LOST Recap: Season 5, Episode 7: “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”

Of course.  Wouldn’t you figure…as soon as I write a blog entry critical of LOST…as soon as I make some disparaging remarks about the show…it comes back with a stellar installment that reminds me why I watch every week.  Don’t get me wrong: I still feel the same way about “316″ as I did last week.  I still feel as though the show crossed the line.  But maybe it didn’t quite jump the shark just yet.  Maybe it was just one bad installment, and now we can get back to the LOST that I’m used to.  One that hit another home run with this week’s episode.

Back on the mainland…

Seriously, LOST continues to do a great job of giving me head fakes that I keep falling for.  I was all set for a little background info on Caesar, when suddenly, Ilana appears.  What’s she doing here?  How the heck do they know each other?  Of course, it’s yet another head fake.  They know each other because this isn’t a flashback…they’ve already come to the island.  Or, the secondary, Hydra station island, as the case may be.  Very clever, and it immediately gave me hope that this episode was going to be a great one.

Caesar finds an old magazine, a map, some space/time specs, and..

I don’t know a whole lot about Caesar right now, but he already strikes me as one sly customer.  In fact, after the events that take place in this episode, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was a Widmore plant.  I can’t imagine that Widmore would let Flight 316 get to the island without some type of attempt to get there as well, and Caesar fits the bill.  But what might be just as interesting is the shotgun he pockets just before Ilana enters the room.  I’m sure that’ll turn up at the least opportune moment.

Locke’s alive

Not at all unexpectedly, once Locke returned to the island, he was magically resurrected.  Now I’m not going to get into the details of what it means or the plausibility of it all, but I do want to try understand one big part of it: how does that relate to what happened to Christian Shepard?  Is Locke following in his footsteps somehow?  What correlation are we supposed to draw from that?  I’ll be very curious to see how that plays out over the next few episodes.

One of the boats is missing

“The pilot and some woman took one.”  My first guess is that the “some woman” is Sun, and she had Lapidus take her to the other (main) island in search of Jin.  And that would also explain the fact that there were only 2 boats at the old original LOSTies camp back in The Little Prince episode.  And that also begs the question: who was in that boat when they began shooting at Sawyer/Juliet/Faraday?  The list of possible choices continues to dwindle down some.  But what may be an even bigger question is this: who got shot?  When Juliet and Sawyer return fire, someone clearly gets clipped, we just can’t see who.

Locke teleports to Tunisia using the donkey wheel

But unfortunately for him, he’s got a compound fracture to deal with, and won’t be going anywhere without someone’s help.  Luckily, Widmore’s got some cameras set up right at the ejection point, and he’s able to bring Locke back to his camp.  There he tells Locke some information about his time on the island, and what the rest of the LOSTies have done since they left.  The important part to take out of this is that everything he said appeared to be true based upon what we know.  Slowly, Widmore is emerging as the one telling the truth, whereas Ben appears to be the liar.  Widmore appears to be trying to truly help John, whereas Ben…well, let’s just say Ben has other plans.  If we’re to believe that Ben and Widmore are on opposite sides, one good and one bad, then Widmore is looking more and more like the good guy.  Of course, I’m still not convinced.  I get the impression that both of them are manipulating the LOSTies in some fashion…

There’s a war coming John…

Here’s the first real hint about LOST’s ultimate endgame.  There’s not nearly enough here to make any kind of serious guess as to what’s going to happen, but I’m sure that when it’s over, we can look back to this moment, and say that this is where the first of the clues started.

And so begins Locke’s (not so) magical mystery tour

Right off the bat, Locke’s confined to a wheelchair, just as he was before he left for the island.  Irrespective of the time he was gone or the lessons he may have learned, Locke’s right back at square one: powerless.  And at the risk of condensing 20-30 minutes of show time into one section, that’s exactly the story for Locke at each locale on his tour.  First Sayid, then Walt, followed by Hurley, Kate, and ultimately Jack.  He has absolutely zero pull, and worse than that, they all think he’s just a bit crazy.  They all (except Walt) attack his character, and ultimately make him doubt everything about his mission.  The chosen one, the special one, gets reduced to a blubbering mess simply by visiting 5 “friends” and gravesite. But before his journey comes to an end, he meets with one last person from his past…

“John, what’re you doing?”

As if it wasn’t interesting enough to see Locke re-visit all of the old LOSTies and fail miserably, the last scene we get with he and Ben is what takes the episode to another level.  First, we get an incredible visual of what John’s journey is really about, when Ben kneels before him.  If you weren’t paying attention to the symbolism before, the writers decided to hit you over the head with it.  Although it was last episode that was entitled “316″, it’s this episode where we get to see the true parallels to the famous verse in the Bible.  John is playing Jesus in every way in this episode.  He’s been sent from a mystical place to try to convince unbelievers that he holds the message they need to believe in order to truly live.  Then, he’s killed, only to be resurrected a few days later.  And finally, those that believe in him, even after his death, find “salvation” in the form of the island.  It’s almost as if they gave this episode the wrong name.

As far as his direct encounter with Ben, you really have to be amazed at just how incredibly manipulative Mr. Linus really is.  The entire time he’s saving Locke, he knows he’s doing it to achieve one goal, and one goal only: how he can be a part of getting back to the island with everyone else.  You see, he already knows that he’s not part of what has to happen to get back.  He knows that it’s all about getting everyone to get together, and then find a means to return.  But he has no clue who he has to find (or where) in order to make it all happen.  When he stops John from killing himself, he manages to earn enough of his trust for him to give up the ghost about Eloise Hawking.  With that information, Ben knows who he has to lead the Oceanic 6 to, and that’s all he needs.  He knows that John doesn’t necessarily need to be alive (or in fact, might serve a better role if dead), and maybe, just maybe, he won’t have to worry about him taking leadership of the island if he kills him right then and there.

Of course, the alternative to that logic is that Ben really is the good guy.  Ben knew that Locke had to die, so he helped him get there, but not before he knew all of the pieces that had to be set in motion for everyone to return.  Of course, whether or not that’s true, you can fully expect Ben to suggest a story along those lines when Locke confronts him about his actions.

Everyone’s accounted for…except for the people who got hurt

As if coming back to life on the island wasn’t enough, at the end of the episode, Locke gets to see just how much things have flip-flopped.  Now, he’s alive and well, and Ben is in bad shape after the plane crash-landed.  It’ll be interesting to see just how much John wants revenge, or how much he wants to move on and lead everyone on the island.

Post-episode questions

1. Who’s really telling the truth, Ben or Widmore?  Remember, Locke was directed to move the island, just as Widmore’s team was closing in.
2. What’s Caesar’s deal?  Is he a plant?
3. What’s the war that Widmore was referring to?  What is Locke’s role in it?
4. Now that everyone’s back on the island, what’s next?
5. What can we expect to happen between Kate, Sawyer, and Jack, now that they’re all in the same place again?

I hope you all enjoyed the episode.  Talk to you again next week!

LOST Challenge of the Week: Has LOST jumped the shark?

OK, so let me say this right away: LOST is my favorite show, ever.  I’ve never been as fascinated by a show as much as this one, never looked so forward to every single episode, never even thought of writing a blog…until LOST.

But that doesn’t mean that I lose all objectivity.  It doesn’t mean that I can’t be critical.  And I have to say, after last week’s episode, I can’t help but to feel as though my favorite show has turned a corner that it won’t ever come back from.

To be fair, I don’t think that this is something that happened overnight.  Some people were pretty disappointed when the show went from “scripted Survivor” to the mystery of the button-pushing every 108 minutes.  Others thought the show went downhill when Desmond started having “flashes” that allowed him to know the future.  And still others thought that integrating teleportation and time travel that started with last season’s finale was a bit far-fetched for this show.

Well, I was fairly OK with most of those events (the teleportation and time travel notwithstanding), but last week’s episode has stuck with me all week long, and not in a good way.  And I’m not talking about the “coincidence” that most all of the Oceanic 6 plus Frank Lapidus showed up for the flight back to the island.  In fact, I think most of that will be explained via flashbacks on the island in future episodes.

No, for me the bits that I’m just not digging are these:

• That there was a Dharma station off the island *in Los Angeles* that was located over a pocket of electromagnetic energy best suited to help discover the island
• That the LOSTies had to “re-create” Flight 815 in order to get back to the island
• That Locke had to kill himself in order to get the LOSTies back to the island
• That Locke will be resurrected (as seen in the previews) once he gets to the island

LOST has slowly evolved from a drama with some minor sci-fi elements, to a full-on sci-fi show, and now to simply a complete fantasy.  From my perspective, what worked so well for LOST was its ability to at least attempt to describe its supernatural or sci-fi events with some measure of reality.  Sure, maybe it didn’t always work, but at least there was the attempt.

Does anyone really want to attempt to base any of the bulleted points above in reality?

I don’t.  Obviously, I will keep watching the show.  I still love what LOST gave to me in those initial seasons, and I have to see how everything ends.  But you can color me majorly disappointed in the events of this season, especially the most recent episode.

So what say you?  Do you agree with me?  Has the show jumped?  Did it already?  Am I nuts to even suggest this?  Please take the poll share your comments below!  I’d really like to hear what all of you think.

LOST Recap: Season 5, Episode 6: “316″

Wow.  That was completely unexpected.  So here’s the deal: we’ve been hearing since the end of Season 3 that the Losties “had to go back!”  We’ve spent a full season plus 5 episodes setting up the story of them trying to find some way, *any* way, to get back to that island of mystery.  And then, in the very same episode that we get the first glimpse of how it *might* happen…it does!  And in reality, we’re actually presented with the outcome prior to the causal event.  Wow.  I don’t know how you felt about it, but it felt like a whole bunch of suspense building for an extremely minimal payoff.  I know I was one of the people clamoring to get back…sooner rather than later…but the whole story felt rushed, forced, and ultimately unsatisfying.  Of course, they left some very interesting pockets of story untold, which will absolutely lend itself to flashbacks in future episodes.  But we’ll get to that shortly.  For now, before we get to the meat of the recap, I ask you to ask yourselves…was that how you expected the Losties to get back?  I’d love to hear your comments.  Anyway, on with the recap…

It’s like deja vu all over again

From the opening millisecond, I knew that we were paying homage to the opening scene.  But what I wasn’t sure of was whether or not this was “real”, or if we were in someone’s dream sequence.  As the scene continued to unfold, it became clear that it was indeed a “real” happening, and the “46 hours earlier” tag clinched it.  They made it back!  Very exciting start to the show, and one that had me on the edge of my seat to find out how it all unfolded.

For some reason, in the back of my mind, I fully expected the season’s theme to be the Losties getting back to the island.  In other words, I expected that they wouldn’t make it back until the tail end of the season.  To see them back already, a mere third of the way through the season, was quite shocking.  It also was an incredible relief.  No more stories with too many plot threads!  But, how did it happen?  It all starts with yet another Dharma station…

“The Dharma Initiative called it ‘The Lamppost’”

OK, is it just me, or was it rather strange to see a Dharma station *off* the island?  I guess they had to start somewhere, and an off-island tracking station for the island is as good a place to start as any.  But for someone like me that found this episode awkward and forced, this was certainly the first indication that things were unfolding just a bit differently than the “normal” LOST.

“The room we’re standing in was constructed…over a unique pocket of electromagnetic energy.”

Wow, really?  In Los Angeles?  Unlike Rose and and Bernard’s visit to Uluru earlier in the series, LA is not exactly known for its special healing properties, or even being a part of the World Heritage sites.  Even if it was assumed that it was somewhere near the San Andreas fault, it seems incredibly arbitrary that this site was the best place in all the world to be used as a locator for the island.  It was at this point that my skepticism meter began to gravitate to the “high” setting.  And for those of you that really enjoyed this episode, I apologize for the cynicism.  I’m just calling it how I see it.

“These people, they’re just using us!  They’re playing some kind of game, and we are just the pieces.”

I think Desmond hit the nail on the head with this one.  Ultimately, in the grand scheme of LOST’s endgame (whatever that may be), it’s Ben or Widmore or Jacob or Christian just pulling everyone’s strings.  They all have much more knowledge about what’s going on, and what’s about to happen, and they’re just pushing Jack, Kate, Locke, and Sawyer to do their bidding.  Regardless of what unfolds the rest of this season and next, our LOSTies are just along for the ride.  They’re be lucky to fully understand the consequences of what’s happening to them even at the point in which it all comes down.

“Ajira Airways Flight 316″

Ah yes, the reason for the title of the episode.  Somewhat odd to me that it wasn’t some combination of the numbers as we know them.  But just for a moment, let’s take a quick sidetrack and discuss the title a little more in-depth.  LOST has been known to use double meanings before, especially in episode titles.  So could it be that the 316 could refer to more than just the flight number?  I think it does, especially since the number is not a combination of Hurley’s numbers.

As some of you have speculated, maybe it has something to do with John 3:16, the verse upon which Christianity is basically founded.  Of course, it doesn’t seem overly coincidental that our character John Locke happens to share the namesake with the author of the verse.  But what does it really mean?  That Locke represents the key to everlasting life?  Well, perhaps, if by everlasting life you mean a trip to the island.  It does seem as though dead folk find a way to continue to appear on the island after they perish.  And indeed, Locke does sacrifice his life for his counterparts.  So the parallels are there.  But does that mean that we should take the big leap of faith and assume that Locke is indeed Jacob, and that his ability to tap into the island’s mystic powers are right now only at the tip of the iceberg?  It’s hard to come away with any true level of certainty with respect to just how far the connection goes.  But I am convinced that the 316 in the title refers to both the Ajira flight number, as well as the famous biblical verse.

“So that’s it?  We just get on that flight, and we just hope that it works?”

Yeah, my sentiments exactly.  All of that set up just for this?  No attempt to charter their own plane and parachute out of it at just the right moment?  No getting a submarine and following a specific trajectory and speed?  No crazy teleportation device that only works if just the right person turns it just the right way?  For all of the subterfuge surrounding how the Others went to and from the island in the earlier episodes of this series, it seems too simplistic to have the answer come down to a station that could predict where the island will be.  Was it really necessary to drug Juliet on her way over to cover that up?  It seems to me that it wouldn’t have made any difference to her had she been awake or asleep for the trip.  The only possible explanation would be that the Others wanted to create an artificial sense of misdirection.  But without the Lamppost to “unlock” the island’s location, what difference would it make?  It’s really not adding up for me, but maybe there will be more to the story by the end of next season.

“John is going to be a proxy…a substitute.”

OK, so they have to try to recreate the original trip as best they can.  While I’m again feeling that this decision was somewhat arbitrary on behalf of the writers, it does create a very fascinating situation, in 2 ways.

First, it’s really fun to see how each character plays a role on Flight 316 that mirrors another from Flight 815.  Almost no one is “themselves” from the first flight, so it’s cool to see that play out.  But more on that later.

What intrigues me even more is this thought: what if this “re-creation” is not the first?  What if, in fact, this attempted re-creation is a re-creation from a previous island flight?  More simply put, what if Flight 815 was someone trying to re-create the circumstances of a previous flight?  Is it at all possible that Christian Shepard knew of the island, and on Flight 815 played the role of Locke on Flight 316?  Maybe Christian willingly died so that his son would get on Flight 815 and take him to the island?  I’ve always hoped that the circumstances surrounding Flight 815’s journey to the island were not coincidental…that in fact, they were by design of someone who needed this specific set of folks to be on the island for whatever LOST’s final endgame is.  The scenario as Ms. Hawking presents it to Jack at least allows for that possibility.  There are still many gaps to fill in if this will be the case, but this episode at least allows for that line of thought.

“I made a promise to an old friend of mine…just a loose end that needs tying up.”

Oh boy.  Ben knows that Desmond is in town, and that by default, Penny is likely in town as well.  Considering all of the blood that Ben is covered in when we next see him, I would seriously be concerned about whether or not Widmore’s daughter is still among the living.  While many of the untold stories of our LOSTies prior to them getting on Flight 316 seem intriguing, I think I’m most looking forward to what happened with Ben during his time away.

Jack visits his grandfather…

…and finds a pair of his dad’s shoes.  While you could certainly try to read a bunch into this encounter, I choose not to.  Sometimes, a visit to your grandfather is just a visit to your grandfather.  And I’ll take the placement of the bunny at the start of the scene as a hint that my conclusion is correct…almost like the writers are saying, “Don’t get too carried away here, or you’ll end up going down the rabbit hole.  There’s really nothing to see here, move along now.”

Kate does a 180

OK, so I’m most looking forward to seeing what happened to Ben between the church and the flight back to the island.  But a *very* close second is what happened to Kate from the time she left the pier to the time she shows up in Jack’s place.  Distraught, forlorn, and looking for a little bit of Jack’s lovin’ to get her mind off of life, Kate is a mess when she re-appears in this episode.  She’s given up Aaron, and it clearly wasn’t her first choice.  She makes Jack vow not to ask what happened, but it doesn’t mean we won’t get the scoop at some later date.  I’ll go on record as saying that I hope it was because she finally decided to do the right thing and allow Claire’s mother to raise the child like the family he is.

Ben’s a bit busy getting bloody, so Jack’s got to go pick up Locke’s coffin

OK, so did anyone else get a distinct Wizard of Oz vibe when watching this scene?  Jack’s pulling John’s shoes off and replacing them with Christian’s, eerily similar to Dorothy pulling the ruby slippers off the Wicked Witch of the East.  Of course, Dorothy uses those slippers to return home from the fantasy world of Oz, whereas John is using them for exactly the opposite: to return to the fantastic world of the island after being “home”.  Or is it the reverse?  Maybe “home” for John is the island.  In any event, the correlation to the Wizard of Oz seemed too spot-on to be coincidental.

“Hurley, what are you doing here?”

And so the fun begins.  Can you attach the Flight 316 passenger with their Flight 815 counterpart?  Let’s see, Locke is playing the role of Christian (dead), Sayid is now doing his Kate impression (forced on the plane handcuffed), Hurley is playing both Charlie (instrument) and Walt (Spanish comic book), and Ben is playing the role of Hurley (getting on board at just the last second).  Not only that, but we’ve got Frank Lapidus (interLOST reader Brad is excited!) fulfilling the role that he was originally cast in: pilot of the flight to the island.  I couldn’t place the roles of Jack, Kate, or Sun, but if any of you want to take a stab at it, I’d love to hear your connection theories!  In any event, it was alot of fun to see that all play out.

“The other people on this plane…what’s going to happen to them?”

Ah yes, the collateral damage.  It’ll be fascinating to see what goes on from their perspective, if we’re given it at any time during the rest of the series.  It’ll be as if our LOSTies are the Others, whereas the Flight 316 passengers will be like the original Flight 815 passengers.  In fact, that could explain one of the previous loose ends.  Perhaps the people shooting at Faraday/Sawyer/Juliet back in “The Little Prince” were actually members of Flight 316.  And ones that have no freaking clue what’s going on, only that someone stole their hand-crafted skiff, and that they don’t appreciate it…probably enough to shoot at them…

“How can you read?”

“My mother taught me.”  Amazing how two simple sentences can convey so much information.  First, Jack is still not convinced that this is going to work.  Despite all of the “coincidences” that everyone except Aaron has made it on to Flight 316, Jack still can’t bring himself to believe that he’s actually going to get back on the island.  It’s not until he reads John’s suicide note that he finally allows faith to take over.  Additionally, while Ben is as calm as can be in expectation of his return to the island, he simply cannot help but to lie, even in the most innocuous of situations.  Remember, Ben’s mother died in childbirth, mere minutes…if not seconds…after his birth.  In reality, his mother didn’t teach him anything.  Ben’s lying is clearly a force of habit.  The man does it by default.

Hey, wait a minute, it’s Dharma Jin!

And he’s driving the Dharma van!  OK, so this creates a confusing situation.  Either we’re way before Ben’s father ever got the van to drive around in, or Jin was able to find the old thing after Hurley used it to bum-rush the Others, and got it running again.  Of course, based upon Jin’s outfit, especially the apparent lack of wear of it, leads me to believe the former.  It’ll be fun to see how everyone recounts their situations in the episodes to come.

Post-episode questions:

1. What the heck happened off-screen to Ben, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid before they got on Flight 316?
2. Can Desmond really escape from the island if it has more in store for him?
3. Is Locke really resurrected just by returning to the island?  How the heck is that possible?  And how does that correlate to what’s happened to Christian Shepard?
4. Where did Sun, Sayid, and Ben go after the plane entered the island’s airspace?
5. Does Jin’s outfit and transportation indicate that the island still hasn’t stopping skipping through time?
6. Will we be lucky enough to see how things unfold from the eyes of the newbies on the island?

Overall, this was an episode that gave us a lot to contemplate, even if it was a bit uneven in the storytelling department.  I look forward to reading any new theories you may have after this one!