Lost and then buried alive!

Last night's episode of Lost had one good point - it introduced a mystery and the solved it by the end of the episode?

THIS IS A SPOILER WARNING. I'm about to reveal the ending.

The episode was the whole back story of two Losties, but they were minor characters who weren't even introduced until this season. I'd like to watch the first episode again and see if Nikki was really there running around the crash site or if they refilmed those scenes. She was probably just an extra who was written in this season.

The only tie-in to the rest of the story was showing why Paulo used the bathroom at the Perl station, which I don't really care about. It did show Ben and Juliet in the Perl station hatching their plan to kidnap Jack, Kate and Sawyer. But we already knew all that.

The episode reveals that Nikki and Paulo discovered a few of the islands secrets before the rest, but they never shared the info, so what's the point?

This episode gives the back story for a couple unknowns and how they stole some diamonds, but by the end of the episode they're buried alive! With the diamonds!

The episode starts off with them dead (paralyzed). Why get us involved with these characters and then kill them off?!? Is there hope that they will dig their way out before suffocating?

Tune in to next week's episode for the exciting conclusion. Or not.