For me, as someone who loves this episode, Lost in general, and was never one to focus on the endpoint or solving all the mysteries, I STILL found Nikki and Paulo's "we've always been here!" introduction grating. I think it's just the nature of that trope, though: I find that grating no matter the show it's on.

My fiance and I call any awkwardly-shoehorned-in character that's supposed to have been there the whole time (and there are a good handful of them considering how specific that is!) "Nikki" or "Paulo."

I think I read a comment here that said something along the lines of "it seemed like people wanted to know What The Big Mystery Was so that they could…stop watching the show, I guess" and I have to agree. The whole racing to get to the end/the big reveal/the next big mystery is just not how I've ever watched anything.…

YOU SHOVE OFF.

Agreed! So great and SO tragic.

"Not to jump ahead" - I think you're okay since they're not going to be continuing these reviews past the end of this season! ;) (Which I am still sad about if anyone is listening!!!)

Yeahhhhh. :\ I just rewatched for the third time at the beginning of the year, and Kate is a character that seemed a lot more understandable during a binge-watch. EDIT: to make it clear, I am really mostly agreeing with you (they clearly didn't know what to do with her) and then going off on a bit of a related tangent!

I may be totally making this up but did Emilie de Ravin leave to film a movie at some point? Is that why we never got any Claire on-island stuff? Not that that's an excuse for all the ways that her storyline was poorly handled, but maybe a partial excuse.

I have to say my favorite thing they did (and this is saying a lot, as someone who loooooves behind the scenes stuff) was the conspiracy theory video on the (I think) S4 DVD set. SO GOOD.

Naveen Andrews' actual accent always throws me for a loop!

For all the amazing character writing on this show, I always felt like it was Claire and Kate that were most underserved by it (or worst-served, I guess, in Kate's case). I really love both characters, but a lot of the time it seemed like the writers had no idea what to do with them.

I'm pretty sure my favorite moment from the S3 blooper reel is from this episode: Naveen Andrews declaring "NOT EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY, JOHN!" dramatically:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…

I really do think that it's mostly writing, honestly. It's like they didn't quite know what they wanted to do with Kate-by-herself (as opposed to Kate-with-Sawyer/Jack) whereas Juliet basically always had her own motivations and arc.

This is what I took from it, too! They knew early enough on that it was the heart of the world, or whatever phrase seems more apt. I would love to hear what the exact words were in the writers' room, though!

I feel like that was a really popular theory at the time (that Walt conjured the polar bear because he saw one in the comic book, like he did with the bird in his flashback), but I might be misremembering that. I don't know what it had to do with his father's love, though.

I could never ship Kate and Sawyer because of how she compared him to her stepfather. It always seemed like Kate felt as though Sawyer was the type of man she deserved, when Jack was what she really wanted.

To your "everything became a debate" point, I just stumbled across a pages-long message board thread about whether Eddie meant "coercion" which hints at a deeper meaning!!, or meant "manipulation" and the writers were using "coercion" in a broad sense (but they couldn't have!!! it must mean something!). I'm a little…

It's probably already been said, but upon rewatch the comment about Locke being "amenable to coercion" just breaks my heart.

I don't hate the Dutch. I love the Dutch. That's why I hold them to a higher standard.

The rubber room is a real thing, which totally horrified my fiance when I told him! Though I think it's centralized, rather than being in each individual school.