the blast door map

what was surprising to me was that island ben was also redeemed. i fully expected him to join nemesis after choosing the good path in the parallel. this episode shows us that not only can redemption can happen in both worlds, it showed that on island world, it doesn't necessarily have to happen at the cost of your life (though island ben could die at any point now that his character arc is fully wrapped up). i felt his final speech started out pushed, but by the end he had achieved an amazing and brutal honesty. the moment when he said he was joining locke 'because no one else will have me,' was heartbreaking, and ilana's followup 'i'll have you' pretty much sums up what 'lost' does best. casting william atherton as ben's nemesis principal was genius.. (..'real genius' since both he and jon gries (roger linus) starred in that film..) great, simple performance by an incredible actor who is every bit of equal calibur as emerson. theirbrinksmanship chess game with alex's future was riveting.

each parallel story features the centric character staring into a mirror image of themselves - and here ben stares into his reflection in the microwave, as he prepares a dinner for his aging, ailing father.

the scene between ben and his father was beautifully done. it revealed that in this timeline, ben and roger did join dharma, and did go to the island, but left at some point for an unknown reason. man, they are going to tease us with the alternate history of the island as long as they possibly can, aren't they? the great irony of this scene is that ben expertly changes his father's oxygen tank, giving him relief - a wonderful counterpoint to the scene in 'the man behind the curtain' where ben ruthlessly murders his father by opening a similar canister filled with deadly gas.

so it seems that ben's original history is the same - his mother probably still died in childbirth, horace and olivia still picked them up on the side of the road, and they still went to the island, but i'm doubtful that this ben was shot by sayid, or taken to the temple. we just have to wait to find out what happened to the island.
this episode also featured more dr. arzt than we've had since season 1, or even expose - and the on-island revisit to the black rock was a nice callback to dr arzt's original fate. i can see how eddy and adam wrote this not only as a tribute to ben, but also to arzt, and i'm impressed that they fit him into the story in a completely logical way. it's also fun that arzt and ben would be allies, when on the island, the two never met. i love that his introduction to the episode was complaining about a formaldehyde stain on his shirt, when in the original timeline, arzt exits the show as a stain on a shirt.

loved seeing alex again, and loved seeing a ben/alex scene that retained the love the two characters have always felt for each other, but removed the sinister machinations that island life forced both of them to employ on each other. it's an absolute shame that mira furlan was not available to reprise her role as rousseau in the parallel, though the character was at least mentioned by alex as working two jobs to pay the bills. it would have been great to see the shifted dynamic between parallel ben and rousseau, both wanting the best, and both making sacrifices for alex.

- as ben says to lapidus 'the island still got you in the end.' is the parallel story merely a gigantic-scale course correction?

2. jack and richard.
richard was in chains on the ship? exactly what kind of slave ship was the black rock? episode 9, we'll find out..

wow. finally loving jack again! the only thing that irritated me about the richard/hurley/jack scene was that the one question i needed asked was unaddressed. either hurley or jack needed to ask richard what happened on the day of the incident? richard told sun that he 'watched them all die,' which makes sense, if he saw something that looked like a nuclear blast, or any kind of explosion - whatever it was that happened.. but i felt like richard's reintroduction was missing a few steps: jack was nabbing jughead with richard and eloise yesterday. there needed to be some establishment that this richard did not jump through time along with the rest of them. it was sort of implied in hurley's questioning 'are you a cyborg? vampire?', but i wanted more solid answers. (interesting note, in jorge garcia's podcast, it's revealed that the 'vampire' line was an adlib thrown in by jorge, and kept by the editors.) richard's experience with the survivors has been completely out of order. let's look at richard's linear timeline:

• 1954: richard meets locke, faraday, miles and charlotte
• 1974: richard meets sawyer, who surprises him with knowledge of jughead.
• 1977: richard meets kate when she brings ben to him after being shot by sayid. he later meets jack for the first time, after faraday was shot by eloise. richard parts ways with jack after deciding to keep eloise safe. jack proceeds with the plan to detonate jughead.
• 2004: locke meets richard for the first time. richard suggests sawyer should kill locke's father.
  
• 2005: (100 days after the crash) richard and the others ambush kate and sayid, assists them in overtaking keamy's helicopter, which gets them off the island. ben pushes the wheel, leaving locke as the leader, who vanishes in front of richard's eyes.
• 2005 - 2007: richard is bored, builds a ship in a bottle.
  
• 2007: locke returns as nemesis. jacob is killed. nemesis ties up richard, then sets him free. richard finds sawyer in the jungle, then he finds hurley and jack. richard hasn't seen sawyer or jack since the helicopter, 3 years ago. jack saw richard yesterday.
  

4. preboomer
'proceed as planned,' widmore says to the man at the periscope.
'yes sir, mr. widmore.'
(boom)

since widmore has no interest in joining jacob's camp, i suspect his 'plan' is probably to be joining nemesis and his followers at hydra island.. does this mean that widmore has been assisting nemesis this whole time?
wow! so this answers some questions, namely, one that's been bugging me for two years: why didn't widmore just get on ajira 316 if he wanted back on the island so bad? the answer is finally becoming clear - widmore has made a deal with nemesis: bring him transport off the island in exchange for leadership after nemesis leaves. widmore doesn't want to just get back to the island, he wants to ensure that when he does come back, it's his.

i also think nemesis' promise to ben that he would become leader was a bold-faced lie, pandering to ben's greatest weakness: power. ben would arrive at hydra just in time to be executed by widmore, perhaps another condition of widmore's deal with nemesis. widmore sent the freighter purely for the purpose of wiping out ben. if he's coming back to the island, maybe he has to know that ben is out of the picture.

we need to find out exactly how nemesis has been communicating with widmore - somehow nemesis made it clear that widmore must assist locke in bringing the oceanic 6 back to the island. did widmore know that locke's body would eventually host nemesis himself? is widmore fully aware of what's at stake on the island? if richard doesn't know anything about the candidates, how much does widmore know about jacob and nemesis? questions questions questions..

another question is how desmond is going to be written into the show, after being shot by ben and hospitalized just 6 days ago. but! widmore was at the hospital, and now here he is on a submarine. is desmond on that sub with him?

5. next episode.

sawyer!
is he going to be wanting his stuff back again?

the episode is titled 'recon,' which of course means 'reconaissance' and well as 'to con again.' i will be rewatching season 1's 'confidence man' as prep.
an episode that pays homage to sawyer must, by default, include some kind of con game. sawyer's parallel story might involve sawyer attempting to con hurley out of some of his millions - or it could reveal that parallel sawyer is a very different person, who might never have written his revenge letter. i think we absolutely must see juliet in the parallel as well, perhaps revealing that she's the mother of jack's son.. and if juliet returns in the parallel..

..will she return in the timeflash on the island? will she meet sawyer in the parallel and thenwhoosh shoot and kill him inadvertently during the timeflash as nemesis' gang is journeying to hydra island? either way, this episode is also an opportunity to do juliet's character justice in the parallel world, just as ben's episode also served dr. arzt. i want classic elizabeth mitchell moments.. because there are none of those on 'v.'
i can't wait to see exactly how sawyer's relationship with nemesis has progressed. its likely we'll spend the entire episode with the nemesis camp as they make their way back to hydra island.. i think those innocent people on the ajira flight are about to meet some smokey deaths..