Well, I assume all of us Losties have seen “Namaste” by now. What did everyone think? My observations, in no particular order…
Wasn’t it nice to see Jack get completely owned? First he finds that as far as the DI is concerned he is only fit to be a janitor. (Is that above or below “workman”?) Then, when Sayid is captured, he runs to Sawyer who stops him cold.
Sawyer is right. Jack’s idea of leadership was to do something, anything immediately and not to sit down and think things through or listen to anyone else’s input. True, Sawyer tended to do things that way before too, but he has apparently matured somewhat over the last three years. Jack hasn’t. Look how the Sawyer + Juliette relationship worked out vs the Jack + Kate one.
Jack has always been obsessed with his need to “fix things”. His leadership style consisted of doing something instantly because he couldn’t take time to think it though, he had to fix it! Even his return to the Island was driven by his need to fix things; Locke and Ben told him that bad things had happened and that the only way he could “fix things” would be for him and the others to return. So, he did.
Sawyer seems to have settled into DHARMA and domestic life quite nicely. What is he going to do about the fact that everyone in the DHARMA Initiative is going to die at some future date?
And is the DHARMA Initiative really this incompetent? No one crosschecks with the mainland on these three new people who show up? For an organization as secretive and selective as they seem to be, their security is a bit lax.
A few interesting crossovers. So, Goodspeed and Amy’s son is Ethan? Really? And young Ben brought Sayid a sandwich. So Ben had met Sayid before. When he was a prisoner in the hatch and Sayid came in to question him, did he recognize him?
Here’s a thought; Amy asks Juliette when she and Sawyer are going to have a baby. Juliette looks perturbed. Now, this may be because she is worried about her future with Sawyer now that Kate is back. (And I for one am completely tired of the Jack - Juliette - Kate - Sawyer quadrangle.) But, what if she is already pregnant and hasn’t told anyone yet? What if she has a daughter she names Annie?
Yeah, the timeline is off; Annie should be closer to Ben’s age but it would explain Ben’s later attraction to Juliette and the comment “you look so much like her”
A few other things. Is who wound up where and when on the Island random, or is the Island/Jacob/Smokey the Monster/Christian Shepherd controlling these things somehow. Consider… Jack, Kate and Hurley all wind up in more-or-less the same place in 1977. Sayid also winds up in 1977 but in a different location. (Though, to be fair, he could have arrived somewhere near the waterfall pool as well and just stayed hidden; I’m not sure he came back to The Island very willingly. He may have just watched Jack and company to see what was going on.)
Everyone else on the plane stays in 2008 or maybe drop back to 2007. (The title card says “30 years later” but they may have rounded that off.) They manage to land on a runway on the Hydra island (which I am sure is the one the Others were building there; maybe because someone knew the plane would be showing up?). Sun (the only one of the five who didn’t disappear from the plane), Ben and Frank head over to the main Island (though Sun knocks Ben out before leaving, heh) and find the barracks are trashed. (Presumably the result of the firefight there at the end of last season.)
I thought it was funny how Smokey the Monster shows up, Frank freaks out and Sun is basically “oh, that thing”.
So, are Smokey the Monster and Christian Shepherd the same thing?
Also, some people are saying that there was someone behind Sun when Shepherd was talking to her. There is someone there, barely visible. Speculation on teh Internets is that it is either Claire or just a crew member who inadvertently got caught in the shot.
So Radzinsky is the one who designed the Swan? Is this before or after the “Incident”? (I’m guessing before; I suspect the Incident is going to be whatever happened/happens to get the people in 1977 and the people in 2008 back together again.) Why was he so worried that Sayid (who he thinks is an Other) has seen the plans.
Finally, what happened to Daniel Faraday? (Got kicked out for spending too much time around the little girl Charlotte?) For that matter, where or when are Rose, Bernard and Vincent?
Oh well. This was the midpoint episode of this season so we’ll see where things go from here. Probably downhill.