Lost [1.9-1.12]

Things are picking up steam now.

SPOILER WARNING















Solitary: We gets Sayid's back story as an Iraqi interrogator who falls for a female Shiite captive. The writers also bludgeon the viewer with themes of karma. Again, they're not much for subtlety in this show.
Sayid sets out nominally to map out the island, but mainly out of guilt for torturing Sawyer. He finds the French woman (from the transmission in the Pilot episode). Her name is Danielle Rousseau, and she was part of a seafaring science expedition that crashed (I think that's now 3 separate ship/plane crashes: this, the wreckage in the cave, and the Lost flight). She killed everyone in her party, either because the island drove them or her mad (the latter seems most likely). She captures and tortures Sayid, and informs him that there are other humans on the island whom she hasn't heard (whispers in the jungle) but not heard. When Sayid escapes, he hears the voices. Or was it just the wind?

Raised by Another - Claire, the pregnant lady, was flying to LA to offer her child for adoption. She did so at the encouragement of a psychic who warned of great (and vague) danger to the child were she to do otherwise. It seems he knew the flight would crash. A member of the party (Ethan) turns out not to have been on the flight. He encounters Claire and Charlie in the jingle and ...

All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues - ... kidaps them. (side note: what a lame title) More back story on Jack, who refused to lie to save his father's job after the latter botched a surgery while drunk. It appears this drove the elder doctor into depression and alcoholism, and eventualy to his death. Jack gets his ass kicked by Ethan who ominously warns him not to keep following. They don't find Claire, but they barely save Charlie, who remembers nothing. Boone and Locke stumble upon a metal enclosure while searching for Claire.

Whatever the Case May Be: They seem remarkably unconcerned about Claire this spisode. They also don't expand on the metal enclosure, although there' s a brief scene with Boone, Locke, and an axe, immplying they're still working on busting in but haven't told anyone.
What do we have lurking in the jungle now? A huge mysterious beast, along with more pedestrian ones. A crazy French woman with guns and electricity, and the skill to set tripwires and bear traps. And a group of kidnappers. This episode begins with Kate picking fruit in the jungle by herself.
Sawyer and Kate find a couple corpses from the plane wreck in a lagoon along with the U.S. marshall's lock box. We learn that Kate was a con artist and bank robber, and this case contains a small model airplane that belonged to Kate's former lover whom she killed. She staged a bank robbery just to recover this trinket from a safe deposit box. Was this robbery the crime for which she was being taken to prison, or the murder, or both?

The big news is new people on the island. It bugs me when there's a major event one episode, and the next episode everyone seems blase about it. Why the heck is Charlie not scouring the jungle for Kate? And with all the freaky shit going on, people are still not too bothered about staying in large groups or carrying weapons.

Open issues:

1. What's the big beast?
2. Why is there a polar bear on a tropical island?
3. What else does Danielle Rousseau know about the island?
   
4. Did anyone in the tail section survive?
5. What led Kate to kill her lover?
   
6. How did Locke regain use of his legs?
7. How did they all survive the crash?
8. Did Claire's psychic know about the crash, and if so how?
   
9. Who are Ethan and the kidnappers, and what do they want with Claire? How were they able to make Charlie lose his memory?
10. What's in the metal enclosure?