( continues...) Jack. Jack doesn't strike me as the type to want to listen to prophecy.

But to return to your earlier point, whether Locke is a true pragmatist or not, I think he's a pragmatist now. He's the only one who's been directly active on the "get food, get water" front. Pragmatic.

More to the point, I think Locke very much can be a pragmatic "let's worship the island" type. His worship of the island, if it comes, would come from a very pragmatic place -- the island gave him his legs back. Plain and simple. Direct, pragmatic, and understandable.

Pfft. Of course he's on the white side, even if he's not. He's not the type to believe he's wrong.

Exactly the type of thinking that leads to bad-guy-ism.

Re: the empty coffin, I figure it was empty when they loaded it onto the plane in Sydney. For some reason, I am loathe to believe that Jack's dad was actually raised from the dead on the island. That takes the mystery of the island one step too far, IMO. Plus, as previously mentioned, nobody else could see him when Jack saw him, so I believe pretty firmly that he was a hallucination.

I agree, Kate. Whether Jack's dad's body was on the plane or not, I don't think he's been bodily ressurected. If he has been, his dad can apparently violate the laws of physics (appear and disappear at will).

Plus, real people don't sound like ice clinking in a whiskey tumbler when they walk by.

I cannot wait for next week's episode. Is the writer for that ep someone we know?

Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

I know Javier. Went to high school with him. He's a very good writer. I wish I still had a way to contact him. I'd ask him for a job, even if it was just a PA job.

Best name EVAH.

We always thought so, back in high school.

Sayid, was in the Iraq military. How long ago, we don't know. There is a female in his past, we don't know the relationship, but it's obviously important to him. We do know he's the resident Professor. Not enough information to fit him into the "opposites" theory, yet.

Well, being ex-Republican Guard, back in reality, he's not someone people would regard as a good guy. He sure is now. That fits with your "opposite" theory, I'd say.

I would just like to point out how tickled I am by the fact that this show's main character's name is Jack, and that the plane's point of origin was Sydney.

Soon Jacks will dominate fandom.

I would just like to point out how tickled I am by the fact that this show's main character's name is Jack, and that the plane's point of origin was Sydney.

I'm thinking this is not unintentional.

In Beetlejuice, we knew that the main characters were dead, and there was still some tension in the story.

That's because they were very clearly presented as dead, as soon as it happened (something that has not, IMO, been done here)

Plus, there were dead folk in episode 1, when the survivors were roaming around in their shell-shocked state. If the survivors are dead, too, what does that makes the not-walking-around dead passengers? Massively dead?

Soon Jacks will dominate fandom.

Ah, the Era of Will is over....

Those are not punishments for sins, or problems for dead people, those are all very clearly delineated problems of the living.

But that's in *your* mind. Do you see what I mean? I actually don't think this is going to be a purgatory story, but it's too early to make a judgment like the one above, because we really don't understand the rules of their universe, and if it even is a separate universe.

Taking what are clearly delineated problems of the living, in your mind/our world, and defining them as such in a 'verse we don't yet know, is akin to saying during S1 Buffy, that Angel couldn't be a vampire, because he didn't sleep in a coffin. My only point was that ruling out* a purgatory story, because it doesn't jibe with the a common cultural definition of such a thing, doesn't make sense, when we really don't yet know their rules.

*edited to clarify...
I do not even mean "ruling them out," just judging that it would be a cheat. We are not yet working with anything close to a fully fleshed out mythology.

I'm still waiting for one of these Amazing Jacks to have a last name like Czarnowski.

Also waiting for the show to pull a full Swiss Family Robinson so that Charlie can ride up to camp one day on the back of a tamed ostrich.

Maybe one of the other characters will be from Bristow, California.

Also waiting for the show to pull a full Swiss Family Robinson so that Charlie can ride up to camp one day on the back of a tamed ostrich.

That would be AWESOME. There should absolutely be ostriches.

Those are not punishments for sins, or problems for dead people, those are all very clearly delineated problems of the living.

But maybe the person being punished was Boone or Jack, and not Nameless Swimmer girl.