LOST: An Episodic Equivalent To The Team Assembly Montage In Armageddon

And the book says, we may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.

And apparently J.J. Abrams is not through with the past, either, as he gives us a quick run down of the four new characters to jump from the helicopter. Given these flashbacks, I think it's safe to assume that in a single episode, these four people passed all the extras waiting on the beach to become prime time players.

We open, however, with a very cool shot of the discovery of the (phony) 815 wreckage. The submersible operators reference their man who supplied the map. Michael? Is Michael the responsible party for the delivery of the island to the boat? Note that Harold Perrineau is billed as a cast regular.

We jump directly into the various reactions of the "rescue" team. Daniel Faraday is obviously the one to root for. He's a physicist, for heaven's sake, and being so is incapable of harm (I would have said the same thing about a fertility doctor, though, and one of those has racked up a few kills on the island). And he wept at the news of the deaths of everyone on 815, though he knew them not. A fine fellow.

Bad Attitude Miles is a ghost whisperer. In my book, ghost whisperers usually don't go hand in hand with bad attitudes, as they do not come regularly equipped with combat skills and/or friends. I'm assuming that some of Miles' bad attitude is gravely misplaced.

The pilot, Frank, and the anthropologist, Charlotte, seem much less interesting, though their back stories were intriguing. Why would a mission such as this hire the would-have-been pilot of 815, outside of the usual answer, "just for kicks"? And why was a polar bear in the Tunisia desert?

(My answer: The Dharma Initiative found a way to bend space and time, and sent one of it's test polar bears back "a few million years" after the dinosaurs and across the globe to Tunisia, with an experiment in electromagnetics.)

So, a physicist, a ghost whisperer, an anthropologist, and not-only-a pilot. Why such a team? And who assembled them? Well, we know whom - Michael "Insert Biblical Reference Here" Abbadon, the mystery man who visited Hurley. So does this mean, when he approached Hurley and inquired about the whereabouts of "they," that he actually meant his team? And why did Naomi assume that the survivors of 815, recently proclaimed dead, somehow ended up on this specific island?

Oh yeah, and what in the world makes Ben so special, besides his bug eyes and magic fingers (and quick wit: "Carl, if you sleep with my daughter, I insist you call me Ben")?

IN OTHER NEWS, Dan fills a niche as the new "Aw Shucks" character, Hurley may very well be 

as connected to the island as Locke, the light on the island diffracts in a special way (Clue to island mysteries? Can I say that about something which I don't know the definition?), Ben was once very stylish, Ben likes to moonlight as a Doctor Phil type, and Ben, along with the producers, still has no idea what the smoke monster is.

So much for answers.

P.S. Sawyer's offhand and seemingly meaningless nickname, calling Locke "Colonel Kurtz," is a little eerie given similarities, both physical and not, and, dare I say, can be construed as foreshadowing?