LOST -- A Tale of Two Cities
I've been waiting for this moment since May 23rd... and WOW, what an opening of an episode. In much the same way the second season opened in a completely unfamiliar place, with a 1960s tune playing on the stereo and a person we'd never seen before walking around their home alone, season 3 opened with Juliet's house, her book club, and then... the plane crash. It seems the Others had their own little Pleasantville on the island before Jack and co. arrived. What a GREAT opening.

The rest of the episode -- again, like season 2's premiere -- focused on Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, while leaving the rest of the fates unmentioned (we still don't know what's happened to Locke, Eko, or Des). I've only watched it twice at this point, so these are my initial thoughts.

At times the flashback seemed a little contrived, like they were trying to shoehorn it into an episode that was more island-centric. That said, by seeing Jack's frustration in the past, it certainly made us feel his frustrations now. In "Two for the Road," when Christian called Ana-Lucia "Sarah," I was convinced he had something to do with their breakup (and to be honest, I'm still not convinced he didn't have some affections for her that went beyond what we saw in this ep). What I did like about the flashback was that Jack was obsessed with the name of the man who was with Sarah. All he wanted was a name, like to know that is to know everything. Meanwhile, last season he and everyone else spent a lot of their time with Henry Gale, a man who was using a fake name to get them to listen to him. I think this episode boasts the best performance we've seen from Matthew Fox.

Questions:
-Who do we trust? Juliet's vulnerability shows in the opening moments of the episode, where she's clearly distraught, and looks like she's completely on edge. Yet she also appears to be a willing participant in what is going on with the prisoners.
-Juliet looks exactly like Penelope
-How did the Others end up on the island in the first place, and how did they find those amenities?
-If they can have something as sophisticated as a book club, where the heck are they getting that many copies of the same book? Is there some island Barnes and Noble that we can't see? Does Amazon deliver to an island in the middle of nowhere?
-Is Sarah banging more than one guy? We saw her with two potential love interests. Or is she just a REALLY flirty gal? (And GEEZ, does she have to be SO frickin' harsh?)
-who is Gary? Is he one of the Others, and convincing Sawyer to leave was just another part of their mind game thang?
-is Mr. Friendly gay? I would think that's the only explanation as to why Kate wouldn't be his "type"
-does Kate really love caffeine so much that the "then you don't get any coffee" threat would actually make her put the cuffs on?
***What did Not-Henry/Ben say to Kate after we cut away from the beach scene? Has she been instructed to trick Sawyer into something? Have they put a sexy little number on her and sent her back to Sawyer to sidle up to him, let him think she's chosen him, and then they're going to yank her out of the situation and point to him in a mocking fashion and say, "HA! GOTCHA!" She looks SO upset when she returns to him, when you'd think she'd be comforted to see someone she knows and cares about. Kate looks ravenous and takes Sawyer's only food, but didn't she just eat an entire lush breakfast? Why is she letting on to him she hasn't eaten?
-did Jack really hallucinate Christian saying "let it go, Jack" through the intercom, or were the Others manipulating him?
-now that we know Dharma had an underwater station of some kind, does that explain the shark in season 2 that had the Dharma symbol on its belly? Is it a former test subject of this aquarium?
-what are the fish biscuits made of?
-how do the Others know everything about Jack?
-how did they get Christian's autopsy report when Jack didn't even have it when he got on the plane? I still think Christian might not be dead...
-will we ever be able to think of Henry as "Ben"?

Hurley's numbers:
-4 muffins rolled into the living room
-there were 12 on the tray (4 + 8)
-when Jack is sitting in the car stalking Sarah outside the school, he looks down at his pager, and the time on it is 7:15:23
-Kate's dress was hanging in locker 811
-when Juliet brings Jack the grilled cheese sandwich, she's cut it into 4 pieces
-Christian has been sober for 50 days (42 + 8)
-when Jack leaves the jail cell, there's a 64 on a box behind him (32, a reverse 23, times 2)
-when Sarah leaves Jack standing on the street and goes to the guy at the car, we see the first two letters of his license plate, which is 2F (F is the 6th letter of the alphabet, 6 + 2 = 8)

Did You Notice?
-the book club book was Stephen King's Carrie, which is about a woman with telekinetic powers. Does that mean someone on the island has the same power? Is that why everyone was so interested in Walt?
-we found out Not-Henry's real name was Ben at the end, but at the beginning at the book club, there's also a mention of it, when someone mentions that "Ben" isn't at book club
-Jack sitting in car watching Sarah: You can see a crossword puzzle he's been working on, and he's filled in interesting words that have to do with the island, like "raft," "necessary evils," "prenatal," "ensemble," "essential facts," "heroes," "area," etc. yet if you look at the words reading down, they don't make any sense at all, like he was just filling in words that fit without paying any attention to the clues
-Sawyer being in the cage is almost the exact research experiment that BF Skinner conducted on rats (see page 187 of my book)
-Goodwin, the guy Not-Henry sent to the tail section of the island, is the one that Ana-Lucia later impaled with a spear
-all of the shampoo products that Kate was using had the big Dharma symbol on them. So what is their connection to the Others?
-the station Jack is located in was called the Hydra station. The Hydra was a many-headed serpent from Greek mythology, which may be a comment on the fact that Juliet is being two-faced in her dealings with Jack.
-when Jack is dealing with a patient and he sees Christian take a cellphone call, the patient looked a LOT like Mr. Friendly. Was it him?
-when Jack walks out of his cell to see Sarah, there's a Wanted poster on the wall and it looks a LOT like Hurley on the poster

Let me know what I've missed. I know there's a ton of stuff (I wish I could see the books on the shelf of Jack's office in the hospital better, for example).