A very good episode. Disjointed observations and ruminations, in rough chronological order (chronological in the sense of the episode, not time, thankfully):
* When Desmond was describing Scotland to his son, it sounded a lot like the island, except for the part about glens.
* I don’t mean to sound like a chauvinist or anything, but I think we’ve had a few too many childbirths on the show. Claire, Emily Locke, Mrs. Linus, Sun, Penny…we got the idea.
* The revelation that the Others speak Latin was cool, as I recall several Latin phrases on the blast door map. Maybe Radzinsky was an other, Kelvin found him out with his mad spy skills, and Radzinsky didn’t really off himself. Or Kelvin was lying about being DHARMA, or none of this is connected at all.
* The soldiers were Americans, but Jones and his friends apparently just had their uniforms. What’s funny is that they think Locke and co. set the bombs; do Locke, Sawyer, and Juliet look like a 1954 Army battalion?
* At first I thought the Other girl with the gun might be Amelia, but of course by the end of the episode that theory was replaced by a better one.
* Nuclear testing was, at one time at least, a pretty popular theory to explain some of the strange things on the island. While it appears the bomb never went off, it is still interesting…and where is it now? Some people think it may be related to the Swan station, and that perhaps the “electromagnetic anomaly” was a cover for a thermonuclear bomb.
* As soon as I heard people were snooping around Faraday’s research, I figured they worked for Widmore. Usually when I’m right about a question on Lost, it’s one that is raised and answered in the same episode. So if you’re reading this blog, maybe you should find one that’s more insightful.
* I hope for Locke’s sake that Richard, Jacob, or whoever can see how he went all in as an Other by letting “Jones” run away.
* And then I realized that the gun-toting chick wasn’t Amelia…it was “Ellie”…Eloise…the name of Faraday’s rat and the name of Faraday’s mother (who despite my earlier doubts surely has to be Ms. Hawking). Which is why he kept looking at her funny while they were going out to the bomb.
* When the comatose woman that Desmond visited was revealed to be supported by Widmore, I figured he’d really screwed up and outed himself to Widmore. Maybe he did too, because he went all in and visited him. But why was the woman comatose and still alive after all of this time, while Minkowski and Desmond (and now Charlotte) were much closer to death much more quickly?
* When Locke first strolled into the Others’ camp, I kept wondering why he didn’t just give Richard the compass. But then it turns out that Richard doesn’t remember that either, and Locke apparently gives Richard the idea to come check him out as a baby. Of course, in that scene the bombshell is that “Jones” is Charles Widmore himself. So Widmore was an Other (and already one who had trouble with authority as seen by his reluctance to do as Alpert says). This puts things in a whole new light--previously I assumed that while Widmore may have been on the island, it was in some other role, and not as an Other. Now the whole Ben/Widmore conflict looks more like an Other Civil War. Of course, there is still a lot of story to be seen and it will be interesting to see when and why the schism occurs.
* How cute is it that Desmond and Penny’s son is named Charlie? And I hated Charlie.
* Too bad about Charlotte, as it appears she’s in serious trouble. “Why her?” is a good question. Some say it’s because she’s from the island, but one would think that would make her more able to deal with such a thing, not less.
* This was such a good episode that the complete absence of the Oceanic Six + Ben didn’t register until I wrote down my thoughts.
