"Further Instructions"

Finally, three weeks into the third season of LOST, we got four things that have been sorely missing: Locke, Desmond, Mr. Eko and an episode that was actually worth watching! Say what you will about the few nuggets of information revealed in the first two episodes of the season, but they were both really boring. This week, we finally got the action that the producers have been promising!

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I liked how the beginning of the episode mirrored the beginning of the pilot episode, this time with Locke waking up disoriented in the woods. I was expecting Vincent to come running out of the grass. This scene is obvious paralleling Jack waking up in the pilot and then springing into action as the leader of the group. As we saw by the end of the episode, Locke has now asserted his leadership over the Losties and everyone seemed responsive of it.

I enjoyed the vision quest that Locke embarked on in the sweat lodge, and it was great seeing Boone again, but what is with his hair? I guess the urban legends are true about your hair continuing to grow after you die! Speaking of hair, what's with Charlie's? Did his exposure to the implosion of the hatch make him grow a mullet??

In Locke's flashback we see that Locke was in a cult!?! But of course we also learn that he is a sucker and got conned again by that undercover police officer. I was really expecting him to kill the cop. After we found out how Jack was a stalker and Sun was a big liar, I expected to find out that Locke was a cop killer. But alas, he couldn't do it.

I wish we could have gotten a little more of Desmond's story this week, but we did get a juicy little hint in his conversation with Hurley. It would appear that Desmond might have done a little time traveling since the hatch imploded. Some one on the Fark message boards pointed out that he looked a lot like Jesus after Hurley gave him is huge T-shirt. I can't argue with that. So what does this all mean? Is Desmond time traveling, is he a prophet or is he the true savior of the Losties? I don't know but I sure can't wait to find out!

I was expecting for Mr. Eko to be a little more involved in the episode, but at this point I'm just happy that he didn't die. I thought for a second there that he had expired after talking to Locke. There are not too many characters that I would miss [especially if one of them was Jack (ed.)], but Mr. Eko would be a big loss.

This was without a doubt the best episode so far this season. I hope that we don't have to wait through two more boring episodes before we get another good one. I know that they are going to drag out as much of this show as possible, I just hope they don't do so at the expense of progressing the story and losing too much more of the audience.

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