Okay, I'm here, I'm alive.  Last week's recap of '?' got back-burnered so long by the time I revisted it, well it wasn't very appetizing.   But without further ado... here is "Three Minutes".

First of all, it wasn't three minutes,  okay?  It was two minutes.  Maybe they cut out the part where Walt said "I've been trying to call... didn't Shannon give you my messages?".  Or maybe they just don't have any temporal overisght in LOST's editing room.  For the record, this is not the only time disruption in three minutes.  When Charlie enters the hatch computer room to bug Eko the counter is at 108,  when he leaves a minute and twenty seconds later, it flips to 107.  We  know  it flipped to 108  exactly when Charlie entered the room.  Using that logic,  Michael's two minutes with Walt actually was almost three minutes,  in their warped universe.  Is this another mystery?  Okay, so I'm sounding a little crazy here.  Who knew.

Nitpicking aside, what do we have here.  Well, the writers had a tremendously tough job ahead of them.  They had to convince us that what Michael did was in some way justified.  Well, they didn't do that.  Instead,  Michael is a trigger happy, gullible, son-of-a-bleep with no idea at all how to tell a good lie.  Not only did they fail to build any sympathy for Mike,  they did it so poorly as to make Michael twice the villian he was to begin with.  And an idiot to boot. 

When the others tell Michael they will let him go if he rescues Henry and brings the "good" ones he believes them on their word along.  And asks them for a boat!  The same people who left him for dead in the middle of the ocean, and have been kidnapping tailies since they crashed.  Just because they let him see Walt doesn't mean they are telling the truth!  Come on Mike.  Wake up!

They spent a week questioning Michael about Walt,  does all that time indicate that they find Walt to be pretty important?  Walt himself tells Michael these people are liars,  pretenders.   And they never said "Kill anybody who gets in your way." so what was that all about?

I'm just putting myself in Mike's shoes here.  Jack just tried to broker a deal where they would trade Henry for Walt,  when he stumbles upon Michael in the forest.   Michael knows they want some specific people and Henry.  Hmmmmm.... what plan do I go with?  Try to assemble these specific people to escort Henry for an exchange,  which I can tell them "the others" have offerred?  Seems like that will work, and since it is more or less what Jack was doing anyways I'll have no trouble getting them to go along with it.  Or should I sneak Henry out of the hatch, kill all witnesses,  tell them nothing about the trade, but lead them all into battle against the others?  Sure,  everybody will be hypervigilent after a couple of mysterious senseless murders, but I really think that will work!  Oh,  I'll just pick on people while they try to grieve to get them to go with me.

More Later...