Five-Legged Iguana

LOST Season 3 Episode 10 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”

What is it about Lost and bad fathers?
Fathers on this show are conmen, drunks, abusive, crooked, or coldly controlling. Now you can add “absentee” to the list.
As it turns out, Hurley’s dad (played by Cheech Marin; too bad Chong wasn’t along for the ride) abandoned the family 17 years ago, and suddenly pops back into their now nouveau riche life to straighten out the son he walked out on all those years ago (and have some really long overdue sex with the missus).
And even as we get another peek into Hurley’s past, the island story (which I said last review was moving at a snail’s pace) begins to chug slowly along as Kate and Sawyer make it back to camp, finally getting Locke and Sayid off their a$$es and on the road to rescuing Jack.
So, although I was kind of expecting there was more of a story to the meteor hitting the fast food joint (and what happened to Marguerite Moreau?! She ran off with DJ Qualls? Come on! I thought there was more of a story there too.*), this episode does play better than last week’s, and not just because the island story is gradually revving up.
We also have nice little scenes of Jin being taught English (first by Sun, then by Sawyer), as well as the payoff to the whole “let’s get the VW running,” as Sawyer gets back to camp with a whole lotta beer and no one to share it with.
And now that they’ve finally informed Danielle that her daughter may very well be alive, I should mention something that didn’t occur to me till a few days after I’d written my review of episode 7 (“Not In Portland”): if Alex really is Ben’s biological daughter (and not simply adopted), then why is it that Ben came into the survivors’ lives through his “misfortune” of getting caught in one of Rousseau’s traps? If Ben really is Alex’s biological father, then Danielle must know who he is, shouldn’t she? Or was she in on it? Did she knowingly allow Ben to insert himself into the survivors’ lives because she struck some kind of deal with Ben? (I have always thought that if Ben is such a smart guy, how stupid was he that he got caught in one of Rousseau’s traps? And what, he was traipsing around the jungle all by his lonesome? The all-powerful leader of the Others? I dunno…)
Or is that how far gone Danielle is that she can’t even recognize the father of her own child? Or maybe the Others’ Alex is just a young woman who happens to be named Alex and isn’t actually Rousseau’s daughter. Was there even a real Alex to begin with? Maybe Rousseau’s just completely loony and this stolen baby episode never really happened.
So many questions…
Then again, this is Lost.

* And I love Marguerite Moreau! Please tell me we’ll see her again. Since we see the point when Hurley leaves for Australia in this episode, the only chance we’ll see Starla again is if we do see the events leading to DJ Qualls running away with her…

Parting shot: Still waiting for Paulo and Nikki to make that significant contribution… What’s his excuse this week? Oh, yeah. He was gonna get some bananas. Right.

Parting shot 2: Hurley should really think twice before chasing Vincent out into the jungle. I mean, I love the dumb dog, but he was one of the key factors in Shannon’s death by Ana-Lucia…