But the bear has to be important for some reason.

I think that's Alex.

No way. Already stated why. Walt had no teddy bear, and the kids legs were white. I agree with Timmynauseau.

I forgot how frustrating watching this (or any) show in real time can be. Last year I watched the first 12-14 episodes, then kind of stopped watching when they really delayed the airings (it was something like 2 weeks off, 2 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off at one point). So it ended up being that I got caught up in the final 2-3 weeks, watching a backlog of like 8 shows in the process.

When you're watching it week-to-week, a lackluster episode can be kind of a bummer. I would rate the last two episodes as fairly uneventful, and now we've got two weeks off. bleh.

Was it two or three weeks off?

It said coming in 3 weeks, so that's two weeks off.

ahh right...silly math and common sense.

It's back in three weeks, so I assume that mean two weeks without shows... tonight's episode was a complete waste of an episode, most of the character development \ interactions and backstory could have been summed up in 10 mins in a more highly paced episode.

Normally I like the slow pace... but when nothing new is introduced then it's just annoying. Really did we see anything important that was not covered in the preview for tonight's episode? The ending didn't even lead us with a cliffhanger... they left that part for the teaser for the next epidsode. Arghhh... At least last week we finally met Bernard, Rose's husband.

My prediction for the next show:
- we won't meet "the others" - up close
- Rousseau won't show up
- Desmond won't show up
- someone will have an accident and die, but it won't move the storyline along very much... and will basiclly used as something to creat drama and\or tension within one of the two groups

Hopefully I'm horibbly wrong...

BTW - I missed a few portions of the show, was the bearded guy on the boat in this episode at all? I accidentlly scrolled down to this episode in the Lost IMDB cast list, and he was supposed to be in it.

Not the strongest episode. I don't mind the Jin/Sun back story. I like them both, so it's good to see.

This is was the first time in the series, however, that I felt frustrated. Why didn't they actually talk about what happened? Maybe these discussions all happened "off screen", but it really felt forced. Why Michael or Sawyer didn't stop the people and say "What the hell happened? How did over half your people die? Who are the people who killed them? Blah blah blah."

Who's Alex again?

Alex was Rousseau's kid.

Ah. Right. Thanks. So, he would be around 16 or so?

Wow. That was REALLY bad.

No explanation of "the others" - just, "we have to keep moving" and stuff like that.

Sounds like they have a story that could last 2-3 seasons that they're going to stretch to 6. Don't go X-Files on us (not in the sci-fi sense, but in the sense where the series really had no directions after a while).

Disappointing.

They actually did give a pretty good indicator of the timeline through a couple music related clues. In last week's episode Hurley asked the record store clerk out to see 'The Hold Steady' show (one of my favoritest bands, whose show I myself just attended in Portland on Friday). The Hold Steady were formed in 2003 and released their first album in March of 2004.

Then you've got the driveshaft web site. I haven't kept up on whether or not that's a 'legit' site or some sort of ruse, but this page pegs the date as September 2004.

Interesting information there, never knew about that site.

The winning numbers drawn Wednesday evening were 7, 21, 43, 44, 49 and Powerball 29.

Does Jin just not have any facial hair?

Yeah when I first saw that I thought that we may be in store for a date in the early 90's or something like that... but after watching last season's episodes it has to be more recent since Hurley is driving a H2, and Sayid's backstory deals with the current war in Iraq...

This season sucks.

Its super slow, and repetitive.

and its episode after episode about "the others"

a real snore.

Yup. Last night could have been done in about ten words.

Others! Must find Walt! You find Walt Michael. The Others!

I liked last night's episode. I appreciate that lots of people watch the show for the simple revealing of mysteries. For me, the plot matters, but I enjoy the characters and mood of the show much more. Taking time is fine with me.

Agree. How often do network shows explore this many different characters this deep? I could do without the 3 week breaks though.

I agree with that!

Hey - it can't be geekboy cluefest jamboree every freaking week.

A lot of East Asian men don't...

I liked the episode. Sun and Jin are probably my favorite characters so I liked the focus on them. I was expecting one of them to die before the end of the episode or at least set up a cliff hanger where one of them was about to die.

I don't think we need to learn a lot every week, but I do think it's pretty painful seeing the people from the tailend, knowing that more than half of them are gone/dead, knowing that they know about some other people on the island (the same "others"?) - and they haven't said anything about it. They just say, "we have to keep moving!"

I just think it's unrealistic that it would be stretched out THAT long. I don't mind slow, but I mind ridiculousness like that.

DOLA, they might have given away too much too fast with the season premiere that now it has become expected and people are pissed when its slowed down. I don't mind... we learned/saw a couple things:

1) Seems pretty obvious the Others killed off the rest of the tailies. Also seems to imply they will be going after the main chars now that the tailies are gone.

2) The others don't leave tracks. Weird because we saw them walk by and they didn't seem to be doing anything to cover them so something strange is going on there.

3) We got a better idea for numbers... I didn't count, but there had to be at least 8 of them in the group. We didn't see Walt so you have to assume there are even more somewhere else.

4) We got a hint that Alex is alive as the kid with the Teddy Bear looked 16-ish to me.

5) It seemed like the others perfectly alternated between guys in long pants and bare legs... not sure if it means anything, but it was strange/obvious enough to notice. My only thought was that it maybe was meant to convey that they were from different eras in time?

6) Mr Echo is pretty badass.

I interpreted it as them having shame for what happened. Whether they broke away from the rest of the group, failed to protect them, or otherwise feel guilty, shame is what I saw by their reluctance to talk. Maybe I'm wrong, but I expect to find out more about that later. I guess it didn't strike me as that unrealistic.

Good point... i wonder if we might find that they actually killed each other and that's why they don't talk about it? The only way the first group knew Ethan was an other was because they had the ship manifest... up until then they thought he was one fo them. Its possible that they were similarly infiltrated, but didn't know it was from the outside and quickly turned on each other and killed off several of themselves before they realized it. Might explain why they improsoned Michael, et al... seems they don't have a good handle on who the enemy is even now.

I could see that. I just think that if people so creeped out that they were constantly "moving out" or "running" from something that they might tell the people they've found just a tad about exactly why they're running, as opposed to - "they'll kill you"

Just my $.02

I could be wrong but I believe Mr. Ecko was talking about how the survivors leave shoe prints, and the Others do not since they aren't wearing any shoes. Probably because most of them were kids at one time and have "busted out" of their shoes. I didn't see any shoe stores in the jungle, did you?

Since the Others have found, and been killing the tail end passengers. And the tail end pasengers have found refuge in their own hatch, the Others must not know about the hatches. So these Others aren't responsible for the project.

Remember when the tail end passengers came out of their hatch, they were peeking around. Obviously they were looking to see if anyone was outside, but the hatch is also "hidden" behind the bushes - which implied to me, the Others didn't know about it.

If the Others aren't responsible for the project, then they wouldn't have their own boat. So the people who took Walt are not the same "Others" that are walking around outside killing the tail end passengers.

So the people who have Walt are a 4th group on the island. This seems to maybe relate to the picture earlier which shows the guy and girl on the boat, may be the couple from the video.

I liked the episode last night and I was glad that Mr. Ecko lived (was worried about that one). I agree with Raven that there must a 4th group on the island (or nearby?).

The only thing getting on my nerves is Mike yelling for Walt. I get it. He loves and misses his son. For being a pseudo-engineer, you'd think he'd be smarter than that. Also, did anyone catch what the whole conversation with Mr. Ecko, Jin, and Mike was at the end? For some reason, I couldn't hear what they were saying.

I couldn't hear what Jin said that persuaded Michael to turn around either at the waterfall.

Not sure about a fourth group of people. Although it does make some sense. I feel that they can lock themselves in those hatches so they are at least somewhat safe in there and that the Others do know where it is. Maybe they know where some of them are and not all of them, they just know the proximity.

I think the others are just one big group, with Adults (Ethan, the people on the boat), and possibly kidnapped kids being the ones we saw last night. The only thing that contradicts my point is why could Ecko take them all on himself if they were kids? Maybe they are somehow genetically altered through some experiments gone wrong that makes them very strong?

Dola-

Can anyone make out what walt said in the previews for the next episode? To me I thought I heard the word "eminent".

I believe that the tailies group may have been infected, as in some of their group started going nutty, kind of like Rouseaux said happened to her companions. They said that they had trust issues, which to me, could mean that they were infiltrated, or their own group members tweaked out.

I also think that Mr. Echo lost his wife on the island. Just my feeling after the conversation with Jin, as little was said.

I can understand their reluctance to speaking about what might have happened. Think of all the horrors that occurred during Vietnam, and then think about all of the stories where the veterans don't even want to discuss it.

If I went through a plane crash, survived, was stranded on an island, then people started dying unspeakable types of deaths, by who knows what, I probably would not want to talk about it either, especially if my mind couldn't quite wrap around the logic of it all.

Also, I figure they have so much time on their hands they might not even think there's reason to beat a dead horse, or possibly they just don't feel like going into detail to someone they think might be dead shortly. There was the point where Anna Lucia referred to Michael by "him".

As every eppisode goes by Jin's english seems to be come so much better :D

Finally watched the episode and I'm going to agree with John. Yea, nothing major happened but it did development some characters that don't usually get a lot of air time.

Good point. They might be why Ana Lucia says they have "trust" issues.

Seems like a pretty big leap of logic there. It's possible the 'Others' were part of another experiment (assuming there were six experiments ala the 3 of 6 in the video and the 6 areas of study in the video).

The 'Others' may know about their experiment site (aka their 'hatch') but may be completely unaware of the other sites. Desmond (who granted was not an original scientist) did not mention that there were other hatches or other sites on the island. So it's possible the different experiments/researchers had no idea that the other projects were on the same island.

I think the combination of locking the hatch from the inside and checking to see if the coast is clear before leaving the bunker would seem to indicate the Others know about the hatch - why they wouldn't just stay outside and kill the tailaways I don't know, but there is a lot about the others and their motivation we do not know. I mean, Ethan was presumably an Other, and they presumably kidnapped Claire and her baby, so they definitely know about the Jack/Locke group. Plus there is still that big monster in the woods that ate the pilot (remember him? where did he go?). So it seems kinda odd that now everybody is just walking through the jungle by themselves or they aren't setting up much of a defense against the others.

As for the rest of the season, I really hope more time is spent on manning up an expedition and going after the Others now that they have guns and with Michael so eager rather than being spent on love triangles between Kate and Jack and Sawyer and Ana-Lucia.

I just finished the first season on DVD and a couple of questions that I don't believe were answered and a couple of general observations:

- What part did Rousseau play in Claire's kidnapping? Was she part of it, or did she help her escape? Remember Claire knows she scratched Rousseau in the woods...

- The fact that the others don't leave tracks was introduced in the first season when Sayid & Charlie went to the black smoke. Because of this I'm doubting that Ethan was one of the others... Locke & Jack found three sets of footprints when Charlie & Claire were originally taken.

- What is the "monster" in the jungle? It has to be more than smoke... This is another area that erks me besides the tail people not telling Mike\Jin\Sawyer what happened... Locke has seen the monster twice and has yet to describe what it looks like to anyone.

- Ethan & the boat people both displayed extra strength, it appeared that way to me anyways. I'm 100% convinced that Ethan isn't part of the others because of the "tracks", so I really think that Ethan\Desmond\Boaties are connected and that the injections are the cause of their extra strength.

I don't think the guy's name is Mr. Echo. It's Mistereko. At least that is what I gathered from the captions. :)

I thought he said Afrikabaambata.

Very interesting theory. Also, you know how Ethan wasn't on the manifest, but infiltrated his way into the group? I wonder if something similar happened with the tail end group.

I was thinking the same thing, so far I have three different theories as to the "trust" issues:

i) That someone like Ethan (not one of the "others") infiltrated the group
ii) That people got infected from the others and they started to turn on their own
iii) The others infiltrated the group

Until I re-watched Season One, theory i & iii were the same theory. But as I said before Ethan is not part of the others, and if he is then the writers can't keep their storylines straight... Ethan makes tracks, the others do not. Right now I'm leaning toward theory ii... the tailies are very scared of the others, and it ws even pointed out to Jin that the others were responsible for the dead guy they found, which brings me to the next theory:

Did the others actually phyisicly kill the dead guy, or were they simply responsible for infecting him and the other tallies actually killed him in fear for their lives?

Well, the Ethan making tracks thing could easily (or maybe uneasily) be explained somewhere else. Maybe because he infiltrated he injected himself with that serum and became "more human". I'm sure the writers could come up with some reasoning as to why Ethan left tracks and the Others do not, yet they're part of the same group, so I wouldn't dismiss it completely. :)

Then that would make Desmond an other... and I really doubt he is, why would he run away if all they do is kill people? I'm sticking by my theory for now...

Here's how I see the groups breaking down:

- Others, which include Alex
- Original Survivors
- Tail Survivors
- Ethan\Boaties, may include Desmond but definitly have some connection with him
- Rousseau, still not sure how she fits in with Claire

I think before everyone keeps saying that the "Others" do not make tracks, it is my thought as stated before, that Ecko meant that the Others do not make shoe prints because they do not wear shoes, they make foot prints. I don't think he meant the others float or somehow leave no tracks.

Dola-

Rousseau crashed there 16 years ago, correct? So if it is 2004-2005, that would mean her group crashed there in the late 80's. I think they would be considered original survivors who were beaten/tortured/killed by the others and some like her son Alex was kidnapped and became an "other".

So dharma started around 1980 correct. So maybe something disastrous happened in the mid to late 80's?