Here is another episode that many people hated that I absolutely loved.

When LOST decided to cast two actors as new characters but say they had been on the Island with the survivors for the entire time, the fans rejected the idea.  Nikki and Paolo were the characters and they received a ton of heat for being there.

I never knew what cause people to hate these two so much.  I mean, let’s face it, even though they were here, it is not like they were heavily used.  They were background characters who received a line or two an episode.  It is one thing if, because of Nikki and Paolo, other more popular and long term characters got pushed to the back burner, but that did not happen.

So when the decision was made to kill of Nikki and Paolo, few people were upset.  However, many seemed to be bothered by them getting an entire episode devoted to them to tell the story of their demise.

Maybe it was where it fell in the season.  The week after the magnificent “The Man from Tallahassee” was on may bot have been the ideal place for the show to air.  However. if you give it a chance, Exposé works big time.

First of all, it is a mystery.  We don’t know what has happened to Nikki and Paolo and some of our favorites (Hurley, Sun, Sawyer, Charlie) tried to figure it out.

Second of all, the way they did the flashbacks were awesome.  Not only did we get a cool cameo from Billy Dee Williams, but also got several key moments from the series re-shot with Nikki and Paolo involved.  The initial airplane crash, Jack’s “Live together or Die alone” speech, the Pearl Station, the waterfall were all shown from Nikki and Paolo’s POV.

Third of all, the episode allowed us to see some old favorites reprise their roles.  We got Boone.  We got Shannon.  We got Arzt.  It was really fun to see these characters once again in different manners than we had seen them before.

Fourth, the pay off is one of the best single moments of the series.  Nikki and Paolo were not dead.  As the fought over the diamonds that they had stolen, Paolo and then Nikki were paralyzed by the bite of a Medusa spider.  But they looked dead, so Hurley and Sawyer and the rest buried them alive.  LOST rarely got this dark and I loved every second of it.  I couldn’t believe that they were going for it and I was sure something was going to happen to stop it.  But it didn’t.  And to make it even worse, Nikki’s eyes popped open at the last second so she would have known what was happening.  By the way, Vincent knew what was going on as he was trying to uncover their not dead bodies.

And come on… “Paolo lies” instead of “paralyzed”… that is just some creative stuff right there.

There were several fun self-depreciating meta humor here too.  When Nikki was on the Expose set and the creator of the show, Howard Zukerman, suggested that Nikki could come back next year, she joked that she was only a guest star and everybody knows what happens to guest stars.   Boone and Shannon were fighting at the airport and Nikki said to Paolo, “Promise me we won’t end up like them.” Of course they do, both dead and buried on the Island side by side.

I really do love this episode and I will defend it to the end.  It is a dark, humorous mystery (almost noir) that is a perfect send off to two of the most disliked characters on the show.

Wow.

John Locke-centric episodes are always great.  This one took a step above that.

What an unbelievable performance from Terry O’Quinn.  He would win an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this episode and it is completely well deserved.  John Locke takes us through every possible emotion and feeling and shows so many different layers to the character.  Whether it be the flashback showing how he wound up in the wheelchair or on the Island verbally jousting with scene partner Michael Emerson, Terry O’Quinn brings more to John Locke than you could ever wish to see.

I cannot imagine the pain that John had to feel when the man who conned him out of his kidney, shoved him from an 8 story window and caused him to spend four years of his life in a wheelchair.  Anthony Cooper is seriously one of the worst people on this show.

Poor John Locke in the flashbacks was already pretty broken, suffering from depression, when a young man named Peter came to see him to ask about a man John had donated a kidney to…was he a good man?  He was going to marry his mother and Peter had a doubt about him. Peter had found medical records indicating that his name was once Anthony Cooper.

John said nothing, but he went to see Cooper to make him cancel the wedding.  Then, Peter turned up dead.  John felt guilt over his lack of response and anger over his father’s evil and John went to confront him.

And Cooper shoved him through a window of the 8th floor.

Watching John plummet to the ground was absolutely crushing, no pun intended.  Then watching John being hauled from his hospital bed into the wheelchair by the physical therapist was heart breaking. The look of utter fear and denial on Locke’s face was horrible.  Such pain.

However, on the Island, his paralysis was gone.  And Ben wanted to know why. But John figured out a couple things… Ben wondered why he hadn’t recovered yet and how he got sick int he first place.  The healing powers of the Island worked on Locke but seemed to be skipping over Ben.  This explains Ben’s fascination with John.  Through John, Ben thinks he has found someone he can manipulate into giving him a stronger connection to the Island.

Ben allows John to take the C4 he brought with him to blow up the submarine.  This way, Ben can keep Jack and Juliet on the Island without breaking his word.  John knew this too, but he did not care.  Both Ben and John wanted that sub destroyed, but for different reasons.

The scene with Jack and Kate was very powerful too.  You could see that Kate felt betrayed by Jack leaving the Island, even though he promised he would come back for her.  He went to Ben and arranged for his friends to be released after he was gone, to which Ben was more than happy to agree to because he knew that Locke was going to blow up the sub before Jack could get on it.

Everything was going Ben’s way.

The cliffhanger… Ben had told John about the “magic box” that could bring anything you wished for…and John dismissed Ben.  But Ben then took John to see what came out of the box last.

It was Anthony Cooper.

Didn’t see that one coming.

“The Man from Tallahassee” is one of the best episodes of the show so far.  Season three seems to have either average episodes or episodes off the freaking chart.  This is the latter.

Desmond is saving Charlie again.

Desmond’s latest vision included Charlie getting smashed against the rocks because Claire had spotted a bird. Claire knew these birds could be tagged and wanted to catch one so they could write a note.  However, Claire got mad when Desmond kept ruining their attempts.

Finally, Desmond told Claire about his ability to see the future and how he has been trying to save Charlie.

Anything with Desmond is excellent.  He is charming and entertaining every time he is on the screen. This plot was an excuse to throw in a flashback for Claire.  A flashback that gave us a huge piece of information.

When Claire was younger, she was in an auto accident in Australia with her mum.  Her mum wound up comatose in the hospital.  Worried about being able to afford the care, the doctor said the bills had already been taken care of y an anonymous donor.

That donor turned out to be Claire’s father… Christian Shepherd.

Claire had been told that her father died when she was young, but in truth he was in Los Angeles.  Christian came to see Claire and her mum in the hospital and told Claire who he was.  He never gave her a name, though.

We see Christian come on the night he died and get into an argument with Claire’s mother so we know that she will come out of this coma at some point.  Claire is already pregnant and is talking about giving the baby away for adoption while she is still in a coma.

Meanwhile, Locke, Sayid, Kate, and Danielle continued to take Mikhail on their way to the Other’s home.  They come across a sonic fence that surrounded the barracks.  Mikhail lied to them as he had been doing the entire time.  Locke shoved him between the fence causing him to go into a hemorrhage and “die.”  They had to go over the fence, so they chopped down a tree and shimmed over.

When they arrived at Otherville, they get a shock when they see Jack tossing the football around with Tom Friendly.

Kate is determined to find Jack and bring him back to the beach.  So she, John, Sayid and Danielle head off into the jungle following a compass bearing provided by Mr. Eko’s Jesus stick in an attempt to find the Other’s home on the Island.

While that sounds a little crazy, it does not sound as crazy as some of the choices made while on the Island.

On their trip, they come across an isolated compound called The Flame and they see the eye-patch wearing man from the video feed in the Pearl.  His name is Mikhail and he immediately shoots Sayid, while pretending to be protecting the station from “Hostiles.”

Mikhail is quite the character.  He will die several times, at least it appears that way.  He will be around to cause all kinds of chaos over the next season or so.

Sayid’s Other Sense is full on tingling, because he does not fall for Mikhail’s story at all, despite the fact that Sayid allows Mikhail to take the bullet from his shoulder and stitch him up.

Kate and John search the rest of the compound.  John finds a computer chess game and starts to play.  He gets beaten and Mikhail tells him that the computer cheats.  Later, John is playing it again and wins, popping up a video featuring Marvin Candle outlining what to do in certain instances.  If there is a “Hostile” incursion in the station, they are to enter 77.

Kate had discovered that the station was rigged with c4.  They also captured Bea Klugh at the site and capture her. Unfortunately, Mikhail had gotten free and had a gun on Locke which led to a showdown.  Mikhail, from orders of Klugh, shoots her instead, killing her.

They take Mikhail captive, but may be a mistake.

The flashback was a Sayid story that was good, but did not seem to have anything to do with the story.  It is true that many of the flashbacks in season three felt as if they were stretching for things to show.  While Sayid being grabbed by a woman whom he had tortured while he was with the Republican Guard might be a compelling tale, it did not fit with what we had.

The ping pong contest between Hurley and Sawyer was fun, but was just a distraction.  Still, Sawyer unable to use nicknames for a week is full of comedic possibilities.

I do not understand the vitriol that this episode of LOST can bring up.  “Tricia Tanaka is Dead” is generally considered one of the worst episodes of the series.

Yet, I absolutely love it.

I suppose I can see the complaint that not much happened, mythology wise, in the story.  Season three had been a slow start with sprinkles of brilliance and some might have watched “Tricia Tanaka” with an eye already upset with the pace.  All of that is your own problems.  I still cannot accept that anyone who knows and cares about these characters wouldn’t be filled with joy and hope at the end of the memorable episode.

The scenes with the four actors are some of the best work of the series.  Hurley, Sawyer, Jin and Charlie have undeniable charisma and work some comfortably well together that their scenes are just magical.  You can see how much these actors enjoyed working together here.  It is their energy and fun that comes through the screen and helps to create the magic of the scene.

Sawyer teaching Jin some important English phrase all women want to hear (“You were right,” “I’m sorry,” and “Those pants don’t make you look fat”). Hurley calling Sawyer “Red Neck Man” and Sawyer appreciating the effort.  The interaction with Roger Work Man (“Skeletor”).  The Dharma beer.  Sawyer screaming at the head in the car.  There is just so much here that works wonderfully.

There has been a lot of darkness this season, and an episode like “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” which is filled with joyous fun and great humorous dialogue, is a welcome distraction.  Maybe it does not move the story forward much, but it shows you the magic that this cast is capable of and how entertained you can be if you let yourself.  Every episode does not have to be deeply rooted in mythology to be a good episode.

Although the car and Roger ARE mythologically based.  We just don’t know it yet.

I enjoyed Cheech Marin as Hurley’s absentee father.  I’ve seen some complaints because they gave Hurley daddy issues like so many other characters, but that does not bother me wither.  Cheech was solid as Hurley’s dad and fun to watch.

And the episode prepared to kick off the second half of the season with Kate going to find Rousseau to tell her about Alex, whom Kate believes is her daughter.

Take the haters away.  I loved the episode “Tricia Tanaka is Dead” and you should too.  Maybe only Tricia Tanaka should be against it.  She was hit by a meteor.  Or an Asteroid.  Hurley doesn’t know the difference.

Ever wonder where and why Jack got his tattoos?

Me neither.

But we got an episode about it.

I remember watching this episode for the first time live and thinking that it was terrible.  On the re-watch, I still think it is terrible.  I think that it is clearly the worst episode of LOST ever made.  What makes it worse is that it followed “Flashes Before Your Eyes” which was flipping brilliant and the exceptional “Not in Portland” before that.  Timing was really bad for this one.

The flashback to Jack meeting the beautiful Achara in Thailand and starting an affair and winding up with tattoos that, for some reason, offended her family.  Jack gets beat up.

Um…..

That’s basically it, I believe.

Jack’s tattoos apparently say, “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us”.  But according to Jack, that’s not what they mean.

There were a couple of interesting things happen.

• We see Cindy again.  She, and the kids, come to see Jack at his cage.  Like he’s in a zoo.  The girl asks about Ana Lucia and Jack gets mad.  That’s why you don’t feed the animals.
• Juliet is on trial for her murder of Pickett.  Jack gets Ben to pardon her.  They still “mark” Juliet.
• Sawyer and Kate fight.
• Carl cries.
• Isabel, the “sheriff,” came to give the verdict in Juliet’s trial, and she seemed important, but is never seen again. Apparently she died off screen.

Okay, so I stretched the truth about a couple of interesting things happening.  After that scene with Jack and Cindy, there was not much more.

This episode was one of the major reasons why the producers of LOST went to ABC and got them to give an end date for the series.  The argument was that they knew where the story was going, but they did not know how many episodes they had to fill.  Flashbacks like this one are completely worthless, and if they knew how many they needed, they could take the narrative towards its conclusion.  They got ABC to agree to end the series after season 6, and the seasons 4-6 would be shorter in length, not the 23 as the other seasons had been.  This helped tighten the storytelling and develop the plot in the way to lead to an ending.

What a brilliant episode.

Desmond has become, in short order, one of the best characters in all of LOST and maybe even on television.

This episode is fully original and different than anything we had seen up to this point on LOST.  It set up the world of time travel beautifully on the show, something that would be explored in much grater detail as the seasons progressed.

The flashbacks in this episode is done unlike anything else on the show prior.  Desmond, after turning the key, had his consciousness flash back to his past and he was reliving what he had seen before.  But he would have flashes of the future… of the Island and the button and of the survivors.  So while we are able to see what happened to Desmond in flashback format, we also saw him struggle to make sense of what was happening.

And then we get Eloise Hawkins.  One of the greatest riddles of the show.  Eloise was at the ring shop and showing Des wedding rings.  He was not supposed to buy one.  He was to change his mind about Penny and break her heart.  So when he went to purchase the ring, Eloise flipped out.

She then explained to Desmond (and us) how this worked.  He always did this and that is the way it has to be.  Even if you wanted to, you can’t change it because the universe will “course correct” to make what was supposed to happen, happen.

I remember watching this for the first time and having my mind blown.  It makes more sense this time through, having known what happen moving on.

In this flashback, we see what a jerk Charles Widmore is and how he taunted Desmond with his McCutcheon Whiskey.  Ironically, that was the same whiskey that Charlie and Hurley try to tempt Desmond with to loosen his lips.

On the Island, Desmond has been acting odd since waking up naked in the jungle.  In this episode, he took off running and jumped into the ocean to save a drowning Claire.  How exactly did he know she was drowning?

Pair that with the lightning from earlier this season, and Desmond has some explaining to do.  Hurley believes that Desmond can see the future, but Charlie is not so sure.

So after finishing the bottle, Charlie and Hurley go to figure out what is going on with Desmond.  Desmond doesn’t want to tell and tries to leave.  Charlie called him a coward (which is what Penny called him too) and Desmond tackled him, screaming at him about what he sees.

Finally after calming down, Desmond reveals that he did not save Claire.  He saved Charlie who drowned when he tried to save Claire.  And the lightning was supposed to electrocute Charlie, but Desmond’s lightning rod stopped it. But Desmond cried out at the end of the episode…

“No matter what I do…you’re gonna die, Charlie.”

Goose bumps.  What an amazing episode, full of emotion and drama and with a fantastic cliffhanger.  Desmond episodes have become the best of the best, even surpassing Locke episodes, it would seem.

I hated Juliet.

She was such a horrible person when we first meet her and you couldn’t believe anything she said.  She was like a female Ben.

Even with the juxtaposition of her first Juliet-centric episode, “Not in Portland,” which focused on her quest to help her cancer ridden sister to become pregnant, I could not bring myself to care for her at all.

Her on Island persona was so rotten that I had no problem hating her. It wouldn’t be until she and Sawyer get together later in season 4 (i believe) that Juliet becomes more than just a lying killer.

She has told so many lies on the Island that you are never sure exactly what she wants.  You can guess now that her main goal would be to get back to the world to her sister, but her actions are still suspect.

Kate and Sawyer escape but have to run through the jungle as bullets are fired past them.  Pickett isn’t about to give up on his desire to kill Sawyer, and quickly, Sawyer is out of bullets.  If it wasn’t for deus ex machina Alex, Kate and Sawyer would have been caught and probably killed.

Alex has a boat, but she wants Kate and Sawyer to help her save her boyfriend Carl. She takes them to a building that has Aldo as a guard.  They pull the “ol’ Wookie prisoner gag” as Sawyer puts it and get the jump on Aldo.  They find Carl in room 23, which is quote the trip.

Carl looks like he is being brainwashed with quick, flashing images and messages.  He had LED glasses on and an IV in hi arm.  The existence of Room 23 is one of the more brutal aspects of the Others and the Dharma Initiative before them.

Back in the surgery, Ben awakes and listens to Jack and the argument.  Finally, he asks to talk to Juliet.  According to Juliet, Ben told her to help Kate and Sawyer escape and in return he would let her go home.  It is unclear whether she was lying about that or if he did say it and was lying about it.  Either way, Juliet went off and helped Sawyer and Kate by killing Pickett and letting them go.

There was one scene in particular that flashed from Juliet in Miami with a bright, happy face to Juliet on the Island who looked cold, calculating and full of anger.  It was quite the stark difference.

Other things that happen:

• Juliet’s ex-husband gets hit by a bus.  Buses are dangerous on LOST.
• We meet Richard Albert for the first time.  He recruited Juliet.
• Ethan Rom is the official “THIS IS A FLASHBACK” guy.  He appears any time they want to make sure you understand that this is happening in the past.
• Tom introduced himself to Jack.  He seemed like a nice guy who could have been friends had the Others reacted differently.
• We find out that Alex is Ben’s daughter.  Sawyer repeats one of Hurley’s lines, “Didn’t see that coming.”
• Jack tells Kate not to come back for him

By this point, Season 3 is fully out of its early slump and we’ve had a couple amazing episodes in a row.

Look, Kate married Nathan Fillion!

“I Do” is a “Mini-series finale” as the show was going on a 13-week hiatus after this.  We see this more often now with shows taking their Winter Finales etc, but at the time, it was a novel approach to keep the episodes together and not have them constantly interrupted by reruns.  Because of that, the first six episodes were meant to feel like it had an over arching story, in this case, Kate, Sawyer and Jack’s capture and detainment on Hydra Island.

Of course the biggest news from the episode was that Kate and Sawyer had sex in the cage.  This was lauded by many, but I was (an am) on Team Jack (shipped Jate, if I remember correctly) and I was not happy about it.

I must say that I really liked the relationship between Kate (aka Monica) and Kevin (Fillion).  This continued the narrative of the character of Kate being unable to commit or to stay in one place.  She needed to run.  When she called Edward Mars, Kate was asking him to leave her alone so she could stop running, but Mars knew she couldn’t do it.  He even offered to let her go if she would settle down.  What would have happened if she had been able to do it? It was the pregnancy test that was the final straw, that kicked her flight response into gear. She couldn’t picture herself as a mother, which will be a real change in Kate in the later seasons with Aaron and the Oceanic 6.

Kate was probably right though when she said that Kevin would eventually find out.  He was a police officer and she did not want to compromise him.  So Kate drugged him (which seems to be Kate M.O.) and took off.

Back on Hydra Island, Jack was considering operating on Ben, but he basically told Ben to get ready to die.  Jack was pretty brutal here, not necessarily following the Hippocratic Oath.  There were certainly better ways for Ben to have gotten him to help.  The entire argument of the Others is flawed.  Ben keeps saying that they were the Good Guys and that the violence came from the survivors of Oceanic 815.  The problem was, if he would have just approached the survivors and offered help instead of abducting passengers (especially children) things would have been much easier.  Don’t forget, not only did Ethan Rom try to kidnap Claire, he hanged Charlie from a tree.  That kind of goes against the narrative of him being a “good person.”

Matthew Fox is wonderful in this episode.  You can see the betrayal on his face when Kate comes to him to ask him to do the surgery because they were going to kill Sawyer.  Then he sees them in the cage going sat it on Ben’s monitors making it even a worse feeling.  Still, Jack comes up with a plan to save Kate and Sawyer.

And what a plan it was.  Start the surgery on Ben and then stop in the middle, make a small incision and let Ben die unless the Others follow his instructions.  Let Kate and Sawyer go or he dies.

And the timing couldn’t have been better because Pickett was moments away from executing Sawyer in font of Kate.  With the rain pouring down, this scene was tension filled and frightening.

And Jack’s “Kate, dammit, Run!” really punctuated the mini-series finale.

Other important details:

• Mr. Eko’s body was buried by Locke and company.  Sayid and Locke went back and found the Jesus stick to mark the grave.
• The Jesus Stick had carved into it, “LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK NORTH” with John 3.05.  Message?
• Pickett mentions that Shepherd “wasn’t even on Jacob’s list.”  This is the first mention of the name Jacob.
• Alex shows up in a panic trying to find her boyfriend Carl.  She thinks that the Others have killed him.  She is looking for help from Kate and Sawyer, perhaps foreshadowing what will happen in the future.
• Ben asked Juliet if Alex asked about him. We know that Ben and Alex have a complicated relationship.

Goodbye, Mr. Eko.

Only Bernard remains from the Tail section of Oceanic 815.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje had only signed a one year contract with the show, and was looking to leave.  Apparently, the producers talked him into returning so they could spread out Mr.Eko’s death from that of Ana Lucia and Libby.  He agreed.  However, there is no way to measure how sad the loss of one of the best characters on LOST was.  Mr. Eko had so much more story to tell.

Bringing Mr. Eko back to the Smoke Monster is a stroke of genius though.  In The 23rd Psalm, Mr. Eko stared down the Smoke Monster, apparently being judged worthy to live. However, here, Smoke Monster changed his tune.  Perhaps it was because of Mr. Eko’s insistence that he had not sinned.  That all he did was survive.

Mr. Eko’s flashback went back to Nigeria to Yemi’s church and Eko took it over.  Then so bad men show up demanding vaccine from a shipment.  It is a deal Yemi had negotiated but Eko was having none of it.  He drew the men out and killed them all, unleashing the darkside of Mr. Eko.

Mr. Eko used the line, “You don’t know who I am.” before burying the machete in the man’s head.

On the Island, Eko is confronted by zombie versions of these men.  He also tries to confess to his brother, which was when he had said that he did what he had to do to survive.

Problem was this was not Yemi Eko was confessing to .  It was the Smoke Monster.  It was one of the first times when we understood that the Smoke Monster could take forms of other people.

While Eko was above ground, Locke, Sayid, Paolo, Nikki and Desmond were in the Pearl Station trying to find a way to communicate with the Others.  When Nikki suggest they try one of the other TVs, they find a signal to another station where they see a man with an eye patch (who we would eventually know as Mikhail).

And on Hydra Island, Ben admits to Jack that he has a tumor on his spine and he wants Jack to operate on him.  Juliet comes with a video that suggests that some Others want a change in leadership and that Jack could “accidentally” lose Ben on the table.  While the video played, Juliet said the opposite things for the cameras as not to give away her plan.

This marked another improvement on season 3.  LOST feels at this point that it might have been out of its early season slump.

This was the best episode in season 4 so far.  A Sawyer-centric episode where Ben decided that the only was to gain a con man’s trust is to con him.  So he went about tying to manipulate Sawyer.  And Ben does one hell of a good job.

He takes Sawyer from the polar bear cage and pretends to implant a pacemaker into his body that would blow up Sawyer’s heart if his heartbeat got going too fast.  He showed Sawyer a bunny that they had done the same thing to and he shook it until it died.

Dark, but it was just part of the con.

They gave Sawyer a watch to keep track of his heartbeat.

Flashback to prison where Sawyer has been sent after his attempt to con Cassidy.  She pressed charges on him and he wound up in prison for the lat nine months.  Cassidy came to see Sawyer with a picture of  a baby girl that she claimed was his.  Clementine is what she said the little baby’s name was.  Sawyer rejected the idea of having a daughter and sent Cassidy away.

However, Sawyer got involved with the warden to con another prisoner into giving up the location of money that he stole.  In exchange, Sawyer’s sentence would be commuted and he would receive a part of the reward.  Sawyer asked for it to be set up in a bank account for Clementine.

Back on Hydra Island, Jack is brought to try and save Colleen, but he cannot. Pickett gets upet and goes to take it out on Sawyer.  After opening the cage and taking him over to Kate’s cage, Pickett began to pound on Sawyer’s face, yelling at Kate, “Do you love him?” He kept beating on Sawyer until Kate admitted that she did love him.

Honestly, this whole section was the weakest part of the episode.  It feels a very contrived way to get Sawyer and Kate together.  And I don’t know why it mattered to Pickett at that point whether she loved him or not.  Pickett did not know that it was Sun who had shot his wife, but he was taking it out on the con man.

The next morning, Ben arrived to show Sawyer something.  He takes him and shows him the bunny, not dead, and told Sawyer that they had not implanted a pacemaker in him.  It was all a con.  However, there is no reason to run because they were on a different island, not the one where Sawyer’s plane crashed.

Ben was trying to show Sawyer that he was way ahead of him, no matter how talented he was at conning.

We also got some more of Desmond back at the beach.  He was trying to convince Claire to let him fix her roof, but she and Charlie sent him away. Instead, Des set up a long pole with a 5 iron at the end of it.  Turns out that the pole Desmond set up gets struck by lightning and falls down harmlessly beside Claire’s tent.

As Hurley will eventually note, this is Desmond’s super power.

This is an anomaly.  A John-centric episode where the flashbacks were not very good.

Who knew that could happen.

Locke on the Commune with the pot dealers just did not seem to fit wit anything.  They tried by playing this off of John’s desire to find a family, but it just felt too forced.  It does show Locke as a good man, because he would not execute Eddie to protect the Commune’s secrets.

The Locke story on the Island was much more entertaining than the flashbacks.  John came from the Hatch implosion unable to speak so he built a sweat lodge to talk to the Island and see what he was supposed to do.  John’s spirit guide turned out to be Boone, who took John on a campy metaphysical voyage through an airport with all the other regulars showing up in weird roles.  This was all meant to get to the point that Locke needed to clean up his own mess, and save Mr. Eko.

Apparently, Mr. Eko had been taken by a polar bear and John needed to find him.  Charlie came along, still pretty ticked at John for last season’s events.

As they were tracking the polar bear, Locke and Charlie stumbled across Hurley, who had the message from the Others.  John told Hurley to return to the camp and tell everyone what the Others had said.

On his way back, Hurley came across a naked Desmond.  “The Hatch blew you out of your underwear?” Hurley asked, barely able to look toward Desmond.  Hurley gave Desmond a tie dye shirt.  Hurley worried aloud about Jack, Kate and Sawyer.  Desmond said not to worry because John would help them and that Locke had said that in his speech.  Hurley was confused because John had not said anything like that.  Desmond claimed to be confused.

John and Charlie arrived at the polar bear cave and John went in.  John found Eko and used a torch and some hairspray to create a flamethrower and burned the bear badly.  It ran off and John got Eko out of the cave.

They returned to the camp.  Eko had talked to John, though it seemed that it was not Eko doing the talking (the Island, perhaps?).  After laying him down, Locke gave the speech that Desmond had told Hurley about to the people at the camp, including Nikki and Paolo (making their debut).  Hurley was confused, looking over to Desmond.

This was better than the other episodes so far in season three, but it is definitely the worst of the Locke flashback episodes.  It also feels weird now knowing that Mr. Eko will not last much longer on the show.  The main story of this episode was saving Eko and he dies very soon.

However, it was nice to see John Locke back to his old self, before the Hatch and the button, back when he had faith in the Island.  Perhaps that is the key result of this episode.

The second consecutive weaker episode to start season 3 was an episode I was talking about during the season two re-watch.

This is the episode that confirmed that Sun had been having an affair with Jae prior to getting on Oceanic 815.  So “The Whole Truth” episode where Sun tells Jin that she had not been with any other man was a big old lie and serves to undercut Sun as a character.

Much like the previous week’s fair where White Knight Jack was shown in a much more negative light in flashbacks, Sun is dealt with in much the same way.  Sun is caught by her father with Jae and he is shamed.  He orders Jin to kill him.  Jin does not want to do it.  Instead, he beats Jae up and warns him to disappear and leave the country.  At this point, Jin leaves, but Jae leaps from the balcony with a pearl necklace- the one he tried to give to Sun, in his hand and crashed onto Jin’s car, killing himself.

Jae thought Jin was talking about the affair with Sun when he actually had no idea about that.  He was only following Sun’s father’s orders.

Meanwhile, Sayid is setting a trap for the Others by setting a big fire without knowing that they already know that they are there.  In the end, Sun winds up shooting Colleen and the rest of the party escapes with Desmond’s boat.  Sun, Jin and Sayid are safe and begin their trek back to their camp.

The best scene of the episode takes place at the end where Ben comes and introduces himself properly to Jack.  Benjamin Linus is his full name, though Jack refused the handshake offered.  Jack and Ben interact, with Ben doing  most of the talking.  Ben waxed poetic about how last week their places were reversed and how he just wants to help Jack.

He offers to get Jack home.  Jack laughs at him, not believing that Ben can get him off the island.  Then Ben shows Jack a video of the Red Sox winning the World Series to prove that they have contact with the outside world.

This was a powerful moment since Jack’s dad used to say that “That’s why the Red Sox will never win the series.”

Sawyer and Kate kiss on the work line, which leads to Pickett coming over to shock Sawyer, but Sawyer gets the drop on him and gets a gun.  Unfortunately, Juliet is there and has a gun on Kate, forcing “James,” as she said, to give up his gun.  Sawyer and Kate exchange witty banter at the polar bear cages later that night.

I was not a fan of Sawyer and Kate so I did not like how the writers seemed to be forcing them together.  I still think that, deep down, Kate wants to be with Jack and that Sawyer is the bad boy she likes because she is more like her mother than she wants to admit.

Oh, and Ben is sitting watching everything happening on his monitors.  Creepy.

All in all, I found the season three premiere a tad underwhelming.

There are some typically great things.  First, the Book Club meeting at the beginning of the episode that introduced us to Juliet and some of the Others was sensation. It kept you guess about who these people were until you went outside and saw Oceanic 815 crack apart in the sky.

Ben was introduced under his correct name, instead of Henry, and Michael Emerson is always top notch.

Sawyer and the fish biscuit was a nice touch of levity.  We are introduced to Carl, who will become more important later.

We learn a bit more about Jack.  At least, we see Jack acting jealous and angry in the real world when Sarah refused to reveal the name of the man she left Jack for.  Jack became convinced that the man was his father, Christian, and he attacked him at an AA meeting (which resulted in Christian hitting the booze again after 50 days sober).  It showed some of the negative traits that Jack displayed while dealing with Locke and Kate and Sawyer over the first two seasons and made us understand him more.

Otherwise, the episode was not my favorite.  We did not see anyone else besides Jack, Kate and Sawyer and the Others.  It made you wonder exactly what had happened to the Hatch, specifically Locke, Eko and Desmond.

We also found out that Jack was being held underwater at the Hydra station, or so they said. Juliet had a file on Jack giving her a ton of information.  It is unclear how they are able to gather such information on this isolated island.

My memory is that I was never a huge fan of the polar bear cage episodes so we’ll see if any of them are better than I recall.

I am now finished with season two of LOST.  I enjoyed it tremendously.  I have to say, my memory of season 2 was that it was not as good, but this was way better than I remembered.  Heck, I believe there were more episodes currently in the upper half of the overall list from season two than one.  I’m not sure why I remembered it this way.

I will say that there was one issue that I had with the season.  It was characters who did something that looked as if it was going to fundamentally change the perception of the character only to change back in just a few episodes.  Two huge examples:

Dark Charlie.  When Charlie was revealed to be the person who grabbed Sun, it sure seemed like he was on a path to become John Locke’s nemesis.  This was right after he had the breakdown with the baby and everyone turned on him.  Suddenly, the hoodie was gone, he was working with Eko and everyone forgot about Charlie’s crimes.  Heck, by season’s end, even Claire had forgiven him as she was kissing him in the last few moments.

Sheriff Sawyer.  Sawyer, mad about people going through his stuff when he was on the raft, set up a long con to grab control of the guns and the medicine.  He made everyone look foolish while doing it.  He declared himself the “new sheriff in town.”  Then the next episode, he was out acting like nothing had happened.  Him having the guns just became an unimportant plot point.  When someone needed a gun, they just went to Sawyer.  Sawyer did not cultivate this image and, before the season was over, everything was back where it started.

Neither of these characters were affected by these episodes even a little bit as they were treated as if they never happened.  Unlike Michael, who was completely and forever changed by his actions, Charlie and Sawyer went right back to who they were prior to the episodes.

To a lesser extent, you could argue that Hurley was the same way as he went from preparing to jump off a cliff to having a picnic with Libby, in the space of an episode.

While these episodes were mostly entertaining, they did not have the impact that they should have had on the overall story or the characters.

Best Episode:  Live Together, Die Alone.  This is currently at #1 on the list of episodes on the re-watch list.  I know there are some that will exceed this, but it was an exceptional season finale with huge storyline implications.  Runner-Up:  Orientation.

Best Flashback:  Desmond, Live Together, Die Alone.  This flashback had me crying over the relationship between Penny and Desmond.  It made me care more about that relationship in just a few minutes of air time than I did for several other relationships after two seasons.  Runner-Up:  The 23rd Psalm

Best Performance:  Harold Perrineau.  He made me hate Michael.  I was never a fan of Michael, but I HATED him by the end of this season.  You can see the way Michael was affected by everything he did in the name of getting his son back.  Wonderful work.  Runner-Up:  Michael Emerson

Biggest Jerk:  Michael.  Well duh.  He went from a bit of a jerk to a downright monster, willing to do anything to anybody for Walt.  Runner-Up:  Charlie

Best Death:  Ana Lucia and Libby.  It has to be this pair of deaths because you just did not see it coming.  And it was just a blow to the chest, especially with Libby, who was juts starting to form a closer relationship with Hurley.  Runner-Up: Shannon

Biggest Surprise:  Michael shoots Ana Lucia and Libby.  Did not see it coming at all.  It forever changed LOST and the character of Michael. Runner-Up: Desmond is in the Hatch.

Funniest Moment:  “You guys got any milk?” Henry Gale.  Henry tells John and Jack what he would do if he were one of “them.”  After putting them on notice, he calmly asks for milk for his cereal.  Runner-Up:  Hurley’s dream with Jin speaking English and Mr. Cluck.

Best Moment:  The Hatch implodes.  Everything in this episode that led up to the destruction of the Hatch was just remarkable. Ending with Locke’s line “I was wrong.” Runner-Up:  Mr. Eko goes face-to-face with the Smoke Monster.

Most Character Developed:  Desmond.  Amazing since he was only in four episodes, but it can show you what you can do in limited time.  Desmond went from the guy in the Hatch to a romantic hero in just a few hours of TV.  Runner-Up: Michael

Best New Character:  “Henry”.  Boy this was a loaded category for season two because you could have any number of possible choices.  But Henry, who will eventually come to be known as Ben, is one of the most vital characters in the history of the show.  Runners-Up: Desmond, Mr. Eko, Penny, Ana Lucia, Libby, Bernard, Charles Widmore, Kelvin Inman

Bring on Season Three!  And Flash Forwards!