SPOILERS SO BE CAREFUL

1) The main thing I’m taking away from Lost so far this season is the sense that the creators and crew are having a lot of fun just being Lost. Like last week: There was no reason, strictly speaking, to reveal the birth of Desmond and Penelope’s kid in a flashback of undetermined temporal origin, then cut to the present day and show how old the kid is now–it’s just fun for the writers to monkey with flashbacks/flashfowards/time like that, so that’s how they did it. Similarly, in this episode, they just did a bunch of Lost-ish things because it’s fun to do them–having our heroes get shot at by persons unknown, having secondary characters we haven’t seen in a long time pop up out of the blue, riffing on aspects of the show (like the light from the Hatch) that we haven’t thought of in ages, and so on. The show seems to have a lot of confidence in what it is and what it does well at this point. It’s fun to watch.

2) Moreover, there were just a lot of thoughtful, intelligent moments, where they could have played a particular plot point a number of ways but went in just the right direction with it. For example: Of all the moments that the time-displaced castaways could have stumbled upon past or future versions of themselves in the middle of, they have Sawyer come across Kate delivering Claire’s baby. It’s the perfect moment to use: A) Sawyer loves Kate, so it’s heartbreaking to see her; B) Everyone loves the birth of babies, so it’s a hugely emotional moment for Sawyer just for that reason; C) Sawyer’s not the deepest thinker, and making him the first castaway to find a recognizable moment from the past therefore emphasizes just what a mindfuck it is; D) put it all together and you’ve got such a mix of intense and bizarre emotions, exactly what you want for the first time you do this on the show.

3) Related: Locke realizing they’re in the middle of the night that Boone died (they mentioned him by name! Hooray! I love it when the story acknowledges people who in show-time died just a few weeks before, as it really should) and the night he really came to believe that he was on the Island for a reason. That’s a rich moment for Locke to relive.

4) Another smart bit: Having Miles keep his illness on the DL, revealing it only to Daniel, the one character who he thinks might know something about it. Miles’s sarcastic personality might make you think he’d make a big screeching deal about it and freak out, but it seems truer and more interesting to make his sarcasm a sort of cloaking device for a more intense desire to be apart from other people. He wouldn’t want to be the center of attention, ever.

5) Another smart bit: I like the way they’re establishing more of a rapport between Juliet and Sawyer. At the rate Lost takes bad guys, or at least ambiguous guys, and makes them into good guys, the only way the show’s relationships work is if they can convincingly create bonds between the characters that emerge from shared adversity. They’re doing a good job with these two right now. It helps that the actors are good at bringing out their mama-bear and wounded-puppy sides respectively. It’s a little corny, but it’s comforting.

6) Still another smart bit: I loved watching Jin wake up on yet another beach filled with yet another group of survivors of yet another wreck, and realize all over again that he doesn’t speak the language. I suppose they couldn’t have gotten a whole lot more out of having him go through that whole storyline over again beyond the initial No Exit impact of him discovering what’s up, so it’s good that Rousseau and her babydaddy can speak some English, but it was a great moment.

7) Michael Emerson’s line readings get more and more awesome with each passing episode. “He’s my lawyer.” I don’t know if I ever would have come up with a way to say that the way he said it, but the way he said it was so funny and perfect.

8) Kudos to the show for not dragging out certain “deception” elements of the plot–like having Ben come right out and say he’s trying to steal Aaron. But boo to continuing this nonsense where Kate and Jack keep refusing to explain to each other why they’re doing what they’re doing. For chrissakes, it takes 30 seconds to tell someone you care about why you’re behaving a particular way. Take the goddamn time. This week’s installment of Todd VanDerWerrf’s must-read weekly review focuses a lot on that particular point. (Be warned, the review drops some Mad Men and BSG spoilers on you out of the blue, a few sentences into the paragraph about how TV series have to create a sense of false drama.)

9) I still don’t know if Sun’s kid counts as someone they need to get back to the Island because she was pregnant when she left. It doesn’t seem like Ben is approaching it that way. Actually, I’m sort of getting the impression that the kid is dead or missing.

10) Obvs, Miles is Dr. Marvin Candle Jr.

11) I can’t figure out who Charlotte is, though. She’s too young to be Ben’s childhood sweetheart Annie. (I’m pretty sure Penny is Annie, anyway.)

12) Fun to see Rousseau as a fresh-faced youngster with a spring in her step and a song in her heart and a bun in the oven and non-high-waisted trousers on her legs.

13) You know what I wonder about? The Hurley bird.

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