LOST: Where You Prove You're a Good Person By Stabbing Someone In The Chest

This was really half-and-half episode: half exciting and half boring; half revealing and half vague; half predictable and half unexpected.

Watching Sayid and Dogen fight was cool, but their conversations didn't really lead anywhere. We learned a little more about Locke-less Monster and Sayid's death, but those revelations actually raised more questions. I was 100% positive that Island Sayid was going to kill Dogen and Flash-sideways Sayid was going to kill Keamy, but the events that lead up to both were a bit of a surprise.

And I have to say: watching a world where Sayid and Nadia act like the platonic boy and girl buddies instead of ex-lovers is downright depressing.

DISCOVERIES

1. Apparently, both Jacob and Dogen had the ability to keep Smokey away.
2. Ilana sure knows her way around the Temple.
3. Sayid realizes that he's constantly being manipulated by other people, yet now he no longer cares.
4. In the X-world, the guys who took Jin away gave him to criminal Keamy.

OBSERVATIONS

1. Ben goes to save Sayid, the man who tried to kill him back in 1977.
   
2. Locke-less Monster didn't seem to keen on Kate coming with the Temple Massacre Survivors.
3. On the flip side, Kate seems fairly adaptable to her sudden situation.
   
4. Is Miles one of the luckiest characters on the show or what? We've had characters who died by walking the wrong way on the Island before; Miles has survived two attacks from the Freighter Mercenaries, time travel headaches and related events, living with the Dharma Initiative in 1977, the Incident, being captured by the Temple Others and now the Temple Massacre. I say this because Miles isn't exactly the thrill seeker that characters like Sawyer, Jack and Kate are.

QUESTIONS

1. If Dogen planned on Sayid killing Locke-less, why didn't it work?
2. If Dogen planned on Locke-less killing Sayid, why didn't he do it?
3. What was the significance of killing those who didn't want to join the Monster and stay at the Temple?
4. How could the Monster not know about the Lighthouse?
5. Claire was at the bottom of a pit; Sayid was at ground level in the Pool Room; considering that the Monster was trashing everything in it's path (as it promised to do), who had the real justification for being safe: Claire (who claimed her location protected her) or Sayid (who believed his deal with Locke-less protected him)?