Kate NOT pregnant, and other comments
Thanks to the people who commented on my late-night Lost blog last night and confirmed that Kate's pregnancy test was negative. When I watched it the second time, I paused that scene, backed it up, checked again, but, like Blondie mentioned in her comment, I was watching the ABC feed and there was a stupid AP alert across the bottom of my screen, so I didn't get to see the bottom of what she was holding, so it wasn't clear.

So, sorry about that! ;) Now other comments:

the problem i've had with the episodes so far is that they seem to be repeating a lot of character development in the flashbacks. For example, with Kate in "i do" we learn that she was in a romance which could not be because she was a fugitive, but wasn't that the same case with Tom whom she got killed because of her criminal actions. Also with Locke, we knew about his previous pain stemming from his lack of a family. And yet again that point was made again by his screw up in his pot growing hippie family. How many times have these people repeated their mistakes? I would say the only revealing flashbacks so far were of Jack, Sun and Jin because those were the only flashbacks that displayed new aspects of these characters.

I agree with the other episodes, and it's what I'd said earlier in the season when we saw Locke's (and Sawyer's, I would argue). Kate's, however, did show a different side to her, I thought. Yes, the Tom thing showed she couldn't settle down, but he was also married with a kid, so that played a major role there. But this one showed how she tried to settle down, which is something we haven't seen before. With Tom, it was a reminder of all of the things she could have been, and wasn't. With Kevin, it was what she tried to do to make up for it, but couldn't. And unlike with Tom, with Kevin, she couldn't be "Kate," but Monica.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Alex, when she's being carried away, ask them about what they'd done with her boyfriend, and then say something about Ben?

Yes, she said she wanted to see Ben. I took it to mean that she wanted to speak to the leader, but as I was saying, he asked about her, too, which makes me wonder if there was something more there. Did he raise Alex as his daughter when she was younger?

I was disappointed, not so much in the episode, but in the six-episode arc as a whole. I was under the impression that this was going to be a self-contained mini-movie of sorts. Almost stand-alone.

I thought to myself last night that some people will be very annoyed by the mini-arc because of what you said; at the end of 6 episodes, we're pretty much back where we started. In a way. But I think we're heading in a new direction now: Jack has taken control of the situation, and 6 episodes ago he was very much NOT in control. Jack is a potential killer; Kate and Sawyer are bed buddies; and we've had some insight into the Others. I think the 6-ep mini-arc was simply to show us what was going on with Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, primarily, but they knew if they didn't have some focus on the other side of the island, we'd get pretty pissed.

Seriously, if this were any other show, I'd give up. Three months??? I was annoyed when Prison Break pulled this stunt and I'm mortified by this. And the audacity of trying to sell this as a benefit to the viewers .

But there's the thing: If this were any other show, we'd all give up, but it's Lost, and they make it good enough that you won't give up, and neither will be. That's saying something. :) I agree I was SO annoyed with Prison Break (mostly because I hate FOX, and I'll take any excuse to hate FOX) but Lost, unlike Prison Break, was announced way back in April that it would have this broadcast schedule.

The thing about the 6 eps is, maybe it wasn't its own closed mini-arc, but have you ever known Lost to be a show where they answered ANYTHING in 6 episodes? I wasn't expecting answers, so maybe that's why I wasn't as upset. I'm not saying, 'Hey, expect nothing, and Lost will make you happy,' but they've given me just enough to whet my appetite, and make me clamour for more come February 7.

Not enough Sayid. What's up with Claire, the baby, and the Hobbit? Hurley Who? Sun, Jin, we hardly knew ye...

I was actually going to post on that today, so I'll do it now. Hurley is practically non-existent. Desmond had about 4 lines. Rose and Bernard? Gone. Hobbit seems to have a hearing problem of some kind, continues to dominate Clarie, and that's it. Locke's been pretty significant, as has Eko, but one of them is dead now. Sun and Jin... it seems so strange to think they actually had a flashback this season -- to me, it seems completely out of place that they had one. But they needed to get Kate, Sawyer and Jack their flashbacks, and that leaves them with 3 more, so Locke, Eko, and... someone, was the way to go. (I think it should have been Desmond; probably would have been more fitting... or Sayid. That would have better.) I love Jin and Sun flashbacks, don't get me wrong, but has ANYONE seen those 2 since the second episode?? I haven't. (Then again, I thought the pregnancy test was positive, so who am I to say?)

But again, I think the focus needed to be on the other side. Maybe they should have just waited until January, and done a 24. But the difference with the two shows is, Jack Bauer's adventures are self-contained. See a season, you've seen a complete arc begin, develop, and end. Lost is continuous, and to leave them hanging last May with a big explosion and not show us anything until January? It would have been lunacy, and they'd have lost a LOT of viewers. They gave us a taste of what was to come, and it's enough to bring me (and a lot of other Lost viewers) back for more come February. So, I totally see where you're coming from, and understand why you'd be ticked, but I've been trying to figure out how else they could have handled it, and I'm not coming up with anything yet.

when Danny (?) is walking out to the cages to kill Sawyer, he says, "Shepherd wasn't even on Jacob's list." Who is Jacob?

ACK! I can't believe I left off the most important thing in my blog!!! That line freaked me out, too. Who is Jacob? Does it mean Ben really isn't the leader? (I speculated in my book that he wasn't; it just seemed too easy.) Is it a list of people who were supposed to have gotten on the plane? Is Ben's real name Jacob? It's an interesting name to choose, because Jacob was the second son of Isaac in Genesis. He tricked his first-born brother Esau out of his birthright, but more importantly, he had a vision of a ladder stretching to heaven with God standing at the top of it. If you go back to Locke's episode, we saw him lying at the bottom of an escalator with Boone standing at the top of it, an obvious reference to this. (The movie, Jacob's Ladder, is about a man trapped in purgatory, another comment on the island.) Jacob is the only person in the bible whom God explicitly says He "loved."