Ach, I'm bad at this

Timely updating, that is. But here I am on Wednesday night, at least... I just have two episodes to discuss.

"Maternity Leave," the Claire episode, was interesting in a number of ways. First of all, it's the first episode to provide flashbacks that don't leave the island (the only other episode that messed with the main format was, of course, "The Other 48 Days," which had no flashbacks at all unless you count the entire episode). And those flashbacks did tell us a number of things about the Others. The second main thing was that this gave us, by far, our biggest clue about the Others ever. It basically gave us all the info we'd never gotten and then some. Among the things we now know:

1. The Others have some sort of medical facility, or at least they had one. Whatever it was, they were evidently capable of breaking it down in pretty short order.

2. The Others are, well, not the Others. They don't live in the jungle, they don't dress in loincloths, and they don't have real beards. (But they do have plenty of spirit gum.)

This second one is by far the most interesting to me. So if the Others are actually just some dudes in a building, where did they go? Is there a secret tarmac in the middle of the jungle that they use to jet back to Ann Arbor? And does the fact that they only appear to the castaways in the guise of jungle people (when not pretending to be castaways themselves) mean that they are part of some big sociological experiment? And if that's the case, what do they really need with Aaron, or Walt, or anyone they took? (Of course, the answer may well be "nothing, we're just seeing how people react." There's no way the Dharma Initiative is the whole story here, though.)

Meanwhile, Claire reaffirms her title as "Shrillest, Most Unpleasant Character on the Show." I know she's gone through a whole bunch of stuff, but she was always pretty obnoxious.

Speaking of Claire, weird Charlie appearance in tonight's episode, "The Whole Truth." He just gets to hang out with Sayid? I know Sayid is Captain Forgiving (see: Ana Lucia), but Charlie's outcast period sure doesn't seem to have lasted very long.

In the A plot, Sun thinks she's pregnant, and then she is. I really enjoyed the story; we got to see a lot of how Jin and Sun relate to each other and I liked Jin's emotional side coming out more. (His "Daddy-o" realization was really well done too, I have to say. I'm a sucker for little polished moments like that.)

In the B plot, Ana Lucia convinces Sayid (and Charlie) to go find Henry's balloon. Meanwhile, Henry acts as ominous as possible, which of course means he isn't an Other. Stupid TiVo cut off right as Henry has poured some Dharmios and is starting his ominous talk. Alma filled me in on the last minute or so, which was basically exactly what you'd expect - Henry finishing his dark "if I were an Other it would be so totally bad for you guys" spiel and then immediately giving a cheery "But I'm not, hooray!" Then I guess the teaser shows that the balloon is there.

So how is Sun pregnant? Well, there are a couple options.

1. Miracle baby! This one just seems silly, but stranger things have happened on this show. (Well, maybe nothing as strange as immaculate conception.)

2. Jin! Doctors aren't infallible.

3. Baldy! Come on, they were totally setting it up like Sun was going to do it with him. Her look of vague apprehension while hugging Jin could have been "I was lying about not doing it with someone else," though it could have been many other things as well. The one thing that I wonder about here is, not being a woman, I'm not intimately familiar with the potential timeline. Sun's been on the island around two months now - could she really have been pregnant the whole time and only finally noticed it now?

Well, yet more mysteries to unravel. I wouldn't expect anything less.