Don’t pretend you didn’t notice.

I liked the twist on Sawyer, and the fact that they gave a nod to it with Sawyer saying he was either gonna become a criminal or a cop. In fact, he was pretty much the same person, just a cop instead of a con man.

His “well, hey there” to Kate when he captures her at the end (who didn’t see it coming that she was the runner?), his sheepish attempt to get Charlotte to forgive him, his anger at Charlotte learning too much – even his buddy relationship with Miles was pretty much the same as on-island.

It made me wonder, though: Was the difference in this timeline that Jacob never touched these folks at whatever point in their lives?

We’ve heard from Richard (we get his story Tuesday???? AWESOME) that Jacob’s touch is as much a curse as anything else. What if Jacob’s touch was meant to get our Losties on the road to being Losties?

What if, without his touch, their lives were extremely similar, but yet still different enough that they were no longer candidates?

That would be why their planes didn’t crash.

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either, but, then again, what about this show ever does? I mean, except for the parts that totally make sense.

I have to say, I enjoyed seeing Charlotte again. But I’d rather have seen her in some flashback with Faraday, in love and living together. I’d like to have thought that in this alternate reality, flash sideways, whatever you want to call it, Daniel and Charlotte would have found one another and lived happily ever after.

I have to say, I’m exceedingly curious about the Widmore folks. Did they kill the rest of the plane crash survivors? I honestly can’t remember if there were other survivors other than Ilana and her crew. Sawyer wouldn’t have known, given that he didn’t crash with them.

What I still don’t understand at all is what exactly Richard Widmore is. Obviously, he’s a Jacob ally, as he was leader of The Others. But if he was supposed to be leader, why did Jacob allow Ben to run him off? Or is that the Free Will portion of Jacob? I wonder if we’re going to find out where Widmore’s from in the Richard-centric episode on Tuesday??????? I’d love to get some more background on that.

We have just eight episodes left. We’re headed toward a huge showdown, with Flocke and Widmore clashing soon.

I’m getting really excited on the one hand, melancholy on the other. And scared. Scared that not all the questions I have will be answered. I think if that were to happen, my brain just might explode. Asplode.

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I keep starting and erasing this blog post because I hardly know what to say. I need to let all this sink in.

Wow.

(BTW, I cried when you-know-who fell you-know-where and the other you-know-who cried.)

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These two episodes were inextricably entwined and filled in so many gaps, it’s almost impossible to take them separately.

In “He’s Our You,” we found out why Sayid ended up on the plane to Guam (sort of, we still don’t know if it really was Ben who hired the bounty hunter to bring him there or if, perhaps, it was Widmore who was behind it – hmmm, hadn’t thought of that until this moment, actually)…

In “Whatever Happened, Happened,” we found out why Kate changed her mind and decided to go back to the island (sort of) and, more importantly, what the heck happened to Aaron.

And, perhaps most importantly, we learned how and why Ben became who he was.

The young Ben, as we’d already seen, hated his father and was miserable in Dharma-land because of it. His father was a grade-A a-hole, mean and unforgiving. But we saw that when his son’s life was on the line, he realized how he’d mistreated him. If Ben weren’t taken by the Others, who knows if they’d have been able to repair their relationship.

We’ve seen, however, that you can’t change the future or the past, no matter how hard you try. Maybe you change individual events (you don’t even know if you’re really changing them, because it’s all happening in your own present), but the end result is the same.

The timeline is set. If not, and Ben had died, Hurley was right – it would have created a temporal paradox and they would have vanished in a puff of logic (apologies to Douglas Adams).

But Ben couldn’t die. We knew that, because he was alive in the future. Not the Losties’ future, but Ben’s future. We saw it. It just so happened that was the Losties’ past. And because that had happened, Ben couldn’t die, no matter what Jack decided.

In fact, Jack was supposed to decide not to operate on Ben, ironically, because otherwise there wouldn’t have been a reason to take Ben to Richard and the Others, which led to the purge and Ben’s leadership of the Others, and so on.

Obviously, Richard’s decision not to consult with Widmore (and Ellie) led to Widmore’s eventual expulsion from the island (did Widmore have to jump the island in time at some point? Did Ben trick him into jumping the island in time?) and Desmond ending up on the island and the plane crash and the Oceanic 6, and …

And so everything happened as it was supposed to happen. And whatever Richard does to Ben in the temple, he doesn’t remember, so that (very neatly) explains why he doesn’t remember any of this.

But Richard does, and feels responsible. Which is why he helps Locke out. It’s as if he’s trying to atone to the island for what he did with Ben, by helping Locke take over leadership by letting Locke know that his father is the one who caused Sawyer’s father to kill Sawyer’s mom and himself. Did I just give you a headache there?

I still want to know how Richard gets on and off the island, by the way.

The Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet square is rather interesting, as we basically have Jack totally left out in the cold, with both Kate and Juliet mad at him and in love with Sawyer. But I think that Sawyer does truly love Juliet, and he went to save Ben not because of Kate, but because of Juliet. And Juliet felt so strongly about saving a little boy that she knew it was more important to send Sawyer after Kate than to keep them apart.

You could see the pain in her eyes as she told Jack that.

It’s an interesting dynamic, to see Jack so utterly being left out and considered, basically, useless. He’s boxed himself into this corner, though, and has no one to blame but himself.

The Hurley/Miles conversations were totally the comic relief of the night and I loved the entire conversation between the two of them, with Hurley finally, finally stumping Miles. Until a couple scenes later when we get the answer to the question of why Ben doesn’t remember Sayid shooting him. Though, honestly, how do we know Ben doesn’t remember that? Ben never gives anything away. Maybe he remembers Sayid shooting him and telling him that Ben is right, that he is a killer. Hmm? And so that’s why he says that to Sayid all those years later (or earlier, depending on whether you’re looking at it from Ben’s or Sayid’s perspective).

I was so afraid they were going to kill off Sayid, by the way. Glad they didn’t.

And, by the way, I loved the scene where Sayid tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and they all think he’s insane. Lucky for Sawyer, that.

So what are we left wondering?

• What, exactly, does Richard do to Ben in the temple?

• What, exactly, are the Others/Hostiles?

• What, exactly, is the Incident and why does it lead to the Purge?

• How/why, exactly, does Widmore get expelled from the Island? You’ve gotta assume that Ben is behind it.

• Why, exactly, am I writing “exactly” in each of these questions?

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First off, I just want to say this: Poor Juliet.

While I fully believed Jim (really? Jim? Sawyer’s so not a Jim) when he was telling Horace how he was over Kate and couldn’t even remember her face, you just knew the episode was ending with him finding out Kate was back on the island and that was all going out the door.

What is so frakkin’ amazing about Kate that makes the men flock to her? Juliet’s totally as badass and not nearly as self-conflicted. Being a brunette myself, I should feel more of a kinship to Kate, but I’m completely on Juliet’s side on this.

I can’t remember who said it (Steph, was it you?), but one of my friends in the past week wondered why Juliet is the woman everyone loves when Kate’s not around.

Did I mention that spoilers abound? Continue at your own risk.

I loved the whole Three Years Earlier/Three Years Later aspect of tonight’s episode. I’ve grown so used to the back and forth in the episodes, from the flashbacks of the first couple seasons to the flash-forwards last season. And I loved how we got the Oceanic 6 one week, Locke the second week and then the folks still left on the island in this third week.

Speaking of, why the heck do we have to wait two weeks for the next ep? What’s up with that? Grr.

OK, so I’m not gonna recap so much as raise the issues that occurred to me:

• Sawyer was in FULL nickname mode tonight. When he called Faraday “Plato,” I almost fell off the sofa laughing. Brilliant.

• When Reiko Aylesworth was crying over her dead husband, I did, indeed, yell out, “So Tony really IS dead!”

• Now we know why Faraday was helping in the excavation project near the frozen donkey wheel when Marvin Candle was examining the project a few episodes back. He was newly thrown back into the past. But why didn’t we see much of him tonight in the “Three Years Later” portion? Are we going to get a Faraday-centric episode? (I would love love love that, by the way.) It was utterly creep-tastic, however, when he spied the young Charlotte and stared at her.

• If you can’t change what happens anyway, what is the point of anything? It’s a conundrum.

• How cool was the scene between Sawyer and Alpert? I mean, really? I have a feeling that until the experience with Locke and now Sawyer, Alpert didn’t really know the full power of the island’s time-travel abilities. Or I’m totally wrong and he’s just surprised that others are aware. But he really didn’t seem to know when Locke came upon him.

• Alpert obviously was the leader of the Others for quite some time. Why did he relinquish the position to Ben and, possibly, before that to Widmore? Was it simply that Jacob told him to?

• If Charlotte’s body disappeared because she was no longer living and couldn’t move with the island through time, what does that mean about Christian Shepherd’s status? He’s not alive, at least not in the sense we consider being alive. But he wouldn’t have time-hopped with Locke and the others if he were dead, it seems.

• How mad were you that they time-hopped right after seeing the back of the massive four-toed statue???????????? I mean, on a scale of 1-10, were you at about 25?

• How mad did you get at Sawyer for not telling Juliet what Jin was calling about?

• Speaking of Juliet, we now know that babies could be born on the island in the 1970s. She got there in the 2000s. Ben’s revolution happened when, the 1990s? Was it the poison gas that caused them to be unable to have children? Was it something Widmore did when he left? Was it something the Dharma folks did that caused it, and thus caused the Others & Ben to do the poison gas attack?

• How can you not love Juliet? She’s a doctor. She can fix a car. She has deadly aim with a rifle. She’s totally pretty. She’s completely badass. Kate’s claim to fame is blowing up her father and crying. OK, she’s pretty good with a gun, too. But can she fix a VW van and then go deliver a breach baby by C-section? Hmmm? Yeah, didn’t think so.

So, what did you all think?

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