I Am DB

I think most fans are enjoying this penultimate season of Lost, but I continue to come across comments online from disgruntled viewers and critics who are disappointed by the time traveling and general sci-fi turn the show has taken. They long for the simple days of Season One, with its traditional character-centric, flashback-filled episodes. But come on – if the show still consisted, after five seasons, of a bunch of people sitting around waiting to be rescued, running back and forth between beach, jungle and cave, exposing pre-island nuggets of their lives, people would be complaining that the show hasn’t evolved and nothing is happening. And those complaints would be correct. Season One laid the groundwork for the storyline that is now unfolding, and focusing so heavily on the characters and their backgrounds was appropriate and necessary to invest us in what happens to them. And the crazier things get, the more we’re drawn in because we’re so committed to the people. The show’s creators may not have known quite what the story was when they began (my feeling has always been that they didn’t really start figuring out what the big picture would be until they got into Season Two) but they always knew it would be heading into some fantastical places. Hell, a giant, unseen, tree-shaking “monster” was introduced in the first episode. You knew it was only gonna get weirder.

Embrace the weirdness. We’re deep down the rabbit hole…

THE LAND OF THE LIVING
When Ben awakens to find Locke sitting by his bed, he immediately tries to make Locke think that he’s happy to see him alive and, more importantly, that he expected to see him alive. Yet later in the episode, when he assures Sun that Locke was definitely deceased and she asks if he knew that bringing Locke back to the island would also bring him back to life, Ben claims he had no idea. He says he’s seen the island do some miraculous things, including healing the sick, but he’s never seen it do anything like this. “Dead is dead,” he says. “You don’t get to come back from that. Not even here. So the fact that John Locke is walking around this island scares the living hell out of me.”

So did Ben expect Locke to rise again or not? Is he genuinely unnerved to see Locke up and about? He certainly doesn’t seem to like having him around, as Locke is all up in his grill, yo – asking lots of questions, crashing Ben’s Judgment Day party, possessing all kinds of intimate island knowledge that even he isn’t sure how he knows…

Oh, and I loved that moment when Ben makes it clear to Sun that Locke was indeed dead. The way he looks at her and holds her stare leaves no doubt in her mind as to why he’s so certain.

THE IDES OF MARCH
The mixed signals from Ben extend to his interactions with Caesar. The first chance he gets, when he talks to Caesar on the beach, he paints Locke as a potential threat who can’t be trusted, which puts Caesar on alert.

Later, when Caesar shows up with a couple of guys and attempts to keep Locke from taking a boat to the main island, Ben acts as though he’s being forced to go with Locke, playing up the angle of Locke being dangerous. But when Caesar reaches for the shotgun, which he had shown Ben in their earlier conversation, he finds it missing. Ben pulls it out instead, and blasts Caesar in the chest with it. Maybe not as elegant a kill as the one suffered by Caesar’s Roman namesake, but it gets the job done.

I’m just not sure why Ben goes through the charade of being forced to go with Locke. Who is he acting for? If his plan is to shoot Caesar moments later anyway, why doesn’t he just pull the gun from the get-go? In fact, why does he even suggest to Caesar earlier that John poses a threat? Is he just improvising as he goes? Maybe the decision to shoot Caesar happened in the split second before he did it. Then again, he had taken the gun, so he probably had already considered using it. If Ben is just doing things as he goes, making snap decisions, we don’t see him working through his options. Nothing on his face suggests that he’s figuring things out second-by-second. The whole thing plays like everything Ben says and does is deliberate. I just can’t figure out what the point is.

Oh, and raise your hand if you think Caesar is dead.

Yeah, me neither.

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL JACOB
“Jacob wanted it done. The island chooses who the island chooses, you know that.”

This is what Richard says to Charles Widmore when the latter rides into the Hostile’s camp looking all conquistador-esque. He is angry that Richard brought the young Dharma Initiative boy into the Temple, saying Richard should have let him die.

Richard’s explanation about Jacob brings Charles around, and the older man goes into the tent where Ben is recuperating and introduces himself, seeming quite warm and friendly. But I keep thinking about how Richard seemed to throw the Jacob line out there as if just to calm Widmore down. When Richard took Ben from Kate and Sawyer, I didn’t get the vibe that his doing so was fated or that he was following Jacob’s orders. It seemed to me like he acted on his own and now he’s just telling Widmore what he needs to hear. When one of his men warned him that Charles would not be happy about Richard taking Ben, his reply was that he didn’t answer to Widmore. Richard made a decision and now he appears to be hiding behind the idea of Jacob. Is my read on this correct? Is Richard just manipulating Charles?

Here’s the bigger question that this leads me to: is Jacob a manipulation altogether? A lie, like The Wizard of Oz (one of Lost‘s primary touchstones), which those in power use to control everyone else? One argument against this idea is that there’s physical evidence that whatever Jacob is, he’s real. We see this in Season Three’s episode The Man Behind the Curtain (an Oz-inspired title), wherein Ben first takes Locke to Jacob’s cabin and some shit goes down – the place shakes, objects go flying around and Locke hears a voice say, “Help me.” But that incident was much too ambiguous to prove anything about who or what Jacob is, or even if he’s real. I’m reminded of Ghostbusters, and how the antagonist Walter Peck accuses the heroes of filling the air with gases that cause hallucinations. “People think they’re seeing ghosts! And they call these bozos, who conveniently show up to deal with the problem with a fake electronic lightshow.” That wasn’t the case with the boys in grey of course, but could the truth behind Jacob be something like that?

Jacob’s name comes up again when Ben returns to his camp with a young Ethan (cool), having kidnapped Alex. Widmore is angry that Ben didn’t follow through with his orders to “exterminate” Rousseau. Ben asks why they need to kill her, as she’s just an insane woman who poses no threat to them, adding that Widmore didn’t tell him she had a baby. When Ben asks what he should have done, Widmore answers malevolently that he should have killed the child too. Ben shows compassion for the baby, arguing against killing her.

Charles:You might find this difficult to understand, Benjamin. Every decision I’ve made has been about protecting this island.

Ben:Is killing this baby what Jacob wants?

It also intrigues me that Richard just sits silently and watches how Ben and Widmore deal with each other. He doesn’t intervene, he shows no expression, no indication of which one he agrees with…he’s completely impassive.

A few years later, we arrive at Widmore’s departure from the island. As he is led in handcuffs to the submarine, Ben comes to see him.

Ben: Charles! I came to say goodbye.

Charles: No you didn’t! You came to gloat.

Ben: No, don’t act as if I wanted this. You brought this on yourself.

Charles: Are you quite certain you want to do this, Benjamin?

Ben: You left the island regularly! You had a daughter with an outsider! You broke the rules, Charles.

Charles: And what makes you think you deserve to take what’s mine?

Ben: Because I won’t be selfish. Because I’ll sacrifice anything to protect this island.

Charles: You wouldn’t sacrifice Alex.

Ben: You’re the one who wanted her dead, Charles. Not the island.

Charles: I hope you’re right Benjamin. Because if you aren’t, and it is the island that wants her dead, she’ll be dead. And one day, you’ll be standing where I’m standing now. You’ll be the one being banished. And then you’ll finally realize you can not fight the inevitable. I’ll be seeing you, boy.

Now we know why, when Ben snuck into Widmore’s apartment in last season’s The Shape of Things to Come and accused him of murdering Alex, Widmore responded, “Don’t stand there looking at me with those horrible eyes of yours and lay the blame for the death of that poor girl on me…when we both know very well I didn’t murder her at all, Benjamin. You did.” (We don’t know why, in the same scene, Widmore asks Ben if he has come to kill him and Ben responds, “We both know I can’t do that.” Why can’t he do that? Irrelevant for the moment, but there’s something more to learn there…)

But let’s back up. When Ben tells Charles he’ll have to kill the baby himself, the older man walks away. Why? Why doesn’t he follow through himself with killing Rousseau and little Alex? Does the Island (and presumably that means Jacob too, if Jacob is real) really want them dead? Why? And if not, then why does Widmore? Are these orders really coming from Jacob, or is Jacob just a phantom menace that each leader uses to justify what they want done?

And what are we to make of all these “rules” we keep hearing about? Are these the Island’s (Jacob’s) rules? How was Widmore having a daughter with an outsider a violation of the rules? What did Ben mean, after Keamy killed Alex last season, when he said that Widmore changed the rules? Did Ben really believe that she wouldn’t be killed? Did he choose to take the risk, or was it truly outside the realm of what he thought possible? And though Ben accuses Widmore of regularly leaving the island, we know that Ben has a secret room where he keeps several passports, foreign currency, suits – it would appear that he leaves the island fairly regularly himself.

Okay, so we’re learning more about Ben and Widmore’s shared past, but there are still some key questions. How does Ben actually get Widmore banished? On what authority is he able to have him removed from power and taken to the sub? If Jacob is real, and it is his choice for Ben to take up leadership, how is that communicated so that everyone – all the Hostiles/Others – will believe it? How does the Hostiles’ loyalty shift from Widmore to Ben?

And again, what is Richard’s role in all of this? In my last write-up, I wondered if Richard was the real leader of the Hostiles but allowed other people to take on the role so that he could dwell behind-the-scenes instead. Entertainment Weekly‘s Doc Jensen has a Richard theory that I like. He writes: “My current take on Richard is this: He is like an angel to be wrestled with and overcome, like a sphinx to be solved and beaten, and should you be successful, you get the keys to the kingdom, the Island, and as part of the deal, he serves you faithfully until someone else comes along and knocks you off the mountain.” I dig the idea that Richard is just sort of a part of the package deal. If you want the Island, you gotta take Richard, like it or not. In such a scenario, his primary purpose is to protect the island from forces that might harm it, and he won’t interfere with how things are run unless he has doubts about the person running it. Then he’ll do what he has to do to help power shift into safer hands.

LUCKY PENNY
The show teases us with Penny’s fate by delaying Ben’s encounter with her, first depicting just his phone call to Widmore as he approaches her, and then having him ask Sun for the favor of apologizing to Desmond if she ever gets off the island.

I may not have all the big secrets of the show worked out, but every now and then I score a small victory. Evidence this excerpt of my write-up from the episode 316:

Jack takes a phone call from Ben. He’s on a pay phone at a pier; his face is badly bruised and streaked with blood; his hair is wet and matted, and he’s soaked all over. He says he’s been sidetracked and asks Jack to pick up Locke’s body. Seems obvious Ben went after Penny. My hope is that when he got there and prepared to go in for the kill, he saw little Charlie, which caught him off guard long enough for Desmond to arrive, kick the shit out of him, throw him overboard and sail away at Ludicrous Speed.  That’s what I hope. Ms. Hawking said the island isn’t done with Desmond. I sure hope the Irishman doesn’t return to the island to avenge Penny. I’m still not over Claire and Charlie being ripped apart. I can’t handle the demise of Penny and Desmond’s relationship.

Let the record show: that’s pretty much how it went down. And wouldn’t you agree that there really is a special thrill in watching people beat the ever-loving crap out of Ben? It’s the little things. So Desmond and Penny live to see another day…and if I might take a moment to say something positive about Ben, this is the second time in the episode where we see him spare an intended murder victim because of a child. Maybe Ben just needs a really good hug…

NEW AND IMPROVED
Early in the episode, Locke waltzes into Ben’s office to talk about what he casually calls “the elephant in the room.” Let’s just go ahead and acknowledge the line of the night right here, which was Ben’s response: “I assume you’re referring to the fact that I killed you?”

Ben says Locke had crucial information that would have died with him had he hung himself. Ben had to keep him alive to get that information, and apparently he got it sooner than he expected to, because the murder took place about two minutes later. So was Locke’s explanation that Jin is alive the vital nugget that fell into place for Ben? What about Locke mentioning that Eloise Hawking could show them all how to get back to the island? The last thing Ben did before choking Locke was acknowledge that he knew Eloise. But that doesn’t mean he knew she could show them a way back. So presumably, these two tidbits comprise the “crucial information” Ben referred to. What is Ben’s relationship to Eloise?

So he killed Locke because it was in the best interests of the island. When Locke announces that he’s going to take Ben to the Smoke Monster for his judgment, he says, “If everything you’ve done has been in the best interest of the island, then I’m sure the monster will understand.” An important point, as we’ll see later.

When they arrive at the remains of New Otherton on the big island, Locke asks Ben if it had been his idea to move into the houses after murdering the Dharma folk.

Locke: It just doesn’t seem like something the island would want.

Ben: You don’t have the first idea what this island wants.

Locke: You sure about that?

Locke has tried before to make Ben think he has more power and control than he actually does, but Ben was always able to get inside his head and undermine him. Yet when Locke asks, “You sure about that?” he does it with total confidence. Throughout the episode, in fact, he just seems sort of bemused by Ben. This new Locke is unflappable so far (also evidenced by his encounter with Caesar). This was the point where I began to really think that Ben would regret facilitating Locke’s resurrection.

When Locke and Ben meet up with Sun and Frank, Frank shows Ben the Dharma ’77 picture featuring Jack, Kate and Hurley. Once again we never know if Ben’s reactions are genuine or fake, but he seems to be honestly surprised to see them there. And if that’s true, then when he woke up with Locke by his bed he had probably not remembered Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid and Miles all being present in his childhood, as we considered last week. When Sun and Frank tell him about Christian – that he gave them the picture and told them to wait in the house for John Locke – Ben shows no sign of understanding.

Locke says he has a few ideas about how to find Jin, though he wasn’t about to share them just yet. Frank heads back to Hydra Island in the hopes of fixing the radio on the plane, but Sun agrees to stay. At this point, Ben goes into his secret room to summon Smokey. We get a better look at the hidden door this time, and while it is clearly marked up with hieroglyphics, it also had a cool, H.R. Giger, Alien look to it (maybe they’ll get Sigourney Weaver to play Jacob!). Anyway, the actual summoning of Smokey is both strange and mundane: Ben reaches into a muddy puddle and pulls a lever that drains the water. How exactly does this summon it? Are there similar places elsewhere on the island from which it can be sent for?

When Ben says he doesn’t know where the Smoke Monster is – only how to summon it – Locke says he knows where to find it, and leads Ben and Sun into the jungle. If Ben is being truthful that he didn’t know where to find it, then watching John lead the way must further freak him out. They get right to the heart of it when Ben tries to ask John how he knows where he’s going.

Locke: You don’t like this, do you? Having to ask questions that you don’t know the answers to. Blindly following someone in the hopes that they’ll lead you to whatever it is you’re looking for.

Ben: No John, I don’t like it at all.

Locke: Well, now you know what it like to be me.

In your defense Locke, I think this barely scratches the surface of Ben knowing what it was like to be you. I suggest taking him further into the jungle and shooting him in the chest. That might enhance his understanding.

So what more will this new and improved Locke have in store for us? In The Fellowship of the Ring, after Gandalf the Grey fell into a dark abyss, his companions all believed him dead. But he returned in The Two Towers as Gandalf the White – still the same lovable badass wizard, but a little…enhanced. You might say the same for Locke. If we have a Jack 2.0 on the island, we have a Locke 2.0 as well. Maybe even 2.5. Locke seems to be hardwired with a new understanding of the island, and we’re finally entering the period on the show where we will begin to understand this unique relationship.

BENJAMIN LINUS AND THE TEMPLE OF (POSSIBLE) DOOM
As I mentioned above, Locke told Ben that if he really has acted in the best interests of the island, the monster would understand. That would seem to be the case when Ben goes into (or under) The Temple and surrenders himself to Ol’ Smokey.

Above the grid of holes in the ground from which Smokey will soon waft, there are more hieroglyphic carvings. The main image is of Anubis, an Egyptian god, kneeling or crouching and reaching out its hand toward some sort of demon or devil whose head is growing out of a jagged body that may actually be the Black Smoke. The sharp figure starts small on the ground, as if coming up through the ground in a thin stream, and expands as it gets higher. It’s gotta be a depiction of the Smoke Monster, right? I thought of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, when Indy enters the tunnel that leads to the underground temple and looks at a carving on the wall of the god Shiva handing the Sankara stones to a priest. Remember the statue we glimpsed from behind at the beginning of the episode LaFleur. The show’s Egyptian motif is definitely becoming more pronounced…

The sequence with Smokey was thick with Indiana Jones references. The smoke billows out of the holes until it fully envelops Ben in a cloud. It was a very Raiders of the Lost Ark moment, with strong echoes of the climactic scene in which the Ark is finally opened. Of course, Ben comes out of looking Smokey in the eye a whole lot better than, say, this guy who looked into the Ark.

The fact that Ben emerges unscathed (mostly) would seem to suggest that the things Ben has done – good and bad in our eyes and the eyes of those around him – have been necessary in the eyes of the Island, including The Purge and the inaction that led to Alex being shot.

Although in hindsight, I wonder about that. All the moments from Ben’s past that the Smoke shows him are related to Alex or Widmore. It doesn’t show him the Purge, or holding Jack prisoner, or sending Goodwin to his death, or shooting Locke…so can Smokey just judge you for something specific at any given time? If Ben goes there with the intention of being judged for Alex’s death, does the Smoke know that and implicitly agree to judge only the incidents which relate to that event? Could Ben come back the next day and ask to be judged for something else?

If the Black Smoke is a security system, as Rousseau (and her lover Robert before her) once described it, then it must judge people on what their intentions are toward the Island. It spares Ben because he has apparently done right by the Island. But it has a clear and foreboding warning, which it expresses through a physical manifestation of Alex. She appears to Ben, and looks at him with sympathetic smile as he apologizes to her. But her expression is one of detached sympathy. It is alien. When he finishes speaking, she delivers her – the Island’s – (Jacob’s?) message. Slamming him up against a wall, she says, “Listen to me, you bastard! I know that you’re already planning to kill John again. But I want you to know that if you so much as touch him, I will hunt you down and destroy you. You will listen to every word John Locke says and you will follow his every order. Do you understand? Say it! Say you’ll follow him!” Ben looks away and says that he swears he’ll follow John. And when he looks back, Alex is gone. But the Island hath spoken. When Ben looks up at Locke and says, “It let me live,” it sounded to me like he was saying it with regret…as if he’d almost rather die than have to cede his power to (and start taking orders from) Locke.

In light of this sequence, and in pondering the inner workings of Smokey, one has to wonder: why did it kill Mr. Eko? I went back and checked out part of his fateful episode, The Cost of Living. In it, his dead brother Yemi appears to him in a vision and tells him, “It is time to confess. To be judged, brother. I will be waiting. You know where to find me.” Okay, so far so good. In the end however, Eko tells the vision of Yemi that he will not ask for forgiveness, because he has not sinned; he has only done what he needed to do to survive and to protect Yemi when they were boys. After making his case, Yemi says derisively, “You speak to me as if I am your brother.” Then he walks away, and out of the trees comes Smokey, picking Eko up and thrashing him to and fro.  It all seems generally consistent with Ben’s judgment, other than the outcome of course, but it seems like Smokey is a lot harsher on Eko than he was on Ben. Maybe it’s because Ben still has a necessary role to play on the island even if it’s not as leader, whereas Eko did not. Still, Eko had done a lot of good things that Smokey didn’t seem to take into account. And in sending “Yemi” to call Eko to judgment, Smokey made the first move. It’s always been said by Lost’s fans and creators that everyone on the island has something to atone for or is seeking redemption. Some have got what they came for and some have not yet. It just seemed that in the case of Eko, the Island took a particularly proactive approach.

And what about the pilot of Flight 815? He was killed by the monster.  I know, I know – there’s probably nothing to read into there. Once again, I figure it was a case of the creators not really having decided yet what the monster was or how it operated; just that there was one, and it’s got a temper. Still, I had to bring it up. I had to!!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-When Ben steals Alex, he tells Rousseau that he’ll kill her if she follows him or tries to find him. And most curiously, he tells her, “If you want your child to live, everytime you hear whispers you run the other way.” I might be wrong, but I think this is the first time that an Other has directly commented on the whispering in the jungle. When will we learn what it means? Why does Ben issue that particular warning?

Also, I briefly mentioned this in the last write-up, but it really belongs here: why didn’t Rousseau recognize Ben when she captured him in her net? I mean sure, it was dark when he came and took Alex away, but c’mon – even after years of isolation and paranoia, wouldn’t you remember the face of the guy who kidnapped your child? And why did she tell Sayid, way back in Season One when she captured him and he asked her if she’s ever seen other people on the island, “No…but I hear them”? Did she really not remember encountering Ben in person on the night Alex was taken?

Seriously, I should get a job as a Hollywood continuity coordinator. The position exists, and overall – with everything to keep track of – I’m sure Lost‘s is doing a fine job. But they do seem to let some obvious errors slip by sometimes…

-When Ben returns to his camp with Alex, when in time is that? As we know, he goes back to his Dharma Initiative life at some point after being healed from his gunshot wound. So does he disappear from there for long stretches to live amongst the Others? Is the kidnapping of Alex supposed to take place after The Purge? The way his hair is styled seems to be an attempt to make him look younger than he looked on Purge Day. But by the time Widmore leaves the island – which judging by Alex’s age, can only be five years later at the most – the Others are already living in the old Dharma houses and Ben accuses Widmore of using the sub to regularly leave the island, meaning they’ve had access to the sub for a while. Did Widmore order the Purge? If so, why did Richard seem to be taking his direction from Ben when it was complete? While some people are confused by the show’s time travel, I’m more confused by its timeline…

-I liked the nice touch of seeing that the game of Risk, which Hurley, Sawyer and Locke were playing when Keamy’s soldiers showed up and attacked New Otherton last season, was still there, unfinished when Ben crept through the house and discovered Sun.

-The structure we thought was The Temple is apparently not the Temple, but rather a wall surrounding The Temple, which is actually a half-mile away. Ben says the wall was built to protect it, and to keep people like Sun and Locke out. I gotta say though – this wall doesn’t look that tall to me. And there are trees all over the place. Couldn’t people have…I don’t know…like, climbed one of them and seen what lies beyond? You wusses wanna build a real wall, talk to the Chinese. Or Pink Floyd.

-Did you notice that the episode seemed to make a point of Locke taking his shoes on and off, at least one time each? The shoes that are not his, but rather Christian’s, placed on his feet by Jack? It’s probably nothing, but it jumped right out at me.

-I’m reconsidering my position about Caesar and Ilana, who I’ve assumed all along know each other and are working together. Now I’m toying with the possibility that they actually don’t know each other and are not in league, but rather are at odds with each other, even if they don’t realize it yet. I still think that they have a larger connection to the big picture and that they were not aboard Ajira 316 by mere chance, but I wonder if whatever each of them is there for will turn out to be in conflict with the other one.

Then there’s also the question of whether either of them have anything to do with Ben and/or Widmore, or if they each represent yet another interest in the island. I also wonder, now that we know Ilana is responsible for bringing Sayid back, if Caesar is the one who got Hurley on the plane. Probably not, since they briefly interacted on the plane and there did not seem to be any indication that they knew each other. But right now, Hurley is the only one who has returned to the island without us knowing why. (Well, maybe not the only one; there’s still Lapidus.)

-Speaking of which, the episode’s random twist occurs when Lapidus returns to Hydra Island and learns that Ilana and a couple of other passengers have guns and have taken charge.  When Ilana asks Lapidus “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” does she mean lies as in lays down, or lies as in speaks falsehoods? And more importantly, when she says statue, does she mean that statue? The one we think she means? And even more importantly…what?!? What is she talking about? Who’s the big guy with her? What has she done with the other passengers? Is that big metal crate filled with weapons? Why does she think Lapidus will have any idea what the hell she’s talking about? Where are they headed? Note that she is now back to using the accent she used when she seduced Sayid. I’ll assume that that is her natural voice.

-Widmore tells Ben on the phone that the island won’t let him come back; that he’s been trying for 20 years himself. The question is – and I might have brought this up previously – why hasn’t Widmore been able to get back? If he knows where Eloise Hawking is, and she knows how to get back, why hasn’t he found out? Especially if she does turn out to be Ellie from the island, then she and Widmore have a history together; he doesn’t just know her as Faraday’s mother. Does he just not realize that she knows how to get back? In his 20 years of attempting to return, wouldn’t he have sought out everyone who might possess relevant information? Wouldn’t he make an effort to go see her? Did he do that, and she was able to conceal the sub-church Dharma hatch from him? And how did she come to be in an off-island Dharma station anyway? Especially since the Dharma headquarters are in Ann Arbor, MI. Okay okay – stopping myself from asking all those questions right now, as they have nothing to do with this chapter. Pace yourself…pace yourself.

Tonight’s Episode: Some Like it Hoth