I loved it! I certainly didn’t care to meet new characters with more baggage. Now we learn just enough to know that they are evil, and meet a spectacularly appropriate end.
I don’t really care that the main plotlines didn’t advance.
I’m not really sure what – or even if – I’m supposed to feel about this episode, but because I have been trained by the bastards in charge of this show that everything is supposed to mean something – sons of goddamned bitches! – I really hope that Nicki & Paolo are not dead so that we can find out what the crap the walkie-talkies are for. Because, let’s just face it: even after 80-some days on that island, you know that nobody else whose name we actually know is going to bother, you know, trying to find out who or what is on the other end.
This show irritates me sometimes, even when I actually think the episode, in and of itself, is pretty frakkin’ cool.
I still stand by my assertion, however misguided it may be at this point, that Vincent-the-Shifty-Eyed-Dog is really the key to all of this. Somehow or another.
I just rewatched part of the ep, to see exactly what Paolo got in the hatch… still a bit confused about the doll in the toilet tank, but he did overhear Ben saying that Michael was a traitor and that the Others were going to try to adbuct Jack. Whoa. Not worth comment, eh Paolo? Truly self-interested scumbags, both of them, but Paolo could have saved our heroes a lot of time and grief if he’d been forthcoming.
N & P got no better than they deserved, but Locke mentioned that “things on this island don’t stay buried…” Foreshadowing or irony?
Also, Juliet thinks Jack is cute. And the preview indicates…
…Kate and Juliet get in a girlfight over Juliet’s accusation that Jack didn’t want to be rescued because Kate broke his heart. Love rhombus anyone?
[QUOTE=rockleI really hope that Nicki & Paolo are not dead so that we can find out what the crap the walkie-talkies are for. [/QUOTE]
When Juliet and Ben came into the hatch where Paolo was hiding the Russian doll in the toilet, they left the walkie talkie there and Paolo just picked it up and put it with his stuff (or, it was always at the Pearl hatch, J&B didn’t bring it, but Paolo did pick it up).
All of the Others have one (as Sawyer says)…so it’s for Others to communicate with Others.
Paolo was so obsessed with his diamonds that he probably just put it in his tent and forgot about it.
Or are you seeing some other huge mystery??
I just knew if I was patient, I’d get a chance to see more of Nikki. You know, the important parts of Nikki. That intro was not long enough. 
I really like how they backtracked in the flashbacks to work in the small details like Paulo’s exit from the Pearl bathroom which, way back when, seemed completely frivolous. People say the writers don’t know where the show is going, but episodes like this demonstrate that a lot more of this has been thought through than we’ve given them credit for because all these shots were taken long ago. I wonder if, as Rubystreak mentioned, the tide will come in and carry Hurley’s Memorial Garden out to sea. It’s pretty far back on the beach, though, so it’s unlikely. If Hurley wasn’t so zealous about getting bodies in the dirt before they’ve even gotten cold, this whole buried alive thing wouldn’t happen. 
And Charlie gets off scot free once again. I fully expected Sun to at least whack him. Hasn’t he used up his nine lives yet?
Sun wasn’t exaggerating, Sawyer. Jin would kill you.
Wrong. Con artists fool you into giving them your money. They use your own greed against you. Nikki and Paulo were murderers. Not at all the same thing.
If you feel conned feel free to bow out of any other hours. And threads.
Best line:
Hurley: Dude thats evidnence! You’re messing up the crime scene.
Sawyer: Evidence? Is there a forensics hatch I don’t know about?
So I wonder if the Paralysis Kids were supposed to be conscious and aware the whole time, just unable to move. Or were they knocked out enough by the poison to be pretty much unconscious of their surroundings – like when the shovelfuls of dirt started to fall.
Boy, wouldn’t that suck. To be totally aware that your “friends” were about to bury you, and not being able to raise your hand and say, “Um, excuse me…”
Paolo just found a walkie-talkie left behind by one of the Others, in the Pearl. He picked it up and hung on to it. Looks like Sawyer’s guess that he was working with the Others was wrong.
Maybe Vincent is really the all-powerful leader of the Others. Vincent is the true identity of “Him”. 
The diamonds were hidden in the doll. And Paolo went and hid the doll in the toilet tank back when he first found the pack (where Kate found the gun suitcase) and didn’t want to tell Nikki. Later, when John took the small group down to the Pearl, Paolo got worried and went in to retrieve the diamonds from the doll that he’d previously hidden – I guess he figured it would be easier to hide the jewels near his own jewels… I assume they were all about the same size…
I sort of agree with this. As an episode of Lost it didn’t provide much more than a little depth to some things we already knew.
But as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents? Excellent!
You know what? It was kind of like a time travel episode where characters in a show or film series go back in time and secretly witness events from a new perspective (e.g.- Back To The Future 2).
This “mystery” was satisfying because it ended as soon as it was set up. Plus, Nikki looked hot in that red bikini.
As flashbacks go, the best ones are the ones that take place on the island.
If all the treadmill episodes were this good, I wouldn’t mind a few hear and there.
Interesting contrast between Kate and Sawyer when they first found that pond – leaping right in like it was “Tuck Everlasting” – and Nikki having to order Paolo into it. (And man, was he hot! In that scene and in every scene! Would they really give us such eye candy for only one episode?)
Also, I’m not sure, but I think you’re not supposed to have diamonds in a pouch like that. I would think they’d all get scratched.
I thought it was one of the best episodes ever!
I’m not bothered that it didn’t advance the ‘main story’. I’m in for the long haul–and the longer the better. For me it’s the journey not the destination.
Besides, we did get some exposition on The Others (Ben and Juliet in The Pearl)–we know a little more about who knew what and when, and how long-ranged their plans were.
I loved all the retrofitting. P+N in the airport (complete with gratuitous Boone and Shannon), at the crash scene (must have been super-hard to restage), arguing with Kate about the guns in The Case (Whatever It May Be), in The Dead Pool (with a shout-out to our beloved, waterlogged corpses), their reason for joining in on the Quest to Investigate The Pearl (with obligatory bathroom scene), all of it.
I especially liked that it turned out that Paulo kept the fact that he had the diamonds from Nicky because he loved her and was scared of losing her. I liked it not in spite of, but because of the fact that she was nearly totally irredeemable scum. It was his sole redeeming quality just as hers was her desperate attempt to relate that “Paulo lives”.
I can only assume that those who didn’t like this episode were looking for something to complain about.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch it again.
I thought she was saying “paralysed”. The last time was pretty distinct.
You’re probably right, now that you mention it.
Way to destroy my comforting illusion, man!
I don’t think that the earlier-aired scenes were restaged. Nikky & Paulo were just superimposed onto old footage. If you look closely, you can sometimes see the cut-and-paste lines between them and the original scene.
Did Boone originally ask some other random extra for a pen in the Pilot, and they were like, erased and replaced with Nikki?
Was Shannon’s comment about Boone flirting with guys the ‘gay character’ moment the producers hinted at?
I thought it was interesting that the episode hinted at big things like Nikki and Paolo working with the Others (that would explain the death of Scott/Steve and the Pearl burning cigarette) and them being killed by the monster, but neither turned out to be true. Also ironic that if Nikki hadn’t run into the jungle, or they had understood what she said, or they had paid attention to Vincent, Nikki probably would have woken up before they were buried.
The producers hinted that fans might consider this a shark jumping episode. So I was thinking this might be the bombshell episode that’s been hinted at. But nothing earth shattering happened. And there was nothing particularly shark jumping other than some implausibilities and a cliché overused plot element.
I guess I’m glad they are dead. I love Rodrigo but neither he nor Kiele were given particularly good scenes in Lost, and their introduction was awkward, and they were underused. Seemed almost like a house cleaning episode to tie up some loose threads and fan nitpicks. I did like some of the self references - the Russian dolls was a meetaphor for the show within a flashback within a show. Paolo was afraid of the plane falling like Locke, but also eager to explore the dark tunnel like Locke, as Nikki pointed out. The Losties argue about what killed Nikki and Paolo in a similar way to fan boards, suggesting many events from Lost: guns, knives, poisoned water, polar bears, the Others, the virus, and the monster. Nikki says “We poisoned him, let’s not poison ourselves.” Nikki tells Howard “I’m just a guest star and we all know what happens to guest stars” after he suggests he could bring back her apparently dead character."
Also loved the “Forensics Hatch” and… “bullet proof breasts.”
Am I the only one who found much of that episode seriously funny? Dark at the end, but we were cracking up over much of it before that. Great stuff.
Okay, I must be the only one who doesn’t understand this, but…Paulo opened the hatch as easily as if it were a washing machine. When Locke found it, it had a two-inch-thick bubble of Lexxan bolted over it. Someone installed that, presumably because they either knew they’d had an intruder, or feared they would have one. That person might not have been Desmond, since IIRC, he said he never went near that opening, and never went outside at all. So who was it, and why?
I guess what I meant was … did Paolo hear anything? Sawyer picked up the walkie and did … whatever with it. Are we going to come back to it? Listen in on private “Other” conversations? Whose walkie was it in the first place? Does anyone know it’s missing? Is Paolo going to come to and dig himself out of his hole, and then are Sawyer, Hurley, et al., going to ask him how long he’s had the thing and what he might know? (Because they don’t know that Paolo wasn’t working with the Others, based on what they’ve seen so far.) Are Sawyer and Hurley going to try to use the walkie to get information to mount another rescue mission of their own? Does it even matter? I want to think it does, because that’s such a specific detail that the writers had to have put it in there for a reason, right? Right?