The Lost Lowdown

OK, so The Others said Sayid was sick, infected. "We believe he has been (claimed)...There is a darkness growing in him and once it reaches his heart everything your friend once was will be gone."

So: The Sickness, Vaccine, Quarantine

Then: Locke, Christian

And also: The French Team, Yemi, Claire(?)

But: Ben's mother, Kate's horse, Walt

The diagnostic: The Ash could be Smokey indicator, which suggests Smokey and infection are one and the same. However, Sayid seemed to not have a reaction. The electrodes were reminiscent of Rousseau's treatment of Sayid but I can't think of any connections to electricity or hot pokers in the past. It seemed like test 1 was negative, test 2 was positive and test 3 confirmed it.

I tell ya, these Others and their tests. It reminded me very much of Alpert testing young Locke. (Smoke Monster drawing in that scene...Hmmm...HTF did 10 year old Locke have a sense of Smokey?)

(slight non-sequiter)>Makes me think Radzinsky put 'Quarantine on the inside of The Hatch of his own paranoid initiative while, shot hisself when he was infected (or under the delusional belief he was).

Did Bob "Smokey" Loophole also possess/impersonate Adam and Eve after their deaths?

It seems that in some cases the dead person brought back to life and is just slowly taken over by the darkness (French team, Claire, Sayid) and others Smokey actually makes a copy of the body and inhabits that body (Locke, possibly Christian, possibly Yemi).

Walt, the horse, and Ben's mother seem like Smokey has an ability to project a person memories of person or animal into a vision of that person or animal. (Even if it's only a picture in Ben's case.)

The Sickness is back baby!!!! And in a big way. I find it weird how hard it is to tell when the show is done with a particular mystery. I thought we were done with the sickness in season 2 when it seemed apparent that there was no sickness, then I though that the sickness mystery was solved in the constant, then I thought we were done with the sickness after This Place is Death but now it seems that the sickness is going to be a key part of this season.

Damon and Carlton have promised a zombie season for years. I'm starting to think they weren't kidding.

Yeh they even use the term zombie this episode, lol. Damn writers messing with us.

Just to refresh everyone's memories, this is from one of the official podcasts:

Ben's mother Emily = "Apparition."
Sawyer's wild boar = "Animal."
Medusa Spider = "Monster."
Hurley bird = "Oh, I'm not gonna comment on that."
Dave = "Figment of imagination slash apparition."
Yemi = "Monster."
Mikhail's cat Nadia = "Animal. And coincidence."
Walt = "Walt the person is a person. But there are apparitions of Walt that may not be Walt, and also monster-related."
Boone in Locke's dream = "Dream."
Jack = Damon: "Heh. Jack is an apparition. That's gonna be the big twist at the end of this season. He's not only in the future, but he's not real." Carlton: "No, no. He's making a joke!" Damon: "Yes."
Kate's horse (and Yemi and Christian Shepherd)= Damon: "We have this, this is actually a funny story. We have this board in the um, in the, in the room. With all the actors in the writers room. With all the actors who are on the show. All of the Oceanic 815ers. But then, all of the sort of recurs, like Penny Widmore, and Charles Widmore and..." Carlton: "We have their headshots. So we can keep track of who we have on the show." Damon: "And Matthew Abaddon and... yeah, so everybody. They go onto a door that says "deceased"; once they die, we move them over there. And then there's the door that says "undead". And on the undead door there's only three pictures. One of them is Christian Shephard, and one of them is Yemi. And the other one is..." Carlton: "Kate's horse. Just a picture of a horse. So Kate's horse is undead."