Abandon hope, all ye who haven’t seen this week’s episode. Like last week, I’ll start with some BS about last week’s episode, so don’t look down, and hit “n” now.

What I forgot to mention in last week’s super-lengthy post on “What Kate Did”: Jack and Dogan have an brief, quiet conversation in which Dogan explains that he does not speak English in order to keep himself at a distance from his followers — a buffer, for when he gives them orders they don’t like. Specifically, he says, “I have to remain separate from the people I’m in charge of.”

At the end of that horrible horrible Season 3 episode, we learn that the Chinese characters tattooed on Jack’s arm mean “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.”

Similar, wouldn’t you say? Way to justify the bad episode, Lost people.

Onward. In scattered fashion.

1. Locke-centric episodes are always good, aren’t they? And “Sideways World” (as I guess it is officially known) Locke is in such better shape than Original World Locke. How great was it to see Helen? And they’re getting married!

2. Helen suggests eloping and says “we’ll just get my parents, and your dad” — so does that mean that things are OK with Cooper? Is Sideways Locke in the wheelchair for a reason other than his dad pushed him out a window? He still must’ve been conned out of a kidney because he and Helen meet at that anger management group — although again, maybe this is another sort of destiny issue when they’re supposed to have always met each other so they meet under different circumstances, but that’s all speculation.

3. Hurley’s streak as luckiest man alive continues when his Hummer does NOT get scratched by Locke’s wheelchair ramp. Excellent callback to Season 1, in which we learn that Hurley owns a box company.

4. And Hurley tells Locke that things are going to work out, sounding very similar to Jacob at the moment Locke falls from the 8th floor window.

5. When Rose tells Locke about living with cancer, and accepting that there are things that she can’t do, I was reminded of their conversation on the island, after one of the (many) times Locke’s legs are hurt (I think it’s when the blast door of the hatch falls on him?) when she tells Locke conspiratorially that they both know that his leg will heal faster than Jack told him it would.

6. As nice as it was to see Helen and Rose, it was hilarious to see Ben. As a European history teacher! Complaining about the other teachers not making coffee when it needs to be made!

7. Locke’s alarm clock made the hatch noise. NICE.

On the island:

1. Seeing things from Smokey’s POV was pretty rad. I still want to know how a man became able to shift into smoke form.

2. The kid: A young Jacob? Why would he appear as a youngster, though? Was he brought to the island as a kid? Or has he risen from the ashes? Or is this kid someone completely new? Locke can see him but Richard can’t. And Sawyer could see him. I think this has something to do with candidacy.

3. Why would Richard not be a candidate? Maybe because he was brought to the island in chains; that is, his path was not made up of free will choices in the same way that all the choices the Oceanic Flight 815 people’s were. And all of the candidates, with the possible exception of Jin, have seen people who are meant to be dead or otherwise could not possibly be where they are. Jack sees his dad, Hurley sees everyone, Sayid sees Walt way back in Season 2. Sun does see Christian after coming back to the island. On the other hand, all of these people with the exception of Sun have time-skipped.

3a. Or maybe Richard’s not a candidate because he’s got a different sort of job. (See note about Ilana, below)

4. All the candidates had corresponding numbers, and those numbers were THE numbers. Whatever that means. Curious: we don’t see Kate’s name. Curiouser: One of the Others, back in Season 3, had complained that “Shephard wasn’t on Jacob’s list.” Two possibilities: 1) The Shephard referred to in the cave isn’t Jack. 2) The names in the cave aren’t Jacob’s list.

5. I caught “Littleton” as a name on the ceiling, with “313″ next to it. Also “Mattingly” and “Domingo” and “O’Toole” and “Jones” — Mattingly and Jones were names on the uniforms that some of the Others, including Charles Widmore, were wearing when they captured Juliet, Sawyer, and Faraday in Season 4. Curious, indeed. I am also pretty sure but not 100% sure that I saw “Chang” written down. Pierre, or Miles?

6. It’s possible that Frank is a candidate, according to the end of last season. On their way to the temple, Bram asks Ilana why Frank’s even with them, and she says that he may be important, and he says “You think he’s a candidate?” And she doesn’t answer. Ilana is on some sort of mission for Jacob; she’s also one of the few people on the island that Jacob did NOT touch — he visits her, but wears gloves, like he’s going out of his way to not touch her. I wonder if Ilana = the new (or a failsafe) Richard? As in, not a candidate, but essential to the protection of the island?

7. This issue of candidacy is one of those answers that prompt new questions, and while I’d hoped that this final season would have fewer of these in favor of more straightforward answers, I realize that it’s still early in the season. But according to Not-Locke, everyone was brought to the island because they are candidates for taking over the position of Island Protector. He doesn’t believe the island is anything special — such a change from Locke when he was alive, and the only thing that mattered was protecting the island. I think this is our cue to not trust anything he’s saying — CLEARLY the island is special.

8. And trust, instead, how flipped out and terrified Richard is. Richard tells Sawyer that Not-Locke is planning on killing everyone on the island, I think through manipulating them into killing each other, the same way he got Ben to kill Jacob — because as the young kid who may be Jacob said, “You know the rules. You can’t kill him.” I think he means that Not-Locke can’t kill all the candidates himself. Why would he want to kill all of them? So that Jacob won’t have a successor, and Not-Locke wins the game.

8a. Not-Locke tells Richard, “Come with me, and I’ll explain everything.” Sounds a lot like the Devil tempting Eve with the fruit of knowledge. (Please let there be more to this than a biblical analogy. That said, it may behoove us to (re)read Paradise Lost.)

9. Not-Locke throwing the white stone into the ocean: “inside joke.” HEH.

10. I would not have pegged Sawyer as a Stooges fan. But I guess that’s appropriate. (“Search and Destroy?” SUBTLE.) And I loved that Sawyer knew right away that Not-Locke wasn’t Locke. How many times has Sawyer followed Locke somewhere during the course of this show? I can think of “The Brig” in particular — another case in which Locke manipulates Sawyer into doing something — but I think there are more instances.

11. “This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.”

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