I'm telling you, this is the Abrams curse!

And BoB, I think you're giving the writers waaaaay too much credit for having some sort of masterplan all sorted out in their head. Especially when these same writers had it set that Jack was gonna die in the first episode and only changed this a few weeks before they started shooting. I really do think that they're just going with the swing of things and deciding what happens from episode to episode.