Whatever Happened, Happened

A very slightly better entry than "He's Our You" in my humble estimation, but again extremely annoying at times and almost totally pointless. These past two episodes have seen the writers clearly stalling which is appalling considering where we are in the show right now (and surprisingly they were both written by writers who usually write the more 'important' episodes). The Ben being shot storyline is absolutely horrible, and I was amazed at the 'OMG' reaction everyone had last week. They've been hammering 'whatever happened, happened' into our heads for weeks now, they're not going to create an alternate timeline all of a sudden. Obviously Ben was going to survive and (oh how convenient) he would somehow forget about it (and hey look it's the magic immortal memory-wiping Richard to the rescue!), and this whole episode was basically about getting to that point and more repetitive, plain character drama with Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet. Horrible exposition in the conversation between Miles and Hurley to explain what's going on to the inattentive viewers who can't understand even simplified science fiction. Interesting writing for Roger Linus, though he's been such a dick every time we've seen him that it seems odd that he never started being nicer to Ben, even after nearly losing him (though he could have, but it struck me more as a last ditch effort to make the character sympathetic). In any case the last three or so minutes were interesting (sans the memory wipe, which, and there's no better word for it, sucks), and promise an exciting final few episodes of the season.