I Love The Way They're Hothing To You

LOSTaways-

Star Wars. Black-van kidnappings. Hurley's special garlic mayo. What else would one want or need in an episode of LOST? I know it wasn't the show's best effort to-date, but there were some pretty interesting things revealed and we finally got to learn more about Miles and if nothing else I just love seeing those Dharma putzes in their natural habitat. We've heard so much about them and I've wondered/daydreamed so often about them so it's nice to finally observe how they do what they do. I think of it like watching Animal Planet.

But we're not here to quibble over whether or not this week's episode was better than you might have expected it to be. After last week's Dead is Dead, Some Like it Hoth never had a chance in winning us fully over.

Let's dissect the title first. For those of you like me who watch Turner Classic Movie channel, you already know that this is an allusion to the 1959 Jack Lemmon-Tony Curtis-Marilyn Monroe comedy Some Like It Hot. Briefly, the film is about two guys who witness a murder they weren't supposed to see and then spend the rest of the film trying to avoid the not-so-understanding mob boss who wants them dead. The duo disguises themselves and keep lies going the whole time to multiple sets of people. Think: Hurley and Miles getting knee-deep in a Dharma death they never wanted any part of. It's a pretty famous film and has been ranked in many lists as the best comedy of all time. Obviously those list-makers have not seen Monkey Trouble. Classic.

More important to me is the other cultural reference in the title of this episode. "Hoth" is the ice planet that Luke Skywalker and the Rebel forces have their secret base on in the second Star Wars film, 1980's Empire Strikes Back. I'll spare the normal among you the nerdy details, but just know that this show from the start has been clavical-deep in Star Wars references and allusions. Hurley trying to re-write what I consider to be legitimately one of the best movies ever made by humans was very funny to those of us who care about such things. The scene Hugo had written in his Dharma notebook was from early in the movie when Han Solo and Chewbecca shoot down some spy drones that Darth Vader has sent to spy on the planet Hoth. In the real movie, Han Solo shoots the drone. In Hurley's version, Chewey shoots it down. Perhaps one of those "modifications" he told Miles about?

Sticking with the Star Wars thing for one more point, Han Solo is a character who initially does everything he does solely for money. But eventually we learn that he is a smuggler with a heart of gold. His side-kick is Chewbecca, the giant, furry, Wookie-animal-thing. Miles seems to be playing the part of Han in this episode with all the million-dollar demands, but like Hurley (Chewey) points out, Miles really wants to care and wants people to care about him. He's a big softie, just like Han turned out to be.

Alright, on to the meat-and-potatoes of the episode...

We open with Baby Miles and his mom (Lara) moving in to a new apartment that happens to have a comatose dude on the floor a few doors down. And on the microwave in the apartment the time is 3:16. Oh, and not to rub one of my predictions coming true again, but if you check back to my re-cap of the first episode of this season five, you'll find that I predicted Dr. Chang's baby that we saw then would turn out to be Miles. Just like Charlotte, Miles had spent time on the island before his Freighter entrance last season.

Miles "hears" the dead guy, Mr. Vonner, and lets himself in to apartment #4. His mom and the landlord are understandably freaked out, and so were most of us. We never really learn why it is Miles has this talent. I'm guessing it has something to do with his time on the island as a baby/child, and we will for sure learn more about it soon. Or maybe his dad, Dr. Chang, was "special" and passed it on to his abandoned son.

Anyway, later we see an older Miles coming back to the same apartment with his best Rufio (from Hook) impression happening. His mom has cancer now and Miles hasn't been to see her in a while. This is his chance to make amends and get some answers from the mom he knows he likely has hurt both by his absence and lack of style. Cool piercings, bra.

His mom has no definite answers to speak of regarding Miles' past. I mean she tells him that his dad is dead, that he didn't want anything to do with Miles and her, but I don't buy it. I was definitely getting a "I can't tell you more and it's better you think your dad is dead because if you go looking for that island only pain and suffering and time travel will follow" vibe from Mama Miles. Maybe I'm wrong. His dad did seem like a total knob-job on the island, but we also saw Dr. Chang lovingly holding Baby Miles as Regular Miles leered with tears in his eyes from the shadows. My official prediction is that Miles will end up talking to his dad like Hurley suggested and will tell Dr. Chang about the "Purge" that is to come and that will lead Dr. Chang to get his wife and Baby Miles off the island...getting the idea?

Moving along, Miles later in life is now a paid ghost-talker and has been paid a lot of money by a Mr. Howard Gray to commune with Gray's dead son and ask the poor kid if he knew that his pops loved him. In a very Han Solo-like fashion, Miles cons the guy for some bigger bucks and walks off with a heavy conscience under that condescending, smug veneer.

As Miles is leaving Gray's somber pad, he is met at his car by our girl Naomi Dorrit, the chick who parachuted on to the island in Season Three with a copy of Catch-22 and pic of Dez and Penny in-tow. Naomi was recruited by Matthew Abbadon who works for Widmore, and she hired all of the people for the Freighter. She wants Miles to talk to dead people on the island when they get there, because there are so many dead people on that island who have either been killed by Ben or will at least know where he is. How cool is that? What an interesting addition to the story of the Freighter folks.

And it speaks some to the mythology of the island. We know that there are spirits and whispers and what not on the island. That they can be communicated with or "tapped in to" adds another layer to the narrative's cake. And I guess they are confirming that Ben has certainly killed many more people than we even know about.

The way Naomi tests Miles is by having him commune with some not-living guy named Felix. We've never seen or heard of this guy before. What he had on his person when he was killed was the information about empty graves and purchase orders for a giant plane. He was bringing them to Charles Widmore we're told. But whether he was bringing them to Widmore because they were the reciepts of Widmore's doings, or because Felix had gathered intel on Ben (or some other group) who was responsible for the fake Oceanic Flight 815 wreckage. Man, is this interesting or what?!?! I want to know more, and I want to know now! Regardless, Naomi likes what she sees from Miles and offers him $1.6 millon to join the team and Miles readily accepts.

Speaking of wanting to know more...the next time we see Miles off-island he is abducted by what appears to be the same black van Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell used in Old School during their pledge week. The leader of the pack in the van is Bram, the guy from the second island crash in the future. Last we saw him, he and Ilana had taken control of the Hydra Island and were asking people "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Welll, Bram's back at it again and asks Miles the same thing and says because Miles can't answer that, he isn't ready to go to the island. Bram says that Widmore is the wrong wagon to hitch one's star to. He warns Miles against going on the Freighter, and says that if Miles comes with "them" instead, he'll learn everything he ever wanted to know about his powers, his dad, and life in general I suppose.

Miles, playing the tough guy, says he doesn't care, wants more money, and eventually gets escorted from the premises of the van. Bram claims that Miles is on the losing team and drives off. We heard Widmore talk of a winning team when he was at Locke's bedside earlier this season. He said to Locke then that if John wasn't on the island, that the wrong team would win.

Back in '77 Miles gets a call from Sawyer who is returning with Kate from handing Ben over to the Others. Sawyer wants security tapes erased to cover his tracks, but Miles gets distracted and never finishes the task. That distraction is Horace who has an errand for Miles: enter the "circle of trust" and go out to the forbidden part of the jungle and pick up a "package"...dead body, package...whatever. Of course that moron Radzinsky is involved and we learn that the original hatch, The Swan station, is being built on a part of the island where Dharma has agreed they wouldn't go.

This does explain why Radzinsky was so mad that Sayid, who he thought was an Other, had seen the plans for the Swan. But it doesn't explain why that tool gets so hot-and-bothered every time another human speaks. Get over yourself. He's the kid who rats on you in class cause you are playing Drug Wars on your TI-83. I will give him credit though for being fully devoted to Dharma and the Swan station.

So Miles is shuttling and talking to the dead body of a man whose filling in his tooth exploded through the back of his skull due to the electromagnetic forces at work around The Swan. Hurley joins in with his stupid sandwiches and gross facial hair. Han (Miles) and Chewey (Hurley) run the dead body out to Dr. Chang at the Orchid who mysteriously takes the dead guy in to this station and then re-appears and demands to be taken to the Swan. Where did that body go? What weird time-traveling experiments will he be doing on that dead worker's body?

I thought it was nice how Hurley tried to help Miles and his dad re-connect, but all of that spoke for itself and so I won't really be commenting on it. What was clear is that Miles is hurting and wants to re-connect.

Hurley did see "his hatch" being built and the numbers being put on the door to it. He has that look in his eye like he'll do something crazy to try and stop the hatch from being there when Oceanic 815 is flying from Sydney to LA.

Back in Dharmaville, Ben's dad Roger plays the drunken fool and starts suspecting Kate (aka the dumbest girl in the world who has literally the worst instincts imaginable) because she runs her mouth and gives her tell-tale glances. One cool thing was that while Jack was cleaning the class-room and talking to an angry, non-sober, Roger Linus, he is "erasing" some stuff written on the chalkboard about Ancient Egypt. Hieroglyphics, anyone? Erasing the past. Etc. Think about it. Blog about it.

That nerd Phil later confronts Sawyer with the security tape Miles never erased and Sawyer pulls a Season Three and earlier Sawyer move and puches his lights out and asks for rope. It's like Sawyer and Juliet have accepted the fact finally that their Dharma world is about to be changed forever. It was Sawyer saying, "I'm all-in" in terms of being on his friends' side. With that single punch he effectively crossed that line in the sand and joined back up with Jack, Kate, Hurley, etc. I love it.

The finaly note-worthy event was of course Faraday's creepy return on the submarine from Ann Arbor. University of Michigan is where Dharma began. Faraday's been gone for some time according to Sawyer's comments a few episodes back.


Thoughts/Theories:

- So now we potentially have Team Widmore, Team Ben, Team Locke, and possibly Team Bram/Ilana. Bram and Ilana are obviously not Widmore's people like I postulated before. (Or are they?...They aren't.) They are either Ben's people, and possibly they don't even know it yet which is why they didn't recognize Ben...or maybe they do know him and are all just acting (see: Ben telling them to "have a nice day" in Dead is Dead and he and Ilana and Bram all look at each other kind of funny)...but that might have been because the trigger for this new team to join up are questions like "What lies in the shadow of the statue?", and they were expecting Ben to bring that up when he approached them on the beach. Another alternative "Team" theory, one that my friend JEH helped me with, is that Richard is his own team and has been all along and that Bram and Ilana are Team Alpert. He seems to be playing all these different groups off each other and when he gets in a bind he plays the "Jacob told me to do it" card, which may in fact be legit, but seems fishy to me.

- Bram told Miles in that van that until he knew the answer to that statue riddle he wasn't ready to go. Ben used to tell Locke that until he did certain things he wasn't ready to know. And long ago Widmore (and Alpert now that I think about it) told a young Ben Linus that we was not yet ready to be "one of them". Is everyone in this show a bottle of wine that hasn't yet properly matured?

- I think Daniel joined Dharma with Sawyer, Miles, and Juliet three years earlier (the events we was in the episode LaFleur) and showed that he knew some juicy things about the island and moved up the ranks and was sent back to headquarters (or volunteered to go there) in Ann Arbor. When he gets off the submarine he is wearing the same black Dharma jumpsuit that those working on the Swan Station were. He must have some role in the harnessing of the energy that the Swan is built around. I don't think he's in charge of anything, but I believe that he is using the knowledge he has in the island's properties to gain a spot in Dharma, perhaps get back to the mainland for a while (where maybe he helps build that Lamp Post station his mom knew about and had claimed a "very smart man" built), all in order to find a way to save Charlotte.

- Remember that Faraday told Desmond that he was special, that "the rules" don't apply to him. I'm not sure if I've written this before, and perhaps it is fairly obvious, but this has to stem from Desmond's turning of the key in the Season Two finale. (Think: "I luv ya, Penny") When he woke up in the jungle (nakey) in Season Three he had his special flashy thingy powers. His dreams were magical (and he wore a technicolor t-shirt at the time too...no pants). I believe that was the point where the rules no longer applied to Dez. So the original hatch our survivors found has much more importance than we might have guessed. Maybe the nuclear bomb Jughead isn't really buried there, or maybe it is, but the important thing is that Desmond is important and so is our first Dharma station love, The Swan.

- Desmond is coming back to the island to put an end to Ben chasing his family and Widmore being his father-in-law. Or maybe Widmore will find Penny and Dez now and because of what Ben tried to do, he will be able to convince his daughter and son-in-law to join "his team" and head back to the island. I still want to believe that they will end up being the island's Adam and Eve bones that Jack later finds in Season One in the caves.

- I've been putting this off for a while, but let me tell you a little about the very cool and interesting movie that ties in with LOST. It is Frank Capra's 1937 LOST Horizon, a film about a hidden magical city named Shangri-la somewhere in the snow-capped Tibetan highlands. The story goes that a British diplomat and his brother have been sent to China to make sure that 90 British citizens escape out of the country as a domestic revolution occurs. Robert Conway is the main character and he is a man of incredible intellect and talents. After seeing to it that all the rest are evacuated from the city, Conway, his brother, a scientist, and con-man, and terminally ill woman all get on to a plane together and as they fly to what they think is safety, they realize that the pilot is an impostor, sent to kidnap them and bring them to what they later find out is the city Shangri-la. The plan "accidentally" crashes in the mountains and the pilot is killed in the crash. Terrified that they might die, Conway starts devising a plan for them to survive and even attempts to go for help.

Well it is just then that they discover they're not alone in the mountains and a group of Others-like people emerge and take the entire group back to their paradise land, which is located in a near-by valley tucked away between giant mountains. Even though it is snowing all around them, as soon as they enter this valley it becomes the Garden of Eden. Without getting too bogged down in the details, they discover that the people living there are an enlightened bunch with many of the modern amenities from back home in the West. Some of the men in the group develop crushes on some of the cuter women living in Shangri-la. The terminally-ill woman from the plane discovers that she is cured.

Conway talks to the head guru dude and learns that he and his friends were brought there on purpose because the guru is getting old and wants a wise replacement. Conway initially turns him down and he and his brother (and his brother's new dancing partner Margo) make a break for it to head back to the Real World. But as they get further away from Shangri-la, Margo starts to rapidly age and eventually dies an old woman in the mountains. Conway's brother is distraught and jumps to his death off a cliff. Conway goes on, finds a search party looking for him, and sets sail back to England aboard a Freighter. He has amnesia at first and isn't sure where he's even been the whole time. But soon he does remember and he jumps ship and heads back to Shangri-la to take over as the rightful, benevolent ruler.

So...LOST, huh? Lot in there for you to chew on.

Hope you enjoyed this week's re-cap. Sadly the show is on a two-week break. There is special thing next Wed night, but it isn't new material. Lame. FDR's legs lame.

Take care and stay out of the Temple.

Love,
John Locke's Pants

Dead = Dead

LOSTaways-

What did I tell you? Last night's episode was to television watching what Barack Obama is to blowing through your children's inheritance: very good. Dead is Dead was so good that it made the prospect of dying more attractive. I have never been holistically judged in the cellar of a decrepit temple on a magical island by a pillar of black smoke that emerged from what looked like a waffle fry of stone...but that's about as close as one can get to that experience without having to live through it themselves. The acting, the writing, the directing, and the mood lighting in which Dan Hase and I watched the episode were all phenomenal. LOST has raised the bar yet again.

There's so much to say about this episode so let's just jump right in, shall we?

Working backwards in time, we find the Others camp in the jungle and a Heath Ledger-like figure riding on horseback towards the encampment. Turns out the handsome British-sounding bloke is Charles Widmore (wow did that guy get ugly with age) and he is none too happy with my boy Richard Alpert for taking Baby Ben into the bowels of the Temple. The 'tude Widmore gives Richard seems to dissipate with the mention of Jacob, but Charles seems still underwhelmed by the prospect of bringing in a new kid on the island block.

This seems to me to be because, as we will see later in both Widmore and Ben's attitudes, leaders on the island fear competition. Richard said to Charles "The island picks who it picks" and so it wasn't just that Alpert was saving some dorky kid from the Dharma and Greg Initiative, he was saving (and then grooming) the future leader. Widmore, by the end of this episode, might have moved neck-and-neck with, or ahead of, Ben as the front-runner for Bad Dude of the Year and Series.

But Charles eventually goes in and talks to Baby Ben who remembers other things, just not how he was shot. This was what Alpert had said would happen should he take and save Ben last week. Hence, he would not remember Sayid as the man who shot him later in life when our favorite Iraqi crashed on Oceanic 815. And along those lines, before I forget, it occurred to me recently that the whole "brain-washing thing when the Others save/kidnap you" is likely the explanation for why the stewardess and children from the tail section in Season Two were seemingly fine with living with the Others when Jack (who was in one of the polar bear cages) saw her and the two kids in Season Three.

Maybe I'm alone here, but I've always wanted to know why Cindy (the stewardess) and those kids who had been kidnapped by the Others would suddenly be cool with 'illing on the island with their captors. Maybe some who are "chosen" or taken go through the same type of process Ben did in the Temple and subsequently can't remember exactly why they are even with the Others and end up embracing the lifestyle of dressing up like 17th century hobos from the Count of Monte Cristo, living in tents, and intense encounters with supernatural forces beyond their control. I'm in, if you're reading this Others.

Back to the tent convo between Baby Ben and Widmore, Charles tells the

boy that despite his protests he will be going back to live among the Dharma people, but that the kid will always be "one of them." There's a lot of "one of us", "one of them" talk in this show. Actually those are two names of two different episodes. One of Them was when we first got to meet Benry Linus-Gale way back in Season Two and it turned out he really was "one of them." The One of Us episode was from Season Three and was a Juliet tale. It turned out (eventually) that she was one of the castaways, if only in the fact that she desperately wanted to get the heck off that island.

Moving right along in chronological order, we find Ben (with a Trump-bad hair cut) and a young, spry Ethan on the beach about to carry out Widmore's order to off Rousseau. Widmore has told them it is for the safety of the island. Ben is determined to kill the nutty French skirt and when Ethan offers to do it he gets mad. But when Ben gets in the tent he can neither end Danielle's life nor leave without taking the baby. So Ben warns Rousseau to never come after Alex or she will be killed, and in fact, if she ever hears "whispers" she is to run the other way. Ben returns to the Others camp and makes his case to an angry Widmore as to why they should leave Rousseau alone ("she's crazy") and why they should not kill the baby.

Now this two-part scene has a lot going on in it. First off, Ben is shown to have something of a softer side, and at the very least is more of a complicated fellow than we've been led to believe. At least earlier in his life he had something of a conscience. He did not want to kill Danielle and could not kill her child. Ethan, who was obviously much younger than he at the time, was willing to kill Rousseau for him which means Ethan knew his elder friend was a softie at heart. This brings to mind the fact that Ben was, later in life, so mean to Locke who could not kill his own father. Ben was the same way at one time. Maybe Widmore was testing Ben like Ben would later test Locke?

Second thing from this part of the episode that emerges is that Widmore's relationship with Jacob or the "powers" of the island seemed to be strained. First there was Alpert knowing about Ben's selection as an Other while he (and presumably Ellie) did not. Then there was when Widmore told Ben to go kill Rousseau, but didn't tell Ben about the baby, and when Ben came back to the tents and asked if Widmore had suggested they kill the two on the beach because of his own desires or because Jacob had told them he didn't really give a good answer. Then again, he did warn Ben that if the island wanted the two French ladies dead, it would happen. And it did.

Third thing, Ben actually and really did care about Alex from the beginning. I'll take more about this when I get to Smokey's Moral Trial in the Temple, but I thought they did a good job getting the audience to see that Ben had been (and could be) a nice guy who loved this girl. I know he stole her from her mom, but one reason for doing this really could have been that he thought Rousseau was nuts...which is a fair assessment. So he could have been acting out of kindness to the baby. But, one could also presume that Ben did this as one of his first "con's", knowing that if he returned to the camp and showed the rest of the Others that their fearless leader Widmore would not kill the child to carry out Jacob's alleged orders that the group would think at the very least that Widmore isn't in-tune with Jacob like he claims to be, and also that Ben might really be the great leader they want/need.

A huge character flaw of Ben's is obviously his compulsive lying. He does it so much and to so many people that we have to take what he says and does with a grain of salt at all times. For example, the next part of the story took us to the day Widmore was banished and before he is put on to the submarine Ben comes to say goodbye. Widmore accuses him of gloating but Ben appears to be sincere that he did not want things to end as they did. Charles, he says, is being removed from the island for "breaking the rules." Again with the rules. Apparently there were rules about leaving the island and having a second family back in the real world, because that's what Charles had been doing. This is how Penny and his corporation back in England enter the picture.

What does this tell us about the island that it isn't good enough to hold the attention of its leader? He's submarine-setting around the globe when he's got a fun, creepy island of mystery to oversee and carouse on. This is a common theme throughout human history: people are never settled with even the greatest of things. In the Old Testament, weeks after being delivered from 400 years of bondage and seeing the Red Sea parted in front of them, the Hebrew people built golden images to worship because Moses had, in their demented opinion, taken too long conversing with Yahweh on the mountain. King David, having all he could want in the world at his finger tips, took another man's wife and then had the man killed to cover things up. The list goes on (and doesn't just include OT Bible stories). From what we know as of right now, Widmore was corrupted by the power he had, and even though he might have been truly acting in what he thought was the best interest of the "island", he eventually LOST his way.

Ben would do the same eventually, and Widmore predicted it. It almost seemed like on that dock before Widmore got in to the sub he was warning Ben that not only was his own eventual corruption a possibility...it was an inevitably. What implications does this have for Locke I wonder?

The afore mentioned Dan Hase pointed out that the line "you had a daughter with an outsider" Ben delivers to Widmore before he's banished is akin to the often-repeated mandate of the nation of Israel to remove from the midst the foreign wives Hebrew men had taken. For those who don't know, the Old Testament is the story of God's chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, who after being brought out of Egypt were to be a holy nation, set apart from their pagan neighbors. Without getting in to all the examples and starting some historical/theological debate, it was a common theme for God to tell the people through his Prophets that the nation was suffering because they had brought "outsiders" in their midst that did not believe in Him. I mention this mostly because I know the writers of LOST put many interesting themes in their story-lines that have been borrowed from many great books, including the Good one.

Next in the time-line is Ben's visit to Desmond and Penny's boat. One quick thing, as Ben first walks down the dock, the name of the boat in the background is "Savage". I'd like to think its a shout-out to conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, but I'm guessing it's a reference to the kind of person Ben can be. (And is about to try and be.) Ben shoots Dez in the shoulder blade, and with how good of a shooter and fighter we know Ben to be, it was apparent Ben didn't want to kill Desmond. He did however want to kill Penny, yet couldn't pull the trigger, especially after seeing little Charlie. Again, the fact that Ben would go this far to hurt Widmore's daughter I think shows how much he cared about his own daughter.

But regardless, Dez form-fit tackles Ben to the ground and unleashes a Scottish fury not seen since Braveheart. Ben is tossed in to the ocean and that's the last we are allowed to see of what happens in the confrontation. Now later Ben tells Sun to let Desmond know he is sorry should she ever get off the island. Could it be that he just meant he was sorry for even trying to kill the dude's wife...or will we later find out that Ben went through with it before he got on the Aijira 316 flight? My money is on Penny being alive and well...for now.

Now finally we arrive at Present Island Time. Locke welcomes Ben to the "land of the living" again and picks up right away on the blatant shock-and-awe Ben has at seeing his thought-to-be-departed protege. Ben says he knew that Locke would come back to life, which we later find out is of course poppycock. Locke seems to be wiser than ever and is done falling for any of Ben's old tricks. Ben was telling the truth that he was there to be judged, but it's hard to tell whether or not that is his TRUE or REAL purpose in coming back.

I mean the guy is still conniving and playing people off of each other. He tells Caesar that Locke is bad, but then steals Caesar's gun and shoots Caesar. He tells Locke he's only there to be judged but then seems to trying to avoid that the whole time. We're even left at the end of the episode wondering whether or not Ben will bite the humble-pie flavored bullet and tell Locke that the island wants Ben to follow Locke's lead from now on.

Regardless, they return to Othersville and find Sun/Frank in Ben's old house, even waiting in Alex's old room. Frank wants to bail and heads back to the Hydra Island. Sun, taking Christian Shepard's advice, follows the newly-risen John Locke and Ben to the Temple. First though, Ben goes in to his secret room, the one where he stored passports and currency that he would use to leave the island (like Widmore had before him), and summons Smokey. Smokey doesn't show, but Locke seems to know right where the trio ought to head. Again, something has changed in Locke since pulling a Lazarus. Even Ben can tell and comments on it. Locke finally gets a chance to really show Ben how he had felt the past two seasons (and really, the past 40+ years of his life), not knowing what is going on and trusting in people (like Ben) who keep letting you down (and trying to end your life).

Smokey also seems to want Ben to come to him. Other times Smokey judged people, like Mr Eko, out in the open, but Ben needs to come to Smokey's lair for his pronouncement. Ben is visibly and understandably terrified of what is about to happen as they approach the Temple.

Ben explains that there was a wall built to keep people out and that the actual Temple is some distance beyond that wall. But Locke knows Smokey isn't above ground, he's under it in the same hole that the French male scientists went down in to and came out "infected" (according to Rousseau). Ben, before going in the hole to test his fate, admits that Locke was right that Ben was there to be judged because he let Widmore's commandos shoot her in the head. In a way, you could say he was also being judged for ever having taken the girl from her mom. (More on this below in Thoughts/Theories.)

Ben and Locke enter the hole and Ben soon falls to another level even deeper in the recesses of the Temple. It appears, from the look on his face, that Ben either never knew about this place or knew about it but had never seen it. The hieroglyphics around the room were very cool. The ones back on the door in Ben's secret room in his house translate to "grief" and "summon." The ones in the Frozen Donkey Wheel that both Ben and Locke have turned stand for "resurrection", and those were also seen on the Temple wall before the pair entered it. Last night, some of the new symbols we saw included what appeared to be a portrait of Smokey facing the Egyptian god Anubis, the god of the afterlife.

Smokey then emerges from the Waffle-fry Stone grate at the base of that picture and surrounds Ben. He is shown a highlight/lowlight reel of his experiences with Alex, including her murder that he could have prevented. The Monster specifically shows Ben the part where he said he never really cared about Alex and that she meant nothing to him. Ouch. Zing. Alex then appears, but she was for sure just the Monster manifesting itself in the personhood of someone Ben was sure to get the message from. That message? STOP TRYING TO KILL LOCKE YOU PUTZ!!!

And here we have it irrefutably confirmed that Ben really did want to kill Locke all along and planned on trying to kill him (and his pants) again. Smokey as Alex makes Ben promise that he will both stop trying to kill JL, but will also now follow him faithfully. If Ben doesn't, Smokey vows to hunt Ben down and finish the job. Ben agrees and we're left with an emotionally-jarred Ben staring at an inquisitive Locke.

The last thing from this episode confirmed my prior prediction that Ilana is working for Widmore. When Frank gets back to the Hydra island he finds out that a few of the passengers have guns and appear to be some sort of sleeper terrorist cell that had been told to ask "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" to discover who else has been secretly sent by Charles. They have some giant case they are protecting and preparing to bring with them to the main island...maybe a nuke to finish the job that Jughead couldn't do? More on Ilana next week as more information comes to light.

Lets get to some...

Thoughts/Theories:

- Ready to have your mind blown....Rousseau was supposed to have been killed by Ben. Widmore was right. Even her lover Robert, after being in the presence of Smokey down in the basement of the Temple, emerged ready to kill the mother of his child. I think that when those French chaps went down the hole they were shown things and came out convinced that Danielle was supposed to die. Widmore later found this out and sent Ben/Ethan to finish the job. It didn't happen, Ben showed "weakness" (as far as the island is concerned) by not killing her and by taking the baby girl, and in the end fate (Smokey) had its way with both Parisian women.

-Locke and Desmond are the two people so far who have defied the way things usually work in the world of LOST. Desmond's time-line doesn't play by the same rules that everyone else's does. Locke can come back to life, even shocking the shocking Ben Linus. What implications does this have? Will Desmond be brought back to the island as the person to follow after Locke's done leading the group? Or is Desmond the rightful leader the island has REALLY been looking for all along? Maybe Locke's a stop-gap or temporary measure.

-The Temple and its wall in this episode has more allusions to the temple and city wall in the holy city of Jerusalem in the Old Testament. The temple was meant only for the people of Israel, with only certain holy men among the holy people allowed in to the inner sanctums. The wall of Jerusalem was destroyed and it was Nehemiah who helped get it rebuilt. Just thought it there were some interesting connections here, so if you have more ideas, please post them for all to read.

- Ben's house, where he found Frank and Sun, was in the same exact condition it had been the last time we saw anyone in it (near the end of last season when Alex was shot in the head). Yet the rest of the Othersville is messed up pretty good. Maybe it was Smokey's attack on the commandos that ruined things and now no one's been back to the town. But things just feel more ominous than that. Where are Benard and Rose and the rest of the beach-dwellers who we last saw running from the flaming arrow attack in 1954? Could they be linked to why the town is decimated? Or are they placing rocks in the sand to spell out HELP?

-Our Mutual Friend got another shout-out this week. That was the name of the Charles Dickens book that Desmond said he would make the last book he ever read before he died back in Season Two. It's also the name of his boat that he and Penny and Charlie live/float on. The writers of LOST said they got the idea to include this book from reading an article by another famous author (can't remember who...and it doesn't matter) who said he wanted to read that book before he died. The story might not have a ton to do with LOST story-lines, but in it a man forsakes his inheritance, conceals his identity and sets out to find out if the woman he was engaged to marry would like him for him...not because he's tough like Dirty Harry or makes her laugh just like Jim Carrey (he's like the Cable Guy). Some other books are shown in the episode on the book shelves of Ben's discheveled home, and those include: Flowers For Algernon, Roots, Uncle Tom's Cabin

- When Ben and Sun are talking outside of Ben's house they hear a noise in the bushes and Ben says "What's about to come out of that jungle...I have no control over" and what comes out isn't the Monster but Locke. Two things: One, this is showing that Ben's control/power over Locke is no more. Locke says a few key lines to back that idea up. Second, Ben and the Others have never had any control over the Monster. But then how does that sonic fence play in to this and how does it keep Smokey out? Especially if what Alpert said ("That fence might keep other things out, but not us") is accurate.

-When Ben summoned Smokey he unplugged some drain and water went down in to a hole. Then he speaks in to the hole, "I'll be outside." This shows some sort of personal relationship he must have with Smokey. Or it's just interesting, compelling writing for the audience's sake. Also important here is the fact that the house Ben lived in (and called Smokey from) was built before he even came to the island with his dad when he was a little kid so that, and that fact there is a sonic fence, means Dharma people must have known about Smokey and even built one of the homes over the room where Monster is summoned from.

Okay, I've written a lot here already so I will end things now. Next week's episode is called "Some Like It Hoth" and while I'm guessing Hoth will end up being the name of some character, its also the name of the frozen wonderland planet the rebel base is located on in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

Good luck and God's speed.

-John Locke's Pants

Whatever Happened, Happened to Vincent?

LOSTaways-

Remember that dog? That beautiful golden lab. The animal who was basically the first thing we saw in the very first scene of LOST back in season one's pilot episode? What's his deal? Where is he? What's he thinking about right now? I believe the last time we saw Vincent was the night of the flaming arrow attack in "The Lie" earlier this year. But I promise you that dog is special and we've yet to see the last of his furry face.

Random start to that blog, I know, but as I was starting to type another title to this entry tonight I for some reason thought of Vincent and figured now was as good a time as any to show him a little Locke's Pants love. Read that link on his name above. Some interesting info about VTD (Vincent the Dog).

More importantly, we have an episode, entitled Whatever Happened, Happened, to re-hash. "Whatever happened, happened" comes from what Faraday said regarding the ability of our time-travelers to affect anything in the past. You kind of feel like the writers of LOST are sending us a signal to clear up the confusion about whether or not things can in fact be changed. So between what we already know from examples like Desmond being unable to prevent Charlie's ultimate demise, and now this episode, it seems to me that we are stuck with the history we've been given thus far. There are still many components of that history that we have yet to see. Hence, one more season to come.

I know the conversations between Hurley and Miles offer more complicated insight to the time-traveling story-line and we'll discuss that a little more in the Thoughts/Theories section at the end.

But for the episode at hand, I have to point out that I have been saying that Sawyer told Kate to go find his daughter Clementine since last season's finale when jumped out of the helicopter pre-island disappearing. Check the blog, suckers.

Of course Cassidy has some understandable resentment towards James Ford/Sawyer for the way in which he both ditched her when they were conning together, and never tried to see his daughter after finding out she had been born. But was it just me or were the discussions between Cassidy and Kate a little aggressive and awkward? There seemed to be a lot of girlish hostility going on there. Even later when they had become friends and Kate came to her in tears Cassidy was a cold customer. Although, she did almost sound like a guy with her spot-on analysis of Kate's attempt to fill the void in her life by taking Aaron as her own.

Frankly, I'm getting a little bored with Kate, and the equally boring Cassidy didn't spice things up enough for my liking. Maybe had there been some Dharma or Widmore connection there I'd have taken the narrative's bait and cared at all what was going on in the Kate flashes this week. As a token to Kate lovers out there, I will say that there was distinct hint or whiff of LOST-style mystery when Kate misplaced Aaron in the grocery store and that creepy Claire look-alike was at the check-out counter with the blonde little boy.

Eventually Kate checks in to the same hotel as Claire's mom, otherwise known as the worst actress of this or any generation, and fills her in on what happened to her daughter. Kate also gives what seems a genuine reason for going back: to find Claire! Last week, in 1977 time, Kate had told Sawyer that she came back for one reason, and one reason only...and then Baby Ben's flaming VW bus-o-death came careening by. It was set up to appear as if Kate was going to say that she had come back to "make time" with Sawyer, but now it seems that she was going to say that she had come back to find the blonde babe who is likely in Jacob's cabin calling for her "baaaaaaby" right now. Or Claire might be necking in LOST heaven with Charlie if she is dead.

Back in 1977....Jin wakes up for Sayid's scissor-kick to find the Iraqi long gone and an adolescent Ben with a flesh wound. He takes the kid back and Juliet starts to work on him. Eventually it becomes clear that only Jack, our beloved island operation guru, can save the child. But that child is Ben. Jack, for more than one reason, says no to helping save Ben's life. Juliet is pissed and Kate is annoyed. Kate and Sawyer take Ben to The Others at Juliet's suggestion and Richard agrees to take and save the boy, but warns that Ben will never be the same...that he will lost his innocence...and that he will always be "one of us." Sawyer and Kate agree, knowing full well that they've just participated in making Ben the monster he will someday be. The same monster who locks the two of them in cages at one point. Richard walks off and ominously enters what appears to be The Temple.

That was a quick re-cap, so let me unpack a few things. Jack is the New Locke, or at least is talking like the Old one. He tells Juliet in the literally steamy bathroom scene that he has returned from the island, "beause I was supposed to." Wow. Very un-Jack of you. Not very Man of Science-like if you ask me. Something has changed in Jack. I know it seemed that he was being cold and callous to not save Ben, but this existential dilemma the castaways find themselves in, in regards to saving their enemy's life, is not an easy one. Jack it seems has now accepted his fate, but like Locke, is now searching for what that destiny might be.

Juliet told him that they didn't need to be saved, but how was poor Jack to know? He had been hounded by the likes of Locke and Ben to come back to the island, being told that it was HIS fault that everything had gone wrong. And so now he has humbled himself, given in to what seems to be the island's unavoidable calls to come back, and his reward is that he has to hear from Sawyer's new gal-pal about how little they needed his help. Rough. I like the new Jack. He was right when he reminded Kate that she, and many others, didn't like the Old Jack. Maybe he has finally let go of so much of the emotional baggage that had held him back from being a great leader and man in previous seasons. Or...maybe he's just a knob-job now and I'm dead wrong about all of this.

Another interesting thing was when Richard agreed to take Ben and gave Kate and Sawyer his spiel about Ben "forever changing" should he be healed by them, and one of the nameless Others says to Richard that "Ellie and Charles" won't like the decision to heal Ben. First of all, that is cool that we're getting some allusions to Ellie (who I still think is Eloise Hawking) and Charles (of Widmore fame) and can't wait till we see them both again. The last time we saw them was in the episode Jughead and it was 1954. The question I have is this: Was Charles always really the leader or was this Ellie character at one point in charge? Were they an item? If Ellie is Eloise, is Faraday's father Charles Widmore? And if he is his father, does Faraday know that? And for that matter, where the heck is Faraday?

Second point about what was said in the encounter with The Others was Richard's under-the-breath comment that he did not answer to either Ellie or Charles. Jacob, anyone? Remember that shadow that has looked like Christian Shepard every time we've seen him? Or maybe Richard answers to Smokey the Monster. But it is I believe a key piece to the puzzle to know that although Alpert is with the Others, appeared to be leading them back in 1954, speaks on their behalf to Horace a few episodes ago regarding "the truce", he also appears to be his own man, beholden to no one. Maybe he's been there MUCH longer than we may even now suppose?

Richard walking in to the Temple with Baby Ben in his arms was a chilling end to the scene.

And then we were left hanging for next week's episode, which will be called "Dead is Dead" by the way, with a classic Ben-Locke staredown in the Hydra Station 30+ years in the future. Locke sees the utter shock on Ben's face and simply says: "Welcome back to the land of the living." Wow. Lot going on there. Ben looked legitimately shocked which means he really thought he had killed Locke back in L.A. I had speculated that perhaps Ben killed Locke on purpose because Ben had known that that was the way things were supposed to play out, but Ben doesn't have a "Hey big guy...sorry about the murder thing, but you know how Jacob can be" look on his face, he has a "Rat-farts, I really put myself in a jam this time...this guy isn't supposed to be breathing" mug on his bug-eyed face. The commercials for next week look fairly intense and seem to offer the promise of tying up some loose ends with what all Ben has been doing since leaving the island.


Thoughts/Theories:

-There is some huge tie-in's between the time travel theories presented in this week's episode and the story of the comic book that Richard presented, among other items, to a young John Locke in last season's Cabin Fever episode. That comic book was called Mystery Tales and one of the stories in it was called "March has 32 Days" and is about a man who tries to go back and re-live a day to change a fatal mistake he made. Read more at the links I have here. Very interesting why Richard (and the writers of LOST) would pick such an item.

-Hurley brings up the Back to the Future reference we've all used about 100 times by now in our LOST viewing and exegesis. Kind of predictable, but here's more on that from LOSTpedia: "Hurley looks at his hand, waiting to see if he disappears, like in Back to the Future. In the movie, Marty McFly's hand starts to disappear as he was being erased from existence because he had interfered with his parents' past, preventing his mother from falling in love with his father. Seconds after this reference is made, Sawyer comes in in a rush calling Jack "Doc", the same thing McFly used to do in the movies when looking for Doc Brown."

-This episode contained the theme of what is known as the "Cassandra Complex" in Greek mythology. It is the curse of knowing the future (or past) and being unable to change it.

-I'm not afraid to admit that I am a huge Patsy Cline fan. Most of you likely don't even know who she is. The legendary country singer tragically died in, what do you know it, a plane crash in 1963. Her songs are played in every single Kate-centric episode. This week featured the tune, "She's Got You", in which Patsy laments the fact that all she has left from her previous boyfriend is the memories left behind from a broken relationship, while the new girl has the real thing to share her life with. There's more than a couple analogies in those lyrics to the Sawyer-Kate-Cassidy-Juliet love quadrilateral.

-We've seen Ben later in life when The Purge happens and he kills his own father. But will that now happen in a different way? We know things can't be changed in the grand scheme, but like Charlie avoiding some of fate's earlier attempts on his life, will Ben's being given to the Others now lead to an alternative Purge happening?

-Locke and Ben together in a scene, even a brief one like in this week's episode, is what gets me out of bed in the morning.


That's all for this week people. I'm telling you that "Dead is Dead" will knock your socks off and I'm saving some thoughts on that movie I've been promising to tell you more about for my re-cap next week. Enjoy the episode Wednesday and stay out of the deep end.



Love,

Locke's Trousers

I'm My Me

LOSTaways-

Greetings, salutations, and namaste! I forced myself to churn this week's Pants re-cap out quicker because if I let it slide for a few days I loose my creative edge. So here goes...

Are you kidding me with the ending of this week's episode? Adolescent Ben gets capped in his clavicle by disgruntled and embittered Sayid? Really? He's Our You, the 10th of 17 episodes in Season Five, was one of the most climatic finishes to a LOST ep since the Flash-forward surprise of Season Three's finale. We'll get to that epic ending soon enough, but first things first:

The show began where all good tv shows should...Tikrit, Iraq and we got to see the early makings of Killer Sayid when his older brother couldn't pull the trigger on off-ing a chicken in the family's front yard/desert. Eerily familiar to the scene in Mr. Eko's first back-story that revealed he had been willing to shoot a man his younger brother Yemi was supposed to shoot to spare his brother the painful and jarring experience of taking a life. The continuing theme of purpose and fate can be seen in characters like Sayid and Jack and Locke who all have had to struggle throughout their lives with what they wish they were, and what they actually are.

Sayid is for the most part a nice and honorable man, but he is also very good at and torturing people. He thought that maybe by joining the military, where such things are condoned and often necessary, that his guilt would be asuaged...but it hasn't. And what is worse, since losing his wife after escaping the island, he gives back in to that killer instinct by agreeing to be Ben's personal whack-a-guy specialist.

After we witness Sayid ending chickens, we're wisked away to Mother Russia where, according to Ben, the "last of Widmore's people" that needed to be taken care of is executed by our favorite Iraqi. Sayid couldn't even be bribed by the Russkie. This shows a deeper pathological need to kill than even just "protection for his friends back on the island". Sayid is a troubled dude.

So Ben leaves Sayid in Red Square with no direction or purpose left. We know Sayid then eventually finds his way to a group called Build Our World in the Dominican Republic. This is his attempt to make amends and literally/figuratively rebuild his emotional/spiritual life. But even here, eventually Ben finds him and has a new assignment: go kill a guy. So not really that new. We saw last season that the man parked in front of Hurley's mental institution is eventually shot in the dome by Sayid, who then rudely interrupts a magical game of chess between Hurley and invisible Mr. Eko.

Ben is obviously using Sayid, but I don't really get the whole "all Widmore's people are " line from Linus back in Russia. There's tons of people involved and we know that Widmore keeps pursuing the matter and has other people at his disposal. And what about "the rules" Ben and Widmore talked about last season? I feel like he knew that he couldn't keep pushing Sayid forever, that every person would have their breaking point of not being able to just keep nameless people around the globe. So Ben says, "Take a breather, big guy...we'll get back to this soon" and lets Sayid go do his best Jimmy Carter impression in the Caribbean.

Sayid, after ing the guy in the parked car, and after having it out with Jack and Ben and the rest on the marina, goes for a drink of MacCutcheon Whiskey at a local watering hole. Now this is like the 5th time that brand of booze has been referenced on the show. Widmore had it in his office when Desmond was told to never see Penny again. Charlie used it to get Desmond drunk on the beach. Etc. Etc. There's something important about it, and I think eventually we'll learn that some character we know already will end up being the guy/gal who makes the stuff. There's too many references to ignore its importance/significance.

At that same bar, he bumps in to Ilana, the chick from the second plane crash who brought Sayid eventually to that plane in hand-cuffs. She is a bounty hunter, hired by the family of the guy on the golf course Sayid capped last season. But what gets me is why the family requested Sayid be brought to Guam? That dude Sayid shot, Peter was his name, is Italian and was playing golf in the chain of islands known as Seychelles which is a Republic just north of Madagascar. Guam is on the other side of the world practically, part of the chain of the Mariana Islands (also the general location the fake Oceanic 815 was found). Either Ben or Widmore had hired Ilana, not the family of the victim.

If Ben hired her, or had someone hire her for him, it would make sense because it would be a great way to "convince" Sayid to come on the Ajira Flight 316 with the rest of the gang. If Widmore hired her, that would also make sense because he wants Sayid also to be back on that plane with Locke's body because, if you'll recall with me, Widmore told Locke that if he and the others aren't back on the island when "the war comes, the wrong side will win." Wrong side = presumably Ben and crew. So Ilana is there for a reason, not just returning a killer to the victim's relatives. Which would be weird anyway.

So Sayid is put on the plane with Ilana and ends up being one of the four that makes it off the island and sent back in time. But he is separated from the pack and ends up caught and in Dharma jail awaiting his fate.

So back in 1977, Sayid is questioned by Horace and Radzinsky in his cell but basically refuses to divulge anything worthwhile. Young Ben keeps bringing him sandwiches and even explains why he is helping who he thinks to be a "hostile." We see Ben's dad, Roger, abusing his son physically and emotionally and even Sayid seems to express some concern for the young boy who would grow up to ruin everyone's life. After refusing to talk though, Sayid is brought to some old dude's tee-pee in the jungle. Oldham (not Chad) the r has some secret potion that acts as a truth serum. The title for the episode comes in this scene when Sayid asks who Oldham is and Sawyer says, "He's Our You."

I was shocked at how much Sayid gave up and how little the group seemed to care. I mean, these guys have been threatening that Oldham would make Sayid talk, Sayid talked, and they all dismissed what he said. They're just mad he knew where/what the Pearl and Swan stations were. You'd think the whole "I'm from the future and you will be off-ed by your enemies in the near future cause I've seen your dried up bones in a pit-o-death 30 years from now" thing would have gotten their attention. Either way, the result is a community vote to execute the er Sayid. Like Sawyer says, "Even the moms want you ."

But when Sayid is informed of his fateful fate, he refuses to let Sawyer allow him to escape, insisting he has found his purpose for coming back. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense at first because chances are, at the current rate, he'll be ski before that purpose is realized. But that was before we found out Baby Ben was in cahoots with Sayid to spring him from the Dharama jailhouse. Here we seen Ben's first con: flaming Dharma bus distracts people while he frees "hostile" prisoner Sayid.

Off to the jungle the pair flees, where they run in to Jin-bo out on security detail. See now here I felt that Sayid should just explain to Jin what is going on and ask for his help. For that matter, Sayid really ought to have just talked things out with Sawyer back in the cage and come up with a plan together. Everyone is weird and awkward now back in 1977. Not that this group of castaways has ever been fully able to communicate with each other, but you'd think now would be a good time to start. But Jin gets his wallet handed to him by cut-throat Sayid, and then Young Ben gets a bullet to the chest. Sayid prances off in to the jungle, and the audience is left with mouths agape at the fact that Benjamin Linus, the bug-eyed creepster who has been so central and key to the LOST saga thus far, is likely ....or is he?

There was some other stuff with Kate and Sawyer and Jack and Juliet and Hurley making waffles with weird dipping sauces...but who really cares in light of what happened in this episode, right? All of that Gossip drama will sort itself out and Sawyer and Kate will kiss with either Jack or Juliet walking in on it and by the end Ross and Rachel will get back together anyway. The Love Rhombus will be a site to behold in future episodes, I'm sure.

So let's get to some thoughts/theories:

-Ben hired Ilana to get Sayid on that plane. Since typing about this earlier, I've decided I think it was for sure Ben.

-As Sayid is leaving the Russian's house at the beginning of the episode, the sign on the building he exits is translated to say in English: "Oldham Pharmaceuticals." This is the name of the torturing dude from 1977 Dharma time. Is this just random LOST fun-facts placed to drive people like me insane...or does it have a deeper meaning? All I know is that the dude was listening to a phonograph and that's odd enough for me.

-Juliet mentions that she and Sawyer have been "playing house". Kate said the same thing to Sawyer three years earlier before the Oceanic Six left and the island moved. Juliet actually did stay and play house (even though she has had the chance to leave on a submarine). THIS is what is going to make the Sawyer-Juliet-Kate-Jack connection so complicated. Sawyer finally found a woman who, to quote Blessed Union of Souls, "like's me for me" and hasn't abandoned him.

-Always wanting to get interesting and classic pieces of literature referenced in the show, LOST referenced a book called A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda written in 1971. It is supposed to be a work of non-fiction, but that point is contested by many. It is the self-accounted story of Castaneda's time as something of an apprentice to a self-proclaimed sorcerer named Don Juan Matus. This sorcerer claimed that by taking mind-altering he could see realities that no one else knew about. By ingesting "plants" (drugs), Matus was shown a perspective on things few had experienced. Think: Alice in Wonderland. Or, think: Oldham's truth serum he gave Sayid. Take a look at the wikipedia link I have above and see if you can find any more LOST connections to share.

-I know there is a lot of questions surrounding the biggest moment of the episode (and perhaps season so far): Ben getting shot. Basically, we don't know enough yet to make any real predictions. Faraday has said that time cannot be altered, that whatever happened, happened. We saw this with Charlie's fate as Desmond tried to save him repeatedly. We also know that when the island wants someone to stay alive (i.e. Locke being shot, Michael trying to off himself), they cannot perish. But until we know for sure that things can't be altered, until we know if Faraday was right or just quirky...I'll leave the Ben theories alone. It was an awesome scene though.

-In last week's Namaste episode, Sun and Frank are told by Christian Shepard that they are in the future and that, "I'm sorry, but you have a bit of a journey ahead of you." Who wants to bet that they will have to "move the island" themselves and that by doing so it will cause time to skip like the record player analogy and the two groups separated by some 30 years will be brought back together? Just a thought.

-How long till we see Patchey the Russian again? I still think he's alive somewhere.


That's it for now, folks. Wednesday night's upcoming episode is entitled "Whatever Happened, Happened" and should be a real doozy. There will be 17 total episodes this year and the season five finale will air on May 13th, In The Year of Our Lord 2009 and has already been titled "The Incident." If you remember, there has been numerous references in previous seasons to an "incident" that occurred in the original hatch (The Swan). Sounds boring, right?



Love,

The Pants of Locke, John

I wanna stay where they say "Namaste"

LOSTaways-

Namaste! Not the greeting, but the title of the newest LOST episode. I realize I never posted my thoughts on "LaFleur", so I will incorporate some of the things I had prepared for that episode with this one. For further reading on LaFleur, read this Entertainment Weekly wrap-up by Doc Jensen.

I have to say that I actually liked having a week off from LOST. This season's been tremendous thus far and I appreciated the chance to collect my thoughts and prepare for the second-half push that began this past Wednesday night. Namaste was a very solid return for the show and both revealed some very important tidbits of information and foreshadowed what might be on the Dharma-dominated horizon for those who made it back to 1977-Island time.

I must pause here and note that this week's upcoming episode, He's Our You, will feature a character named "Oldham". Chad, I knew you had secrets, but this is too much.

----

Since we learned this week that the second batch of plane-crashers (Sun, Ben, Lapidus, etc.) have been separated both by the distance between the bigger and smaller island, but by at least 30 years (if not many more), I will separate my thoughts between 1977 time and PSI (Present Island Time).


1977-

We left of in LaFleur with Sawyer seeing Jack/Hurley/Kate on a grassy meadow, and this week we hear the first words and awkward glances exchanged between the reunited LOSTies. As Sawyer explains that those who were left behind have joined the Dharma Initiative, Jin, upon learning that Sun is on a plane potentially nearby, bolts for the Flame station (the place we last saw in flames thanks to Locke back in Season Three's episode "Enter 77"). As for Sawyer and the other three, James plans to (and eventually does) bring them in as supposed new Dharma recruits who have just arrived on the infamous submarine.

When Jin goes to the Flame, we meet a character named Radzinksky. Hopefully you recognized both that name and the of the Swan station that he was building when Jin busted in the door. Radzinsky was the name we heard in Season Two during the episode that filled us in on what Desmond had been doing for those three years he was on the island. If you remember, Desmond was hanging out in the hatch with a man named Kelvin (who also happened to be the CIA officer that forced Sayid to become a r back in the first Gulf War). Desmond saw a stain on the ceiling of the hatch and found a map on the blast door (the same one Locke eventually found and used to go on his island crusade in Season Three), and Kelvin filled him in that both the map and stain belonged to a man named Radzinsky who had blown his own brains out before Desmond crashed on the island.

I realize that is a lot to recall and take in, but for those LOST sickies out there, just hearing the name Radzinsky was the equivalent of receiving one of those "Taste Bailouts" that delicious Domino's Pizza is offering during every single stinking commercial break of the NCCA March Madness Tournament.

Radzinsky was building a of the Swan station that he would one day blow his brains out in. Talk about fate...

Getting back to Jin's purpose in coming to the Flame, he insists that Radzinsky find out if a plane has crashed recently. After no news came in about a plane, a motion sensor was triggered and Jin ran out to find not a "hostile", but Sayid in a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air-like purple shirt/blouse trouncing through the underbrush. Having to keep the charade up, Jin acted like he didn't know Sayid and put him in to a locked room until Sawyer could be located and brought in on the situation.

Sawyer has now officially emerged as the "leader" of those who got left behind in 1977. He has fully transformed from selfish con-man to a....well....not-as-selfish con-man? I mean he still is conning an entire island full of people abou this name and the reason he, Juliet, Jin, Faraday, and Miles are even there in the first place. He conned his way in to a high official position of security in the Dharma Initiative. The whole lot of them have been living just as big of a lie as the Oceanic Six were back in the real world. I love that dichotomy in the story-telling of this show. Both groups had to lie, while another group had to die. Or something like that.

Sawyer tells Jack that he was a bad leader because he reacted to instead of thought through situations as they arose. James references Winston Churchill, the legendary British leader during World War II, who became a great leader only after committing many blunders earlier in his life and career. Sawyer's story is somewhat similar. (So far.)

So Jack, Hurley, and Kate elude tough questions and get through the Processing Station and assigned to their new duties. Jack being given the task of "workman" due to his low scores on an aptitude test was priceless. But it is interesting to note that Jack does not really seem all too worried about his lot. I mean he did eventually go to Sawyer and they had their verbal jab-fest about who was the better leader, but Jack isn't his usual worried self since deciding to go back to the island. The tension will be building though between Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet and I can't wait for it.

Faraday is referenced, although not seen, in this episode. Jack asks if Daniel is still there, and Sawyer responds, "Not anymore." Now this obviously means that he is , which I don't think is the case, or that he has left the island on a submarine (perhaps to go back to the real world and figure out a way to "fix" things), or that he is insane and is not mentally "there." My money is on the third option. I bet Faraday has lot his marbles, what with all the things on his mind pertaining to Charlotte Staples, the woman back in England whose brain he fried, and the fashion stress of having to wear a tie that would be too skinny for Olive Oil to pull off.

The final important information from this week's episode was the scene where a creepy little kid brought a creepy little sandwich (with no mustard...what is that dope thinking with no mustard) to Sayid in his creepy little cell. Of course that creepy little kid would grow up one day to be a creepy little bug-eyed man known affectionately as Benry Gale Linus.

Prediction: Sayid tries to kill adolescent Ben.


Present Island Time-

Okay, so first of all, the scene with Lapidus putting the plane down on the Hydra Station island's runway was very cool and well done. I liked how they Incorporated the runway from Season Three that Sawyer and Kate were forced to work on back when they lived in Polar Bear cages and made whoopee like their ship was going down. One wonders whether the Others had Sawyer and Kate building that runway because they knew some day that second plane would crash there with Ben (their leader) on it....along with the fact that Ben knew right away where the outrigger canoes would be, it seems like it was all pre-planned that this would happen.

After the crash, Caesar decides to play the role of leader and dismisses Lapidus' suggestion that the survivors stay on the beach until they can figure out a plan. It was very reminiscent of Season One where different factions disagreed about where the LOSTaways should set up shop. Jack wanted to move inland and find water/shelter, while others, including Sayid, wanted to stay on the beach in hopes of attracting a rescue plane or ship. The people this time agreed with Caesar and decided to move towards what we know to be the Hydra station, scenes we have already seen in previous episodes (Life and of Jeremy Bentham).

Ben starts to creep away from the group as they have this argument, and Sun follows him (and Lapidus follows them both). Sun confronts Ben and they decide to head back to the mail island. Lapidus warns against this decision, and eventually Sun heeds this advice and whacks Ben upside the head something fierce. But before he got his bell rung, Ben said something interesting to Frank the Pilot: "A captain's first responsibility is to his passengers...but I also have people I am responsible for." He then started to give Frank directions as how to get to Othersville eventually, which seemed a nice gesture and very un-Ben-like. But Sun smacks his brains with a paddle and she and Lapidus get off to the main island.

Once there they discover that Othersville has been decimated. The town didn't look just over-grown and old, but destroyed, almost like a went off (or a Smokey Monster went "ape" on the occupants of Othersville). Speaking of Smokey, Sun and Frank heard some initial rumblings from him in the trees as they approached from the dock when their boat landed. It then went away and a minute later those infamous whispers could be heard and Christian Shepard emerged from the Processing Center that has been used many times throughout this show to house imprisoned characters. Was Christian Shepard really there or was it the Black Smoke manifesting itself (like it did as Yemi to Eko is Season Three)?

Jack's not-so-deceased dad helps Sun to learn that her husband is back in 1977 and that she and Frank (and perhaps the others back on the smaller island) have a "long journey" ahead of them.


Thoughts/Theories:

-Frank and his co-pilot on Aijira 316 hear "the numbers" being broadcasted as they are on their way to crashing the plane on the runway. The voice seems to be American. How bitter-sweet would it be if the voice heard was Hurley's?

-You might have noticed that when Frank/Sun/Christian are in the broken-down version of the Processing Center there is a woman standing in the background in one of the shots. No one has yet confirmed if that was an editing error or was supposed to be another spirit-like character that will later be revealed. Perhaps Claire, who was last seen chilling with Christian in Jacob's cabin?

-Two songs were heard in this episode. The first was one that I have had on my iPod for a long time and couldn't believe they used it. "Ride Captain Ride" by the band Blues Image is being played when Sawyer pulls up to have Jack-Kate-Hurley processed and it contains the lyrics "Ride captain ride upon your mystery ship/ Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip". I'm not sure how much parsing I need to do for you with those suggestive lyrics as to how they might pertain to this show. Island = Mystery Ship. Friends = LOSTaways (who amazingly are scattered throughout time and then re-discovered when you least expect it). The other song is an original number by the creators/writers of LOST called "Dharma Lady" which was playing during the bbq Dharma was hosting for its newly processed recruits when Sawyer pulled up with Sayid in his VW bus. I'll let you take a look at the lyrics and artwork for the album yourself, but please do note that this was all put together just for a show on ABC. Appreciate the work and thought put in to something like this and hold off on all the "I could never create something 1/100th as creative as this show, but I'll complain about how the only reason they put things like this song in it is to make money and drag the show on forever" comments. ;)

-Ben was once visited by Sayid in a cell when they thought his name was Henry Gale back in Season Two, and now Ben is visiting Sayid in a cell of his own. Nice symmetry.

-Why was Radzinsky so worried about a hostile seeing his of the Swan? Did they have some agreement as part of the truce that Dharma wouldn't build any more? Had the Dharma people found the nuke Jughead somehow and decided to harness its power for the benefit of their research and didn't want the Hostiles to know about this?

-If Ethan was born on the island to that chick from 24 that Horace Goodspeed is married to, how did he survive the Purge and why would he then work with Ben and the Hostiles who had killed his family and friends?


Okay kiddies...that's all I got for now. Next week I'm gonna share some insight on a famous movie that deals with the mythical city of Shangri-La that I recently saw on TCM at like 1am on a Tuesday night. I will dissect some parallels between it and the island. Look forward to that.

Thanks for reading and please post any comments or questions here on the blog.


Namaste,

JL's Pants

Life and Death and Bentham and Locke

LOSTaways-

Boy, am I just glad Ben didn’t “O.J.” Locke.

A strangling in a seedy L.A. hotel, a celery stalk-like bone-setting in a sleazy Tunisian infirmary, and a reincarnated bald-headed island hero. What more could a blogger ask for?

The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham was the seventh episode of the tremendously exciting Fifth Season and offered a sneak-peak into the time between Locke’s donkey wheel turn in the well and his crash (and re-birth) on the smaller island where the Hydra station (think: bear cages from season three) is located. By the way, that mango did look like the best one Locke has ever tasted.

The episode opened ominously in what quickly became apparent was a Dharma office suite, but what might not have been so apparent was that the man searching through that office looked to know exactly what to be looking for. I think that he (Caesar) is an agent of Widmore’s, sent to crash with the plane on the island and report back to his superiors as to its location. Complicating this plan might be the fact that the island, at the time of this second crash, is back in the days of roughly late 1970’s Dharma when Widmore himself would likely have still been on the island as the leader of the others.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, so to wrap up the opening sequence, Caesar finds a map, a flashlight, a gun, and lies to the woman (Ilana) who had brought Sayid on the plane in handcuffs about what all he found in the Hydra office. The maps he pulled out of the file cabinet included one that Rousseau eventually has in her possession in season one and another that Faraday brought with him to the island last season. In the episode “The Other Woman” Daniel and Charlotte used that same map to find The Tempest station and de-activate its chemical suicide machine. This means that Faraday, who was working for Widmore before coming to the island, must have received the map from Widmore who had received it from his agent on the island: Caesar. How’s that for detective work?

The crescendo of the opening of this week’s episode clearly was the unveiling of a not-dead Locke, sitting under a black hood on the beach minding his own reincarnated business. For those Star Wars or Star Trek fans out there, the allusions to the way in which they shot Locke’s unveiling need not be pointed out, but for the rest of you, in Star Trek: The Search For Spock the previously deceased Spock is brought back to life on a supernatural planet and when Captain Kirk and the gang finally find him he is unveiled from under a dark hood. In the original Star Wars trilogy there are countless instances of important characters under dark hoods.

The obvious question is this: Is Locke really alive or is this an island manifestation? Did the same thing happen to Christian Shepard after the first crash? In Season One Jack found his dad’s coffin empty, and obviously now Locke’s is as well. My money is on the fact that both are alive and well, but part of the deal with reincarnation on the island is that you can never leave. Locke had such a cool/chilling line before we entered the good old flash-back storytelling technique that most of the rest of the episode follows: “I remember dying.” I remember you dying too, Locke. It’s nice to have you back.

And with that we are brought back to the moment Locke left the island and found himself in the desert of Tunisia, with a camera on him. Tunisia we learn is the “exit” according to Charles Widmore. Widmore and his lackey Matthew Abbadon do their darndest to convince Locke that they, echoing what Ben said about The Others, are “the good guys.” The question as to whether it is Ben or Widmore who is the “bad guy” is becoming a front-and-center issue on the show. I’d have to say that after this episode, the advantage goes to Charles for who might end up being the good guy. Or neither are and they’re all crazy. Us too.

Widmore gives Locke a new name, Jeremy Bentham, and has to be convinced by Locke that Ben didn’t “exile” John as he apparently had done to Widmore at some point in the past. It seems that Widmore and Ben, while very well informed as compared to most other characters on this show, still are out of the loop on many big pieces of information. I’ve been saying for some time that there are competing forces on the island and I think my theory, although not entirely clear or fleshed out yet, is starting to come in to focus. More on this later when Ben “off’s” Locke.

Widmore was the one-time leader on the island, was swindled out of his claim to leadership by the conniving Ben Linus, and now has put all of his efforts in to tracking down his former home and current adversary. He tells Locke that John and the Oceanic Six must go back because “a war is coming, and if you aren’t on that island the wrong side will win.” Huh. Not a very cool set-up for future drama on the best show ever made by humans, right?

To prove how serious he is about being the “good guy”, Charles Widmore offers the services of the creepy Abbadon and access to his own personal fortune (including a private jet). One last thing about the interaction between Locke and Widmore: Charles brings up the fact that it has only been four days since Locke saw the then 17 year old Widmore in the Others camp (back in the Jughead episode). Widmore is blown away by this reality, and so was I because it should be obvious that Richard Alpert might no longer be the “never-ending dude in the jungle”, but simply someone who knows how to time travel. This would explain his showing up throughout the history of this show and always looking the same.

Moving right along, Locke’s first stop is to find the best thing out of Iraq since the term “Fertile Crescent”: Sayid Jarrah. My boy. The guy has gone all Jimmy Carter on us and started building homes in the Dominican Republic. He wants nothing to do with Locke’s plea to return to the island, and seems to be content in making up for past sins (i.e. murdering people for Ben) and time by helping out his fellow man. He must not be a liberal because he actually is doing something to help poor people instead of just talking about it with friends at Starbucks. Too soon?

Next is a detour to check in on Walt, the backgammon-playing wonder boy from seasons 1 and 2 who has now become lurchey and awkward. Walt says he’s been dreaming about Locke (take a number, kid) and he has seen John standing in a suit on a beach with angry people around him. Sounds like a Tuesday in the life of Jeremy Bentham-Locke. Locke leaves Walt alone and rightly points out that “the boy’s been through enough.”

“A lot”? You mean like being lied to even further by you just now about his dad possibly being alive when you know full well that man ended up as chum in the water surrounding the freighter, John?

The next two stops were at Hurley’s Nut House and Kate’s regular house. Hurley was not interested in talking to a live human being and freaked out when he saw Abbadon. For some reason Hurley is the one the island has chosen to send most of its deceased all-stars to. Probably because he is weak and stupid.

Kate pulls her usual ‘tude with Locke and even takes a few cheap shots at the obsessive qualities John continues to display. There are few more attractive women on this planet than Freckles, but she can be a real knob-job sometimes, this being one of them. Kate, umm, hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a lying should-be fugitive whose sole talent is looking cute and forlorn (and making horrible decisions based on emotions). Maybe you should just trust Locke here and avoid whatever sad thing happened when you will later go to Jack’s apartment in tears and demand the Good Doctor never ask you about Aaron? Just a thought, toots.

Getting back to Locke’s Blues Brothers-like attempt to reunite the island band…after a number of setbacks he is ready to see his old flame Helen. Oh, well she’s dead. Bummer. At her gravestone Locke laments leaving her and despite Abbadon’s attempt to remind John that every person’s course and path is the one they were supposed to take, Locke insists that things would have been different had he just listened to Helen and dropped the obsession with his dad and past pain/hurt. This story-line helps us understand even more why it is Locke knows what he speaks of when he pleads with Jack to not go down the same short-sighted paths of avoiding reality when its in front of your face.

And speaking of Jack, after Ben caps Abbadon and Locke fails at escaping, John wakes up in a hospital room with the Bearded Wonder leering at him from the shadows. Here we get another great Locke-Jack scene where Jack has had enough of John and crushes his spirit by ending their brief encounter with, “We were never special.” Ouch. That is the LAST thing Locke wants/needs to hear right now when his spirits are down, his quasi-buddy Abbandon is murdered, and he’s had absolutely no success in convincing anyone to come back to the island.

It is here, at wit and emotion’s end, where Locke decides to call the island’s bluff and end his own life in a lonely hotel room. I can’t say enough about this entire scene, from the time Locke begins to prepare the noose until Ben walks out after strangling him. Powerful. Disturbing. Sad. Masterfully acted. All of the above. You could feel Locke’s pain and disillusionment. He had come so far and it seems that every single time he gets back on the right path he is supposed to be walking (i.e. turning the wheel himself and being willing to give his life) he suffers set-backs. The Man of Faith has his tested constantly and in this scene in that hotel room we see a man at his own breaking point. Ben comes in at “just the right moment” and insists that Locke can’t die, that he has too much work to do, and admits to killing Abbadon because Widmore would have had Locke killed before long any way.

Really the toughest thing to watch in this scene was after Locke was convinced to come down off his death ledge and the reality of what he had been about to do to himself seeps in and he can’t help but cry. So sad.

But as Locke’s spirits began to rise as Ben talks and tells of Jack’s purchasing of an airline ticket, John mentions that he is supposed to find an Eloise Hawking. Something snaps in the bug-eyed former Others leader’s head and he strangles Locke to death. Then he sets up the room as if Locke had in fact committed suicide and takes Jin’s ring with him (to use as leverage to get Sun to come back eventually). As he leaves he says “I’ll miss you John…I really will” as if he really thought Locke was dead and that the two would never see each other again. But a week later (or less) he and Jack are in a funeral parlor and Ben is loading Locke in to the back of a van to take him back to the island with them.

Something happens in that interlude that caused Ben to get on board. Or was he on board all along? Maybe the “rules” that Ben and Widmore referenced last season involve prohibitions against suicide. Maybe Ben head Locke say something about Hawking, knew that she used to work with Widmore, assumed that Widmore had converted Locke to his side, and murdered Locke because he thought he was one of the bad guys now. Then Ben might have gone to Ms. Hawking and realized that she could actually help to get them all back and had to eat some crow and work with her.

In that same vein of hypothesizing, here are some thoughts/theories to wrap up this installment of Pants:

-Another option with Ben killing Locke is that he was told that he had to do that by either the island or Jacob. When Ben left the island last season he said, “I hope you are happy Jacob” and perhaps whatever it was that Jacob had told Ben to do (or that Ben knew Jacob would have him do) involved crazy things like murdering JL.

-In Season Three the Others are having Sawyer and Kate help build a runway, which includes the removal of stones and gravel. That is the same island where Locke’s plane crashed this past week on what appeared to be a gravel path. Then there is another plane to consider and that is the one that was still dropping Dharma food in Season Two. What gives?

-The pilot (Lapidus) and “some woman” took one of the outrigger canoes and bolted the first night. One could assume that the woman is either Sun and the two of them are bolting to go find Jin and whoever else they can…or maybe it was just one of the stewardesses that Lapidus had eyes for and they wanted to go start a Swiss Family Robinson-style brood on the main island. If it was Sun though, why did she not get put back on the island? Could the island be sending a signal to those who weren’t transported via bright white light to the lagoon that they aren’t needed or welcome back on the real island?

-Here is some interesting information about Jeremy Bentham (the real guy).

-Hurley is drawing/coloring a Sphinx when Locke visits him at the loony-bin..."sphinx" is Greek for "strangler". Sound familiar?

-Ben killed Locke in the same way that Sawyer killed John's own father in the Black Rock in season three. It even basically happened in the same surprising, spur of hte moment way. If you remember, Sawyer was gonna try and help Anthony Cooper until something Cooper said triggered a reaction in Sawyer that drove him to strangle the old kidney-stealing jerk.

-Why were those outriggers just sitting on the beach on the island where Locke crashed? Who did they belong to and where did those people go? My bet is that they belong to original Others, including Alpert.

I really have more to say overall about this episode and some theories but I have mid-terms this week and am exhausted and my dog (Rudy the Dog) is about to go to the bathroom on my floor. Please feel free to post any of your own here or email me with them. If you really want more, please also read this article from Doc Jensen at Entertainment Weekly. The guy's a genius.

God Bless,
Pants-o-Locke