I'm not sure what the Kate-Sawyer interaction accomplished.

I think it showed that in the three years away from each other, he got over her but she did not get over him.

Darlton have said that they both have different opionions about the love triangle (Jater and Skater) but that they agreed upon the ending. I wonder if the Sawyer\Juliette fan love have influenced them at all.

Ethan's mother is not Olivia. It was that other lady whose husband was killed, she then remarried Horace and had Ethan. They rpobably got off the island when the women and children were evacuated.

You're right. Amy?

I think Ethan's mom is Amy

I thought this episode sucked. Sure any epsiode of Lost is better than none but at this stage of the game I feel gyped by last nights episode.

It just highlighted the complete weakness of the Kate character. She just is not interesting. Don't even get me started on the plot holes of her on the run and no cops showing up anywhere and not even furthering their "search" for her in the hospital. Her throwing herself at Sawyer was beyond ridiculous and they better not go with a Sawyer/Kate endgame because that ship has sailed.

I still am sure that Sayid is not inhabited by MIB. MIB is in Locke. That darkness could be in him as well as Claire and Ben but the actual MIB? Nope. I also think that it's not really that important. WE just need to know that they are not the same.

Positives: Acting by Josh Holloway on the dock. He knocks it out of the park again. Most underrated of the cast.

Jack and already interesting character has even more depth to him this season and I like the turns with him.

Nice touch to use the Other henchman from 3 years ago.

I ♥ You.

What I liked:

Sawyer. Great performance. Loved how he delivered the lines. Loved how Saywer didn't seem interested in Kate at all.

Loved it when Jack swallowed the pill. The reaction of Dogen basically beating the crud out of Jack to get him to cough up the pill made it pretty clear that The Others want (need?) Jack to survive.

Liked uncertain, confused, conflicted Jack. I know that not everyone likes Jack but I have decided that I do. (For a while I didn't.) I like the character development going on here. I think we have a lot of questions left on Jack, and now I'm not sure if he's even capable of answering them. He has no idea what to do when he can't fix things.

Liked Ethan showing up as the doctor at the hospital. Ethan has tried to take Claire's baby before. I'm not sure if there was an undercurrent of creepy in his portrayal or if it just felt that way because we already know him as Ethan.

Liked Clairesseau at the end. I didn't see it coming, guess I should have but I don't think that much about what's coming.

Looking forward to how Jack reacts to finding out that Claire is his sister.

Did not like:
Too many long, drawn out, lingering close up shots of Kate making her concerned, thoughtful, conflicted, criminal with a heart of gold face. Good grief, we have only so many minutes of LOST left, do we really have to spend SO many of them staring at Kate making the same face?

While I'm on it, too much emoting and long silences from Dogen, too. Let's pick up the pace a little, please. It felt like filler.

Did not like Clarie conveniently going into labor upon finding out that the family wasn't taking Aaron. Seemed forced.

Tired of Jack-Kate-Sawyer. I really hope that the triangle disintegrates and goes away and we never speak of it again. I don't want any of them to wind up together.

Overall, when this episode ended I felt kind of blah. I felt like it was a lot of filler and not much substance and I really felt like it was slow and tedious.

General
I don't think the sickness is Smokey. Then again, I also do not think that Jacob is good. So, to me, if it's only a choice between Jacob/Smokey for who "claimed" Sayid, I don't know that either one is a winner.

It's not just A Zombie Original, it's THE Zombie Original!

I think we incorrectly assume Dogen, et al. have all the answers. I think Jacob and MIB are the only ones with ALL the answers, and they've only imparted some of those to people on the island...even the protectors. I frankly think Widmore and Eloise know more than those left on the island.

My intuition still says that Aaron is going to be a very important part of the final pieces. There's a reason he's survived this all, there's a reason children are important, there's a reason Claire's story has returned with a vengance, why she was with Christian.

Then again, my intuition really doesn't have more than a 50% track record in life.

-A Tribetastic Creation

I think you're right - that the Others don't have all of the information so expecting them to give it to us is unreasonable. I also think that you're right in that Widmore and Eloise probably know more of the puzzle than anybody since they've been on-island and off-island and managed to live.

My whine is really more about the long silences while focused on someone making a mysterious face. We got a LOT of that with Dogen. Okay, we get that he's mysterious and knows "something" but I started getting fidgety staring for long seconds at him waiting for an answer that I knew would be obscure.

I'm just plain fidgety.

It's not just A Zombie Original, it's THE Zombie Original!

Pssst...Jack has known Claire is his sister for awhile now.

I completely agree about Jacob/MIB.

Oops.

I should probably refrain from making too much commentary. My lapses in what details I remember about LOST are directly related to the fact that both of my children were born in the spring during LOST and for those two seasons (2007 and 2009) I have trouble remembering what happened in the last 6 or so episodes of the season. When I discuss LOST with Mr. Fro I'll ask a question about some detail and he'll look at me like I've been through a time warp of my own.

It's not just A Zombie Original, it's THE Zombie Original!

*snort

I just blame my lapses on getting older. At least with yours it's babies.

LAST EDITED ON 02-10-10 AT 07:00 PM (EST)

Although boring, this episode gave me clues to the island's secrets: Like I wrote before, the loophole Nemesis found to kill Jacob was using someone that Jacob had "claimed", namely Ben, to do the job. That got me thinking of something weird from episode 1: XLocke telling Richard: "Glad to see you without your chains." We had speculated that Richard had been a slave long ago but XLocke had been with Richard the whole time on the trek to Jacob's hide-out. By his reference to chains, I think XLocke was telling Richard that Jacob was dead. In XLocke's eyes, Richard was chained to Jacob because of his beliefs.

I was also wondering why Dogen didn't simply kill Sayid, why did he have to get Jack to do it? If Sayid is claimed by Smokey then Dogen needed his own loophole to kill Sayid thus he used someone Sayid trusted. Thinking of that, I realized that Smokey never attacked the Others even if both roamed the island freely. I think that Smokey couldn't attack the Others because they were all "claimed" by Jacob.

Ben couldn't kill Widmore because one was claimed by Jacob, the other by Smokey.

I like where you are going with this.

How do you think those who have tried to commit suicide off the island (Jack, Michael) fit it?

I don't know. I've always thought that the Losties were Lost well before crashing on the island. Returning home meant returning to their pathetic lives. Maybe also the island's special powers are addictive even to those who don't experience them as vividly as Locke and Rose.

The only interesting off-island theory I have is that Walt was supposed to be Jacob's special one. Unfortunately, Jacob lost his hold on the Others before Walt's capture. Nemesis had entered the cabin by then and he didn't want anything to do with Jacob's chosen one. Walt was more than they could handle if I remember what Ben said. Walt could be a threat to Nemesis.

It's all about free will vs. destiny. The Others, Ben and even John Locke have used someone else to kill someone or do something that they "can't" do.

Ben---> needed Jack "to want to save him". (spinal surgery)
used Locke to kill Cooper who Locke in turn used
Sawyer.

Christian--->used Locke to turn the wheel, would not help.

Dogen---> wanted Sayid to take poison by his choice, needed to
have Jack do it(kill him) instead of them doing it.

Zombie - I think the writers are kind of playing fast and lose with the free will thing.

I think there's a vast difference between free will and trickery. They were doing ok up until Sayid. The others may have been coerced, but they still had a choice. If Jack had blindly stuck with the medicine story Sayid would have taken it merely from trickery. Maybe it was Jack's choice/test instead of Sayid's.

Tummy, here's what I think about the concept of free will and destiny with LOST.

First of all, I think the writers are adhering to the idea that with time travel, you can go back and change things but that the universe will compensate for your changes and the outcome will be the same anyway. The idea is that because space-time is a physical thing, making a change isn't a matter of logic, it's a matter of physics. It takes a huge amount of energy to physically warp space-time. More energy than a person can apply, but possibly a bomb can do it?

There are a lot of things that are happening in the 2004-redo timeline (where the plane doesn't crash) that parallel things that happened to the 2004-original timeline, just in a slightly different way. Charlie almost dying (by choking) and Jack saving him happened on the island, too. The paths of the Losties crossing. Christian's body getting lost. The idea also goes along with the whole thing where Desmond kept trying to save Charlie from dying, but Charlie was going to die in some way, no matter how many times Desmond prevented it.

Here's something interesting. The Oceanic 6 (and a few others, like Desmond and Ben) have a timeline in their lives from 2004-2007 because they lived those years off the island. So they have a destiny and things that happened to them needed to happen. But there are people (Sawyer, Jin, Miles. . . ) who have a big gap. They were on the island in 2004, jumped around, wound up in 1977, and when the bomb went off, they jumped right into 2007. They have no personal timeline from 2004-2007 so THEY HAVE NO DESTINY. They're the wildcards. They're the ones who can make changes because they don't have any outcome to which they're supposed to achieve.

It's not just A Zombie Original, it's THE Zombie Original!

Nice Fro - I'd never thought that for those that had wound up in '77 they had no history between '04-'07. Very interesting. You'd think Jacob and MiB would target those as they would be the easiest pawns as they had no outcome to uphold.

Wow Fro, that is some deep thinking. Very interesting.

I agree. *stalk*

Very good observation Frodis! Never even thought of those that don't have a timeline for that gap!

very interesting ideas, michel ...
I would only point out that the Others weren't safe from Smokey. They had the fence around their whole compound to keep it out. They may have taken precautions when out and about.

So the Others who lived in Otherton were not immune. Certain people may be immune, but not the whole group.

Interesting that in 1977 there doesn't seem to be a smoke monster problem. No fence. Instead it is the hostiles that are the concern, Richard's people. There is a smoke monster when Danielle's people land in 1988. So did the smoke monster exist pre-incident? Did the sickness start after the incident?

By incident I mean the energy released at the Swan in the original timeline, not the bomb detonation.

I know I don't have every thing worked out but The Others went to the temple when Ben knew Widmore's mercenaries were coming. That was the danger then but notice that they only secured the temple once they heard Jacob, their protector, was dead.
No more Jacob = no more claim = The Others better watch out. Richard already found that out.

Otherton is Dharmavillle after the purge, right? Ben lived there as did Juliet and Ethan but I don't think that there were many true "Others" there. Richard wasn't there, it was mostly people that Ben brought to the island. None of those would have been claimed so they would need protection.

Yes, Otherton is what the writers call the DHARMA barracks.

I'm not sure how to separate the Others from each other.
Cindy was at the cages with the children in Season 3; she was with Ben's group. And wasn't the guy who threatened Sawyer?

But now they are both at the Temple. Were they sent there when Ben told everyone to go join Richard, when the mercenaries arrived? In 2004?

I think everyone there other than Richard is from the outside world. Ben wasn't born on the island either. No one conceived on the island has lived, that we know of, since the time of Horace and Sarah, Charlotte, Miles. Some come as adults and some probably come over as children, but they all get recruited I think.

What is "claimed" exactly? I'm confused about the concept. The sickness is what Sayid has, what Claire has, and what happened to Danielle's team. Danielle's team became as Dogen described, not themselves any more.

Ben is still himself. He has always had his individual passions, envies, weaknesses. Locke was still himself until Ben killed him, I think. He was on a mission, sent by Christian, which I assume is Smokey, but he was still Locke, the guy that fails ... (but not in a wheelchair). So I don't see either of them as having the sickness.

Maybe I read this topic too fast, as I haven't been around this forum before and am playing catch-up, and I haven't been to the Fuselage either since last year, but I don't know what the concept of being claimed entails.

LAST EDITED ON 02-10-10 AT 10:43 PM (EST)

Dogen said that Sayid was "claimed" by a dark force. I understood it to mean possessed and the torture he conducted looked like an exorcism. Now, we know that Ben went into those springs after being shot by Sayid so Ben must also have been claimed. Richard accepted Locke so I assume Dogen did also and that Ben wasn't claimed by the "dark force".

"Ben is still himself."

Well, according to Richard, Ben was going to be changed forever when Kate asked for his salvation.

Locke also almost died but, instead of the springs, Walt appeared to him. Maybe there are other ways to claim someone.

I remember that Ben had his own soldiers like the big guy that Sawyer killed. I remember Ben giving them direct orders. Those were the ones he brought to the island. At the same time, (Jack was bringing the Losties to the communications tower) Richard was in the camp and he had people around him that weren't under Ben's command. I took those as the "True" Others. Didn't Richard even tell Ben that it wasn't "our fight"?

I agree that there is a group of Others that are Richard's people, not Ben's. Certainly Richard commanded the Hostiles, and Ben was DHARMA. After he was healed at the Temple, he did help Richard (and Jacob?) kill the DHARMA folks. He had already killed his own father. He seemed to be a nice little boy, so I'd say he did change! But supposedly he served Jacob, not Smokey.

I don't think we know whether the Hostiles came and occupied the DHARMA barracks after DHARMA was wiped out. Some may have. At least some stayed with Richard out in the wilds, at the statue? (Didn't Ben say that Richard was easy to find because he'd always been at the statue?) Then clearly Ben AND Richard recruited people. Richard and Ethan recruited Juliet. Ethan took orders from Ben. He lived in the houses, not with Richard. But he and Richard worked together in some situations.

btw, I looked up the scene where the Temple guard appeared before. For those like me who didn't remember him exactly, Aldo was the Other sitting in front of the building where Carl was being brainwashed, reading "A Brief History of Time." Alex, Sawyer, and Kate tricked him, and Kate knocked him out with a rifle butt as he said, then later Danny found him and yelled at him. No wonder he's sore at Kate.

(Season 3.7, "Not in Portland."
The writers could have used anybody as a Temple guard. They didn't have to bring back Aldo and have him specifically remind Kate about the events on Polar Bear cage island. They're making it clear to us that the temple people have a crossover with Ben's people.

Alex tricked Aldo by telling him that her Dad had sent her. So we know that Aldo answered to Ben. Now he answers to Dogen. We haven't seen Richard interact with the Temple people yet. He took Ben to the Temple in 1977, but the personnel would have been different.

Writers having fun echoing: as they stared at Aldo wondering how to get by him, Alex said "I have an idea," and Sawyer says sarcastically, "of course you do." In What Kate Does, Justin tells Aldo (about the decoy trail) "I think she's right" and Aldo says "of course she is" with the same intonation.

As far as the change in people goes, there seem to be different processes.

Ben didn't die of the gunshot wound, as far as we know. Sayid died, and the spring wasn't clear.
Eko's brother died. Christian died. Smokey seems to have possessed their bodies. Smokey created an apparition of Walt, but he was not only not dead, he was elsewhere on the island, so that wasn't Walt's body. Nor was it Kate's horse that appeared to her.

Locke died, off island, where it's not clear that Smokey can travel. Presumably he was "inhabited" after the plane crashed, similar to what happened to Christian.

We don't know what happened to Claire after she disappeared. She doesn't seem anything like Locke. She is wild, like Danielle. But Danielle hadn't lost herself. She remembered her daughter.

With Sayid there's no sign that he's "fake" Sayid as we saw with fake Locke. He has the same personality, whereas Locke had a new confidence and attitude. Sayid is infected and is going to change gradually. This is what Desmond was afraid of and why he took the vaccine, I would imagine. Or why he thought he was taking it.

In Fire + Water, Charlie had visions that Aaron was in danger and needed to be baptized. Also, Claire was persuaded to give Aaron the vaccine. And of course Claire was being treated (but they didn't have enough medicine for both her and the baby? What was that about?) So it seems that children are vulnerable to this infection, and probably that relates to the thing that makes pregnant women die?

I'm pretty confused about it all. I think we will understand what this is about very soon, but I don't think it's clear yet.

I think the "true" Others were brought to the island by Jacob, not Richard. I do believe that the main difference between them and Ben's group is that they have mystical powers. The whispers that accompany them in the forest is not present when Aldo and his kind are seen. I'd bet they don't age like Richard. Cindy, Zach and Emma were on the list furnished by Jacob so there was something special about them.

Great discussion in here. I have some thoughts as well that I'd like to add.

First, I enjoyed this episode. I noticed another big comparison in Flash: Sideways with Ethan and Claire. He wanted to dissuade her from more needle sticks and drugs, where on the Island, he was the one that wanted to give her the needle sticks and the drugs. This time, it was her free choice, on the Island, she didn't have free choice.

Ethan's interaction mirrored her interaction with him on the Island, so to speak.

I think that Dogan and the Temple Others are assuming that Sayid is "claimed" by the dark force....just as Claire was claimed by the dark force. But, is it the dark force that has claimed them? I think not.

There was an illness as we saw with Danielle's French team and husband. They were infected with the illness and became insane and went to murder each other - Danielle. But, Danielle defended herself and shot them all. Just as she said to Claire in Season 2, "if your baby is infected, I trust you will know what has to be done".

It's confusing, because I don't look at that as the same "illness" that the Others are vaccinating against, or Desmond and Ethan. I think they have been vaccinating against the possession that can occur. AS they are referring to what has happened with Sayid and with Claire. But, clearly they are assuming that Claire has been claimed. If Claire had been claimed than Rousseau must have been claimed as well. We know that the survivors of flight 815 considered Rousseau insane early on. But, I considered her one of the "good guys". I never thought she was insane, just a mother that lost her child.

When I think of it this way, perhaps the other members of the French Science team were claimed, infected by the dark force, where Danielle perhaps was claimed by the light force. Clearly, they were not infected in the same way.

I think that Jacob or the good force has claimed Sayid....just as perhaps Claire has been claimed....as perhaps CHRISTIAN was claimed by Jacob. We do NOT know who has claimed the body of Christian, just that he was dead and that he keeps reappearing. Claire was with Christian. The only time the ash circle was broken was when Ilana came to the cabin, not when Locke and company came and saw Claire and Christian there.

I also want to state some observations. Dogan said in this last episode that he came to the island just as everyone came to the island. I think Jacob indeed brings people to the Island, and we know there are conflicts that arise time and again because of it. Man in Black comments that it is always the same end, where Jacob notes, it never ends, it's just progress. I think it will end with the last round of Jacob recruits to the Island, our survivors. I do not think the "Others" are on the same side as the survivors of flight 815. I do think they will perservere to resolve the conflict one way or the other for the Island.