Lost: Jughead (but not Archie)

I know I've said but I will say it again - I LOVE this show! The attention to every little detail is just so flawless and the way it all works back in on itself is so incredible and so much fun!

To sum up, the flash from the end of the last episode carried the remaining survivors/scientists into the 1950s where they encountered an earlier tribe of Others, led by Richard Alpert (still ageless as ever). It turns out that Charles Widmore is a very outspoke, dedicated, militant other which fits in perfectly with his story - clearly, he must have come to odds with the group at some point and/or got banished from the island in some way and spent significant time and energy trying to find his way back. It also turns out that Alpert's visits to Locke as a baby and young child were precipitated by adult time-travel Locke who held Alpert's compass - and is why Alpert was disappointed that child Locke did not choose the compass over the knife (although I would argue that Locke's signature island tool is really his knife).

It is also likely that a hydrogen bomb is buried on the island at the time of the Oceanic crash ALA Faraday's instructions in the 1950s to do just that (EW points out that there was a steel and concrete sealed off bunker in one of the hatches which is where they speculate the bomb may be). Turns out that before the Dharma Initiative arrived (in the 1960s/70s, right?), the U.S. military tried to conduct bomb tests on the island but ran into resistance from the not so merry band of others. The others assume that our heroes are with the U.S. military although one of them correctly points out that it is unlikely in the 1950s to have a Brit and someone of Asian descent in cahoots with the U.S.

In addition, it seems that Charlotte definitely has time travel disease, something with which Faraday is very familiar. Although it seems to me that Faraday has not yet figured out how to cure time disease (given that his last girlfriend is a vegetable), so his promises to her that he will save her and it will all be OK sound a little hollow.

At the end of the episode, time changed again so it is unclear where our band is now but Locke, Juliet, Sawyer, Miles, Faraday and Charlotte are all together in the field. We are led to understand that many of the other anonymous survivors on the beach perished in the fire arrow attack but is anyone else deathly worried over where Rose and Bernard have got to? Please, please someone find them soon!

My favorite parts of the episode though had to do with Desmond - a character I've come to like more and more. I love his relationship with Penny (very touching), I love his hip Euro scarf and sunglass look and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the name he gave his son (in what is definitely the first tearjerker moment of the season). Desmond's highlights from the episode are here:



So true to his newly found memory, he has gone in search of Faraday's mother at Oxford and I rightly assumed last week that this would be problematic since Mrs. Hawking is in L.A. (yay I think I'm finally getting this!) Although his father in law Widmore has tried to call him off, and although he volunteered to give up on his mission for Penny, she talked him into a family trip to L.A. to try and find her. I am not quite sure what to think of Ms. Hawking if she is working with Ben but Widmore is up on her whereabouts (and funded her son) but I am sure we will have our answer soon.

I was actually a little relieved that the Oceanic 6 did not make an appearance in this episode as it gave us some time to wrap our heads around the whole time travel thing but since next week's episode seems to focus on Kate and the lawyers who want to prove she's not Aaron's mother, I'm sure we will soon be back to the problems confronting them (namely, Hurley's in jail, Sayid no longer trusts Ben, Sun may be working with Widmore, Kate is still distrustful of Jack and Ben and Ben seems to somehow be playing Jack - oy).