Delayed Lost 2.3 Review!

Okay, okay - you can stop the threatening Emails, voicemails, and IMs. I'm sorry that I didn't get my instant review up Wednesday night. Due to a volleyball tournament, I was unable to watch "Orientation" until very late Wednesday night, which made posting afterwards impossible. However, better late than never, here are ten things to make you wonder, and tide you over until my full analysis next week!

Brief Review: This episode advanced the storyline so much - more than any episode in the history of the series, perhaps! We got our "crazy scientist research facility" theory finally proved, and although it answered some questions - it opened up brand new questions to let us obsess about for many months to come. It's also finally adding some "mythology" to the island - how it started, the players involved, and how it came to be the island it is today. Love it.

Ten Things:

1. In response to Dr. Bob's question, "Where does Ethan fall into the different groups on the island?", I've got to think he was in cahoots with CFL and the Others on the boat that stole Walt, and that they're all a part of Hanso.
2. What is Hanso? Check it out: http://www.thehansofoundation.org/ (Clever viewers will find the whole Orientation video)
3. "The Others" that Mikey, Sawyer, and Jin ran into are not Others. Smart money is on them being Tailers that have already gone Lord of the Flies on each other. The question is... why?
4. Where is Desmond going? Another one of the six research facilities on the Island? My guess is we'll be seeing more of him, and he knows a lot more than he is letting on. His story was just a tad too convenient for my liking.
5. Are the other research facilities on the Island, or are they spread across the world? Based on everything we've seen on the Island so far, I think they're all on there!
6. The "Incident" that is referred to in the Orientation video - what was it? In researching the "unique electro-magnetic attributes" of this portion of the island, did they accidentally trip something bad? Did exposing the magnetic core of the Island throw the equilibrium of the Island out of whack?
7. "Don't push the button, the button is bad." Walt says. Yet now Locke is pushing it for as long as he is able. Bad news. Locke's gonna go crazy.
8. The flashbacks the past two episodes have been fairly weak. When you've got so many mysteries behind these characters, to show these fairly mundane vignettes of their lives seems like a waste. Yes, we're building the characters more, but come on - how did Locke lose the ability to walk? What happened to Helen? What happened to his Father?
9. The Orientation video dude closes with "Namaste" - what's that? More Hinduism lessons! http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/namaste
10. Books seen in this episode:

• The Third Policeman: The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliant comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botche d robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where he is intruduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and the view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped."
• The Turn of the Screw: The story starts conventionally enough with friends sharing ghost stories 'round the fire on Christmas Eve. One of the guests tells about a governess at a country house plagued by supernatural visitors. But in the hands of Henry James, the master of nuance, this little tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and psychological ambiguity. Only the young governess can see the ghosts; only she suspects that the previous governess and her lover are controlling the two orphaned children (a girl and a boy) for some evil purpose. The household staff don't know what she's talking about, the children are evasive when questioned, and the master of the house (the children's uncle) is absent. Why does the young girl claim not to see a perfectly visible woman standing on the far side of the lake? Are the children being deceptive, or is the governess being paranoid?

Looks like I've got some reading to do!