I remember as the camera was panning and you can kind of see the guy that was fixing the plumbing, I turned to my wife and said, "WTF! Was that Ethan?!"

Actually, the first five minutes were full of those moments.

There is something sinister about Henry. He is not only the leader of the Others, but I get the feeling that he has some type of crazy dictator-like hold over them as well.

I thought the premiere was VERY solid. Some people are already complaining, and I'm like, "About what??" Honestly - We're not supposed to have nearly all the answers yet... It's the freakin' season premiere. It wouldn't be very worthwhile to reveal everything just yet... I thought it was just the right amount of information to start things out. I can't wait for next week. I don't know how I ever made it through last season! My dad had to work late last night, so we couldn't watch it together like we traditionally do... Now he's saying he wants to wait for a few more episodes to air before he'll watch it! I'm going to try and convince him to watch it tonight so I can gab to him about it. Ha ha. It's killing me. If he doesn't watch it, then I probably will a second time to see if I missed anything. There aren't many shows where you seriously want to watch an episode right after you just saw it.

I really like Juliet (Juliette?) so far. I think she's a good character to throw into the mix. It's hard to tell what her motives are just yet, but I'd like to believe she could be a potential ally to Jack & co. There's obviously some tension between her and Ben (Henry) - I hope we'll be seeing some flashbacks from the Others' perspective this season.

I think Jack's flashback this time around gave a lot of viewers the ability to relate to Jack in some way or another - Something a lot of viewers probably needed. I, of course, cried like a little baby... Ha ha. Lost makes me so emotional! I don't know what it is. I enjoyed the second season, but not as much as I thought I would've... I have high hopes for the third season, and I already feel that its start has packed a bigger punch. Next week's episode looks good.

Maybe they couldn't get the rights and changed the song last minute.

That was intentional...it was supposed to remind you of the Season Two opener with Desmond in the hatch when he heard the alarm for the clock going off...this time the "alarm" was for the muffins.

Re: The Stephen King novel. That was more of an "in joke" than a "clue". King has been writing for the past couple years how LOST is his favorite TV show in the pages of Entertainment Weekly. This was probably just a "shout out" to his kindness by the show's producers.

Speculation:

The guy on the hospital bed that Jack was treating when he saw his father laughing on the phone outside the room looked like MC Gainey. It probably wasn't but a screen cap would be nice.

I think you're on the money.

This guy?



Hmm. Tough call.

I saw "MC Gainey" in the opening credits...by the way, who is he?

He's Zeke/Mr. Friendly/Tom/The-(no-longer)-bearded One. People are just wondering if that's him on the table.

Wow, talk about over-analysis (especially when it's obviously NOT him).

I've read speculation that Sarah's new boyfriend is an other, anybody see that?

looks like a crater

ha ha, seriously groucho... let's make a 3-D rendering and rotate it 360 degrees, just to be sure...

The Island is HUGE. holy crap.

I'm thinking that maybe the "smoke creature" in the woods might show up if they get near it at all to scare anyone away from the Others actual living area, where the houses are. Otherwise somebody would have discovered it at this point.

well it is Hawaii ...

The Talking Heads CD thing bugs me because in a show with so many mysteries, even the smallest error by the film makers could indicate a new mystery or an answer to an old one.

In this case it would seem that The Others are in possession of a remastered dual-disc Talking Heads CD that just came out this year (2006), when we are to believe that the events depicted (the original plane crash) occurred on Sept. 22, 2004. Additionally, when the others put this magical Talking Heads album into their CD player it plays a song that is not by the Talking Heads at all.

I suppose the use of the alt. song could be because of music rights issue, but in a mysterious show like Lost everything gets held up for scrutiny.

I thought the same thing. Just send someone down to the local music store to pick up a Petula Clark cd, or just not show it at all.

Anyone have a legible screencap of the CD?

That's actually Mike Delfino 20 years later.

Ratings:

Considering the hate this episode seems to have attracted on a few other sites (the most mixed of any Lost episode I've seen.. and I don't get it since this was the perfect example of a good Lost episode), it makes me wonder if it'll keep up the ratings or not.