it sure looked like the guy who played his superior officer was a white dude, which was both distracting and disappointing.

If I'm reading IMDB right, I believe the actor's Navid Negahban.

Huh, really? Okay, I could well be wrong, since I didn't actually do any research myself...

"I could build an aqueduct, but I couldn't build a relationship with my son."

Ha!

Edit: Cleolinda's recap is up! Too bad it's way past my bedtime.

Any takers on the title of Michael's flashback ep being called "Building Bridges"?

Looks like I am going to be alone in my dissent here, but this episode was just...blah. Dull. No intensity. There was no chemistry between Saeed and Nadia, or between Saeed and Danielle. There was no emotion in either the now-story or the back-story. The Danielle Rousseau character was neither entertaining, frightening, or interesting as a new Ben Gunn.

Maybe I'm just having a bad day. I'll save the tape and watch it again later this week, perhaps it will be better then.

Okay, I totally lied, and am still awake and reading the recap, and it has reminded me, if Danielle and her team crashed on the island unexpectedly, how did she/they build the warehouselike structure she's been living in? It looks pretty permanent and sturdy and complex for what was supposed to be just a makeshift campsite.

Okay, I think cleolinda was watching with me, cause:

"Nearly two months we survived here," she says, and maybe it's just the way she phrases it, but I was totally expecting her to be like, "And then a polar bear ATE US and WE DIED and now we're just GHOSTS. Have you seen The Sixth Sense? I love that movie."

I totally added a "AND THEN WE DIED" too.

Plus?

"You think I'm insane," she says, and Sayid does the sympathetic head shake of No, Really, I... Yeah, Pretty Much.

That's almost exactly what we said as well.

Also, she was listening to "Haunted"! I love that song.

Looks like I am going to be alone in my dissent here, but this episode was just...blah.

You're not alone, by the way. I thought it was all right, but not great. It felt muddled.

Just finished reading Cleolinda's recap -- and you know she's right. What a weak preview for Desperate Housewives that was. If that's the best scene -- then I think we can expect a lousy episode of DH this Sunday.

Well, didn't Danielle and Co. have a ship?

I suppose it wasn't made out of wood though. Was her cabin thingy underground? Could they have taken part of the structure of the ship and created the cabin from it. Perhaps that's why the "door" was a hatch in the ceiling.

I don't know. It looked like an actual research station, rather than A Hole We Dug In The Ground And Fortified With Bamboo.

Okay, and now I am actually going to sleep. 'Night, all.

I had fun. i love that nadine turn out to be a prisoner. And I have to say that i general I love the fact that we are seeing a lot of outwardly confident people , less that perfect. and I love that Charlie really was somebodY, and lost it. not coherent. but there were some unexpected things and lots more questions and I find I like people better in this episode. and Locke is creepy and I can't take my eyes off him... Plus Golf. It belongs on this island because it is such a silly game

steals Sawyer away while blurring the buffistas with my babble

Kate -- assuming that they didn't lose much in the wreck, might they not have brought some sort of research station/lab building kit with them? That would have been a good thing to salvage.