Well now that was interesting!

So "Henry Gale"'s real name is Ben. Hmm..

Okay, yeah, that was wild. It's kind of surprising that in spite of that fact that only three Lostaways even show up in this episode and it's still great. I can't wait to see how all of this plays out.

I liked the parallelism of this episode's beginning to last year's, with a previously unknown character searching for a CD (rather than a record) and playing an old song. Though somehow "Downtown" sounds less cheery to me than "Make Your Own Kind of Music" did.

Have the Others prepared for a situation like a plane crash? Like, what to do if intruders come to the island? "Henry"/Ben is shouting orders pretty quickly after seeing that plane go down.

You know, in spite of the fact that the Others always seem to lie, for some reason I believe Juliet when she tells Jack that the intercom doesn't actually work. It makes me wonder if the island has some supernatural element that even they don't understand. It would fit with their comments on Walt last year. Then again, the fact that she warns Jack about hallucinations and that they have so much info. on him, it could easily be their doing.

"The bears solved it in 2 hours". Hilarious!

I think the biggest revelation from last night was that the Others were surprised that the plane crashed. I've always had the suspicion that all of the Lost people were arranged to be on that plane by someone so that they would end up on the island. But from the Others' reactions it seemed that a plane exploding in mid air was the last thing they expected to see. I also thought it interesting that upon feeling the "earthquake" none of them said something like, "hey, did those guys finally forget to push the button? Who was supposed to be watching them?"

It seems to support the theory that a third party might be at work here, and that the other's might indeed be the "good guys" as Henry (Ben?) said to Michael at the end of last season. Personally I am hoping that is the case. I think it would be a much cooler writing choice if we find out Henry (or Ben, I guess) was really doing the right thing all along, and actually saved the day somehow by kidnapping those guys. No idea how that would happen, mind you, just think it would be a good direction to take the story.

Also, why no mention of Desmond's girlfriend? I thought that's who the blond doctor girl (Juliet, I guess) was for the first few minutes of the book club.

Man, I'm glad Lost is back. How about you guys?

Jason

JoshM: Unanswered Questions: What is the purpose of the Hydra? Why do the Others have a modern community in the middle of the island? Why are they so hostile to the survivors of 815? Why did they take Jack, Kate, and Sawyer? Was Karl really another captive, or a plant? How did the Others get so much information on Jack? Did Jack really hear his father's voice in that intercom? Was it the Others screwing with him, or something else? Is Tom gay?
Luigi Novi: LOL!!!!!! I love the way you worked in that last question!

I've always had the suspicion that all of the Lost people were arranged to be on that plane by someone so that they would end up on the island.

Especially when we have "6 degrees of Lost" and the Magic Numbers showing up everywhere (like the soccer team in Hurley's attempt to make the plane).

Yeah, I still believe--barring some magical force existing in the Lost universe--that someone is orchestrating this whole thing, an eccentric billionaire or something. My guess is that all the people we brought there for a reason. I think it is kind of interesting that for most of the group, crashing on that island is best thing that ever happened to them. They kicked drugs, got away from the law, found some chance for redemption, learned to walk and found a spine (metaphorically and actually in that case, maybe), etc...

-Jason

One of the potential problems I pointed out for the flashbacks was that in continuing to insert events in between or before ones that had already been established, that there might be the appearance of character regression instead of development. This occurs in this episode, though I don't know why I didn't notice it when I first saw it: In Jack's first flashbacks, Christian Shepherd is cold, dispassionate, and cynical. In later flashbacks, including this one, he's the one who appears to be the good guy, and Jack appears to be the unstable one. Now this could be attributed to moods, difficult periods in a person's life, etc. But in Jack's first flashback, Christian caused a patient's death because of his drinking, and the the strength to speak out against him on this point was a difficult thing for Jack to muster. When he finally found the courage to do so, it led to Christian fleeing to Australia. But in this episode, which takes place before that, Christian has been sober for 50 days, and Jack has no trouble at all standing up to him. In fact, he does worse than stand up to him; he practically persecutes him in fits of paranoia, and excoriates him for supposedly treating his son like he doesn't have the strength to do difficult things. If we were to watch these flashbacks in chronological sequence, they would appear to be going essentially backwards.

Maybe Christian was sober, but Jack's behaviour was partially responsible for driving him back to drink. By the way, I never watched this on transmission, I've only just got the season 3 DVD's and this is the only episode I've watched so far.