Apologies for the lateness, work is hell.

Lost – Confirmed Dead
The survivors begin to question the intentions of their supposed rescuers when four strangers arrive on the island. [Including Jeremy Davies, yum-Ed. note]

The episode starts with a nice underwater shot of a couple of robots being controlled by two people who are obviously looking for pirate’s gold. I haven’t seen an underwater scene this stunning and well acted since Seaquest went off the air (that covers the Roy Schneider reference for the evening…RIP). The voices in that shot sounded like those ridiculous commercials that the NBA is doing now where the player reads some script a PR guy wrote about caring and giving back to his community. Dan, the parachuting guy, is now watching the video of the airplane underwater and he’s crying and doesn’t know why. So they’re either trying to show me that Dan is unstable or that he cares that much about a bunch of people he’s never met. Either way we now know that someone went to a pretty spectacular effort to make sure it looked like the survivors of Oceanic 815 look dead to the outside world. They even put the plane in a part of the ocean that is too deep to send any submarines for recovery efforts.

So Dan has just parachuted onto the island and says he’s there to rescue everyone. I suppose I should mention that he didn’t parachute in willingly so much as he was thrown out of a distressed helicopter. He has conveniently lost his backpack that contains his satellite phone. He’s also acting like a tweaker and that’s really not helping with his whole credibility thing. We’re finally getting to the other group who took off with Locke. Locke says that he’s taking the group to Jacob’s cabin and Hurley asks why they’re heading in the direction they’re going because Jacob’s cabin is the other direction. Apparently Hurley said something Ben and Locke wants to know more about because their heads almost twisted off they turned so fast to look at him. Locke says he’s taking orders from Walt now. Sawyer wants to know where Locke saw Walt and Locke talks about being shot by Ben. Since Locke’s dad stole that kidney from him the bullet passed clean through. In my head I’m thinking, “just a flesh wound.” Sawyer does have a valid point in wanting to know why Locke didn’t ask more follow up questions -- like why Walt didn’t want Naomi to radio her friends -- but of course Locke had that whole "getting shot" thing to hide behind.

Sayid and Juliet have decided that Ben is either telling the truth or lying about the people coming to the island. So they strike off to find some answers. Jack, Kate, and Dan find some gas masks from the helicopter and Dan says the rescue really isn’t their primary objective. My only reason is why in the hell are Kate and Jack following this tweaker Dan?!? They find another parachutist whose name is Miles. Miles isn’t very friendly and he turns out to be a ghost whisperer/con man with a heart. He wants to find Naomi’s body so he can have a nice conversation with her spirit. After Miles communes with Naomi’s spirit he decides that Kate and Jack didn’t have anything to do with her death. Sayid and Juliet show up to rescue Jack and Kate. Sayid finds out Dan is a physicist and Miles lies about his profession. That’s probably a good thing.

We have another flashback where Charlotte is introduced. She’s in the desert at an archaeological dig where they’ve found a polar bear skeleton. She digs around a bit and finds a Dharma collar in the sand. I don’t even want to know why there was a polar bear in the desert with a Dharma collar. Ok, I lied, I do.

Back on the island Locke’s crew finds Charlotte. When her phone starts beeping Locke attaches it to Vincent the dog’s collar and sends him running off towards Jack’s group. Another flashback and we meet a guy who looks like an old Nick Nolte playing Keanu Reeves in a surfing cop movie. His name is Frank and it turns out he was supposed to be the pilot for Oceanic 815 but he was too drunk to fly that day. He sees some of the footage of the crashed flight 815 underwater and calls the NTSB to tell them the pilot for the crashed plane isn’t the pilot who was flying 815. The pilot who was flying 815 that day was named Seth Norris and he always wears his wedding ring. The bloated dummy corpse in the plane was clearly not wearing anything on its finger. When he calls the NTSB to tell them all of this they sound like they want to know more from him. Not in a good way, but more in a “you know too much and we’re going to kill you” way.

Back to Locke’s crew. Frank has shot a flare and Charlotte is pissed Locke won’t let her go find him. Ben steals Karl’s gun and drills Charlotte a couple of times. Fortunately or unfortunately Charlotte was wearing a bulletproof vest and doesn’t die. Sawyer wants to kill Ben immediately and Locke seems willing to do it but he asks Ben what the smoke monster is before he puts a cap in his head. Ben is turning out to be one of my favorite characters. To save himself he spouts off Charlotte’s name, profession, and history. Ben knows all of this because he’s got a man on the boat and the reason these people have come is for him. Touché Mr. Linus, touché. This makes Locke reconsider blowing Ben’s brains all over the island.

Jack’s crew is hanging out around the helicopter that the drunk Nick Nolte/Keanu Reeves human-animal hybrid miraculously landed and it is in flyable condition. Miles tries to talk to a guy on the boat named Minkowski who is unavailable to talk. I wonder if this is supposed to be Abaddon’s real name. He’s the lawyer who tries to get Hurley to leave his insane asylum. Juliet is patching up Frank’s head and he figures out she wasn’t on the flight manifest. This really sets Miles off and he demands to know where “he” is. That man in question is their primary objective, Benjamin Linus.

• I really like Ben. I can’t help it. At some point I think he and Locke are going to have a very serious disagreement and reenact the fight scene at the end of Karate Kid II. The only difference is I think this would be more like if Sato and Miyagi had finally had the chance to battle to the death instead of kissing and making up.
• I like the introduction of the new characters. I’m still undecided on whether or not they know very much about why they’re there. Naomi knew more but even she didn’t expect there to be actual survivors from 815 on the island. Miles is unstable and I’m willing to bet he’s going to do the most stupid stuff that will get everyone killed.
• Dan’s comment on the light on the island not scattering properly has me thinking. I know the writers are trying to get something across with this but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe they really are in some sort of magnetic snow globe that hides the island.
• The boat people brought gas masks and hazmat suits. Naomi doesn’t think anyone from 815 is alive. At least a few of the boat crew have pretty obvious connections with flight 815. If they’re there to get Ben would they gas the whole island the way Ben did when he purged the island the first time?
• Charlotte knew exactly where to look for that Dharma initiative collar on the polar bear. Has she been hunting for the island for a while?
• I’m starting to think that time on the island may be different than time everywhere else.