When Ana Lucia said that I blurted out, "Oh, that's fucked up." haha

Also, my roommate and I could not stop laughing as Frogurt (Neil) got "lit up", so to speak.

HIGH-larious

maybe it's just me, but michelle rodriguez is fucking hot.

i got into an argument with the dude who plays ethan rom at a comic con and made quite a scene about lost, he's just as creepy in person!

Durig the recap hour, I forgot that Sawyer once called Hurley 'Jumbo-tron'. I LOL'd again....

you and 10,000,000 lesbians can't be wrong

She was looking good last night.

Also, how long before Sawyer and Juliet do each other?

In the spirit of time travel, here are my predictions for the season to come, based only on the first episode:

1. That the show's writers chose to present three time periods before the commercial break suggests that Season 5 will be the most experimental one yet—with little or no regard for the usual rules of chronological storytelling. The motto of this new season was delivered by John Locke, while Richard Alpert was taking a bullet out of his leg: "When are we?"

2. In the first scene, Chang picks up a baby, but it's unclear whether it's actually his. Could it be Charlotte, the British anthropologist who, it seems, has returned to the island to find her birthplace? Or is it Ben's childhood friend Annie? I venture it's Charlotte, and also that the baby holds the key to one of the show's long-standing mysteries: Why do women on the island die during childbirth?

3. When Chang surveys the Orchid station, he says that there are rules to time travel. My groundbreaking guess: We'll learn the rules.

4. The physical effects of time travel will be more fully explained this year. When a miner gets too close to the energy source on the island, he gets a nosebleed—surely an indication that jumping from decade to decade messes with your brain, as it did for Minkowski last year. I expect the answers will come via a reappearance of Horace "My Nose Only Bleeds When I Wants It To" Goodspeed. Was he time-tripping when he saw Locke in the jungle last season? I think so. Don't know what I'm talking about? Rewatch Season 4's "Cabin Fever" episode.

5. While Jack and Ben discuss how to get the Oceanic Six back to the island, they see a local news report on Hurley's alleged killing spree. This juxtaposition as well as Hurley's run-in with the law at the end of the episode suggest Hurley won't return willingly. He'll have to be forced.

6. Daniel Faraday is the only character to appear in two parts of the three-part introductory segment. Expect him to be a major player this year, both as the time traveler in residence and as the guy who translates what's happening to an increasingly bewildered audience. Faraday, you could say, is our Constant—the guy who makes sure our heads don't explode while we try and make sense of all this time travel.

My first thought on the hand-chopping guys were that they were from the ship with the tnt (the Black Rock?)

Dan commented on gun girl looking like his coma girl. Presumably she is the same person? i.e. She will leave the island sometime after 1954 and go become his university test patient.

I think she's his mom.

Great episode.

Chuck Widmore being a former Other is interesting as he was an Other before Ben was even born. How they wound up so hostile toward each other and why ought to be good. As well as who the Others initially were to begin with.

Maybe Widmore was groomed to be the leader before Ben took it away after helping kill the Dharma Initiative? I don't know if the timelines match up, but he did tell Ben that he "took everything away from me" (paraphrasing) when Ben approached Widmore in his bedroom.

agreed

Do we still believe in the "once you step foot on the island, you can't die off the island" theory?

We've seen this a couple of times in action:
-Michael crashes his car and lives
-Michael tries to shoot himself but the gun doesn't fire, despite having all the chambers full
-Jack almost jumps off a bridge before a car accident catches his attention
-baby Aaron survives a helicopter crash into the ocean
-Sayid very-nearly-almost dies from the poison dart, but doesn't

I don't think we've seen anyone from the island actually die off-island. The only one who comes close is Locke but there's been no confirmation that coffin Locke was actually dead or that he died off-island.

It would explain why Ben and Widmore haven't killed each other, why Ben threatened to kill Penny instead of Charles, and why Widmore opted to send in Daniel, Charlotte, etc. to grab Ben first instead of Gault and his team of nutcases. He'd obviously prefer people who'd already been to the island to go than to send new people who'd become invincible once they landed.

the whole "become invincible" once on the island, because of this whole time travel/course correcting b.s. i'm starting to believe, i think since 815 crashed on the island and it was 1996 - rose & locke were back to their healthy form, locke didn't become paralyzed until 2002, and not sure when rose got cancer, but i'm thinking 2002 as well.

Wait, when was it established that the island time was 1996 when they crashed on it?

if you're wife is in her fourth trimester