something that jumped out at me watching the episode was that Brian told Michael he had two one-way tickets from Sydney to New York for he and Walt. the flight was Sydney/LA. do flights from Sydney go direct to NY? and if so, why was he on the flight going to LA?

oh and a poster at the Fuselage says that there was a calendar in the hospital room scene that said it was 2000. the math doesn't add up because that would mean current year on the island would be 2008. i rewound and watched again, but i didn't see the calendar. maybe i just missed it. did anyone else catch it?

do flights from Sydney go direct to NY? and if so, why was he on the flight going to LA?

My guess would be a stopover in L.A. Sydney to New York would be a pretty damn long flight.

What Dana said. In about 1998 they were starting a new service direct from New York to Singapore, and it was once a day, and it was like the plane ride to end all plane rides. I don't know if they still offer it.

Flying with a kid, I'd definitely want a couple-days layover between two 6+ hour flights.

Sawyer I always assumed was on the plane to flee someone who was chasing him on a bicycle, yelling "I want my two dollars!"

They're gonna have to come up with something really good if this isn't the case.

I knew going in that Harold Perrineau had better acting chops than anyone on the show except maybe Terry O'Quinn, and it was so nice to see Fury make use of that to good effect.

I think the actress that plays Sun is of comparable skill. She's extremely expressive and nuanced.

I am kind of thinking, if Michael had any sense and any friends who are lawyers, he had some serious points in his favor, no? I mean, they weren't married, so he probably can't get alimony even if he claims it was a common-law marriage (although he supported her through school). But if he's the stay-at-home dad, and the mom wants to move to a foreign country? I bet that he had at least an outside chance of (a) making her not move or (b) paying for him to move too, or at least paying for his airfare (considering the kid can't fly alone).

Even if there isn't a court order of custody in place already, and even if we presume that the mom will end up with primary physical custody of the kid, the dad is still likely to get visitation rights, and she is interfering with those rights if she moves a continent away.

Though state laws vary, those rights would not apply to an unmarried father who does not go through the legal process (with the mother's consent) of establishing legal parental rights. Since the burden of childrearing falls to the Mom in the vast majority of these cases, most courts consider it onerous to have her base her life decisions around the father. An unmarried father in the situation of this episode would have very very very little chance to win legal rights in a dispute, if he didn't have them already. Particularly if he didn't have deep financial resources for a long court fight. Which would be moot, because as the legal guardian she could take Walt out of the country anyway.

Nutty, for Michael, I think the dealbreaker was his accident.

Yeah but that was after she had already moved to Amsterdam. What about before that, when she first said, "I'm up and moving, and taking Walt with me, end of story"? Maybe Michael simply didn't realize that he did have the legal right to see his child and I agree, he probably could have gotten SOMETHING - like maybe the right to fly out there at Bitch's expense every few years.

[ETA - or I am talking out of my ass, as Hec just proved.]

I will say that this episode totally made me feel for men who get screwed out of their parental rights - because normally it's shown like with Claire and her BabyDaddy - the man's all "oh, please have the baby, I want to be a father" and then when reality hits, he's out the door. Or he sticks around but treats the kid like shit. The saddest thing for me was that Michael didn't even get the chance to see what kind of father he could be. He was completely cut off before Walt was old enough to even know what was happening.

This episode? Kicked all kinds of ass.

The sweeps bullshit that makes us go on hiatus AGAIN after only getting 3 new eps? Sucks donkey dick. I would like to abolish sweeps, WTF is the point of them anyway?

PS I tried to support Marti, but MAN, Point Pleasant suuucked. It made Roswell & Dawson's Creek look good.

arby,

Point Pleasant suuucked.

right there with you. Damn.

Sawyer I always assumed was on the plane to flee someone who was chasing him on a bicycle, yelling "I want my two dollars!"

Okay, this must happen.

It means that JJA is chock full of daddy/parent issues.

Ah. So it wasn't just for talent that he raided the ruins of the Mutant Enemy Writers' room.

Heh. I was going to say the same thing; there's a comforting familiarity in all the bitterness, isn't there?

Flying with a kid, I'd definitely want a couple-days layover between two 6+ hour flights.

No kidding. And Sydney to LA is more like 14 hours. Although I bet Walt's a pretty good flier for a kid (discounting the theory that he was the one who made the plane go boom, anyway).

And Sydney to LA is more like 14 hours.

Not to be nitpicky but in White Rabbit didn't Jack say 16 hours?