Goodbye, Bakunin. The sneak previews for this new episode of Lost clued us in to the fact that Bakunin might not be long for this world, and it turns out they weren't leading us on. What we didn't know, however, was that Locke was the one who caused it. The crew reached the perimeter of Othersville to find a bunch of tall obelisk-type posts surrounding it; cross through, and you get zapped and die, but not before doing a really cool foam-at-the-mouth routine.

Luckily, turns out all you need to do is hop over the defense system in order to evade certain death. But more on that later.

No, this episode belonged to Claire, which was quite fresh. If you can believe it, we've actually only ever gotten one single real flashback episode from Claire. And that was all the way back in the first season - the one in season two was her flashbacks to when Ethan kidnapped her. So this was cool, and it also answered the question that everybody had as soon as Jack's dad took that fateful trip to Australia last season: turns out Claire is Jack's half-sister. Not that either of them have any way of finding out. (Yeah, it's another connection that seems pretty pointless. But wouldn't it be cool if the Others pointed it out to them at some dramatically appropriate point? Because with all they seem to know about our castaways, you know they know that.)

Of course, there was another reason why her flashback was cool. I'm sure this is a bone of contention, but for my money, Claire was pretty darn adorable as an angsty semi-goth teen. Yeah, we can make fun of her for screaming about her baby all the time, but I still contend that Claire's the most attractive girl on the island.

(I just noticed my computer has pointed out to me that "angsty" is not a real word. It should be. Somebody get that fixed.)

Anyway, the main present-time plot - Claire's idea to tag an SOS message onto a migrating bird - was basically an excuse for her to get caught up on the whole Charlie's-Gonna-Die thing. But I still liked it a great deal, mostly thanks to the effortless charm of both principles involved. There was no real reason to hide it from her in the first place, but whatever.

In fact, the Charlie's-Gonna-Die thing has reinvigorated the drama on the original side of the island, which has lately seem to have been used for comic-relief B-plots. Charlie and Claire had both gotten pretty boring, so my involvement in their conflict this time is - my thing for Claire aside - a good indicator of a well-done job in the writer's room.

How do I want this storyline to be wrapped up? To put it quite frankly, I don't want Charlie to die and I think it will be bad for the show. Yeah, his character had gotten a little stagnant because they didn't know what to do with him after finally resolving the heroine thing. But he's one of the original staples, and I continue to disagree with the creators' rationale that people need to keep dying in order to make the stakes seem real. If he's killed off, it would be because he's an expendable character whose only really has one ongoing storyline (his relationship with Claire). That reasoning is stupid - it's the peripheral characters that give the show its color. Focusing only on central characters like Jack, Kate, and Sawyer was what most people think caused the ratings slide in the first place.

Of course, now you're saying, "but wait, it was Desmond's premonition, and that woman already told him that destiny was predetermined, so Charlie has to die." Wrong. If he's not killed off, it would be great for the show - that would mean Desmond's premonitions were unreliable, which could potentially mean that there are different possible timelines parallel to each other, or maybe it would mean that fate isn't predetermined after all. I'm a sucker for a good rumination on time travel and fate. When Claire said "we can beat this," I felt like cheering.

Her letter she attached to the bird, by the way, was also remarkably poignant. I've been a viewer since November 2004, so her little rumination on how everyone has adapted to life on the island really made me feel the weight of the remarkable journey they've all had. Not to get heavy on you, but I was amazed at how touching it was.

But I must end with some of the juicier stuff. Kate, Sayid, Locke, and Danielle get past the Death Fence and discover Othersville - that fun little neighborhood that we glimpsed at the beginning of the season. And lo! Jack's playing a fun game of football with Tom. This, of course, begs the question: is it an act, or is he brainwashed? Split-second theory: I think it's neither - well, not totally. Jack doesn't think there's any way to escape, so he's adapted to their way of life. Of course, that seems to be what the Others were going for all along (remember Ben's speech about how he wanted to convince Jack to honestly like them?) so maybe you can call that brainwashing. And of course, I could just be totally wrong.

Next week it looks like we find out why Locke has been acting a bit strange: he's not there to save Jack, he's there to seek revenge on Ben. (At least, that's what it seemed like.) Chances are, the reason he's pissed off is because Ben was all false-nice to him during his Henry Gale days (and particularly during the hatch lockdown). Plus, Ben told Locke he was one of the good ones, and had a higher sense of purpose, and Locke probably wants to know what, exactly, he means by that.

Final points that I haven't squeezed in yet:
-It seems that this episode confirmed, via Bakunin, that Ben is definitely not "Him", the real leader of the Others. My money's still on the mysterious Jacob.
-I liked how Kate forced Bakunin to keep talking about the Others, by the way. Too many people seem to totally accept their way-too-vague answers, so her "try me" line to Bakunin's "you wouldn't understand" shrug-off made me smile.
-Apparently, next week we find out what happened to Locke that put him in a wheelchair! Sweet. Hopefully it's cool.