"Every Man for Himself" (Season 3, Episode 4)

Great. There's another island. It's a good thing this was revealed since all of the other mysteries about the first island have been resolved. Yes, that was sarcasm. Early in tonight's episode when Juliet asked Jack if he was frustrated, I answered for him. Yes! Then when he asked her "Are you going to tell me why I'm here", I also replied. Please, tell us. Something. Anything. With only two more episodes until the show is off for three months and not returning until February 7, I need to get some answers. And I've seen enough violence and brutality to last me through this season.

Best Line: Charlie to Desmond - "I was building a church . . . before Eko exploded."

Did You Notice?

• Desmond can still see into the near future. Or is this a future Desmond who is somehow traveling backwards through time? A side effect of the hatch implosion. Here's a crazy thought: Could baby Aaron grow up to be Desmond and he's protecting himself?
• There were a couple of hints that the Others were on their own island. When Jack was questioning Juliet on her working relationship with Ben, she told him "It doesn't work that way over here." Also, the sudden rain that occurred when Kate was escaping her cage later made it to the survivors' island where the lightning struck Desmond's homemade lightning rod, saving Aaron.
• If you listened closely when Ben rushed in on Juliet and Jack, he told her "the sub is back." Apparently, the Others who went to capture Desmond's sailboat had traveled to the other island by submarine.
• I liked when Sawyer called fellow inmate Munson by the nickname "Costanza" due to his physical similarities to George Costanza on "Seinfeld".
• The novel Sawyer was reading, "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, involves among other things two men who want to raise bunnies. Apparently, the Others Book Club had read this before moving on to Stephen King.
• Speaking of bunnies, if Ben's was number 8, what happened to 1 through 7? Were they used in fertility experiments by Juliet? As in the old pregnancy comment "The rabbit died".
• When Sawyer is regaining consciousness, we hear Tom telling Ben that the comms (communications?) have been down since the sky turned purple and he hasn't been able to get them back up.
• When the Others are trying to pierce Sawyer with the needle, Jason says "Like in the movie", a reference I believe to "Pulp Fiction" when Uma Thurman has a needle plunged into her chest.
• I don't know about anyone else, but I realized that there was no pacemaker in Sawyer when Juliet was so helpless trying to save Colleen. Her skills were obviously limited. Also, Ben doesn't like needles. None of them were capable of implanting an exploding pacemaker in Sawyer's chest with hardly any sign of surgery.
• Curious that the Communications box in Jack's cell keeps sporadically working. The one conversation was ". . . under control. Yeah? You know what he is doing to Karl?" (This was the young man in the zoo cage next to Sawyer's before he tried to escape and was apparently beaten.) The static-filled comments continued with "You know what he is doing? It was a mistake to bring those two here."
• If Juliet is a fertility doctor, I'm guessing she may have had some involvement with Claire when she was abducted and taken to the medical hatch. And who knows if her and Sun's paths will cross. And why is a fertility doctor needed on the island?
• Charlie may have some competition from Paulo for island jerk.
• This was the first time we've seen Ben wearing eye glasses. I didn't think he could look creepier, but I was wrong.
• Wasn't it convenient that Tom provided Kate with pants to change into right before her acrobatic escape from the cage. Did they suspect she was going to try this and wanted to make her outfit more practical than her sun dress?
• I couldn't help but think of the song "Oh My Darling Clementine" when I heard Sawyer's daughter's name. The tragic ballad tells of a grieving miner who loses his true love.
• The treasury agent at the prison is named Freedman. This is an interesting last name since the warden tells Sawyer his cooperation has allowed him to become a "free man".
• The mystery of the 40-year old man with a tumor on his spine appears to be resolved next week based on the previews. It appears that Jack is talking to Ben about this very issue. Perhaps this is the favor Ben told Jack he would be asking for in return for a trip home.
  

The Numbers - 4 8 15 16 23 42 (and sometimes 108 and maybe even 2 and 6)

• Munson (who stole the money) had the number 248 on his prison uniform. Sawyer's number was 840. The Other named Tom was telling Ben that it has been 2 days since the sky turned purple.
• The bunny had an "8" painted on it.
• Ben talked of 15 beats when explaining the heart monitor to Sawyer.
• Ben was watching monitor number 2.
• Jack counted to 6 when trying to revive Colleen.
• Sawyer told the treasury agent that the truck with the stolen money was in storage unit 23-C.
• Sawyer got 6 years commuted off his prison sentence for his involvement in determining the location of the stolen millions.
• Jack points out that the x-ray displayed a tumor near the L-4 vertebrae.
  

Previews
The flashback story will feature Eko. His memories are more than likely brought on by his return to the crashed drug plane where he found his brother's corpse. It looks like Locke, Eko, Desmond, and the new survivor Nicky head back to the Pearl Station. Who is the man with the eye patch on the monitor? Alvar Hanso? The real Sawyer? Locke's dad? Whoever it is, recall that when the tail survivors found their hatch last season, Eko found among the items a glass eye. And, if the online rumors are true, someone may be joining Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, and Libby - if you know what I mean.

"Further Instructions" (Season 3, Episode 3)

Good episode. It had the feel of a first season show. Characters traipsing through the jungle. A lot of action. Boone's back. A polar bear shows up. I loved Locke's vision quest and seeing the characters in roles other than their traditional ones. The perfect family of Charlie, Claire, and baby Aaron. Sun bossing Jin around. Sawyer and Kate as a couple. Jack being frisked by airport security guard Ben. Captain Desmond and his bevy of flight attendants. Hurley the ticket agent. This show was also the halfway point of the first six episodes before the loooong holiday break. Three more weeks then nothing until late January 2007. Enjoy them while you can.

Best Line: As I expected last week, it was Hurley to a naked Desmond: "So, like, the hatch blew off your underwear?"

Did You Notice?

• The opening scenes with Locke were very similar to how the very first episode began with Jack. The close-up on an eye; a character disoriented on his back in the jungle, and a disturbance in the surrounding grass (although this time it wasn't Vincent the dog but a naked Desmond).
  
• When Locke examined Mr. Eko's Jesus stick it was carved with "Lift up your eyes and look north" which is the beginning of what God told Abram in Genesis 13:14: "Lift up your eyes and look north, south, east and west. For all the land that you see I give to you and your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so numerous that you can't count them all. Get up and walk up and down the land, for I have given it to you." Interesting since Locke is so in tune with the island. There were also two other biblical references carved into the stick: John 3:05 (which deals with baptism - Eko baptised Claire's baby) and Acts 7:12 ("But when Jacob heard that there was corn in Egypt, he sent out our fathers first." Yet another father reference?).
  
• I wonder if the paste Locke made and ate for his vision quest was the same concoction he had put on Boone's head wound in the episode where Boone thought Shannon had been killed by the monster?
  
• Interesting that Locke built the sweat lodge inside of the frame of Eko's church.
  
• The creature that leapt out of the fire in Locke's vision quest was the polar bear he would later face.
  
• Eddie the cop's t-shirt featured the band Geronimo Jackson. This was the same band whose album Charlie and Hurley had found in the hatch while reviewing the record collection last season.
  
• Was it a coincidence that three of Locke's farm family (Bobby, Mike, and Jan) had the same names as members of the Brady Bunch? Was it all that marijuana that made them so happy all the time?
  
• One of the farmers was named Adam - same name as Shannon's dad and one of the Others in Juliet's book club.
  
• Whose toy dump truck was in the polar bear's lair? And who was the skeleton in the Dharma t-shirt?
  
• When Locke and Eddie went out hunting, I was reminded of the season one episode when Locke's dad and he went out hunting, only with the roles reversed.
  
• Paulo (the Brazilian man) and Nicky (the lady in red) are two new survivors who will be appearing off and on in future episodes.
• Whoa, Desmond can see the immediate future? I guess in addition to blowing off his underwear, the hatch implosion gave him this new gift.
  

The Numbers - 4 8 15 16 23 42 (and sometimes 108)

• 4, 8, 15, and 16 can be seen carved into Mr. Eko's Jesus stick.
  
• In Locke's vision quest, we see Hurley the ticket agent enter 4, 8, and 15 into his computer.
  
• The "new" Numbers (2 and 6 so far) appeared again. There was a "2" by the escalator Locke crawled up in his vision quest and Eddie the cop was at the farm for 6 weeks.
  

Previews

Back to the human petting zoo. Looks like Sawyer is in for all kinds of hurt next week. Beaten by Ben, strapped to a table (not unlike the alien in Hurley's comic book, I might point out), then injected by an Other that looks like a male Sigourney Weaver. I think Ben may want Jack to do that favor he said he would ask for in exchange for taking him home.

"The Glass Ballerina" (Season 3, Episode 2)

As most of you who have read my e-mails over the past two years know, I typically am not thrilled when the episode features a Sun and Jin flashback. However, I am happy to say I liked this week's show. We saw new layers to Sun and Jin's relationship and the impact her father had on them both. (There are those pesky parent issues again that all of these characters seem to have.) I was intrigued by Sayid's comment to Sun, "And what would you know about lying?" when we had earlier seen her as a child lying about breaking the glass ballerina (of the episode's title), thus costing a maid her job, and cheating on her husband with her English tutor. (So whose baby is she carrying?) I also enjoyed Sawyer's various expressions throughout the show. Whether he was imaging Kate out of her sun dress breaking rocks to him admiring "the view" of her to the look he gave Juliet - his face spoke volumes. The other scene I liked was with Benjamin Linus (the artist formerly known as Henry Gale) and Jack. It was almost surreal that Ben would be referring to these current events with which we are all familiar (Bush's re-election, Christopher Reeves's death, the Red Sox winning the World Series). I guess the world outside the island does exist as we know it and not just Penelope Widmore in her bedroom and two Porteguese men in a quonset hut in the snow somewhere.

Best Line: Kate to Sawyer after he told her she tasted like strawberries: "You taste like fish biscuits." I think fish biscuits will be to this season what the Apollo candy bar was to Season 2.

Did You Notice?

• Jin was really angry in this episode.
  
• I'm thinking that Ben and Juliet were once more than co-workers. "You never made me soup."
  
• Recurring Name Alert #1: Colleen mentioned an Other by the name of Brian who had spotted "the Iraqi" at the decoy village. Brian was also the name of Walt's mother's boyfriend, who told Michael he didn't want to be Walt's father after she had died, and Brian was the name of Shannon's boyfriend when Boone went to Australia to get her. It's also my name but I am sure that's just a coincidence since the producers still refuse to take my phone calls. Recurring Name Alert #2: The Other who harassed Sawyer was named Danny. Ana Lucia's boyfriend in LA was also named Danny.
  
• The music played in Sawyer's cage is John Phillips Sousa's "The Thunderer". Interesting side note: This march was dedicated to the Knights Templar, which are featured in a couple of fiction books recently published due to the popularity of "The DaVinci Code".
  
• Why does Ben so desperately want the sailboat? Was the boat he gave Michael their only one? What happened to the Pala Ferry that the orientation videotape mentioned last season and whose dock was where the Others brought Jack, Kate, and Sawyer? How did the six Others get to the sailboat? Close captioning revealed Colleen says to Danny that Ben said to take the "Galaga" to investigate. Is this a boat? Galaga is the name of a classic arcade game where the player controls a spaceship to shoot aliens. Hmmm.
  
• The Others are not a happy bunch.
  
• The girl in the bushes whispering to Kate was Alex, Rousseau's child. She shows up out of the jungle, makes strange statements ("You're not even supposed to be in the cage"), then disappers. Like mother, like daughter.
  
• Do you think Sun's tutor/lover jumped to his death? Or was he pushed? And if so, by whom? Sun's dad? Or had Sun rushed to his room prior to Jin showing up and afterwards, she and her lover argued and she accidentally (?) pushed him out of the window?
  
• Colleen's comment to Sun, "We are not the enemy", was reminescent of Ben telling Michael in the season 2 finale "We're the good guys."
  
• These Others seem to know a lot about the passengers. Juliet knows Sawyer's real first name is James. Colleen knows Sun's last name and that she's not a killer. Well, one out of two right on that one.
  
• Throughout the episode, Sawyer called Kate "Freckles" until he made the strawberries remark, then he called her "Shortcake".
  
• Why is Jack being drugged?
  
• What did Benjamin Linus mean when he said he's spent his whole life on the island? If he was born there, then who were his parents and how did they get there?
  
• The fact that Ben mentioned the Red Sox to Jack ties in to the episode where Sawyer realizes he met Jack's dad in the bar in Australia since the elder Shephard made a comment about the likelihood of the Red Sox ever winning the World Series.
  

The Numbers - 4 8 15 16 23 42 (and sometimes 108)

Apparently I did miss a reference to The Numbers last week. During Jack's flashback when he was calling the various phones numbers from his wife's phone, his beeper sitting on the desk displayed the time of 7:15:23. As for this week, I saw one reference. The room number of Sun's tutor/lover was 1516. This is odd since we saw Jin get off the elevator on the second floor. Wouldn't the rooms start with a number 2? And could a fall from a second story window kill you? This also leads me to predict that this season we will have a whole new set of numbers to listen and watch for. The first two numbers being 2 and 6. Let me start with 6: Ben had 6 monitors in his room to watch the goings-on. The Other named Colleen said she was on the sailboat with five other people, making a total of 6 for the boarding party. As for the number 2: The Other named Danny referred to Sawyer and Kate as "you two"; Sayid wanted 2 hostages; when Jin followed Sun's tutor/lover, the elevator was marked with a "2"; Sawyer told Kate that only 2 of the guards were a concern; and Ben was watching Jack on monitor 2. This was also the second episode of the season. That's a lot of 2's. We'll have to see what I find in the next episode to see if my prediction holds true or if I'm just going through Numbers withdrawal.

Previews

How about those previews? Locke and Eko survived the implosion but for how long since it sounds like the monster/security system is back. Candidate for best line for next week would be Hurley noting to Desmond that the explosion blew his underwear off.

"A Tale of Two Cities" (Season 3, Episode 1)

Those first five minutes? I had goosebumps. Not once, but twice. Maybe even three times. From the closeup on an eye as we have seen in the first episode of each season (Jack, then Desmond, now Juliet) to this seemingly innocuous book club to what at first appears to be an earthquake (not quite) to some familiar faces (Ethan, "Henry", Goodwin) to the sight of Oceanic Flight 815 breaking apart and going down. Oops, just got goosebumps again! What a way to start the season. "Lost" is back, baby!

This episode had a very "animals in a cage/experiment" feel to it. The zoo-like setting. Sawyer's attempts at food (fish bisquit, any one?). Jack behind glass. Ben (he'll always be Henry to me) playing bad Other to Juliet's good Other.

As for the flashbacks, what a revelation that it was Jack that caused his father to start drinking again.

Best Line: "The next two weeks are going to very unpleasant." (For us the viewer, however, the next six weeks are going to be a joy!)

Did You Notice?

• Juliet's CD choice was "Downtown" by Petula Clark. Old song, new technology.
  
• One of the book club members was named Adam, same as Shannon's father.
  
• The book choice was "Carrie" by Stephen King.
  
• In Jack's flashback in the car watching Sara, the song that was playing was "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller. This was the same song that Sayid and Hurley heard last season when they got the radio to work. Interesting choice since in reality Glenn Miller himself boarded a plane in 1944 and disappered. Neither he nor the plane was ever found. Cue Twilight Zone music.
  
• So when Mr. Friendly (as he is refered to in the cast listing) told Kate she's not his type, did he mean he doesn't like brunettes or just girls in general?
  
• The Communicate box amidst the static broadcasted Jack's dad's voice saying "Let it go, Jack."
  
• I wonder if Carl (or as Saywer called him, Chachi) is actually an Other who was testing Sawyer's reactions.
  
• The Dharma logo for the Hydra Station incorporated the Greek nine-headed sea serpent in it's design. Hydra is also Latin for water. Appropriate. (I told you the Others were underwater.)
  
• Mr. Friendly mentions Sawyer's cage was previously occupied by bears. I'm guessing these were of the polar variety. And Juliet confirms the aquarium once held dolphins as well as sharks. Strange that Jack would mention the sharks since it was only Sawyer and Michael on the raft that encountered one.
  

The Numbers - 4 8 15 16 23 42 (and sometimes 108)

Okay maybe I missed something (hard to believe I know), but I do not believe there was a single occurence of any of The Numbers. The closest was Jack's dad being sober for 50 days (42 + 8) and that's a stretch.

Previews

Looks like the next episode will be action-packed. Until next week (or sooner if I uncover any more tidbits), see you then!

Soon . . . Very Soon

There is just over 24 hours before the season 3 premiere tomorrow night. Make sure you're done with the dinner dishes and the kids are in bed because you do not want to miss the first five minutes. According to an article on Entertainment Weekly's website (ww.ew.com), it is "pure Lost genuis". Show creator J.J. Abrams says in "Lost - The Magazine" (yes, I subscribe - was there any doubt?) that Season 3 will "blow you away!" Hatches? We don't need no stinkin' hatches!