(Update, 3/30/2006: Please see my post on “Lockdown” for more commentary.)

A few LOST notes for recent and upcoming episodes. I’m big on spoilers, so stop reading right here if you don’t want to know what’s coming.

First, be sure to read DCeiver’s latest Pompatus of LOST.

Claire and Kate?

Now, about Claire and her Flashback Adventure with Kate and Rousseau to the abandoned DHARMA medical facility, I have only one question: why did she ask Kate to go with her? I don’t remember Kate and Claire having any special friendship or connection through the course of the series. And if she wanted a tracker, she’s got ever-trustworthy, not-creepy-at-all Mr. Locke bedding down by her tent. (Of course, you just know it was because the writers had to get Evangeline Lilly and Emilie de Ravin together, out and alone in the sweaty jungle of mystery and passion. And with an insane wild French chick to boot.)

Henry Gale

As for Henry Gale, he’s an Other, right? But it’s not sure: maybe he really is just a rich balloonist with a penchant for making evil faces at Sayid and spouting offhandedly manipulative phrases at Locke while living on an island for four months and not hearing a plane crash. Next episode (2.16), Locke will enlist Ana Lucia’s help in interrogating him. You know what this means: Henry Gale will have met almost all of the LOST survivors’ minority representation. So far he’s had the Iraqi Torturer, the Weird African Beard Trimmer, and now the Trigger-Happy Hispanic Vigilante Ex-Cop. After next week, all he’ll need for the full LOST racial experience will be Jin the Korean Kneecapper coming into his cell and expressing his “extreme disappointment.”

James and John

One last point, and this is a major spoiler: we’re going to find that Locke and Sawyer have some kind of a “surprising connection.” (No, no, not that kind of connection — Sawyer loves Kate, remember?) I’m putting my money on Locke’s kidney-conning “father” also being a con man of Sawyer’s association, possibly even the Original Sawyer who killed his parents. Since LOST is big on biblical allusion (though occasionally getting it wrong), it’s worth noting that Sawyer’s real name is James, and Locke’s first name is John, and in the New Testament, James and John were brothers, the sons of Zebedee who were called to be among Jesus’ first apostles.

Also, what’s Eko building? A church?