LOST: Recon... Sawyer's struggles, Smokey's mom-issues, and the Mirror-Motif

"Surprised?" Detective James Ford replied sarcastically, in what was possibly one of my favorite Lost openers ever.

I loved this episode, even though I was seriously displeased at Sawyer and Charlotte hooking up... I mean, what? I've never really liked her though, so you'll have to excuse my being indignant over that bit. (She always seemed like such a BE-och, smirking secretly over the fact that Daniel was hopelessly in love with her...) Otherwise though, I loved seeing cop Sawyer in his other life -- the same person, but different choices. I also enjoyed the interactions with Miles. Do we think he can talk to dead people in this reality?

The theme of mirrors reemerged again as well, but now I'm thinking that perhaps it's simply a device to emphasize that the two realities are mirror images... the same, but flip-flopped. Though that explanation still be a bit simplistic, since this reality is not just reversed but is also completely different. Example: The existence of Jack's son David. Regardless, it's a nice motif... maybe it's even a little more specific than that, like a leitmotif associated with Jacob, as established by the mirrors he used to watch the Candidates in the lighthouse.

Answers:

• Sawyer isn't really on Team Smokey, he's just a free agent right now. Or a loose cannon, however you want to look at it.

• Claire is crazy... at least according to Smokey-Locke. The Kate/Claire show-down was a little anticlimactic though, one minute Claire is clinging to Kate's hand and the next she's pulling a knife on her, only to be immediately disarmed and dismissed by a slap-happy Locke.
  

• Widmore was not coming to take Smokey-Locke off the island. Whether Widmore actually even wants his death is perhaps more questionable... that is what Sawyer assumed the goal was, but we don't actually know.

Our New Questions:

• Who is Smokey's mom? Obviously Real-Locke also had a psycho mom, but I'm assuming that Smokey was referring to his own alleged former status as human with this one.
  

• Did Smokey incite Claire to the little knife-episode? It occurs to me that he might have set it up to try to coax Kate into trusting him after he "saves" her. That would explain Claire's bipolar switcheroo, as well as her tearful contrition later. I don't trust the silky-smooth, puppy-dog-eyes Smokey-Locke one bit. "But I just want to leave..." Yeah right! You probably want to leave and take over the world, and turn it in to your own little smokey house of horrors. Well, not on our watch!!
  

• What's in the locked room on the sub? Personally, I thought that whole "oooooh it's a locked doooooor, that's tooooootally significant" thing seemed pretty contrived, but since it seems to be considered a nail-biter within the show I'll include it for good measure. People on the forums were guessing that Walt or Desmond were in there, but I figure it's some mystical weapon that nobody would ever have thought to expect.

Things referenced on the message boards that I had totally forgotten:

• Miles was hired to go to the island by Widmore through Naomi... Bram & Ilana grabbed him and told him not to go, that they were the good guys and he should come with them instead. This would seem to imply that Widmore is not on "Team Jacob."

• Apparently, at some point there was an auction in which Charles Widmore bought a journal that belonged to the first mate of the Black Rock. Does anybody remember this? I still don't, but the person posting seemed fairly certain of themselves.

• Sawyer mentioned Little House on the Prairie to Kate in Dharma-ville, and she laughed at him for it.
  

"Spoilers" from the message boards (take with a grain of salt, I'm not vouching for veracity):

• There's going to be an episode set entirely in 23 AD (that would be sweeeeeeet)

• Supposedly 8 of the 15 main characters are going to die. I don't want to know who even if it's a totally false, malicious rumor, so my interest in that spoiler ends here.

Next episode, Richard Revelations!! To repeat my prediction from last week: He was either a prisoner on some kind of transport ship, or "in a somewhat more gruesome/complicated twist, that he was a slaver whose ship crashed; his prisoners escaped and left him chained in his own hold, and he was freed by Jacob to redeem himself from the evil life he used to lead."

Let me know your thoughts and theories on this episode! And be sure to fill me in on anything I missed...