i thought it was okay, the polar bear with the Dharma logo was good but i dont think ben has anything to do with the black smoke

Truly baffling.

I was confused a lot in that episode (though I enjoyed it). This was a "open up a big can of worms episode" and less of a character development episode. Reminds me a lot of the episode from Season 2 when we first met the Tailies. The Lost Universe just expanded again.

I was confused for a bit about the flash-backs. I didn't know, initially, if they were back or forward.

With Miles, I was worried at first that the ghost might be Walt's. But that turned out to be a wrong instinct.

Ben's man on their ship was a huge wtf? How did he get a man on some freighter? How are they communicating?

Who are these new people? What's up with the physicist?

And where the hell is Desmond?

I am truly perplexed. But enjoyed it a lot...

i really enjoyed this episode.

i think i know who the man on the freighter is. i think it's michael.

when miles was communicating with the 'ghost', the pictures looked like mr. eko... hmmmm....

one thing i absolutely LOVED in this episode was sawyer's interactions with ben. i love how sawyer pretty much has ben figured out and knows how ben loves to get inside peoples' heads, and he (sawyer) just goes along with it for a while and then kicks bens ass. sawyer is awesome.

i wish desmond could have been in this episode.

i loved how jack used the situation with the others from a while back with the 'rescuers'. brilliant.

I'm guessing the man on the boat is Michael - he's the only one who's been off the island in recent timnes. The reason Walt appeared "taller" is because time travels slower on the island than off it. I read in the Radio Times (strangely enough) that when Harold Perrineau had been told by the writers that he was coming back, they also said "5 years had passed". But Harold said he didn't understand what they were talking about when he read the script. He must have dropped a clanger by revealing that - 5 years have passed OFF the island, but only a few months on it.

Two subtle things interested me in the episode. One was the photo of Ben that Miles had - when was it taken, and where was it taken? Was it taken off or on the island? How did the freighter people get the photo? The other was Ben's response to Locke's "what is the monster?" question - I think he said "you don't want to know". This suggests that the monster's function and composition is in itself something frightening. This I think adds substance to the theory that the monster is made of people's worst fears or something similar.

I think the ghost that Miles exorcised is not someone we've met, or will meet. I think he'll be simply a Randy Nations sort of character - just someone who occasionally pops up in flashbacks just to link the Losties lives together.