And it's great, because Ben's story would have held up to the kind of scrutiny almost anyone would have given. Balloon, grave… it checks out. But Sayid went that extra, CRAZY-ASS step of verification… and the story falls apart.

The way I saw it on the re-watch, the Flashsideways are very much about the characters dealing with lingering issues that they had when they arrived on the island, and still had to let go of when they died. For Jin and Sun, it was about how they let Sun's father drive a wedge between them, and they create a situation…

You would think so, but in my observation most Exposé haters are also extreme N&P haters. Like, to them, everything around them is "a waste".

I'm curious how their introduction was awkward to you. In their first appearance, they both have, like, two lines of reasonable questions/responses. Locke is addressing the whole camp, and the only regular who was in a position of ignorance to say or ask that stuff was Claire. You basically needed someone "new" in…

Yeah, the Blast Door Map, in retrospect, only makes sense if Radzinsky had already gone crazy, and if everything Inman knew was fruit off the poisonous tree.

Well, I think it's different facets of the same point: removed of the "mystery" of what the flashsideways is and wondering why the hell we're spending so much time on it— it's a lot easier to see what it's doing and why it's important to each episode and the season as a whole.

Probably because she didn't develop strong feelings of hatred for Nikki and Paolo in the first place.

I still have to say, the hatred of Nikki and Paolo strikes me as so overblown. Take "Exposé" out of the equation, and they have about fifteen minutes of screentime and twenty-five lines.

Ab Aeterno tells its story quite well, but what that story is feels unsatisfying in terms of the mythology of Richard, Jacob and the Island.

The flash-sideways feel like less of a waste in retrospect. I will agree, when I watched the show live the first time, it felt like a lot of time "wasted" on something that didn't seem to matter.

Having rewatched Season Six now, I've figured out its key "problem"— in that it works SO MUCH BETTER when you know what the flash-sideways actually are. But in the first-watch, you don't know that until the end of watching it, and it isn't a "oh, now that I know, it makes sense" thing. I mean, it does make sense,…

Oh, for the love of God.

There was another fan theory that the pregnancy thing stemmed from Jughead exploding, that it put the island into some sort of over-correction mode, treating pregnancies like an infection.

Of course, there's the mixed message of who's allowed "off the island". Juliet is trapped, and they want to keep the 815 folks on there, but Richard, Ethan and Tom all go out into the real world back and forth pretty easily.

Mira Furlan makes this episode. The woman is a treasure, and it's a shame she didn't really get any more high-profile work beyond LOST and, to a much lesser degree, Babylon 5.

Sayid doesn't exactly have a lot of high horse to look down from, and he's pretty aware of that.

But, of course, when that happens, it's because it's about babies.

Also, there is something in the text that the pregnancy issue is something Ben, specifically, is obsessed with, and doesn't necessarily line up with what Richard thinks The Others are supposed to be doing.

Yeah, it's pure theatre for the sake of the Oceanic survivors. Like, I can see using the big beard to suggest primitiveness, which is what they're trying to project. But at the same time, they saw the boat with a gasoline motor, so the idea that they also have razors isn't too strange.

Ethan himself might have grabbed one from the wreckage. Because, hey, there's a baby coming, and they need toys.