Watching Lost, I realized tonight, is like being repeatedly punched in the brain (not the head, but directly in the brain).

Not that I mean that in a negative sense.

Benjamin Linus is probably the most maddening character on television. Ever. EVAR.

And there’s no one I enjoy watching more (well, Fringe‘s Walter Bishop comes close, but for totally different reasons).

For this episode to center around Ben Linus was so long in coming and filled in so many freakin’ gaps, it’s wonderful.

To quickly recap what we learned:
• Ben didn’t remember what happened to him as a child (he knew that he was helped in the temple, it appears, but he could have been told that by Richard or Charles or anyone, really)
• Charles was forced to leave the island (by whom, exactly? That still wasn’t clear; I hope we get a Widmore flashback) because he left the island repeatedly and fathered a child with an “outsider.” (Which means that Ellie, whoever she is, is not Penny’s mother.)
• Rousseau was supposed to die (according to Richard) and so Alex should have, too. One could argue that Alex was, indeed, supposed to die, and so she did, in the end. She had to die because otherwise Ben never would have listened to Locke. And she wasn’t supposed to die until she did, because she wouldn’t have been able to strangle Ben and Ben wouldn’t have been as attached to Alex as he was (in part because he was feeling guilty about his causing her death).
• Locke is somehow utterly plugged into the island now, at least as much as Ben ever was.
• A bunch of other people on the plane were doing their damnedest to get to the island, too. Do they work for Widmore?
• We haven’t seen the last of Frank Lapidus, thank the Gods of Kobol.
• Richard Alpert seriously doesn’t age. He’s not like that because he’s jumping around in time. He looks exactly the same every single time.
• Smokey is somehow judge, jury and executioner and has been for a really, really, REALLY long time. Really long. Really. As in lots and lots of years, decades, centuries (millennia?).

What we still don’t know:
• Why Alpert doesn’t age. Is he the personification of Smokey? (I know that theory is all the rage, and it sounds more and more likely almost every day.) And, speaking of aging, why does Widmore appear to have aged far faster than anyone else? Or does it just seem that way because Alpert does not age and we keep seeing them together?
• What, exactly, is Smokey?
• What is the temple?
• How did Widmore travel back and forth to the island? We know about the Frozen Donkey Wheel, but that only shows how to leave the island.
• Why did Widmore leave the island in the first place (not when he was banished, but when he met Penny’s mom, etc.)?
• What happened to the Dharma village? It’s been abandoned far longer than the amount of time that’s elapsed since Alex was killed there. WHAT IS UP? WHEN are Locke & Ben & Sun?
• How are they going to get back to 1977? Or get the Losties from ’77 back to the present (or whatever time they’re in).
• How did Ethan turn from being Amy & Horace’s son into a willingly cold-blooded killer at such a young age? It’s more than just the Purge. Was he taken from his parents before the Purge? How did Ethan join the Others???

A last thought on tonight’s ep:

I almost jumped through the TV screen when they made us believe Ben killed Penny. It also gave a second dimension to the scene where he doesn’t kill Rousseau; the whole reason he can’t kill Penny is because she’s a mommy. He couldn’t kill Rousseau because she’s a mommy. His mommy died giving birth; no matter what he is, he can’t deny any child – any child – his or her mother. Even if that child never knows who her mother is (which Alex didn’t almost her entire life).

Nothing can stand between Desmond and Penny, so far as I’m concerned. NOTHING. You hear that Lindelof & Cuse??? YOU HEAR ME?????

Sorry, got a little carried away there.

Oh, and one more thing: Loved Ben sporting those floppy ’80s hairstyles. Way to rock a ‘do. How fashionable, despite being in the middle of nowhere.