I Am DB

Trust me when I tell you that in my school days, I weren’t no math student (and apparently I weren’t much of an English student either). But one of the few things I did glean from Algebra is that every equation is comprised of parts, such as a constant and a variable. Last season, Lost gave us one of its best-ever episodes, The Constant, in which Desmond mentally traveled between 1996 and 2004 until a phone call to Penny stabilized him. If Lost itself is an equation, last week’s The Variable brought us one step closer to solving it. (Don’t miss next season’s thrilling installment, The Coefficient!) The only reason I’m grateful for the show ending next year is that I won’t have to face more titles inspired by advanced mathematics. Trig and Calculus can suck my long division.

I hate math. But I love Lost.

I BELIEVE THE CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE
I want to start at the beginning, but in order to do that I need to start at the end: this episode sees the unfortunate death of Daniel Faraday (at least, I assume it does. Maybe he’s gonna make it, but it sure looked like the light went out of his eyes.

But how did it come to this?

There’s a Bob Dylan song called “Gotta Serve Somebody” in which he sings, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody/Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” So in trying to understand Daniel’s demise, I wonder: who does Eloise Hawking serve? In a flashback to Faraday’s childhood, Eloise approaches her son with trepidation as he plays the piano (quite skillfully, if I may say so). She seems to be steeling herself for what she has to tell this young boy, which is that his destiny relies on the application of his mind toward mathematics and science. “It’s my job to keep you on your path,” she tells him. The emphasis she puts on the word “job” suggests that her duty as a loving mother is secondary (at least) to serving her master, whoever or whatever that may be. There’s a pall over this encounter that makes me wonder if she knows even then that sending Daniel down this road will result in his death.

CHANG REACTION
Outside The Orchid with Miles, Faraday just waits, checking his notebook, until Dr. Chang arrives. “Right on time,” he says, and follows Chang into The Orchid. How does he know the day’s details down to the exact time Chang will arrive? How is he able to be so precise?

What follows is of course the very first scene of this season, seen from some new angles. Faraday listens to Chang tell a construction foreman that he must stop drilling so as not to release a powerful energy. As Chang is about to leave, Faraday approaches him to make his case.

Faraday: I need you to order the evacuation of every man, woman and child on this island.
Chang: Why would I do that?
Faraday: Because that man is on a stretcher as a consequence of the electromagnetic activity that your drilling unleashed down here.
Chang: Which is now contained.
Faraday: It’s contained down here. But in about six hours, the same thing is gonna happen at the site for The Swan station only the energy there is about 30,000 times more powerful Sir, and the accident is gonna be catastrophic.
Chang: That is utterly absurd. What could possibly qualify you to make that kind of prediction?
Faraday: I’m from the future.

Now I know he’s dealing with a guy who believes time travel is within reach, but Faraday still might have tried easing Chang into the whole “future” thing.” I might have said, “Because where I come from…it’s already happened.” But instead, he skips right ahead to the “f” word. Back above ground and outside the station now, his efforts to convince Chang that he’s serious – even trying to point out that Miles is his son – fail. Miles doesn’t admit the truth when Faraday asks him for backup, and Chang drives off even more pissy than usual. Faraday tells Miles that he’s just trying to make sure Chang does what he’s supposed to do. Which I figure is to follow through with that evacuation order, at least for some of Dharma’s inhabitants.

OXFORD BLUES
In another flashback, we meet Teresa Spencer, previously seen in a comatose state during Desmond’s attempts to track down Faraday’s mother. At that time, we learned that Faraday was, to an unknown degree, responsible for her condition and that he abandoned her and fled to America, though even then we suspected there was more to it than that.

So here she is, Faraday’s research assistant and girlfriend. When he introduces her to Eloise on his graduation day, his mother shows little interest in her. Over a mother-son only lunch, he complains of her rudeness to Teresa and of her apparent inability to be satisfied with him, pointing out that he’s the youngest doctor to ever graduate from Oxford and that he just got a 1.5 million pound grant from an industrialist named Charles Widmore. Eloise registers happy surprise at news of the grant, and another kind of surprise at learning that it comes from Widmore, but she doesn’t let on that she knows him. Instead, she gives Daniel a present – the notebook we’ve seen him so often referencing.

MEMORIES…LIKE THE CORNERS OF MY MIND
Jumping ahead in time, we finally revisit one of our first meetings with Daniel, in which he watches the news report about the discovery of Oceanic 815 in the Indian Ocean. (Continuity Police – I love that they made no effort at all to match his hair with the original footage, where it’s all kinda slicked back. One moment his hair looks like that, and the next it’s flat and down around his face as we usually see it. Seriously? You couldn’t have attended to that detail?) Maybe the crew is suffering from memory problems, just like Daniel himself. You may remember that when Desmond visited him at Oxford, he was running experiments with his rat Eloise and, over time, exposing himself to large quantities of radiation…without wearing any protective headgear. I assume that is what damaged his memory. Oxford Faraday even says to Desmond that Island Faraday must remember them having this conversation in 1996, but Desmond says no, Island Faraday doesn’t remember it.

Daniel is visited by Charles Widmore, whose name he remembers as his benefactor, though they’ve never met. When Widmore makes reference to Daniel having been dismissed from Oxford, Daniel says that what happened to Teresa was an accident, and that he had run tests on himself first. Whatever did happen with her, it now seems likely that Daniel was taken away from her as opposed to abandoning her on his own.

Daniel can’t explain why he’s so upset by the Oceanic discovery, but the newscast prompts Widmore to make his purpose known. He says that the plane wreckage is an elaborate, expensive hoax – which he himself orchestrated – and that the plane actually crashed on an island which has unique scientific properties, as well as the power to heal Daniel’s mind and restore his memory. He wants Daniel to go to this island, which he says will “further your research; show you things you’d never dream of.” Daniel asks why he’s doing this for him.

Widmore: Because you’re a man of tremendous gifts and it would be a shame to see them go to waste.
Faraday: You sound like my mother.
Widmore: That’s because we’re old friends.

I assume Daniel will forget that little nugget due to his memory problems, just as Widmore says he’ll forget the confession about the fake plane wreckage. (Hey! Now it’s official: Widmore staged the 815 wreckage!) I wonder if Widmore makes Daniel this job offer knowing what fate awaits him on the island, or if Eloise alone is burdened with that foreknowledge.

That burden becomes more apparent when she visits Daniel at home in what must be mere days after Widmore was there. She tells him that he should accept Widmore’s offer and go to this island. Daniel asks if that will make her proud. She says it will, but she can barely maintain her smile before her expression collapses into fear, regret and sadness. Even before Daniel’s fate is revealed, we know from her look that something terrible awaits him.

By the way, we now understand last season’s scene where Daniel and Charlotte were on the beach, looking at three face down playing cards, with Daniel trying to guess what they were and coming up short. He was trying to see if his memory was coming back.

GAME OVER
Sawyer convenes a meeting at his house with Juliet, Jack, Kate, Hurley and Jin. The gig is up, he tells them. With Phil the security guard tied up in his closet, their cover is blown and they have precious little time to ditch Dharmaville. Their choices are to commandeer the sub and get off the island, or head into the jungle and start from scratch. Jin won’t leave the island while there’s a chance Sun is on it, and Hurley doesn’t want to go either after all the effort involved in getting back (hmm, we still don’t know why he came or how he knew about the flight). Before the rest can weigh in, Faraday and Miles arrive and the former says he needs to find the Hostiles, one of whom is his mother. “She is the only one on this island who can get us back to where we belong,” he says. Oh yeah, that’s right! I neglected to mention that Faraday’s whole reason for returning to the island was that he saw Jack, Kate and Hurley in the new recruit photo and he needs to know how they got to 1977. Early in the episode, Jack informs him that they arrived via a plane that they were told to board by his mother. And he told Jack that his mother was wrong and they shouldn’t be here.  So…there’s that.

What Faraday says about her being the only one who can get them back where they belong is an important point, as it reinforces that Eloise seems to be a gatekeeper of sorts. Why is it that she would know how to readjust their course on the island? Why is it that she knows how to get to the island? Is she the sole keeper of this information? Later in the episode, in 2007, Eloise will be approached by Widmore, which once again leads me to wonder how he could possibly not know for all these years that she holds the key to getting back to the island.

Come to think of it, how does Faraday even know that his mother is a Hostile? He didn’t know it when they wound up in 1954 and he told her to bury the bomb. Or at least, he certainly didn’t let on that he knew. Did he somehow learn about her while in Ann Arbor? I can’t see how…

Sawyer resists the idea of Faraday going to the Hostiles, so Jack looks to Kate to tell him where they can be found. Jack says whether they go on the sub or go to the beach, they don’t belong here. “I belonged here just fine until you came back, Doc,” Sawyer says.

Jack looks to Kate again. “Kate, you made me promise to never ask what happened to Aaron, or why you came back here. But I know that reason isn’t…it isn’t here. It’s not now.” Kate agrees to take Faraday, with Jack tagging along. Juliet gives them the code for the pylon fence, and the rest remain to pack what they can and flee.

Oh, and before heading out, Faraday spies little Charlotte on a swing-set and goes to tell her that when Dr. Chang asks people to leave the island, she and her mother have to go. Just like she told him he would when she was dying.

This is followed by a shootout with Radzinsky and a few of his men, who come upon Jack, Kate and Faraday taking guns from the motor pool. Our trio manages to escape in a jeep, though Faraday is grazed by a bullet. While treating the wound out near the pylons, Faraday reiterates a lesson we learned from Miles a few episodes ago: “Any one of us can die, Jack.” It’s a loaded moment; the words hang there and the camera lingers on Faraday, then moves to Jack. It’s loaded with the inevitability that one of them might soon prove the statement right. And we know which one did…for now. I’m still left with the faintest feeling though…wouldn’t it be ballsy to kill Jack at the end of this season?

Think about it…he dies, but remains a presence on the island, occupying the same ethereal plane his father is on…and the one Locke is possibly on. Father and son reunited, Man of Science and Man of Faith reunited, all with a common purpose. I don’t think it will happen…but I think it could.

And if it doesn’t, I still think chances are high Jack will die before the end of the show. What’s left for him in the real world? A happily ever after with Kate? I feel like that ship has sailed. Jack’s fate seems tied to the island. And remember Ben’s words (not that you can ever trust them, but still) when they were preparing to return: “Find yourself a suitcase. If there’s anything in this life you want, pack it in there. Because you’re never coming back.” Jack dying soon would even, in a way, honor J.J. Abrams’ original intention, which was to kill Jack off at the beginning the series. His plan was for Jack to be introduced as the apparent leader of the survivors, only to have him die three-quarters of the way through the first episode. But the network rejected this idea, fearing viewers would be alienated. Anyway, most people probably assume that because Jack is the primary hero of the show, he’ll survive at least until near the end, if not all the way through. So for him to die with a whole season left to go…

CAUSE AND EFFECT
Once they’ve crossed over into Hostile territory, Faraday lays out what’s about to happen and why his mission is of such crucial importance. And here comes that trippy time travel, butterfly effect shit that I eat up like sugar.

I love it. This entire chain of events is gonna start happening this afternoon. Awesome.

I know I’m not the only one among you who was thinking that Kate isn’t likin’ that plan so much, knowing that all her problems with the law will start over if the plane lands in L.A. She might argue against Faraday’s plan, and with good reason. But while I’d feel for her plight, my counter-argument would be rather simple: Charlie. Boone. Shannon. Michael. Ana-Lucia. Libby. Eko. Rousseau. Alex. Charlotte…

Speaking of which, the wild idea that floated into my mind briefly after this episode was that Faraday’s plan will kinda work. He’ll change the future, but only to a small degree. The plane will still crash on the island, but events will unfold differently than they did the first time. And that would be the set-up for Season Six. And the big surprise would be that because we re-visit the plane crash, departed cast members Boone, Shannon and Charlie – and perhaps some from the tail section – would return to the show as regulars.

That wouldn’t work, I quickly realized, because Harold “Michael” Perrineau is starring on another show, and Malcolm David “Walt” Kelly has reached the far shores of Pubertyland. That plot development would also free the creators from having to answer a lot of big questions, like why Claire disappeared into the jungle with her Ghost Dad, why some people were in 1977 while others were in 2007, why Locke is walking around again…and so on. Still, I feel like there would be ways of making it work. Can I leave it hanging out there as a radical possibility?

Okay, getting back to business: Faraday wants to detonate Jughead. I assume that’s part of the reason he wants to find his mother – not just because she can help them get back where they belong, but because she knows where the bomb is…since he’s the one who told her to bury it. But I gotta ask – and hey, I’m no physicist – but can someone explain to me how detonating an H-bomb will be any less catastrophic to the island and its inhabitants than an enormous blast of electromagnetic energy?

Also, isn’t it a little bit early for the incident to occur? (For surely that’s what this release of energy from the Swan site constitutes: the “incident” that Chang spoke of in The Swan orientation video, and the incident for which next week’s season finale will be named. Don’t you think?) As I pointed out in the previous write-up, Chang – aka Dr. Marvin Candle – says in the video that The Swan was “originally constructed as a laboratory where scientists could work to understand the unique electromagnetic fluctuations emanating from this sector of the island. Not long after the experiments began, however, there was…an incident.” It clearly sounds like The Swan was up and running with its normal purpose in place before this “incident” ever occurred. So does Faraday have his facts wrong? Or has the show just lapsed into complete inconsistency? Or are there different incidents?

And one other thing – if The Swan’s original purpose was for study, why does Faraday say it won’t be built if he can prevent the release of the energy? Wouldn’t it just be built with maybe a little less concrete? Maybe it would look a little different, but it would still be built, right? Built and used for its original purpose, that being the study of electromagnetic energy, rather than the prevention of releasing electromagnetic energy?

IN THE BALANCE
Let’s briefly interrupt Faraday’s mission impossible to return to life off-island in 2007. Desmond is one tough son of a bitch, cause after the beatdown he gave Ben on the pier, I assumed he was unharmed by Ben’s bullet. I thought it must have grazed him, or been absorbed by a pot roast hidden in his grocery bag. But no, he did take the bullet, and now he’s been rushed into the emergency room. As Penny and little Charlie wait, they are visited by Eloise, who tells Penny that she is Daniel Faraday’s mother. “I came, Penelope, to apologize. Your husband has become a casualty in a conflict that’s bigger than him, bigger than any of us.”

The word “casualty” alarms Penny. “What do you mean, is Des gonna be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Eloise says. “For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” Is that because this is as far as she’s ever been able to see, or is it because the course of events she has always expected has somehow been altered? Maybe some action taken on the island has already changed the future that she’s been used to for so long. I’m not thinking anything as major as what Faraday proposes to do with Jughead…but some alteration that has changed the course of future history.

When the news arrives that Desmond is okay, Eloise slips out. Outside the hospital, Widmore steps from the shadows and asks if Desmond is okay.

Eloise: Your daughter’s in there. Why don’t you go in and say hello?
Widmore: Unfortunately Eloise, my relationship with Penelope is one of the things I had to sacrifice.
Eloise: Sacrifice? Don’t you talk to me about sacrifice, Charles. I had to send my son back to the island, knowing full well that…
Widmore: He’s my son too, Eloise.

Bombshell!!

Or was it? I dunno, was that obvious? Did any of you see it coming? I brought it up as a possibility in my write-up for Whatever Happened, Happened, but it was just speculation after Richard was warned that taking young Ben might upset Ellie and Charles. I asked, “What is this Ellie and Charles business? Is Richard no longer the leaders of The Others, as he appeared to be when we first met Ellie and Young Widmore in the 1950’s? If he is no longer in charge, how did that come to pass? And are Ellie and Widmore sharing power? And more importantly, are Ellie and Widmore gettin’ it on? Are Penny Widmore and Daniel Faraday siblings? Do I have any reason to suspect as much? No? Think that’ll stop me from suspecting it anyway?”

Another minor victory…unless I was the only one who didn’t see this writing on the wall from a mile away.

Eloise slaps Widmore when he refers to Daniel as his son. Why the slap? Was she forced to raise Daniel alone and resents Widmore for it? Was Widmore the one who put Faraday on his path, as a young boy, to the island? Is it because Widmore didn’t have to bear the burden of knowing what would happen to his son? Is Widmore the somebody that Eloise has gotta serve? (Nah, I’m guessing the one she serves goes higher than Widmore.) If Eloise resents Widmore, for whatever reason exactly, does that explain why she helped Ben get back to the island but never helped him?

LOWER THE GUN, STUPID!!
Why Daniel, why do you go marching into the Hostile’s camp and refuse to lower your gun? You’re surrounded by people with rifles, there’s no way you can get what you want in his situation by means of firepower. Richard seems willing to talk to you! All you have to do is lower your gun, and you can have a civil conversation regarding your mother’s whereabouts. You’re smarter than this. You’re so much smarter than this that I wonder if you’re doing it deliberately; if you’re trying to make them kill you; if that’s part of your plan. Except that doesn’t make sense given what you just told Jack and Kate about your intentions. Plus, you seemed genuinely surprised that you were shot – not just surprised that your mother did the shooting, but surprised that you were shot at all. Which brings me back to my original point. Lower your gun!! There’s no reason you can’t lower your gun. There’s no reason you need to die. Why, damn you, why?!!?

Okay, so maybe there is a reason you need to die. Maybe it’s to service the plot. But you don’t know that! You don’t know there’s a plot! You’re a character! So just lower the gun, Stupid!

Okay, so maybe I was affected by Faraday’s death. No, I didn’t cry. But he’s such a great character, and my respect for Jeremy Davies dates back to Saving Private Ryan. Maybe tonight’s episode will shed light on the reason for his death. And hey, maybe there’s a chance he’ll pull through. Maybe Eloise will realize what she’s done and bring him into The Temple to let the healing begin! Of course, if it were that simple, Future Eloise probably wouldn’t be so emotional about encouraging his return to the island. And like I said earlier, it really did look like he breathed his last breath. I guess I’m just clinging to wishful thinking. There’s a chance, but not a great one…

Riddle me this, though: how is it that Eloise is even on the island now, in 1977? Shouldn’t she be on the mainland with Daniel? I don’t know how old he’s supposed to be, but given the flashback we saw to his piano-playing childhood…wouldn’t you figure that had to be sometime around ’77? Also, why don’t Eloise and Richard recognize Daniel from the good ‘ol Jughead days? Maybe I’m overestimating the power of memory – after all, their encounter back then only lasted part of a single day. Maybe they just don’t remember his face. Or maybe they do. Richard did ask if they knew each other, but I read that less as “you look sort of familiar” and more as “should I know who you are?” And Eloise had barely stared into his dying face when the show ended, so maybe she did recognize him and it just took her a minute to place him. Again, tonight’s episode might clear it up.

Fine, I’ll be patient and give them a chance to actually answer questions before I ask them.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-One of the things I keep thinking about – okay, there are obviously many, many, many things this show keeps me thinking about – but one that has been front of mind for weeks is why the Oceanic Six needed to return to the island. They were told by Locke, who was told by both Richard Alpert and Christian Shepherd, that the Flight 815 survivors left behind on the island would die if Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley and Sun didn’t come back (or what they may have said is that in order to “save the island,” the O6 needed to come back. But saving the island and saving Sawyer and the others amounts to one and the same, so…)

And indeed, after they left, things were pretty bad, as Sawyer, Juliet, Locke and the rest rocketed hither and thither across the space-time continuum. But consider these facts, which I’ve mentioned before: a) the time warping was caused by Ben turning the wheel, which had nothing to do with the O6’s departure; and b) the time-warping stopped when Locke turned the wheel again and moved it back into place. In fact, Locke keeps saying that Jack and Co. never should have left the island…but if they hadn’t left, then Locke wouldn’t have left to bring them back, and the wheel wouldn’t have been re-set, and the time warping would have continued until they all wound up like Charlotte: nosebled and dead. So from one perspective, the O6 departure actually saved the lives of those left behind.

But I’m getting off track. Point is, the Oceanic Six (well, five actually) finally return to the island to find that, other than it being 1977, everything is copasetic. Everyone has assimilated nicely into the Dharma Initiative, and things are going particularly well for Sawyer and Juliet. Both have made it clear that they didn’t need the others to come back and save them from anything. So what’s the deal? Are all of us – the viewers, the Oceanic Six, Locke – victims of a big manipulation which led us to believe the O6 had to return to the island? Or has the danger facing the island and those left behind simply not yet revealed itself? Could it be The Purge? If Jack and the others didn’t come back then Faraday wouldn’t return, the Swan incident would happen, the plane would crash, the freighter would come, the O6 would be rescued, Sawyer and the others would be killed in The Purge, and who knows what would happen to The Island.

Or maybe something entirely different is in motion. If we’re keeping score: Richard, Christian, Ben, Locke and Eloise all said the Oceanic Six needed to go back to the island. And in this episode, Faraday says they didn’t. Alls I’m asking is: did the Oceanic Six have to come back? If so, why? And if not, why were they (and Locke) led to believe they did?

-Moving on, where the fuck are Rose and Bernard? Seriously, no one has even mentioned them since the time-tripping began. What the hell?

-I’m still wondering if Faraday will be revealed as the “clever fellow” that Eloise talked about (in her off-island Dharma hatch) who figured out that the island was always moving, calculated the equations to figure out where in time it would be at any moment, built a massive pendulum to help make those calculations etc. It’s gotta be him, right? But when? And how does that fit in? And why, I ask again, was Eloise in a Dharma station to begin with?  Could this whole thing be a ruse? The friction between the Hostiles and the Dharma Initiative, the “truce”…is it all just a big lie? Are they all really one big group…perhaps serving whatever lies in the shadow of the statue? Nah, I guess that doesn’t really make sense when you start to think about it. Plenty of mysteries still to be solved as Lost winds down…

-I came across two pretty good interviews with Damon and Carlton recently, if you’re interested. One is from Variety and one is from Lostpedia. They don’t really answer any plot questions or give clues away, but they do have some interesting things to say.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
Welcome to the meeting, Twitchy. Good to see you again. Pound cake’s in the kitchen, help yourself to the punch. – Sawyer

Tonight’s Episode: Follow the Leader

The Variable was Lost’s 100^th episode. Check out this cake that was made for them! Click here for a larger picture, and here for some close-ups.

I would like to state from the outset that the makers of Lost stole this episode title from me. In 2002, when it was announced that Star Wars Episode II would be called Attack of the Clones, I started a list of alternate titles that riffed on other movies. The list quickly turned into a general game of altering titles to incorporate any element of Star Wars. “Some Like it Hoth” was on my list. Had I shown the foresight to copyright my parody titles, I would now be preparing to sue the makers of Lost and the ABC television network. (I would of course offer to settle the case out of court in exchange for full-time access to the set during the production of the sixth and final season.) Instead, I must be content with knowing that I came up with the title over six years ago, and that I have the e-mail to prove it. I will share my work with you later; right now, we have more important things to consider. Starting with…

BODY OF EVIDENCE
With Sawyer “off the grid,” Horace has no choice but to bring Miles into the “circle of trust” in order to take on an important assignment. (I wonder if this is the same circle of trust into which Robert DeNiro brought Ben Stiller.) Miles notes that the location Horace is sending him to is not part of Dharma land, but in Hostile territory. Regardless, Horace gives him a package and assures him that Radzinsky is there waiting to a) take possession of it and b) send him back with one in return.

The package going back to Horace turns out to be a dead body. When he returns to deliver it, Horace is on the phone with Dr. Chang, and Miles hears him say, “Pierre, if it was caused by the electromagnetism, we need to know!” Horace now tells Miles to bring the “package” out to Dr. Chang at The Orchid. Miles seems uncomfortable with the assignment, but Horace isn’t in a patient mood. The stage for hilarity is set when Miles arrives back at the van only to find that Hurley has signed it out to deliver lunches to The Orchid’s work crew. Miles tells him to get another van, but Hurley insists they go together. “We’re going to the same place. Why don’t we carpool? It’ll help with global warming…which hasn’t happened yet, so maybe we can prevent it.”

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?
Meanwhile, Roger Linus returns to the infirmary to discover that Ben has disappeared. Juliet says she was gone for ten minutes, and that’s pretty much the best she has to offer other than an apology. Not too smart of her, I have to say. Juliet has always been pretty resourceful, so it’s kinda strange she hasn’t thought this through more. She looks like a deer in headlights when Roger angrily demands to know where Ben is. When he storms off to notify security, Juliet says to Kate, “Well, here we go,” as if this is the beginning of the whole thing unraveling – not just the fact that they took Ben, but her whole life on the island with Sawyer.

Roger’s mood doesn’t improve as the episode goes on. When Kate tries to offer encouragement that Ben will be fine, Roger grows suspicious of her interest in his kid. She backs off, but now he’s wondering if she might have something to do with Ben’s disappearance. Later, when Roger finds Jack cleaning a classroom and kicks his water bucket across the floor, that feeling of sympathy I started to have last time we saw him –  grieving over his wife’s death and his son’s shooting – began to turn back into a feeling of “that guy’s an ass.” I try to remember the pain he’s suffering underneath it all, but he doesn’t make it easy.

That night, security officer Phil shows up at Sawyer and Juliet’s with a security tape showing Sawyer and Kate out by the pylons with Ben. He’s willing to give Sawyer a chance to explain himself, which Sawyer does….by knocking him unconscious. He tells Juliet to get some rope. Well, here we go…

THE SIXTH SENSE
While driving to The Orchid, Hurley detects a foul smell in the back of the van. He makes Miles pull over so he can check to make sure the sandwiches aren’t bad, but as he roots around in the back, he discovers the source of the odor: the body bag.

When he asks what happened to the guy, Miles says he was working, thinking about a girl, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in his tooth, which turned out to be a filling getting yanked out of its socket and through his skull. (The moral of the story is if you don’t overindulge in junk food, you’ll reduce the chances of needing fillings that might one day get yanked through your cranium by a massive electromagnetic surge. This episode of Lost is sponsored by the American Dental Association. Four out of five dentists choose Lost in the Wednesday evening, 9-10pm time slot.)

Hurley is curious as to how Miles knows details like the fact that the victim was thinking about a girl. He asks Miles point blank if he can talk to dead people. He says he understands, because he can talk to them too. At first I thought Hurley was just trying to trick him into admitting his secret, but in their next scene Hurley talked more about his experiences and I was reminded that of course, he’s had encounters – at least in his head – with Charlie, Mr. Eko, and who knows who else. Miles’ sixth sense works differently from Hurley’s, in that the latter’s seems limited to his friends or people he knows, whereas Miles hears it all…as long as there’s a body nearby, at least.

They finally arrive at The Orchid, where Dr. Chang – acting like his usual, short-tempered self – is annoyed that Hurley knows about the body. Dr. Chang sorta chews Hurley out and threatens him with a new role weighing polar bear feces on Hydra Island if he speaks of the body to anyone. He takes the corpse away and tells Miles to wait there for him. Hurley remarks that Chang is a douche.

“That douche is my dad,” Miles responds.

MORE DADDY ISSUES
Perhaps this would be a good time to comment on the episode’s flashbacks. It only took about two seasons, but we finally got a good chunk of the Miles Straume backstory. It had been widely predicted by the fan community that Miles was the son of Dr. Chang, and in this episode we learned it conclusively. But he was living off the island by the time he was six or seven years old, and he already had his gift for communing with the dead. Where did that come from? Did something he experienced as a boy on the island give him that ability, or is he just special, like Walt?

When he’s older, he questions his dying mother about his father, but she does not want to talk about him and harps on the fact that his father didn’t want them, didn’t love him, kicked them out when he was a baby, etc. But is it really that cut and dry? I mean sure, Hurley’s description of Chang is accurate, but did he really not want his family? If he did kick them out, might it have been because he somehow knew that something bad was going to happen on the island and he was trying to save them by making them think he didn’t want them? He might not have known what was coming exactly, but maybe he knew something was. Or he expected one thing, and instead suffered The Purge. Or maybe he died before the Purge. And how does Mrs. Straume even know he’s dead?

So now Miles is back on the island, working with his father in The Dharma Initiative. When Hurley asks how he knew Chang was his father, Miles answers, “Third day we were here, I was on line at the cafeteria and my mother got in line behind me. That was my first clue.”

After a few minutes, Chang returns and tells Miles to drive him back to Radzinsky. With Hurley along for the ride again, more good times are in store. The whole scene that follows, in which Hurley casually questions Chang and tries to make the connection between him and Miles, is hilarious.

Hurley actually does a pretty good job of not sounding obvious, though you gotta figure: Chang is Chinese. He has a kid named Miles, which I don’t think is a particularly common name among the Chinese. He’s now sitting next to a Chinese guy named Miles. And he believes in the possibility of time travel. For a scientist, he’s not too bright, is he? Shouldn’t the presence of adult Miles at least give him brief pause at some point?

To those who would argue that he might not know about the time travel yet, I counter that he certainly suspects it’s possible. The Orchid is already under construction, and as he told a foreman in the very first scene of this season, “This station is being built here because of its proximity to what we believe to be an almost limitless energy. And that energy, once we can harness it correctly, is going to allow us to manipulate time.” So he’s already caught the whiff off time travel…which makes me think he’s a little bit of an idiot for not putting two and two together vis-à-vis Miles. Still, just cause he believes in time travel doesn’t mean such a leap would be obvious. Alright Chang, I’ll give you this round…

One thing is for sure: half the people on this show have some kind of daddy issue. Jack, Kate, Sun, Jin, Locke, Ben, Miles, Claire (remember her?)…am I missing anyone? These people don’t need a way home; they need group therapy.

Oh, and based on the last few seconds of this episode, I assume we’re about to learn more about how and why Faraday was present in The Orchid during that “limitless energy” conversation.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
Haunted by the voices of the dead, abandoned by his father and lied to by his mother, Miles grows up to be a sarcastic, cynical loner with a capitalist streak. After all, he’s got a gift – why not show that American, entrepreneurial spirit and make some money off it? His business as ghost whisperer leads him to an encounter with a familiar face: Naomi Dorrit, organizer of international covert freighter operations.

Naomi approaches Miles and informs him that her employer has been following his work for a while and is interested in retaining his services. For his “audition,” she takes him to a corpse she’s got hidden away and asks him to tell her about the deceased. Miles says his name was Felix and that he was delivering something to a “guy named Widmore” – papers, photos of empty graves, a purchase order for an old airplane…

Had we ever officially found out whether it was Ben or Widmore who planted the fake wreckage at the bottom of the ocean? This episode tries to reinforce that it was Widmore, which I bought into…until I logged onto Entertainment Weekly‘s website and read Doc Jensen’s recap, in which he pointed out that last season, Tom/Mr. Friendly/The-Now-Dead-Other-With-The-Fake-Beard showed Michael the very same documents Miles describes. Jensen writes, “So: Did Big Tom kill Felix and swipe his stuff? Or is it possible that Charles Widmore wasn’t behind Oceanic 815 cover-up at all, that it was actually Ben who was behind it, and that Felix was killed to prevent him from reporting the scheme to Widmore?”

Anyway, Naomi is convinced that Miles is the real deal, so she lays it out for him, and at last we find out why he was chosen for the freighter mission.

Naomi: I’m leading an expedition to an island, and on that island is a man that will be very difficult to find. That’s why I need you.
Miles: Need me for what?
Naomi: This island has a number of deceased individuals…residing on it. And as this man is the one responsible for their being deceased, we believe they can provide invaluable information as to his whereabouts.
Miles: Much as hunting down a mass murderer sounds really safe, uhh, I’m gonna pass. Thanks for the audition.
Naomi: My employer is willing to pay you $1.6 million dollars.
Miles: (Long pause for dramatic effect) When do we leave?

Okay, so….1) I love how matter of factly she says that the deceased will be able to provide invaluable info. I mean okay, she just witnessed a legitimate communication with the dead, so she’s in the realm of the amazing. But still, she says it as if it’s not the slightest bit out of the ordinary; as if they’re going into a standard police line-up and it’s obvious that the suspects will talk.

2) Matthew Abbadon requested Miles because Widmore has been following his work. Is that just a coincidence, or has Widmore been following his work because he knows of his connection to the island? Just like Faraday?  And possibly Charlotte? And if so, how does he know?

3) How is it that people off the island – like Widmore, or Miles’ mother – know that people on the island are dead? And in Widmore’s case, at least, how does he know the details? (That is, that Ben is responsible for the deaths?)

VAN-NAPPED
One night after agreeing to go to the island, Miles is grabbed off the street by a gang of ruffians and thrown into the back of a van, where he meets…that big dude from Hydra Island? Yes, the guy from Ajira 316 who is in cahoots with Ilana introduces himself to Miles as Bram. He explains that he wants to talk him out of getting on Widmore’s boat the next week.

Bram: You know what lies in the shadow of a statue?
Miles: No. Can’t say that I do.
Bram: Then you’re not ready to go to that island. But if you come with us, all those things you’ve spent your life trying to find out, you’ll know. You’ll know who you are, Miles. Why it is you have a gift. And most of all, you’ll know about your father.
Miles: I don’t know where you’ve been getting your intel, but I stopped caring about my father a long time ago. What I do care about is money. So I’ll tell you what: you want me to pass on going to the island, it’s gonna cost you double what they’re offering me. $3.2 million.
Bram: We’re not paying you anything. And all the money in the world isn’t gonna fill that empty hole inside you, Miles.
Miles: That’s sad, isn’t it?
Bram: Toss him!

I think this exchange merits another numbered list, yes?

1) Last season, when Miles asked Ben for $3.2 million, I wrote that the sum was “oddly specific.” Now we know where it comes from. Of course, the initial offer of $1.6 is pretty oddly specific too. But 16 is one of the Numbers, so I’ll assume that’s where it came from.

2) After listening to the line 1.6 million times, I’m pretty certain Bram asks what lies in the shadow of a statue; not what lies in the shadow of the statue. I replayed the previous episode, when Ilana asks the same question of Lapidus. Her question says “the statue.” A small distinction, but a potentially important one. And what’s up with this damn riddle anyway?

3) Was Bram serious when he said he could provide Miles with answers about his past, his abilities, etc.? Or was he just saying whatever he felt necessary to dissuade Miles from getting on the freighter?

4) If Bram and Ilana are against Widmore, does that mean they’re with Ben? There are clues to suggest yes. For starters, Sayid directly asked Ilana if she’s working for Ben, only to have her deny even knowing who Ben is. I took her denial mostly at face value at the time, but now I wonder if it could have been meant to throw us off the scent. There was also the moment when Ben came upon Ilana and Bram on the beach, moving that big metal box, and asked them if they needed any help. They treated each other as cordial strangers. Too cordial?!?

On the other hand, if they are working with Ben, would Ben have had to know all about the freighter crew before they boarded, making it possible for Bram to grab Miles? Or did Michael gather all that research about the passengers for him en route to the island, which would mean Bram couldn’t have stopped Miles on Ben’s orders? I’m not sure it’s been clarified how Ben got all the facts about the freighter team members.

As the van prepares to drive off, Bram and Miles exchange their final words.

Bram: You’re playin’ for the wrong team.
Miles: Yeah, what team are you on?
Bram: The one that’s gonna win.

How many teams are in this game?

HATCHING THE SWAN
Miles and Hurley return to the location where Radzinsky handed over the dead body, and we now see that it’s a construction site. Chang gets out and says they can leave him there. They remain for a moment to observe the work, wondering what’s being built. It doesn’t take long for Hurley to see a worker carrying a piece of metal with a window in its center. A look of sickening realization comes across his face, and in one of my favorite moments of the episode, the worker calls out to another asking what serial number is supposed to be hammered into the lid. As the second worker responds, the first bangs in the numbers: 4 8 15 16 23 42.

Hurley: They’re building our hatch.
Miles: What hatch?
Hurley: The one that crashed our plane.

The one that crashed our plane. Not “the one where Desmond lived.” Not “the one that imploded.” Not “the one that had all the food in it.” No, Hurley’s choice of words is “the one that crashed our plane.” Spoken like a man who might try to interfere with fate and prevent that crash? I wonder. Something is gonna happen here. Remember The Swan’s orientation video, the first time we ever saw Dr. Chang (calling himself Dr. Marvin Candle in the video)? He said the station was “originally constructed as a laboratory where scientists could work to understand the unique electromagnetic fluctuations emanating from this sector of the island. Not long after the experiments began, however, there was…an incident. And since that time, the following protocol has been observed.” He then goes on to explain the pushing of the button every 108 minutes. Also, in that orientation video, Chang/Candle’s left arm is fake. It’s a wooden limb, resting at his side the entire time. But in other orientation videos, and obviously in 1977 real time, his arm is fine. Was the prosthetic limb just a prop? Was the Swan orientation video filmed after the others in which his arm is fine? Does the “incident” result in him losing his arm? What was the incident exactly? I don’t know. What do I know? The title of this year’s two-hour season finale is…The Incident.

So if The Swan was supposed to specialize in studying electromagnetism, what’s up with The Orchid? We already revisited the fact that The Orchid was being built near a pocket of “almost limitless energy.” But is it electromagnetic energy, or some other kind? Remember also what Ms. Hawking told Jack and the others when they were in her sub-church Dharma station: “The room we’re standing in was constructed years ago over a unique pocket of electromagnetic energy. That energy connects to similar pockets all over the world.” Including, she says, the island. But is the entire island over one of these pockets? Or are the pockets smaller? And if they’re smaller, could there be more than one on the island? Could two pockets on the island – maybe one at The Swan and one at The Orchid – connect and cause some kind of reverse-flow damage? (I don’t actually know what reverse-flow means, if anything, but it feels like the right thing to say. Besides, I’m pretty sure Egon mentioned it when he described how crossing the streams “would be bad.”)

As for the stamping of the serial number – it must have been located on different parts of the hatch. When we saw the numbers on the structure way back in Season One, they were engraved on the side, in the concrete or whatever the side was made of; they weren’t on the metal door. Just a point of interest for the truly obsessive among us. Which is probably just me…

By the way, when we saw a wide view of the Swan construction site, I looked for some sign of Jughead, but I didn’t see anything. Time will tell on that one…

“HOW DO YOU SPELL BOUNTY HUNTER?”
Throughout their van treks across the island, Hurley is writing in a notebook and being rather secretive about the contents. When Miles has had enough of him prying about his father, he grabs the notebook away and discovers, well…they say it better than I will:

Miles: What the hell is this?
Hurley: I’m writing The Empire Strikes Back.
Miles: I’m sorry, what?
Hurley: It’s 1977, right? So Star Wars just came out. And pretty soon George Lucas is gonna be looking for a sequel. I’ve seen Empire like 200 times, so I figured, make life easier and send him the script. With a couple of improvements.
Miles: That has gotta be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

Miles is right about that. It is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Because The Empire Strikes Back can not be improved. It is literally not possible to make that film any better than it already is. It’s perfect cinema.

That said, I LOVE that Hurley is trying to script it and save George Lucas the trouble. If he wants to do George (and all the rest of us Star Wars fans) a favor, he should try writing and improving The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

After returning to Dharmaville and exiting the van, Hurley tries one last time to encourage Miles to give his father a chance, telling him about his own dad abandoning him, and their eventual reconciliation.

Miles: My dad didn’t leave when I was 10. I was a baby. I never knew him. And I don’t want to. It’s not happening.
Hurley: That was Luke’s attitude too.
Miles: What?
Hurley: In Empire, Luke finds out Vader was his father, but instead of putting away his lightsaber and talking about it, he overreacted and got his hand cut off. I mean, they worked it out eventually, but at what cost? Another Death Star was destroyed, Boba Fett got eaten by the Sarlacc, and we got the Ewoks. And it all could’ve been avoided if they just, you know, communicated. Cause let’s face it: Ewoks sucked, dude.

Now I’m sorry, but I gotta set a few things straight here. First, anyone who has seen Empire 200 times knows perfectly well that Vader cut off Luke’s hand before revealing that he’s his father. Second, no amount of communication in that moment would have altered what was to come. Vader was not yet in the mental space to be redeemed, so Luke had no choice but to respond to Vader’s revelation by throwing himself down that metallic abyss into the bowels of Bespin. Third, even if he had worked things out with Darth Daddy, the new Death Star would still need to be destroyed, lest the Empire continue to terrorize the galaxy. And fourth, Luke still would have had to go to Tattooine and rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, and so Boba Fett still would have died. So my message to Hurley? You may not like the Ewoks, but you can’t impose some kind of cheap, sentimental Dr. Phil moment on the Dark Lord of the Sith and just poof!, erase the events of Return of the Jedi. I’m afraid your theory is utterly flawed, and I say once more: The Empire Strikes Back: Perfect. Film.

Oh and you know what? I’m saying it loud and proud right here: I love the fuckin’ Ewoks. So suck it, haters.

A LONG TIME AGO…
Having just completed the relevant Star Wars portion of this write-up, I’m cutting in with the irrelevant portion, which I addressed at the beginning: my prescient creation of what would become this episode’s title. For those among you who call yourselves Star Wars fans and film geeks (and you’ll need to be both to appreciate some of these…if they are appreciable at all) here is my list from Fall 2002 (I’ve got the date stamp to prove it) of movie titles adjusted to reflect the holy saga. I decided to add some new ones, which are separated from the originals by a line break. Behold my [CHOOSE ONE] genius/lameness/illness:

When Obi Met Ani…
Bringing Up Vader
Mr. Skywalker Goes to Coruscant
His Girl Padme
Strangers on a Starship
Tuskin Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Sand People Under the Stairs
The Man with the Golden Gungun
A Hutt for All Seasons
Inherit the Windu
A Starfield Runs Through It
The Maltese Jawa
One Flew Over the Sarlacc Pit
They Shoot Tauntauns, Don’t They?
Some Like It Hoth
The Fortune Wookie
Something Wicket This Way Comes
Jabba on 42nd Street
The Perfect Stormtrooper
Porgy and Bespin
Look Who’s Tarkin
Jango & Cash

Song of the Sith
The Darth Crystal
Han’s Labyrinth
A Fett Called Boba
Master and Commander: Dark Lords of the Sith
Kamino Royale
Kung Fu Wampa
O Yoda, Where Art Thou?
Chasing Ani
Dude, Where’s My Landspeeder?
Crouching Mynock, Hidden Bantha
The Curious Case of General Grievous
The Sith Sense
Twi’lek
The Pink Bantha
Before the Rancor Knows You’re Dead
Qui-Gon with the Wind

That’s right, bitches. The Force is strong with me.

One last note on the Star Wars theme, and I’ll wind down this write-up. It just so happened that Monday night’s Colbert Report was infused with much Ewok related humor, and I encourage you to watch the following clips:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Or watch the full episode, which you can link to from either of these clips; it was a great episode in its entirety, thanks not just to Ewoks, but also to the appearance of my musical obsession, The Decemberists.

RETURN OF THE JEDI?
With all of that nonsense out of the way, there’s one more important development to address. After his long day on the job, Miles is outside Dr. Chang’s house when his father emerges and asks him to give him a ride to the dock, where a team of scientists from the home office in Ann Arbor has just arrived on the submarine. Once at the dock, Miles helps unload luggage for the sub’s passengers…one of whom turns out to be the MIA Faraday. Can’t wait to find out what he’s been up to…and what brings him back now.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-Anyone else notice that there are a lot of dickish people in The Dharma Initiative? Horace is generally okay, but he’s quick to turn snooty and condescending, as he is with Miles in this episode or as he was with Jack when the prisoner (i.e. Sayid) “escaped” and Jack asked how he could have gotten out if he was locked in. We’ve seen plenty examples of Roger’s pissy behavior. Then there’s Radzinsky, who has a major attitude problem and tells Miles, “Your job is to do what I tell you to.” We’ve already spent some time – in this write-up and in others – talking about Chang’s extreme prickness, and Miles’ comment that he and Dr. Chang “don’t exactly travel in the same circles” illustrates (along with the whole “circle of trust” notion) that the Dharma Initiative is a pretty hierarchical organization with a lot of big egos and big secrets. Not exactly the hippie-dippie, harmonious utopia we once thought Dharma was.

-What’s the deal with mothers and their kids who seem to get off the island during the Dharma years? Charlotte left with her mother; Miles left with his mother; did Ellie leave the island with Baby Faraday somewhere in there too? Knowing now that Ben has a weakness for mothers and children, could he somehow have arranged these departures, possibly across time warps?

-If Ilana and Bram are so concerned with people who know what lies in the shadow of the/a statue, are we to believe that Sayid is in the know? After all, Ilana brought him with her, so she must have had a good reason. And come to think of it, if Ilana is not in league with Ben, then how would she know that Flight 316 would take her to the Island?

Remember off-island when Ben first visited Jill in the butcher shop and asked her to keep Locke’s body? Do you remember he asked her if Jeffrey and Gabriel had checked in yet, and Jill answered yes, everything was moving according to schedule? Could Bram be a last name…like Jeffrey Bram? Gabriel Bram? That wouldn’t necessarily explain Ilana…but c’mon: on a show like Lost, almost everything means something. These Jeff and Gabriel people Ben was asking about – whether or not they have anything to do with Bram and Ilana – are probably going to come up again at some point.

-In my previous write-up, I questioned why the Smoke Monster killed Mr. Eko but not Ben, since both of their Smokey encounters seemed pretty similar. I like this theory from Doc Jensen, in which he points out an important difference between how Ben and Eko handled their judgment:

Maybe we don’t need to be cosmic about it. My current take on Smokey is that the Monster is an electric prod used by the Island’s secret masters to keep the herd of its people in line, lest they make a mess of said secret masters’ master plans. Sometimes, that prod can kill. (See: Mr. Eko.) But the example of Ben shows us it can be set to stun, too. Remember when we all thought Smokey was attracted to fear the way sharks are drawn to blood? I think there’s mounting evidence to suggest that what Smokey is really drawn to is guilt. I don’t think the Monster’s interest is in judgment or redemption. What it wants is control. That’s why Mr. Eko had to die: He could not be manipulated. Smokey smoked out his great guilt, but when Eko basically said, ‘Dude, I haven’t done nothing wrong, I only did what I needed to survive,’ Smokey threw up its hands like a director pissed at an uncooperative actor, said ”I can’t work with this fool,” and fired him. And by ”fired,” I mean ”brutally pummeled him into jungle pudding.” But Ben didn’t rationalize his sin, and by submitting to Smokey’s critique, he is now more useful than ever to the Monster’s masters…

-There’s one more tidbit from Doc Jensen’s files that I’ve been meaning to share. He posted this interview with Matthew Fox a few weeks ago, and I liked Fox had to say about Jack. I thought you might enjoy it too:

”I feel very fortunate to be able to play someone like Jack Shephard,” Fox told me. ”When we were shooting the pilot, I remember talking with Damon [Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof] about how we didn’t want to make Jack the guy who was the ‘knight in shining armor’ or ‘the classic hero.’ It seemed like an antiquated, unrealistic version of heroism. We were really trying to look at a new way at looking at heroes.”

Fox describes Jack’s journey on Lost like this: ”We set him up to be a hero in the eyes of people on the island — they needed that — but he really wasn’t that, or he felt like he couldn’t be that. And so we broke him down to where he was desperately trying to hold onto the idea that he can control his reality, that logic and reason and science are the real dictators of the world, not fate and magic. He then felt like his only way out was to take his own life. Failing that, he then moved to a place where he was finally forced to consider that he was probably wrong, that probably Locke was right, and probably the only way he can find any redemption or any salvation in this universe is to go back to the very place that he tried to leave and get back to whatever fated destiny that place has for him. Playing that has been a pretty extraordinary opportunity. A f—ing challenge the whole way through, but it’s been really cool experience.”

I asked Fox to describe the state of Jack as we currently find him at this point of the season, and his answer speaks to the quiet, patient, humbled hero that has returned to the Island. ”Coming back to the Island, he gains strength just by being in its proximity,” he explained. ”I’ve always believed part of what was destroying him was his actual lack of physical proximity to the Island. He is fated to do something on the Island, but in fighting to get away from that, the Island was destroying him from afar. Now, he’s wide-eyed and alert and watching for his destiny. He doesn’t have any idea how he’s going to know it, or when he’s going to know it. But when the moment comes, he will realize he’s in the path of his own destiny. And when he’s clicked into it, he can start taking action without over-dictating, without trying to control his reality, to just do what it is he’s meant to do.”

-Can I just say how jarring it was to cut from a scene in Lost directly to a shot of Harold Perrineau in a commercial for his new show, The Unusuals? It just brings back painful memories of how badly they botched Michael’s exit from the show last year.

-Finally, I came across this article today. Suddenly my obsession with Lost – and even my need to write about it – is explained. I had no idea I was so lonely and socially retarded.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
It’s not a line; it’s the look that Miles gives when Dr. Chang says he likes country music. Classic.

Tonight’s Episode: The Variable

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

Given the title of this episode, I thought we might learn the whereabouts of Faraday. But whatever happened, that didn’t happen. Lots of other stuff did though, so here we go.

ALTERNATE PERSPECTIVE
Watching the recap of He’s Our You, I was struck by a long-shot thought. Early in the episode, Sayid asked Sawyer how he could live his life side-by-side with Young Ben. Later, when he’s tied to the tree and given the truth serum, he seems to have a moment of clarity, and eventually tells Sawyer that he knows what his purpose in returning to the island is. When he shoots Ben, saying, “I am a killer,” we assume that his purpose is to kill Ben. But what if his purpose is actually to set Ben on the path to the adult he will become? After watching Whatever Happened, Happened and seeing Sawyer and Kate bring Ben to Richard and the Others, I wondered if Sayid somehow came to a realization that he needed to set that future in motion. Maybe that’s why he only fired one shot; he needed to wound Ben, but not kill him. If this were the case, his comments about being a killer could be a way of shouldering some blame for the deaths that Ben will cause later in his life.

I doubt this is the case, but I like the idea. Maybe I only concocted it to help me justify the idea that Sayid wouldn’t fire just one shot. I mean c’mon! How many guys has Sayid shot on this show? And how many has he shot just once and walked away from without being sure they were dead?!?

A SOFTER SIDE
Roger Linus is around again, and in this episode we see someone other than the emotionally and physically abusive father we’re used to. Roger seems decent enough when meeting Kate and asking for her help extracting the charred van from the house, and that’s before Jin shows up with wounded Ben, turning Roger into the Concerned Father. Throughout the ordeal with his son, Roger expresses his gratitude to Sawyer and Juliet for all they’re doing, and when he talks to Kate as she gives blood, we see the regret of a man who was never able to get over the loss of his wife, and couldn’t deal with raising a son on his own, especially knowing that the son indirectly caused her death. It almost makes me feel bad to know that Ben will eventually sit next to him in a van and kill him without a trace of emotion. Though I wonder if Ben being shot changes his future, and perhaps changes the way his father treats him after that…

YOU ARE LOST AND GONE FOREVER, DREADFUL SORRY CLEMENTINE
There wasn’t much doubt, but we got confirmation that the thing Sawyer whispered to Kate before jumping out of the helicopter last season concerned his daughter, Clementine…whose mother, of course, is Kate’s platonic fling Cassidy. I wondered at what point Kate put that together. Even if Sawyer told her Cassidy’s name in that brief whisper (and it was a brief whisper), she would still have no way of knowing that Sawyer’s Cassidy is also her Cassidy. Yet by the time Kate goes to see her, she’s figured it out. Cassidy is not expecting Kate’s visit, but Kate knows exactly who she’s going to see. It’s not an important point, but one I wondered about.

Anyway, I liked the idea of Kate having a gal pal. We generally see her as such a loner, particularly in her off-island life, so the fact that she has a confidant is refreshing. I dug the fact that she told Cassidy the truth about the plane crash, and that she acknowledged that Aaron wasn’t her son when Cassidy asked her about it. As for Cassidy’s theory about Sawyer, I’m not sure I buy it. But it was interesting to hear someone else interpret his actions through a different filter.

THE LITTLEST LITTLETON
Earlier in the season, it seemed like the writers were sometimes dragging out the Oceanic Six coming back together and returning to the island. In writing about The Little Prince, I remarked that the appearance of Claire’s mother made for a neat red herring in Kate’s quest to learn who was trying to take Aaron away, but also seemed like an stalling tactic; a cool, but ultimately unnecessary diversion. But this episode proved me wrong. It turns out Kate left Aaron with his grandmother, which sinks my theory that Caesar and Ilana were somehow responsible for her, Sayid and Hurley getting onto Ajira 316. (Well, partially sinks my theory. It does hold true for Sayid, and time will tell if it’s true of Hurley.) But my theory about their involvement with Kate (and Aaron’s whereabouts) was wrong.

Instead, Kate left Aaron with Claire’s mother, but not before telling her the truth about the crash, the island and the fact that Claire may still be alive. And now, after being interrupted during her conversation with Sawyer in the last episode, we know Kate’s reason for returning to the island: she has come back to find Claire.

Awesome.

JACK 2.0
Juliet can only do so much to help the wounded young Ben, and the Dharma doctor is unavailable for days. That leaves Jack as the only person around with the skills to help. But when Sawyer comes calling, Jack refuses. He recalls agreeing to perform spinal surgery on Ben because Kate pleaded with him that doing so would spare Sawyer’s life. He says he won’t save Ben a second time.

Jack: When we were here before, I spent all of my time trying to fix things. But did you ever think that maybe the island just wants to fix things itself? That maybe I was just gettin’ in the way?
Kate: I don’t like the new you. I liked the old you, who wouldn’t just sit around and wait for things to happen.
Jack: You didn’t like the old me, Kate.

For my part, I do like the new Jack. I like the Jack who doesn’t feel like he has to be in control and who isn’t running around with a hero complex. I like the Jack who is reserved, thoughtful, sad and open to possibilities. When Juliet confronts him later, he tells her he came back to the island because he was supposed to. He says he doesn’t know why yet, but I love that he has embraced the notion that the island has a plan for all of them. Seems like somebody might owe John Locke a big fat apology.

BEN LINUS AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
So let’s get into this, because it’s the crux of the whole episode: To save Ben or not to save Ben? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and flaming arrows of Other’s fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by letting Ben die, end them. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about this over the last week. The dilemma has proven to be one of the show’s more provocative storylines. Where do you fall?

Kate and Juliet fought to save Ben’s life while Jack refused to help. And I gotta say, I’m with Jack on this. Despite Miles’ attempts to explain the Time situation to Hurley (and we’ll get to that), Jack doesn’t know how accurate Miles’ statements are. And we the audience only know marginally more than he does about the rules of time travel as they apply to the castaways. So if we put ourselves in Jack’s shoes, for all he knows Adult Ben will cease to exist if Young Ben dies. And given what he’s seen Adult Ben do, why should he help? I think his justifications, first to Kate and later to Juliet, are perfectly understandable. And while the series end may prove that Ben was, as he has said, one of “the Good Guys,” he has still resorted to countless Machiavellian machinations to achieve those good guy ends.

In the past I’ve compared Ben to Severus Snape, arguably the richest and certainly the most enigmatic character in the Harry Potter series. Spoiler alert for you poor fools who have not read the Harry Potter books: to further my comparison, I’m about to discuss some big, huge, these-answers-didn’t-come-until-the-very-end-of-the-seventh-book facts about Snape. So skip the next three paragraphs.

Seriously, even if you think “I’m never going to read those stupid Harry Potter books or see those dumb movies”…don’t read this. You might have kids someday and change your mind. Or you might decide that all those years of resisting peer pressure have left you hardened and lonely, so you’ll find yourself reaching for Potter to try and connect, before it’s too late, with the friends who have forsaken you. And if that day comes, you won’t want to know the things I’m about to bring up (as they relate to Ben). Here, I’ll even make it easy and change the text color for the part you should skip.

In the end of the Potter series, Snape turns out to have been on the right side of the battle all along, but Rowling glosses over the fact that while his ultimate role was good, his motives were selfish and sort of twisted, and he was still pretty much a bad guy along the way. The part he agreed to play in Dumbledore’s master plan didn’t require him to be such an asshole…to everybody…all the time. Regardless of what he was trying to do, he still abused his power, favored Slytherins, treated everyone like crap…I mean, maybe being ceaselessly cruel to Neville Longbottom for seven years is a small price to pay for the sacrifices he makes, but couldn’t he have still worked his good deeds without being ceaselessly cruel to Neville…and everyone else?

If it seems like I’m going off on a tangent, well…maybe I am. But only slightly. The point is that the end does not necessarily justify all the means. Snape shouldn’t just be forgiven for all the bad stuff he did (which I sort of felt like Rowling did in the epilogue), and neither should Ben (if he turns out to be kinda decent after all).

Spoiler complete.

When Juliet says, “That kid was bleeding out,” Jack’s reply is, “That kid is Ben.” Juliet says, “He’s not Ben yet. He’s just a kid.” But I would argue that he is Ben; or at least, he’s already heading in that direction. As I said last week, he has developed an ease with lying and manipulation, and was willing to plow a flaming van into an occupied home in order to get what he wanted. Now some might feel that Richard’s comments at the end of the episode suggest that he and the Others are responsible for Ben forging the path that he does, and I’ll admit there is some merit to that idea, given how things are worded (we’ll get to that too). But for now, I’m maintaining that Ben has already shown signs of the man he will become. And as that man has given Jack and the rest no reason to believe anything he says, nor any true indication that his actions serve anyone’s interests but his own, I’d be inclined to refrain from intervening as well, and let fate – in the form of Sayid’s bullet – run its course. Avada Kedavra, motherfucker.

At the risk of exhausting the topic, I do have to say that I was intrigued by the respective positions held by Juliet and Jack over what to do about Ben. We have a surprising role reversal here: Jack, usually so noble and quick to act under whatever circumstances, refuses to help. And Juliet, who has always been more calculating, lets emotion rule her and isn’t concerned about allowing Ben to live. Knowing the effect that he will have on her future, I’m surprised she fought so hard to save him. This is the same woman who tried to convince Jack to kill him during his spinal surgery. Now she is able to separate the boy on her operating table from the man who will land on Jack’s. Go figure.

PARADOX PUZZLES
Damon and Carlton have always kept an ear tuned to feedback from the fans, and they keenly and humorously addressed some of the time travel questions out in the ether by positioning Hurley (and who else but Hurley could it have been?) as the audience’s surrogate in grilling Miles – who seems to have been listening closely to Faraday’s lessons – about the complications of traveling through time. These were great scenes, and did help clarify a few things for me.

While I found the scenes quite amusing, I also found them useful for somewhat clarifying what can and can’t be ramifications of actions taken by Jack, Kate, Juliet, Sawyer, Jin, Hurley, Sayid, Miles and Daniel in  the 1970’s. (And Rose and Bernard, wherever the Christ they are.)  I am still fuzzy on Miles’ explanation that the conversation he and Hurley are having has already happened, “but not for you and me. For you and me, it’s happening right now.” Or the similar notion that, “Your maniac Iraqi buddy shot Linus. That is what always happened. It’s just, we were never around to experience how it all turns out.” But hey, whatever. I’ll basically roll with it. It’s time travel, it’s freaky, end of story.

Now if I might briefly don my Continuity Police cap: how does Miles know about the wheel that Ben turned? I find it hard to believe any of them have seen the wheel in the three years they’ve been living the Dharma life. Early in the season, when they were first jumping through time, Daniel said that whatever Ben did down in the Orchid seemed to dislodge them from time. He didn’t mention a giant wheel. Now, we do know – from the very beginning of the season – that Daniel was present during the construction of The Orchid, when a foreman showed Dr. Chang a sonar image of something wheel-like. But we don’t know a) if that has happened yet, b) if Daniel actually saw the sonar pic or knew specifically about the wheel, c) if he shared possible knowledge of said wheel with Miles or the others, or d) where the Christ he is. Maybe Daniel, Rose and Bernard are all camping out together somewhere in the middle of the island, getting stoned and listening to Geronimo Jackson.

As for Hurley’s last question – the one about why Adult Ben doesn’t remember that Sayid is the man who shot him as a child – my thought in the moment was that Ben has recognized Sayid all along. Which would be pretty cool. (And in keeping with that line of questioning, why didn’t Rousseau recognize Ben when she captured him? I should probably wait until after tonight’s episode to pose it; in the preview of tonight’s episode, it looked like Ben has an encounter with young Rousseau; whether or not he directly kidnaps Alex from her remains to be seen, but if they do meet at some point, why doesn’t she know exactly who he is later on? File that question away…)

Anyway, the answer to Hurley’s question comes later, from Richard, who says conclusively (and ambiguously) that Ben will not remember any of this when he wakes up. So let’s talk about that…

SPECIAL DELIVERY FOR RICHARD ALPERT
When Jack refuses to operate on Ben and when Juliet can do no more to save him, she suggests that maybe the Others can help. Why? What does she think they can do for him? Does she simply think they might have doctors on hand? Or has her own time as an Other made her aware of possible – perhaps supernatural – cures that Richard might be able to utilize?

Kate and Sawyer exit Dharmaville, at risk of violating the truce, to bring an unconscious, dying Ben to Richard. When they find him, he of course recognizes Ben from their previous encounter and offers something of a warning to Sawyer and Kate.

Richard: If I take him, he’s not ever gonna be the same again.
Kate: What do you mean by that?
Richard: What I mean is that…he’ll forget this ever happened and that his innocence will be gone. He will always be one of us.

The weight of this hangs in the air for a moment.

Richard: You still want me to take him?
Kate: Yes.

As if the encounter weren’t thick enough with mystery, one of Richard’s men leans into his ear and says, “Richard, you shouldn’t do this without asking Ellie. And if Charles finds out…”

Richard cuts him off. “Let him find out. I don’t answer to either of them.” Then he takes Ben in his arms and walks away without another word to any of them. Turns out they are just around the corner from The Temple, last seen when Jin and Young Rousseau waited for her companions, who had climbed down a hole after the Black Smoke. Richard pushes open a doorway and disappears inside.

Whoa.

First of all, he’ll never be the same? His innocence will be gone? WTF? What are you guys gonna do, take him in The Temple and gang rape him?

Second of all, will Ben really never remember this? Does he not recognize Sayid later in life because of something that happens to him in the course of his healing? And do all of those memories come crashing back to him in the moment before he wakes up to find Locke at his bedside? (More on that in a minute…)

Third of all, what is this Ellie and Charles business? Is Richard no longer the leader of The Others, as he appeared to be when we first met Ellie and Young Charles Widmore in the 1950’s? If he is no longer in charge, how did that come to pass? And are Ellie and Widmore sharing power? And more importantly, are Ellie and Widmore gettin’ it on? Is Ellie indeed Eloise Hawking? Are Penny Widmore and Daniel Faraday siblings?? Do I have any reason to suspect as much? No? Think that’ll stop me from suspecting it anyway?

Let’s say that somehow Richard fell out of power (I’ve speculated this before, when I wondered if that would explain his looking so uncharacteristically unkempt when he met Young Ben in the jungle. If he’d been exiled by his people – or left for his own reasons – perhaps his appearance would have suffered from wandering the island). If he did, then that might put him at odds with Charles Widmore, who was already pretty insubordinate back in the 50’s. You could sense tension between the two men even in their brief scenes. And if Ben is loyal to Richard, that might put Ben at odds with Charles Widmore.

Then again, consider Ellie. She appeared to respect Richard’s authority back in the 50’s. What if Richard eventually decided he didn’t like being the one in charge, and instead preferred to advise the leader from the background, initially asking Ellie to take over and then continuing in an advisory capacity through subsequent changes in leadership? Remember that when The Purge occurs, Richard is asking Ben for instructions on what to do. Even though he brought Ben into Otherhood, he’s taking his orders – ostensibly, anyway – from Ben. This continues to be the case throughout Ben’s leadership…though in the later days he does take steps to undermine it (planting the seed for Locke to recruit Sawyer into killing his father, for example). If Ellie became leader of The Others, and if she and Charles did get romantically involved, Charles might have come believe that her power as leader extended to him as well. All of which might make sense of the remark Richard, you shouldn’t do this without asking Ellie. And if Charles finds out… Not to mention Richard’s reply that he doesn’t answer to either of them.

Or maybe I’m light years off base and absolutely none of this will be correct.

Getting back to things we know: we know that Ben does not stay with Richard and the Others, because he is part of The Dharma Initiative – at least for appearances sake – when The Purge happens (he’s wearing a Dharma Work Man uniform just like Roger’s when he takes Roger out in a van to a remote location and kills him. (It just occurred to me that when Hurley, Jin and Sawyer discover that van in Season Three, complete with Roger’s corpse, Sawyer has no idea that the skeleton sitting next to him will soon be a flesh and blood man that lives alongside him. I wonder if that’s occurred to him…)

So what does Richard do to save Ben? And where will Ben go from there? And did Kate have any second thoughts about what she was about to do after Richard issued his warning? What will the consequences be when the Dharma authorities, and Roger, find out that Sawyer and Kate took Ben to The Hostiles? And how will his return – his wound healed – be explained?

Lastly, I loved the way Richard taking Ben into The Temple fluidly brought us back to 2007 and Hydra Station-Ben waking up from his injuries to find Locke – noticeably absent from the last few episodes – sitting by his bed. I also like reader Shirley M.’s comment on that transition, which didn’t occur to me in quite this way when I first watched it: “Oh, and based on those explanations, don’t you think that when they showed Ben wake up to Locke at his bedside that he’d been dreaming/remembering his own memories that are concurrently happening in the past?  Like how Desmond woke up from a dream and knew they were memories, not dreams?  Also, Charlotte was only able to remember Daniel from her childhood when she was in a dream-like/dying state.”

If Shirley is right, then does that mean that while Ben did not remember Sayid shooting him, or remember Sawyer, Juliet and others from his childhood, that he is about to remember them now for the first time? Perhaps we’ll know in a few hours…

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-This episode seems to settle the question of whether or not Kate’s reappearance will throw a wrench into Juliet and Sawyer’s good thing. I imagine the relationships could still get complicated, but for the time being at least, Sawyer says clearly that he’s helping Kate with Ben for Juliet. He also says things never would have worked out with him and Kate. Not off-island, anyway. He admits to growing up a lot in the last three years – and his experience in The Dharma Initiative is largely the reason for that.

On a related note, last week I included Doc Jensen’s rebuke of Sawyer for putting his own well-being ahead of the right thing to do by refusing to let Sayid go free. Well Sawyer redeems this failing with his decision to help Kate save Ben’s life. Or, well…saving Ben’s life may or may not prove to be a “right decision.” But in the context of Sawyer’s actions, it’s right in that he risks his own standing with The Dharma Initiative in order to save a kid’s life.

-I liked that the woman who finds Aaron in the grocery store when Kate loses him looks like Claire. A distorted, kinda scary, sorta freakishly ugly version of Claire. But still…

-I said in my last write-up that I’d like to see more of Juliet’s reaction to living in the company of a young Ben. Although it didn’t play out quite how I wanted it to, we still got to see how she regarded her future boss. So that was a good thing…even if her reaction to him wasn’t what mine would have been.

-I also wondered in my last write-up if Jack and Kate were together again on the island. From their conversation about Ben in the kitchen, it sounds like they aren’t. Though again, who knows where that’s going…

-Seeing Juliet treat Ben’s wounds made me wonder: why is she still in the motor pool now that she’s revealed herself to be a doctor? I know she delivered Horace and Amy’s baby just recently, but what’s a girl gotta do to get some promotion love? Or, to examine her delivery of the baby from another point of view, did the introduction of her medical skills lead to questions from Dharma’s powers-that-be about why she never told them she was a doctor, or at least had medical experience?

Tonight’s Episode: Dead is Dead (Based on the preview, methinks this one is gonna be good. Lots of Ben gaps and Island lore will be filled in!)

The “abridged” notation in my subject line is probably inaccurate, seeing as something must exist in a lengthy, original form in order to spawn an abridged version. In this case, no such lengthy original exists. I was out of town for a family event Thursday-Monday, and so was unable to undertake my usual obsessive dissection. I thought this would be pretty short, but it still wound up kind of long…if not as long as usual. The news of this abbreviated write-up will fill you with feelings of either disappointment, elation or indifference. I never intended these to just recap the episodes’ events, so we’ll see if I can use this piece as a model going forward….

SEEDS OF…SOMETHING LIKE PSYCHOPATHY…BUT NOT QUITE
Some of the things I brought up in last week’s write-up were dealt with in this episode, beginning with the timing of Sayid’s return to the island relative to young Ben Linus’ jungle meeting with Richard Alpert. Ben himself informs us, upon bringing another sandwich to an imprisoned Sayid, that it’s been four years since he asked Richard to take him away. He offers to help Sayid escape if he can go with him to the Hostiles.  We see in these opening scenes that Ben has already developed an ability to lie, manipulate and convince people of his harmlessness and innocence even while harboring devious intentions. The way he smooth talks Phil the security guard is an early display of his skills…and his ease with using them. When did he start to develop these traits? He seemed like a pretty normal kid when he first arrived on the island. Was it just life with his bitter father (more on him later) that set him on the road to being…I was going to say psychopath, but I don’t think that’s an accurate description, as much as I like using the word. And I hesitate to invoke the word “evil,” because Ben’s motivations are still completely unknown to us. I’ll refrain from choosing a word right now. You know what I’m trying to say.

I also want to note that Ben refers to Richard both by name and as the leader of the Hostiles. In the scene where that jungle encounter took place, neither of those tidbits entered into the conversation. We can assume that we just didn’t see that portion of their meeting. I only bring it up because I’ve questioned whether or not Richard was still with the Hostiles/Others at that time, or if he had perhaps been ousted from their ranks or even voluntarily left. In most of Richard’s appearances on the island – including his 1950’s days with young Widmore and his 70’s days when Sawyer spoke to him in Dharmaville, he has been neatly dressed and cleanly groomed. His long-haired, shabby look in the jungle when he met young Ben remains an anomaly, and I’ve long wondered why.

When Sawyer first goes into Sayid’s cell to talk, Sayid brings up Ben. “Sweet kid, huh?” Sawyer smirks. This confirms another of my comments from last week, which is that Sawyer and his merry men (and woman) have indeed encountered young Ben. Although things don’t look too good for the kid when the episode ends, I hope that future episodes will give us flashbacks into the three years between 1974 and 1977 so that we can see Sawyer, Juliet and Miles interact with him. I especially want to see Juliet’s reaction to him. They have a pretty loaded relationship after all, which has been ignored ever since Juliet officially left The Others and joined the Oceanic 815 survivors. In Season Four’s premiere episode, when everyone met in the jungle and broke off into two camps – those who would go with Locke and avoid the rescue freighter and those who would go with Jack and try to leave the island – we didn’t get so much as a glance between Ben and Juliet…and that was the first time they’d seen each other since she defected. I’d be more than a little interested to watch her deal with the boy who will eventually recruit her, fall in love with her and basically imprison her. And thinking about young Ben knowing Juliet reminds me of a comment that Harper made in last season’s episode, The Other Woman. Harper was The Others’ therapist, who met with Juliet when she first came to the island. She was snarky and catty from the start, and mumbled something under her breath about Ben being so good to Juliet because she “looks just like her.” Harper thought that Juliet looked like someone from Ben’s past…but who? His mother? His childhood friend Annie, who we are bound to revisit sooner or later? Or maybe the woman Juliet reminds Ben of is Juliet herself. If they knew each other in Ben’s childhood, and if Ben had a pubescent boy’s infatuation with her…it’s unlikely, but I’m just sayin.’

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
We know from previous episodes that Sayid went from killing indiscriminately for Ben – out of a belief that by doing so he was protecting his friends – to not trusting Ben at all and telling Locke in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, “For two years I was manipulated into thinking I was protecting everyone on the island.” We’ve been waiting to see what happened that turned Sayid away from being Ben’s trigger-happy, go-to assassin. We got our answer in this episode.

Or did we? After committing a murder in Moscow, Sayid meets Ben outside the victim’s building and is told that their arrangement has come to an end; that this fresh kill is the last member of Widmore’s organization who poses a threat to them. Their work is done. Sayid is not happy to hear this, and we can infer from their exchange that since Nadia was killed, working for Ben to eliminate those responsible for her death (or those who Ben claim are responsible for her death) has given Sayid a sense of purpose…not to mention personal satisfaction. But he has no life to go back to, so Ben’s abrupt news does not sit well. Still, to me this doesn’t explain Sayid’s current state of mind – that is, the belief that Ben manipulated him into all of those murders. How does being upset that he has run out of people to kill transform into a conviction that those killings were based on lies? It seems like we’re still missing a piece of the puzzle, but maybe this is as much as we’re going to get on the subject. Seems like it might be time to move on to other mysteries; this episode would have been the logical place to deal with Sayid’s feelings toward Ben. If this is all we got, maybe it’s all there is.

KILLER INSTINCT
Later in the episode, Ben goes to the Build Our World site in Santo Domingo where Locke/Bentham had visited Sayid, and informs his former hitman that Locke is dead and that a man has been parked outside Hurley’s mental hospital for two weeks, keeping watch. He tells Sayid that Locke’s murder may be retribution for the killings Sayid did, but of course we know that Ben killed Locke. It would seem then, that this is his way of trying to lure Sayid back to the island. All of which makes me wonder who the guy in the parked car that Sayid killed really was. Did he actually have anything to do with Widmore? And what about the men in the safehouse who attacked Sayid when he tried to being Hurley there? Or the guy who posed as a hospital orderly when Sayid was recovering from that attack? Were these men all working for Ben? They used tranquilizers, not bullets, so clearly they wanted Sayid alive.

When Ben visits Sayid in Santo Domingo, he tells him, “To put it simply, you’re capable of things that most other men aren’t. Every choice you’ve made in your life, whether it was to murder or to torture, it hasn’t really been a choice at all, has it? It’s in your nature, it’s what you are. You’re a killer, Sayid.” His words cut deep, and Sayid replies, “I’m not what you think I am. I don’t like killing.” But Ben is right; he does have a flair for it.

This episode gave us the reappearance of Ben’s bitter father, Roger Linus. He talks to Sayid while mopping the floor outside his cell, and is none too happy when his son shows up with yet another sandwich for the prisoner. When Roger grabs Ben and yells at him, Sayid jumps up as if to defend the boy from his abusive father…a natural reaction which Sayid must reconcile with who Ben grows up to become. Does he wonder if this mistreatment is responsible for paving Ben’s eventual path? And even if he can trace it back to the abuse, does that matter? Can Ben be forgiven his future misdeeds because of the way he was treated as a child?

Apparently not, based on how the episode ends. Young Ben comes to bust Sayid out his cell, asking if Sayid will take him back to the Hostiles. “Yes Ben, I will,” Sayid answers. “That’s why I’m here.” After having no choice but to knock Jin unconscious in the jungle, Sayid takes his friend’s gun as Ben stands nearby waiting for him. Hunched over Jin’s body and collecting himself for what he’s about to do, he says, half to Ben and half to himself, “You were right about me. I am a killer.” Then he shoots Ben square in the chest.

I don’t think a lot of TV shows would have the balls to show a young kid take a bullet. It was harsh, powerful and completely necessary. But c’mon Sayid, you’ve been doing this long enough to know that you don’t fire one bullet at a victim and then walk away. You gotta fire two or three to be safe. That’s how I roll. I know your feelings are mixed because you’ve just murdered a teenager, but you did what you had to do. So how can you run off without making sure he’s dead? You know what this kid will grow up to do. Sorry to be the cold voice of reason, but you should have put one in his head.

So was one shot enough? Is Ben dead? He can’t be, right? I mean, if he were wouldn’t the whole island kind of implode like the house at the end of Poltergeist? At the very least his adult self, who is currently on the Hydra island thirty years in the future, would disappear, right? “Erased from existence,” as Doc Brown would say?

Or is he still alive because…well, see below for the name of tonight’s episode to complete the sentence.

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE
When Sayid refuses to cooperate, Horace, Radzinsky, Phil and a reluctant Sawyer bring Sayid to The Dharma Initiative’s hippie shaman, a guy named Oldham, who operates out of a tent. They tie Sayid to a tree and Oldham administers some kind of truth serum. I wondered at first if Sayid could resist the effects of the truth serum – sort of the way Westley had built up immunity to iocane powder in The Princess Bride. But the serum works it magic, and soon a tripping Sayid is spilling details about Ajira 316, Oceanic 815 and the purpose of various Dharma stations – including The Swan, which hasn’t been built yet and about which Radzinsky is particularly edgy. He concludes with a warning. “You’re all going to die, you know. You’re going to be killed.” When Horace asks how he knows this, Sayid tells them he’s from the future. They assume the truth serum was too strong and that Sayid is loopy…but a spy nonetheless. Sawyer’s secret is safe.

He was nervous about this whole thing, of course, because he didn’t want Sayid to blow his story. Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen had a thought about this which I liked. He wrote, “He’s Our You offered us another, more relatable example of free will and the factors and circumstances that infringe upon it: Sawyer. The born-again James LaFleur — scrambling not just to save Sayid’s ass but preserve the good thing he’s got going for himself and Juliet in Dharmaville — tried to convince his old castaway friend to lie and say he was a Hostile trying to defect. But Sayid refused, saying — correctly — that the right thing to do was to grant him his freedom and let him go. Sawyer flipped. No way could he allow Sayid to escape on his watch. ”These people trust me,” he said. ”I’ve built a life here, and a pretty good one, too.” Sawyer stands for any of us who put comfort and security over doing what’s right and standing up to what’s wrong. Funny: Three weeks ago, we were thrilled for Sawyer as we watched him blaze to heroic, happy life as a member of The Dharma Initiative. Now he’s an alarming cautionary tale for moral compromise.”

BEWARE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN DINING ALONE
Another gap that this episode fills in is how Sayid wound up on Ajira 316. After leaving Ben, Sun and Jack at the pier in Long Beach, Sayid goes to a bar to have a drink or ten.

Oh, hold up. Since I’m in the habit of complaining about bad continuity, I have to point something out here. When we first saw this dock scene in The Little Prince, Sayid walks off and says to Jack and Ben, “And if I see you, or him again, it will be extremely unpleasant for all of us.” But when we revisit the scene in this episode, the dialogue is different. Sayid no longer includes Jack in his warning, and instead says just to Ben, “If I see you again, it will be extremely unpleasant for us both.” C’mon guys…that’s just lazy.

Anyway, back to the bar. Sayid meets a stranger who we recognize as Ilana. A couple of things about their interaction, leading up to her bringing him to Ajira 316. First, she uses an accent which she has not used when on the island talking to Caesar, Locke and Sun. So either her accent with Sayid is an act, or the lack of an accent on the island is the act. Second, I don’t believe for a moment that she’s just a bounty hunter bringing him to justice for the family of one of the men he killed for Ben. She’s neck deep in all of the island/Widmore/Ben/Dharma intrigue, and she and Caesar are definitely in league.

By the time he boards the plane, Sayid has seen Jack, Hurley and Kate in the airport and knows things are not what they seem. When Ben walks into the cabin, Sayid leans in to Ilana.

Sayid: Are you working for Benjamin Linus? Are you working for him?

Ilana: Who’s Benjamin Linus?

Sayid: He’s a liar, a manipulator, a man who allowed his own daughter to be murdered to save himself, a monster responsible for nothing short of genocide.

Ilana: Why would I work for someone like that?

Sayid: I did.

As for Sayid uncharacteristically letting his guard down in the first place, I’ll blame the expensive scotch for his not being astute enough to ask himself why a beautiful woman is all dressed up to eat alone at a bar. (Fun Fact: The scotch he’s drinking is McCutcheon, which is Charles Widmore’s favorite. He once poured a glass for Desmond, explaining as he did so about how valuable the bottle was. He proceeded to drink it himself, telling Desmond that he wasn’t worthy of such an expensive drink. Or something like that. I didn’t have time to look it up exactly, and it’s not important anyway.)

SENSE OF PURPOSE
After Sayid’s visit to Oldham and after a Dharma leadership council votes to kill him, Sawyer gives him a last opportunity to escape. Sayid turns it down, saying that the truth serum brought him clarity and a (renewed) sense of purpose. He knows why he’s back on the island. After leaving him to his fate, Sawyer knocks on Kate’s door and asks her point blank why they all came back. She says she doesn’t know why the others are there, only why she is. But before she can say more, a flaming bus rolls into camp and crashes into a house – Ben’s diversion so he can help Sayid escape.

By the way, when the house caught fire and Jack came on the scene, which house did he come from? Are he and Kate living together? Juliet watched them walk out together that morning, but maybe they had just met up. Yet when Sawyer comes knocking, she closes the door and steps out on the porch as if to avoid disturbing someone inside. So are Jack and Kate on again?

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“A twelve year-old Benjamin Linus brought me a chicken salad sandwich. How do you think I’m doing?” – Sayid

Tonight’s Episode: Whatever Happened, Happened