"Why Are You Really Here?"
It's almost like the writers of Lost are listening to the bitching on the internet. Last week, Sawyer encountered Take A Shit Guy walking around with his porn and a roll of Dharma toilet paper. When Exposition Girl said something to Sawyer at the ping-pong table, he glared at her and asked, "Who the hell are you?" Last week, Locke accidentally blew something up. Last night, when Sayid razzed him about it, Locke says "If somebody had told me the whole place had been wired with C4 I might not have done that." Then later on in the episode, a bunch of the explosives are found in his backpack. Locke's getting that dark vibe again, the one he had back in season 1, offering up Boone as a sacrifice to the island. The stuff coming next week looks like it's going to continue pushing his character in a very dangerous place. I can't wait. But this was only one of three stories. The main thread involved Claire trying to figure out what's been going on with Charlie while at the same time hatching a plan to get them off the island. I liked the interactions between Charlie, Claire, and Desmond. The flashback showed Claire in her gothgirl phase and talks a little bit more about her background, before she got pregnant.
Here's what else happened: Locke tosses Mikhail into an alarm system that fries Mikhail's brain. It's another frustrating act of Locke but I think all this frustration is building toward something and it will hopefully pay off next week. Locke's not the badass he was in season 1 -- he's a very sad and haunted man. Claire is Christian Shephard's daughter, and therefore Jack's half-sister. This wasn't a big surprise -- it was insinuated big time before, but it's nice to get the absolute confirmation on it. It was also cool to see people talking to each other. Desmond explained to Claire his premonitions of Charlie's death, which led to some kind of sweet stuff between Charlie and Claire. Finally, Kate, Sayid, and Locke make it to Othersville where they see Jack playing football with the Others (I was actually expecting this to happen toward the end of the season -- I'm glad it's not going to drag out that long).
It was a good way to end the episode. I've always been expecting Jack to go to the dark side to some degree. He shares the same name as the antagonist in Lord of the Flies, and we know the writers are too literate to pass up on an oppurtunity like that.
Next week is a Locke flashback and it's either going to make or break Locke as a character. I know for sure we find out why Locke's in the wheelchair and Terry O'Quinn's on record at being very excited, saying he was worried about it all being anti-climatic but in the end it rocked him.