What's Alan Watching?: Lost, "Jughead": How to dismantle a hydrogen bomb
How good is Jeremy Davies, by the way? There's a tendency to take what he does for granted because he specializes in playing this kind of twitchy outcast, but he more than deserves to be shoved center stage the way he's been this season. Just listen to the way he delivers a line like "Fantastic idea, really inspired" when Ellie the Other threatens to take a shot at him while he's standing near the hydrogen bomb; coming out of Sawyer's mouth, or Miles', it easily has a sarcastic undertone. But Davies' delivers it with complete exasperation, even exhaustion. Dan's mind is always racing faster than everyone else's, and you can see him doing all the mental calculus -- including the realization that the bomb problem will work itself out with or without him, because the island hadn't blown up 50 years in the future -- and growing frustrated that Ellie, like everyone else he deals with on the island, can't keep up with him. He's not cruel the way 1996 Dan was (though my opinion on that could change when we learn more about what happened to Charlotte), but he makes it clear how tiring it is to always be the smartest man in the room.