SPOILERZAPOPPIN

* Explain to me how “We’re takin’ the sub” constitutes a) a cliffhanger; b) an adequate response to their lack of a pilot to fly the plain, unless Sawyer became a sub captain during his Dharma days and I missed it.

* So that part was pretty irritating, and since it’s the end of the episode, it left something of a sour taste in my mouth.

* I suppose I’m also frustrated that my “Widmore’s coming to pick up the MIB” theory didn’t pan out. Well, as far as we know. Everyone is just lying to everyone else all the time now, then admitting it and moving on, so I figure both Fake Locke and Widmore are entitled to be bullshitting about this too.

* Actually, maybe I’m just frustrated by everyone lying all the time. What is this, Gossip Girl?

* Anyway, now that we’ve (in theory) learned that Widmore isn’t on MIB’s side after all, how many factions are really in play over the course of the show? You’ve got Widmore’s people. Ben’s Others. Jacob still seems separate from the Others to me. Then there’s the MIB. The Dharma Initiative. The castaways. Rousseau. The French team?

* In the “pro” column on this week’s installment: Sawyer’s a character who can really hold an episode, and while I’m sure the cop stuff in the flashsideways is as egregious inaccurate as was the teacher stuff in the Ben flashsideways last week, I’m not married to a cop and wasn’t raised by a cop so it didn’t bother me, and instead made a lot of sense as a road Sawyer–or more accurately, in this case, Jim Ford–could have gone down. It makes at least as much sense to become a cop and track down the con man who destroyed your family as it does to become a con man yourself to do it.

* And again we see a character confronting and surmounting the emotional issues that bedeviled them in the original timeline. Jack puts his daddy issues to rest and mends fences with his own son; Locke lets go of his rage and compulsion to prove everyone wrong and allows himself a happy life with his wife-to-be; Sawyer opens up, trusts someone, and knowingly puts a huge if not insurmountable roadblock in the way of pursuing his grudge to its murderous end. In all three cases these aren’t storybook happy endings, but in the immortal words of Bruce Wayne, “This would be a good life…good enough.”

* On the other hand, we’d previously put Kate in this category–instead of running, she came back to care for Claire–but of course here she’s still running. And ending up in the hands of Sawyer/Ford in a fashion reminiscent of Sayid finding Jin.

* Which raises the question: Why the hell did Sawyer, a cop, let a woman in handcuffs go at the airport in the first place? Was it because he didn’t want to reveal to anyone that he was there? Wouldn’t there be ways to tip someone off without saying “I’m a cop”–like not helping her sneak past security, for example? Well, maybe this’ll come out during her interrogation, I don’t know.

* Lots of cameos in this episode. Good to see Charlie’s brother.

* Good to see Charlotte, too! She was never my favorite, but I liked her here, and not just because she looked better than she’d ever looked before. Well, okay, maybe because she looked better than she’d ever looked before. But kudos to Rebecca Mader for that anyway. She was convincingly sexy, and she handled the infuriating humiliation of being angrily booted from a bedroom just minutes after having sex convincingly too.

* (Speaking of which, this is only relevant to Tri-State Area viewers, but one of the things I’ll miss about Lost are those little five second glimpses of Liz Cho during the teaser commercial for Eyewitness News.)

* I don’t know if this says more about Lost or what watching Lost does to people, but Fake Locke tells Sawyer he’s the smoke monster, Sawyer asks about why he killed all those people but not a peep about “what the fuck are you, smoke monster???”, and I barely even blinked.

* Haha, the “I’m just a scared and lonely survivor please don’t hurt me” routine’s been done before, Zoe, and by a better actor than you. Won’t get fooled again!

* Even though it was (too) quickly defused, the creepiness of Claire being all friendsy with Kate and then trying to cut her throat while Sayid looked on all sedated-like, then Fake Locke coldcocking Claire to talk her down, was really somethin’. I wasn’t sure what kind of mileage they’d get out of these sorts of scenes, but it worked, not least because crying is something Evangeline Lilly does well.

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