Namasté, Initial Reaction

There were a lot of little touches/payoffs in this episode. While I liked it, I've been finding myself a little, shall we say, lost, in these past few episodes. I started to wonder why that was, and I couldn't figure it out at first, but then I realized that most of my favorite characters have hardly been in these episodes, or even, in this season all that much. We have no idea where Desmond is or what happened to him and/or Penny and little Charlie. Sayid can be seen on screen but has said little to nothing this entire season. Locke has spent a lot of time dead. And although I like Sawyer as a character a lot, and do enjoy how much his character has grown and developed throughout the series, I'm spending too much time anticipating the impending doom of Kate making a move on him to enjoy it as much as I want to.

Questions:

• Is Christian Shephard dead or alive? Can we just find out already?
• How did smokey get into the barracks?
• Who appeared behind Sun when Christian was talking to her? Was it Claire?
• Why are there Dharma props in Othersville in the future?
• Was the purge somehow avoided in the past?
• Is Sayid going to kill young Benjamin Linus?
• Why doesn't Ben remember Sayid in the future? Or does he?
• Where is Annie? Is she still on the island at this point?
• Where is Daniel? Is he dead or did he leave the island?
• Why was Radzinski designing The Swan station? Has the incident happened yet?
• What happened to Radzinski? Is he really dead? Did he actually kill himself or was he murdered by someone? Did Kelvin know this?
• Why didn't Sun, Ben and Locke travel back in time to the 70s with the others, Jack, Kate and Hurley?
• Why is Sun in the present?
• Has Ben already spoken with Richard Alpert at this point in the 70s?
• Where the hell is Claire?
• Where the hell are Rose and Bernard and the other red shirts?
• Where the hell is Vincent?!
• How is Ethan's last name Rom and not Goodspeed?
• Has the future been changed by something that happened in the past?
• What were the whispers saying?
• How did Ben know that they had to build a runway?

Notes:

• It was really cool to finally see Radzinski, however, I was a little disappointed with his character.
• Sawyer calling Jack out was long overdue. Sawyer is a better leader than Jack ever was.
• Juliet making Kate sweat to show her who's in charge and with Sawyer now was also overdue.
• I'm a little confused with Radzinski designing The Swan station. Okay, so he designed it. He was part of the Dharma Initiative. So, then, why would he need to "trick" the system to fake a lockdown and draw a blast door map of the stations on the island that can only be seen under a black light? This just doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't he already know about all the stations considering he's actually designing one? Shouldn't he have a map of the island and know where they all are? Why would he need to keep notes on all of it?
• Ethan is Amy and Horace's son, very nice touch. I still don't see him being 27 years old in 2004 though.
• I'm so glad Frank Lapidus is back, though I'm kind of missing the goatee and Hawaiian shirt.
• Jack is a workman. Priceless.
• Juliet and Kate are mechanics. Also priceless.
• Apparently the numbers transmission can be heard as the Ajira Airways plane is going down, though I'm going to have to go back and give that one a second listen.
• Also, what kind of pilot do you think Lapidus is? He landed that damn plane on the runway.
• Phil is really annoying. I hate that dude.
• Sun knocking the snot out of Ben was awesome.

I could really do without the lame love quadrangle. Please, just stop. With that said, I'm getting more and more excited about this season. It seems as if the momentum toward the finale is building with each episode and it feels as though something big is going to happen soon. I just hope it's not both Sayid and Desmond dying.