last night's episode of 'Lost'...

You raise some really interesting points here and, yes, I agree - Sayid in a tux is delicious.

The Six. Can't help but feel a little McGoohan here.

Some of my own thoughts:

In my tally, the Oceanic Six has already been possibly reached and exceeded. Now, correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't watched the last season's finale in a while and season I is kind of fuzzy.

On my count we have Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Kate, Jack's father, and whoever it was whose funeral Jack attended. There's also Ben, if you count him, but I get the feeling his departure from the island would be something he'd want to keep quiet.

I believe at the end of the last season Jack commented to Kate that she didn't go to the funeral. While it's possible the funeral was for someone who held significance for them both who had not been on the island, it's unlikely. It could be argued that the person who had died, if they had been part of the Oceanic Six would have at least generated a few gawkers considering the at least semi-celebrity status the survivors seem to hold. But, then again, the public tends to have a short attention span and could simply have forgotten about them at this point.

There then comes the possibility that the person who was having the funeral was indeed one of the survivors, but not one of the Six. There have been indications that there are others alive outside of the Six the public knows about. The Haitian...I mean...the guy who visited Hurley in the institution demanded to know whether or not there were others still alive. Perhaps the funeral was for one of the non-Six who had assumed another identity that Jack and the others were aware of.

Of course, there's also the fact that Hurley sees a very convincing hallucination (maybe?) of Charlie. What if some of the other characters we've seen the survivors interacting with are also hallucinations(?)?

Andrea: Since the public knows about the Oceanic Six, Jack's father can't be one of them. He was dead before the crash and his casket was being transported on the plane - it's possible that he's alive again or some weird deal - but it can't be well-known that he's one of the rescued passengers.

Maryann: About your Film.com article, I think you mean Claire and Aaron, not Claire and Oscar. And you might be right. I don't think they would kill off a cute l'il baby, so Aaron either gets off and is one of the Oceanic 6, or he's still alive on the island once the 6 are rescued.

Or maybe he becomes one of those kids kidnapped by the Others. Whatever happened to them?

Unless Jack's father is a hallucination(time traveler...thingy), or Jack was blitzed enough to just blurt out anything (which is also possible), his father is at least known to work at the same hospital he does as Jack told one of the other employees to check and see if his father was "as drunk as he was." Jack also found, unless I'm mistaken, his father's casket in the wreckage on the island, but it was empty.