I have to say that I love it when an episode begins with an eye opening. And this episode began with young, dark-haired Claire’s eye opening after a car accident. She had been driving, her mother was thrown through the windshield, and her mother’s comatose because of the accident for a long, long time. In this flashback, we learn that Claire and Jack are half-siblings. Jack’s father, Christian Shepherd, had an affair with Claire’s mother. (This was something MANY of us had been suspecting, especially since Ana Lucia’s flashback when Christian went to the home of a pregnant blonde woman. That has to be Claire’s mother.) Anyway, Christian hears about Claire’s mother’s accident, and he flies over to “help out,” mainly by paying the hospital bills and advising Claire to end her mother’s life somehow. Evidently, turning off life-support is not an option in Australia? Anybody know? Claire refuses to end her mother’s life and she tells Christian, “You might be my father, but I don’t even know your name, and I don’t want to.” Don’t we wish she’d learned his name somehow?? Claire’s mother is still comatose when Claire is pregnant, so we assume she still is.
In this very Claire-centric episode, Claire also gets an idea to help them get off the island. Her idea is to attach a note to the tagged, migrating birds, letting those in the outside world know where they are. Desmond seems dead-set against this idea, and it becomes obvious that Charlie dies helping Claire with the birds. So, Desmond does everything he can to prevent Charlie from having anything to do with the birds. Claire knows something’s going on, and Desmond finally tells her how Charlie has died before and how he’s trying to keep him alive. Desmond caught one of the birds, gave it to Claire, she wrote a note, and Charlie attached it to the bird’s leg. Claire tells Charlie that Desmond told her what’s been going on and that everything will be okay. “We’ll get through this together,” she says. Awwww!
Now, to the good stuff! Sayid, Locke, Kate, and Rousseau, with Mikhail as their prisoner, are looking for the Others’ “barracks.” Rousseau and Locke think Mikhail should die since they have the map. Sayid and Kate want to keep him alive, and Kate seems to be trusting Mikhail a little too much for my taste. But Mikhail is full of information. From him we learn that he came to the island on a submarine, but using a submarine to get to the island again would be impossible because the sensors have been incapacitated by an electromagnetic pulse. Kate wants Mikhail to explain that a little more, but he says that Kate is not capable of understanding the Others because she’s not on “the list.” He says she’s not on the list because she’s flawed, angry, weak, and frightened. Sayid tells him, “Don’t speak to us as if you know us.” Mikhail admits that he doesn’t know them but that he does know John! He acts like he knows something about John, and he starts to say something, but Roussaeu interrupts him because she sees the fence pylons. It turns out that these pylons are creating a force field around the barracks. Locke tests it by throwing Mikhail in between two pylons. Mikhail begins foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the ears. It’s pretty disgusting and scary. I thought he might literally explode. Anyway, Mikhail says, “Thank you,” right before he dies. Spooky. Sayid says it was a cerebral hemorrhage. Locke justifies his killing Mikhail by saying that the Others were never going to trade Jack for Mikhail anyway. He has a point, but Locke’s still acting a little suspicious.
The groups determines that they’ll need to climb over the “fence,” and they use a tree to climb over the danger zone. They find the Others’ neighborhood, and, to quote my sister, it looked like a college campus with people riding bicycles and playing football. The best shot was seeing Jack running toward the bushes where the four were hiding. We think he’s running for his life, but he was just going long for a pass from Tom! Jack looks like he’s having the time of his life. This is very disturbing for Kate, of course. She’s coming to save him from these horrible people, and he’s playing football! So, what do you think Jack’s doing? Turning into one of them, or making the best out of a bad situation?
More Lingering Questions, as usual:
1. What was Mikhail going to say about Locke?
2. Why did Rousseau stop Mikhail right at that moment?
3. I thought that Kate was on the list, and that’s why she was taken to begin with. Right? She, Sawyer, Jack, and Hurley were on the list Michael was given. Is there another list??
4. Why is Locke lying so much? He’d said he didn’t know there were explosives in the Flame, but then he has some of the same explosives in his bag. What is his deal?
Anything else? I already mentioned the Ayn Rand novel in my previous post. Any thoughts on that?
Lost, Locke, Sayid, Kate, Jack, Claire, Charlie, Desmond, Rousseau, Par Avion, Christian Shepherd
TV Guide has a great interview with Michael Emerson, who plays Ben. Here’s a little peek:
Here’s some more of what we can expect on tomorrow night’s episode from 
On this week’s episode, “Expose,” we’ll get a Paulo and Nikki flashback. Hopefully, we’ll see why it’s necessary for them to be there. I’m still pretty annoyed by those two.
Dominic Monaghan will be starring in a horror movie called I Sell the Dead. Production on the movie will begin in May, and there’s no release date set yet.
In this week’s episode, “The Man from Tallahassee,” we’ll get a Locke flashback. I wonder if we’ll learn more about how he got in the wheelchair… I found this bit of information at 
There’s a fantastic article on one of the more intriguing Lost characters, Danielle Rousseau, on 
