Messages in a Bottle: LOST Thoughts

While last night's episode ("The Long Con") focused more on Sawyer's plan to con the castaways and gain control of the guns (and therefore the tribe), there wasn't much to speculate or theorize on, compared to other recent episodes (mysterious black electricity-laden smoke, weird Virgin Mary fantasies, cursed numbers, and ominous computers).

However, a few things did manage to pop out at me:

The book that Locke is handling (upside-down no less) in the hatch as Sawyer comes in is An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce, which recounts the story of a man condemned to death by hanging at Owl Creek Bridge, only to escape when the rope breaks. However, the story's twist ending reveals that the entire story is imagined in the moments between being pushed off the bridge and his neck breaking. Does this mean that our castaways are in purgatory? Or that the events we are watching are merely imagined (by whom?) during the plane crash?

The waitress in the diner (where Sawyer meets with his partner) is none other than Kate's mom, played again by Beth Broderick. While her appearance is limited to telling us about the diner's chicken salad (made only with white meat and no celery!), it's yet another indication of how the castaways' lives intersected before the crash.

Hurley finds a manuscript for a book on the island called Bad Twin (by apparently dead castaway Gary Troup) and begins reading it. Hmmm, parallels to the symbolic uses of doubles and mirror images on the island perhaps? In a sign of continuing corporate synergy, Disney sister company Hyperion Books will be releasing the book on May 2nd.

Hooded Charlie. Charlie is working with Sawyer on his con and it was he who faked the abduction of Sun... but he declines the offer of the Virgin Mary (and the heroin it contains) when Sawyer offers it to him as payment. So he's evil but not using then? The only time Charlie was seen wearing his hood was early on in the show when he was using but now it seems to represent his journey to the dark side. Which means: who sent the vision to him about saving Aaron? And did it want him to save the Aaron... or kill him?

Next week: a stranger--possibly one of the Others--is captured, Sayid sees himself as a "torturer," and the numbers on the counter tick down to zero...