I thought it was a great episode, maybe one of the best of the season in terms of character development. The keyword here was confruntation:
- between Sawyer and Miles (mirroring their 3 year old friendship)
- between Kate and Claire (cathartic rage followed by redemption)
- between MIB/Locke and just about everyone - Claire, Sawyer, Kate
- between Widmore and Sawyer (wouldn't have mind if Sawyer would have asked W. more questions, but he didn't really care)
- between Sawyer and Charlotte (OK, we didn't really need that one, but it was fun)
What I liked about this episode is that people finally started talking to eachother, and they all stayed in character. Sawyer was the same conman we all love, Kate was circumspect to Locke just like she has always been, and expecting protection from Sayid (they always had a big brother - little sister type of relationship). Mad Claire was a cross between old Claire and Rousseau and Sayid is obviously not himself, but that is to be expected. All the dialogue exchanges were logical (unlike other times). The Temple people did want to know what happened to the others and they were scared and confused, not just acting like the usual redshirts.
And I liked the off-island stuff and I don't think they're just throwing us the character connections for no reason, just to make Charlotte appear or something. Claire-Kate-Sawyer-Miles-Charlie-Charlotte, Sayid-Jin and Locke-Ben-Arzt seem to be the current connections, but I suppose they will all be reunited by the end of the season in the flashsideways world, and there will be a good reason for that, not just coincidences. Or at least that's what I think they want to do.
I had my moment of frustration during episodes 4-6, since I didn't like the way they were reinventing the story of the numbers, but now I have faith that the show is going in the right direction. And the Richard centric episode is just around the corner.
And we did get a few hints as to the intentions of Widmore, and it seems to blow up the Jacob good MIB evil stereotype, since he seems more evil than both of them. And we did get one hint to an answer: who was in the boat that Juliet shot in season 5, as the answer seems to be Widmore's men.