Spoilers ahead… Don’t read this if you haven’t seen “Enter 77”
Very good episode. A few predictable things (notably the ending, after John entered 77), but overall, a good episode.
A few thoughts, based on what we saw tonight:
The One-Eyed Man, (I think his name was Mikael) was probably doing what he could to fix communications between the island and the outside world. The station was important enough that Ms. Klugh told The One-Eyed Man to shoot her so that Sayid, Kate and Locke wouldn’t have any leverage over them. Why would that be?
With no leverage over The One-Eyed Man, Kate, Sayid and Locke should have been in a weaker position. I think that’s what Ms. Klugh was counting on. I think she was trying to keep them from figuring out how to communicate with the outside world.
Sure, the communication links were broken, but sooner or later someone on the outside was going to figure that out and probably fix it. As far as the people who are in communication with The Others know, everything is status quo.
Are The Others keeping up a ruse? Trying to keep up appearances that whatever they’re working on is proceeding as planned?
I think that’s a reasonable explanation. Had Locke actually been able to communicate with the outside world, the people The Others had been communicating with would probably do something, and come to investigate. I think its entirely possible The Others haven’t told the outside world about the plane crash in the hopes that whatever they’re doing can proceed as planned.
Any other thoughts about why Ms. Klugh wanted The One-Eyed Man to shoot her? I don’t think she would have said a single thing about who she was, or why she was there, so I’m not sure what other explanation (than the one above) makes any sense.
It makes you wonder why Ms. Klugh was still dressed like we last saw her…I mean, the Others don’t seem to be keeping up the whole rag-tag image thing (dirty/torn clothes, etc.) behind the scenes, so why would Mikael be dressed Dharma as well?
Part of the answer is likely that Mikael and Klugh knew that Kate/Sayid/Locke were coming in the first place. Even then, Kate’s seen them before, so why keep up the ruse?
Next thing, concerning the self-destruct. They had to have known what the C4 was for. If the place was valuable, why wouldn’t they (the Others or Sayid/Locke/Kate) remove the detonators? I think it reasons that no one on the Others knows how to play chess (I’m taking Mikael at his word here), so they never knew how to fire everything up. However, that also means that whomever manned “The Flame” also was a pretty smart person, ‘cos they’d have to beat the computer with little to no time in order to detonate the place.
Lastly…I think there needs to be a tribal council vote to not let Locke near any more computers…