Things I Noticed – The Shape of Things To Come
This is hands down my new favorite episode of LOST. As the writers pull even tighter on the strings that bring all of LOST's loose ends together, it would be easy for them to leave out the stuff that made the show great. Instead they feed us the tantalizing answers we've been dying for while slapping us with jaw-dropping action and heart-rending drama… not to mention explosions, gunfire, and the alien shredding of jungle soldiers the likes of which have not been since since Predator or Commando. Things I Noticed:
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Doc Ray Needs a New Plastic Surgeon
Arriving at the island via high tide, Doc Ray's murdered corpse poses new questions for everyone. Of course the real questions don't begin until Bernard correctly translates the freighter's Morse code response. From the look of Daniel's face as he tells the 815'ers that "time is relative", at least he and Charlotte have a pretty good idea of how the doctor could be in two places at once: both alive and dead to boot.
Let's assume for a minute that the freighter people aren't lying about the doc's condition. If the chopper's return journey to the freighter seemed to swallow a chunk of time, it makes sense that a voyage from the freighter to the island would regurgitate it. Yet the doc shows up dead on the island before he's even killed on the freighter (according to freighter time, anyway). Either way, we've finally got a definitive time difference between the island and the real world, and one that's a lot more than just minutes or seconds. In fact, it seems that the time difference has now reversed itself. Over the course of the season it seemed to be decreasing from its original 31 minutes to only a few seconds, and now it's gone beyond the zero point and the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction... right around the same time as our flashbacks have now swung into flashfowards.
Since the ship is anchored, we can assume the island must be moving, and I'm betting that Desmond tore it loose when he turned the failsafe key. I also think this is what Daniel alluded to with the deck of cards and his ominous comment that it was 'getting worse'. Maybe his ability to jump his consciousness through time and see things are they were (the cards for example) is degrading due to the island's movement. And with the island now slipping through both time and space it's no wonder Widmore's had a hard time finding it.
As mind-blowing as all that might be, it's nothing compared to the revelation that the scar on Doc Ray's cheek has been replaced by a freshly, if badly, stitched cut in the same spot. To me, this is the first real concrete evidence that some of the sharper theories out there have probably been hitting the nail on the head all along: the mind travels through time independently of the body. Case in point, the doc's body travels backward through the time storm to arrive at whatever period in time the island currently exists in (1996?), putting his body back into the exact state it existed at that time (when he'd just been cut). Applying this to the 815'ers, this explains how Locke can walk and how Rose's cancer seems to have disappeared: upon waking on the beach their bodies were returned to the same physical states they were in at that past time – before those injuries. These theories have been out there for a while now, and while they don't explain why Claire wouldn't wake up zero months pregnant, I think they still hold a lot of water.
Ben and Sayid Could Put a Dent in World Hunger by Feeding Rifle Butts To All Who Oppose Them
I have never loved Ben more than I did this episode. He smirks, he lies, he manipulates… standard Ben fare, but then he startles us with facets of his persona we've never seen before: ass-kicking time mercenary, for one. "Oh, you do speak English?" I almost shat myself, and I hope I wasn't the only one.
Ben time skips violently into the desert, obviously from some frozen tundra judging by the quickly dissipating frost on the air around him. He looks shocked and pained; in fact he's injured, and immediately he pukes up the same orange gak Ethan made Juliet drink before she unknowingly slept through her own time jump. This tells us two things: Ben knew in advance he was going to make the trip, and that someone was probably trying to kill him as he made his escape. The most likely place for Ben to acquire an Edgar Halliwax jacket is the same place most likely to displace someone in time – the Orchid station. What makes little sense though is why Ben's wearing a parka if the Orchid resides, like all the other stations, on a tropical island. This suggests that maybe the Orchid station itself exists in a region where you'd find polar bears and Portuguese guys playing chess. And although the fact that Ben's arm is hurt points to the eerily similar arm problems of Candle/Wickman/Halliwax, it is Ben's right arm that is injured – not his left.
I think Ben probably knew when but not where he was jumping to. He looks surprised to wake up in the desert, but knows what year it is. He tells the hotel desk clerk that he's been to Tunisia before, but 'not in a while', yet she gives him a strange look after seeing his name in the book. Check out how Ben's name was only one page deep in the register. 'Not in a while' Ben-time (island-time) probably translated to only a few days of real world time.
I'm attacking Siberia
Lots of not-so-subtle little clues here. Hurley's reference to 'fighting amongst ourselves – that's what he wants!' easily pertains to the division of the 815'ers and all the gun-pointing between the groups. Hurley even loses a die roll at this point, when he's always been impossibly lucky. Up until now, the only person to beat him in a game has been Walt – perhaps the one person more akin to the island than anyone else. Hurley then goes on to mention that Australia's 'the key' to the whole game. Could LOST turn out to be just that - a giant game played between Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore, with everyone else acting as the pieces? Well guess what? It already is.
vo
There Goes the Paintjob on the Swing Set
When you've got a secret monster cave under your secret room, you definitely need a code 14J. And if you're in need of a code 14J, you gotta get a phone with no numbers on it. You're also required to hide a snub-nosed pump shotgun in your piano bench. These things just go without saying.
I'll bet the freighter jocks were just itching to fire that RPG, too. It must've been torturous for them to drag it all the way across the Pacific Ocean without shooting it off at the first sign of a seagull. As Keamy's crew unleashed on the barracks, Sawyer continued to accumulate hero points by going back for Claire. Splattered in the blood of red-shirts (one who was even wearing a red shirt!), he once again pulled off some very unselfish maneuvers. Sawyer's star keeps rising, and he continues to have the best lines of dialogue in the whole show.
The Writers are having fun with us or Claire is Doomed (or both)
Sawyer: "You alright sweetheart?"
Claire: "A bit wobbly, but I'll live."
Miles: "Well I wouldn't be too sure about that."
Punch-in-the-face foreshadowing? Or does Miles know that Claire will die? If Miles can speak with the dead, and perhaps even the whispers (which at this point seem to be made up of mostly the dead or soon-to-be-dead), he might have future knowledge over who bites the dust. I'm betting that he probably does.
He Changed the Rules…
Ever since Goodwin first mentioned 'the list' to Ana Lucia all the way back in season two, we've understood there are certain rules in LOST that must be followed. "We're the good guys Michael" and "We're not monsters" has always followed the assertion that the Others don't kill "innocent people". Yet they've seemingly done just that. And while we might not know exactly what these twisted rules are, we know that Ben has been obeying them - at least in his own mind.
Keamy's execution of Alex totally stunned me. Ben's reaction was magnified a thousand fold – for the first time in the whole series, his face registered pure, unadulterated astonishment. Ben's plans might not have all unfolded in exactly the manner he intended, but he's always known – on some small level – what was going to happen next. At least until now. The death of his daughter was something completely unforeseen to him. He'd intentionally led her into Keamy's hands, as assured of her safety as he was of Karl's (and possibly Danielle's) demise. As long as they knew who she was, he knew she was safe – at least within the scope of the 'rules'. Alex's death changes everything for him, much the way Nadia's death changes things for Sayid this episode.
Ben goes from sinister to sympathetic in the span of a gunshot. Watching him say goodbye to Alex was one of the most powerful scenes of the entire series. Even the reactions of the other 815'ers seemed genuine. Seeing Ben suffer his daughter's loss, surrounded by photos of her as a child, I felt like we were watching a major turning point in the show. The title of the episode rang especially true here.
Smoke Monster Wins… Fatality!
I'm not sure what new aspect we learned about this smoke monster this week, other than the fact it can be called in like some sort of hellish air-strike. I don't think Ben lied to Locke about not knowing what it is, but he certainly knew how to bring it down upon the barracks in about sixty seconds. The cave beneath Ben's home looks ancient – temple ruins and four-toed statue ancient. Maybe we just learned that Smokey has been here longer than anyone else.
Ben strategically chose the house nearest the glyphed door, giving him some measure of control over the monster or at least a secondary method to keep it away. The sonic fence has apparently been off for while, but the creature hadn't come until Ben removed some other sort of safeguard within the cavern. When it did come, the creature passed over the house and went straight for the intruders. They were the main threat – they were obviously counterproductive to the will of the island. They weren't scanned or tickled; they were immediately dealt with in a manner consistent with a furious animal released after a long caging. I still don't think Smokey's agenda is 100% in tune with Ben or Jacob's, which is why I think the Others were probably scared shitless of it.
The End of New Othertown
Ben and the 815'ers take big steps toward new alliances this episode, with Ben even chiding them for their five minutes of doubt. Caution and secrecy is tossed aside - at this point their interests are aligned, fully and completely. As they provide a united front against the incoming freighter commandos, Ben begins to enlighten them even more. Hurley's 'fighting amongst ourselves' line applies here more than ever.
Ben explains to Locke that he needs to survive, and how he himself will not be hurt. After the chaos, Ben talks freely in front of everyone about meeting with Jacob. He provides Locke with both a direction and a purpose. Looking relieved, Locke hands Ben back the torch of leadership, both literally (as he hands him the torch) and figuratively. The new Others are dissolved - Sawyer and Claire head back to the beach. This sets Miles up for what I believe to be his primary purpose: a trip to Jacob's cabin.
Jack's got the Meat Sweats
Jack has extreme nausea and his Right Guard suddenly takes a left. The first thing through my mind was that he was experiencing some sort of time-sickness, just as Ben had done in the Sahara. As he sweated through that shirt I expected him to hurl orange gak all over Bernard at any moment. My reasoning here was backward: since we know Jack's leaving the island soon, I thought perhaps he was experiencing some sort of reverse time travel symptoms. Anyway, that was my first idea. Watching the previews for next week seemed to shatter that theory just as fast as it had hatched.
It's Better to have Loved and Lost… than to Never have Loved at all…
… unless you're in love with Sayid Jarrah, because that guy is an absolute DEATH-MAGNET. Fresh from the island he's managed to find, marry, and get Nadia killed – all within less than a year. Not quite as fast as he did with Shannon or Elsa, but an impressive time nonetheless.
Ben hasn't missed a step since leaving the island. His courtship of Sayid is as brilliant as always - in his own words: "I gather intelligence on people and I exploit it". Knowing who killed Nadia, Ben gathers the evidence and approaches Sayid from the only angle that won't get his neck snapped. He lays the trap with some very Mr. Bean-like 'tailing' of his suspect to his bumbling capture in the alleyway. Ben shrewdly plays the Widmore card right before Sayid pumps a clip of real and a half clip of imaginary ammo into his wife's killer. One look of mock surprise and a gentle protest later, our vengeful Sayid is ready for an international man-hunt. Best friends forever!
The question now becomes who Ben and (an unknowing) Sayid are hunting? He knows exactly where Widmore is, and getting to him seems pretty easy. Apparently, killing him is not in the scope of the rules either – at least for Ben. Is he truly after Penny? And if so, why would he need Sayid for that?
MacCutcheon's Whisky – it isn't just for Breakfast Anymore
I honestly didn't expect a showdown between Ben and Widmore, at least not this season. I always thought such a meeting would be more climactic than the quiet bedroom scene we were provided with, but it was far from disappointing. In the dialogue between the two of them, we learned some of the most important stuff yet.
"I know who you are, boy". This is the second time someone's said that about Ben. The first time was not so long ago, when Miles told him essentially the same thing. I think he even punctuated it with an "I know what you are". That alone is extremely interesting to me.
Ben knows Widmore too. They face off like old arch-enemies. "Everything you have, you took from me", Widmore tells him. "The island is mine. It always was, it will be again". This seems to associate Widmore with Dharma. It also reinforces my belief that Charles Widmore has physically been to the island, which I think is very important. Probably when Ben was a boy. He mentions nightmares, and I don't think he's speaking of normal everyday ones.
Most interesting of all is that they cannot kill one another. It could be they're indestructible in the same sense that bullets would currently bounce off Michael's head. Personally, I tend to think they need each other for something, or more specifically, they rely on each other in a Ying-Yang sort of way. A light/dark, good/evil, black/white sort of thing. As Tim Curry says in Legend: one can't exist without the other. Maybe Widmore is even Ben's constant.
When Ben accuses him of changing the rules and murdering his daughter, Charles Widmore calmly corrects him. He tells Ben that he himself was responsible for Alex's death. In retrospect, this is probably true. In the past I mentioned how Ben had wanted something all his own, something just for himself, something not pre-determined by the will of the island. That something was Alex. Ben took her from Rousseau, took her as his daughter, and made her his own. If he hadn't done this, she might still be alive. From a Jacob-following, island-serving, one-directional Ben, this one thing has always seemed a little unorthodox. And here Charles Widmore calls him on it.
In the end, it seems they're both playing a high-stakes game. Widmore even uses the term 'game' during their meeting. Only now that Widmore has changed the rules, can Ben also? Does this mean that fate can be re-written? That's the trick here, I think. The Shape of Things to Come might just mean that things to come can be shaped. The future is an open canvas - nothing's really predetermined. Except maybe, for the ending of LOST.
Arriving at the island via high tide, Doc Ray's murdered corpse poses new questions for everyone. Of course the real questions don't begin until Bernard correctly translates the freighter's Morse code response. From the look of Daniel's face as he tells the 815'ers that "time is relative", at least he and Charlotte have a pretty good idea of how the doctor could be in two places at once: both alive and dead to boot.
Let's assume for a minute that the freighter people aren't lying about the doc's condition. If the chopper's return journey to the freighter seemed to swallow a chunk of time, it makes sense that a voyage from the freighter to the island would regurgitate it. Yet the doc shows up dead on the island before he's even killed on the freighter (according to freighter time, anyway). Either way, we've finally got a definitive time difference between the island and the real world, and one that's a lot more than just minutes or seconds. In fact, it seems that the time difference has now reversed itself. Over the course of the season it seemed to be decreasing from its original 31 minutes to only a few seconds, and now it's gone beyond the zero point and the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction... right around the same time as our flashbacks have now swung into flashfowards.
Since the ship is anchored, we can assume the island must be moving, and I'm betting that Desmond tore it loose when he turned the failsafe key. I also think this is what Daniel alluded to with the deck of cards and his ominous comment that it was 'getting worse'. Maybe his ability to jump his consciousness through time and see things are they were (the cards for example) is degrading due to the island's movement. And with the island now slipping through both time and space it's no wonder Widmore's had a hard time finding it.
As mind-blowing as all that might be, it's nothing compared to the revelation that the scar on Doc Ray's cheek has been replaced by a freshly, if badly, stitched cut in the same spot. To me, this is the first real concrete evidence that some of the sharper theories out there have probably been hitting the nail on the head all along: the mind travels through time independently of the body. Case in point, the doc's body travels backward through the time storm to arrive at whatever period in time the island currently exists in (1996?), putting his body back into the exact state it existed at that time (when he'd just been cut). Applying this to the 815'ers, this explains how Locke can walk and how Rose's cancer seems to have disappeared: upon waking on the beach their bodies were returned to the same physical states they were in at that past time – before those injuries. These theories have been out there for a while now, and while they don't explain why Claire wouldn't wake up zero months pregnant, I think they still hold a lot of water.
Ben and Sayid Could Put a Dent in World Hunger by Feeding Rifle Butts To All Who Oppose Them
I have never loved Ben more than I did this episode. He smirks, he lies, he manipulates… standard Ben fare, but then he startles us with facets of his persona we've never seen before: ass-kicking time mercenary, for one. "Oh, you do speak English?" I almost shat myself, and I hope I wasn't the only one.
Ben time skips violently into the desert, obviously from some frozen tundra judging by the quickly dissipating frost on the air around him. He looks shocked and pained; in fact he's injured, and immediately he pukes up the same orange gak Ethan made Juliet drink before she unknowingly slept through her own time jump. This tells us two things: Ben knew in advance he was going to make the trip, and that someone was probably trying to kill him as he made his escape. The most likely place for Ben to acquire an Edgar Halliwax jacket is the same place most likely to displace someone in time – the Orchid station. What makes little sense though is why Ben's wearing a parka if the Orchid resides, like all the other stations, on a tropical island. This suggests that maybe the Orchid station itself exists in a region where you'd find polar bears and Portuguese guys playing chess. And although the fact that Ben's arm is hurt points to the eerily similar arm problems of Candle/Wickman/Halliwax, it is Ben's right arm that is injured – not his left.
I think Ben probably knew when but not where he was jumping to. He looks surprised to wake up in the desert, but knows what year it is. He tells the hotel desk clerk that he's been to Tunisia before, but 'not in a while', yet she gives him a strange look after seeing his name in the book. Check out how Ben's name was only one page deep in the register. 'Not in a while' Ben-time (island-time) probably translated to only a few days of real world time.
I'm attacking Siberia
Lots of not-so-subtle little clues here. Hurley's reference to 'fighting amongst ourselves – that's what he wants!' easily pertains to the division of the 815'ers and all the gun-pointing between the groups. Hurley even loses a die roll at this point, when he's always been impossibly lucky. Up until now, the only person to beat him in a game has been Walt – perhaps the one person more akin to the island than anyone else. Hurley then goes on to mention that Australia's 'the key' to the whole game. Could LOST turn out to be just that - a giant game played between Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore, with everyone else acting as the pieces? Well guess what? It already is.
vo
There Goes the Paintjob on the Swing Set
When you've got a secret monster cave under your secret room, you definitely need a code 14J. And if you're in need of a code 14J, you gotta get a phone with no numbers on it. You're also required to hide a snub-nosed pump shotgun in your piano bench. These things just go without saying.
I'll bet the freighter jocks were just itching to fire that RPG, too. It must've been torturous for them to drag it all the way across the Pacific Ocean without shooting it off at the first sign of a seagull. As Keamy's crew unleashed on the barracks, Sawyer continued to accumulate hero points by going back for Claire. Splattered in the blood of red-shirts (one who was even wearing a red shirt!), he once again pulled off some very unselfish maneuvers. Sawyer's star keeps rising, and he continues to have the best lines of dialogue in the whole show.
The Writers are having fun with us or Claire is Doomed (or both)
Sawyer: "You alright sweetheart?"
Claire: "A bit wobbly, but I'll live."
Miles: "Well I wouldn't be too sure about that."
Punch-in-the-face foreshadowing? Or does Miles know that Claire will die? If Miles can speak with the dead, and perhaps even the whispers (which at this point seem to be made up of mostly the dead or soon-to-be-dead), he might have future knowledge over who bites the dust. I'm betting that he probably does.
He Changed the Rules…
Ever since Goodwin first mentioned 'the list' to Ana Lucia all the way back in season two, we've understood there are certain rules in LOST that must be followed. "We're the good guys Michael" and "We're not monsters" has always followed the assertion that the Others don't kill "innocent people". Yet they've seemingly done just that. And while we might not know exactly what these twisted rules are, we know that Ben has been obeying them - at least in his own mind.
Keamy's execution of Alex totally stunned me. Ben's reaction was magnified a thousand fold – for the first time in the whole series, his face registered pure, unadulterated astonishment. Ben's plans might not have all unfolded in exactly the manner he intended, but he's always known – on some small level – what was going to happen next. At least until now. The death of his daughter was something completely unforeseen to him. He'd intentionally led her into Keamy's hands, as assured of her safety as he was of Karl's (and possibly Danielle's) demise. As long as they knew who she was, he knew she was safe – at least within the scope of the 'rules'. Alex's death changes everything for him, much the way Nadia's death changes things for Sayid this episode.
Ben goes from sinister to sympathetic in the span of a gunshot. Watching him say goodbye to Alex was one of the most powerful scenes of the entire series. Even the reactions of the other 815'ers seemed genuine. Seeing Ben suffer his daughter's loss, surrounded by photos of her as a child, I felt like we were watching a major turning point in the show. The title of the episode rang especially true here.
Smoke Monster Wins… Fatality!
I'm not sure what new aspect we learned about this smoke monster this week, other than the fact it can be called in like some sort of hellish air-strike. I don't think Ben lied to Locke about not knowing what it is, but he certainly knew how to bring it down upon the barracks in about sixty seconds. The cave beneath Ben's home looks ancient – temple ruins and four-toed statue ancient. Maybe we just learned that Smokey has been here longer than anyone else.
Ben strategically chose the house nearest the glyphed door, giving him some measure of control over the monster or at least a secondary method to keep it away. The sonic fence has apparently been off for while, but the creature hadn't come until Ben removed some other sort of safeguard within the cavern. When it did come, the creature passed over the house and went straight for the intruders. They were the main threat – they were obviously counterproductive to the will of the island. They weren't scanned or tickled; they were immediately dealt with in a manner consistent with a furious animal released after a long caging. I still don't think Smokey's agenda is 100% in tune with Ben or Jacob's, which is why I think the Others were probably scared shitless of it.
The End of New Othertown
Ben and the 815'ers take big steps toward new alliances this episode, with Ben even chiding them for their five minutes of doubt. Caution and secrecy is tossed aside - at this point their interests are aligned, fully and completely. As they provide a united front against the incoming freighter commandos, Ben begins to enlighten them even more. Hurley's 'fighting amongst ourselves' line applies here more than ever.
Ben explains to Locke that he needs to survive, and how he himself will not be hurt. After the chaos, Ben talks freely in front of everyone about meeting with Jacob. He provides Locke with both a direction and a purpose. Looking relieved, Locke hands Ben back the torch of leadership, both literally (as he hands him the torch) and figuratively. The new Others are dissolved - Sawyer and Claire head back to the beach. This sets Miles up for what I believe to be his primary purpose: a trip to Jacob's cabin.
Jack's got the Meat Sweats
Jack has extreme nausea and his Right Guard suddenly takes a left. The first thing through my mind was that he was experiencing some sort of time-sickness, just as Ben had done in the Sahara. As he sweated through that shirt I expected him to hurl orange gak all over Bernard at any moment. My reasoning here was backward: since we know Jack's leaving the island soon, I thought perhaps he was experiencing some sort of reverse time travel symptoms. Anyway, that was my first idea. Watching the previews for next week seemed to shatter that theory just as fast as it had hatched.
It's Better to have Loved and Lost… than to Never have Loved at all…
… unless you're in love with Sayid Jarrah, because that guy is an absolute DEATH-MAGNET. Fresh from the island he's managed to find, marry, and get Nadia killed – all within less than a year. Not quite as fast as he did with Shannon or Elsa, but an impressive time nonetheless.
Ben hasn't missed a step since leaving the island. His courtship of Sayid is as brilliant as always - in his own words: "I gather intelligence on people and I exploit it". Knowing who killed Nadia, Ben gathers the evidence and approaches Sayid from the only angle that won't get his neck snapped. He lays the trap with some very Mr. Bean-like 'tailing' of his suspect to his bumbling capture in the alleyway. Ben shrewdly plays the Widmore card right before Sayid pumps a clip of real and a half clip of imaginary ammo into his wife's killer. One look of mock surprise and a gentle protest later, our vengeful Sayid is ready for an international man-hunt. Best friends forever!
The question now becomes who Ben and (an unknowing) Sayid are hunting? He knows exactly where Widmore is, and getting to him seems pretty easy. Apparently, killing him is not in the scope of the rules either – at least for Ben. Is he truly after Penny? And if so, why would he need Sayid for that?
MacCutcheon's Whisky – it isn't just for Breakfast Anymore
I honestly didn't expect a showdown between Ben and Widmore, at least not this season. I always thought such a meeting would be more climactic than the quiet bedroom scene we were provided with, but it was far from disappointing. In the dialogue between the two of them, we learned some of the most important stuff yet.
"I know who you are, boy". This is the second time someone's said that about Ben. The first time was not so long ago, when Miles told him essentially the same thing. I think he even punctuated it with an "I know what you are". That alone is extremely interesting to me.
Ben knows Widmore too. They face off like old arch-enemies. "Everything you have, you took from me", Widmore tells him. "The island is mine. It always was, it will be again". This seems to associate Widmore with Dharma. It also reinforces my belief that Charles Widmore has physically been to the island, which I think is very important. Probably when Ben was a boy. He mentions nightmares, and I don't think he's speaking of normal everyday ones.
Most interesting of all is that they cannot kill one another. It could be they're indestructible in the same sense that bullets would currently bounce off Michael's head. Personally, I tend to think they need each other for something, or more specifically, they rely on each other in a Ying-Yang sort of way. A light/dark, good/evil, black/white sort of thing. As Tim Curry says in Legend: one can't exist without the other. Maybe Widmore is even Ben's constant.
When Ben accuses him of changing the rules and murdering his daughter, Charles Widmore calmly corrects him. He tells Ben that he himself was responsible for Alex's death. In retrospect, this is probably true. In the past I mentioned how Ben had wanted something all his own, something just for himself, something not pre-determined by the will of the island. That something was Alex. Ben took her from Rousseau, took her as his daughter, and made her his own. If he hadn't done this, she might still be alive. From a Jacob-following, island-serving, one-directional Ben, this one thing has always seemed a little unorthodox. And here Charles Widmore calls him on it.
In the end, it seems they're both playing a high-stakes game. Widmore even uses the term 'game' during their meeting. Only now that Widmore has changed the rules, can Ben also? Does this mean that fate can be re-written? That's the trick here, I think. The Shape of Things to Come might just mean that things to come can be shaped. The future is an open canvas - nothing's really predetermined. Except maybe, for the ending of LOST.
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79 Comments:
i feel so bad for Alex and Ben because the last words that Alex heard were how her father doesn't care about her and that he really isn't her true father. She didn't know it was all an act to save her and Ben didn't get a chance to show how much he truly cared about her.
This episode was incredible and Sawyer went from my favorite character on LOST to my favorite character on any TV show of all time (he even beats out Dean Winchester) and the only person that i can ever see topping him on my list is the great wizard himself, Benjamin Linus.
Smokey was great, i lost all of my respect for Faraday and finally Bernard had his second chance to shine (first being his shot at blowing up the tent) with his fluency in morse code.
Well done Darlton and crew!!
Just a small correction, but Miles also went with Sawyer and Claire, and from the sneak peek for next week, he's definitely not on his way to the cabin anytime soon.
Great episode, great review.
I tend to think that maybe Widmore and Ben were once colleagues on the Island, the same age, even, and once Ben took the island from Widmore and Widmore got trapped in the "real world," he aged and Ben didn't.
Who knows?
Different Dan here - Awesome observations Voz ... 2 questions and 2 observations jumped into my mind while watching last night:
1. Could Des and Penny end up being Adam and Eve? My reason for this is that Penny may be in hiding and Jacob reaching out to Locke may prove that there is a 3rd party in the game. Jacob and the 815ers could expel both Ben and C. Widmore from the Island. I do remember Locke chastising the Others for their "pharisaical" approach to the Island.
2. Do you agree that the entire Mousetrap scene from a Locke-centric episode and the Risk scene seem to be very important for the end game of the series? Maybe the 815ers have to set a trap that fools both Widmore and Linus. Bernard's "we're the good guys comment" pushes me in this direction.
Observations:
1. Aaron being placed into the clothing bin by Hugo evoked more Moses imagery last night.
2. The 3 body problem in physics may mean that the game on Lost is more interesting than even the ancient Backgammon that Locke introduced to Walt. Determinism works well in physics that only deals with 2 bodies, but the introduction of a 3rd body makes thing a lot more messy. The 815ers, Des, Penny and Jacob may be the 3rd body messing with Charles and Ben's game. Sorry to keep beating that dead horse.
Vozzek, I'm a little confused by the Dr./scar talk. That is something I definitely didn't notice, and am not sure what you mean!
This episode was so great, and your take on it is equally so.
After reading Jimmy Kimmel's interview with Darlton in TV Guide, I have to point out that Jack is probably getting sick b/c he picked the wrong side. He is so far out of tune with the island, more so than ever, and he is feeling the consequences.
The lighting in the last scene...totally supports the yin/yang, light v. dark theory you mentioned. I loved the way it was shot.
Amazing commentary. As always.
Ben seemed startled. He obviously was dressed for cold.
Either he didn't know he was time travelling or he time travelled not knowing where exactly he'd end up (or when?)
Because he doesn't seem to know what year it is and he seemed almost stunned that he had a cut on his arm.
Although this may be stretching it here, I actually think Ben knows all the (limited amount of) timelines that are possible that he time travels to.
Whichever one fate chooses, he goes and does it. This one, his task was to kill Widmore's pawns.
But after reading some reviews I am convinced that Ben is time travelling. Whether he's doing it by choice, by choice but can't control when he goes to, or randomness is up for grabs.
Is it, with a very deep stretch, that everytime he time travels even if by choice he needs a constant to stop himself and get back to the island. Widmore might be that constant. Or he could have multiple.
Perhaps the reason Ben could not kill Widmore is they are the SAME person living in two times.
At first I thought this was a good episode, but the more I think about it the more I think this was a great episode.
I love Lost for all the little things. Like Hurley's comment that "Australia's the key to the whole game." I think this is definitely a reference to the island, which will be the key to the endgame of Lost.
I CRACKED UP at the Sayid bit XD
"It's Better to have Loved and Lost… than to Never have Loved at all…
… unless you're in love with Sayid Jarrah, because that guy is an absolute DEATH-MAGNET. "
Truer words were never spoken XD
You rock, Vozz.
I really needed an episode like this AND your perfect recap. Great to have L O S T back!
Love love loved it!! The whole thing, and I have to say I now officially sick of Faradays voice, his mumbling, bumbling attitude,,, the lies, someone give him a Nicki berry and be done with it!
Didn't you just love it when Sawyer told Locke not to harm a single curly hair on Hurley's head? Great scene!
Thanks for the excellent recap, as always.
If it is a game then smokey appears to be the ref.
Nice recap. The Ben-Widmore scene is one of the best scenes in the whole series.
Just wondering Vozzek, or anyone actually, any thoughts on Widmore's change of accent?
Am i getting this right?
All that happends on the island is actually the past for ben. he "has been" there already (just like desmond's journey back to 1996) and thats how he knows locke was going to blow the sub and so on. he always knew what would happen but not how. so to say ben is leaning back and watching and trying to have influence on the course corrections triggered by him or the losties.
maybe all this has been discussed before but this is my first post and i'm not following every single activity on the site
Hi there,
I was wondering why nobody noticed that Ben came from a cold environment (the ice, his breath, the warm clothing) into a warm environment.
It means he can not only travel through time (why he asks what date it is) but also through space as in instant transportation.
Or maybe somebody did mentioned it here, and we can all forget about me saying it.
rle enjoyed that blog. nice work.
"...you gotta get a phone with no numbers on it. You're also required to hide a snub-nosed pump shotgun in your piano bench. These things just go without saying"
fantasic
rle enjoyed that blog. nice work.
"...you gotta get a phone with no numbers on it. You're also required to hide a snub-nosed pump shotgun in your piano bench. These things just go without saying"
fantasic
Awesome recap, and great episode. I still haven't gotten over Alex's death, it was so cruel. Poor Ben.
Actually, you need a warm parka in Sahara, it's freezing during the night.
Fantastic recap!!!
I love the theory about the island is moving and that time on island happens in the past. I think Claires pregnancy was allready too advanced for being effected.
Great writeup, Vozzek, as always. I was just wondering... You wrote that "This sets Miles up for what I believe to be his primary purpose: a trip to Jacob's cabin."
perhaps it is, but didn't Miles say he was going with Sawyer?
If not to go in such a bright field as time travels etc.
Things I noticed and things what bother me:
Sayid finds Ben, asks how did he leave the island but he has no questions about other people out there: How's Jin, Claire, Sawyer?
Does that mean they are assumed dead? Does that mena noone cares?
What does that mean?
=)
Vozz - Ben goes from sinister to sympathetic in the span of a gunshot. Watching him say goodbye to Alex was one of the most powerful scenes of the entire series. Even the reactions of the other 815'ers seemed genuine. Seeing Ben suffer his daughter's loss, surrounded by photos of her as a child, I felt like we were watching a major turning point in the show. The title of the episode rang especially true here.
BENS - Personally, I think that we are watching one of Ben’s many time-looped travel paths – we’re seeing the consequence of “history” first (that is, the original time path) and then we’ll see his adjustment of it to change that time path to one where Alex doesn’t get shot in the head. So then, every time Ben experiences his original time path he is completely oblivious to its consequences and lives through it with real pain.
"Case in point, the doc's body travels backward through the time storm to arrive at whatever period in time the island currently exists in (1996?), putting his body back into the exact state it existed at that time (when he'd just been cut). Applying this to the 815'ers, this explains how Locke can walk and how Rose's cancer seems to have disappeared."
Mind. Blown. Away. Wow, that needs some thought, but very very interesting idea! Especially with the island apparently making the body see pregnancy as a disease and purging it. Yet both Danielle and Claire made it to the island pregnant, and had their babies. Special babies, perhaps? But Alex is dead. What purpose did she serve - or was she meant to serve before Keamy killed her unexpectedly? Is it all up to Aaron now?
Widmore is TOTALLY Ben's constant! That would make perfect sense!
Other than that... brilliant, amazing review, probably your best one yet (following that this is probably the best episode yet!), and it enlightened me a lot on what is going on. It really is an eerie feeling, that everything just changed... And it just proves that Lost will never become boring or trivial. This is our reward for sticking with the show while so many others gave up midway - their loss, and we can only laugh at them because we know what they're missing!
Voz,
I agree with all your comments and guesses except one. I'm not convinced that the guy Sayid shot was the one that killed Nadia. Ben the manipulator wanted that guy dead, and may have used that line to convince Sayid to do the deed.
I liked the poster's comment that Smokey is the referee. I think that is possibly right on the mark.
Great to see the recaps back :) Especially when they make as good a read as this.
I assumed Ben was wearing the parka because the process of 'travelling' using the Orchid involves the passage through something or place that is very cold. Nothing to do with the actual destination, but the journey. Ditto for the vapor.
About Doc Ray's scar -- it appears between the episodes "the constant" (no scar) and "ye jeon" (fresh cut, no stitches). Perhaps the island exists (at this point) at time between those events.
Also, if an old wound reappears when you pass through to the island, wouldn't a new wound disappear (i.e., a slit throat)?
Great Episode! Great recap!
Interesting theory on Doc Ray. He may be both alive on the freighter and dead on the beach. Perhaps they must get to the freighter before he dies to ensure Jack lives?
Not sure what to think of Ben's smirk after getting Sayid to work for him. I don't believe he had Nadia killed, but it was the series of events that lead to their alliance. Then Ben makes Sayid believe he is also doing it ensure the safety of those left on the Island.
Can't wait 'til next week. BEST SERIES EVER!!!
Vozzek:
Great job once again. Your insights are fantastic. You have given me much more to contemplate in addition to what I got from watching the episode the other night. I look forward to your next post.
what do you guys think of Jim Dale's (Charles Widmore) acting abilities?? I think he is terrible actor. He changes accent every few words to hide his Aussie-ness. Ugh, I just can't personally picture the Dad from Neighbours playing this evil role
Just a small correction, but Miles also went with Sawyer and Claire, and from the sneak peek for next week, he's definitely not on his way to the cabin anytime soon.
Oops, yup - you're right. Damn, I really wanted him there, too.
I tend to think that maybe Widmore and Ben were once colleagues on the Island, the same age, even, and once Ben took the island from Widmore and Widmore got trapped in the "real world," he aged and Ben didn't.
Interesting idea and I like it!
Could Des and Penny end up being Adam and Eve?
Seeing they'd have reason to now hide from both Widmore AND Ben, I'd say sure they could.
Do you agree that the entire Mousetrap scene from a Locke-centric episode and the Risk scene seem to be very important for the end game of the series?
Totally. I mentioned this in detail one or two reviews ago, can't remember which.
The lighting in the last scene...totally supports the yin/yang, light v. dark theory you mentioned. I loved the way it was shot.
I wanted to mention the lighting but I was too tired by the time I got to the last paragraph. I agree with you totally.
The whole thing, and I have to say I now officially sick of Faradays voice, his mumbling, bumbling attitude,,, the lies, someone give him a Nicki berry and be done with it!
I liked Dan at first, but I'm really starting to agree with you. It's way past the point of lying, he needs to lay his cards out on the table already (there's a pun in there somewhere...)
Just wondering Vozzek, or anyone actually, any thoughts on Widmore's change of accent?
Hmmm, didn't notice. No theory other than 'everything changes'. :)
I agree with all your comments and guesses except one. I'm not convinced that the guy Sayid shot was the one that killed Nadia. Ben the manipulator wanted that guy dead, and may have used that line to convince Sayid to do the deed.
I thought this initially. However, it's obvious that Widmore would be keeping tabs on Sayid and the guy did seem to recognize the word Widmore coming out of Ben's mouth. Ben definitely manipulated Sayid - no doubt. He even lied to him about how he left the island (I doubt he used Desmond's boat). But I think in this case, Ben did tell Sayid the truth about Nadia's killer. And although Ben is using Sayid as a weapon, on some level, I think he does feel some sort of common camaraderie with him. He'd be inhuman, otherwise.
Also, if an old wound reappears when you pass through to the island, wouldn't a new wound disappear (i.e., a slit throat)?
Great point. But was it me, or did his throat not seem slit too deeply? Gotta look again.
Okay--I think it has to be said that there is no TIME TRAVEL. darlton doesn't lie, yo.
I think there are two things at work: teleporting (i.e. Ben to the desert) and CONSCIOUSNESS TRAVEL, which Ben (if he can do it) could only do by jumping backward.
Ben (if he can manipulate his consciousness) can only go BACK to a place where he's been before.
there's no "back to the future" style time-travel. there is a time anomoly functioning on the island (in relation to "normal" time).
there's ben, des, etc brain-jumping back in time (but NOT forward).
and there is teleporting.
these things conspire to mimic the "game-changing" quantities of time travel, but without the paradox.
please please please give up on the phrase time-travel.
"Just wondering Vozzek, or anyone actually, any thoughts on Widmore's change of accent?"
The guy's an Australian actor, he just had a bit of trouble trying to sound English because it's fairly similar.
The guy's an Australian actor, he just had a bit of trouble trying to sound English because it's fairly similar.Quote
Actually Dale is a New Zealander not an Aussie.No worries,mate my father is Australian so I'm actually objective on this.It's kinda like saying that William Shatner is American,when in fact he is originally a Canadian from French speaking Montreal,Quebec! Dale lived in Oz but Dale still maintains his New Zealand citizenship and passport. And Aussie English and Brit English is different.Brits speak with a deeper voice whereas Aussies and Kiwis speak more like Americans,they usually speak from the front of their mouth!
I think that your claim of Alex's death being Ben's fault as "probably true" are false. Despite whether or not Ben's game was foolish, it was Keamy who put the bullet in Alex's head. Not Ben. It's not even clear that Ben's surrender would have ensured Alex's safety, as we all know the kind of people these freighter folk are. Even if they had given her safety for Ben's capture, Ben has less blame than Keamy/Widmore, because it was the gun that physically killed Alex, and the game Ben played has overall less blame than Keamy's own coldhearted determination to murder. Ben couldn't know whether his actions would kill his daughter, but Keamy on the other hand did. Furthermore, I was aghast when Widmore claimed Ben wasn't the victim. Ben has clearly been adversely affected by Alex's death, and so to call a grieving father anything other than a victim is ridiculous, given the very definition of a victim. I think a recent interview with Michael Emerson was interesting, because he himself labeled Widmore's ideas as being sophistry. I agree completely.
"Case in point, the doc's body travels backward through the time storm to arrive at whatever period in time the island currently exists in (1996?), putting his body back into the exact state it existed at that time (when he'd just been cut). Applying this to the 815'ers, this explains how Locke can walk and how Rose's cancer seems to have disappeared."
Maybe their body can change backwards or forwards. What I mean is that Sawyer needed glasses soon after the crash. Maybe he needs glasses in the future...
Also, I think the juice that Juliet drank is the way all the others travel. I remember thinking it was so strange that Tom Friendly could travel to see Michael so quickly, and then go back to the island to get killed. Either there was two of him, or he did some lightning fast traveling!
@Mother Of Light
I totally agree with your post, you have said exactly what I was thinking. It seems if everyone diregards that Darlton stated that physical traveling to the so called past or the future is not apart of the Lost universe. However physical travel through the so called present by means of teleporting (or "Instant Transmission") is in play .
@All
This is not directed at anyone in particular but it has to be said...
"People it is time to stop ignoring the writers and having the audacity to tell them what their show is about. If they say that their are paradox don't , physical time travel, and that the past or the future can not be changed in the Lost universe then it is their show . So WTF? Let's just accept that they know what they are doing."
If I read another blog or post claiming that the writers are liars then I am going to need a Constant.
Widmore feels like the victim because Ben stole 'his' island. Boo Hoo.
This guy looks every bit the elitist, snide, raging capitalist who derided and humiliated Desmond with the phony offer of a drink because Des had the nerve not to take over the world and excel at rat-racing...with a penchant for organising ruthless murder tacked on. Nice.
What are his nightmares about? Bad day on the stock exchange?
I don't think Ben will kill Penny. Surely all he has to do is tell Desmond's flame what kind of man her father truly is and she may as well be lost to him there and then.
Did anyone notice the "flashback" sound at the end of Ben's future scenes indicading he was flashing back to the island?
I believe the risk scene was key, because as they are talking about "fighting amongst ourselves" hurley than says "Australia is key" and i believe the producers went above and beyond on little sayings in this one.
"I havent been here in a while"
"(You're not) dead YET"
etc....
love it.
I didn't notice Ray's stitches. I'll have to watch for that.
It's an interesting idea that people have been set back to the state they were in a few years ago, but I'm not sure it holds up. Shouldn't Locke have gotten his hair back as well?
I think you are still misunderstanding the nature of time between the island and boat. There isn't a time difference; it's more complicated.
Those two time lines are simply not connected. When something does travel between island and ship, its arrival time depends upon the route that it takes. These connections are a tangled web.
This is not the first definitive time difference.
Previously, Daniel called the boat well after the helicopter left, but he spoke to the boat before it had arrived there.
The Island does not move--land masses just dont float around and even for scifi--that would be just stupid
What the writer is not taking into account is where time bends--space bends as well. Spatial distortions are oldhat in scifi and no one could call that lame.
The other possibility is that "where" the island appears to be at any given Time--is an illusion--just as Jacobs cabin is. But an Island that is actually traveling though the pacific is surely Not what is going on.
Two things:
1. there is Dharma station in Canada (mentioned in Through the looking glass), maybe Ben teleported from there (clue - the melting snow around him).
2. how on Earth is he able to hear about Nadia's murder on TV, and quickly travel to Iraq with knowledge who did it and with picture from traffic cam form LA.
So he had to quickly jump (maybe buying some time by jumping backwards in time) from Marocco to LA and to Iraq.
Voz - I now recall your point about Mousetrap. Here I was under the impression I thought of the Risk/Mousetrap thing all on my own when it was just memory. Obviously backgammon, General Locke in the lunch room, and even Locke talking to Jack about the game Operation even contributes to this theme.
As an aside if Locke lost his kidney after 1996, then the Island restoring bodies to that state does not work because his lack of a kidney saved him from Ben's gunshot wound.
shieldsy29 said... Nice recap. The Ben-Widmore scene is one of the best scenes in the whole series. Just wondering Vozzek, or anyone actually, any thoughts on Widmore's change of accent?
===========
I noticed that too slightly. My rewatch confirmed it.
He sounds exactly like the emperor (Emperor Palpatine, that is) from starwars. Remember that the Lost guys are huge fans.
It's now my impression that Ben is like Death Vader and Widmore is like Palpatine.
Just in this case Ben couldn't save his sibling like Vader saving Luke. I also parallel the Darth is evil but the emperor is really really evil.
Man,,,there are so many things wrong with the explanations in the review its staggering
The docs body reverted back to 1996? Ben drank Ethans OJ? Desmond tore away the Island so now it moves? Maybe Widmore is even Ben's constant???
Goodness gracious. Is Widmore on the Island? The whole point of the constant plotline was that person needed contact with the same person in both timelines--do people even think before they speak?
I think the claim that Ben throws up the same orange goop that Juliet had to drink is a huge assumption that forces another large batch of assumptions. One, that Juliet time traveled to get to the island. Two, that Ben time traveled to get to that spot. Three, that travel to or from the island involved time travel or some sort of antidote, when we've seen the 815ers and the Freighter people get there with little evidence of either.
Also, Juliet never threw up after reaching the island. It just seems like you take many of your theories as fact and move forward with them to make crazy assumptions.
It's now my impression that Ben is like Death Vader and Widmore is like Palpatine.Quote
I think that Darlton said that Jacob is more like the Emperor...the Puppeteer behind the scenes so to speak!Or the real man behind the curtain!Does that make Ben, Anakin and Widmore, Obi Wan?Hmmmmm.....Food for Thought!Who is Luke?Locke or Jack (who has a sister)?But is Jacob a future Jack?
give lostisagame.com credit here for the whole game theory - they've been at this all along and obviously the game at the beginning of the ep and the ben/widmore game talk and dynamic points right in that direction.
^
Credit to them for a good metaphor...but from what I can gather, they're proposing that Lost is literally a videogame :/
A couple of points
My understnding of the constant was that it had to be "someone or something that you care about". I am not so sure that Ben "cares about" CW.
Ben said that his daughter was just a pawn, giving more strength to the "game" theory.
I have not seen anyone else mention that Ben knew the Hurley had seen the cabin, and not only saw it, but knows where it is.
Ha! Jake I noticed the Palpatine sound myself.
Widmore just sounds downright sinister when he's sinking his fangs into Ben.
Both Ben and Locke know that Hurley has seen the cabin. I think it was in 'Confirmed Dead' that Hurley said "The cabin is that way".
Ben's eyes lit up like a hatch and Locke commented on it.
What if Alex was Ben's constant...and now he has no constant?
How can Alex be Ben's constant? She has never been off the island.
Some other questions/thoughts that I have:
1. Alex - could she be Linus' daughter with Annie? Or maybe Annie died in childbirth around the same time Alex was stolen from Rousseau and Ben felt that she was his daughter. And maybe Alex got killed because Ben said that she's not his daughter?
2. Smokey didn't kill the soldiers from the freighter? Don't we see them in the preview for next week's episode?
3. It seems that Ben wasn't at Nadia's funeral to recruit Sayid, Why would he be taking pictures of the bold guy and try following him to send a message to Widmore? It also seemed that he didn't want Sayid to see him - he was trying to run away from him. It seemed that recruiting Sayid was an afterthought.
4. Why did Ben lie to Sayid about how he got off the island? Obviously, the Oceanic 6 don't know Ben has a way to get on and off the island, and that there is a way to get back to the island aside from flying to Australia and back and praying the plane would crash.
5. Since Ben has a way to get back to the island, why doesn't Widmore follow Ben after his night visit to find out exactly how he does it?
Voz and a few other bloggers...
Thanks for noticing the lighting in the last scene w/Ben and Widmore! I loved the shadow/light contrast on the two of their faces. The whole scene was shot that wasy! Loved it, loved it, loved it....but it also creeped me out.
guys its DARTH VADER not death!!!!! respect the saga.
I'm with John Burger. Vozzek, you're out of your mind on some of those wilder theories, such as the island moving and the body/mind time travel difference. Just looney stuff there with no substantiation except a goofball theory.
I am still incredulous at all the Ben Linus apologists out there. Are you paying attention? What he said to Keamy right before Keamy put a piece of hot lead into her skill was SOME COLD MOTHERFUCKING SHIT, even if he didn't expect to be called on his bluff. Ben Linus killed his father, particpated in genocide of DHARMA, and has engineered countless other crimes.
Dude is giving Hitler and Genghis Khan a good run.
I was a little confused about Sayid asking Ben how he got off the island. It was Sayid who found Ben's secret room with all the passports and currency, so he would know that Ben could easily get off the island.
But Sayid looked genuinly shocked to see Ben at Nadia's funeral, asking him how he got off the island. This leads me to believe that when the O6 left they were under the impression that no one else could leave, leading to Sayid's shock at seeing Ben.
I am convinced that Ben killed Nadia and took the picture of Widmore's man so he could show it to Sayid and pin the murder on Widmore. My guess it that by the time we see Sayid in The Economist he has figured out that Ben tricked him into murdering Widmore's men but Ben is now holding the safety of the remaining people on the island over his head to keep him killing.
Bloody hell, when did this show go from a very good series to a frickin' blockbuster of hourly awesomeness. WOW.
I am tired of all the people out there that will give everyone else on this show a pass, but when it comes to Ben apparently there is NO way he could be a decent person. He obviously thought by saying what he said to Keamy that it would get Alex to safety and OBVIOUSLY didn't think it would actually get her killed. Sawyer kills a random guy who he thinks is the actual Sawyer, but thats okay. He later kills Tom in cold blood, but thats okay. Kate kills her stepdad in cold blood, but thats okay. Ben is obviously not a completely good person and he manipulates people to get what he wants, but who on this show is a completely good person? All of you people that are so quick to judge him should take a look at your favorite character and I gaurantee that you'll find some pretty foul ish that they've done in their time either on the island or off.
And by the way, I still think that there was more to the Purge then what has been showed thus far. The fact that it jump so far in Ben's flashback from when he was a boy to the time of the Purge should tell us that something had to happen to get Ben to do what he did. Maybe the original Dharma people were just as evil as the freighter mercenaries are. Maybe the only way to help the island was to kill all of the Dharma members. I just think there is more to tell there and for everyone who automatically calls the original Dharma people innocent should realize they really don't know anything about them.
I don't think Ben was saying those things before Alex was shot to be mean or to convince Keamy not to kill her. It seemed to me like he was trying to convince himself that "she was a pawn, nothing more," when really he loved her deeply. Ben knew he had to let it happen. He couldn't compromise the island for his personal feelings for Alex.
I think its hard to be an "apologist" for Ben. He's clearly done some terrible things, but he does think there is some higher purpose behind them. It just depends on your perspective on his reasons. So far, we don't know his reasons, so he appears truly evil.
@ brianamolsch
I think it's significant that the 'hostiles' are apparently so dangerous and their attacks on the Dharma people so frequent that they earn the name 'hostiles' and have a 'sonic fence weapon' erected in their honor (although a certain smoke monster may also claim some credit for that one) Yet when one of those Dharma people, a little kid no less, wanders off and encounters one of them...the 'hostile' in question (one Mr. Alpert) seems remarkably unhostile, friendly even, and takes no action whatsoever against his bitter enemy aside from a few words of good advice. Something dosen't add up.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the Dharma chiefs were actually simulating some, if not all of these 'attacks', Jonestown style. And persecuting the natives on the sly. If so, Roger Linus certainly bought into it, confronting Horace Godspeed and demanding he be compensated for the perceived danger involved.
Benjamin Linus was inspired into a kinship and sympathy for the natives by something I believe we have yet to see. I think there is more to it than a vision of his dead mother.
Ben: They couldn't even coexist with the Island's original inhabitants.
This suggests that there was a willingness on behalf of the natives to coexist but Dharma are to blame for it not happening.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that Ben is some kind of misunderstood good guy, but I'm already amazed at how sympathetic I have grown towards him as a result of watching this show progress. The writer's seem to be engaged in reverse engineering what is initially presented as evil but what ultimately may turn out to be something different. Having Michael Emerson along for the ride is a proverbial cherry on top :)
Here we go with this again....Miles did not go with John and Ben people...He's going away from Jacob's cabin not to it.
t.l.a., as far as what we know, that's doesn't add up. Ben Linus is simply not a defensible character. There's not valid defense for mass murder. None. Zer0.
with all due respect... this should be called "THINGS I BELIEVE"
week after week it seems to be least things you noticed, and more and more things you thing will happen.
anyway, did anyone NOTICE that both times they threw the dices, they got 18?
dunno what it could be, but it was funny.
Just tossing this out there. Anyone else notice the similarity with Ben "waking up" flat on his back, in the middle of nowhere?? Very similar to our first scene ever...Jack waking up in the middle of the jungle...flat on his back....
I think Vozzek is Jacob.
And I'm waiting for my "Things I Noticed" t-shirt.
@ bongzilla
If someone was to mass murder Keamy and his assosciates right now, I would have no problem whatsoever compiling a valid defense for such an action.
Seeing things in either black or white with no noticeable shades of grey dosen't add up. Time alone will tell whether or not Benjamin Linus is a defensible character.
We still don't know what Dharma were up to, and why Ben assisted in the purge. Of course it was a brutal act, but what if, say, in their fertility experiments they decided every girl of childbearing age would be subject to insemination experiments...or weird fertility rites...something really whacked out like that? What if children who proved infertile were exterminated?
These are both scenarios I found imaginable when they were really hinting at weird fertility experiments last year. Would Ben be defensible if he purged the people who were conducting some kind of eugenics experiments?
I'm not saying they'll go there, and the plot seems to have moved on from the whole apocalyptic cult fertility hints anyway. Even in these wild speculations, it's debatable whether mass murder is justified (I'm a Quaker/Buddhist, so certainly in "real life" I don't think killing is EVER the answer), but all I'm saying is, in the context of this show, I don't think Ben can be judged til we know what the people he purged were up to.
This show excels in painting with a gray brush. There are no heroes so far. That's one reason I like it. I get uncomfortable when the fans start moralizing.
My two cents:
1. I see both sides of the Ben argument, but most of all, I enjoy the ambiguity of it all! No one knows, for sure, whether Ben is a good guy or a bad guy. We don't know what his motives are or what his end game is. Just sit back and enjoy the awesomeness that is Michael Emerson's acting.
2. I think Vozzek is reading too much into the freighties morse code response about the doc. It's not like the freighties have a history of honestly and forthrightness. When I heard Bernard's response, I just assumed they were lying. They don't know the doc just washed up on shore. (I'm not even going to address the scar/wound/stitches, time issue as I don't recall enough details of the episodes and, as stated in point one, just prefer to enjoy the ride without as much theorizing as some).
P.S. I have liked Vozzek's TIN for awhile but I have to agree with aguanteflema... it's has become much more theorizing and hardly any concrete observations.
The danger in judging others is just what this show presents us with every week:
Ben and Company deign to judge which 815ers are "good" and "bad," yet commit their own crimes and were founded on a mass murder - so who are they to judge, anyway?
Locke decides Kate is bad because she killed her father - then manipulates Sawyer into doing it for him so he can join the "in" crowd of the Others and feel valued for once in his life. So who is he to judge?
We decide Widmore is bad because someone who probably never met him puts a bullet in Alex's brain when Ben won't sacrifice himself for her - come on, now. REALLY? It will never be that simple.
Objectively speaking, Locke and Ben and "bad guys," as are many other characters (yes, probably most of them). The only character, the way I see it, whose moral status is absolutely NOT debatable at this point is Widmore. Why? Because we know nothing about him. All we have is hearsay, and - since this is not a California court holding a trial that should take place in Iowa - that is inadmissible.
True, we've seen Widmore be an asshole to Desmond - we've seen him pay him off, hide his letters, call him a loser, and so on. And that's it. We've seen him be mean. Oh, he's a mean, mean man. But maybe he NEEDS to be mean.
Consider this: If Charles Widmore knows that, at some point in time, Benjamin Linus will come for his daughter, why WOULD he let Desmond tie her down to one place where any old body could find her? Why NOT send him to the one place Penny would never find him - thus sending her on a wild goose chase for innumerable years, trekking the globe to find Des, LEAVING A POOR TRAIL FOR BEN TO FOLLOW? Consider that all the "meanness" we've seen has been a concerted effort on his part to save his daughter's life?
Wow. There are so many errors in facts and logic here that I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s just go in chronological order.
From the look of Daniel's face as he tells the 815'ers that "time is relative", at least he and Charlotte have a pretty good idea of how the doctor could be in two places at once: both alive and dead to boot.
Daniel’s comment is a reference to the theory of relativity. Daniel is unsure about how much time elapsed since he left the freighter. You’re jumping to conclusions here if you think that the person on the other end of the telegraph is telling the truth.
Since the ship is anchored, we can assume the island must be moving, and I'm betting that Desmond tore it loose when he turned the failsafe key.
Why would we possibly make that assumption? Frank had no trouble landing the helicopter again safely on the island. There is no evidence that the island is ‘moving’.
I also think this is what Daniel alluded to with the deck of cards and his ominous comment that it was 'getting worse'. Maybe his ability to jump his consciousness through time and see things are they were (the cards for example) is degrading due to the island's movement.
A theory based on a theory based on an assumption based on a misreading of another scene.
And with the island now slipping through both time and space it's no wonder Widmore's had a hard time finding it.
This sentence exposes a logical flaw that centers on the way you perceive the show’s reality. Even if time were moving at different rates in two locations (which contradicts the show’s timeline), the island would not become any harder to find. If Widmore is searching for the island in 2005, then he only needs to find the island in whatever state it reaches by that point in time. This ‘theory’ would only make sense if the island were destroyed before 2005.
As mind-blowing as all that might be, it's nothing compared to the revelation that the scar on Doc Ray's cheek has been replaced by a freshly, if badly, stitched cut in the same spot. To me, this is the first real concrete evidence that some of the sharper theories out there have probably been hitting the nail on the head all along: the mind travels through time independently of the body. Case in point, the doc's body travels backward through the time storm to arrive at whatever period in time the island currently exists in (1996?), putting his body back into the exact state it existed at that time (when he'd just been cut).
You’re trying to analyze something that isn’t there. Doc Ray had no wound when he first appeared in The Constant. Doc Ray had a fresh cut when he appeared in Ji Yeon. He now has stitches in that cut when he washes ashore in the latest episode. This progression is linear and logical. There is no ‘reversion’ back to a former state. You’re actually implying the opposite of what your words said: you’re saying that the body travels through time, not the mind. In The Constant, Desmond’s physical body underwent no changes.
Ben and the 815'ers take big steps toward new alliances this episode, with Ben even chiding them for their five minutes of doubt. Caution and secrecy is tossed aside - at this point their interests are aligned, fully and completely.
I don’t see how someone could have possibly watched the episode and then written this statement. The ending of the episode involved a split between Ben/Locke/Hurley and Sawyer/Claire/Miles. There is no ‘alliance’ between Ben and the crash survivors. Locke never told Sawyer about Widmore or Jacob, and Sawyer leaves them because he believes Ben and Locke are not acting in their best interests. You may have also noticed that Locke and Sawyer had a standoff at gunpoint as a result of this conflict.
I also resent the implication that Ben is justified in ‘chiding’ the crash survivors for ‘doubting’ him. They have absolutely no reason to trust any word the man says. Your degree of bias as a Ben apologist is astounding. You’re twisting the story around to suit your own biases, rather than judging it on its own terms.
This sets Miles up for what I believe to be his primary purpose: a trip to Jacob's cabin.
Miles did not go to the trip to the cabin.
His courtship of Sayid is as brilliant as always - in his own words: "I gather intelligence on people and I exploit it".
That quote was not from Ben, but from the psychic Richard Malkin in the season two episode ?.
In the end, it seems they're both playing a high-stakes game. Widmore even uses the term 'game' during their meeting.
Nope. Widmore never uses the word ‘game’. He says ‘Then I suppose the hunt is on for both of us’. I would expect that the writers specifically avoided using the word game.
I see that many people loved this recap. I don’t mean to insult anyone, but this recap just seemed like a complete mess to me.
Wow, Penny, good post. Sometimes, I agree, when you do a recap, and you have certain theories or assumptions you believe, it becomes very easy to bend the "things I noticed" into the "things you think". I think we've reached a point in this show where we're getting close to an end, and people want to start churning out there theories, and bending facts to meet their theories. Alot of people enjoy reading voz's recap's, but I always try not to let it warp my own take on the show. I just read it to see if I missed anything I personally didn't pick up on that could be important.
Mother of light,
I don't disagree with you time travel post. I dont think that your body can travel through time, according to the show. Like you and daniel said...CONSCIOUSNESS. But I do disagree with the fact that your CONSCIOUS can only travel backwards. Daniel clearly sends the mouse to the future to learn the maze. Also Desmond does not travel back in time...1996 desmond travels forward in time.
I was just thinking back about the MacCutcheon's Whisky. Didn't we see this same whiskey with Desmond in the Swan? If so, would this point to Widmore being on the island at some point, or have him associated with Dharma in some way?