"Jughead"

It's been a long week waiting for the new episode of LOST. I'm not sure why it seemed like it lasted more than a week. Maybe it's because we got to see two episodes last week. Maybe it's because we are getting so much new tantalizing information now, a pause for a week seems unacceptable. Or maybe it's just because I love this show!

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I have always loved Desmond episodes. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: for a character that we really only got to know at the end of the second season, he seems to have the most compelling story and, for some reason, he is a very relatable character. I think what has always been most compelling about his story was his quest to get back to Penny. So now that they have been reunited, I honestly don't feel quite the same about Desmond. Don't get me wrong...there were plenty of great things about his story in this episode, but his past episodes have nearly brought me to tears. Desmond's part of "Jughead" was continuing the setup started last week of how the Oceanic 6 plus Desmond will return to the Island. That all being said, I was touched that Desmond and Penny named their son Charlie (after the dearly departed Charlie Pace and not Penny's father Charles Widmore).

One of the things that I really liked about the Desmond story was that I was on the edge of my seat with anticipation the whole time. After he and Penny had the conversation about keeping Charles Widmore from finding out that they were back in England, I had a terrible feeling that something bad was going to happen to Penny. The foreshadowing was making me crazy! I was glad that Penny made it through the episode and that her father is genuinely concerned about her safety. I still feel like I'm going to be worried about Penny's safety for the rest of the show! It was nice that he helped Desmond out after all of their history. And since Widmore told Desmond that Faraday's mother is in Los Angeles, it is all but assured that Mrs. Hawking and Faraday's mother are one and the same.

Meanwhile, on the Island, it was interesting to see a portion of the story focus entirely on Daniel, Charlotte and Miles while Locke, Sawyer and Juliet had their own story. It was good to learn how Ana Lucia's US Army knife ended up on the Island. Fifty years before the crash of Oceanic 815, the US Army was on the Island attempting to conduct test of a hydrogen bomb. The Others killed them and one of the Others is a young Charles Widmore. A lot of podcasters and bloggers suspected as such after seeing a British character in "The Lie," so it didn't surprise me as much as was intended. This revelation makes the Ben/Widmore meeting last season mean what we all thought...Widmore was in charge of the Others at some point and he feels that Ben stole that from him although it's not yet clear how since the Dharma Initiative was on the Island before Ben. So when Ben was a young boy and met Richard Alpert in the woods, was Widmore the leader of the Others at that time? Or was he already off the island?

I really enjoyed Locke's meeting with 1954 Alpert. Roxi had an interesting observation about their conversation as well as Faraday's conversations with the Others: the time traveling Losties are like the Others used to be; they know what's "supposed to happen" and are trying to convince the Others that they are the "good guys." Like Alpert told Locke in the premiere episode, "What comes around, goes around." So Locke met with Alpert, but he didn't find out how to leave the Island before they flashed to another time. So now what? I hope we find out next week, but I'm afraid this week's lack of the Oceanic 6 will make one of them the focus of next week's episode. Not that I don't want to find out how they are going to get back to the Island, I just think that the Island is the story this season and I want more of it!