Dear Lost,

Thank you for continuing to kill off characters I love and keeping the ones I cannot stand. Also, please don't leave me. I don't know what I'm going to do without you. You're leaving me with Gossip Girl and Heroes. Do. Not. Want.

Alea

PS. Thanks for the Jears in this episode. I've been waiting for some good Jears this season.

Tea Bag Quote:

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."

- Socrates


Should get back to work but here are short snippets:

- Heroes finale was anticlimactic. Am really hoping that this was the series finale as well. It was probably the show's weakest season finale (maybe because Nathan didn't die this time around?), but it was good enough to end the series. I really don't want to see Sylar decide between good and evil again and I like the thought of them ending with Claire revealing their secret to the world.

- Lost was interesting. Wonder where they're going to take this Claire thing. She looks like Rousseau

- New Yeasayer's album is absolutely delightful. Cannot get enough of it.

- Oh and I appointed my board for next year. Exciting stuff.

I guess the biggest news since I last posted was that I did run for Editor-in-Chief after all and got elected to that position. Granted, I ran unopposed, but it's still very exciting. It's still sinking in to a certain extent and I've been going between moments of utter elation to very Gob-like "I've made a huge mistake" moments. Overall, though, I know next year is going to be an incredibly busy year (probably something like the CalPIRG days on crack minus pledge week), but it's going to be so worth it in the end in more ways than one. My project right now is to elect a board. In the past, Comm/ent has had two editors-in-chief. Because it's only me, I'm going to have to elect a very reliable and strong board. The people who've expressed their interest so far are great, though. I'm very excited about next year.

Otherwise, it's been a lot of the usual. A lot of reading. A lot of writing that I have to do and not that much time to do it all. Such is the life of a law student in their second year. It's what they warn you about before you apply.

Lost premiered. The season premiere created a number of new questions - namely whether they're going to do this split between alternate universes the entire season, but it also answered a few major ones. We also found out what happened to that one flight attendant. I wonder if they added that in because it was a common complaint among Losties. I also find it interesting that the roles of Ben and not-Locke have reversed in many respects. In a way, I'm kind of sad that this is the last season. I need to get as much mileage as I can out of making fun of Jack, I suppose.

I finally also got around to starting Remix by Lawrence Lessig. Thought it might give me some ideas on where to go for my note. Great read, so far. I love his writing style. I still can't believe I met him a year ago. So cool.


Based on the tags of this entry, the letter of the day is L.

Well, first things first. I am done with finals! I turned in my Enviro law final 2:49, almost 20 minutes before it was due. W00t. The 30 hour final was pretty grueling, but it wasn't quite as tiring as i thought it would be. It was kind of like waiting until the last minute to write a paper. The questions were hard, but I managed.

Even had time for an American Idol break. Kris was so good last night. I hope Danny gets kicked off. Also, I really hope they get rid of Kara. She brings nothing to the show. And Adam was terrible. People need to stop encouraging that.

In case you're wondering, this is what a 30 hour final looks like...



To celebrate, I am going to let my brain relax for a while. Am watching S.Darko, which is the sequel to Donnie Darko. I watched it out of morbid curiosity, for the lulz, and because Chuck's in it. So far, it is absolutely terrible. Words don't even describe. I am not sure what I expected. There isn't even good music in it so far. I mean, I don't know what to expect when it came straight to DVD, was not directed by Richard Kelly (though, I can't give him much credit anymore because Southland Lands was terrible), and the only cast member who returned was Samara from the Ring. Also no Jake and mullet Alex. I think Frank might actually make an appearance *cross fingers.* If not, this movie and I are done professionally. Apparently Seth Rogen was in Donnie Darko as well. I found that out earlier this year. Anyway, I'm hoping this movie might get better.

Anyway, speaking of Chuck, I was not a big fan of Monday's episode. They cut the prom episode in half to introduce that Valley Girls spin off. The spin off, which may not be happening anymore, was pretty bad. Little Lily and her sister sounded terribly valley girl for people who recently moved from NY. Also, there was no Rufus. And the No Doubt cameo they've been hyping for months wasn't that exciting. Those are my thoughts. Season finale of that next week. And LOST tonight. I'm going back to watching this terrible movie.

Today actually turned out to be a pretty busy day. Somehow, I managed to get most of what I wanted to do done too. That's definitely a plus.

I had class in the morning, as usual. Went out to lunch with Matt and Jeanne. Went to Ananda Fuara, the vegetarian restaurant on Larkin and Market. Been there before with Jamie. Good stuff. Had Property right after that. Managed to squeeze in paying rent during break.

After Property, they had some learn how to register for classes meeting that all the 1Ls were obligated to go to. I maanged to sneak in a trip to the B of A ATM between class and that meeting. I stayed for the first forty-five minutes, but I left early so that I could get rid of my laptop and property book before Moot Court.

Today was our last Moot Court meeting, which was kind of sad. On the upside, my Wednesdays are significantly less hectic. We celebrated the end with a trip to Chevys with some margaritas and chips. I've been craving those Chevys chips for a while. No idea why. Anyway, that was a lot of fun. Got to talk to my classmates out of the class context.

I had to leave the celebration a little early because I had to go to a KALSA board meeting. Turned out there was more food there. Talked about the end of the year BBQ and logistics for next year.

That ended a little before 8. This meant that I had an hour to throw things in the laundry before Lost. I did that. Actually, I had really good timing with Lost. It finished around the same time that Lost finished. While watching Lost, I also baked brownies for the GAAP bake sale tomorrow. I also have to finish selling raffle tickets. That is for tomorrow, however.

Also, Lost was pretty good tonight. Kate was surprisingly likable. This was a strange and rare experience for me. I'm just really excited because next week's got a Ben-centric episode and there has been a severe lackage of oldBen.

Also, I'm really happy America had the sense to vote out Megan Joy this week on Idol. She was terrible. She's been terrible. I don't even understand how she lasted this long. Now they just need to kick off Scott. Seems unlikely though. I just hope Allison doesn't go before he does. I also kind of wish Adam sang something like Muse's "Starlight" this week, but at least I didn't want to gouge out my eyes watching him perform this week. I think he's just growing on me.

I did Contracts reading for Thus last night because I knew I was going to be busy today. Read through ConLaw while watching Lost and spent the rest of the night working on my application for Moot Court tryouts. There are limited spaces on the team, so I probably won't make the team. Figure I might as well give it a go. The benefits of trying out and maybe getting on definitely outweigh the benefits of not trying out at all. Also, I really loved the process in the end. I also found out I got an Honorable Mention for Best Brief in our class, which was really exciting. I guess I do have decent research and writing skills after all. The only thing I really have left to do on this application is find some way to get my argument from 14--> 10 pages. I can do this if I change the font. Checking with my TA to see if that's all right. Hopefully I can turn in all this stuff tomorrow. The second part is a 5 minute oral on one of the topics on the site and an interview.

Seems intense, but the journal competition seems way worse.

Oh, cool. TA just got back to me on that question. Yay. Can turn it in before I table for GAAP tomorrow.

Still on the to do list:
Enviro Reading for Fri
Watch An Inconvenient Truth bc I slept through class on Tues where we watched it
get a summer job
clean my room
outline

I finally finished watching this week's Lost yesterday.

For one, that four-toed statue came back. They haven't completely forgotten about it.

Also, Kate/Sawyer needs to end. I've been long over that ship. Kate and Jackface deserve each other. Juliette and Sawyer have had amazing chemistry all season, so I was happy to see that they actually got together this episode. Oh, but wait...no Kate's back. alskdfj

What happened to Aaron anyway?

No Ben. Where are Sun and Sayid? Whatever happened to Rose and Bernard? Has Farraday turned into a creepy pedo?

There wasn't that much to this episode, but I feel like it's been the first real fluff episode since the season started.


Also, SPRING BREAK!

This whole Moot Court on Thursday instead of Wednesday thing has thrown off my week. On the plus side, I got an extra day to make the final rough draft of my brief (that i'm turning in at least) look nice. I took me like 2 hours to find a stupid citation so that I could make one point that I was obligated to make. That was fun. But I've been enjoying watching Lost on Wednesdays night happily knowing that I'm done with Moot Court for the week and, well, that didn't happen.

Lost last night was amazing. I'm just going to pretend that Season Three didn't happen. I think that things would be better that way. I mean, really, I still can't believe they dedicated an entire episode of the show to Jack's dumb tattoo. Like we even care about it.

Tonight's episode answered a lot of questions. We know why Whidmore hates Ben. We know how Locke died. We saw him attempt to get people back to the island. There was an entirely unnecessary scene where doctors tried to fix Locke's leg.

My question is how Ben got Eloise to trust him. I hope they go into that more. We also still don't know what happened to Ben before he got on the plane (the theory I've seen floating around the Internet is that he's killed Penny). Also, what did Sayid do to get arrested?

Also, I love that Ben's been playing everyone the whole time. It's not that it wasn't expected or anything because that's his purpose on the show, but it was pretty cool. So if Whidmore's the "good" guy now, why is it that he sent that crazy guy to the island with loads of C4? I think Whidmore mentioned it, but I was reading for Contracts at the time, so I think I missed it.

That's all I can say for now as I've got to go run to GAAP.

Oh.

I hate how American Idol's set up this season. I hate this Top 36 business. I hate having a fourth judge. I hated how it felt like auditions dragged on forever. Anything else? I don't know.

I have to leave for GAAP in a bit. This leaves me in a bind. I don't have enough time to start reading the 60 page behemoth known as my Enviro Law reading or to start writing more cover letters for jobs (the huge influx of firm layoff posts at ATL today is kind of intimidating) or do anything else mildly productive, so I'll just post here about Lost.

This season has been great so far. In the four or five episodes since the season premier, the show's seemed to finally start answering a lot of the questions we've been asking since season one. Of course, they give us 20 more new questions. I don't know if it's all the leaping or the lack of flashbacks, but it feels like the pace has increased significantly this season.

Charlotte used to live in the island. She speaks Korean (better than Jin). Last season, they seemed to build up the fact that she could speak Korean as part of her mysterious past. She probably just studied it in college or something. I'm assuming this because now that she's dead, this question is going to be left unanswered (unless we find out when Faraday meets little Charlotte). I was actually kind of warming up to her too.

We finally know why Rousseau is crazy. Non-crazy and happy Rousseau was kind of making me nervous and uncomfortable, so it was nice to see her with at least one large gun at the end of the episode. And apparently the only reason she didn't get sick like the rest of her group was because Jin stopped her from pursuing Smokey. Why the rest of her team decided to go after it, I have no clue.

Locke's sacrifice is presumably what stops the island from going into Quantum Leap hyper drive. I wonder what year they are in right now. I'm going to presume that it's an earlier Dharma time period so Faraday can run into little Charlotte, but we never know.

Also, creepy old lady is Faraday's mom. The blinking spoiler lights were right.

New questions:

Who is Charlotte's father? You know it's going to be someone they're all connected to. Maybe Whidmore?

Also is Christian Shepard Jacob? I'm still not entirely sure what his purpose is on this show other than being Jack's dad. (minimal Jackface this episode)

Are Juliette and Sawyer going to happen? It seems like they're trying to set it up, but it seems kind of awkward. The previews show Jack/Kate happening (again), so...

What happens next? They're obviously going to get to the island. But I don't see that taking the rest of the season. They've got to get Sayid, Hurley, and Kate on board. Does Ji-Yeon have to go as well? She wasn't born on the island though, so maybe not.

Are they reincarnating Locke? I imagine it would make it seem slightly less ridiculous than having to carry his corpse back to the island. Also, I'm sure Benry can find some way of making that happen.

Are they going to explain the Whidmore/Benry feud? They have to right?

Old Question:
Are. They. Ever. Going. To. Explain. The. Four-Toed. Statue?


Okay. I've got to go now. Those were my quick thoughts on Lost. I also went to this art law panel that my Property Professor put on yesterday. It was really cool. About art in the public sphere, so it was a lot of wall murals and stuff. I had to run to Moot Court, so I missed the end. That was upsetting. The last guy was pretty cool. The only thing i saw of his before I had to go was this art project he did where they set up a miniature park and bench in a metered parking space in SF for 2 hours a couple of years ago. I'd find a picture, but that's going to make me late so you can google it yourself.

I've got a lot of mini things to post about

1) I've finished Book #7 of the 50 books I plan to read this year. This one was A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain. I've started to like reading travel books, mostly because the authors get to go to fun places that I either have never been to or will never be able to go to. This one is about food. Food + Travel = Happiness in my mind. In this book, Bourdain travels around the world looking for the perfect meal. He goes to Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia, France, California, Morocco, etc. and tries everything from goat testicles to (the much dreaded) vegan food. In the process, he more or less comes to the conclusion that there really is no one perfect meal. I've never actually seen his show. Might have to at some point. He's got kind of a big ego, but his book's a fun read.

2) This season of Lost has yet to disappoint. What happened last night? A lot of things. It was a Kate-centric episode so we got a lot of Kate and a lot of Jack-face. Still no flashback, which is kind of disappointing. Sayid demonstrated more of his pure powers of awesome. Someone's lawyers are trying to take Aaron away from Kate since he's not really his kid. She stalks the lawyer to figure out who it is. The lawyer happens to go to Claire's mom. Jack, being Claire's half-sister, steps up and says "hay, i've totally got this." He confront's Claire's mom and it turns out she has no idea what he's talking about, so he Jack-faces away into the distance and tells Kate to leave as quickly as possible. We find out it's Benry's lawyer doing all of this. He's also getting Hurley (or Hugo, since that's what everyone seems to be calling him now) out of prison. Anyway, Jack tells Kate that they HAVE to get to the docks, where they meet Ben and Sayid. Kate is clearly pissed that Jack tricked her into meeting with Ben. Sun, meanwhile, is hiding in a car with Aaron and is holding a gun that she got out of a chocolate box.

Meanwhile, on the island, we return to Quantum Leap on crack. Charlotte, Miles, and Juliette get nose bleeds. Sawyer sees a scene from Season 1, they get shot at by random people, and Ziggy malfunctions once again. Oh, also...Jin's alive. Yay! He gets rescued by a boat full of French people and we get to see young pre-crazy jungle woman Rousseau. Given that they're quantum leaping, we won't see her for long, but I wonder if we're going to FINALLY get backstory on that woman.

Also, I wonder if present-Locke is dead for good.

Yup, I don't think we have to worry about Lost going back to the crapfest known as Season 3 for a while.

3) There was a lot of eating today.

For lunch, I went with Jamie and a couple of other girls to Ananda Fuara, which is a vegetarian restaurant on Market and Larkin. I pass this place whenever I go to Walgreens and it's intrigued me for quite some time. Unfortunately, I feel like it was closed whenever I walked by. Considering how drab and semi-Tenderloiny it looks from the outside, it's really cute on the inside. I was actually pretty nonadventurous today and had eggplant parmesan, something I could have just as easily gotten at Morty's next to GAAP. I don't know. I was in an eggplant mood. It was really good though. It's also relatively inexpensive and I've heard good things about their other dishes, so I guess I'll have to go back and try something else there some other time.

For dinner, I went with KALSA to Cocobang. It was a post-BOB party since KALSA hosted BOB. I was actually supposed to volunteer and pass out kimbap at BOB, but I could only get Career Office appointments at BOB time or GAAP time and I figured that helping homeless people was just a little more important than giving law students free kim bap. I missed Korean drums, apparently, though. That would have bee fun. Anyway, we went to Cocobang. Chris and I had been there before. It's definitely one of those places that's more fun to go to in a big group. We shared chicken, and bibimbap, and dokkbokki, and I don't remember what else. We also had soju. It was fun. A lot of the group went to a norebang after. Jeanne and I went back. Homework, what else?

4) Group auditions yesterday for Idol were fun. That Tatiana girl is obnoxious, but she's never going to bring as much drama as the twins from Season 5. In fact, they might as well give up trying to make Hollywood week seem uber dramatic becaus there is never going to be a Hollywood week moment as great as this one.

That's it. Sleep time.

I've been trying to brief a case for my Moot Court research for like two hours now and I just can't get into it. It's an interesting case about child pornography, but I just haven't been able to get into it. This is one of the big cases that I need to know, too. You might ask how that relates to identity theft, but it's actually not as exciting of an answer as you might expect.

Anyway, as part of Project: Get out of the Apartment More, I decided to go to the Asian Art Museum. Today was an ideal day to go because it was a great day, it was a weekend...and admission to the museum is free on the first Sunday of every month. That's definitely a plus. The admission isn't really that bad to begin with, but free > all. Anyway, I went to the museum around 10:30. In addition to it being free today, they were also celebrating the Year of the Ox at the museum. Thus, they had performances and arts and crafts tables. Anyway, the exhibits in the museum were really cool. The museum is huge (a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be). The collection is enormous. The Korea collection here was a lot bigger than the one at the Freer & Sackler Galleries in DC. There's an entire room that's filled with Jade. It's really cool. There were so many statues of Buddha (the law student in me had to stop myself from typing statute instead of statue). It's a really great exhibit. I'm going to have to go back at some other time. I got through two and a half rooms and realized that I had spent an hour there. Knowing that I would, at some point, have to actually start doing work, I kind of sped things up after that. I was there for another hour and a half or something, but I know I probably missed a lot. Also, I missed the exhibit on art from Afghanistan. It's been here since October and pretty much just ended. It looked really cool, too.

I was starving after that, so I grabbed a burrito and got work done. I got some work done, but I got severely distracted after having rediscovered the blog, Stuff White People Like. At least I'm done with reading through Wednesday. Probably spend all of tomorrow doing Moot Court. Fun times. I have a sneaking suspicion that there was something I was supposed to do today that I didn't, but whatever.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl, but I watched what were apparently the best commercials from it. The Conan O'Brien one has to be my favorite. I found out that there was an hour-long episode of The Office after. I missed it and will have to watch it tomorrow or something. Tomorrow's actually a big TV night. Gossip Girl, Chuck, and Heroes come back. I actually have to choose between my Josh Schwartz shows, so I'll probably be watching Chuck on Hulu in between classes on Wednesday. Yay Heroes though. Let's see if they can prove themselves against some really good episodes of Lost.

It's ridiculously late now, so I should probably go to bed.

Today was a pretty long day. It's my long day of classes since I have Moot Court in the evening. It actually doesn't feel like it's as long as it was last semester. I think it's because I have Property for two hours instead of Civil Procedure. Much, much, much more interesting class. Anyway, I think I'm just tired. I've been doing a lot of homework this week and last weekend. I thought I was going to have time to start on next week's reading this week, but I'm seeing now that this is not going to happen. Nope.

Idol was okay tonight. I think they're finally done with auditions, but I switched to Lost too soon to find out for sure. There were some really good voices tonight.

Lost was more interesting. I don't know where to begin. They need to go back to the whole flash back thing. I miss that format, but I guess there's something intense about to go down, so they don't have time for that.

You know what the best part of this episode was? There. Was. No. Jack. In fact, there was no Kate either. It was GLORIOUS.

There was a lot of Faraday in this episode, and I'm coming up with some new theories on him. I think creepy old lady (Mrs. Hawkins, I think is her name) is Faraday's mom. Either that, or the woman who kept on trying to kill him is his mom. Farraday did keep looking at her because he said something about her looked familiar. Also, we've now established that not only does Charles Widmore know Faraday's mom, but he also used to live on the island. He was one of the O.G. Others, apparently. It would make sense that their acquaintance goes back to this time. It could be that Faraday's mom is both creepy old lady and O.G Other. This would explain why creepy old lady knows so much about the island and what's going to happen if they don't go back.

Also, I love Juliette. She's so much cooler than Kate. I love her tongue-in-cheek jokes about "the Others."

I'm glad someone finally asked the question that we've all been dying to know for the last few seasons regarding Richard's age. Apparently he's been the leader of the Others at his current age since the 1950s (at least). I also find it interesting that Locke apparently recruited himself as an Other.

I think the last comments I wanted to make on Lost had to do with Desmond/Penny. One, or both, of them is going to die this season and that makes me very sad. Neither of them actually want to be caught up in this whole scandal and even Charles is trying to get them to stop their silly meddling. Considering Charles is supposed to be the bad guy in this (or is he? When are we getting his flash back episode?), I'm wondering if he actually cares about what happens to Desmond. Then again, Desmond is with his daughter and he can't be that cold hearted. Even Caleb Nichol wasn't. Also, notice Desmond's kid is named after Charlie?

Oh, one last thing. Daniel Dae Kim's name is still appearing in the credits and he has yet to reappear this season. I'm still convinced he's not dead, but it looks like he's for sure coming back in some form (flashback, Hurley crazy, jinsactuallyalive) this season.

Loooooost Premiere

So, American Idol was disappointing tonight. We had good singers and bad singers. Speaking of Idol though, you can download one of Sanjaya’s tracks for free on Amazon. I was expecting terrible lulz out of it, but it was actually very mediocre. That’s disappointing. Kind of like tonight’s episode (Idol, not Lost). On to Lost.

Apparently this episode is actually 2 episodes (Because You Left and The Lie) squished into one. Since the plan is 16 episodes a season, does this mean that we only get 15 nights of Lost this season or are we getting two make up episodes since last season was cut short due to the Writers’ Strike? I think I read that we got make up episodes, but I’m not sure if I dreamt that.

So I was squeeing about the new episode since they showed clips from last season. We start with an alarm going off at …wait for it… 8:15. Who’d have guessed? They show the face of some woman we’ve never seen before, but don’t show the face of the man. Turns out it’s a flashback that goes back to the guy in all of the Dharma initiative videos. What a surprise. That whole beginning scene is kind of confusing. They’re in the Orchid and some guy wants to open up the thing that Benry used to leave the island last season. Apparently if you unlock it, the island will start time traveling. To prove the point, we get to see our first glimpse of someone we actually recognize – Farraday – who, as usual, looks confused and awkward. Someone with a bloody nose is dying. I guess that whatever power the Orchid holds explains why people like Desmond have been time traveling. I wonder why it’s only affected certain people so far.

Has Michael Emerson won anything for the show yet? He’s seriously brilliant on this show. I was actually surprised by the episode tonight. There was an amazing lack of Jackface. Definitely no jears. Granted, this was not a Jack-centered episode (thank god!), so I guess there was not enough screen time for jears.

Actually, it’s been so long since I’ve seen the season 4 finale that I don’t remember how they filmed it. I don't remember it focusing on one character. These episodes did not either. Therefore, we had two hours of the writers finding every possible way to mess with our minds. Speaking of which, are they ever going to tell us what the deal was with that giant four-toed statue? I. Really. Would. Like. To. Know. Anyway, I hope we return to our 1-2 character flash back/flash forwards after this.

Apparently whatever Benry did during the season finale has caused everyone on the island to start time traveling. I felt like I was watching a trippy episode of Quantum Leap (much like the Lee Harvey Oswald episode).

Sawyer spent most of the episode shirtless. He kept on bugging people for a shirt, but to satiate the crazy Sawyer fans, the writers did not give him one until the episode was almost over. I guess Lost can’t get enough of the gratuitous shirtless Sawyer moments.Are Sawyer and Juliette going to happen this season? I know Sawyer is ohsoinlove with Kate, but Juliette and Sawyer are significantly cooler than Jack and Kate. Plus, pairing the doctor/doctor and the con/con is so much more boring than two pairs of doctor/cons. Anyone agree?

Speaking of which, I have two questions. Since I got the 4^th season on DVD for a Christmas gift from Crasher, I actually meant to rewatch the season. I watched The Constant since that’s probably one of the best episodes of Lost. I’ve also seen Ji Yeon twice since the season finished (once in French, actually). That’s it. Point being, I don't remember all of the details of the last season. First question, is this really the first time that Farraday and Sawyer are meeting? Was it because he was in the suburbs of the island for most of the season or something? Oh, right. He had JUST met Miles for the first time towards the end of the season. It all makes sense now kind of. I thought it was hilarious when Sawyer slapped Farraday. I’m glad that he’s going back to his old crabby and grouchy self. Second question, since when were Charlotte and Farraday an item? Was I just clueless about this whole thing?

I get the impression that this next episode (which I think is going to be Desmond-centric) is where we’re going to see Desmond return the favor and act as a constant. I’m not sure if he’s JUST going to be Farraday’s constant or if he’s going to be everyone’s constant. I was happy to see Penny and Desmond together this episode. I’m enjoying every moment of Desmond’s happiness right now. It certainly cannot last long, especially since Penny’s father is in the middle of some epic battle with Ben Linus.

Also, I love when they introduce random and obnoxious 815 survivors because you know it means they’re about to die. Today’s random and obnoxious 815 survivor went by the name of Neil. He whined about how Bernard the dentist could not start a fire. I guess they were so spoiled that everyone forgot this important skill. I think he complained about the boar that Miles just kind of brought back no questions asked. And then he got hit by a flaming arrow. Amazing. Seriously. Who shot these flaming arrows anyway? That’s what I want to know.

A lot of this episode seemed to be a trip down memory lane for Lost fans. We see the drug plane crash land. You’d think that after the Boone experience, Locke wouldn’t be so keen on climbing up to the plane, but he does. He ends up running into Ethan, who actually almost kills him. Ethan’s kind of shown up here and there since he died in Season One.

We also see that Richard guy again. I guess he never really died, but he still disappears for long periods of time. This guy confuses the hell out of me for such a minor character. He never seems to age and is EVERYWHERE. I want to know how or why this can happen. Are they going to show more of him this season? He’s also got this insane wealth of knowledge about the island. For example, how does he know that Locke’s going to have to die to save the island? My thought is that he might be able to time travel without the inconvenience of death. I thought he was Jacob for a while, but I don’t think that’s true. I mean, he takes orders from Ben and apparently “real” Jacob won’t even talk to him. Whatever. I hope they spend some time this or next season explaining him.

The reappearance that surprised me was actually Ana Lucia. I did not expect to see her again. For a moment I thought that Hurley was time traveling like the people on the island. Then, I remembered that he’s been seeing dead people. There was kind of a Harry-Dexter moment there as she gave Hurley hints on how to avoid being caught by the police. I was touched, really.

Speaking of the Hurley story line, more Sayid action sequences. Please.

Apparently Hurley’s just been DYING to tell someone that they lied about being the only survivors of the Oceanic plane crash. In about 2 minutes, he sums up the entire series thus far to his mom. If I were in her shoes, I would have sent him right back to the mental hospital he escaped from with Sayid. She believes him, although she admits what us Lost fans have been thinking for years – that we don’t get it.

Sayid, who we saw last season worked for Ben, tells Hurley not to believe him at all costs. Thus, at the end of the episode where Ben, being amazingly creepy guy he is, shows up at Hurley’s house and tells him that Hurley’s going to be safe with him. Whatever Hurley thought Ben’s intentions were must have been absolutely terrible, though. He went to the police and embraced the four murder charges that he’s been wrongfully accused of (Sayid’s fault, of course) so that he can get away. I don’t know I might have just taken my chances with Ben.

Sun, like Charles Whidmore, wants Ben dead. I was actually expecting her to have a vendetta against Jack. Ben makes more sense. I don’t know what Whidmore would care about Jack save for the fact that he spent a significant amount of time on the island. Kate later has a heart-to-heart with Sun, where she tells him to watch over Aaron at all costs and forgives her for throwing her back into the helicopter before the giant ship blew up. I’m still not convinced Jin’s dead. I’m not sure where he’d be. He has to show up at least as a Hurley hallucination, right?

Speaking of Kate, why does she have such a lame phone? She got like a gajillion dollars from that settlement with Oceanic Airlines and it’s 2007/2008. She needs to get with the times. Come on!

And I’ll end with my thoughts on Benry. I have no idea what he’s up to. Somehow, he’s keeping DeadLockeBentham in a freezer at some butcher that seems to be in cahoots with him. Are we supposed to know who this Jill person is by the way? And why the name change? Is this a reference to the fact that Bentham’s body was preserved and on display at a university after his death or are we going to see a change in Locke’s philosophies over the course of this season? I’m not sure what was up with the creepy old lady at the end. It took a while for it to dawn on me that this was the same woman who, two seasons ago, told Desmond that he could not/should not buy a ring for Penny because he couldn’t change the past. I guess this means that she’s a real person and not some figment of Desmond’s imagination. I’m curious to know how she’s going to play into the storyline this season.

That’s about it. Not the strongest Lost season premiere, but it unleashed a number of questions that we can only hope they pretend to answer over the course of this season. I ended the episode more confused about the show than when it started. Sounds about right. Welcome back, Lost!