First off, I just want to say this: Poor Juliet.

While I fully believed Jim (really? Jim? Sawyer’s so not a Jim) when he was telling Horace how he was over Kate and couldn’t even remember her face, you just knew the episode was ending with him finding out Kate was back on the island and that was all going out the door.

What is so frakkin’ amazing about Kate that makes the men flock to her? Juliet’s totally as badass and not nearly as self-conflicted. Being a brunette myself, I should feel more of a kinship to Kate, but I’m completely on Juliet’s side on this.

I can’t remember who said it (Steph, was it you?), but one of my friends in the past week wondered why Juliet is the woman everyone loves when Kate’s not around.

Did I mention that spoilers abound? Continue at your own risk.

I loved the whole Three Years Earlier/Three Years Later aspect of tonight’s episode. I’ve grown so used to the back and forth in the episodes, from the flashbacks of the first couple seasons to the flash-forwards last season. And I loved how we got the Oceanic 6 one week, Locke the second week and then the folks still left on the island in this third week.

Speaking of, why the heck do we have to wait two weeks for the next ep? What’s up with that? Grr.

OK, so I’m not gonna recap so much as raise the issues that occurred to me:

• Sawyer was in FULL nickname mode tonight. When he called Faraday “Plato,” I almost fell off the sofa laughing. Brilliant.

• When Reiko Aylesworth was crying over her dead husband, I did, indeed, yell out, “So Tony really IS dead!”

• Now we know why Faraday was helping in the excavation project near the frozen donkey wheel when Marvin Candle was examining the project a few episodes back. He was newly thrown back into the past. But why didn’t we see much of him tonight in the “Three Years Later” portion? Are we going to get a Faraday-centric episode? (I would love love love that, by the way.) It was utterly creep-tastic, however, when he spied the young Charlotte and stared at her.

• If you can’t change what happens anyway, what is the point of anything? It’s a conundrum.

• How cool was the scene between Sawyer and Alpert? I mean, really? I have a feeling that until the experience with Locke and now Sawyer, Alpert didn’t really know the full power of the island’s time-travel abilities. Or I’m totally wrong and he’s just surprised that others are aware. But he really didn’t seem to know when Locke came upon him.

• Alpert obviously was the leader of the Others for quite some time. Why did he relinquish the position to Ben and, possibly, before that to Widmore? Was it simply that Jacob told him to?

• If Charlotte’s body disappeared because she was no longer living and couldn’t move with the island through time, what does that mean about Christian Shepherd’s status? He’s not alive, at least not in the sense we consider being alive. But he wouldn’t have time-hopped with Locke and the others if he were dead, it seems.

• How mad were you that they time-hopped right after seeing the back of the massive four-toed statue???????????? I mean, on a scale of 1-10, were you at about 25?

• How mad did you get at Sawyer for not telling Juliet what Jin was calling about?

• Speaking of Juliet, we now know that babies could be born on the island in the 1970s. She got there in the 2000s. Ben’s revolution happened when, the 1990s? Was it the poison gas that caused them to be unable to have children? Was it something Widmore did when he left? Was it something the Dharma folks did that caused it, and thus caused the Others & Ben to do the poison gas attack?

• How can you not love Juliet? She’s a doctor. She can fix a car. She has deadly aim with a rifle. She’s totally pretty. She’s completely badass. Kate’s claim to fame is blowing up her father and crying. OK, she’s pretty good with a gun, too. But can she fix a VW van and then go deliver a breach baby by C-section? Hmmm? Yeah, didn’t think so.

So, what did you all think?