That is except when it comes to a friend of mine—which is no fault of the show. I choose my own friends. For privacy’s sake let’s call this friend Bony Talls. No no, that’s too obvious. Let’s just call him Anthony T. This young individual, who I’ve watched LOST with on many an occasion, has come into the habit of talking to the characters of the show as if they’re in the darkened room in which we are sitting. On cue, he says their name, as if expecting a response. They never respond, by the way. I felt like Larry David in the ending montage of last season’s Curb when he’s with his new family in the movie theater.
I’m a bit hazy on the best quotes from last night. I really enjoyed Ben telling Russo, “When you hear whispers, run,” specifically because this is the same thing she tells Sayid when they first meet. This line is now clearly up for interpretation. In the past the whispers have been a forewarning of the Others’ presence. If Widmore was the leader, and ordered that Russo be killed, then the Others (arriving via whispers) would merk her when they found her alive in the jungle. She took it as the whispers were always bad news (which is clearly not the case; i.e. the Aussie Stewardess who was kidnapped/recruited by the Others) and passed that fear onto Sayid.
Regardless of this endless over-analyzing opportunity in that comment, I have to award best line of the night to John Locke:
“I was just hoping for an apology.”
That coy smile gets me every time. In fact, looking back at the Seder I attended 2 and a half hours late last night., I kind of wish John Locke was my bachelor uncle, who insists on helping me hide the Afikoman. Alas, it’s not to be.
Big ups to Benjamin Linus. He’s like one of those dudes on the Maury Povich Show (my boss watches every morning, so I am forced to watch every morning before we leave the apartment) who finds out that he is, thanks to a free paternity test, the father of his girlfriend/temporary ho’s baby and decides to “step up, be a man, and take responsibility.” Ben was how old there? 18? 24?
New spin off show idea: Ben Linus is a single father, trying to raise a French baby on his own. His devotion to his mysterious religious beliefs coupled with his unique family dynamic leaves him very little room for a love life, even when the blonde OBGYN of his dreams moves to his tropical island.
Back to Russo for a second—why would the Island want her dead? I say the island because the rest of her scientific team went down into the temple and came out with a mission: to kill Danielle Russo. Is it because of how she helped the Flight 815 Survivors later on the time line? She led them to the Black Rock for dynamite (which ultimately freed Desmond). She warned them about the black smoke. Yet, she was eventually killed anyway, so was that just her fate? Was it because she was part of a scientific team and was therefore a woman of science, like Jack, and unable to be a woman of faith, like Locke.
I was a little confused how Caesar would come to trust Ben so quickly. He shows him the gun right off the bat. He wouldn’t even show that Bounty Hunter lady his glock, and it’s not as if Caesar didn’t see the Bounty Hunter lady in first class, transporting a criminal of sorts. Similar to the way Ben explained the murder of Locke, Ben gets the information he needs from Caesar (that he has a gun) and then finds him disposable.
My bad y’all. I was pretty confident about Penny being born on the island. (However let me slip in that I was also confident about Ben failing to kill Penny and that Desmond was the one who went Tyler Durden on his face.) Is Penny’s mother someone we’ve met before? Ben on the dock seemed sincere when he told Widmore that he “broke the rules” by leaving the island so frequently. He was endangering the secrecy of the Island’s location, just as he did when he sent his elite squad to capture Ben. Charles didn’t break the rules by killing Alex. He gave up the whereabouts of the island to those who should never have known in the first place. But Widmore told Locke that Ben “tricked him” off the island. Based on what happened this episode, I take Ben’s word over that of Charles. Yet I’m sure that opinion can change once we see a Widmore back story during his decades in power on the island, which should have the Charles In Charge theme song throughout the episode.
Miss my chubby Spanish gentle giant and would love to get him some face time.
Thought it was very cool how the game of Risk that Hurley and Sawyer were playing before the DI town was invaded was still in tact on Ben’s kitchen table. And while I can’t fill the “noting how Sawyer is the man quota” in this email, I’ll balance it out with a “Lapidis is cool as shit.” My man decides to leave Ben’s house in the middle of the night and walk through the jungle alone! Was he scared? Not even a little bit. He probably made a little road-trip out of it. Songs Lapidis most likely sang to himself as he trudged through the night; (1) Creedance Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle.” (2) Jethro Tull’s “Bungle in the Jungle.” (3) Anything by Lou Reed solo or the Velvet Underground. No jungle relation, he just seems that cool.
I don’t remember when Locke ever came into contact with the temple, although he knew exactly how to get there. He was almost dragged into a hole by the black smoke before they blew open the hatch. Was that at that same underground temple opening?
While Bony Talls…sorry, Anthony T, tries to find a translation to the writing on the wall (“You guys, is that in Egyptian?”), I’ll beef a bit. In a decision that can only be described as homage to the final scene in Happy Gilmore when Chubs, the Gator and Abe Lincoln wave from the sky, Ben is engulfed by the black smoke. The black smoke full of cheesey visuals. Cheesey visuals that were not damning enough to force Ben into oblivion. And now, if Ben can heed the advice of his dead daughter, he’ll be allowed to stick around, creating more memories on the island for cheesey visuals, that can be seen in the opening credits of Ben’s soon-to-be spin off show.
This episode overall was a turning point in Ben’s life. He was always the Lewis Scott, Jimmy Dugan, Gordon Bombay character who thought he could do it all himself. But slowly he’s realizing that teamwork gets it done. Ben is important to the island, clearly. He’s a piece of the puzzle just like everyone else, albeit a bigger piece than most. Now he has to take a back seat to Locke and enjoy the ride with the rest of us.
“Too many questions”
mos jef
Terrible news for all the readers out there, this guy is going away tomorrow on vacation and wont be back for a week. Everyone have a great week and I'll be back with new posts soon.
