My apologies for the week lapse in recap posts, Lost fans. I was stabbed by Benjamin Linus and then my lifeless body was pushed into a fire by the Smoke Monster. True story. Well…okay, actually I was sick. Which is just as bad – worse when you consider the fact that I didn’t get to wander the island and haunt people.

However! Just because I was out of commission doesn’t mean things slowed down on the island, too. Or off it. Last week, during Episode 5, we discovered that in the alternate universe (which I am now being told is to be referred to as “Flash Sideways” within the Lost fan community. Makes sense…I guess.), Jack has a son. Yes, a son. His name is David, and he looked to be around 13. Now would be around the time that, if the Lost characters were the guests on the Maury Show, Kate would start celebrating and Jack would run to the back room sobbing as Maury announced that “Kate Austen…you are NOT the mother!”Because she isn’t. We aren’t told who Jack’s estranged wife is – though it’s safe to say that, since she is actually present in the boy’s life (he only stays with Jack once a month) and not permanently on the run from a completely inept bounty hunter, it isn’t Kate. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be Juliet, but don’t quote me on that (or do…if I turn out to be right).

In the beginning, David seems completely uninterested in and more than a little annoyed by Jack – but who didn’t sometimes hate their parents at 13? Jack struggles with getting David to open up to him, a struggle that appears to have been going on for awhile, but when Jack finds himself in David’s room after he disappears, surrounded by pictures of the Father/Son pair in happier times, he realizes that David is as confused by their dissolving relationship as he is. He ends up tracking his son to audtions for a musical conservatory, where he discovers that he’s pretty good at the piano. Actually, scratch that – he’s really good at the piano. Jack actually makes quite a few discoveries during his Flash Sideways experience – he learns that he apparently had his appendix out (How do you just…not know that? Was that really his first time seeing that scar?), unearths his father’s will and finds that a Claire Littleton was mentioned in it. Insert dramatic music here. Oh, Lost. You keep tempting us with the possibility of Jack and Claire finding out that they’re actually brother and sister. Do it already, before we lose interest.

Speaking of Claire, she spends most of Episode 5 being somewhat terrifying. After freeing Jin from the bear trap he fell prey to, she reveals that she’s spent the last three years on the island kiling people and going somewhat insane. She thinks that The Others have her baby, and ends up putting an axe in a captive’s chest when he and Jin try to convince her otherwise. (Though this does raise the question of how Jin even knows that Kate took Aaron off the island and has been raising him for the past three years. I don’t remember it being discussed during their time at the Dharma Initiative in the ’70s. Continuity issue? And wouldn’t Claire be questioning Jin’s perfect english?) She does all this in front of still injured Jin, and you don’t have to be fluent in Korean to read the look in his eyes – Oh. Sh*t. Panicked, he then changes his story, telling Claire that Aaron is at the Temple, but that she’ll need Jin (alive) to get to him. Claire laughs, relieved, because if Jin hadn’t been “lying” and Kate really was raising Aaron, she’d kill her. Again. Oh. Sh*t.

Other notable events taking place during Episode 5 include Jack and Hurley embarking on a voyage across the island, thanks to a dead Jacob telling Hurley that someone is coming to the island and he needs help getting there. Turns out he just wanted to get Jack into a lighthouse, confuse him, infuriate him at the discovery that Jacob had been watching him and the other candidates for nearly their entire lives, make him break a “spinny mirror thing” and then have him stare out at the ocean. With a (now equally infuriated) Hurley along for the ride. When Hurley confronts him, Jacob says that he needed Jack to discover his destiny (oh, here we go again) and more importantly, that he needed Jack and Hurley away from the Temple, because something bad was coming. Now, before you start rolling your eyes at the typical Lost crypticness, let me just say that this is one prediction that actually came true. Because in Episode 6, the Smoke Monster hits the Temple like the fist of an angry god. Stay tuned…