Not much to say this week. This particular episode wasn’t good, wasn’t bad. It was just necessary.

Basically, this served as a bridge episode, setting up certain elements to prepare for next week. (And, hopefully, beyond. Though this show has displayed a disturbing tendency to set up pitches and then let them fly by.)

Most interesting tidbit this week? Juliet’s claim that she had never seen the smoke monster before. And yet she knew exactly how to stop it. Strange.

Just before the preview for next week came on, I thought to myself, “If they don’t grill Juliet for everything she knows, I am SO finished with this show.” So I was gratified to see Sayid threatening Juliet for information. Then again, for a torturer and alleged bad-ass, Sayid has actually proven pretty terrible at getting information out of people. Yeah, he tortured the hell out of Sawyer in Season 1, but his run at Ben (“Henry Gale”) in Season 2 didn’t accomplish much. I want to see Sayid get everything there is to get out of Juliet.

While I enjoyed the “lame con” Hurley pulled on Sawyer, it’s ultimately meaningless with Jack coming back next week. It’s nice to see that someone was thinking ahead (and it connected last week’s seemingly disconnected episode as Hurley’s reason for his con), but it’s just moot.

Oh — Locke going with the Others? Veeeery interesting. I wonder if we’ve seen the last of him for a while. I hope not — Locke’s character is just starting to be redeemed. If he does return, then he must know a hell of a lot about the Others, and I swear if the writers pull an amnesia out of their butts to explain away that knowledge… Ugh.

We’ll see what happens next week. Looks like a Juliet flashback. She’s a new character and we’ve already had plenty of Juliet this season, so let’s hope it’s worth it.

UPDATE: In the cold, clear light of morning, this just occurred to me: Are they really going to pack up and leave Otherville? Um, there are houses there, people! There’s infrastructure! Move in a bunch of folks and who knows what you might discover? Plus, there’s a friggin’ security fence that keeps out the bad guys! If next week’s episode doesn’t have a damn good explanation as to why they’re not just going back to the beach to gather everyone up and move them to a safe haven…I’ll be very concerned.