Him: A good friend (we’ll call him Fred) I’ve had a thing for, for years. He just got back from studying abroad and the ocean air and warm weather treated him very well.

I kind of thought our first encounter in the bedroom was a one-time occurrence. A tipsy romp between the sheets that was very memorable, but a sexual outlier…that is until it happened again the next night.

And again two nights later.

To the untrained eye, nothing is different. No awkward conversations, no weirdness whatsoever and the sex is nothing short of mind blowing. So where’s the problem?

He is my best friend’s ex-boyfriend.

Hear me out. They dated for two years, mostly long distance, during college. The three of us would hang out together whenever he came to town. Their relationship was good but they weren’t exactly Jack and Rose. They didn’t have many common interests and they only got to see one another once or twice a month. The relationship finally ended last summer when they decided it just wasn’t working anymore. Because the break-up was relatively mutual, I got to stay friends with Fred and we got together frequently.

Fred and Ruby (yes, we’re calling my best friend Ruby) both found new significant others within a few weeks time.

He got back to America after studying abroad and looked smoking hot. We drank, we flirted, yada, yada, yada; I walked him to the door the next morning.

Later that day, I talked to Ruby about it (crazy maybe, but I didn’t want to lie about it) and she sounded a bit…shocked. Not mad, not overjoyed, just…dazed. She thanked me for being honest and telling her first. We exchanged a few pleasantries and hung up. I haven’t talked to her since, but I think she’s coming around.

I told a few other friends this story and they thought otherwise. Half thought I broke the first rule of best-friends: “Hands (and every other body part) away from the Ex.” The rest gave me the go-ahead, “They broke up. She moved on. No harm, no foul.”

But what do you think, CC faithful? She is my best friend and – broken up or not – many would argue that her exes are forever off limits. But is that fair? Shouldn’t there be a statute of limitations on this kind of thing? Do I have to avert my gaze forever, or is there truly no wiggle room in the girl code?

[Photo: TraciNoel.Blogspot.Com]

We saw lots of things happen in this episode. The best things for me though, are all the increasingly ‘Giligan’s Island’ moments that the castaways are stumbling into. Oh, if only LOST had a laugh track…

First scene is between Ben and Locke. Locke’s got Ben locked up independent of Miles now, and he brings Ben some breakfast. Mmm. Eggs, my fave. Not even just any eggs- the last two eggs. Locke wants answers, Ben does the ‘Ben Thing’ to Locke, telling him that “he’s more LOST now than he ever was”. Mmmm.. incorporating the title, that’s some nice cheese to throw on those scrambled eggs, LOST.

Meanwhile, back at the old barracks… Kate and Claire are yucking it up, relaxin’ all cool being the hottest women in the barracks. It’s pretty satisfying to see them interract, because for the past season we didn’t get to see much of that. Claire was too busy bein’ a bitch to Charlie… Is it weird to anyone else that she hardly shed a tear over his death?!

So, Sawyer’s all up in Kate’s thing, “come stay with me, but you better not be pregnant” blahblahblah. Snooze. Don’t care about their romance. Not that I care about Kate’s romance with Jack either. I didn’t mind watching the mounting flirations between them in previous seasons, but they’ve just taken it all way too far. This is what they’re distracting us with, so they have more time to figure out why the hell time is so fucked up on the island, who Ben really is, and what’s been going on with Walt + Michael.

The flash forwards were all about Kate this week. It wasn’t shocking to me that *gasp* she’s on trial for all the shit we’ve already seen her get away with. But I loved the last line of the scene with her lawyer, “Not my son!” WOOOSH commercial break.

Oh, LOST. I love it when you tease me like that. Then we come back, and watch Jack testify in court. He still seems pretty sane here, as his beard hasn’t fully grown in yet. I’m pretty convinced that the longer Jack’s beard gets, the crazy he is. So, after he tells the court about how great Kate was on the island, he gets asked if he loooooves her, oOoOoh (puke), to which he testifies, “Not anymore”. CoughCough*Bullshit*coughcough.

So Kate and Claire are still having girl time in the barracks, and Kate gets all weird about Aaron, Claire’s baby. Kate comments that Claire is “so good” with Aaron, her son. Uh, let’s hope so–what else is she doing on the island that she can’t be a good mother?! Kate secretly wishes she could be good with a baby too, instead of being insanely good at all kinds of other things (suriving on a desert island, being a con-woman, looking hot despite the lack of shampoo + makeup).

Kate finds out what’s up with Miles via Hurley, and plots to bust him out so that Miles can talk to Ben, and maybe she can get some asnwers. Naturally, she uses her boyfriend, Sawyer, to find out where Ben’s at. The hottest part about this is that Sawyer sees it coming and calls her out on it. Con people conning each other–way hot.

But, OHHH shit! Sawyer’s totally all up on Team Locke now, and he rats her out to Locke over a game of backgammon. He’s still a sweetie though, because he makes Locke promise not to hurt Kate. He also tells Locke not to give Hurley classified info anymore. I love all this he-said, she-said stuff. Locke’s pissed nonetheless, because whatever Miles has to say to Ben, he can say to him too!! He will not be undermined!! It sucks that Locke’s become such a facist in these past few episodes. He used to be such an inspiring character who helped people in previous seasons, I hate it when he’s mean!!

Kate eventually breaks into Locke’s house, and we find out that Sawyer didn’t betray her afterall and they both conned Locke into getting out of the house so that Kate could bring Miles to Ben in the basement. Ugh, Miles–such a tool.

Miles blackmails Ben for 3.2 million dollars to tell his boss that he’s found Ben dead. Ben agrees. Who is Ben in the real world?! He’s obviously someone pretty important, seeing as all these people are after him. Kate asks Miles if everybody back in the real world knows who she is and what she’s done, and duh–of course they do. Why do you want to leave the island, Kate? You’re doing a better job surviving here (and getting mad action from two attractive men) than you would be back at home. Then mean ol’ papa locke catches them red-handed, and takes them upstairs.

Back to the future- It’s kind of boring… Kate’s mom doesn’t think Kate’s so bad anymore because she has a son, and grandma wants to see him but Kate’s not taking any of it. The lawyers try to figure out some shizz, and eventually they decide that Kate gets probation and she can’t leave the state. Kate doesn’t mind because she’s got a child now, and she’s not going anywhere. So much for feeling like you can’t be a mommy…

Locke demands Kate to tell him what Miles + Ben said to each other. She complies, and then Locke declares her “banish-ed” from the barracks, and her ass betta be outta here by morning. In true Shakespearean fashion, Kate goes to see her beloved Sawyer one more time and cries to him about what happened. Sawyer un-banishes her, and unleashes some sweet moves telling her that he’ll “keep her safe”. Ew. Don’t care. What’s Hurley doing?

Sawyer gets pissy in the morning that Kate wont put out, and makes a real dick comment about how she’s just gonna leave and bounce back to Jack, but she’ll be back sooner or later. Kate slaps him. Such Gilligan’s Island draaaa-maaaa. Love it.

Back on the other side of the island, Team Jack discovers that the chopper with the two hottest men on the show (Sayid + Desmond) never made it to Charlotte and Faraday’s ship. Uh-oh. If it’s not on the ship, where could it be!? Space-time-continum!? And what about that goofy helicopter pilot that was supposed to fly Oceanic Flight 815?

So the flash forward ends with Kate making a low-key exit out the back of the courthouse. She runs into Jack. Jack asks her out to coffee. Coffee? Really? No dinner? Not a drink? You spent months on a desert-island together, and you wanna meet up for a coffee sometime? Anyway, Kate asks if he wants to see the baby. Jack gets really awkward, and doesn’t want to. Kate reminds him that there ain’t gonna be no coffee if you wont see my baby!! What’s the deal with the baby?! Does it have Sawyer’s nose or something?

Oh no, my friends, oh no. It’s much better than that. Kate returns to her nice-ass LA home, where her nice nanny tells her how much her baby missed her, blah blah. Kate goes upstairs and greets her four-year old son, AARON. Yep. That Aaron. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

Now I wanna know what happened to Claire, was there a big cat-fight where Kate grabs Aaron all last minute as she’s being rescued? Did Claire die? Does this mean Aaron’s one of the Oceanic six? If it does, I think that’s lame. Since when has Baby Aaron counted for anything?! I hope he counts as a freebie.

I’m ready for tonight’s episode. Mostly because it’s going to feature Desmond, with half a shirt on. And Sayid will be with him. Yes.

I wasn’t going to watch it for fear of losing my lunch, but let me break it down for you: remember that Paris Hilton video for “Stars are Blind”? Yeah, this is way, way worse.

When I hit play, I expected to fight the urge to scratch at my eyes or duck for cover if that chin got too close, but 37 seconds of beach frolicking, overly engineered pop sounds and then Heidi’s breathy voice instead caused uncontrollable laughter.

I missed about 40 seconds of the video because I couldn’t stop laughing, but I didn’t miss much.

Because the whole freaking video is this girl and her saline sandbags in the bikini. When she’s not laying on her back or on all fours, she’s doing these weird “Fosse” moves with her gigantic hands and I know that Jack from “Will and Grace” would be all ‘oh, no, honey’ over it.

I sincerely hope that she’s holding back her best moves for her dance battles at Les Deux or Goa or LAX or wherever these people go.

At 2:02 in, when she starts straining to sing higher and I feared that blood would pour from my ears, I became desperate for Evil Spencer to make an appearance so that I could forget my pain. But he’s probably the ass behind the camera phone that’s recording this monstrosity of a video.

By the way, this was released so very closely to February 1 – the birthday of none other Ms. Lauren Conrad. And no one in the history of the world has given their nemesis a better gift. The gift of giving them to opportunity to laugh at you while the rest of the world points and laughs along, too.