First, my sincere apologies for a lack of posts this week.

That said, let's get to business.

This week's episode in entitled "Something Nice Back Home." The synopsis of the episode, according to our friends at TV.com:

Kate and Juliet must learn to work together when Jack's health is seriously compromised. Something goes wrong as Sawyer, Claire, Aaron and Miles continue their trek away from Locke's camp and back to the beach.

If you've seen the commercials this week, they promise that this will be the most intense episode of the season. That's a hard thing to say after the non-stop jaw-drop that was last week's episode.

All bets are off: they promised that this will be the most dramatic episode this season.

Last week, Alex died. The smoke monster is under Ben's control. There's some strange relationship between Ben Linus and Charles Widmore. A dead doctor washed up on the beach.

How do you top that?

Still, here's my guesses for tonight's episode.

• Jack will be OK (with Kate). We know he has to be, eventually, I mean, he makes it off the island, afterall. We will see another Juliet/Kate struggle here, though, with Jack choosing Kate. Juliet will still heal his appendicitis, though.

• Jin will die. It would be too obvious if they killed off Claire now. We've seen her in too much danger lately for it to happen now. They will try and catch us off guard.

• We will actually see Jacob. They don't make any hint of it in the preview commercials, but it just makes sense at this point in the show to reveal Jacob. Hurley, Locke and Ben are headed there, and Hurley will be the one who unveils him to our audience.

• Juliet flashback. It's about time for another.

What are your predictions for tonight's show? Post your thoughts below.

After all of the misery we've seen in other flash-forwards thus far, this looks like the only happy one.

No one is crazy, no one is homicidal, no one is suicidal or abusing substances.

Sure, it's not perfect: Jack's bad with his calendar and steps on Millenium Falcon models. Oh, and the Yankees are winning.

But Jack and Kate are together. Awwwww.

It's not a surprise at this point that Jack and Kate should end up together, but it's a nice end to a question we've had for a while: will she end up with Jack or Sawyer?

My guess is that this flash-forward will not stay nearly as happy for the rest of the episode.

I think it makes sense at this point.

Jack ends up with Kate, which means Juliet isn't in the way anymore. Well, in the future.

She may even die this episode.

None of us would see that coming.

Miles gives us an indication that he wasn't totally in on the freighter's entire plan -- a suspicion I've had for a while about the first group we met.

Walking through the jungle he hears the ghosts of Rousseau and Karl, and discovers their bodies half-buried and covered with palm fronds. He seems nonchalant about the whole thing -- you know, seeing dead bodies is nothing if you can hear ghosts -- but seems disturbed when Claire and Sawyer imply he was in on the freighter's plan.

"I didn't sign up for this, man," he said.

In other news, we know Jack has appendicitis. We know he lives, though, so that really kills the drama there.

Jack, in a flash forward, sees a man he thinks is his father in the waiting room of his new practice.

He then goes to see Hurley, who is still in the mental hospital, and has refused to take his medication. He says he sees Charlie's ghost and sits with him on the bench in front. Charlie told him Jack would be coming, and to tell jack that he "isn't supposed to raise him."

The him would likely be Aaron, a thought which kind of shakes Jack.

(You know what doesn't shake Jack, though? The thought of guiding someone cutting him open and taking out an organ. He wants to guide Juliet through his appendectomy.)

Hurley said someone will be visiting Jack, soon.

But who?

Will it be another ghost? Ben and Sayid?

Do people who die on the island never really die? Do they become ghosts like Charlie or voices like those in the jungle?

What do you think?

Walking into the medical hatch where Juliet took Sun, Daniel flips on the light.

"Where does all this power come from?" he said.

"Add that one to the list," Charlotte said.

A slightly dramatic section.

Sawyer, Miles and Claire barely duck Keaney and his troops, being led through the jungle by Frank, who is flying them back to the freighter.

Kate helps Jack to the operating table after Juliet extends as much of an olive branch to her as she can.

Jack, facing questions about the ghosts of the island (literally and figuratively) really decides to dive in head first and ask Kate to marry him. Really kind of kills those questions about him not being intended to raise Aaron...

... or does it?

Jin, recognizing Charlotte can speak Korean, makes a deal for her to take Sin off of the island on the next helicopter out.

That means we will have two of the Oceanic Six on the freighter.

Is that the way off the island?

In this segment, both Jack and Claire see their father.

Jack, working late in a flash-forward, sees him in the waiting room of his practice before he is interrupted. He asks for a prescription and goes home to Kate, but he acts suspicious of her phone call.

Claire wakes up to see their father holding Aaron.

Here's the big question -- no, not why is Christian Shephard popping up.

If we were to put the flash forwards on a time line, where would this week's fall? Before Jack tries to kill himself? Before Jack and Kate's meeting outside the airport?

I think so.

This is the beginning of the end for Jack.

Just wrap your head around those four words for a second.

He.

Chose.

To.

Stay.

( SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched this week's episode, do not click the link below to read more. I don't go over much that happened, but I sure ruin the last five minutes.)

My coworker -- CyberInk's Andrew Kochirka -- is a regular poster on the blog and probably a bigger Lost fan than myself. We decided to have a fairly regular discussion about the show -- called "Lost Productivity" because we are chatting on the clock -- and to post the transcript of our IM chat here.

Read the transcript below and join the discussion. Post your thoughts as a comment on this blog.

Check out the Lostpedians' entry about last week's episode here.

Here are their big questions:

Flashforward

* What was Kate doing for Sawyer?
o Why was she hiding it from Jack?
* How is Christian appearing to Jack?
* What is meant by, "You're not supposed to raise him, Jack"?
* Why did Jack change his mind about Aaron?
* At exactly what point in Jack and Kate's argument did Aaron enter the room?

On the Island

* How is Christian appearing on the Island?
o Where did Christian go with Claire?
o Why did she leave Aaron behind?
* How did Keamy and his team survive the Smoke Monster attack?

Any ideas? Any answers you see in the questions?

The commercials for this week's episode -- entitled "Cabin Fever" -- have been kind of vague, but the episode synopsis really gets straight to the point. Here's what TV.com says about tonight's episode:

Locke finds out where Jacob's cabin is. Life on the freighter becomes dangerous.

Based on this, here's what I think is going to happen tonight.

• Ummm... Locke finds out where Jacob's cabin is. I'd guess he doesn't really do it alone, and I'd also bet that Ben doesn't help much -- Hurley is the key here. I think we'll actually see some form of Jacob here. Last week's episode-ending preview showed us Locke talking with who looked like Horace Goodspeed. Is it really old, dead Horace, or is it Jacob?

• Oh, and, life on the freighter becomes dangerous. But hw dangerous, exactly? More dangerous, than, say, Michael's ongoing sabotage of the ship's engine. Or more dangerous than the time they locked Sayid and Desmond in the medical ward while Desmond slowly lost his mind? It might just be me, but it seems pretty dangerous already -- I think they'll step it up by putting more pressure on Michael, Desmond and Sayid. When Keamy comes back to the ship, I see a hostage situation developing.

What do you think will happen in tonight's episode? Post a comment below.

The episode opens with music and a shot of a recorder -- this seems to be a recurring theme -- we see Locke's teenage mother hit by a car, shipped to the hospital and give birth to Locke three months before term. His father -- Anthony Cooper -- was apparently twice as old as his mother.

It seems like Locke was doomed from the very beginning. Now we have some idea why he was given up and spent his childhood in foster care.

Speaking of doomed -- it looked like Michael was a goner for a second. Keamy returns to the ship angry that Ben knew everything about him. The captain, in a move of self-preservation, tells Keamy that Michael sold him out.

The problem: Keamy can't kill Michael.

Sure, there's that whole "we need him to fix the engine" thing, but the island is also still protecting Michael.

Keamy's gun jams while he tried to shoot Michael because his purpose isn't fulfilled. The question: Just what is his purpose.

Another question: What is the doctor still doing on the freighter. Isn't that guy dead already? His corpse washed up on the beach several episodes ago.

John finds the ghost of Horace Goodspeed -- the ill-fated DHARMA mathematician who brought Ben and his father to the island -- chopping down trees in the jungle.

"You need to find me," he tells Locke. "You find me you find him (Jacob)."

We also see a flash back of John Locke, the "miracle baby" who fought off infection and survived despite being born toward the end of the second trimester. His mother runs off and refuses to hold him, and his grandmother wants to put him up for adoption.

In the window of the nursery we see the reason he might have pulled through his rocky infancy: an ageless Richard Alpert stares on through the glass.

(If you don't want to click on the link: Alpert never seems to age. He is the first of the island's native "hostiles" that a young Ben met in the forest. He helped Ben kill off DHARMA. And, at the end of last season, he was one of Ben's lieutenants.)

The questions: Is Locke fated to come to the island? Does he, as he believes, have a deeper connection to the land? And is Richard Alpert ageless or time traveling -- a question that occurs now that we see the freaky time-bending properties of the island.

Dharma, indeed.

We see a bit of a wider cultural reference here in this segment, as Richard Alpert gives young John Locke an apparent reincarnation test, showing him a series of items and asking him which belongs to him already.

From what I understand of the process, they use something like this to select the new Dalai Lama -- the idea being that there is only one Dalai Lama who inhabits the body of a different person each generation. They put the young candidate through a series of tests like this.

If Locke isn't the island's Dalai Lama, then who is? Is it Ben? Was Richard Alpert wrong? And just whose spirit are they channeling?

Also, on the freighter, Keamy says he plans to torch the island. He also claims he knows the one place Ben will go, which Widmore apparently had previous knowledge of -- does Keamy know the location of the cabin? The temple?

What are your thoughts on all of this?

We see an exchange here that may give a bigger hint to just who is the "Dalai Lama" of the island.

"I'm not you," Locke tells Ben, denying he was trying to trick Hurley.

"You certainly aren't," Ben says.

What does that mean?

Locke certainly has done a lot to duck the call of the island though. Again, in high school, Richard Alpert reached out to Locke, inviting him to Mittelos Labs summer camp. Mittelos, if you don't remember, is a cover company for the "others" on the mainland.

We also have the makings of a civil war on the freighter. Frank helps Michael and the captain helps Sayid take a small boat back to the island. Meanwhile, Keamy is gearing up with some kind of device on the inside of this bicep. My thought: this is some kind of heart-monitor device -- if Keamy dies, the island burns.

What do you think.

Which side of this battle is John Locke on? Which side will he end up on?

We see a cameo from Matthew Abaddon, working as an orderly. Last we saw him, he was dispatching Naomi, who was at one time commander of the troops on the freighter.

"The next time I see you, you'll owe me one," he tells Locke.

What does that mean?

The doctor was killed after the ship was alerted he was killed.

Keamy, to prove to Frank that he's a bad dude, slits the doctor's throat and throws him overboard.

The captain makes a stand, but Keamy threatens him with the device taped to his arm, then shoots the captain while he's not looking.

Frank makes the decision to fly Keamy's team back to the island.

Good call, Frank, good call.

What does all this mean about the time differences between the island and the freighter?

Only one man goes into the cabin to commune with Jacob -- John Locke.

It's his destiny -- a theme of this episode -- it's his time to save the island.

"It's yours now," Ben Linus tells him.

[SPOILER ALERT: I don't give away everything in this post, but I sure ruin the end of the episode, I'll tell you that much. If you haven't watch all of Thursday's episode, don't read the rest of the post. You know, unless you like the ending ruined for you.]

My ever-bearded coworker -- CyberInk's Andrew Kochirka -- is a regular poster on the blog and probably a bigger Lost fan than myself. We decided to have a fairly regular discussion about the show -- called "Lost Productivity" because we do this on the clock -- and we post the transcript of our IM chat here.

Read the transcript below -- ignoring the basic rules of capitalization and punctuation -- and join the discussion. Then, post your thoughts as a comment on this blog.

ABC.com kept this week's synopsis short and sweet -- but loaded with possibilities:

There's no place like home, part 1: The face-off between the survivors and the freighter people begins.

It's hard to even begin throwing out questions about what might happen, so I'll save that for a later post.

But here's some important news: This is no longer a one-man-band.

Long-time poster, CyberInk graphic designer and rabid "Lost" fan Andrew Kochirka has joined the blog and will be posting his insights and theories in these weeks leading up to the finale. Look for his upcoming posts.

For now, we want to hear from you: What do you expect from tonight's episode and the finale?

OK, so this has nothing to do with Lost, but we have a new toy here at the Times-News/GoErie and I wanted to show it off.

Check out our videos of the Ravine Flyer II, which opens Saturday.

This is it.

The end starts tonight on this episode. From the previews we see that the Oceanic Six are being unloaded off of a plane. Will that happen tonight? I don't think we'll get the whole story of how they get home.

Here is what I think will happen tonight:

• Jin dies. That's right. You know it has to happen at some point -- or does it? Well, if it's going to happen, it's going to be this episode.

• We learn a lot more about how the island works. Locke, Ben and Hurley have to move the island. How? I think we will see that tonight.

• We'll see "the temple." The temple has been a long-time mystery sitting out there in the back of our minds. Ben told Alpert to lead the Others to the temple and wait for him. Tonight we'll see the temple. I have a feeling it's not what we'd expect.

• Keamy kills all kinds of major characters. Well, maybe not major, but major enough. I have a feeling Bernard is close to his end. Rose maybe, too.

• Michael to the rescue. It has to happen at some point soon -- Michael has to fulfill his purpose on the island. I think he may be the one to stop Keamy and his troops, even, in some kind of self-sacrificing move.

The first segment opens with the future -- the Oceanic Six walking off of the plane.

An Oceanic public relations specialist tells them that they don't have to talk to the media, but Jack says they've already agreed. The PR woman leaves, and he reminds everyone that they know the story and if they can't answer a question, just ignore it.

"They'll think we're in shock," Jack said.

"We are in shock," Sun says.

The flashback -- or the present time -- cuts to Jack and the survivors standing on the beach, pondering the phone dropped from the helicopter, supposedly by Frank. Over the radio, Keamy says they are going to "The Orchid."

A station, obviously, but what kind? Certainly seemed to freak Daniel out.

What is the secondary protocol? Another toxic gas? Biochemicals?

Oh, and Jack is running through the jungle with a side full of stitches. Instant drama.

The official Oceanic Airlines story is that the survivors of Flight 815 floated to an uncharted island called Membata.

There, they grabbed a piece of a ruined fishing boat and went to another island, where some natives picked them up.

What is Membata? Is this some kind of literary reference or just a made-up South Pacific island?

Anyone have any idea?

Hurley raises a very good question: if it's possible to move the island whenever you want, why didn't Ben just move it before the freighter arrived?

"Doing it is both dangerous and unpredictable. It's a measure of last resort," Ben said.

Sayid, Ben and Locke are headed to the Orchid themselves, which Ben described as a greenhouse. It has to house considerably more if it's going to move any entire island.

Back on the beach, Faraday agrees to start ferrying people back, among the first group is Sun, Jin and Aaron. (Which means, I think, that Jin has to die in some kind of conflict on the freighter, possibly the same one Michael is fated to die in.)

Sun walks into her father's office and takes over -- literally.

She used her Oceanic settlement to buy a controlling interest in his car company, the legal part of his operation.

When he asks her why she would do this, she says that he ruined Jin's life. This is partially a reference to Jin's career as a thug for the car company's darker branch, and the fact that Jin and Sun were leaving on the plane to escape her father.

"Two people are responsible for my husband's death," she says. "You are one of them."

Obvious question here: Who else is responsible for Jin's death?

Hurley's mom celebrates his birthday with a tropical island theme surprise party.

"An interesting choice of theme," Sayid said.

"Yeah, mom really doesn't get it," Hurley said.

His father shows him his present -- the car they worked on together when Hurley was a boy, completely refurbished. There's a hangup though.

THE numbers are on the odometer.

Coincidence or not? What do you think?

Ben, Locke and Hurley show up to the Orchid station, an overgrown pile of rubble and weeds, a bit too late.

Keamy's team is already in place.

Ben hints that he knew what Widmore was after all along, and it has something to with this station, and some kind of power it holds.

If you believe "Laila," who posted earlier this evening on another post, it has something to do with the electromagnetic properties of the island, which she believes will be the force that moves the entire land mass.

A lot is happening, really fast.

Frank is back on the island, and he wants to start ferrying people to the boat. The problem for Jack and Sawyer is that Hurley is still with Ben, and Keamy and crew are likely going to kill him. The engine on the freighter is up and running, the bearing is set for the island, but something on the ship is blocking the radar.

The flash-forward was to Christian Shephard's funeral, where Jack discovers that he is Claire's half-brother, when Christian's mistress (Claire's mother) shows up and tells him the truth.

There was a nice cut to a naive-looking Kate holding Aaron.

During the eulogy, Jack said something pretty interesting.

"It won't be much of a wake, because I won't even be able to bury him," Jack said.

Could that be because the man is still alive on some mobile island out in the Pacific?

This episode did what it was supposed to do.

It didn't add much, it didn't reveal anything significant, but it set everything up for a ridiculous two hours in two weeks.

This is the beginning of the end.

(SPOILER ALERT: I'm really not going to say anything ground breaking here, but do yourself a favor and watch the episode first. I don't want to be the one to ruin it for you.)

This post is a bit lengthy but PLEASE read it.

I’m sick. Well, mentally at least. Maybe not sick, just unhealthily obsessed. Haha…everything about LOST fascinates me, like most of you, but I tend to take stuff a little farther. My iPod has the numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) engraved on the back, my Wii’s nickname is The Hatch, and my two and a half year old Cairn terrier’s name is Sawyer. I’ve talked about getting a “Swan” symbol as a tattoo and I even have a constantly running computer program that simulates the Hatch computer, making me input the numbers every 108 minutes. Like I said, I’m sick.

I’m Andrew by the way. Maybe you could call me Cody’s LOST partner in crime. The Benjamin Linus to his John Locke. I will now hopefully be a regular GET LOST blogger instead of a regular contributor.

Because of the Writers Guild strike, this LOST season is coming to a speedy conclusion. With Part 1 of the season finale already in the books, and a two week gap because of the Grey’s Anatomy season finale, we have lots of time to think about what has happened and what is going to happen.

For my first post here, I’m just going to talk about some of my predictions/thoughts/questions. Some of these have been posted before, some are new, but it’s my first post, everyone can deal with a little repetition.

When Grey's Anatomy dominates the the Thursday night airwaves, what is a Lost fan to do?

Here's some ideas:

• Watch NBA playoff basketball. That's what I'm doing. Currently, Boston is up 5-2 over Detroit. Should be a good game.

• Tolerate NBC's new Thursday night line-up. The good shows -- "30 Rock," "My Name is Earl," and "The Office" -- are off this week. In their stead is "Deal or No Deal," AKA "Win lose or briefcase," and the preview of "Last Comic Standing."

• Go out and see people. You remember people, right?

• Think about what will happen next week.

• Rewatch last week's episode of Lost to get all pumped up for the finally.

• Take up macrame.
  

As we grind forward to Lost's season finale, we have the chance to see other finales that come before it.

The other two shows I watch regularly -- Fox Network's "House" and "Bones" -- both killed off main characters, well, kind of, in their season finales Monday. It seems like the cool thing to do these days, and it looks as if we are headed toward at least one death in next week's finale of Lost.

That said, here's two big lessons from last Monday's finales.

There's less than two days, three hours, 27 minutes and 8 seconds left before the season finally -- that is, if ABC.com is to be believed.

And it's their show, so I would say they are fairly trustworthy.

Here's the synopsis of this week's episode:

There's No Place Like Home Thu May 29 9/8c The face-off between the survivors and the freighter people continues, and the Oceanic Six find themselves closer to rescue, on the two-hour Season Finale!

That may just be the least descriptive preview synopsis this season.

Do you remember the last episode of the third season? Some of us, including myself, sat through the entire episode scratching our heads, trying to figure out when, exactly, Jack became some drunk lumberjack-look-a-like.

Then came the end, when Kate gets out of the car and Jack says those words, which I am likely misquoting:

"We need to get back to the island."

It was a big moment.

It sent chills up my spine, and hopefully yours. It was the moment we realized that everything surrounding the island wasn't just screwed up.

It was really screwed up.

I'm expecting a moment at the end of this episode that either rivals that moment or puts it to shame.

That said, here are my predictions for the season finale.

I know my previous entry was a bit lengthy so I will make this one shorter for sure.

Season finale number four. It came quickly and I don’t want it to end but with two more seasons to go, we need to start getting answers. Here is what I think is gonna happen in the finale.

In the finale's "previously on Lost" we see Jack touching the coffin.

Do we find out during this episode who is inside?

The man in the coffin was Jeremy Bentham (sp?) who apparently told Jack something that makes him feel that he has to go back to the island. (Jeremy Bentham isn't listed in Lostpedia at all)

In a brilliant move of "too be continued" logic, we pick up with this episode where last season's finale left off.

Kate refuses to go back to the island.

The boys on the ship are up against a wall.

It looks like the bomb will blow up regardless of what they do. Keamy and crew are skilled at wiring the bomb, and there is no good way to shut it all off without a big fat explosion.

The characters are starting to group up, too -- Sawyer and Jack just met Locke and Hurley outside the Orchid.

Another explosive situation.

Yes, I just went there.

The biggest villain on the island died less than 15 minutes into the show's two-hour season finale.

Kate and Sayid just got their pass back to the mainland by helping Alpert and company rescue Ben in a dramatic gunfight-fist fight-knife fight.

Ultimately, Sayid and Keamy end up fighting each other and Alpert shoots Keamy in the back.

The big question here is if Ben is back at the helm with the Others, or if Alpert and company are still shunning him. Will Ben, after a few episodes of being some kind of anti-hero, become the villain again? Is the story arc from here in all about Ben and moving the island?

Also, Locke doesn't quite know how to work the Orchid.

Walt just visited Hurley in the mental hospital, apparently years after the Six are rescued from the island.

Why years? Because Walt has to be pushing 20.

Walt tells Hurley that Jeremy Bentham visited him, and that he can't understand why everyone is lying about the crash.

"Because it's the only way to keep everyone who stayed there safe," Hurley says.

John Locke tells Jack the same thing in the show's "present."

You thought John Locke was going to give it all away.

I know I did.

I waited there during the pregnant pause.

"This isn't an island, Jack," Locke said.

Well then what is it? In my head I said, "It's a hole in the space-time continuum."

No.

"This is a place where miracles happen," Locke said.

Come on, man. That was cruel.

This last segment was largely devoted to Locke trying to tell Jack that he shouldn't leave the island, that he was going to have to hide everything that happened on the island -- from last week's episode we can see him as the leader of the Six's story, reminding everyone that they didn't have to answer any questions they didn't want to.

"Lie to them, Jack," Locke said as he descended to the Orchid. "If you can do it half as well as you lie to yourself, they'll believe you."

So, let me get this straight.

There's this vault on the island, close to a pocket of "exotic matter" that can not only make bunnies travel forward and backward in time, but also can move the island when you put a whole bunch of metal in it?

I may try to alter time and space with a frying pan in my microwave tonight.

This is a major, super cool, fact.

We see a nice new DHARMA video, too, where the good Doctor explains some of what's happening on the island.

For the record, a "casimir effect" is:

In physics, the Casimir effect and the Casimir-Polder force are physical forces arising from a quantized field. The typical example is of two uncharged metallic plates in a vacuum, placed a few micrometers apart, without any external electromagnetic field. In a classical description, the lack of an external field also means that there is no field between the plates, and no force would be measured between them. When this field is instead studied using quantum mechanics, it is seen that the plates do affect the virtual photons which constitute the field, and generate a net force[1]—either an attraction or a repulsion depending on the specific arrangement of the two plates. This force has been measured, and is a striking example of an effect purely due to second quantization. [2] [3] (However, the treatment of boundary conditions in these calculations has led to some controversy.[4]) (From the remotely-reliable Wikipedia)

This,apparently, can stabalize wormholes, a friend just IMed me.

WORMHOLES!

Did you get that?

In other shocking news:

+ Charlotte has been on the island before, or so says Miles

+ The guys on the ship are trying to freeze the battery running to the C4 so that it can't explode, my guess is that it won't really work

+ Someone is coming down the elevator to the Orchid. Ben asks for his weapon.

Keamy is attached to a heart rate monitor, which will blow up the C4 on the boat if he's, say, stabbed in the throat a few times and is slowly bleeding out on the floor of the Orchid.

Which he's doing right now, thanks to Ben.

"You just killed all the people on that boat," Locke said.

"So?" Ben said.

That's cold.

Keamy, by the way, was apparently wearing body armor, which makes sense, seeing as he's in a well-funded paramilitary organization. Alpert probably could have thought of that -- but it still wouldn't save anyone on the boat.

A friend just IMed me that he thinks Jin will die as the last person on the boat, still spraying down the battery with liquid nitrogen.

I agree.

That would make Ben the second or two people who killed Jin -- the other being Sun's father, which she told him last episode.

Sawyer could have been the seventh.

Instead, in a selfless move, he jumps from the helicopter carrying Kate, Sayid, Jack and Hurley to conserve leaking fuel and make sure that the copter can make it to the freighter.

Before he jumps, he whispers something to Kate (something about his daughter?) and then leaps into the water after a prolonged television kiss.

An hour into the episode, we are already questioning everything, but think we know more than we did before.

Here are some of my big questions, in one word each:

+ Wormholes?

+ Jin?

+ Helicopter?

+ Faraday?

+ Boom?

+ Others?

Bentham isn't really Bentham -- he's someone we already know.

Sayid kills a guard posted outside of Hurley's mental hospital sometime in the future and tells Hurley that Bentham was apparently killed, his death covered up as a suicide.

Hurley asks Sayid why they are calling him that, because his real name is...

Sayid cuts him off.

Could it be BENtham?

We have to find out this episode.

Also: Hurley was playing chess with an invisible Mr. Echo. Are the ghosts he sees really there?

Jin could have been the seventh survivor, but Frank takes the chopper off of the freighter before he can get there.

Frank lifts off just in time, too.

As the copter rises, Michael runs out of nitrogen.

Christian Shepard appears to Michael to tell him he can "go now."

Here's a question: Is Christian Shepard now a Christian shepard? That is, gathering the sheep? That is, collecting the souls of the dead? That is, the Grim Reaper?

Seems like he appears to people -- Michael, Clair -- just as they die.

As for Jin and Desmond, we still don't know if they are dead or alive, because we've only seen the freighter blow up and we don't have a body count.

It's getting too intense to keep track of everything.

Ben moved the entire island by moving a big wooden wheel -- yes, a big wooden wheel.

Andrew Kochirka's idea of a hamster wheel wasn't too far off.

Ben breaks through the Orchid station and goes "somewhere cold" at the center of the island. In the icy room, covered in runes, he turns a gigantic wooden wheel and -- boom -- no more island, just white light then open water.

The catch is this: Ben can never come back to the island.

Ever.

He just moved it, and it's lost.

Unbelievable.

( I think this is the point where we saw him earlier in the season waking up in the desert.)

Other big events:

+ John Locke is now king of the Others. "Welcome home," Alpert tells him.

+ The Oceanic Six -- on a helicopter with Desmond and Frank -- crash into the water at a high speed. We cut to commercial. I think Frank and Desmond survive, but aren't lumped in with the Six because they weren't on the plane.

+ Juliet and Sawyer are left on the beach, drinking DHARMA rum. Will they become part of the Others?

+ Widmore and Sun are teaming up, on Sun's urging to find the island. This was a while back, but I hadn't mentioned it.

Desmond and Penny are reunited -- I'm choking up over here.

Andrew doesn't have to fulfill his promise to stop watching the show.

If you didn't catch it, the commercial during the last break was a fake -- a clever Lost plant for DHARMA recruiting.

Check out the site for yourself: http://octagonglobalrecruiting.com.

Sign up for the e-mail list -- who knows that can show up.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm geeking out over here.