Matt,

yeah because he started seeing his father the morning after the burning of the BODYS and it probably brought up all these feelings for him as well.

I am tempted to think the island is strange, that something extraordinary is at work there. Actually, though, there are only three datapoints for that idea. A conk on the head rarely heals paralyzed legs, some of the trees seem to be epileptic, and OMGWTF.

There may be real-world solutions for all of those.

Post-traumatic stress/sleep deprivation can certainly account for Jack's actions in White Rabbit. The usefulness of those hallucinations (finding water, meeting Locke with the boar) seems a little suspect, though.

And why isn't the island mojo working on everyone?

We haven't seen enough of everyone's stories to know, yet.

shouldn't Jack become callous and selfish

He did. He refused to participate in the memorial service for the dead passengers. He was a tad rude about his refusal, too. The opposite I see in Jack is that before, he kept his light under a bushel. He was eclipsed by his father before the crash, pushed around by his mother, and now he's getting his moment to shine and a chance to have a say in what he chooses to do.

Now that I've defended my theory, I just gotta say, it's A theory. One of probably half a dozen I'll come up with before the show's half-way over. I wear a lot of tinfoil. You need feel no compulsion in wadding it up and chucking it in the trash. I'll just go buy more.

He did. He refused to participate in the memorial service for the dead passengers.

That's probably lingering daddy issues, though.

Just don't take any of my tinfoil, Sail. I've got the heavy-duty stuff, over here. and i know you've been looking at it.

I don't see Jack's occasional rudeness as him being callous and selfish, just sometimes focusing more on his own issues or on the crisis at hand than on the other person's feelings. He's still hero-y. I agree about him now getting a chance to shine, but how much of that is the island mojo and how much is simply rising to the challenge of the circumstance?

The only thing, imo, that would be more disappointing than "They're all dead!" would be a Good vs Evil a la The Stand division. I'd much rather see the group of them coming around to working together - bickering notwithstanding - against the dangers the island, and trying to solve the mysteries rather than trying to destroy each other's Army of t Deity . (I hated The Stand .)

I'd much rather see the group of them coming around to working together

Working together's for squares. You want them to hold a summit? Pass an island test?

Well, really, I'd want them to kill and eat the most annoying ones, but that's probably not prime-time...

I don't mean they should become one big happy family. I just dislike the Good vs Evil storyline, in general.

The islanders will divide. Humans form camps. Silly humans.

The tension between camps is the stuff of stories. Conflict. The Romeo and Juliet of it all, when my man Hurley captures the heart of the Uber-Bitch.

Oy.

The islanders will divide. Humans form camps. Silly humans.

Do you think, with only 46? (Not the silly part, 'cause, yeah). I mean, with so few humans, I might tend to think safety in numbers more than ... ew, those guys are weird, I'm moving my hut. So, I'm saying, they have conflicts for sure, but they try to muddle through it as a group. Maybe a couple of outliers. I dunno.

So many possibilites ...

Now we're getting into pig on a stick, let's kill the Hurley territory. I don't like it. I'd prefer that things be a little less divisive, more with combining and recombining based on relationships and betrayals, eddies within the group, without it splitting and becoming two entirely separate groups.

I was thinking something (happens now and again). It went something like: What if we never find out how/why the polar bear got there? What if it's just part of the island's past and makes it interesting just like hidden depths in a new friend, about which we may never know the truth, make the friend interesting? And then I thought, well, then, that makes the island a character, with flaws and secrets and bad hair days just like the rest. And I liked that thought, so I thought (again, yes!) that I'd share it with all of you.