Questions and Rabbits

Yet another great Lost last night. And oddly unsettling, too. The usual pattern is that when you get a flashback, and your character is rumored to be dying (long time rumors -- I'm still spoiler free!), you'll kick the bucket in that ep. Not to mention when you have a drunken, possibly time traveling, maybe prescient Scotsman following you around constantly tell you that you are indeed going to soon take the dirt nap. But our little hobbit made it through the episode unexpectedly, although his situation at the end didn't appear too enviable.

We were completely Locke-free and Sawyer-lite (usually, two harbingers of an ep I won't enjoy as much) but it was a fast moving and melancholy visit to the island. I won't do a full recap/review, but the bottom line: 815ers anticipate an attack from the Others, Jack's an ass and "back in charge, Juliet is still enigmatically hot and quirkily funny, Rose and Bernard still exist and he's a good shot, Sayid as always is a badass, Desmond has visions, Charlie thinks he's gonna die, Naomi's phone might work if Charlie flips a jamming device off in the newly discovered underground bunker called "The Looking Glass" but will probably drown doing it, Ben's possible daughter Alex doesn't really like him, her boyfriend Karl runs/paddles to warn the 815ers about the Others arriving early, and now we know why Rousseau was getting dynamite.

Wow. That's a long bottom line.

Questions and comments:

• The chick Charlie saved from being mugged? Nadia, Sayid's long lost love.
• Charlie made a list of the 5 best moments of his life ("greatest hits") to give to Claire. I grabbed a post-it and started to do that myself, but couldn't fill up the space.
• I'm no expert in childcare (my only real exposure to parenting indicated that you should get drunk and ignore them and then ship 'em off to live with criminals while you fucked half the county) but it seems that leaving a small, metal ring with sharp edges in a crib is not a good idea.
• So what was up with Charlie being a good swimmer all of sudden? In the ep "White Rabbit" (ironic, that) he said he couldn't swim -- even to save Boone. Now, he's a "junior swim champ?" So, what was it? He didn't really care for Boone? Didn't want to stick his neck out for anyone, until Claire made him realize some things were worth sacrifice? Was he lying then? Bad continuity from the writers?
• The sticker on Charlie's guitar case in the flashback (presumably just around the time he saw Desmond) was "I was here moments ago."
• Juliet's droll snark after Karl "outed" her as an Other was priceless.
• Was Ben lying to Juliet about the Looking Glass being flooded? Does he know for sure?
• Who are the gun toting babes in the Looking Glass? Original Dharma? Others? Something else entirely?
  
• What's the rabbit in the logo for the station?
• It appears someone had a good dad. How many people were expecting Charlie's dad to be a typical "island dad" and let Charlie almost drown in the pool?
• A Whodat: Tracy Middendorf played one of the gun toting babes. I recently spotted her on Shark, and remember her from the pilot of Angel. Even wackier? She was also on House as a divorced mom with a sick kid. Know who played her ex-husband on House? Batmanuel (Nestor Carbonell), the apparently never aging Richard Alpert on Lost. Cool.
• Speaking of rabbits, was Alex butchering a rabbit? Was that a sly dig at her presumed dad, who we saw last week, was fond of the hippity hops?
• How could having a groupie three way not make Charlie's "greatest hits?"
• And who else read something dirty into the fact that Rose told Bernard "let's get you into something dark?" Just me?

Spoiler free, and waiting to have my mind completely fucked next week in the two hour season finale.