It did kill her. See the end of the episode. Punishment for what she and Paulo had done before coming to the island.

And that's the one thing about it that I didn't like. Why pander to the audience like that? If you made a decision to stick two people on the island and jam them down our throats like that, have the balls and conviction to stick with it. Don't come up with something like this to appease the audience. It's ridiculous and a waste of time that could be spent somewhere else. After watching this, I was agreeing with what Evangeline said on Dave. I mean, calling a network on constant interruptions/pre-emptions/clip shows is one thing, "influencing" the direction of a show with a supposedly pre-determined storyline, is another.

I also thought it was ridiculous that these two kept stumbling onto things the main cast took seemingly forever to find. In addition, Sawyer's zingers grew about as tiresome as hearing Shannon. Oh, and please let Boone and his bad rug stay dead.

Good riddance to everything except Nikki's non-bulletproof rack.

How long before airing do you think they shoot these episodes? I mean, I would think from the writing stages/pre-production to shooting to post production would take some time. Can they really adjust the show's content based on audience reaction on the fly like that, mid-season? I guess this episode is proof that they can, but I always thought they shot things well in advance. What if one (or more) of the main characters were to get deathly ill in real-life, etc? Seems you'd wanna cover your butt.

If they really wanted to tailor the show to what the audience responded well to, I'd think there would be many more gripes they could have addressed before this. Especially with a show like this, which has such a rabid internet fanbase. Its not hard to put your finger to its pulse. Perhaps they do, on the fly? Do they go through the production process on the dvds? I don't own them yet.

I don’t know that they are pandering to the audience so much as trying to figure how many plot lines to keep sustained at one time. It is probably fair to say writing a serialized story like this without a specific end date in sight can be a bit of a challenge. They need to keep a certain number of plot points going (either by introducing new ones or by closing old ones.) Kind of like a juggling act.

Now that they are getting a better idea of when the show might end, they have to make on the fly adjustments to ongoing plots that they introduced earlier. They were probably preparing for the possibility of 5+ seasons with the introduction of Nikki, Paulo, Patchy, and the Tailies. Now that the show’s run may be shorter, they are having to wrap some things up earlier than they planned.

Just a thought.

I always thought that they introduced these two just to have somebody to kill off later. They let them stick around longer and dropped hints that they were important additions to the cast just so they wouldn't be seen as generic red shirts.

I think it is a combination of what Palaver and Peep are saying. They probably introduced them as filler and kept them around in case the show went longer than 5 seasons, but were disposable from the minute they were introduced.

Relatively speaking, I think it progressed a lot. :p

But I'm not going to try and convince people on here that my opinion is the right one...I've enjoyed these last few episodes a great deal, and that's all that matters to me.

You could tell some people (not you) how to win the lottery, guaranteed, and they wouldn't do it because it'd mean they let you convince them of something.

Hour-long television dramas are usually on the air 4-5 weeks after they're shot. With the case this year of splitting the season [6/16], they probably had several in the can at the beginning of each segment before airing. Not much opportunity to change plots/characters with 10 days to shoot and a few weeks to edit/prepare. The only changes can be ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) work. I'm fairly certain these characters' fates were planned out before the season started.

Yeah, but the director could have shot two different endings and planned to leave them out of the next two episodes, no matter how the coin toss went.

As to the question about how far in advance they shoot the shows ... well, I'd venture that they are currently doing post- on epi 19, shooting episode 20 and 21 of this season, and writing/prepping/pre-producing the Season Finale. Damon and Carlton have been mentioning their current position in the scheme of things when they do their podcasts. So yeah, if "the can" started out 8 episodes ahead of us when they came back from hiatus, they are only 3-4 episodes ahead now and the finale will probably only be completed a few days in advance of it's airing.

They cast the finale this past week and are filming it next week.

I disagree. Ultimately, Hurley and Sawyer killed them when they buried them alive. I don't think it was Smokey, since they ended up paralyzed. For all Smokey knew, Nikki was going to drop in the jungle and wake up 8 hours later. And, if it was Smokey, he only took care of Nikki, since she already paralyzed Pablo.
Smokey is not your everyday run of the mill smoke monster. He's all about action, getting it done now so he can move on. -wink-

I forgot to mention, I thought they should have had Shannon show up in Sayid's Paris flashback since she spent time there too. Those eps weren't that far apart and obviously they are ahead in filming right now.

HOLY SHIT....the smoke monster did not paralyze her!!!!!!!!!!!

Arnz said that the pheremones from the spider would attract all the males of her species in a second....when paolo squashed it, he released mass amounts of the pheremones and Nicki got stung!!!!!

What the FUCK is up with these threads?!?!?!?

'Lost' Takes Costly Tumble In Ratings
Loses half a million viewers, according to overnights

By MICHAEL HINMAN
Source: Zap2it
Mar-29-2007

Right now, "Lost" on ABC is trying to hold its own against "CSI: NY" on CBS in its Wednesday 10 p.m. ET timeslot. But soon, it might be trying to fight to stay out of last place with "Medium" on NBC after "Lost" posted one of its lowest overnight ratings yet, a 6.8 rating/12 share according to Fast Nationals from Nielsen Media Research.

That was more than half a million viewers compared to who tuned in the previous week to see how John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) ended up in a wheelchair. It also was about the same number less than who decided to watch a rerun of CSI instead, which picked up a 7.2/12. However, Zap2it reports that "Lost" had more total viewers.

ABC's luck with Wednesday night isn't helping "Lost" at all. Its immediate lead-in, "According to Jim" and "In Case of Emergency," had an average that was less than "Lost's" total audience -- a 3.0/5. In the 8 p.m. timeslow, with no "American Idol" on Fox, ABC did even worse, its "Great American Dream Vote" getting far less viewers than "America's Next Top Model" on The CW, which earned a 3.4/6.

ABC certainly felt it overall. The Disney network finished fourth for the night with a 4.3/7 behind Fox (9.5/16), CBS (6.6/11) and NBC (4.6/8).

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that includes both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

I guess I wasn't far off then with my estimate as to where they were re: production. For those who are interested some new info for the last run of episodes (19, 20, and 21) was posted on TV.com today (may be mildly spoilerish, but hardly). That means that this is what we'll be getting for the rest of the season:

Episode 3.15 - "Left Behind" - Kate Centric
Episode 3.16 - "One Of Us" - Juliet Centric
Episode 3.17 - "Catch-22" - Desmond Centric
Episode 3.18 - "D.O.C" - Jin Centric
Episode 3.19 - "The Brig" - Jack Centric
Episode 3.20 - "The Man Behind The Curtain" - this is interesting ... "Dharma Intiative" Centric
Episode 3.21 - "Greatest Hits" - Charlie Centric

We don't know much about Episode 3.22/23 other than that it will be a 2-hour finale and is rumoured to be Ben centric.

I don't know, but perhaps you should read them. I was replying to someone else, and in both of my posts (about paralyzing), I pretty much say I don't buy it was Smokey that caused the paralyzing.

Really lame ep (neat story but again, this show can no longer afford clever diversions). I believe lost will top the X-files as the most disappointing show ever. The writers have arrogantly squandered a brilliant concept by bogging it down with pointless episodes, stupid characters who don't act realistically (Hi Sawyer, glad you escaped from the Others! Now help me get this van started for no reason), and diversion writing that doesn't advance the plot.

Please fire Lindelof and Cuse and save this show before it's too late. Or, have them watch Battlestar Galactica or the Shield to see what a REAL show is supposed to do.

would like to thank the writers for clearing up whose shoe that was hanging in the tree at the open of the pilot episode.

Yeah, i'm really killing myself for the answer to that one. That and Sawyer's 6 inches of hair growth between episodes 2 and 3 of season one.

I thought the episode was entertaining, but I can understand the frustration of having a "filler" episode after what many consider to be a lackluster season.

However on a side note, I think it's great that networks let you catch up on the shows online with some commercials. I wasn't able to watch the past 2 weeks episodes, but thanks to ABC, I am caught up for when I finally get finished up with my move. Then I can finally enjoy this and other shows in HD. The only negative is that for some reason "The Man from Talladega" episode kept freezing, and it took me about 5 attempts to get through it.

Heard a funny "commercial" on XM's "Lucy" station (838 on DirecTV)...the voice guy says something like, "Lucy...covering the time from when you couldn't figure out Twin Peaks...to the time you couldn't figure out Lost." And they played the little Lost intro theme.

I loved this episode.

Some notes.

- I thought Nikki had said "paralized" from the beginning

- The show compressed time a bit. Paulo found the diamonds shortly after ep 12 in Season 1, and it looks in the episode that he tries to bury them soon after, but from what we see while he's in the Pearl, he doesn't hide the diamonds there until a ways into Season 2. According to Lostpedia, that's a span of at least 22 days, probably longer. It works in the ep since we get to see Ban and Juliet in The Pearl, but logically he should've hid it there weeks ago.

- I really didn't buy that Nikki wouldn't be interested in The Pearl. Sure, she was miffed that Paulo wouldn't climb to the plane, but this was a major find. Locke and Boone got distracted from the search for Claire and Charlie when they found the hatch to The Swan. And even after giving up on finding the bag, she never once mentioned returning an exploring it?

- It's not too strange that Paulo would keep the walkie secret, but it's odd that Paulo wouldn't have used it in some way, even just monitoring transmissions. I'm guessing the walkie was introduced as a device for the main Losties to use in the future.

- How much nicotine gum did Paulo have? He found their bag around day 22, but still has some to fall out of his pocket on day 80. I doubt someone would carry around 8 weeks worth of gum on their carry-on. I thought it'd be a diamond that had fallen out.

Ricky Bobby is on the island? :eek:

I watched this episode over the weekend and I liked it a lot.

1) Loved how it shows how people can be consumed with what is going on in their own lives and not give a shit about Jack or locke or "the hatch"

--- If I was running around the Island looking for my suit case because it had food in it - I wouldn't care what Jack was doing!!

2) Loved that they ignored the hatches.. I know if I was looking for something important and I found a dark hole in the woods with a ladder in it... I would not go down in that thing. Remember - you are thinking help will arive any day !

3) Loved the Dark Ending! I was screaming at the tv "don't puss out, burry them!"
Just like a tales from the crypt ending

2)