LOST on Overheard in New York

From http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/018743.html

In Penn Station:

Girl #1: This whole Ben situation is really starting to piss me off.
Girl #2: I know! I just don't know what his deal is.
Girl #1: He called me like twelve times yesterday.
Girl #2 (stopping in the middle of Penn Station): He called you? (pauses for a moment) Oh, you mean Ben your boyfriend, don't you?
Girl #1: As opposed to?
Girl #2: Ben from Lost.
Girl #1: Don't talk to me for an hour, please.



Raise your hand if Ben Linus has ever entered an everyday conversation!

Dead is Dead

The title (and Ben's line that it comes from) puzzles me, because everything that happens on LOST seems to indicate that dead is NOT, in fact, dead. People come back all the time, from Charlie to Christian Shephard to Yemi to Locke. So can we discount what Ben said as a lie? The guy is a compulsive liar after all and stretches the truth even when it's not necessary. Or is there some truth to it? Maybe the people we think are alive aren't as alive as we think. (Princess Bride: "I do not think it means what you think it means"?)

There were some pretty big moments in this episode and lots of Island mythology. We saw Ben kidnapping Alex, with the new information that he didn't set out to take her. He was supposed to kill Rousseau but when he realized she had a baby he had mercy on them both and just took Alex. We don't see the merciful side of Ben a lot, but apparently at one point he had one. And it resurfaces when Ben is preparing to shoot Penny Widmore. When young Charlie Hume emerges from the boat (named "Our Mutual Friend" after the Dickens novel Desmond always carried with him) it causes Ben to rethink murdering her just long enough for Desmond to wake up and give him a walloping. I'm so glad Penny is alive! For a minute I thought Ben would be successful and Penny's death would provoke Desmond to go back to the Island too, but I'm glad I was wrong. If no one else ends up happy at the end of the series, I hope Penny and Desmond do.

Funny moment of the night was when Ben tells Sun "what's about to come out of that jungle is something I can't control" expecting the smoke monster...and out walks Locke. What he said is no less true, as he comes to find out.

Another major event in Island mythology was Charles Widmore being banished, apparently for having a daughter (Penny probably) with an "outsider." More Old Testament overtones there. Charles predicted that one day Ben would have to choose between his loyalty to the Island and his love for his daughter.

And the climax of the episode...Ben confronting the smoke monster.

First Ben summons the monster, apparently by letting water go down a drain. (Someone on the forum commented "looks like the SM lives in the u-bend like Moaning Myrtle.") When Ben said he was calling the smoke monster to be "judged" I thought it might be similar to when Eko was killed and the monster revolved around him, with flashes of light and images from his life. It was almost exactly the same, although Ben seemed a lot more scared than Eko did (maybe because he knew what was going to happen?)

The picture above the monster's "vent" appears to be the Egyptian god Anubis being judged by the monster. Guess who else looks like Anubis? Yep - the 4 toed statue.

I am really intrigued by what they're doing w/all the Egyptian references. Is it something about the Island's origins? Or just to indicate that it has been around for a long, long time? If so, could any of the characters have been around for this long - like Richard or Jacob?

The big question for me in this scene is why Ben was allowed to live. It seems the monster decided that it was his fault that Alex was killed. With so much blood on his hands, why wouldn't he be condemned to die? The Island must still have work for him to do. The whole experience reminded me of Saul's conversion in the Bible. It looks like Ben is now a true believer in Locke's authority.

More questions: What is going on with Ilana and Bram? Have they been "infected" like Rousseau's crew? What was Locke doing out in the jungle? Does Ben know how people are resurrected on the Island? Where the heck are Rose, Bernard, and Claire?


Added: I was reading up about Anubis and found this interesting tidbit:
Ammit

Other Names: Eater of the Dead, the Devourer.

Patron of: destruction of the souls of the wicked.

Appearance: a demon with the head of crocodile, the torso of a leopard and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus.

Description: Ammit sits beneath the Scales of Justice before the throne of Osiris where she waits for the daily flow of souls to come before Osiris for judgement. During the Judging of the Heart, if the deeds of the soul being judged are found to be more wicked than good, Anubis feeds the soul to Ammit. This results in the total annihilation of the person, and there is no hope of further existence.

http://www.touregypt.net/godsofegypt/ammit.htm

Whatever Happened, Happened

Two episodes in one this time since I'm behind. I recovered from a horrific but blessedly short-lived stomach bug just in time to enjoy LOST night yesterday. And enjoy it, I did! But let's back up to last week...

First of all, I've spent way too long thinking about the punctuation in the title. Shouldn't it be "Whatever Happened Happened"? Not "Whatever Happened, Happened"? Seems unnecessary to me. And yes, I am a nerd. This was a great character driven episode, in my opinion one of the best character episodes this season. Evangeline Lilly's acting was phenomenal. I enjoyed the return to the more traditional flashback style for the storyline. It was a bit slower than some episodes this season (almost no answers/development about Island mythology) but a lot of the gaps were filled in from previous episodes, the largest ones being why Kate decided to go back to the Island, and what happened to Aaron. I was so relieved to find out that nothing terrible happened to him (that scene in the grocery store made my heart sink with dread, as I'm sure it did for every parent who was watching). It was no less heart-wrenching though when Kate had to say goodbye. I've always thought of Kate as one of the more selfish characters - everything she does seems to be about self-preservation - so it was satisfying to see her finally do the right thing, even though it caused her great personal pain.

The theme of role reversals continued in this episode. The Losties have all evolved and changed so much that now they are doing things that are exactly the reverse of what we would have expected in season 1. Kate gives up Aaron, and instead of running away from a problem (Claire having disappeared) she's running straight towards it. Sawyer is being a responsible leader and is in a long term, loyal relationship. And most striking of all in this episode, Jack is sitting idly by, waiting for a sign to tell him what his purpose is, having faith that the Island will work things out. It's pretty ironic that by refusing to save Ben, Jack actually created Ben as we know him - since the Others saved him he was forever changed. It reminds me of a quote from Jean de La Fontaine (which I most recently heard quoted on Kung Fu Panda, which gets viewed at least 5 times a week at our house): "A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." Had Jack agreed to save Ben, he wouldn't have been changed by whatever happened in the Temple and he may have grown up to be a completely different person. But it couldn't have happened that way; whatever happened happened.



I've heard a lot of discussion about the ethics of killing vs. saving Ben as a child. If you could go back in time and kill someone really evil (the example given is usually Hitler as a young boy) would it be moral to do so? In order for it to be ethical, you would have to believe that destiny is set and can't be changed - that Hitler would always grow up to be a dictator and mass murderer and has no chance of growing up to be a normal well adjusted adult. But the problem there is that if destiny can't be changed, that means you won't be able to kill him. If you are able to kill him, then he is also able to grow up with a different outcome, so killing him would not be an ethical decision. Apparently Sayid didn't go through this mental exercise, but I can understand that after all Ben put him through. He's past the point of caring about morals at this point. In any case it's fun to think about. (And for LDS readers, it brings a new twist to the story of Nephi killing Laban.)

I also loved the scene where Miles and Hurley discuss time travel theory and explain how things work on the Island. I felt like the writers had been reading all the blogs and message boards and the whole scene was an effort to answer all those questions about paradox and free will. The way they handled it was very smart, and really funny at the same time.

He's Our You

This is pretty much what my face looked like at the end of last night's LOST. (A bit less furry, but otherwise spot on.)

Sayid shot Ben! When I read the program info about the episode about one of the Losties "going rogue" and taking matters into his own hands, I suspected it would involve Sayid trying to kill Ben. It never occurred to me that he might actually succeed. We've been told over and over again on the show that nothing the time travelers do can change the past in any significant way - whatever happened has always happened and always will happen. Now it seems that Sayid HAS changed the past by shooting young Ben right through the heart.

Only I don't think Ben is really dead. It reminds me of when Ben shot Locke and left him for dead in the mass grave. The Island took over and healed Locke. I think something similar will happen to Ben. The Island will heal him - or Jack will. He'll survive, and he'll remember in the future that Sayid tried to kill him. It sure would explain a lot of Ben's actions toward Sayid, and his conviction that no matter what future Sayid says, he is a killer. The title of next week's episode? "Whatever Happened, Happened."

There were more role reversals last night. Sawyer brought Sayid to be tortured by Oldham, when in the future Sawyer is tortured by Sayid (although I have to say that Oldham's way of doing it is much nicer than Sayid's.) The opening scene where Sayid kills the chicken for his brother reminded me of when Locke was told that to become the leader of the Others he had to kill his father, and he got Sawyer to do it for him instead. It also reminds of Mr. Eko's flashback where he killed an unarmed man so his brother Yemi wouldn't have to. Now Sayid is taking this role - doing what has to be done when no one else wants to do it. Juliet tells Sawyer "we're done playing house, aren't we?" which recalls Kate asking Sawyer "How long can we play house?" in the season 4 episode "Eggtown." And Sayid drinking MacCutcheon whiskey was a nod to Charles Widmore.

What are your thoughts? Any other ironies I missed? And is Ben really dead?

Namaste

I wish I could find another way to begin these Lost posts other than "Wow," but this season is making it tough. Each episode keeps wowing me! "Namaste" was no exception and I feel the story picked up a bit after the slower pace of "LaFleur."

Seeing Flight 316 go down recalled the first episode of the show; the turbulence followed by the sudden plunge toward the ground. The copilot even says "You're going to rip us apart!" when Lapidus struggles to pull the plane up. Lapidus was supposed to be the captain of Flight 815 - I wonder if the plane would still have broken apart if he had been the one flying it?

One of the biggest questions I had was why the returning Losties arrived at different points in time. Why did Jack, Hurley, Sayid and Kate all go back to 1977 when Sun and Ben did not? Here's one theory. Maybe Ben couldn't go back to 1977 because he was already on the Island in 1977 as a kid. Sun wasn't there that we know of, but in a past episode we did see Pierre Chang feeding a baby - could it have been her? It's a stretch I know, but I kind of like this idea.

Another question is, *when* are Ben and Sun? I'm guessing it's not in 2007, since we saw a time flash as the plane was crashing (it was night, then after the flash it was suddenly day.) Could it be even farther in the future? Or even more out there - could it be an alternate future? We've seen a lot of the Dharma barracks on the show and they never looked the way they did when Sun and Lapidus found them; dilapidated, and with obvious Dharma relics still around. When the Others lived in the barracks, there was very little evidence of Dharma ever having been there (not that I can remember anyway) - and definitely not signs that said "Processing Center" or group photos of DI recruits. So alternate future? Maybe.

Did anyone else TOTALLY see it coming when Ben brought the sandwich to Sayid? I loved the role reversal in this scene. When Sayid meets Ben in the future, Ben is a prisoner falsely claiming not to be one of the Others; this time, Sayid is the prisoner and falsely claiming to be one of the Others. In the future Sayid "questioned" Ben, now young Ben is questioning Sayid, albeit much less violently. I predict that Sayid will try to kill young Ben; now that he knows that Ben is the one who killed Nadia I can't imagine him just letting him be. I don't think he'll be able to do it (à la Michael trying to kill himself) but I think he'll try.

Another juxtaposition that I thought was cool was the Juliet/Jack/Kate/Sawyer love square. When Juliet first joins the Losties, she's an outsider vying for Jack's affections and Kate has the upper hand. Now the roles are reversed, but it's Sawyer, not Jack they both want. Jack seems to have learned some humility (or maybe it's just been forced upon him) since Sawyer is now running the show and he has to be a Workman. Poor Jack. Although I am proud of him for going a whole episode without crying.

The ultimate irony is that the Losties (especially Jack and Hurley) were motivated to get back to the Island largely because they were tired of living a lie. And now that they're back...they're still living a lie. It remains to be seen what going back will actually accomplish.

Shocker of the night - Christian Shephard appearing to Sun and Lapidus. (Although once again, I do wish they wouldn't display the guest actors' names during the opening credits, because that gives it away.) Just who/what is Christian Shephard? How was he able to come back from the dead? And what is it about him and Locke that made it possible? I think this is one of the last questions that will be answered on the series. I won't complain if the show doesn't end with everything all neatly tied up, but I really hope they will answer this one. I don't have any theories that make sense. During this episode they seemed to be implying a connection between Christian and the smoke monster, and there is definitely a connection between him and Jacob (whoever Jacob is!)

Bring on next week! I'm hoping for more Sayid/Ben drama and more Locke. Lots more Locke.

316

LOST never stops surprising me. I never would have guessed that less than halfway through the season, the Oceanic Six (minus Aaron) would already have returned to the Island. But they did. The moment Jack opened his eyes on his back in the jungle recalls the opening scene of the pilot, and is also a nod to fan theories that when Jack awoke in the jungle that first time, he had time traveled there.



The title of this episode is a number, 316, which is the flight number they must take to get to the Island. Numbers are often significant in Lost, so chances are the writers didn't pick that one at random. I think 316 refers to a Bible reference, John 3:16. Themes of faith and belief are highlighted in this episode, as well as foreshadowing about "eternal life" in the form of John Locke. (I read on Lostpedia that 316 is also significant because the episode aired on February 18; on that day there are exactly 316 days left in the year. I like the Biblical interpretation better.)



When Jack, Sun, Ben and Desmond show up at Ms. Hawking's church, she greets them in front of a large print of Caravaggio's Doubting Thomas. Ben later tells Jack the story of the apostle Thomas. Although he was among the most devoted of Christ's followers, when the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples, Thomas refused to believe it was actually him until he had felt his wounds in his hands and side. Ben is pointing out the similarity between Thomas and Jack. As a scientist, Jack will only believe what can be measured empirically. Even when he sees things with his own eyes (e.g. the Island disappearing) he doesn't believe in things that don't make sense. Ben reminds Jack that like Thomas, "We're all convinced sooner or later." John Locke is the opposite side of the coin; he is far too willing to believe without question and instinctively acts purely by faith. Jack's struggle to act based on faith leads up to the pivotal scene where he puts his father's shoes on Locke. In the end I think he is going to end up believing in spite of himself.

The name Thomas has some history on the show too. Claire's boyfriend (and Aaron's father) is named Thomas. And when Christian Shephard travels to Australia just before his death, he uses a false name with Ana Lucia, telling her to call him Tom.

More name stuff: we learn that Locke's body is being kept at Simon's Butcher Shop. Simon is another disciple name, and may also imply a connection to Charlie Pace's father who was a butcher named Simon.

There were a few big answers in this episode. Ms. Hawking reveals that the Island is always moving, and that the only way to get there is to find a "window" - the right place and the right time to enter. It explains why they were never rescued, and why the Island seems to be so difficult for Charles Widmore and others to find. Ms. Hawking further reveals that the Dharma Initiative located the Island using a station called the Lamp Post, which is located over a pocket of electromagnetic energy and houses a Foucault pendulum. She says there are other similar locations all over the world - obviously the Island is one, and I'm betting another is in Tunisia. One of my favorite moments of the episode was when Jack asks Ms. Hawking if Ben was telling the truth about not knowing about the Lamp Post and she says "Probably not." (Second favorite: Jack asking Ben what will happen to all the other people on the plane and Ben saying "Who cares?")

Ms. Hawking goes on to explain to Jack that in order to enter the "window" they need to recreate the circumstances of the crash of flight 815 as closely as possible. Jack takes the leap of faith to put his father's shoes on Locke's body, and explains why his dad was wearing white tennis shoes in his casket. (I always thought it was just because he liked to be comfortable.)

When the group finally assembles to board the plane, Sayid and Hurley are inexplicably there, Sayid in handcuffs and Hurley carrying a guitar case. I don't have any ideas yet for how Sayid might have been arrested, but for Hurley I think he was convinced by Charlie that he needed to get on the flight. The returning castaways are representing others who were on the original flight - Hurley represents Charlie, Sayid represents Kate (on 815 she was also in handcuffs and being escorted by an air marshal), Ben represents Hurley (he ran in at the last moment and almost missed the flight) and of course, Locke's body represents Christian Shephard. An out there but cool theory - Kate might be pregnant after her night with Jack, and she would represent Claire and Aaron.

Jack reads Locke's suicide note ("I wish you had believed me" - recalling what Jesus said to the apostle Thomas: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.") Immediately after he finishes reading the plane starts to experience turbulence. Is this a coincidence, or did his reading of the note somehow help open the window for them to pass through? Ben keeps up his pathological lying when Jack asks him "How can you read?" and Ben quips "My mother taught me" - we know that his mother died in childbirth and he was raised by his loser dad. (The book he was reading was James Joyce's Ulysses, which I'm sure J. Wood will cover extensively on his blog. It has lots of parallels to Lost.) He also claims not to have known that Locke committed suicide, and I'm positive that's a lie too.

A big question we're left with is what happened to Aaron? In order to convince Kate to go back, he must have been taken away from her somehow. Maybe Claire's mother figured out what was going on after Jack's strange visit to her.

Another: why is Ben so beat up when he boards the plane? What was the promise he said he had to keep? The only thing that makes sense to me is that he must have been going after Penny. He promised Charles Widmore that he would kill her to avenge Alex's death. Killing Desmond's family would have the added bonus (in Ben's mind) of freeing Desmond to return to the Island. I'm guessing that Desmond was the one to inflict those wounds on Ben in an effort to protect Penny. If he wasn't able to protect her, we may see an interesting twist in the future where Desmond goes back in time to save her. Since we know that Desmond is "special" in that the rules of time travel don't apply to him, I think that could be a really cool story line.

I'm confused by the ending - Jin driving up in a Dharma van that looks brand new. That would imply that Jack, Hurley and Kate are in the 1980s. Since the Island stopped skipping through time when Locke turned the wheel, it looks like when it stopped the remaining Losties all got stuck at that time. That would explain Daniel being part of the Dharma Initiative and warning Charlotte as a child. But then how are they going to get back? And are Sun, Sayid and Ben in that same time or did they end up somewhere else? We've seen the remnants of an Ajira plane crash, which I'm assuming was flight 316, but Jack, Kate and Hurley don't remember a crash. Does anyone have any theories? If so please share and enlighten me! (Please don't tell me if you've read spoilers though. I like to be surprised.)

This Place is Death

This season of Lost just keeps getting better and better! I lost track of how many times I gasped out loud during this week's episode - it was revelation after revelation.

First off, my dream came true and we got to see more of Rousseau! We even got to see Montand losing his arm and Danielle shooting Robert. Grim scenes, but it was cool to see this mythology we've heard about since the beginning being played out as it happened. Time travel rules! I was surprised that the "sickness" Rousseau was always talking about seems to have been caused by exposure to the smoke monster rather than the "side effects" of traveling to and from the Island. Interesting, and really creepy.


One of the big questions for me in this one is about Charlotte. We finally heard her confirm was has been hinted at for a long time - that she was born on the Island and lived there as a child. So who are her parents? She says her mother left her father behind to get her away from the Island, so her father could be someone we've seen before. (Charles Widmore? Richard? Tom?) Charlotte telling Daniel she met him as a child was one of those gasp-inducing moments. Talk about a twist!

I loved the scene where Ben convinced Sun that Jin was still alive - and that we got an explanation for why Locke didn't tell Sun that slightly important information when he visited her. Ironic that Ben used Jin's ring to convince her that he was alive, when Jin gave the ring to Locke specifically to prove to her that he was dead so she wouldn't come back.

Which brings me to a central conflict of this season. There seem to be two distinct forces at play, one of which wants the castaways to return to the Island, and one that wants them to stay away. Locke is guided by Christian Shephard to get them to come back, and Ben and Ms. Hawking have the same goal. But every once in a while one of the characters gets a conflicting message. Kate has the dream where Claire tells her "don't you dare bring him [Aaron] back." Charlotte has an apparent vision that leads her to shout to Jin "don't let Sun come back here - this place is death." Something or someone doesn't want them to make it back. Ben claims that he's gone to extraordinary lengths just to keep the Oceanic 6 alive. Someone is willing to kill them in order to prevent them from getting back to the Island.

That conflict is played out further in Locke's decision to turn the wheel and leave the Island. From the start he has insisted that no one is supposed to leave, and that he never intends to go. It's a great irony that he is the one that has to leave in order to save everyone who is still there. Maybe it's precisely because he's the only one who doesn't want to leave that he has to be the one to do so. When Boone died, Locke said that it was a "sacrifice the Island demanded." Now he is the one who has to be sacrificed. Something that puzzled me was Christian Shephard refusing to help Locke stand up. Could it be because he doesn't have a physical body and is an apparition of some kind? Or was it simply that Locke had to move the wheel completely on his own, much as Ben wouldn't allow Locke to come with him when he turned the wheel? It was interesting too that both Locke and Ben fell and were injured before they turned the wheel.

Another interesting detail: the van that Ben is driving with Locke's body inside has the words "Canton-Rainier" painted on the side. Since anagrams are ubiquitous on Lost (remember Hoffs-Drawlar=Flash-Forward?) I took a closer look at those names, and what do you know - they're an anagram for REINCARNATION. There's little doubt in my mind now about what's going to happen when they get Locke's body back to the Island. I can picture it as a very dramatic season finale.

As always, I can't wait for next week. Like Ms. Hawking said: "Let's get started"!