Even if Rosseau was convinced of the fact that she needed to protect Alex from the outsiders, why on earth would she go to the Temple? Surely she knows of dozens, if not hundreds, of other, better hiding places on the island.
I said he made the smart decision, not the correct one.
Who spends much of that book jumping from time period to time period…
Interesting point about the timeline - when Michael wakes up in hospital there’s a Christmas Tree outside his door.
Wasn’t there a calendar on the boat a few episodes ago showing Dec 24th? (God, I miss the search function). Presumably this is at least the following Christmas. Or did he get out of hospital and onto the boat in a couple of days? So it’s been a year for Michael, but only a few days on the Island, right?
At the end, anyone else thinking “Run, Bambi, run” or just me?
FYI, the first post in this thread always links to all the past episode threads. Search away. 
Yes, I thought that was odd, too. Unless it’s just real early in the Christmas season. Remember, it’ still 2004, Island time, so there is only one Christmas between the plane crash and now. Michael had to completely heal from his car crash and get recruited onto the freighter and get back to the Island all during the month of Dec.
And it was also weird that his mother knows the whole story about the crash, but doesn’t spill the beans. The kid in the window was supposed to be Walt, but it looked like a different actor to me. I know the real Walt has grown too much, so no big deal.
Oh, and Mr. Friends said “some” of the Others can leave the Island and go back. Presumably, those are the ones who are trusted, and who aren’t affected by the time travel thing.
I think the timeline is:
Crash. Sept 22.
Michael shows up with Walt at his mom’s after being missing for a couple of months. mid-November
Michael tries to kill himself with car, is in hospital, gets out, gets recruited, boards ship, commits sabotage. Mr Friendly returns to island gets killed. Late November to late December
Sayid and Desmond show up on ship around Christmas time.
According to Mr. Friendly Widmore is behind the fake plane crash. If that is so, Widmore doesn’t seem to have let the Captain in on that fact. It seemed to me at the time that the Capt was saying Ben and crew were behind the fake crash to protect the whereabouts of the island. Hence the anti Ben sentiment.
Ben seemed truly surprised that Michael had pushed the button on the bomb.
It would seem that the island is selective about who can live and keep on living (Locke, Michael) and who stays dead (Eco, Shannon, etc.) What’s that all about? To make a distinction the island would need to have a “brain” to make these decisions and they would not be due to just strange island phenomenon.
I like the way the writers have put the viewing audience in the same predicament as the islanders as far and the ambiguity of Ben’s motives. Is he or isn’t he? Only Jacob knows for sure.
We know that Ben has killed a **lot **of people, so unless he has one hell of a good reason, I vote for “bad guy”. He seems willing to kill people for the slightest of reasons.
I’m keeping up hope that CFL isn’t really dead. Karl, I’m sure, is a goner.
Any further thoughts on the black box? The news report said that there was no recovery. Yet here it is.
A bit confused about Michael’s timeline. Visit to mom, car crash attempt, hocking watch, meeting dude in alley, jammed gun, meeting w/Mr. F in penthouse. Is that pretty close?
According to the timeline on Sledgeweb Michael and Walt left the Island by boat on November 25, 2004. Sayid and Desmond arrive on the freighter on December 24, 2004. So all of the events of this flashback must have occurred between those two dates, unless we assume that some sort of time travel is involved. (Ben did tell Michael to hold a different course leaving the Island than Faraday told Frank, so who knows.)
(Unfortunately, Sledgeweb hasn’t kept its timeline up so it stops at the end of season 2.)
Interestingly, Michael sees the news coverage of the finding of Flight 815, so the wreck was discovered sometime between those two dates as well.
When I saw Friendly, my first thought was “Zombie Season!” The conversation with mom was very interesting. I thought I heard her say “he [walt] thought you were dead.” In other words, Walt wasn’t really on the flight, at least in a corporeal sense.
Nobody else seems to have picked up on that, so I’ll chalk it up to being sick and having clogged ears. It wasn’t until mom said “you were gone for over two months” that I started to get that this was after he’d “found rescue.” So who rescued him?
The freighter retrieved the real black box from 815 and isn’t broadcasting that fact. That’s the only reason the I can think of that it would be on the freighter. Whoever planted the fake wreckage probably removed the black box before dropping the thing into the trench. If not that then either whatever surplus plane they acquired (I loved the Thai graveyard as the source of the bodies) didn’t come with one or it was just inaccessible at that depth.
I caught that too, only what pinged me was the Christmas Tree in Mama Michael’s window and the wreath on the door. But I didn’t notice…if he’s in Manhattan in December, wouldn’t he be wearing a winter coat?
I like the casting of Rosseau and Alex…the two actresses do look similar enough to be related.
And dayum, Sayid…try to get the whole story before you spill the beans on Michael to the captain! Although, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Gault’s reaction to Michael being a “traitor” is
Way ahead of you, dude.
or
“Now that you mention it, so do I.” How f-ed up would that be?
So Ben wants to protect the island from “exploiters” like Charles Widmore.
Do we know where Hanso fits into all this?
Ben is 100% definitely a bad guy. I think we’re now having “interesting and sympathetic villain syndrome”, where the villain is such an interesting character that we start finding out about his motives, start to sympathize, yada yada yada.
But regardless of what Ben’s actual aims are, he uses people with cavalier disregard for their lives. He is an evil, evil man.
Widmore may be eviller, but we really only have Ben’s word on that. And god knows we shouldn’t trust Ben.
Vaguely relevant might be a previous JJ Abrams show, Alias, and the character arc of evil-then-good-then-evil-ad-nauseum Arvin Sloan.
You’re talking about a country where the traditional day of the start of the Christmas season is the day after Thanksgiving and some people put up lights before Halloween. It’s probably an artificial tree so there’s no telling if it’s Dec 1st or Dec 24th
I think there might be some bigger connection between Widmore and Ben that we don’t know about yet. And note that both are trying to prevent their daughters from hooking up with someone.
I think I posted when I was too sleepy last night. At that time I said I wasn’t sure who the bad guy was. Upon reflection, I’m positive Ben is evil, I’m just not so sure about Widmore. Oh heck, they’re probably both baddies.
Anyway, do we know for sure it was the lost tribe of Ben who murdered Karl and Rouseau?
And I wonder what Walt’s Grandma will think when she sees the wreckage footage on her TV. Not to mention, what will Walt think when he sees his plane on the bottom of the ocean when he knows its not there?
Was it Michael’s mother’s house that Miles visited in the ghostbuster scene several eps ago?
Note to whoever said upthread that we seem to be moving in the direction of the paranormal - well, to use a worn-out phrase, that ship sailed a long time ago.
No.