Episode 409: The Shape of … Awesome!

 

For those of you who don’t watch the television show Lost, this column is not for you. It should be, but it’s not. It could be, that is if you go now to rent (or buy) seasons 1-3 right now and find a friend who has DVR’d the last nine episodes of season 4. But for right now, this column is not for you.

 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about last night.

 

What the Hell Happened?

 

In the present, a dead body washes on the shore of the island. It is the body of the freighter doctor that brought Sayid and Desmond lima beans in episode 8, “Meet Kevin Johnson.” Faraday and Charlotte know who it is, but seem baffled by his slit throat – those weren’t gills. This leads to a discussion about contacting the freighter, which has been impossible since the satellite phone has been down. Bernard has a solution: turn it into a telegraph. Old school. Way to go, Bernard!

 

Meanwhile, Doctor Jack is feeling ill—oh, the irony—and is looking for pills to deal with the pain. Is this where his future addiction to pain killers begins? Kate suggests crackers with a cute freckled-framed smile. If she weren’t so damn hot, I think Jack would have slapped her.

 

The real story, though, happens in the Other’s compound, where Ben Linus tries to prepare our survivors for war with the freighter folk. The episode begins with a literal bang as Locke intercepts a phone call repeating the same warning: Code 14J. When Locke and Sawyer get around to telling Ben a few minutes later, Ben turns badass and grabs a rifle from the compartment in his piano bench in an exchange of instruments. As Ben tries to get Locke, Sawyer, Hurley, and baby Aaron to safety—especially Locke and Hurley, who are suddenly needed for a very special trip to see Jacob—bullets start flying, and a rocket launcher blows up Claire’s house. Fortunately, Claire’s not dead, and Sawyer rescues her, obviously not wanting Aaron to grow up an orphan like himself.

 

Holed up in Ben’s house, they are visited by Miles, who has been released by the mercenaries and brings Ben a walkie-talkie. Ben makes it clear Miles isn’t going to get his 3.2 million dollars now. Ben doesn’t want to speak to the mercenaries until Miles lets him know that they have Alex, Ben’s adopted daughter, hostage. Suddenly, Ben drops everything and gets on the walkie to talkie.

 

This is where the episode gets really hairy—and subsequently, quite amazing. Keamy, the lead mercenary, who only one episode ago was on the freighter, threatens to kill Alex if Ben will not give himself up. Wanting to protect himself and the rest of the survivors, Ben refuses and enters a game of chicken with Keamy, who we discover was a soldier-of-fortune in Uganda and got his jollies killing innocent people for money. Ben loses. After announcing that he stole Alex from a “crazy mother,” and asserting that she was “only a pawn,” Keamy does not hesitate to pop a cap into the back of her head.

 

Alex is dead. Ben crumbles within himself. “He changed the rules,” he says in utter disbelief and—for the first time in the series—vulnerability.

 

Suddenly, Ben decides to act. He enters his secret room, closes it off to everyone, then reveals another door, this one stone, etched with a multitude of hieroglyphics. Ben goes inside, and emerges a few minutes later covered in soot. He has a plan. He instructs everyone to run toward the tree-line, despite the fact that there are several trained soldiers waiting out there with high-powered rifles ready to light up the night. Then, right before he can be fully questioned, seemingly out of nowhere the house starts shaking, and the Smoke Monster barrels through the Others camp, killing the soldiers. Except Keamy, apparently, who was prominently featured in the teaser for next week’s episode.

 

Smokey kills the soldiers, and everyone runs. In the forest, they split into teams. Sawyer, Claire, and Miles want to go back to the shore, most likely to alert everyone of the developments. Ben wants Locke—and needs Hurley—to go with him to find Jacob’s cabin. Sawyer doesn’t want to leave Hurley with Ben, nearly shoots Locke, but finally relents when Hurley proves he’s a big boy—both literally and figuratively—by saying he’ll go with Locke. This is where we learn why he told Jack in “The Beginning of the End” that he shouldn’t have gone with Locke. Something awful is going to happen in Jacob’s cabin, something Hurley obviously comes to regret. Something that is going to have major significance to the future of the show.

 

And, if that wasn’t enough to make a complete episode, there’s more! In a Ben flash forward, he goes to the future (October 24, 2005). He enters the future wearing a Dharma parka with the name Halliwax on it along with the Dharma Orchid Station logo (Halliwax was the name Dr. Marvin Candle took in the Dharma Orchid Orientation Video). He is shot and initially quite cold. After killing a couple Arabic men in the Saharan desert, Ben steals their horse and treks to Tunisia, where he is a preferred guest at a swanky hotel under the name Dean Moriarty. On the television he sees Sayid lamenting the death of his future wife, Nadia, the woman he’d been pining for since season one. Ben then heads for Iraq, manipulates Sayid into killing one of Charles Widmore’s operatives by telling Sayid the man was responsible for Nadia’s death. Then, in a master stroke of Ben’s powers, he convinces Sayid to become his hired assassin by making Sayid think it was all his idea.

 

But that still isn’t enough. The writer’s of Lost obviously had a fire lit under them during the 100-day WGA strike. They decided to end this episode with one of the most intriguing, well-constructed scenes in the show’s history. It all hinges on this one, folks.

 

In the future, after his time with Sayid in Iraq, Ben shows up at London high-rise apartment building for obscenely wealthy people. He finagles his way past the doorman, then picks the lock of the hotel elevator to gain access to the penthouse. Once in the penthouse, he slinks his way past paintings of the island, and enters the bedroom of none other than Charles Widmore. The two have a conversation that is as illuminating as it is cryptic (just as it ought to be). Ben blames Widmore for Alex’s death. Widmore accuses Ben of stealing his island. Ben makes it clear his intention to kill Widmore’s daughter, Penelope (Desmond’s Penny). Widmore makes it clear his intention to find the island and take it back. Both make it clear the other will fail. There is a standoff, and it ends with Ben telling Widmore, “You shouldn’t have changed the rules.”

 

Thoughts

 

Wow! Is that enough of a thought?

 

I am still having trouble getting my head around this one. It was overwhelming. The story moved with the pace of a speeding freight train, so fast in fact that it seemed there was a commercial break every five seconds. This episode had a bit of everything: time travel, mystery, death, the Smoke Monster, Widmore, conspiracy, and of course, Ben. When Ben is on the screen, the show is at the height of its powers. Michael Emerson should win Emmy’s for his performance. No one could pull this off.

 

There were two moments in the story that I think are absolutely essential to this story, which will be driving factors in seasons 5 and 6.

 

Alex’s death. First of all, this was a shocker. It seems so rare in televisions, and movies for that matter, to see innocent people get gunned down senselessly by apathetic people. Moments like this always stun and shake us to our core. After all, most of us are constantly asking the question: why do bad things happen to good people (always assuming, of course, that the good people means … well … us).

 

Alex was a good person, caught in the middle with a mysterious dad and a mom she never had the chance to know. She sought refuge in love, and despite the right to become jaded and bitter, chose instead to love her neighbor as herself and help our Oceanic survivors when they needed it. Then, suddenly, in the crack of a pistol, she is dead. Her dad gambled that Keamy wouldn’t kill her, obviously believing that there were a set of gentlemanly rules in the power struggle between himself and Charles Widmore that would prevent Keamy from doing such a thing.

 

As Ben said, the rules have changed.

 

Alex’s death is a symbolic turning point. She is the sacrificial lamb whose death changes Ben’s life and motivation. He turns from being the cold, ruthless leader of the Others to the cold, ruthless, vengeful and vulnerable enemy of Charles Widmore. After all, there are now no more Others to lead. Everything Ben had is gone. He is a man without a home. And now he must fight to get it all back by beating Widmore.

 

Yet, Alex’s death is also a symbolic turning point for the show. The writers, like Widmore, also changed the rules. By killing Alex, they proved there are no sacred cows. The gloves are off. Innocence is dead. We are now at their mercy, playing by their rules.

The second crucial scene is, of course, the meeting between Ben and Widmore. In this scene we learn so much, and yet learn so little. This is how it should be.

 

Widmore is not surprised to see Ben, his nemesis. He even seems to gain some sort of pleasure out of it. Ben’s appearance in the middle of the night proves to Widmore that he now has the upper hand in this tête-à-tête. After all, Ben came to see him. Yet, at the same time, Widmore confesses he is wracked by nightmares, and has resorted to keeping a bottle of MacCutcheon scotch on his nightstand.

 

Despite being the weaker warrior in this meeting, Ben is defiant, threatening to kill Penny as an act of vengeance. Ben has called himself the “good guy,” but now it is personal, and he wants blood for blood. This will not sit right with future Desmond, I’m sure, and perhaps will set up the climax of the entire show in Season 6. There is no way the writers will do anything more than revisit this plot thread with a cursory glance until then. “You will never find her,” Widmore says, self-assured. Ben is as equally self-assured as Widmore when he tells the old man that he’ll never find the island.

 

What does it all mean? Were these two partners at some point? Was Widmore the head of the Dharma Initiative? If he was, then Ben’s annihilation of Dharma years before would have been a betrayal. Yet, Ben was merely a janitor at the time, like his father. So, would he have made a pact with Widmore to take over the work of Dharma (hence the continual food drops)? In Ben’s past, was the island easier to find, making it more accessible to Widmore? And after their partnership dissolved, did Ben find a way to cloak the island?

 

Other questions: how did Ben rise to such prominence that he became able to talk to Charles Widmore as an equal? What does Widmore want with the island? What does Ben want with the island? They are fighting over an undefined object of desire – Alfred Hitchcock lovingly referred to this as the macguffin, or the object of desire that really has no meaning at all.

 

Lost, as the producers often tell us, is not so much about the mythology as it is about the characters internal struggle with losing themselves. Last night’s episode both proves and disproves this. Ben is the hinge upon which the show folds and unfolds. While the mythology (the Smoke Monster, the strange hieroglyphic door, the Dharma parka, Widmore’s paintings) is on display in this episode for discussion, it is in Ben’s character development that we discover within each of us is the dual nature to work toward what is perceived as the common good versus the desire to satisfy one’s own thirst for vengeance and self-preservation. Ben is a symbol of the yin and yang, the dueling sin nature.

 

That is why I’m lost in Lost.