Par Avion

There we are... a much better episode of Lost tonight than the last few. Much of its strength came from the fact that it kept more than one of the major stories in motion: the saga of the team exploring to reach the Others' camp, Desmond's visions of Charlie's death, and even (in the last few moments of the episode) Jack's time with the Others.

I'll comment quickly on that last point first. I think we all knew that Jack would have to "come around" eventually. And I really like the approach they've taken here, to have that conversion happen off-screen, so we'll have to explore along with the main cast how that came to pass. But all that said, Jack must have really drank the Kool-Aid since we saw him last. I'm sure some of the major Lost nuts know the exact timeline, but I believe Kate and Sawyer were only back for a day or two before she set out again in search of Jack. And they haven't been traveling long either. So it's only been about three or four days tops (I think) since Jack was taken off the second island by the Others. What the hell could have happened in such a short time to make stubborn ol' Jack change his views?

In the flashbacks, we got confirmation of what many have suspected since last season's final Ana Lucia flashback -- that Claire and Jack have the same father. It does add a bit of an interesting piece to her character to know the fate of her own mother. And that story was certainly a more moving, emotional one than most of the flashbacks this season have been. Score there.

As for the Charlie/Desmond plot, I'm currently finding it the most compelling on the whole show, because I really don't see where they're going with it. Clearly, Desmond can't just keep saving Charlie forever. It would get old, and would eventually undermine the sense that Charlie's in any real danger. But that leaves only two possibilities: 1) Charlie dies; or 2) Some "Major Event" happens to undo his curse. And what would that be? I suppose speculating would be helped by knowing exactly how he came to be cursed in the first place. My friend "Roland Deschain" offered up a good guess on that one -- these death visions of Charlie seemed to start right after he was near ground zero of the Hatch's destruction. It seems to have changed everyone who was there. Charlie's now one wrong move away from death, Eko went from being favored by The Island and its smoke monster sentry to becoming its next victim, Desmond was given his visions, and Locke... well, we don't quite know what's going on with him yet. But he's definitely hiding even more than usual these days, as we saw in his confrontation with Sayid over the C4.

As for Claire's note... well, they didn't seem to have anything waterproof to pack the message in, so I'm guessing that'll never amount to anything. Not that that's an important issue in the grand scheme of things. It made for a good MacGuffin in this episode.

Another good episode next week, and we may officially be able to say Lost is "trending up" again.