FWIW I agree. It looked like he was wearing the same clothes as in the desert when he walked into the hotel (he even still had that cloth tied around the cut/gunshot on his arm).
I think the smile was just because he wanted Sayid to help him all along and his “No, this is my war, I don’t want you to get involved” protests were just part of his manipulation.
Really good episode, lots of new information. One thing that struck me was that the first scene of Ben reminded me a bit of the very first scene of the pilot, when Jack wakes up in the jungle. I don’t see how that could really mean anything plotwise, though.
So, a few things:
A tack-on question about Ben finding out the date: Did she tell him the day of the week and the day and month? If so, I’m thinking that he used the perpetual calendar in his head to figure out the year. Of course, most people don’t need to memorize a perpetual calendar, but perhaps Ben does. (or maybe my entire theory is based on nothing. Curse my lack of memory or DVR.)
I was guessing it was because the doctor is still fine and on the boat and he just hasn’t been killed yet. I don’t remember the exact difference in time between the island and the boat, but it seems possible that the body got washed back in time to island time.
Which makes me wonder if that means that the island people can change the course of time: can Daniel send a message telling the doctor to watch his back, and then the doctor wouldn’t get killed? Would the satellite phone break down completely before he could do that? It’s probably what I’ll be thinking about today, rather than any of my projects I should be working on here in my office.
Yeah, she first told him the month and day, then he paused and asked if it was 2005. It might be that he was figuring it out in his head.
I don’t know if anyone else found it funny, but I thought the scene where they were shooting at Sawyer was hilarious. It was like:
Get back in the house, redshirt!
BANG
Get back in the house!
POW
Get back in the house!
BLAM
And then of course Sawyer survives by running bent over and hiding behind fenceposts, while the team of mercinaries miss him with about 500 bullets.
Well, maybe he was just getting back from teleporting to Tunisia or somewhere 
I was thinking it might be something like that, but the problem is that we’ve seen that boat time and island time are the same, and travelling between the two can slow you down in time, so you arrive later, not earlier. When Sayid & Desmond flew to the ship, it should have taken only a few minutes, but it was like a day and a half before the beach heard from them. When Faraday had them shoot that little rocket to him, it was delayed in arriving and its clock was slow.
So maybe the body was washed back in time to the island, but that would be a new type of event we haven’t seen before, I think. Not that there have been shortages of new types of events on this show
Ben explained that. They let Sawyer live. When he ran from the shooting he led them right to Ben.
I don’t think Ben was figuring out the year with his internal calculator. He thought it should be 2005. But with the island you can’t assume something like that. He had to verify it.
My theory is that the island itself is unstuck in time, and is only findable at all when there is some sort of anchor between it and the rest of the world, as there is with Desmond and Penny. That may be why Dharma was trying to put people on the island and use their relatives back home to control them, so that they could create more anchors and make the island easier to get to.
I think Ben either has Desmond’s ability to travel with his consciousness or else he has access to machinery on the island that allows him to travel in time…I think this is why he seems to know everything. I think he and Widmore, at some point in the future, do something that MUST be done and that’s why they can’t kill each other. I think they had an agreement to leave everything ELSE in the their lives the way it was when this event happened—the “rules” that Ben was saying Widmore broke by killing Alex. That’s why he was so shocked—Alex didn’t die the first time around.
I think the island is a storehouse of technology of a sort that seems magical to us, either from the future or from some ancient, lost civilization or from aliens.
I think it might get explained in the next orientation video by Dr. Ernest Longtaper. Or perhaps the other orientation video with Dr. Frank Tealight.
Yeah, I asked my wife “Who’d they hire - the A-Team?”
I’ve got it! I’ve figured out the Smoke Monster! Turn back now unless you want to read my (probably wrong) speculation.
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Ben IS the Smoke Monster. Or at least, the Smoke Monster comes from Ben.
The Smoke Monster knows everything about you, just look at Mr. Eko and his brother. And the likely interpretation that Jack’s dad was the Smoke Monster. What does Ben do? He knows everything. Tonight, we were able to see him attempt to bluff one of the mercenaries with a full history of his duty. Michael wouldn’t know any of that and there’s no way for any of his people to get it to him.
And when Ben went to call the Smoke Monster, he came back up the stairs covered in dirt and grime. Like the Smoke Monster had exited his body.
Finally, when the Smoke Monster attacked the mercenaries, it was bigger and more powerful and angrier than it ever was before. Like a father would be when attacking the people who murdered his daughter.
I don’t really have much to add other than I love this show. Ol’ Smokey rocks. I think it’s pretty funny that when the smoke monster was revealed back in season 2 the general consensus (at least of people that I knew at the time) was that the monster being a bunch of smoke was anticlimactic. Now, Smokey is totally awesome.
I’m conflicted because Ben is my favorite character on the show and I want him to live, but I also want Desmond and Penny to live happily ever after. It seems like both won’t be able to happen now. 
Edit-before-an-edit: Argh! When Ben and Widmore talked about the “rules” I started racking my brain for previous information because I swore that Ben had mentioned something about “rules” before in the show. And I just realized that it was Michael Emerson’s character in Saw that talked about “the rules.” :smack: Whoops. Crisis averted before I made myself look stupid.
Yeah, when the camera cut to that first guy I was like, “Who the hell is that!? Never seen him before, so I guess that means he’s about to - ah, there he goes. And who is that wom- Never mind. Ah just kill that third guy, we all know it’s about to- Thank you.”
Thinking about it some more, I almost wonder if the scenes of Sawyer and Claire surviving those situations were purposely meant to show them surviving when they shouldn’t. We have quite a few examples now of people who apparently can’t be killed:
Maybe Sawyer and Claire still have a task to do in the future that the island is keeping them alive for. Or, alternatively, maybe those are special Dharma houses, designed to only scratch you a little when they explode.
What’s up with Jack?
Appendicitis?
**RikWriter ** Awesome theory. I like that one the best of all the others I’ve heard.
OK I agree that the timing is wrong for Ben to have engineered Nadia’s death, but who’s to say he didn’t make up the bit about the guy in the procession? He sees him with his field glasses then magically ends up with his picture captured a few blocks from where Nadia was killed. Who says that the picture really was from LA? Somehow Ben was manipulating Sayid to bring him over to the dark side.
Grandfather paradox? 
Wow. Just wow. I just watched the episode on my computer as I was actually out with real live people last night.
Yes, the main points have been covered. But my 2 cents to add - Faraday lied when he said the morse code message said the dr. was ok. He made that up and Bernard caught him in the lie because he knew Morse code too. C. S. “useless” Lewis & Faraday are more mysterious plot-wise than ever. Why did Faraday lie? Why were they on the freighter anyway? (I still like Miles, tho.)
Jack is feeling that existential nausea - he feels sick because he feels like a fool, like he thought he was in control and knew what he was doing, but now he just feels - lost.
and the guy who plays Ben is magnificent. wow. what a fine acting job.
BUT - No! not Penny! He can’t kill Penny…
Great dialogue from right around then:
Ben: How long did you debate telling me about the phone call?
Locke: About five minutes.
Ben: There goes our head start.
Maybe I missed it, but why did Ben not have the Smoke Monster kill the guy(forgot his name) who killed Alex? I swear I saw him in the preview for next week.