Actually, I was convinced that Jin wasn't dead. I thought that if he died, we would have at least seen him first. I was worried he was kidnapped.

t re-delurk

I though I was crazy as a bag of hammers when I saw the tatoo or whatever on the shark.

My big problem with this ep is that the flashbacks have gotten a bit stale. Really, there's nothing in there that we don't already know, and that's what I liked about the format all through last year. The flashbacks gave new info, and altered our perceptions of the characters.

Well, that plus no Hurley. That's another major beef right there.

Ok, and I'm sick of half assed CPR/punching people in the chest working. I'm willing to forgive the fact that in real life, CPR has next to no chance of actually bringing someone out of cardiac arrest (but really, the plane would be carrying one of those swank li'l portable defib kits anyway), and I'm willing to forgive that nobody brought back by this stuff has any broken ribs to deal with, but there's a point where it just gets silly.

Right. Enough griping. The above to the contrary, I really do like the show, and thought the 'present time' sequences in this ep to be very compelling. Loved the scary Romeroesque glimpse of the others, thought that not mentioning Jin at all for the first while to be very tension building (though I didn't think he was actually dead). The bagua on everything is pretty damn freaky (I'm not even going to pretend I knew what it was, I was thinking a corperate logo of some sort), and the bagua on the frickin' shark made brain matter leak out my left ear.

But Desmond thinking he's an apocalypse survivor is about the choicest bit of TV I've seen since Firefly got cancelled. Too sweet.

You know, I think you are absolutely right. I was hoping that Michael or his babymomma would intersect with another castaway's life in some way. We didn't learn anything new at all about Michael and Walt's backstory except that Walt may be the cutest toddler ever. Damn. That was some cute.

Yeah, intersection would have made that worthwhile.

Ugh. What a waste of an hour. At the end we're three seconds further in the timeline than we were last week. It's like those serials in the newspaper comics that run all week but never move the plot forward except on Sundays (I'm looking at you, Mary Worth).

I was totally with you on the flashback, MechKrel. We know she takes the boy away. We know she pressures him with payment for medical bills. We know he was very reluctant but in the end he does what he thinks is best for Walt. What was the point other than to fill time?

And the Walt/Sawyer business on the rafts? Amusing for like 2 minutes. They bicker, they fight, they find a better raft, they get back the island, and OMGWTFOthers. Even the 3 1/2 seconds of shark didn't really make it more interesting. Why did it take half an episode?

It's almost like they don't have enough story, so they drag out the elements they have. The Rashoman Kate thing was interesting, but they could have done it in last week's episode.

See, I don't know about other people, but I note the time while I watch shows. When we haven't had a single interesting reveal 50 minutes into the show, it pisses me off. I might as well just tape the last 10 minutes of each episode, at least I won't be cranky afterward. Really poor plotting/writing. Ugh.

Maybe I was a bit too harsh?

I liked the bickering and the raft trading a lot. Also liked the reveals we got about Desmond and the lair. My mind was going "wait, what's that? Ah ha, the numbers. What does THAT mean?" the whole time, and I like the whirring and buzzing. Lots of new stuff there. The flashbacks I was not interested in.

Yeah, the flashbacks weren't great. Everything in the present-day, though, I thought was terrific. I was both intrigued and entertained.

What was the point other than to fill time?

To see Saul Rubinek again, of course! (He's one of my favorite character actors of all time, so seeing him in even a small role is fun.)

Wolfram, my reaction was the same as yours. I'm tired of being bored for 50 minutes and then something interesting happening in the last 5. PLus, I found the hatch interior waaaayyyy too unbelievable.