"Lost": Episode 10, "The Package"

This week's developments seemed to make it clear that the long talked-about "war" has indeed arrived, and the sides are clearly defined. Sun faced a fork-in-the-road challenge of deciding which team to play for, and as she has before, she ultimately sided with Team Jack, as she has before. The Jack-Ilana-Richard contingent is joining up with Widmore's gang and its nifty sonar technology to stop Flocke from jetting off the island, by any means necessary.

Flocke is getting ever more maniacal about his "people" and the need to get the key people -- presumably the remaining candidates -- to go with him. Does he know that Sawyer is plotting his own double-cross-cross mutiny by submarine with Kate? I kinda think so, based on Flocke's comment to nervous Claire that Kate was basically expendable ("Whatever happens, happens") after he uses her to someone convince the others (presumably Jack and Hurley at the very least) to go with Flocke. Did Sawyer know Flocke's encampment was being watched by Widmore's people? Is that why he told Kate to pretend with the cocoa?

At one point Flocke noted that he was "three people shy" of the group he needs to leave the island. But he didn't specify how many people he needs. Given Sayid's strange state, I don't think we can presume that it's strictly the Oceanic 6 anymore. Flocke needs all of the names that have been crossed off of Jacob's cave wall to "go together" for him to leave. Funny, Eloise Hawking, Daniel Faraday's mom, kept telling Ben and Jack the same thing when she steered them on to Aljira flight 316 that didn't go to Guam.

And now for something completely different -- Desmond! I don't pretend to know exactly how he fits in to the plan to stop Flocke. I do know that when he made his bleary eye contact with Sayid, I immediately thought of how Sayid and Desmond shared that climactic moment of "The Constant" on Widmore's freighter, when Des connected with Penny. Will the sight of Des be enough to jolt Sayid out of his evil haze?

Interesting to see too that Widmore is still focused on uncovering the science behind the island's mysteries. With the help of the sonar fence, Widmore faces down Flocke, trying to emasculate him with the idea that Flocke might be nothing more than him as "myth, ghost stories and jungle noises in the night.
Why else would he send a geophysicist to do a mercenaries job, as Zoe described it. She was pressing Jin for specifics about the maps of electro-magnetic energy pockets that Jin presumably made during his '70s stretch with the Dharma Initiative. And just for old time's sake we got a quick glimpse of the Dharma "Everything Changes" vid. Oh, the things you get nostalgic for.

So Martin Keamy was on board to kill Jin (for a measly $25,000) at the behest of Mr. Paik because Jin was kanoodling with his daughter before they were hitched. Just like Widmore's motivation, it seems like Paik's role in the larger story has to be fleshed out. And btw, the unsinkable Keamy was alive, at least by the time Sun and Mikhail came into the restaurant where he'd been shot by Sayid in a burst of anger in Sayid's flash-sideways predicament.

Mikhail getting shot right in the eye was incredible, considering I wasn't even thinking about that Mikhail at all anymore.

How are they going to weave all of this together? I suppose we'll have to wait, watch and see.