I just finished watching tonight’s episode of Lost after bowling a crappy series that barely broke 300. Approximately three weeks ago, just after the last new episode, I correctly guessed which character wasn’t going to make it through tonight. Needless to say, I quickly forgot about my crappy bowling. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, stop reading and come back later. Otherwise…

While I’ve secretly been hoping Shannon would bite the dust for a long time, the writers did a really good job of making me feel sorry for her before they killed her. It looks like she really was a good person at one point in her life, and an unfortunate set of circumstances (plus a bitch of a step-mother) started her down the road to becoming the conniving bitch who conned “boyfriends” and Boone out of money. Her step-mom must really have been jealous of her relationship with her father to have totally cut her off. It was really sad to see that Boone didn’t believe that Shannon could make it on her own. Did anyone else get the feeling that his mother offered him that job just to get him out of New York so Shannon couldn’t stay with him, thus ruining her chance to pursue her internship? Such spite.

I still want to strangle Ana Lucia for being so over the top bitchy. I understand she’s trying to stay alive and all that, but she really needs to calm down a little. Although I kind of saw the setup for the final scene coming ahead of time, it didn’t really ruin the moment. It still had that “oh shit” value. I really think Sayid might just snap her neck at the beginning of next week’s episode and we’ll be down another regular. She killed an innocent person because she was too trigger happy to look at what she was shooting; maybe once that sinks in it will mellow her out.

There’s one thing about Shannon’s death that I don’t like. She was the most obvious tie to get Boone back as a guest star in flashbacks. I’d had heard before the season started that one of the actors couldn’t reach an agreement with the producers about their contract and so they decided to feature that person in a few episodes and then kill him/her off, never to be in the show again (including flashbacks). If Shannon really won’t be in the show anymore, it seems really unlikely that Boone will ever be back. It’s unfortunate because I liked his character and was sad to see him go last season. Still, making it back into the show twice after his character died is a pretty neat trick considering no one has been having dreams about him (think Providence).

Overall another great episode. Some people have complained it’s not as good as it used to be, but I still love Lost. Not seeing Jack or Kate tonight was a refreshing change. Looking forward to next week when we’ll learn the backstory of the tail section survivors.

Edit: I find it very interesting that Claire made a comment about how she hardly knows Charlie, yet Sayid had time to fall head over heals in love with Shannon.