Destiny=Fickle Bitch. Got it.

4.11 "Cabin Fever"

This episode was really good. There was a minimal amount of Ben being cryptic, and a lot of interesting connections were revealed. At first I thought this was going to lean in the direction of "this is all in Locke's head" (because of kid-Locke drawing the smoke monster) even though the Darlton has repeatedly assured that this isn't in anybody's head. But it didn't swing that way. The "Locke is the chosen one" thing is interesting. So now I'm wondering three things:

1) Was everyone who landed on the island chosen to be there?
or
2) Was the plane crash just a means of getting Locke on the island and everyone else was just unfortunate enough to be dragged along?
and
3) Was Richard Alpert expecting John to have some sort of time displacement issue, like Desmond does, or some other ability that allows him to see his entire time line? Is that what the questions about what things John owned were getting at?

I've also decided that, even though it's annoyed me in the past, I'm okay with Locke being the new Ben as long as Ben stops being Ben. Because otherwise there are just two Bens and that's overkill. Ben seemed to be less Ben in this episode. I guess maybe if Locke is the new Ben then Ben is the new Richard Alpert.

This is one of those episodes that seems to bring up more questions than answers, but I guess that's every episode, so I should qualify that statement. There's the annoying type, where the events of the episode only make you re-ask the big question of "What the hell is going on?" (or possibly just "What?"). And then there's the not-as-annoying type, where the questions are small, like "Is Claire dead?" and "What's the significance of backgammon?" and "How are Richard Alpert and Abbadon related?" and "When will we get back to Desmond having more than one line per episode?".

I was also pleased to see that this episode conformed to the Jack-only-has-one-scene-in-this-episode-so-it-has-to-involve-him-talking-to-someone-in-the-makeshift-kitchen formula. I wonder if that's been addressed by the Darlton in the commentaries.

Oh yeah, what words did Hurley say right before Locke woke him up?* It sounded like "Metal Mars", but I can't make any sense of that. Dammit. I might actually have to venture onto the various theory sites and discussion boards to find out what he really said.

*After some investigation (turning on the CC), I found out that Hurley said "Mallomars". I guess it was meant to be a joke, rather than a clue.