Ha! I know why I like your reviews so much Pete. It is because I wasn't the only person to think of Star Wars when Tunisia came up!

This episode was freaking awesome, eh? (I'm not Canadian, I swear)

I think the polar bear fossil clearly points out that time travel is relevant to this show and leads me to believe that Magnus Hanso (Alvar's great grandfather) could possibly be one of the 815 survivors. I'm just putting that out there. Maybe he told tall tales to his grandson about a mystical island with wonderful properties.

Faraday mentioning that the light doesn't quite scatter right simply sums up the beauty and mystery of this show to me. Let's think about this. Visible light is electromagnetic radiation which is can be affected by magnetic fields in something known as (drum roll, please) the Faraday effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_effect

After reading that crystal clear explanation /sarcasm, it is clear to me that I understand nothing about physics anymore and have no idea how it fits in the context of the show.

Moving on to what I found to be the best mystery of the night: the fake wreckage of 815. What would it take to fake a plane crash? Think of the resources (not to mention the dead bodies) that would be needed. This explains why Sam (from the Find815 ARG) was being led by the mysterious Maxwell group to the crash site though.

If you really want to tease your brain, try googling "faraday effect maxwell". You see Maxwell followed up on the Faraday effect to help understand it's implications better. Coincidence? Maybe, but knowing these writers, I doubt it.

I love this show.

Manzy704 - I think you're right. There has to be something with time travel now after the "polar bear bomb" last night. Somehow, it all leads me back to electromagnetism. There are theories out there that the button was actually a "reset" button that pushed the entire island back in time 108 minutes, essentially trapping the island in one place and time forever. This would be helpful because the scientists could take as long as they wanted on an experiment without having to worry about the ever-looming end of the world. It would also explain the extra species - they may have evolved significantly in the time the island has been in operation. When the hatch blew up, maybe they got thrown forward in time, maybe thrown backwards, maybe brought to present day... who knows.

There's also a competing theory that people on the island are actually living in 3 time periods all at once. Basically, there's a past Charlie, a present Charlie, and a future Charlie, all existing at once. When present Charlie dies, past Charlie and future Charlie are still alive. It's a weird one.

I think I finally figured out what the smoke monster is, thanks to the Faraday connection. We've all seen the youtube videos of ferromagnetic liquid being controlled and effected by electromagnetic fields, yeah? I think the smoke monster is made up of the ferromagnetic volcanic soil of the island. It's being controlled by Dharma, or the Island, or whoever using EM fields from the island itself. Also, using the Faraday effect, it's possible that they could use EM fields to bend light enough to create illusions (kind of like a hologram). That could explain some of the mysterious appearances on the island. Again, just a guess. More research is required: to the internet!

That is actually one of the best theories I've heard of for the smoke monster. What intrigues me the most is that Locke and Ben have no idea what it is.

Irrelevant side note:
That "past present and future" theory reminds me of the final episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation. There was this gigantic interstellar anomaly that existed in the past, present, and future except it was created in the future and got bigger the further back in time one went.

At the end, three Jean-Luc Picards fly (each one at the helm of an Enterprise past, present, and future) fly into the anomaly and somehow destroy it.

Did you notice that Charlotte Staples Lewis is darn close to Clive Staples Lewis, author of the Narnia series? In "Prince Caspian", one of the first scenes describes the kids returning to Narnia on an island - and the first thing the kids do is play in the water because they're so excited to be back in Narnia. Has Charlotte been to the island before? A second look at her landing scene seems to point to YES...

klappyanne - I've heard that the CS Lewis was intentional, as was the Faraday name (it was originally Russell Faraday, like in Steven Kings "The Stand" but was changed at the last moment). I have a feeling that Charlotte knows a lot more about the island than she is letting on, and she definitely seem unfazed by the polar bear skeleton, so I'm guessing that she's been theorizing about the island for a while now and is ecstatic to actually be there.

The other thing I thought interesting about the CS Lewis/Narnia connection is that time works differently in Narnia, as moments here become decades there. Maybe a veiled hint that time works differently on the island?

Thank you for the comment, klappyanne, and nice catch!

Haha, great review Pete, I especially loved the matrix reference and ‘he also saw a cow’ line. Ah…classic.

Now… I don’t know if it’s just me (it’s mostly likely just me) but I can’t get past the fact that Faraday is the snivelling little pussy in Saving Private Ryan that fucks everything up and just sits there while his mate gets a knife driven into his chest by a filthy german while he’s crying a river into his swollen va jay jay. Yes he shot said german in the end but still…..that guy is always a useless sack of shit character and I hate him. But he’s in lost and it’s soooooooooooooo damn good I have to forget my unreasonable hang ups and just enjoy this for what it is. A top notch show hitting its stride.

My only complaints are a) What kind of news network shows footage of rotting corpses while talking about the poor grieving families? And b) If you’re dangling upside down, apparently unhurt, a good 10m above a body of water of unknown depth you don’t release yourself and go for a dip. For a scientist that was a stoooopid move.
end complaints.

I think I did about 5 fist pumps in that episode and to be honest felt like heading out to the forest to punch dance out my excitement. This is freakin Time Travels face bag! I don’t think anyone’s hit the nail on the head here but the theories are good. Wrong…but good. I don’t know the answers, I still have too many thoughts floating around in my head but soon I will have a theory and it will also be wrong. I kind of wish the writers strike wasn’t over if this is the quality of show that can still be produced. Oh well, peeps gotta eat.

Oh lastly, I thought I’d bump an unanswered question of mine from last weeks thread. Who jumped in front of Hurley in the Cabin? It wasn’t locke, I don’t think it was Jacob, to my mind it was Patches ‘yeah that’s a nade in my hand’ O’Hoolihan ,dodging duckin divin and dodging in front of the window but sans patch (read: Crazy Patch wearing dude).

Up to 8 diggs now…c’mon I know more than 8 people read this !

Hahaha! Funny as ever, Tron. It's not even that they showed the corpse, it's also that they just hovered on that one specific shot for FOREVER. Yes, it's a corpse. Yes, that's the corpse's hand. We get it.

I had also completely forgotten about that scene in Hot Rod. Hilarious.

I'm thinking that the person at the window was Jacob himself, and that it was actually "Christian" in the chair. The quotation marks are because I still don't know if he's alive, or if it was the smoke monster imitating him.

So, hooray! The strike is over (kinda)! Everyone is reporting that a deal is in place and that the WGA is "expected" to announce the end of the strike on Monday. The key word there is "expected". A phrase that comes to mind is: it ain't over til it's over. Until the paperwork is signed and people are back at work I'm still holding my breath. There's always the chance that something will come up. Even worse, although the AMPTP and the WGA may have made a deal, that doesn't mean that the individual studios have made contracts with their writers, so that will take some time as well. Just because they're allowed to have more money, doesn't mean that their jobs are still safe at their old workplaces. A higher cost for writers may mean a few misplaced jobs here and there.

I'm a little frustrated that the WGA got what it wanted (due in large part to the upcoming Oscars, god forbid we don't have the Oscars this year), but I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. (Aaaah! Invasion of the Bygones!)

Good game, WGA. Good game.

Ok - now that it's been a few days - who do you think Ben's "man on the Boat" is?

My thoughts:
1. Charlotte - would explain why he knows so much about her, and the "man" part could just be to throw her out of suspicion. Also would explain why he knew she'd survive the shooting.
2. George Minkowski - he's probably played by Fischer Stevens, and how many roles has he taken where he's the good guy?
3. Regina - When Miles calls, she says Minkowski can't come to the phone. Why, because you strangled him to death with a phone cord and dumped the body? Is that why, Regina? Huh? Huh?

And then there's the real shocker: Michael.

We know he's due to return to the island soon, could he be on the boat? Maybe he's the one behind all this. Maybe he worked out a deal with Abaddon where in exchange for his silence about the island, he would be given a team to hunt and capture Benjamin Linus.
But, as we've learned in the past, Ben is really good at making Michael do his work for him. Or maybe, in his time off the island, Michael has learned what Hurley and Jack eventually learned - that he needs to go back.

What do you think?

Hmmmmm. I don't think it would be charlotte, she seemed genuinely shocked to hear ben's knowledge of her and also to to super pedantic Ben would have had to have said 'I HAD a man on the boat'. Ok stupid reasoning.

Michael is an option, however, I think he needs to redeem himself for being second in the douchebag line behind Ben for his epic betrayal of the losties, which would mean he wouldn't be Ben's insider. Having said that, Michael could have been intercepted when he left in the boat with walt and walt could have been re-captured (it may not have even been walt who he left with...stranger things have happened) and Ben is now sending him on another mission in order for him to get his son back and that's to be found by the search team and then feed ben information. again..stupid theory. Just thought of the fact that until charlie cut the comms line it was hammered home pretty hard that there was no way to communicate to the outside 'world' which would then lead to the assumption that Ben's only been in contact with the insider since the comms barrier went down. Which confuses me even more.

I think it will most likely be Regina or some other person we have yet to meet.

Yeah, I'm putting my money on Minkowski, but I'll put Regina down as a close second.