5x10: “He’s Our You”

An episode that started sort of slow and then went into overdrive, ending with a potentially time-bending conclusion. So what of it?

We see from the very beginning, as Sawyer talks to Sayid, that Sayid is creeped the heck out by little Ben.

It will be interesting to watch how the people who have based Jack for years for his supposed God complex while praising Sawyer will react as this season goes on. Sawyer has his own brand of arrogance and is desperate to preserve his new life, even at the cost of harm to his friend. We’ll see if the Jack critics are consistent, or if they just hate Jack. As Jack said once, (paraphrasing) "Everyone wants me to be a leader until I make a decision they don’t like." It’s not easy calling the shots, and his nonchalance as Hurley questions him about the fact that Sawyer is in charge demonstrates that his look of relief last week was genuine.

We already knew Roger was an awful father, but before we saw mostly words--today we saw the physical abuse. It still doesn’t excuse the monster that Ben is, though, and nothing could.

I believe that the scene in which Ben visits Sayid in Santo Domingo was absolutely pivotal, and I’ll discuss it again below. However, my real-time observations was that the cavalier way in which Ben pawns Bentham’s murder off on Widmore lend credence to the thought that it was him who killed Nadia. And his "you’re a killer" comment harkened back to what he told Ana-Lucia in the Hatch way back in "Two For the Road".

Holdum (sp?) is a creepy old guy, and he may be "our you", but he’s way more psycho. And was Kelvin Inman recruited to replace him as DHARMA Head Torturer?

Ilana turns out to be a hot, seductive bounty hunter.

At first I thought that the DHARMA folk’s absolute confidence in their truth serum was little more than utopian science arrogance. But it turns out that their confidence was justified. The stuff works so well that a textbook explanation of the future is laughed off. What did Ben quote to Jack in the Hatch about martyring prophets?

Any question about whether DHARMA was good and evil is answered conclusively when the hawkish Radzinsky threatens to go over their heads to Ann Arbor for a ruling on what to do with their prisoner.

Amy’s impassion plea to the group about wanting to feel safe as they sleep for the sake of the children is ironic, as at least two of those precious little children (Ben and Ethan) will grow up to join the Hostiles.

Sayid is smart enough to figure out that they’re not going to end up in Guam, and questioning whether Ilana works for Ben or not. Also like the throwaway detail that she was working for the family of the man he killed on the golf course in the Seychelles, as seen in "The Economist".

When I saw the flaming bus of death, I obviously thought of Ben, but Hurley was in the back of my mind only because of his previous use of a bus as lethal weapon.

Sayid’s little speech to Sawyer about being where he needs to be makes perfect sense as you seem him tell young Ben that his purpose here is to bring Ben to the Hostiles. And what Sayid’s real intentions are.

So now what? People will be arguing the existence of parallel realities, altered history, and the like. But I think the real answer is much more simple: Ben will be healed by the Island/Jacob, just as Locke was when Ben shot him years later. Ben would later tell Locke "I should have known it wouldn’t do any good"...and he knows this from personal experience. When you still have work to do, you’re not going anywhere, and we’ve seen it with Michael and Jack as well.

The great irony is that as Sayid thinks he is saving the world from the terror of Benjamin Linus, he is actually committing the act that will cause Ben to truly achieve "communion" with the island (which he already had to some extent as seen by his motherly visions and his meeting with Alpert), and become a full-fledged follower and believer in the forces at work on the island.

The best evidence for the theory that Ben was really shot by Sayid is the aforementioned Santo Domingo scene. Go back and watch it if you don’t believe me. Even by Ben Linus standards, he oozes with confidence and smugness as he tells Sayid that he knows his true nature, that he is a killer. And the reason for his absolute conceit is that he knows that Sayid will say that to him as an exact quote, and just hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

5x10 Pre-Thoughts

This post will mostly focus on the things I missed while watching “Namaste”, or at least for got to discuss. First is the obvious parallels between the scene in which Ben visits Sayid in the DHARMA jail and the encounter those two men will have in the hatch many years later. It even has all the “is he or isn’t he” intrigue as it relates to being a member of the Others/Hostiles, but in reverse.

Some people are fretting about the potential for serious contradictions and continuity problems in having the young Ben interact with Lostaways, but I think that’s a little overblown. I don’t think we can say with any certainty how the time travel works anyway. Were our people always part of the past, or are they now creating a new string of time? If it’s the latter, there’s no need for any concern on the specific Ben front, although it could open up a new can of worms in terms of complaining about that story structure. Anyway, my guess is that little Ben will not be overly significant in the lives of our heroes and that he won’t be getting that much screentime. A little reminder that Ben Linus and his father were with DHARMA at that time is enough.

I noted that the baby was Ethan, of course, but that raises the question of “How did he survive the Purge?” Did he too rebel against his community and seek out its enemies? Did he follow the older Ben around like a puppy dog and become his acolyte? Was he persuaded logically to join the Others as an adolescent/adult? Was he kidnapped by the Hostiles? Did he flee to the real world and then get recruited back? There are any number of possibilities.

Screencaps show that there was a woman visible in the DHARMA shack where Sun and Frank chat up Christian. There is some question as to whether or not this is a production error, but many believe that Claire is still hanging out with her dad. I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: the return of Claire is one of the inevitable events of the season that I am most looking forward to. I’m not quite sure why--I like her, but she’s not the most interesting or important character and I wouldn’t describe her as a favorite. But I’m looking forward to seeing her again much more than I was Michael in Season 4, and my opinion of Michael is much higher than most LOST fans.

It seems as if off-island stories have been left behind, but of course there is one big exception: Desmond. Desmond has not appeared since “316”, and of course we are still waiting to find out what happened between Ben and Penny. I hope that Desmond’s return will enable us to see some of the outside world’s reaction to the Ajira 316 crash, including the revelation that the Oceanic Six was aboard. Perhaps that news will be the spark that causes Desmond to jump back into action.

One of the mysteries of the Ajira crash is why Sun was not flashed off the plane like everybody else. I now have a theory on this, which makes perfect sense to me. Christian, or the entity using Christian as the case may be, needs someone with knowledge of the island to help it fulfill some mission. That person must be in the present.

So what choices does it have? Ben? No way, he won’t do anyone’s bidding with the possible exception of Jacob? Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sayid? No…they all know or know of Christian Shepard. Remember the seemingly unimportant detail that Sun was not at Christian’s funeral…where there was a big honking picture of him? Any of the other Oceanic Sixers would have recognized Christian and been freaked out. Sun knows of Christian, but has never met him or seen his face. And that, I believe, is why Sun was not flashed off the plane.

More fun lyrics from "Ride, Captain Ride": "On your mystery ship / on your way to a world that others might have missed".

Rewatching 1x06: House of the Rising Sun, one thing that stands out is the discovery of the Adam and Eve skeletons. This is an enduring mystery, one of the oldest on the show, and the recent time traveling has only made their identity more interesting, as it’s possible they are people we know. However, the fact that Charlotte’s dead body disappeared as the survivors jumped through time makes it seem as if bodies would not exist outside of the lifetime of their owners.

As a rough estimate, Jack says the degrading of the clothing makes them look 40 to 50 years old. 50 years would be 1954, which does make Rose and Bernard an interesting possibility, although I tend to believe they are still alive.

5x09: Namaste

A good episode, although it was character-driven without a whole lot of mythology (relative to many of the other Season 5 outings).

We learn that Sun was not flashed off the plane, and that Ben was not injured after the crash. Hmm, I wonder how he got injured, and if we’ll see that tonight?

My theory (and that of most observers, I think) that Ajira 316 was in the present and the Oceanic Six less Sun was in the past was confirmed.

Jack and Hurley’s lines and expressions as Sawyer explained the time situation to them were a good stand-in for the audience’s thoughts throughout this season.

The best mythological nugget tonight was that we finally got to meet Radzinsky. He’s a bit of a jerk, and he’s at the Flame. Why is he not at the Swan? Oh yeah, because he’s designing a model of the yet to built Swan and fretting that the Hostiles may be sending spies to ascertain its location. No wonder Radzinsky knows so much about DHARMA and is later able to make a killer blast door map.

Sawyer and Juliet are not particularly pleased that they came back. They are having a nice time playing house on the island, and I am reminded of Sawyer’s plea to do so with Kate in “The Economist”.

Horace + Amy = Ethan, which creeps Juliet the heck out. Then Amy asks if she and Sawyer are going to have kids, which lets Juliet have the line of the night: “the time has to be right.”

Sawyer mentions Faraday’s ideas about rules, but the question is where is Faraday? We know he’s puttering around the Orchid at some point, so he’s clearly gone but not forgotten. And good job by Hurley, pointing out that DHARMA is wiped out in the not-that distant future.

The funniest A-team mission ever: “Infiltrating the DHARMA recruits welcome party”.

Interesting song choice: “Ride, captain ride, upon your mystery ship” by some one-hit wonder that’s not coming to mind. So the island is a mystery ship and Jacob is the captain…and that means Jacob is Magnus Hanso, right? Right?

Sun whacking Ben, then teaming up with Lapidus, was awesome. But why was Sun not flashed off the plane as everyone else was? Was she not supposed to come back? Was Ben not flashed back because it would create a paradox?

Poor Jack, stuck as a workman. But awesome to see Pierre Chang in the flesh, interacting with one of our characters (his brush with Faraday in “Because You Left” didn’t really count). Pierre was clearly not happy to be dragged out of his lab to have to deal with a bunch of peon janitors showing up on the submarine.

The monster was lurking as Frank and Sun stepped off the dock. I was afraid it was going to finish the pilot-killing ways it started way back in the beginning. Instead, though, Sun and Frank enter the barracks. Interestingly, they are not decimated as they should have been (post-Keamy) and still have DHARMA insignia. Is this some sort of island/monster-induced mirage? What has happened on the island over the three present years since the Oceanic Six left and Sawyer and friends started time-jumping?

Christian is in one of the DHARMA cabins for the mythological meat of the night. Has Jacob taken up residence in a DHARMA cabin too? Anyway, the picture from 1977 on the wall was great. Christian tells Sun she has a long journey in front of her, and of course we’re all intrigued to see what that will entail.

Phil is suspicious of the new recruits, particularly Kate, and the facts that Juliet had to bail Kate out and that Sawyer is protecting Sayid is not going to help assuage those suspicions. I suspect he’ll be a problem as the season progresses.

The seeming friendship between Sawyer and Jack is blown to bits as Sawyer frostily explains that his leadership style is thinking, while Jack’s was reacting. But as he needles Jack on having to go home and wait for someone else to make a decision for him, he strikes out. Jack’s genuine smile remind us that he was never really comfortable with being the leader (a theme that the episode I just watched this afternoon, “White Rabbit”, introduced from the very beginning of the show). Jack now seems to be the happiest of our castaways, as he has since opening his eyes in “316”.

Ben is the creepiest little kid ever. Do our heroes tell him things that enable him to be seemingly omniscient? And will anyone try to kill little Ben?

5x09 Pre-Thoughts

My theory that the Oceanic Six had managed to come back at a synchronized time with one of the time jumps, thus explaining the three year difference between island time and Los Angeles time, was damaged when in “316” they were flashed off the plane at apparently different times. It was blown to bits in “LaFleur” when it turns out that three years have passed on the island as well.

The actual explanation is much simpler, though--time is moving at roughly the same rate on the island even after it was moved, and it was Locke who made a big time jump, as Ben did, when he turned the wheel. Ben turned the wheel just a few days before Locke and ended up less than a year in the future (2005); a few days later, Locke turned the wheel and was in 2007. The effects were said to be unpredictable, and there you go.

There are always a lot of interesting theories after an episode; right now it’s in vogue to suggest that the Lostaways will rise to a position of some power (as LaFleur already has) in DHARMA or the Hostiles and will have a big influence on future events. I think we can expect to see some of that, and I like the theory that someone (with Faraday often mentioned) will cause the Incident.

However, I would be personally disappointed if every action could be traced to the Lostaways. If they are the cause of the Incident and the Purge and the recording of the numbers and the pregnancy problems and the…that would be a little too much, and it would take away from the fun when they are involved.

I keep intending to write about episodes that seem better/more pivotal in retrospect, and vice versa. One of the biggest examples of this is the episode I just watched as I slowly work my way through Season 1--1x05, “White Rabbit”. This episode has the first real Jack/Locke discussions, and it features Christian leading Jack into the jungle--something that could be dismissed first as hallucination, later as the monster, but has taken on a whole new level of meaning since Christian showed up in Jacob’s cabin.

A couple things to ponder. When they are discussing looking for Jack, Locke tells Kate and Sayid that he “knows where to look”. Interesting.

The big line in the Jack/Locke scene that everyone remembers is “I’ve looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful.” Knowing that was coming, though, I was more amused by Locke telling Jack he’s not going crazy, because crazy people think they’re getting saner (and Jack has raised the possibility that he’s going crazy). Locke spends most of the next four season thinking he’s getting saner as he gets more and more crazy.

Another point is that in an interview about his character (Locke), Terry O’Quinn apparently floated the theory that the island is malevolent. This is something I’ve mentioned before; Locke and his fans always talk about him doing what’s in the best interest of the island. But using that as a justification for actions takes for granted that the desires of the island are good. I think we’ve seen more than enough to throw out some challenge flags at that assertion.

You would think that two weeks to think about the last episode would lead to a lot of great ideas and theories. For some maybe, but for me, just the opposite.

5x08: LaFleur

The last couple of episodes have been cause for a lot of disagreement among fans. This episode will be no difference, as a certain set of fans (namely the “Skaters”) are bound to absolutely hate it. As someone who is not particularly interested in which characters go to bed together, I thought it was a good but not great episode.

Darn you, Locke, for having the gall, the AUDACITY, to turn the donkey wheel before we had a chance to see more of the statue. The moment of the episode, and I don’t mean that as a knock on what followed.

Love the Dharma hippies down in the Pearl or some other central control room with their “special” brownies.

Apparently it has now been three years on the island, which means that my theory on how the time discrepancies between the island timeline and the Oceanic Six timeline doesn’t work anymore. It’s too late right now to think in-depth about this; with an off-week coming up, they’ll be plenty of time later for that.

We meet pregnant Amy, wife/girlfriend of Horace. What happened to Olivia? And where’s Tony Almeida?

The disappearance of Charlotte’s body makes sense, as she is now dead and shouldn’t be moving. Plus she exists on the island in the time they end up in as a little girl (which was a nice moment, although sort of creepy in a Dateline way if you get my drift).

Dan mutters over and over again, “I won’t do it”. The ensuing question is so obvious I’m not even going to type it out.

Why were the Hostiles trying to kill Amy and Paul?

Sawyer mirrors Jack throughout this episode as he concocts their own lie…”let me do the talking”, but Amy outsmarts them with earplugs to combat the sonic fence.

Horace reveals that women always give birth on the mainland, so did the pregnancy problem always exist? Amy’s successful birth leads me to believe that it was not a 100% death sentence as it later would be, but still dangerous and to be avoided when possible. This does put a damper on the theory (not mine) that the pregnancy problem was some physical manifestation of Ben’s mom fixation, or a physical result of the Purge.

Speaking of which, where is Ben in this timeline? Sawyer tells Juliet it is 1974. According to Lostpedia, Ben did not arrive until 1976 or 1977. Can you imagine what Sawyer will do when he learns of a subload including Roger and Ben Linus? Or do our people somehow facilitate their arrival?

Sawyer tells Jin to keep searching the grid for their people, but then in his heart-to-heart with Horace says that he’s over Kate. I think he’s probably just telling himself that, but it is an interesting disconnect.

Sawyer’s lie to Horace about a salvage ship searching for the Black Rock is pretty good…Horace lies that he doesn’t know about the Black Rock.

Is Widmore still on the island at this point, and if he is, how does his claim to have been the leader square with Alpert being the one coming to have a chat with Goodspeed? Again Sawyer steps in, although he’s able to get through to Alpert by telling the truth. And he earns forever brownie points apparently with Horace.

We see that Sawyer aka LaFleur is head of security; Juliet is a mechanic; Jin is a driver; Faraday is a construction worker/scientist; so what’s Miles’ job, or did I just miss it?

Who would have thought after watching the “Glass Ballerina” that eventually Sawyer and Juliet would be best pals (let alone more in the future)? His speech on the dock about not leaving him stuck with a mad scientist, a guy who talks to dead people, Jin “a helluva nice guy but not much of a conversationalist” was pretty funny.

More interesting to me than all the Kate/Sawyer/Juliet intrigue is that Sawyer and Jack look genuinely happy to see each other. It has been fun to see their relationship develop from outright hostility to grudging respect to a modicum of friendship. Of course, there’s still the girl to fight over…

It is the mythology of LOST that really makes me a fan, but as Damon and Carlton remind us, the character stories are the real heart of the show, and I’m interested in those too. However, my interest in that area does not extend to the question of who shares beds. With that being said, I think Sawyer/Juliet and Jack/Kate are better pairings. Juliet is strong enough to be firm with Sawyer and keep him in line, while Kate is just crazy enough to be a good complement to straight-laced Jack. But I don’t really care what happens there.

5x08 Pre-Thoughts

Something from the last episode that people have been wondering about is that when Bentham visits Jack, Jack is completely unreceptive to his pleas to return to the island. As Bentham tries to hang himself, Ben tells him that Jack had booked a ticket on a trans-Pacific flight as evidence that he was coming around. But Jack had apparently been doing it for some time as shown in “Through the Looking Glass”. Why the discrepancy?

Well, there apparently is no discrepancy. First, the episode did not make it clear how much time elapsed between Jack and Locke’s chat in the hospital and Locke’s death. But in “There’s No Place Like Home”, Jack tells Ben that it’s been “about a month” since Locke visited him. And so the logical conclusion is that Locke’s mention of Christian, coupled with Jack’s semi-recent encounter with an apparition of Christian and breakup with Kate, gave a sufficient jolt to Jack to devote the next month to the idea of going back.

Where I would theorize a bit is that Jack was building up his courage (or trying to sufficiently swallow his pride) before re-establishing contact with Locke; it would be tough for a man like Jack to tell Locke he had changed his mind face-to-face. And that is why Locke’s death caused Jack to completely lose it--because he felt that his chance was gone, and it probably brought on another round of self-loathing. Poor Jack.

The last two episodes have caused a lot of disagreement and debate amongst LOST fans. I understand the mixed reaction to “316”, but am a little puzzled at the mixed reaction to “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”. But of course people are entitled to their opinions.

I would like to address one complaint about the most recent episode, which is that Locke was such a pathetic figure. I wouldn’t want it any other way. John Locke is a pathetic figure and has always been a pathetic figure. I think Jack gave the best diagnosis of Locke’s psyche in the last episode, although Sayid and Kate also made eloquent points. John Locke was pathetic when we first met him as a young man(chronologically)--stuffed in a locker, unable to recognize that he wasn’t a star quarterback/movie star/whatever the heck his delusional mind expected to be. He was pathetic when he was so desperate for a father figure that he did anything Anthony Cooper wanted--even after he had taken his kidney, he allowed him to ruin his one normal relationship. He was pathetic when he lived on a cultish pot farm. He was pathetic when he role-played that relationship as “just friends” on a phone sex line, and when he thought that telling his boss “Don’t tell me what I can’t do” as he walked out the door was some kind of great tell-off. He was pathetic when he crashed on the island and attacked those who wanted to get off. He was pathetic when he became a slave to the hatch and was blinded by Ben’s true nature as a prisoner. He was pathetic when he continued his rampage of destruction against any possible mean to leave the island, and when he knifed a woman in the back in cold blood. He was pathetic when he led half of his people on a suicide mission, and he was pathetic when he allowed Ben to manipulate him into letting Ben move the island. John Locke is a pathetic person.

Sure, we’ve seen some flashes of something better out of him, but he at his core a sucker who refuses to accept that he’s not some kind of superman, and that he’s just a regular guy. That’s not to say that he may not be capable of achieving great things, but he needs to attempt to do that as normal people do--through a successful career, a loving family, a passionate hobby, etc.

And certainly LOST is about character growth and development, and ideally we’d like to see our characters grow and evolve and improve, and many have throughout their time on the Island. But there was no way that Locke’s “bring everyone back to the island” campaign could possibly be the impetus for that growth.

Why do I say that? Because the whole nature of it was intertwined with Locke’s delusions--heroism, destiny, fate, what was supposed to happen, all of the claptrap that has led Locke astray almost all of his life.

I believe that the true character breakthrough for Locke would have to occur near the very end of the series. Imagine him sitting down for a chat with Jacob, and Jacob explaining how special he is and about how his whole life has been a runup to this particular moment when Locke can save the Island. And Locke looks him straight in the eyes, and calmly says “Screw you. I don’t need this silly island or you or anything to make my life meaningful. I am my own man and I will live on my own terms and you can fend for yourself.” Now THAT would be character growth.

I have been slowly working my way through Season 1 on DVD throughout the course of Season 5. This week I watched “Walkabout”, so as you can see I’m well behind the season 5 pace. Anyway, “Walkabout” is widely regarded as one of the greatest episodes ever, and with good reason. A lot could be written about it, but the one thing that struck me in retrospect was the first real conversation between Jack and Claire (Jack helped her in the aftermath of the crash, but that doesn’t really count). Claire asks Jack to organize a memorial service, and Jack says “it’s not my thing.” Of course, it really isn’t Jack’s thing, but at the time it is particularly painful to Jack we know as he had been preparing for his father’s funeral. And of course we now know that he was Claire’s father as well, making it all a bit more poignant.

What is going to happen in tonight’s episode? It’s as wide open as it’s been since the premiere. Will we focus on Jack, Kate, and Hurley? On Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Faraday (which may well be the same thing as the first, but you never know). Or the Ajira castaways? Or Frank and the mystery woman, and what happened to Sun and Sayid? Or some combination thereof? (Most likely.)

The episode title does give me some inkling about what we’ll see, but if I’m wrong I’ll explain what I was expecting.