means” modus operandi. A girl escapes the Island with her mother, spends her whole life making herself someone who could find her way back, actually manages to get back, and then turns out only to be there so that she can, in her dying throes of Time Travel Sickness, tell Locke to look for a half-remembered well from her intentionally-repressed childhood.

That is just plain cold. I know that, if I were bereaved enamorato Daniel Faraday, once I figured out how this particular temporal game had been rigged, I would be doing my damnedest to go from being a temporal troubleshooter to being the most dangerous monkey-wrench the Island has ever seen thrown into its gears.

What’s more, the verification of her DHARMA Initiative upbringing (who else listened to Geronimo Jackson?) has bred a lot of speculation about the identity of her parents. The two most compelling couples I’ve seen bandied about are Ben and long-lost love, Annie, and Horace & Olivia Goodspeed. Both pairings would seem pretty likely to produce a redhead like Charlotte, but I have to kind of give the edge to Ben & Annie here, given Ben’s piercing blue eyes which Charlotte shares.

Given that we know Daniel will go back in time to DHARMA days, I think it’s a fair bet that we’ll actually get an answer to this question. If it is Ben, how horrible would it be for him to lose not one, but two daughters to the draconian game into which he was pulled as a neglected and abused child?

But that’s just how big, bad papa Island rolls. This place, as the lady said, is death.

First the Breakdown, then the analysis, shall we?

TEASER

A – The show kicks off with Jack being awakened (Jack, I need you to wake up) and going outside his tent to make the peace between his people and the freighties before reiterating his promise to get everyone off the island and then collapsing.

Act Out – In the future we discover that after her trial, Kate, Jack, and Aaron are living together [note: Jack wakes up and finds Kate in the shower)

ACT ONE

A - Still in the future, Jack reads "Alice in Wonderland" to Aaron and appears very fatherly.

B - While crossing the island back to the beach, Sawyer and Claire learn that Danielle and Karl are dead when Miles reveals their bodies.

Act Out - On the island, Juliet confirms Jack's need for an appendectomy.

ACT TWO

C - Juliet sends Sun and Jin to the staff for medical supplies to perform the surgery . Dan and Charlotte join them.

B - Sawyer takes a "Big Brother" (not the show or Orwellian) role toward Claire and imposes a "restraining order" against Miles.

D - There's a D story? Yes, it's very brief but it's the conversation between Bernard and Rose where they discuss the implications of Jack's need for surgery. 

A - On the island Jack wants Kate to hold the mirror for him while he directs his own surgery.

Act Out - Jack visits Hurley and learns that he has been seeing Charlie and that Charlie has a message for Jack: You're not supposed to raise him. Then he also learns that someone will be visiting him very soon.

ACT THREE

C - Sun, Jin, Dan, and Charlotte arrive at the Staff and Jin suspects that Charlotte knows Korean. [Note: Daniel goes into the Staff first]

B – Sawyer, Claire and Miles come across Lapidus, who warns them to hide from Mr. Keamy.

A – Jack and Juliet convince Kate to help with the surgery.

Act Out – Jack wakes Kate up to propose to her.

ACT FOUR

C – Jin confirms his suspicion about Charlotte and makes her promise to get Sun off the island regardless of what happens to him or his friends.

A – (Bernard: Wouldn’t you rather be dreaming about something nice back home?) Juliet begins the surgery Jack’s way, but they have to toss Kate out of the tent and chloroform his butt.

Act Out – Claire wakes up in the middle of the night to find her dead dad holding Aaron.

TAG

(This tag is long enough that it is nearly an Act Five)

A – Juliet lets Kate know that Jack loves her while he pretends to be sleeping. In the future Jack and Kate start to fall apart when he learns that Kate is doing a favor for Sawyer.

Act Out – We end on the B-story when Sawyer wakes up to find Claire missing, learns that she left with her dad, and finds Aaron a few yards away. Claire! Claire!

Now, deciphering the intent of this week’s episode isn’t as easy as last week’s when we could just follow the act outs…or is it? Let’s see.

First up, notice the number of times people are being woken up: Jack wakes up to make the peace between his people, then wakes up to find Kate in his shower, Kate wakes up to a proposal, and Claire wakes up to dead daddy holding her baby.

Bernard asks Jack about the chloroform: Wouldn’t you rather be dreaming about something nice back home? Think back to the Alice in Wonderland reference. The line that we’re clearly meant to hear is “I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I?”

One of the themes of this episode is what is real and what is a dream? Jack thinks Hurley is crazy because he tells him he sees Charlie, but when Jack starts seeing his father his happy world with Kate begins to unravel. We know where this will eventually lead, but what it truly reveals is Jack’s inability to deal with reality and more importantly his inability to place faith in others based on the reality that surrounds him. Remember, Jack has been seeing his dead father since Season One, but for Hurley to see Charlie is crazy. Not only that, but the guy can’t even let a trained fertility doctor do a simple appendectomy because he doesn’t trust anyone.

That leads us to the second part of this episode – trust. This is played out in the all stories as the need to protect someone. Notice, that in the future we first see Kate in the shower. If that isn’t a vulnerable place then watch Psycho.  Jack wants to protect everyone, but he needs Kate to protect him by holding the mirror. Juliet tries to protect Jack from himself. Bernard wants to protect Rose, Jin – Sun, Sawyer – Claire, and Dan -Charlotte. What’s the one thing none of these people are trying to protect? The island! And I believe that is because none of them has learned to trust it like Locke seems to have. The big key to this episode isn’t who is dead and who isn’t, it’s that small D-story, when Rose points out that it can’t be mere coincidence that Jack is ill the day before they are set to leave an island that heals people.

The story fits into the big picture by revealing that until these people unite (for example, Jin needs to care for more than just Sun and his baby), care for one another, and protect the island, then any hope of happiness is just a dream.