and more…

You love the title.

In less than a week, the TV series LOST returns for its final season. We will finally have all the questions that they have left with us answered. We will see who ends up with who, who ends up dead, and why / how the hell was walt killing so many birds?!?!

Being a huge fan of the series, I like to theorize whats going to happen, and then rub it in everyones faces if i get it right. So ill be using Loaded Couch Potatoes as my logging site to time and date stamp my theories. I will post a few general theories i have in the main body below, and then after each episode i will amend the theories in the comments. I am more than open to hearing thoughts on my theories, or your own theories. Feel free to use this as a way to timestamp your ideas so you can rub it in later on. I know LOST can spawn some pretty heated discussion, but plzplzplz keep it civil if you do want to chime in.

If you have not caught up to thru season 5 of the series, you may not want to read this as it may spoil some of your fun later on.

So. Without further delay.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

ENDING THEORY: Jacob has used his loopholes and crazy magic powers to have the real John Locke, not Unlocke / Smoke Monster Locke, replace him as the “Man of the Island”.  For some reason something happens and throws the cast back in time to an alternate reality or timeline where the whole process starts over with Jack in a wheelchair being the man of faith, and telling the whole story again with different people in different roles. The story continues to loop itself with changes in roles each time the loop cycles thru.

Other Theories

– As soon as Ben and Unlocke emerge from the chamber inside the foot of the statue, all Hell will break loose.

–The man we saw with Jacob on the beach will wind up being responsible for any of the “bad” things that happen on the island, possibly even off-island. “Bad” is in quotation marks because at this point the “good” and “bad” sides are getting more and more blurred. His name will be Esau. For the rest of the article, even if its not his real name, i will be referring to Jacob’s nemesis as Esau to make things easier for me and everyone else to follow. Dont get the reference? Let me google that for you.

– Ben will have been the victim of a long con (really really really long con) that was created by Esau to eventually work him in to being the loophole that Esau needed to kill Jacob.

– Aaron and Ji-Yeon will team up and be some crazy powered team. I dont know what they will do exactly, but i can guarantee you that whatever it is will be based in the realm of the paranormal. Fooooor sure.

– The black and white stones  that Jack took from the corpses in the cave from season one will show up again. If i had to guess, id say either in the very beginning, or the very end of the season. Nowhere in between. I also think the general reference of black and white will be used much much more frequently.

– Im still sticking with Aaron and Ji-Yeon being the Adam and Eve skeletons from season one. However im hearing filming rumors and whatnot that may make me amend this later.

– There wont be Team Locke / Jack / Ben / Whidmore anymore. Now its all Team Jacob and Team Esau. Black and White. Good and Evil. And i would love to see this Team Jacob beat the shit out of the sparkling glitter fairies version of Team Jacob.

– Everything that we have been taught and learned will be completely broken down and re-learned. Characters will switch attitudes, careers, really just lives in general. I want to say that they will switch within each other, so that all the lives still exist in the same way, just lived by different people, but there could be completely new elements. Confused? Example: Jack gets reset and starts out as a man of faith instead of a man of science, and “re-lives” his life accordingly.

– Jack will be in a wheelchair. When exactly I cant really predict. But I think that with all the irony that floats around on this show, that Jack in a wheelchair absolutely has to happen.

– The Others ancestors came to the island on the Black Rock. Before that it was just Jacob and Esau.

– Im going out on a limb with this one, but in the end after all of the facts are revealed, i think Jacob will wind up being more of a villain than everyone thinks.

– Alive or dead, Charlie will sing me a song and make me cry.

– Whidmore will be found to be telling the truth about Ben tricking him and the Others in to getting him off the island and replacing him with Ben as the leader. I also believe he will come back and perform one or two tricks to completely woo you back to his side.

– Claire will be found to be alive, and will be the new Rousseau of the island. Crazy jungle lady looking for her stolen baby.

– Richard will not be revealed as a time traveler, but as some form of immortal. Ive switched my stance on this one. I believed the opposite for a season or two. I hear we get an entire Richard episode this season. Im pumped.

– The whispers will be revealed to have some sort of scientific backing related to time travel. Not just purely paranormal.

– Vincent will return, and he will save the day. Twice.

– Miles will be the source for more info.

– The dead people that Hurley talk to will not be considered the same dead people that Miles talks to. I almost think that the people hurley are talking to are part of a long con from Esau. Im not completely sold on that yet, tho. But I am sold on them being a different type of interaction.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

That’s all I have for the moment. Im sure more will start flowing after I get in to more discussions with my fellow Losties, and they will be added to the comments to preserve the original post date for this blogish deal.

(C) indicates Criterion

(B) indicates Blu Ray

(C) Seven Samurai, Directed by Akira (Stray Dog) Kurosawa,

and starring Toshirô Mifune

Samurai 7 (the Anime)

(C) Charade, Starring Cary (Walk Don’t Run) Grant,

and Audrey (My Fair Lady) Hepburn

Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels

Directed by Guy (Sherlock Holmes) Ritchie,

and starring Jason (The Transporter) Stathem

Luther

Starring, Alfred (Spider-Man 2) Molina,

and Sir Peter (We’re No Angels) Ustinov

(B) Star Trek

Directed by J.J. (“Lost”) Abrams

and starring Chris (Smokin’ Aces) Pine.

What with Black Friday coming up and Barnes and Noble having their first ever black Friday sale many more will be added and soon.

J.S. Wolfwood

I’m not entirely sure I’m up to the task of reviewing this episode.  There’s so much going on, it’s hard to figure out where to start.  And since so many of the events cannot be properly appraised until we know how they turned out, and why they happened to begin with, and what they actually mean from a plot standpoint … well, it’s just hard to determine how to feel about some of this episode.  And by “some,” I mean about 90% of it.

That’s an audacious thing to do during a season finale, but the producers of this show are audacious folk.

I think what I’ll do for a review is just do a recap, and see where it leads me.

The episode begins with a man working on some sort of tapestry, which he appears to be weaving.  He goes out into the sun, catches a fish, and sits down on the beach to watch a ship out on the ocean.  And when I say “ship,” I mean a sailing ship; as in the Black Rock (we don’t see its name, but I think we can pretty safely assume its identity).  Another man comes and joins him, and calls him Jacob.  They are both there to see the ship, which they have apparently called to the island in some way.  The second man talks about some sort of cycle of violent struggle being enacted and always ending the same way, and Jacob refutes him, saying that it can only end once.  “Do you know how badly I want to kill you?” the second man asks; Jacob says yes, he does.  The second man says sooner or later, he’ll find a loophole; Jacob says when he does, he’ll be waiting.  The camera reveals that they are on the beach where the statue sits; it is an Egyptian statue of some sort, with a beast’s head, and an ankh in one hand.

This scene alone was enough for me to be convinced I was about to see something that would really change the nature of the series.  The events haven’t yet played out, but it’s abundantly clear that something is happening here that I probably would not have been able to predict in a thousand guesses.  I don’t want to speculate as to who, exactly, these characters are, or what they are, so instead I’ll talk briefly about the actors playing them.  Jacob is played by Mark Pellegrino, whom I’d only ever seen before when he played Rita’s abusive ex on Dexter; he’s terrific in this episode, and I hope Pellegrino will be sticking around for season six.  As for his counterpart, that’s Titus Welliver, who you might remember as Adams on Deadwood.   I hope we’ll be seeing more of Welliver, also; I’m all for guys named “Titus.”

Flash back to Kate as a child, getting caught shoplifting a lunchbox from a store.  Is this the same lunchbox she and her boyfriend used as their “time capsule”?  Probably.  Anyways, Jacob shows up and pays for the lunchbox and sends her on her merry way.  In the 1977 timeline, Kate shows up on board the sub which is departing the island, and tries to convince Sawyer and Juliet to help her stop Jack from detonating the bomb; Sawyer refuses.

Meanwhile, in the present, Locke and his troupe of Others are on the march.  Richard and Locke have a conversation about the fact that Locke has, apparently, returned from the dead; John speculates that it’s because of Jacob.  He also says that before they go to see Jacob, they have to take care of the rest of the passengers from the crashed Ajira flight.  (Locke must forget about that, because he never mentions it again, and neither does the episode.)  Speaking of those other passengers, they’ve taken a boat trip and come ashore carrying both Frank and a big metal box, and Ilana decides to show Lapidas what’s inside.  It may or may not be Gwyneth Paltrow’s head; either way, it’s enough to make Frank say “Terrific,” in a tone of voice that strongly implies sarcasm.

I wrote in a review of one of the other episodes from the latter half of this season that I was concerned over the fact that Lost was — in Ilana and Bram — introducing yet another set of characters.  The fact is, there aren’t that many episodes left, and some of the regular cast members have been sorta getting shortchanged lately.  Another fact is that the writers on this show are very, very good at creating new characters (Nikki and Paolo being notable exceptions, granted).  They are also very, very good at casting those new roles.  And so it is that despite my reservations, I already want to know more about both Ilana and Bram, who keep telling people that they’re the good guys.  Come to think of it, this very episode introduced two new characters during the first scene, and I want to know more about them, too!

Season six needs to be about forty episodes long … preferably at about two hours per episode.

The next act begins with young James Ford, who is attending his parents’ funeral.  Jacob is there to loan him a pen, with which he begins writing his letter to Sawyer.  I kinda got the chills a little bit during that scene.  In 1977, Sawyer continues to refuse to help Kate, but Juliet uses her awesome ninja attack skills to knock out a guard and get herself free of the handcuffs, and announces her intention to go back with Kate and help stop Jack.

Back on the island, Sayid is working on extracting the bomb’s core so he can have his very own backpack nuke.

In the present, Locke finds out that Ben has sworn to do whatever Locke tells him to do; Locke is pleased to hear about this, and says that he’s not killing Jacob, Ben is.

It’d be hard to go overboard in talking about how good Terry O’Quinn is in his scenes this episode.  Both he and Michael Emerson are powerhouses, and their scenes together are almost always revelations.  They both have the power of utter persuasion, and have the even rarer gift of being able to turn on a dime and still be persuasive no matter where the new turn takes them (and us).  If there were an Emmy for best on-screen duo, these two would be nominated every year.

We next see Jacob standing on the side of the road as Sayid and Nadia walk past.  He stops Sayid to ask him for help with directions, and moments later, Nadia is struck by a car and killed.

Well, as if it wasn’t obvious enough before, it’s definitely obvious now: Jacob is some sort of agent of fate.  Given his work on the tapestry during the opening scene, it’s entirely possible that Jacob is writing – make that “weaving” — fate.  Is he doing what he’s doing to ensure that these men and women end up on the island?  That seems likely.  But this scene takes place after Sayid left it once; is Jacob ensuring that he returns?  Did he play a hand, as yet unseen, in Sayid’s first trip to the island?  Will we see further such visits from Jacob in sixth-season flashbacks?  It’s all maddeningly unclear, and yet utterly compelling.

Down in the bomb cave, Richard grabs up a sledgehammer and knocks a hole in the wall; it leads into one of the Dharma houses.  He knocks Eloise out and takes her back to their camp, while Jack and Sayid put on Dharma jumpsuits and try to sneak out past all the chaos of the evacuation.  It doesn’t work; they get in a big ole gunfight, Sayid gets gutshot, and Hurley has to ride in to the rescue in his van, with Jin and Miles along for the ride.

This seems like a good place to mention how very unconcerned both Richard and Eloise seem to be over the fact that they are, presumably, going to be dying soon in a nuclear explosion.  Now, I know why Eloise is doing it; she’s trying to save Daniel’s life.  What’s Richard’s excuse?  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there is probably some reason for it we’re not yet privy to.

Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet make their way ashore, and damned if Vincent doesn’t come bounding up to them.  He’s been living with Rose and Bernard, who claim to have “retired” from the struggles that Sawyer and Jack are always seemingly bound up in.  “All we care about is being together,” says Bernard; “that’s all that matters in the end.”  Rose points them in the direction of the Dharma camp, and as they’re going, Bernard asks Juliet very pointedly if she doesn’t want to stay for a cup of tea.  Sam Anderson is gold in this scene, in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.  The implication, I think, is that Rose and Bernard have broken free of the cycle of strife described by Jacob and his adversary at the beginning of the episode, and are basically urging Juliet and friends to do the same.  Obviously, they’re unsuccessful, but it’s intriguing to ponder how Sawyer was essentially arguing for the same thing on the sub, and also to ponder how differently the episode might have ended if they had all just stayed where they were and had tea with Bernard.

Ilana’s party comes to Jacob’s cabin in the jungle, and finds that a ring of ashes around it has been disturbed.  (I can’t remember; did we see this happen in a previous episode?)  This, apparently, is cause for concern.  We get a flashback in the middle of the scene; Jacob comes to Ilana, who lies severely bandaged in a hospital bed, and asks her to help him.  She obviously already knows who he is, and agrees to help him.  Back in the present, Ilana comes to the conclusion that “someone else” has been using the cabin; they torch it and set off for the statue.

We next see Jacob sitting on a bench, reading Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge, in front of a building; Locke comes crashing out of one of the windows and onto the ground.  Jacob goes to John, and touches him, and Locke is either brought back to life or just woken up. (Has Jacob pysically touched each one of the people we’ve seen him interacting with in flashbacks?)

We rejoin Locke’s hunting party just in time for them to stop at the old beach camp of the Oceanic survivors.  Ben asks John why he wants him to kill Jacob; Locke asks Ben why, with all the things Jacob has allowed to happen to him (his cancer, Alex’s death), he wouldn’t want to kill Jacob.  Meanwhile, Sun finds Aaron’s old crib and Charlie’s old Driveshaft ring, which causes her to remember her wedding; she and Jin are approached by Jacob, who gives them his blessing in fluent Korean.  He definitely touches both of them.

The van full of Jack and friends is continuing to make its escape, but comes to a roadblock consisting of Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet.  Sawyer demands that Jack give him five minutes, and Jack reluctantly agrees.  Flashback to Jack making the mistake in surgery that he told Kate about way back in the pilot episode; it plays out, and Jack buys a candy bar that gets hung in the machine.  Luckily, Jacob is there to buy another and give Jack’s to him.  “Looks like all it needed was a push,” Jacob says (or somethig to that effect); he does not touch Jack.

Speaking of pushing, that’s the end result of Sawyer talking to Jack, only they push each other in certain parts of their faces and abdomens, and use their fists to do the pushing.  Juliet shows up and has another change of heart, this time saying that they should help Jack.  Sawyer is obviously confused, frightened, and heartbroken by this change of events.  We see a flashback of young Juliet learning that her parents are getting a divorce; her mother tells her that when she grows up, she’ll understand why they aren’t supposed to be together, and rightly or wrongly, Juliet must have taken this talk to heart, for that’s exactly the realization she’s come to with Sawyer.  She knows that Sawyer still has feelings for Kate, and says that if she never has to meet him then she’ll never have to lose him.

This Sawyer/Juliet scene is in some ways my least favorite scene of the episode, because some of the dialogue, frankly, stinks.  Also, I’m just not sure I buy the idea that Kate’s mere presence can be explosive enough to make Juliet think Sawyer is going back on three years worth of relationship.  This sort of thing probably would play a lot better in a novel than it does on the screen.  I will say this, though: the acting of all persons involved is stellar.  Josh Holloway, in particular, delivers what might well be his best performance of the series to date.

It’s also worth pointing out that the flashback scene with young Juliet is the only flashback scene of the episode that doesn’t involve Jacob.  The way the episode has been structured, you’re sorta led to expect him to show up during the scene, but he doesn’t.  Now, I’m wondering: are we meant to notice his absence and assume that it means something, or is this simply a flashback designed to illustrate Juliet’s frame of mind?  If it’s the latter, that’s poor judgment on the part of the writers (Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, in this instance); you never want to set up an expectation and then fail to deliver on it, unless the failure is intentional and is its own kind of payoff.  As always, I assume that I’m supposed to be making connections on Lost, so until I see otherwise, I’m going to choose to feel that the lack of Jacob in Juliet’s life means something.  (Could it be that we will later discover that it was not Jacob who set her on her path to the island, but instead his adversary?)

Jack, meanwhile, has moved on to the Swan, where he’s spying on things and planning his next move.  Kate asks him what happened to his face; he asks her why she made him promise to never ask about Aaron.  (Which, technically, isn’t asking her about Aaron, so he’s found a bit of a loophole there.  I doubt that has anything to do with the other quest for a loophole in this episode, but you never know.)  I can’t actually remember what Kate’s response to this is, and I didn’t have the sense to write it down in my notes.  I did note that Jack ends the scene by telling Kate that nothing has ever felt so right to him as does the idea of putting things back the way he thinks they ought to be.  Matthew Fox is more alive during this scene than he has been since arriving back on the island; he’s a little bit frightening in his conviction.  Kate is obviously both attracted to him and frightened of him, and that seems pretty reasonable to me on both counts.

Another flashback, this time of Hurley getting out of jail.  He shares a cab with Jacob, who convinces him to get on the Ajira flight.  He also leaves Hurley a guitar case.

In 1977, Jack takes the bomb, which Sayid has rigged to explode on impact.  Speaking of Sayid, he’s not looking too good; he says that he can’t be saved, and he might be right.  (It occurs to me that, spiritually speaking, “saved” is the opposite of “lost.”)

Richard shows Locke how to get into the statue, and he and Ben head inside.  Richard isn’t happy about Ben going along; he tells Locke that only the Leader can demand an audience of Jacob.  Locke tells him that he thinks Richard is making up the rules as he goes along.  In they go, and Locke promises Ben that “things will be different once he’s gone.”

At the Swan in 1977, a shootout ensues, and Jack is basically pinned down with no ability to get to the drill site (he’s got to drop the nuke down to the area of the electromagnetic activity) until Kate, Juliet, Jin, Hurley, and Miles show up to provide backup.  Jack drops the nuke into the shaft, but nothing happens … except the elctromagnetic event, which Dr. Chang tries to nip in the bud by turning off the drill, but it’s too late for that.  All the metallic objects in the vicinity start getting sucked into the shaft, including a heavy chain, which wraps around Juliet and pulls her in, as well.  Sawyer and Kate try to pull her back out, but they can’t hold on to her, and she plummets into the chasm.

Ilana and the rest of her group arrive at the staue, and ask “Ricardos” what lies in the shadow of the statue.  He answers, in Latin, “he who shall save us all” (thank you, Lostpedia).  She opens the box to show him what it contains, which turns out to be the corpse of John Locke.

Ben and “Locke” find the inner sanctum of the statue, and sure enough, Jacob is waiting there for them.  He shows them his tapestry, which is considerably more complete than when we last saw it; “it takes a very long time when you’re making the thread, but I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?” he asks.  He, of course, recognizes “Locke” for who he truly is, and says, “you found your loophole, didn’t you?”

Jacob tells Ben that he has a choice about what he does next, but Ben asks Jacob why he’s never shown any interest in him before now; and yet the first time Locke asks to see Jacob, Jacob treats him like he’s Moses.  “Locke” gives Jacob a knowing look at this, and there’s no way that look has no significance.  I don’t know the Bible well enough to know what transpired between Jacob and Moses, or to know who Jacob’s adversary might represent in this equation, but there’s just no way this is a random connection.

Ben ends his pitiful rant/plea by asking Jacob what was so wrong with him that Jacob ignored him so; “what about me?” he asks.  “What about you?” Jacob asks in return, with considerably more coldness than he had shown when telling Ben he had a choice.  It seems almost as if Jacob, aware that Ben has already made his choice and resigned to his fate, is now pushing Ben toward action; and Ben takes action, plunging a knife into Jacob’s chest.  Jacob says to his adversary, “they’re coming,” and “Locke” then pushes him into a fire.

Speaking of fire, Juliet is about to cause one: lying (implausibly not dead after a very long fall; what is this, Z’ha’dum?) at the bottom of the shaft, she grabs a rock and starts whacking the nuke.  It takes her a few tries, but she eventually hits it just right, and the screen goes white.

And that is the end of season five.

There is, as I mentioned at the outset, quite a lot that I simply cannot assess until I know more about what is going on.  So in that sense, this is an unsatisfying episode.

But it is also incredibly provocative, and it was certainly entertaining.  I’m not sure where I’d rank it amongst Lost‘s other season finales, but I think it might come in second behind season three’s.

As for the season entire…?  Time may change my opinion one way or another, but I think it was the best season this show has had since its debut season.  That’s a good sign for season six.  It feels as if the writers are now definitely working toward a specific endgame, and if it’s anywhere near as cool as this episode suggests it could be, we may be in for a doozy of a season come next January.

Frankly, anything else would be a letdown.

Spoilers are throughout, but there is an especially big one for Fringe in the first paragraph, so if you don’t want to know, you might want to skip reading this.

The next-to-last episode of the first season of Fringe, “The Road Not Taken,” is a great example of why I try to not watch the “next-week-on…” clips for shows anymore.  Unfortunately, I’d seen a promo for this episode during House on Monday night, so I saw the Observer come into Walter’s lab and tell him that it was time to go.

That was in the final seconds of the episode, and was obviously intended by the show’s writers and producers to be a giant cliffhanger of an ending leading into the season finale.  So why Fox would then decide to put it in a promo is a mystery to me.

Actually, it’s not a mystery.  They do things like that for the same reason any marketing hack does things like that: because they think more people will watch if they do. I don’t believe it’s true, though.  Fringe is getting perfectly good ratings right now, and one thing that can increase its ratings is for the people currently watching to get so hooked on the show that they feel the need to get friends to watch.  You get people hooked on a show by surprising them and making them freak out a little over how cool what they just saw was.  If you’re giving away giant surprises like the one which ends this episode, then you’re dulling what should have been a great moment.  If my logic is sound, then you are therefore depriving the show of potential viewers in the future.  Well done.

It’s an annoying trend, and it must drive television producers up the wall.

Nevertheless, this was still a pretty good episode.  “Bad Dreams” writer/director Akiva Goldsman returned, this time as the contributor of the story, and while “The Road Not Taken” isn’t nearly as good as his first episode, it’s still good enough that I hope he returns for the second season.

He returns to the idea of the Jacksonville cortexophan trials, this time with a tale of twin sisters who have apparently been given pyrokinetic abilities.  (Yes, it’s a Firestarter reference, and yes, the writers acknowledge it.)  This leads to a scene in which one of the sisters incinerates Agent Harris, who has been revealed to be a mole … though who he is a mole for, exactly, has yet to be determined.  I’m guessing David Robert Jones, mainly because this episode is working so hard to make me believe it’s William Bell.

Olivia spends a decent amount of this episode experiencing some sort of deja-vu-like halucinations, in which she seems to be side-stepping into a parallel universe where things have happened slightly differently.  These scenes are shot well, and are creepy as hell.

I don’t have a lot to say about this episode, but I would like to take a moment to applaud some of the acting.  Anna Torv is steadily growing on me as an actress.  She’s quite the beauty, of course, so I’ve enjoyed seeing her the entire season from that shallow perspective, but for most of the season I’ve felt like she was curiously free of any real charm or charisma.  It’s now becoming apparent that that was simply how she was playing the role, and that there may have been reasons for it.  In the last few episodes, she’s started to seem a little crisper, a little more driven; or maybe it’s some other quality I can’t quite put a name to.  Either way, it’s not just Anna Torv that’s happening to, it’s Olivia Dunham; so I don’t think it’s a mistake, and I’m curious to see where it goes from here.

However, this episode — like several others before it, and arguably the entire season — belonged to John Noble.  He gets two incredibly juicy scenes.  The first is when he is confronted by Olivia, who demands to know what he and Bell did to her — to all the test subjects — during the cortexophan trials.  Noble’s work during this scene is tremendous, although I would like to point out that I had no idea Dunham knew Walter was involved in those trials.  That’s no reflection on Noble, of course.  But seriously, did we know she knew about this?  Did my attention slip at some point during a previous episode?

Bringing this review full circle, we return to the scene which ends the episode: the Observer showing up for Walter.  Earlier in the episode, Nina has alluded to something happening the last time the Observer showed up with the regularity he’s apparently been showing up lately.  Was this also something that involved Walter, or is Nina hinting at something even more ominous?  Either way, John Noble gets several more great moments during this final scene.  He finds the missing part of the ZFT manuscript, and calls out “Astrid, I’ve found it!”  That’s surprisingly touching; the poor guy has been saying Astrid’s name wrong all season, and now he finally gets it right.

Except it’s not Astrid walking into the lab; it’s the Observer, who says, “Hello, Walter.  It’s time to go.”  Walter replies, “Is it time?”  He doesn’t seem surprised; if anything, it seems as if (possibly subconsciously) he’s been waiting to hear those very words.  “I’ll get my coat.”

“Follow the Leader” is an episode of Lost that I know I probably should have loved.  I didn’t, though.  I liked it, don’t get me wrong; it just seemed very much like a getting-the-pieces-into-place episode, and while there were numerous moments of excellence, overall it felt a little lacklustre to me.

The two cruxes of the episode are Jack in 1977 trying to talk Eloise into helping him detonate the bomb and Locke in the present trying to take firm command of the Others.  The “leaders” of these two parts of the episode are seemingly Jack and John — appropriate, given how much of the series has revolved around the leadership of those two men — but both also feature Richard Alpert in a very prominent way.  I can’t help but wonder if he isn’t the leader the title is referring to.  I suspect we’ll find out next week.

Jack’s plan is to complete — or should I say “follow”? — Farraday’s plan to change the future by detonating the bomb.  Kate is not happy with this idea.  When Eloise asks her if Jack knows what he’s talking about and she replies, “He thinks he does,” I have rarely seen a more hateful look in anyone’s eyes than I saw in Kate’s.  It looks like this is it for Jack and Kate; I don’t see how she would ever even consider being close to him again.  Jack, in fact, is dangerously close to turning into a villain.  If this show can manage to persuasively pull that off, it’ll be one of the great coups in the hidtory of television.  And frankly, if they can turn him back into a genuine hero, at this point that would be a coup, also.  Once this Jack playing Sam Beckett, striving-to-put-right-what-once-went-wrong thing shakes out, it’ll be interesting to see where Jack is as a character.

Meanwhile, also in 1977, things are going poorly in Dharmaville.  Sawyer and Juliet sell out the location of the Hostiles in return for being put on the sub and evacuated from the island.  Things are looking pretty peachy for them until Kate shows up; nobody seems pleased that she’s there, except maybe for Kate herself, who now appears to have signed a lifetime contract with Team Sawyer.

The sub is evacuatig people because Dr. Chang has found Hurley and Miles and gotten the truth: that they are from the futre.  He puts Hurley on the spot, and Hurley says he’s crazy, but Chang presses the matter, asking Hurley a series of questions such as what year he was born.  1931, says Hurley, unconvincingly.  Dr. Chang asks sarcastically if he was in the Korean War.  “No such thing,” says Hurley, trying to salvage the situation.  He ends up saying, “Alright, dude, we’re from the future,” in his best hand-in-the-cookie-jar voice.  Jorge Garcia ought to be eligible for the next Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy; he’s been pure gold this season.

Back in the present, Locke is doing trippy things like leading Richard to the Nigerian plane so that Richard can give past-John the compass and take the bullet out of his leg.  He is also asserting his supposed control over the Others, demanding that Richard take him to see Jacob.  In fact, since nobody has apparently ever seen Jacob, John wants the entire troupe of Others to go along for the visit.  “I’m starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble,” confides Richard to Ben.  “Why do you think I tried to kill him?” Ben replies.

Tried to kill him, huh?  Well, that’s interesting, innit?

Obviously, here, things are not entirely what they seem.  This shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow it did, and effectively.  This is probably why I’m getting a distinctly Wizard-of-Oz vibe off of Jacob.  Once again, I’m curious to see how this plays out.

I’ve got a feeling next week’s season finale is going to be monumental.

One last note: 1977 Eloise is played by Alice Evans, who is great, but it’s weird casting, because you could neve ever convince me that a smoking hot fox like her could eventually turn into Fionnula Flanagan.  Simply not possible.

Speaking of Flanagan, her Brotherhood co-star Kevin Chapman (he was Freddie Cork) shows up in this episode.  I hope he’s got a real role to play in future episodes; I’d hate to see him get wasted the way this show has occasionally wasted such fine actors in the past.

After taking a week off, Lost returned tonight with its 100th episode.  And was it a doozy?  Why, yes, it was, thank you for asking.

It was a big ole Farraday episode, and it serves as a bit of a companion piece to “Some Like It Hoth” in that, for the most part, this is an old-school Lost flashback episode, going all the way back to Daniel’s childhood and forward again, filling in some of the blanks about the twitchy bearded wonder.

Interestingly, it can also be seen as an Eloise episode.  It begins with Desmond being wheeled into the ER after being shot by Ben, with Penny and Charlie following him frantically.  Penny is visited by Eloise, who apologizes for the whole thing, which is her son’s fault.  She reveals to Penny that she’s Farraday’s mother, at which point we flash back (or forward, depending on how you look at it) to “Thirty Years Earlier.”  Farraday is getting off of the submarine, and Miles is meeting him.  As it turns out, Daniel has seen the Dharma group photo that Jack and friends are in, and confronts them, telling them that his mother was wrong about it being their destiny to go back to the island; they don’t belong there.

Daniel finds Pierre Chang at the Orchid, tells him that he’s from the future, that he has to evacuate the island due to a massive explosion that is going to take place at the Swan in the next six hours.  He also tells Chang that Miles is his son.  Chang does not believe him, and leaves; Miles is furious, but Daniel says that he is just ensuring that Chang will do “what he’s supposed to do.”  (That’s ominous.)  In grand Lost tradition, Miles does not ask him what he means by that.

(Side note: is it just my imagination, or do some of the sounds from the Orchid construction site sound an awful lot like some of the sounds the smoke monster makes?)

We see Daniel graduating from Oxford, with another grand Lost tradition intact: terrible, terrible hair which is meant to show us that This Happened In The Past.  We find out that Daniel has gotten a $1.5 million grant from an industrialist, Charles Widmore; Eloise seems disturbed by this.  Later, after Farraday’s accident, Widmore visits him and offers him the opportunity to go to a scientific anomaly, an island, which could heal him; Daniel is skeptical, but his mother will later tell him he has to accept Widmore’s offer.  Daniel asks if going will make her proud; she says it will, and he agrees to go.

Back in Dharmaville, Sawyer holds a meeting and tells Jack and friends that — thanks to the closetful of Phil he’s currently a proud owner of — they have to leave, either sneaking off the island in the sub or fleeing into the jungle.  Farraday interrupts, asking if they know how to find the Hostiles; he needs to find them because his mother is among them, and only she can help put them back where they belong.  Sawyer and Jack get into an argument over this, but Juliet gives Kate the code to the gate, and they slipt into two groups, with Jack, Kate, and Daniel heading off for the jungle and everyone else planning to make for the beach.

Before they all get underway, Daniel approaches young Charlotte, and warns her about … what, exactly?  We don’t see the entire conversation, so I’m not sure if we’re supposed to think he’s done what Charlotte said he did in her past, or if he’s tried to change things by telling her something different this time.  Unfortunately, this scene doesn’t come off as well as you might have expected it to.  The little girl who plays Charlotte is not exactly the next Dakota Fanning; in fact, she’s kinda terrible.  The scene feels rushed, and this might be due to the writers wanting you to think Farraday has done one thing, setting it up so they can tell us in a future episode that he did something else entirely.  If that’s how it shakes out, I’m okay with it.  But if the scene is meant to merely be taken at its face value, then it’s a swing and a miss; Jeremy Davies does his part, but he’s got no assistance in this particular scene.  A shame (I think).

Then, Jack’s group gets into a gunfight with Radzinski.  They escape, and Daniel is shot, but the bullet only grazes his neck.  He tells Jack not to be mistaken; they can all definitely be killed in this timeline.

Sawyer and Juliet are getting ready to leave when Radzinski and his goons burst in on them, intending to tell LaFleur what has happened.  They discover the closetful of Phil, and take Sawyer and Juliet captive.

In the jungle, Daniel tells Jack and Kate his plan: to disrupt the accident at the Swan (and, therefore, the entire chain of events which will lead to 815′s crash landing on the island, along with all the resultant events) by setting off a hydrogen bomb.  This, apparently, is what he needs his mother for: to tell him where Jughead is.

Cut back to Eloise at the ER; she tells Penny that for the first time in a long while, she doesn’t know what will happen next.  We find out that Desmond is recovering just fine.  Widmore lurches out of the shadows at Eloise, and he confirms for us that he is Daniel’s father.  No shocker there.

Daniel marches into the Hostiles’ camp with his gun drawn, demanding that Richard tell him where Eloise is.  He finds out when she shoots him in the back.  He looks up at her — the younger version of her we’ve seen in flashbacks of him as a child, when she discourages him from playing the piano and tells him that he has to focus his intelligence on mathematics — and breathes out in wonderment and horror that she knew all along what was going to happen to him, but she sent him to the island anyways.  Then, he dies.  The end!

There’s a lot to digest here, starting with the fact that this is Eloise’s episode as much as it is Daniel’s.  The first scene involves her owning up to being Daniel’s mother, and the final scene involves her finding out that she’s just killed him.  The implication is that she, as Daniel says, finds herself from that point on in life making decisions to ensure that she and her son arrive at that place.  Just like Daniel says he’s making sure Doctor Chang does what he’s supposed to do, that’s what Eloise must spend the rest of her life acting out.  That certainly fits into Farraday’s assertions in previous episodes that the timeline can’t be changed.  We still don’t know to what extent Desmond — who may or may not be an exception to this rule — will play a part in this idea, but his presence in this episode seems to be some sort of hint.

On the face of things, it must seem like Eloise is a cold, cold, heartless bitch, but consider this: she gives birth to Daniel knowing that she has already killed him.  What would be the emotional impact of that knowledge?  Some folks, I’m sure, would spend each day weeping into their palms while listening to Sarah McLachlan for hours on end; others might find that they then had no ability whatsoever to actually love that child.  I can’t get enough of a read on Eloise to know where she falls on that spectrum.  Is that bad writing?  I can’t even tell that; I’m sometimes unsure as to the specifics of what this show is prompting me to feel.  I’m also perfectly content to not spend much time worrying about it; that’s what DVD collections are for.  However, it might help to explain the seemingly ever-shrinking audience for this once-upon-a-time ratings behemoth.  Not everyone is as patient — and as willing to swim in the waters of ambiguity — as I am.  (I probably should have said “as we are,” since it’s unlikely that this will be read by many people who aren’t in the same camp.)  What I know is that the final scene of the episode renders much of the rest of it quite chilling; in particular, the scene in which Eloise tells Daniel that she’ll be proud of him if he returns to the island.

I’d guess that Jack and Kate are now going to try and fulfill Daniel’s plan to find Jughead and stop the “incident” from ever happening.  Knowing this show, they just might be successful.  How trippy would it be if the final season consisted of everyone living out the lives they were going to live if only Oceanic 815 had landed like it was supposed to?  I don’t see that happening — the Locke/Ben storyline (amongst others) hasn’t been resolved yet — but if it did happen, I wouldn’t be too surprised.  On this show, you just never know.

As always, Jeremy Davies was great in this episode.  Then again, who wasn’t?  I actually even liked Fionnula Flanagan in this episode, and while Alan Dale is always good playing Widmore, I felt myself sympathizing a bit with Widmore, which has never happened before.  I wonder: did he, too, know he was sending Daniel to his death by sending him to the island?

Another strong episode from Lost in its fifth season.  It seems to have been some sort of important turning point in the history of the show, and I guess that’s appropriate for episode 100 of any series.

Uh, dude…?  Spoilers.

Gotta be honest: when I saw the commercial for this week’s episode and learned that it was a Miles episode, I said “Meh.”  Then, I quickly realized that I’d said — not out loud, but in my mind, which was somehow worse — one of those douchebaggy words that gets said a lot nowadays by douchebaggy kids, and I made a face like you’d make during a chili-inspired BM.  Then I realized I’d gone on a mental rant against “those darn kids with their hula hoops and their Zima,” and it was a long downward spiral for the rest of the week.

Well, as if the fallout from that wasn’t stupid enough, I now feel even more like a big fat pile of teh suck — or, if you prefer, a pile of “epic fail” — for I have seen The Miles Episode, and, yes, it was awesome.  Speaking of awesome, you’re going to want to see the picture I posted at the end of this review.  Don’t want to read what I wrote?  Well, on the one hand, fuck you, but on the other hand, use your scroll powers and check out the picture anyways.

Very similar in structure to the “classic” (meaning seasons one/two/three) Lost episodes, “Some Like It Hoth” teaches us a lot about Miles.  For example, we learn that he already had his corpse-telepathy powers when he was a small child.  We also learn that Miles put his talents to use conning people out of their hard-earned money.  This, apparently, somehow brought him to the attention of one Charles Widmore, who sends Naomi to recruit him for a mission to the Island.  My memories of season four are dim at best, so I’m not sure how much of that is new info and how much is a dramatization of things we already knew.

Here’s what I know we didn’t already know: that Miles was hired to find Ben by digging up the corpses of his victims and learning from them whatever he can learn about Ben’s location.  Sick, dude.  Awesome … but sick.

Also, at some point after being recruited by Naomi, but before setting sail for the Island, Miles got snatched by ski-masked men in a black van.  One of them, a dude calling himself Bram, tried to talk Miles out of going to the Island, telling him that he was on the wrong side.  “Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?” Bram asks him.  Miles, showing a bit more sense than Lapidas did when posed the same question last week, answers no.  “Then you’re not ready to go to that island,” Bram replies ominously.  Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that we’ve seen Bram before; he’s one of the Ajira survivors who knocked the previously-mentioned Lapidas in the noggin last week.  (He’s played by Brad William Henke, who will be seen in Star Trek as Kirk’s uncle.)

I’m tellin’ ya, I think something fishy is going on with these Ajira people.  I think they know more than they’re letting on.

In further Milescentric news, we find out that his deadbeat dad is none other than Doctor Pierre Chang!  Or, if you prefer, Doctor Marvin Candle!  Or, if you prefer, Doctor Edgar Halliwax!  This is probably not that big a shock; you had to figure that when you saw Doctor Pierre Candle Halliwax with a baby earlier in the season, that wasn’t a random occurrence.  And who could it have been other than Miles?  Still, it’s a satisfying plot development.

A large portion of this episode is devoted to scenes between Miles and Hurley, and they are all pure gold.  Jorge Garcia has impeccable comedic timing and delivery; he gets my vote to be one of the next-gen Ghostbusters when and if that movie gets made.

In this episode, we get awesome Hurley comedy on multiple fronts.  First of all, he gets to smell out the fact that there is a dead guy in the back of the van Miles is driving.  This leads to Miles’ revelation of his necrotelepathy — yeah, I just invented that word, and you’d better mahfah’n credit me when you use it (and you will use it!) — which leads to Hurley sympathizing because, as he points out, he can talk to ‘em, too.

That leads to Hurley tossing off great one-liners like a bull tossing rednecks off its back.  “You actually see them?” asks an incredulous Miles.  “Of course,” says a blasé Hurley; “why wouldn’t I?”  Hurley goes on to taunt Miles, saying “You’re just jealous because my power’s better than yours.”  Garcia isn’t even necessarily the only actor on this show who could pull off that line without sounding ridiculous, but he does it more effortlessly than I can imagine just about any actor managing.  Except maybe for Bill Murray.  Hmm…

Next, when Doctor Edgar Pierre freaks out over Miles having brought Hurley along on the corpse delivery and tells the two to stay put with their mouths shut, Hurley loudly reassures him, “Don’t worry, dude, I won’t say anything about the body.”  Chang looks at him the way you or I might look at a person claiming Charles In Charge is a better time-travel show than is Lost.

Later, after Miles has revealed to Hurley who his father is, he rides in the back seat of the van while Dr. Chang and son ride up front.  The look of delight on his face — the sheer glee of knowing so monumental a secret and being able to torture Miles with it — is just great.  Hurley begins quizzing Dr. Chang a bit about his family.  Upon “learning” that his three-month-old is named Miles, he remarks what a small world it is.  “You’re name’s Miles too, isn’t it, Miles?”  Miles looks like he’s about to dump out right there on the spot.

And we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.  Check out the episode’s title, and you’ll find a nice little Empire Strikes Back reference.  Why is Hoth referenced in a Lost episode title?, you might ask.  Well, it’s not exactly a big plot point for the rest of the series (I assume), but the resultant cascade of randomness and silliness and awesomeness is just too good for me to repeat, even in a spoiler-heavy environment such as this one.  Suffice it to say that only this show could pull off some of Hurley’s dialogue during the rest of the episode.

Miles appears ready to confront his feelings about his deadbeat multinomic father, but before he can do so, Dr. Chang gets him to drive him to the docks to meet some new scientists “from Ann Arbor.”  And who should step off the submarine in a black jumpsuit but Daniel Farraday?  He tells Miles hello, and the episode is over.  Eeeeeenteresting…

This episode didn’t necessarily have the food-for-thought depth of some of the better recent episodes, but it was exceptionally entertaining, and advanced the show’s mythology in several unexpected ways.  It was also a welcome call-back to the Lost of old.

Two weeks until the next episode, apparently, and while that sucks, it’s a small price to pay for a show this awesome.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot the picture.  I found it here; it seemed appropriate given the Lucasfilm-ish aspects of tonight’s episode.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Comics

• Wolverine: Weapon X #1: New stand-alone starring everyone’s favorite canuck. The story is going to revolve around Logan trying to stop a group called the Blackguard from profiting from the use of Weapon Xresearch. The series looks to focus mainly on the violent,  nature of Wolverine. The writing is solid, and the art does its job well. There’s even a small section in the back dedicated to info on various Weapon X projects. Would make a great jumping-on point for new fans, and should please any long-time readers. I’m really looking forward to the next one.
• Daredevil: Noir #1: The third Marvel franchise to get the “noir” treatment. I haven’t had a chance to check out the other two – Spider-Man and X-Men – but this one caught my eye. By my standards, it’s an exceptional re-imagining; the theme works incredibly well with this particular character. The writer obviously knows his Daredevil, and does a great job of working in the old series standbys. The art absolutely nails the feel of old ’40s serials, and the new take on the costume is wicked-cool. Might be better suited to prior readers; as with Marvel 1602, it will best appreciated if you get the references. But hey, if you’re a big noir fan, maybe this is just the right title to get you into comics.
• Ignition City #1: Warren Ellis rules. When I heard about this new series, I was stoked. Set in an alternate-steam-punk-history, the story will follow a young explorer and pilot as she tries to discover the circumstances of her father’s final years up until hs death. The universe is extraordinarily well-fashioned, the dialogue is sharp, and the supporting characters have my attention. The art is greatly detailed and still clean and clear. I’m really glad I got on-board at the start for this one. Can’t wait to see what they do with it.
• Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk #4: Written by Damon Lindelof, the general no-holds-barred demeanor of the Marvel Ultimate line lends itself well to this match-up. This issue gives our title characters a break in order to fill in some gaps on just who the She-Hulk that appeared last issue might be. Even without the punches flying, the all-out pace and edgy dialogue doesn’t disappoint, and the art continues to impress. Probably most easily enjoyed if you know something about all the characters involved and the events within the Ultimates series. Issue #4 might be a little late to start, though, and I’m ever a fan of trade paperbacks.

Television

• House: “Simple Explanation” : Maybe the best ensemble episode the show has had so far; the death of a character always brings a chance for everyone to shine. I’ll admit the medical side didn’t really hook me, despite the presence of Meat Loaf playing a character named Eddie. The grief process seemed very real, and well-suited to each personality: Cuddy’s administrative side taking over as she doles out grief counselors and time off; Foreman and Thirteen’s roles being flipped as he withdraws from letting her in; and Taub’s obsession with saving the patients to make up for his failure at saving a friend. House’s inquisitive tenacity took on what I found to be its most heartbreaking form yet, and I can’t help but wonder if this might finally bring about a real change in him. An all-around great example of the show’swriting and acting strengths.
• Lost: “Dead is Dead” : Ah. This is the Lost I know and love. Hooray for some character development on Ben; even with the flashbacks revealing a few “Island Events,” I felt like the personal side of things wasn’t over-shadowed. I also really think that the nature of Ben’s “judgement” will play a crucial role in just what the island expects from everyone. The “new crash survivors” sub-plot, while not central, gave us a taste of something big, I think. The discussion of Locke’s resurrection was well-played; nothing better to me than John’s “This is how it is” attitude. I also loved the use of the “smoke monster”: “Hey, look everyone! It comes out of holes in a temple! What is it? Who knows?!” Good times.

Movies

• Dragonball Evolution: I’ve been trying really hard to keep the language clean in these posts; my mom reads them, after all. Plus, it makes me use intelligent critique methods. …So when I say this movie is f*cking terrible, you understand the full weight of that sentiment. Seriously, the best thing I can say is that it does manage to capture the light-hearted, whimsical side of Akira Toriyama’s vision. Then, it removes all of his positive creative force, pours a big pot of poor acting all over that, and then wraps it up in some terrible visuals for good measure. If you have a spare $25 and an urge for some Saiyans, forget this filth and go here.
• Observe and Report: Demented. Violent. Offensive. If these words spell out “hilarious” for you, then this is a film to take notice of. I absolutely relished every darkly-psychotic minute of it. Seth Rogen always struck me as a one-trick-pony, but he shines in this role, and his supporting cast is just as good – maybe even better in the case of Michael Pena. The genuine absurdity I felt was just the right level: a hair’s breadth beyond reality, and tweaked so that the truly disturbing managed to stay the course at completely hilarious.

*THIS WEEK’S SPOILER* The man playing “Simon Says” with John McClane is actually named Simon Gruber. He is the brother of Hans Gruber, and is seeking vengeance against McClane for his brother’s death.

You know he gonna spoil ya.

“It’s one thing to believe it, John,” says Ben to Locke, while he’s trying to convince our favorite baldy that he knew all along Locke would come back to life once he got back to the Island.  “It’s another thing to see it.”

This, of course, was a big Ben episode … but in some respects, it was just as significant an episode for Locke.  He doesn’t seem to have changed full-bore into a different character, the way Christian Shephard appears to have done … but at the same time, this isn’t quite the same old John Locke we’ve known all these years.

The episode’s title is central to that idea.  “Dead is dead,” Ben tells Sun after admitting (or possibly lying) to her that he had no idea Locke would come back to life; “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.”  How does Christian fit into this philosophy?  Does Ben know about Christian?  I’d guess not, though with Ben, you never can tell.

This was a mythology-heavy episode, and it was a fairly satisfying one, although the writers used the opportunity to raise as many questions as they answered.  We now know what happened to Ben before he got on the Ajira flight: he shot Desmond, found himself unwilling to kill Penny in front of her child, and then got his ass beat by Desmond … but we don’t know how badly Desmond was injured.  We now know where the smoke monster comes from … but we still don’t know what it is.  We know how Widmore left the Island (he was exiled from it for leaving too often and for siring a child while not there) … but we don’t know any of the circumstances of how the Island came to settle on Ben as its new servant.  Similarly, though we now know that Locke is the Island’s new servant, we don’t know how or why the Island made that decision, nor do we know how Ben is going to react to his diminished status.  Will he react as poorly as Widmore reacted?

Most importantly, we know now that at least some of the Ajira crash survivors have some sort of knowledge about the Island.  Did they get on the plane because they knew the crash was going to happen?  Did they become infected, like Rousseau’s people?  Is Caesar actually dead, or will the Island spare him?

Clearly, these Ajira folk are being set up to be major participants in the show.  I don’t want to doubt the writers — they haven’t steered me wrong very often in the past — but I do now begin to question the wisdom of introducing yet another group of new characters, when there are so many characters on the show already that it’s beginning to feel like a medium shirt on a 3X frame: way too full, and possibly in danger of ripping apart.  It isn’t something I’m worried about, given this show’s ability to introduce interesting new characters … it’s just a mild warning sign on the horizon.

A few other thoughts:

Michael Emerson playing young Ben = kinda ridiculous.  They did essentially the same thing they once did with Matthew Fox, which is to slap a terrible wig on him and count on us making the connection that if his hair is that bad all of a sudden, then this must be in the past.  It works, but not without elicting some chuckles.

I love Lapidas.  He got one of the better lines in the episode: “As long as the dead guy says there’s a reason, then I guess everything’s gonna be just peachy.”  It’s always valuable to have a character around to comment on some of the more outlandish aspects of the episode.  That sort of thing helps keep the show grounded, and, therefore, helps the outlandish stuff retain a solid element of realism.  Without Sawyer, Hurley, or Charlie around to fill those shoes, Lapidas is a pretty good replacement.  Hopefully, those Ajira people aren’t going to kill him.

Another good episode.  The show is on a definite winning streak this season.

***spoiler alert***

So, another great episode of Lost tonight.  Tonight’s episode, “Dead is Dead,” was a Ben-rific episode that revealed even more about this slightly sinister character.  The beginning of the episode cut to the chase and we got to see Locke confront Ben about killing him.  Ben deflects, and says he thought that Locke would be resurrected, although it seems clear he is lying and quite shaken by seeing Locke again.  He also tells Locke that he has come back to let the island “monster” judge him.  Locke seems skeptical … and rightly so, since Ben has manipulated and lied to just about everyone on Flight 815.

Next is a great flashback to a significant event of the series, the abduction of baby Alex from her mother Russo.  The scene is pretty simple; Ben steals the baby and tells Russo “Every time you hear whispers, run the other way!”  That’s no lie.  Later, we find out that Ben had been sent to kill Russo by none other than Charles Widmore.  Ben had gone with an eager young Ethan to do just that, but after sparing Russo’s life, he returns to his people with the baby.  Widmore scolds Ben for not killing the kid and Ben defends his actions.

Back to Locke and Ben bantering back and forth about the island and Locke’s death and such.  Locke decides to help Ben be judged by the monster.  Locke seems pleased by both the idea of Ben being judged and by the fact that he suspects Ben has no intention of following through.  On the way to the other island, they encounter Caesar and have a conflict over Locke and Ben taking a boat.  Locke argues his point and when Caesar goes for his gun, Ben promptly reveals that he has it and then uses it, shooting Caesar in the chest.  Classic Ben.

Moving on, Ben and Locke go to the old Dharma housing camp and discover Sun and Lapidas.  Ben seems disheartened when Sun reveals she has been told to wait for Locke.  It seems as though he is no longer the island’s go-to boy.  From here, Ben shows increasing reluctance to unleash the “monster.”  It definitely seems as though he is concerned by Locke’s new found islandy specialness.  I love Locke, but he kinda acts like a smug asshole in this episode.  I guess rightly so, with the whole “the island chose me and brought me back to life and now I can act like a smug asshole” thing.

More Ben flashbacks reveal that Charles Widmore has been banished from leading the Others.  We also get to see what happened to Ben before he got on the plane sporting some nasty cut and bruises.  I had suspected it had something to do with Penny, but I would have guessed that he had killed her; I was wrong.  Ben finds Penny, calls Charles to taunt him, shoots Desmond, and then finds himself pointing a gun right at Penny.  He tells her why he’s there, and in the midst of things Desmond and Penny’s kid, Charlie, comes out of the boat before being desperately shooed away by Penny. It’s here Ben really looses his gusto.  He hesitates, and although we don’t know, because Desmond (gun-shot and all) beats the crap out of him, I really don’t think he would have ended up shooting Penny.  He seems to really have a soft spot for kids, possibly due in part to the fact that his own childhood was pretty strange.

In other news, Lapidas, having left Sun, returns to the beach and finds that several of the survivors have taken over.  “What lies in the shadow of the statue?”, they ask him, sounding as if they fully expect an answer; when they don’t get one, they knock him out.  What is up with this?  My first instinct is to suspect island possession or something.  But I think we all know what statue she is talking about.

So, Locke and Ben continue on to find the island’s smoke “monster.”  Locke continues to grin about the fact that he knows what’s going on and where things are.  They follow the hole under the ruins that sucked down two of Russo’s comrades.  Before going down, Ben tells Sun to tell Desmond that he’s sorry.  (About shooting him, I guess.)  The closer he gets to his to judgment, the quicker Ben becomes repentant.  Finally, after falling through a floor, Ben finds himself standing before a carving on the wall of the smoke thingy.  It’s a pretty awesome carving that looks like something from ancient Egypt.  The smoke comes out and show him visions of Alex: his inability to kill her as a baby, pushing her on a swing, their arguments as she got older, and finally her death.  Ben takes responsibility in the end; he never meant for her to die, but admits that it was his fault.

The island spares him.  A vision of Alex speaks to him and roughs him up a little and demands that he do whatever Locke says to do from that point forward.  It seems the transfer of power is complete and Locke is now running things for the island.

One important thing about Ben.  He loved his daughter.  Sure, Alex wasn’t his child, but he raised her and loved her.  So, yes, Ben is a killer and a liar. But I just can’t help but pull for him.  It could be the fact that Ben is almost always right, or the fact that Michael Emerson plays this complex character perfectly, but I just can’t help but cheer for him.  Especially in this episode, where he isn’t torturing our main castaways and is giving us a look at his softer side.  I’m so happy Ben’s alive … I say this especially to all my co-workers who hate him and want him dead.

Can’t wait until next week.