LOST recap: ?

That, by the way, is really the episode's title. As in "what the ? is Michael doing shooting people in the hatch?"We've had a week now to get used to the notion of Michael the murderer. It hits me sometimes how very early we are in the history of LOST. Go back and watch the shows before the hatch, before the Dharma Initiative, before we'd seen the Others. It's hard to imagine the show now without those things in them. And now we'll always look back at a time before Michael did what he did. Five years on, it'll be unthinkable that he was a relative innocent. But now he's forever untrustworthy, regardless of what they did to Walt, and what was promised to him.

His secret is apparently safe, with Libby unable to finish her dying thought. Libby was expendable, just like Boone, but all the characters on LOST go out with style. Libby's death was without a doubt the most wrenching, the most heartbreaking moment yet. Hey wide eyed terror that she might be putting all the survivors at risk if she just...can't...finish...
Give first time LOST director Deran Sarafian the credit here, everyone was spot-on tonight. Every note hit home.

What an episode. What performances.
This is not an astonishing collection of actors, they're mostly has beens and never weres, but when they have material this good to work with they step up to it, time and time again. This is a show hitting its creative peak.
My favorite moment tonight, and it's a little thing really, was the scene right after Libby dies, when they're panning across the broken Virgin Mary statue, and we see Kate crying. Not only because it was beautiful and evocative of loss and sadness, but because it perfectly fit the theme of the episode which was shattered faith.

Tonight, it was Locke losing his way. His arc this season has been his 'personal' relationship with the island: what it has shown to him, what it demands from him, what his ultimate purpose is. Finding out he was a 'rat in a maze' crushed him, but Eko let him in on the bigger picture, and renewed his faith in the island and in himself. Yemi would be proud. Eko may be a killer, but he is a true man of faith as well.

There's something about Jack's reaction to the heroin that makes me think he's a former user. He figured out Charlie's secret pretty quick, although he is a doctor and doctors are used to watching for druggie behavior in patients. Still-Jack has a secret Thailand history we know nothing about.
Speaking of Jack: the moment in which he uses Kate as a tool to find Sawyer's stash was brilliantly underplayed, Jack was truly ashamed, but he just couldn't help himself. Something dark's going on inside the good doctor.

I love the new hatch, the viewing station, reminds me of an old sci-fi movie (well, a lot of them actually,), I think I'm thinking of Logan's Run but I've only seen it once ten years ago. Anyway, it's old and creepy and I love the new Dharma training video.

Also: Claire's psychic? You know he's lying, but now I think we can guess that he is connected to the Dharma Initiative in the same way that Jack's father is. Look for a lot more of this in the Third Season flashbacks.

I still wonder if we can trust Eko's dreams. What does the island want from him and John? Eko trusts too blindly, while people like Jack don't trust at all. But it's important that the island has picked those two to speak to and that those two have had the closest contact with Smokey the Smoke Monster.

This was a moving, tragic, wonderful episode.

LOST Episode 2:21; ?: A+