4x06, "The Other Woman"

*What more can be said about Benjamin Linus? He's so damned good at being so evil you just want to applaud. I think almost everyone could call Ben sending Goodwin to his death as the payoff of Juliet's flashback. But just the way that Ben was so proud of it -- fucking chilling. To top it off to see him amble back to the snug confines of his house in full view of the incredulous Hurley and Sawyer.

Hurley knew it. Sawyer Knew. And Ben lives it -- there's nothing definite on this Island except for one thing: BEN WINS.

*Whose Side Are You On? If Widmore wants to wage war on Ben, then who exactly is the good guy here? In true LOST fashion I assume neither is and everyone else is caught in the middle. The Freighties probably have no idea what kind of a man Charles Widmore is. Meanwhile it's clear that Ben thinks that the Freighties may be more a threat to himself than the Island. Maybe he thinks that in the process of fighting the Freighties he'll end up killing everyone on the Island with the Gas of Doom again?

*I think it's safe to assume the "her" Juliet reminds Ben of is Annie, his childhood sweetheart who I suspect died in childbirth. And Ben's attempts at being romantic were just too cute.

*Umm, who are you again? So what was up with Harper? Was she real? Was she dead and just the monster? I just realized, she essentially came and went, whispers and all, as Walt did in Season 2. Maybe where the Others ran off to features the capability to project oneself, and that's what Walt was just doing the same thing back then. Otherwise, if it ends up Harper is dead and Juliet didn't act shocked at all, that's just awkwardly done.

*Interesting theory I just read at The Fuselage: The Gas of Doom may be distributed throughout the Island using the Cerberus Vents. Those vents were first referred to in the Blast Door Map from Lockdown in Season 2. Supposedly the vents are how The Monster gets around.

*Phillip K. Dick's Valis makes a second appearance this season.

The main character in VALIS is Horselover Fat, an author surrogate. "Horselover" is English for the Greek word philippos (Φίλιππος), meaning "lover of horses" (from philo "brotherly or comradely love" and hippos "horse"); "Fat" is English for the German word "dick".

Even though the book is written in the first-person-autobiographical, for most of the book Dick treats himself and Fat as two separate characters; he describes conversations and arguments with Fat, and harshly if sympathetically criticizes his opinions and writings. The major subject of these dialogues is spirituality, as Dick/Fat is/are ostensibly obsessed with several religions and philosophies, including Christianity, Taoism, Gnosticism and even Jungian psychoanalysis, in the search for a cure for what he believes is simultaneously a personal and a cosmic wound. Near the end of the book the messianic figure, incarnated by the child Sophia (a name associated with Wisdom in many Gnostic texts), cures him (temporarily), and the narrator describes his surprise that Horselover Fat has suddenly disappeared from his side.

*And I love Elizabeth Mitchell. All the Jaters can just cry themselves to sleep tonight.

NEXT WEEK: Episode 7 was to act as a season finale if the WGA strike killed the rest of Season 4. So it;s supposed to feature one of this season's biggest Oops, I Crappped My Pants! moments. I think we can all guess if the glorious return of Michael.