Penny could become an important player as the story continues, since they did mention that fathering a child with an outside was one of Widmore's "crimes" that got him banished.

I prefer not to know too much about Ben's thoughts (via thought bubble, smoke monster clip reel, or any other means). Now I know that he's plagued by the same boring guilt crap as the rest of the characters. The whole "kids are Ben's kryptonite" thing makes him much less bad ass.

For me, it wasn't so much the quality of the smoke effect as the Ben & Alex: The Early Years clip reel playing inside the smoke tornado. Something about the way those clips were integrated took me right out of the moment. It just seemed so literal, almost like a thought bubble.

The fact that they still play FPT, Telex, the Bends, Just, etc. live demonstrates how well the album holds up.

I don't know, I kind of interpreted that first Jacob/Christian appearance as the writers not exactly knowing where to go with the whole thing. The Christian that seems to be popping up everywhere these days seems pretty different from that particular incarnation.

Although, after those French guys got the smoke monster treatment, they seemed different, but still knew who Danielle was and seemed to have the same "memories." Kind of like pod people. Maybe that's what will happen to Ben.

Re: memory loss: Just because Ben won't remember anything prior to the shooting doesn't mean that he's not going to return to the DI and hear about it, or subsequently meet Juliet, Sawyer, Kate, etc.

Have we ever seen Ben interact with a "reanimated" character - like Christian?

Wait, that was actually Dauber? I thought they just put an actor in a wig as a Coach reference. This episode just moved up a notch.

You have to think that Jim is getting screwed, since Miner wanted an outside hire. It wasn't that long ago that he was interviewing for that job. Karen is now a branch manager and Ryan was able to leapfrog over that position. Jim seems to be a top salesman but isn't moving up in the company. You'd think he'd be…