Well, it's been eight long months since my last recap of LOST, but I'm excited to get back in the swing of things. At least for the next eight weeks.

Flashforward:

We open on a vintage Camaro busting through a pile of produce - it's a high-speed chase. Someone is watching the chase on TV as he adds vodka to orange juice. If anyone was surprised when the camera panned up to show Jack watching TV, well, then you haven't been watching this show long enough. Anyway, now we're actually watching the chase again. The car slams into what looks like a flea market and cops surround the car with their guns. Out of the Camaro comes Hurley, hands up. As the cops slam him up against a wall to cuff him, he screams "Don't you know who I am? I'm one of the Oceanic Six!"

Later, Hurley is in an interrogation room, being questioned by a cop who looks rather familiar. He shows Hurley a surveillance tape from a convenience store. Hurley is at the counter about to pay for something at the counter when he sees something that freaks him out. He backs out of the store, knocking over a display, and gets into his car, speeding away. The cop asks Hurley what he saw that freaked him out, but Hurley refuses to answer. Then the cop tells Hurley that his old partner was on flight 815 - Ana-Lucia. He asks Hurley if he knew her, but Hurley lies and says he did not. The cop plays the tape again and tells Hurley to watch it again, then leaves the room for a minute. Hurley looks at the one-way mirror in the interrogation room but it's turned into a window, and beyond the window, Charlie is floating in water. "They need you" is written on Charlie's hand. The window breaks and water pours in, flooding the room. Hurley freaks out and the cop returns. Of course, there is no water - Hurley imagined the whole thing. The cop threatens Hurley that if he's going crazy, he's got no problem throwing Hurley back in the mental hospital. Hurley throws his arms around the cop and thanks him.

Later, Hurley is back in the mental hospital, wearing a robe, playing Connect Four like the good old days. A nurse comes to give him his meds and tells him he's got a visitor. It's Lance Reddick from Oz and The Wire! He tells Hurley that his name is Matthew Abbadon and that he's an attorney for Oceanic Airlines. He offers to put Hurley in a better facility with a view of the ocean, but Hurley turns down the offer - he likes it where he is. He says he doesn't want to see the ocean. Then, Hurley becomes suspicious of Abbadon and asks to see a business card. Abbadon doesn't have one, which makes Hurley even more suspicious. Then Abbadon asks, "Are they alive?" Hurley starts freaking out and goes to tell the nurse that someone is after him. But when he turns to point out Abbadon, he's gone.

Later still, Hurley is sitting at a picnic table on the grounds of the mental hospital (still in his robe. Is that really how mental hospitals are?) when another patient tells him that someone has been staring at him. He points out the person, and it's Charlie! With a kicky new haircut and some sweet aviator shades! Hurley starts to freak out again but Charlie tries to get him to calm down. We find out that Charlie is who Hurley saw in the convenience store, which caused him to run off. Charlie says, "You know that they need you." Hurley convinces himself that he's imagining the whole thing and closes his eyes. When he opens them, Charlie is gone.

Later still, Hurley is playing shooting hoops in the hospital gym when Jack comes to visit. This isn't the drugged-up bearded future-Jack we saw in the season finale, but a much more together future-Jack. He tells Hurley that he's working again and that the crash made him a celebrity; he still gets asked to sign autographs (ed. note: seriously?) and he's thinking of growing a beard to make himself less unrecognizable. He and Hurley start playing a game of Horse (Hurley kicks Jack's ass) and then Hurley asks Jack why he came. Jack asks if Hurley is "going to tell" and Hurley doesn't answer. Jack goes to leave and Hurley apologizes to him, saying he should've gone with Jack instead of Locke (more on that later). Jack says it's no big deal. Hurley asks if they should go back to the island, because "it" will do whatever it takes to bring them back. Jack says he's never going back to the island and Hurley tells him "Never say never." Jack leaves.

On the Island:

We pick up right where we left off. As a reminder, Hurley, Sayid, Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, and Bernard are at the beach. Locke took off after throwing a knife into Naomi's back. Desmond and Charlie (RIP) were at the underwater station. And everyone else is at the radio tower.

At the beach, Hurley calls Jack on his walkie talkie and finds out that rescue is on his way. Elated, he tells Bernard that he won the lottery but that it was a curse. Now that he's believed dead, all the money will be gone, and Hurley will be free. He's so happy that he does a cannonball into the water. But when he comes up, he sees Desmond returning to shore, sans Charlie. Desmond tells the gang at the beach that Charlie is dead and that his final message was "Not Penny's Boat." Sawyer wants to warn Jack over the walkie but Sayid doesn't think it's a good idea, as their communications may be monitored by the people on the ship. Hurley takes the walkie and throws it into the ocean., making the decision himself. The gang all grab guns and head off into the jungle to find Jack and the rest at the radio tower.

At the radio tower, Ben (still tied to a tree and bloodied after Jack beat the snot out of him) tells Rousseau that everyone will who is with Jack's group will die. He asks her to take Alex and hide, but Rousseau is just pissed that Ben called Alex his daughter.

Jack and Kate discuss Locke. Jack says that if Locke returns, he will kill him. The phone rings and Jack answers it. It's someone named George Minkowski, who says that the signal is weak and wants to speak to Naomi to fix it. Jack doesn't want to tell Minkowski that Naomi is dead so he says that she's away gathering firewood. But when he turns around, Naomi is gone. I guess she wasn't so dead after all. She and Mikhail are like the X-Men! Ben witnessed her escape but didn't tell anyone.

Rousseau and Kate both see different trails of blood. Jack says he'll go with Rousseau to track Naomi but Kate wants to follow the other trail, thinking that Naomi left a dummy trail. Jack says that Naomi is too hurt to take the time, and Kate agrees. She hugs Jack and goes to lead the rest back to the beach.

Jack, Rousseau, and a captive Ben follow the trail but it ends. Kate was right, this was a dummy trail. Jack goes to check the phone and realizes that it's missing. Ben tells Jack that he saw Kate take the phone when they hugged. Meanwhile, Kate isn't leading the rest to the beach - she's following her blood trail. The phone rings and it's Minkowski, asking where Naomi is. Kate hangs up on him. Drops of blood rain down on her from above and then Naomi leaps from a tree, tackling her from above and holding a knife to her throat.

She accuses the survivors of trying to kill her but Kate convinces her that it was only Locke, not the rest of them. Naomi takes the phone and calls Minkowski. She fixes the weak signal and tells him that she was injured from the tree branch when she fell. She doesn't mention the knife wound. She tells Minkowski to tell her sister that she loves her, and then Naomi dies. For real. I think.

The group from the beach, meanwhile, are still trekking through the dark towards the radio tower. Sawyer is being all cute and nice and is trying to talk to Hurley about the death of his buddy, but Hurley doesn't want to talk. Eventually, Hurley falls behind and gets lost. Then, he sees Jacob's cabin. He sneaks up to it and looks in the window. He sees Jack's dad, Christian Shepherd (!) sitting in a rocking chair and then an eye, presumably Jacob's, appears in the window. Hurley freaks again and runs away with closed eyes, but when he opens his eyes, the cabin is right in front of him again! He closes his eyes and when he opens them, the cabin is gone. Hurley begins to scream for help, and Locke shows up.

Hurley tells Locke about Charlie's death and Locke says that if they allow everyone to go with the people on the ship, Charlie will have died for nothing. Eventually they catch up with Sayid and the rest, and also Jack and the rests of the survivors (minus Kate). They all meet up at the cockpit, which we haven't seen for a long, long time. Sun and Jin have a joyous reunion, as do Rose and Bernard. Claire (in a very, very bad wig - ick) is looking all around for Charlie. Hurley tearfully informs her that Charlie is dead, and the two of them hold each other, sobbing.

Jack knocks Locke down to the ground and pulls a gun on him. Locke says "You're not going to shoot me" but Jack PULLS THE TRIGGER! Whoa! Unfortunately for Jack but fortunately for Locke, the gun isn't loaded. Jack starts to beat the crap out of Locke until some other people drag him off.

Locke says that everything he's done is in the best interests of the group, and he says it's not in their best interest to leave. He says that he's going to the Others' barracks, which are now empty, because there's some degree of security there. He says "If you want to live, come with me." Jack doesn't think anyone will go with Locke, but Hurley goes with him, because of Charlie's message. So does Claire, Karl, Alex, Ben, and some extras. Bernard asks Rose if she wants to go with Locke, since she once said that she doesn't want to leave the island because of her health. Rose says, "I'm not going anywhere with that man." Sawyer also goes with Locke, telling Kate that he's doing what he can to survive. Locke and his group leave.

Later, Jack and Kate are alone, looking at the cockpit and reminiscing about the time they went there with Charlie, right after the crash. They hear a noise, which turns out to be a helicopter. They see someone parachute down to the island and HOLY SH*T it's Jeremy Davies from Rescue Dawn and Secretary!

He asks "Are you Jack?"

Dun dun DUN...

Questions to Consider:

1. The "Oceanic Six." Obviously, three of them are Jack, Kate, and Hurley. I wonder who the other three are, and how they got off, and why nobody else did. And why everyone who ended up off the island seems so miserable?

2. I wonder why Naomi covered and said that she was just injured from the branch.

3. Who does Matthew Abbadon really work for?

4. What is the deal with Charlie showing up? If he's just a figment of Hurley's imagination, how did the other dude point him out to Hurley?

5. Why did Hurley lie about knowing A-L? Maybe the Oceanic Six told the world that they were the only survivors from the get-go. Because when the cop asked about her, he specifically said, "Maybe you remember her from the plane?" but he didn't mention knowing her on the island. Maybe the story was that the plane crashed, six people survived, and that's it.

6. WHY was Christian in Jacob's cabin? And why does the cabin appear and disappear?