All I could say was HOORAY!!! ....then @#$%&*!!!!!!

I am sure I joined most LOST fans in a nationwide ecstatic dance of joy with the demise of both Nikki and Paolo in the first 10 minutes of this week's episode. These two "Who the hell are you?" characters that suddenly arrived on the island this season after having never appeared on the island during any of the first two seasons have been widely unaccepted (is universally hated too strong?) by fans.

We came to care about our core group of Losties in Season 1 and came to despise "The Others" in Season 2. To have two new people suddenly thrown onto the island and thrust upon us fans in Season 3 and to expect us to believe that they had always been there, not just added because it was felt that after all the season 2 deaths the show needed another hottie guy and hottie girl, just stretched the believability of this already rather unbelievable show a bit too much and was just plain offensive. It certainly didn't help matters that it wasn't until this episode, two-thirds into the season, that TPTB at Lost made any attempt to let us get to know them or start to care about them.

Now, we finally get the Nikki and Paolo backstory and learn that they are another set of grifters (This island is rife with criminals it seems.) who took an old man for his wealth and made off with a bag full of uncut diamonds. Paolo seems rather taken by Nikki, who was a C-List actress featured in a cut-rate rip-off of a Charlie's Angels type TV show called Expose' and from all evidence presented last night, seems to be quite the bee-yotch. She yells at and berates Paolo pretty much every chance she gets and seems only interested in him to the extent that he can help her pull off this heist and then get off this island with their "treasure" intact.

As you would imagine, the bag of diamonds ends up LOST after the plane crash. After much searching for the bag, during which, we learn Paolo and Nikki stumble upon the Hatch, the Surveillance Station and the plane in the tree before any of the characters we know and love, Paolo finds the bag of diamonds. He doesn't let Nikki know he found them, however. He stashs the diamonds where she can't find them. (Remember his long visit to the can when they accompanied Sayid, Locke, and Kate and found the communication station? He was hiding them in the toilet tank in a Russian Stacking Doll!) His reasoning that if he didn't control her access to the diamonds, she would have no use for him. (Probably true.)

Once Nikki finds out that he has the diamonds (which have now been stuffed down the front of his pants!) Nikki throws a jar full of poisonous spiders at him. Paolo keels over immediately. As he is passing out, Nikki steals the diamonds back and tells him that he will just be paralyzed.. for eight hours.. as a result of these bites. A whole jar full of spiders tend to scatter and CAN bite more than one person, however. Nikki gets bitten too, and just manages to bury the diamond bag before she passes out as well.

It's Sawyer and Hurley with Jin that end up coming upon them both as well as figuring out their secret and eventually finding the diamonds. Too bad they didn't figure out and no one else knew, that they were merely paralyzed and not dead... BEFORE THEY HAD A FUNERAL AND BURIED THEM. We see Nikki's eyes pop open for a second as Hurley and Sawyer throw the sand on them.

So, are they dead?? They probably will be SOON.. they did put A LOT of sand on top of them (and threw the diamonds in there with them too!) But, as Locke said to Paolo in one of the flashbacks, when Locke caught him trying to bury the diamonds, "Nothing stays buried on this island for long. The island is eroding." (ummmmmmmm.... How does Locke know THAT??) It's not likely, but it's possible that We MAY still be stuck with Nikki and Paolo after all. Damn.