No, I've seen comments here in the past few weeks saying it's terrible. Not "the worst", but terrible.

Was it a secret from the Others, or were the Others content to let the people in there keep pushing the button? Especially since the only way I can make sense of the Swan's station's design is if it's the Dharma Initiative's Dead Man's Switch weapon against the Others. Why else create a system that requires someone…

I was surprised to discover on here how hated Maternity Leave is. I mean, it's not a GREAT episode, but I'm surprised by the vitriol toward it.

"Oh, IRONY! See, people in this town snort cocaine and ski topless, so irony isn't a big priority."

The meme of "The beginning Season Three is bad", I think, comes from A. the wonky way it was aired combined with a taking-its-time batch of episodes (first six episodes, then a HUGE break before any more), B. flashbacks that were clearly more there-for-format's-sake rather than telling us anything new, and C.…

Well, maybe. Or black representing the other side of backgammon.

Strictly speaking, we didn't. Eko smoke to "Yemi", who then said, "Why do you talk to me like I am your brother?" (Or words to that effect), and then "Yemi" went into the woods. Then we heard the growl-and-clank, and the Smoke Monster emerged from those trees. So, while it was heavily implied that the Smoke…

See, despite what the show is trying to do, the Comic Book Geek is going, "But it's Ray! He's a good guy!" The ambiguous just washes over me.

To be fair, usually if you wail on someone with a baseball bat a few times, that does the job decently enough.

Not to mention Claire tended to be more baby-carrying-object than character. The second season finale is especially damning along these lines: You have Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Hurley going Michael; you have Locke, Charlie, Eko and Desmond in the Hatch; you have Sayid, Jin and Sun on the boat— three groups in three…

No, what I'm saying is that we see Titus as 'The Man In Black' in that one scene in "The Incident"— but he walks onto the beach and walks off (and says 'I already ate' when Jacob offers him some fish). No smokiness. Then when FauxLocke confronts Jacob, Jacob calls back to that scene my saying 'You found that…

Or go back to the island to get "rescued" in order to enact his Save Starling City plan.

Yeah, I wondered if she was going by Mia Dearden in Corto.

I really want Ray to get tiny as part of that. I'm just saying.

"The board is curious about the agenda item 'Everyone will suffer'. Is this one of those trust-fall team building exercises? And why are you carrying swords?"

Plus Season One showed he had a captaincy in the Russian Mafia. The idea that he wasn't on the island the whole five years has been there since the beginning.

"Destroy the city? How is that going to help our bottom line? It's like she wasn't even thinking of the stockholders."

I figured, but I was just confirming.

Fair enough. But this hits on a point I made elsewhere in these comments— the process needs to be an organic one and react to both production necessities and new story ideas. Here's a good example where the production of necessity of Emilie needing a year off was made to work to the story's favor.

I do have my own bit of speculation, based on my current rewatch, that at the end of season 5 they intended the Man in Black to be a new thing altogether, as Jacob's Adversary, and then at the top of Season 6 decided to make that Adversary also be the Smoke Monster, consolidating two separate ideas into one thing.