Having just finished a rewatch myself, I found S6 much better than I expected it to. In particular, the Flash-Sideways are a lot more effective when you already know what they are, instead of trying to figure out how the "alternate timeline" works.

Of course, that is literally her only contribution.

"Look, it's painfully simple. I can't just walk into camp, so I get 'caught' by one of Danielle's traps. She'll instinctively not trust me, of course, but won't want to deal with me. She'll turn me over to Sayid, who we know is a mess over Shannon. He'll work me over, but I'll stick to the story: namely, assuming…

Well, Hurley's whole point there is to return to camp as a trusted messenger. Bluntly, if just about anyone else had been the Fourth, they might have fought back, or not been believed by the camp. Hurley was someone who the Others knew could deliver the message and not cause trouble.

Ben makes Xanatos look like an amateur.

Right. It basically showed that Nikki and Paulo were aware of various things on the island, sometimes before our main heroes, and could care less. Just like the rest of the non-speaking 815 people.

Plus, we have John dream AS Eko, seeing Yemi… which gives further credence to the idea that the visions are something REAL. We never quite get at what's underneath that, where they are coming from… but it does make Locke the one who is "right" about the Island in the MoS/MoF question.

The Others are a perfect example of people whose claims about themselves are completely belied by their behavior. Part of why Juliet works so well as a character is she's the only one who seems even aware of the fact that they are horrible people.

Pretty much. I have trouble with the Michael timeline in Season Four, but Perrineau did a great job of playing a man who had already died and gone to hell, and was just waiting to stop moving.

PLus— as Nikki points out later— he references multiple experiments, and there are multiple monitors. The screen they turn on is tuned to the Swan because Ben & Juliet had left it on that setting. But it's clear that the Pearl is more some sort of absurd double-blind loyalty test, rather than actual meaningful…

It does— Ben is there to talk about his plan to get "captured" so he can bring Jack back.

What are you talking about, there was no guy like that at my high school. Everyone loved my jo…. oh.

Well, he'd be around eight or nine, right?

Are there a choice of toppings?

Watch to the end.

I think it doesn't so much "kill" you as make you regret life.

There's something gloriously Early-80s about that. "Hey, we need some ladies to get in the hottub for the cover picture." "Hell, I'll do it, and get those two girls from accounting."

Not to defend Dawn too much, but a lot of exercise bikes run on the electricity you generate by riding the bike. So in THAT, she wasn't being terrible.

For me, it's got some fundamental problems that I don't think a few minutes of runtime would solve. Save the Emerson/Locke scene in the hotel (which is its only saving grace), most of the episode consists of perfunctory "confirming events we've established as happening"— fitting the letter but not the spirit. The…

Cesar, I read, was going to be Big in Season 6, but the actor got other commitments, so that got dropped in a hurry.