It was a total lampshade, I just think it was clumsily done. They could have winked at it in a two sentence exchange instead of a confusing 3 minutes scene.

I also get antsier than normal when I feel this show is wasting the precious 42ish minutes it has to give us SHOW. Granted, I'd be even antsier if this was the final season and the final few episodes (I'm looking at you BSG), but still.

Yeah, but it was giving us more Hurley in an ocean of Kate, and that's always a win.

if ethan's been born already, then penny shoud be either alive or very shortly on the way.....

who is penny's mother?

We think it's the young British girl with the rifle when they Losties were on the Island post WWII. (Ellie.)

I think we think that. . . but we also think that was Faraday's mother.

Okay, we think that Faraday and Penny are siblings. Possibly unbeknownst to each other.

Who else felt the Hurley/talks-to-bones-guy conversation was the writer's attempt to dumb down the time-twisting issues for viewers? I thought they made things worse by trying to explain it rather than just assume we'd get it. I mean really, saying little Ben's past is Hurley's present? How does that make it less complicated? Actually, I think Hurley understood the whole situation better before TTBG tried to explain it. He was spot-on with the Back to the Future bit.

I took most of that more as a playful jab at fan arguments, and maybe at arguments that happen in the war room (see Angel: Caveman vs. Astronaut), because at the end of it, didn't Miles sort of end up copping to the fact that what he was saying couldn't be completely right, either?

Until they clearly show me otherwise, I am taking "Whatever Happened, Happened" to mean that pivotal events happen, no matter what. Ben gets shot. Somehow. And scar tissues from that shooting would account for his later tumor on his spine. What I'm not accepting is that the circumstances and minor players were always the same, like that the shooter has always been Sayid. Or that the doctor who didn't operate on child-Ben was always Jack (because Juliet did mention that the other doctor was elsewhere at the time). Likewise, I know Ben defects to the others. Somehow. I'm not yet sold on Sawyer and Kate having always been the ones who carried him to them.

Miles sort of end up copping to the fact that what he was saying couldn't be completely right, either?

Well, he didn't know that Ben would magically not remember getting shot. Miles is completely right so far.

What I'm not accepting is that the circumstances and minor players were always the same, like that the shooter has always been Sayid. Or that the doctor who didn't operate on child-Ben was always Jack (because Juliet did mention that the other doctor was elsewhere at the time). Likewise, I know Ben defects to the others. Somehow. I'm not yet sold on Sawyer and Kate having always been the ones who carried him to them.

That's interesting. Who would the alternate players have been?

I take the opposite view: I think they have been the players this whole time. They saved Ethan's mother's life. Perhaps if not for them, Ethan would have never been.

I think the tension is whether they will get the fuck out of there before Ben gasses the place or not.

Yeah, the only thing that gave Miles pause was Ben not remembering Sayid, and now we know that that's because of losing his innocence or whatever, so Miles seems to be right. Which puts our time travelers in a deterministic universe - the most sensible and least satisfying way to deal with time-travel paradoxes.

I just want Sun and Jin reunited. Enough of the 70s.