Yeah, that's a really gratuitous picture. But are you complaining? I didn't think so.

Anyway, onto last week's Lost episode. (Sorry again for the delay.) The subplot (which produced the fine picture to the left) was about Sawyer and Kate rekindling their fire after Kate gets jealous watching Jack and Juliet eat dinner together. Sawyer eventually wises up to the fact that he's getting played. It was pure relationship drama, but who can complain when she bursts into Sawyer's tent and...

Okay. Time to get my head out of my butt. The main plotline featured our good ol' bro Desmond and another one of his future visions. This one, however, was a doozy: not only does Charlie die in the vision, but a woman - possibly Penny - finds her way to the island and parachutes down. This presents Desmond with a problem: he's desperate to reunite with his true love, but if he saves Charlie from certain death, the future will change, and through some mysteries of the space-time continuum, Penny might not show up after all. Hence the Catch-22.

Frankly I didn't exactly follow why saving Charlie would mean no Penny. I can understand how changing the time line can produce unforeseen consequences - thanks, I've seen Back to the Future, Frequency, and all the rest - but saving Charlie and the identity of the person who shows up on the island are completely disconnected.

Besides, let's face it: it was painfully obvious in the closing scene that the person in question, who parachuted down from an aircraft of some kind and landed in some trees, was not going to be Penny. The helmet, combined with Desmond's rock-solid belief that it was, confirmed it. So who was it? They open the helmet to find...some chick. Who says, "Desmond," and then passes out.

At first, I thought it was the girl in Desmond's flashback who we find out he was going to marry before becoming a monk. (Yeah, he became a monk. Finally the age-old mystery of why he calls everyone "brother" was revealed.) It was upon being fired from the monastery, in fact, that he met the charming, ever-more-lovable Penny. But anyway, yeah, I thought his first fiancee was the one on the island in the present time, not because they look very similar, but because she was all sweaty and bloody and I couldn't remember what the flashback girl looked like. I actually had to consult the ABC.com synopsis to make sure they were two different people.

Actually, since we're talking about three different girls here, let me clear some things up. Desmond's true love is named Penny. His first fiancee's name was Ruth. And press release notes revealed the first name of the girl who crashed (stop if you don't want to know, but considering it doesn't actually reveal anything and it's a heck of a lot easier to write about her this way, I'm going for it). It's Naomi.

Who is she? Where'd she come from? Why'd her helicopter or whatever it was crash? When Desmond still thought it was Penny, I liked his echoing of her quote that with enough money, you can find anyone. The epic quality of their romance hit strongly in the Season 2 finale, of course, but they've been able to maintain it fairly well. Since Naomi knows who Desmond is, does that mean that she knows Penny, too? Does she work for Widmore?

The rest of the episode was fairly straightforward. Desmond and co. whistling while they walked was nice. Oh, and according to EW.com, Superman and the Flash have raced each other a couple of times in the DC Comics universe, usually for charity. As I remember, none of the races ended with a definitive winner...usually supervillains were around to screw things up.

The recap for next week's episode -- the most recent to air, I mean -- will be coming shortly.