Here is the final Season 3 Episode League table as voted for by you the fans. The Top 5 are all so close but the winner was Wednesday's finale episode, Through the Looking Glass and is set to become the most voted for episode. Do these correspond to your personal top 5? My Top 5 would have to be.
1) The Man Behind the Curtain 2) Flashes before your Eyes 3) Through the Looking Glass 4) The Man from Tallahassee 5) A Tale of Two Cities
Another indepth review of The Man Behind the Curtain by the always interesting J.Wood.
"Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. in the morning devouring the prey, and at evening dividing the spoil" — Jacob's blessing on Benjamin, Genesis 49:27
The eyes of Horace are closed, and Locke's are open. But despite all we see, this is an episode of questions and lies.
The central question of "The Man Behind the Curtain" is did Locke see Jacob? And did you? Because for a brief moment, just after Ben is flung against the wall, we do see an old man with shoulder-length hair, his face in shadow, sitting in the chair. But the other questions revolve around Ben.
Ben misses his mother Emily, but she's not the only woman Ben loved and killed; although we don't see it, we can presume that Annie, whose name Kate used as a pseudonym in Australia, was also killed in the purge. When Ben brings out the wooden doll Annie carved for his birthday, he is commemorating his original life and his new life at the cost of the lives of the people he loved.
In some ways, Ben was precocious: he was born two months too soon, seemed to be a good learner, and somehow became the leader of the Others. He also didn't talk much at first, but he didn't exactly have a nurturing father. Roger Linus didn't give a damn about his education and never remembered Ben's birthday: "Kind of hard to celebrate the day you killed your mom." Roger was clearly not a good person — he was no Anthony Cooper or Wayne, but he was no hero, and fits right into the Lost pantheon of feckless fathers.
But something changed after Ben's foray out into the jungle, which revealed a few things, perhaps most surprisingly that the seemingly-ageless Richard Alpert was already there on the island. Perhaps there was something special about Ben; he saw his deceased mother Emily twice on the island, which piqued Richard's attention and made him ready to adopt a child of the tribe he was at war with. After this meeting, Ben seems to come out of his silent shell. We next see him years later as an adult, and learn that, like Horace Goodspeed suggested, he's speaking and has found something to say, as Roger mentions how he's usually a "chatty Cathy" in the morning. Like the books on Ben's shelves suggest, he's gained word power.
Has Ben gained any other kind of powers? The nod to the well-known wizard Harry Potter is unmistakable (the other alluded wizard of this episode); he even has the rabbit, recalling "Every Man For Himself" and "White Rabbit," as well as Sawyer's copy of Watership Down and its theme of tribal warfare. When Ben and Locke approach Jacob's shack, they cross a barrier of what looks like black ash (but may be something else, as it smells funny to Locke ). In magical rituals, salt or some other substance is used to make a consecrated circle that contains the thing conjured. Did Ben bring Jacob to the island? Perhaps: the episode focuses on Ben's birthday, December 22; since we have the presence of a ritual circle, and we know numbers are symbolically important, we can look for any symbolic meanings with the numbers of the episode. In numerology, the number 22 is one of three Master Numbers (the others are 11 and 33); there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 22 paths within the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (the Sephiroth), 22 arcana of the tarot, and 22 can manifest archetypes in reality. Richard saw something in Ben, perhaps some kind of adeptness. Perhaps Ben did bring Jacob to the island, and is he keeping him trapped in that shack (and is that what those sick-looking jars of liquid are for?). If so, that may be why Jacob asks Locke to help him.
Watching that scene closely, we can see Locke was looking right at Ben when Ben was flung against the wall. We can see Jacob for a split second during that shot (if we catch it), but did Locke? Ben didn't hear Jacob, and Locke apparently didn't see him, but given Locke's newfound ability to bend the truth as necessary, Locke may have just told Ben he didn't see him in order to keep some advantage over him. And it may be why Ben shoots him; Ben, being the con man that he is, may recognize Locke's playing him and shoots him to maintain his own advantage — Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. But where did Ben's gun come from? Was that Locke's gun, and if so, how did he get it?
The appearance of Alpert raises another question: Just how long have the "Hostiles" been on the island, and where did they come from? Are they — or some of them — from the Black Rock, or were they there when the slavers ended up in the middle of the island? Did they have something to do with Jacob, and what's with the whispering? It now seems they're continuing some of the work begun by the Dharma Initiative, but we still don't know what their goals or purposes are. They clearly introduced Ben to the secrets of the island, and somehow between the time Ben was Harry Potter and a patricidic janitor with a great education, he also became the leader of the Others. Ben is the checker piece who gets to the other side and is crowned.
Before this, however, Ben was a junior member of the Dharma Initiative, brought in with his father Roger by the man who first met them on the day of Ben's birth (and Emily's death), Horace Goodspeed. The Dharma Initiative had set up Otherville and the sonic fence, and like the Lostaways, did not get along with the Others. Horace was a mathematician, and was probably recruited to work on the Valenzetti Equation. His name is certainly evocative; of the few historically significant Horaces and Goodspeeds, there is the Roman poet Horace, and the early 20th C. biblical scholar and translator Edgar J. Goodspeed, who are in their ways mirror-twins.
The poet Horace was known for his Satires and Epodes; the Satires rejected public life, ambition, extremes, and embraced wisdom through serenity and balance — very Dharma-ish. The Epodes sound a little more like satire than the Satires, and mocked social abuses and conventions, mainly through their form; they seem to be praise, but the meter they were written in was used for personal attacks and ridicule. We may find it difficult to find the hidden mockery and satire in some of these works, but we're in an age of Colbert, not Maecenus. A writer of social satire, though, also recalls the Dickens of Little Dorrit.
But the second name, Goodspeed, may be from a relatively famous biblical scholar at the University of Chicago named Edgar J. Goodspeed. He translated a widely-used 1923 edition of the New Testament that did away with floral, formal, poetic speech; very un-Horace-like. In his preface, Goodspeed notes that the dialect the original texts were written in were "the common language of everyday life," and that "the most appropriate English form for the New Testament is the simple, straightforward English of every-day expression." In the name Horace Goodspeed, we get a mirror-twin of two literary heavyweights with very different formal concerns, one of royalty and one of the common people. This also seems to reflect some of the social concerns of the island: will people organize themselves under cults of personality, or democratically?
Another mirror-twinned scene is when Locke whips Bakunin. Locke's namesake recalls the enlightenment philosopher of the social contract, and indeed Lost Locke has only used violence selectively and for a clear purpose (like when he beat Charlie). Bakunin's namesake recalls the 19th C. philosopher of anarchy who embraced streetfighting in the revolution of 1848. When Lost Bakunin rushes back to the camp with news of Naomi (and explains that the sonic fence didn't kill him because it wasn't set at a lethal level), he's offended that Ben would answer to Locke, who wants to go see Jacob. Without a second thought, Locke beats Bakunin senseless to maintain Ben's attention, and we see the man of social balance acting in an extreme way against a man of extremes who is questioning social imbalance. But as we've seen, these names are used more or less to introduce themes and ideas, and shouldn't be directly mapped onto specific characters; the social contract and anarchy are to be worked out amongst social groups, not individuals. We'll see that played out before long; just as the Dharma Initiative couldn't live with the Others, neither can the Lostaways. And the look Bakunin flashed Locke said "this isn't over."
That is, if Locke gets out of the mass grave alive. When Ben finally comes clean about not being born on the island, he puts a bullet into Locke's ribs, seemingly because Jacob said something to Locke that Ben couldn't hear. Jacob's call for help suggests Locke has a connection with Jacob that Ben doesn't. When Ben brought Locke to the Dharma Initiative mass grave, he's also bringing him to the remains of the Tribe of Benjamin. The Book of Judges describes how the Tribe of Benjamin was, in effect, purged by the other tribes of Israel after a certain offense (as recounted earlier in this blog by dharma bum). Since we know Ben Linus's tribe was the Dharma Initiative, the purge makes more sense now. But the biblical purge gives us a bit more to work with, since it was based on a con.
The entire biblical purge — the story of which seems inflated — resulted from one unnamed Levite and a gang from Gibeah. The story is all about hospitality and the lack of it: the Gibeah gang knew the Levite was housing a traveler, and wanted to have their way with the guest. Instead, the Levite tossed his concubine (not a full legal wife) out to the gang to be raped. In the morning, the Levite finds the woman laying unresponsive on the threshold of his door; she may be exhausted from pain, or she may be already dead. At any rate, the Levite cuts her up into twelve pieces and sends the pieces out to the twelve tribes of Israel, claiming the Gibeah gang had cut her up and something needed to be done. And with that, the Levite saved his own skin, killed (or at least desecrated) his wife, blamed it on some others, and brought down some righteous wrath upon the Tribe of Benjamin. Nearly all of the tribe were killed/purged, including the Benjamite women and children. The Israelites then stole women from Shiloh to replace the ones they killed so the Tribe of Benjamin could continue.
It's a crazy story that has some resonance with what's happening on the island, but there are two points from the Book of Judges that are worth noting: The Benjamite warriors fought left-handed, and a Shekinah resided in the Benjamite land. Ben Linus isn't left-handed (he shot right-handed), but the term is used as a metonym for keeping an opponent off-balance — and we've already seen how the Others deal with the Lostaways, constantly keeping them off-balance ("We're the good guys, Jack"). A Shekinah is basically a dwelling for god. We know that Jacob seems to have god-like powers; according to Ben, Jacob's the cancer-healer, and even helped Rachel. Jacob's shack may be a kind of debased Shekinah for a god-like figure — a shackinah. But if so, this is a haunted holy house, a mirror-twin of what it should be. The horror of Jacob is that if he is somehow god-like, this god is imprisoned by a ravenous wolf and needs help.
It may all depend on if Locke can crawl out of that grave and heal like before. But the fact that he played such a manipulative role in Cooper's death may have altered Locke's "good" character, and his ability to be healed so quickly. We're not in Kansas anymore. Recap by J.Wood
Here is the latest Episode League table based on the latest poll results HERE. The Man Behind the Curtain placed very high at 3rd place and broke the record for the amount of votes in the first 24 hrs of voting, with 11900 votes to date.
Interesting to note that the top 3 all start with "The ..." :)
There will of course be those who disagree, but I'm officially declaring this to be the best season of LOST yet. Each episode seems to top the last, and we haven't even seen the finale yet. Things I Noticed:
Jack, Juliet, Kate, Sayid, Blah Blah Blah... Just like its characters, LOST is evolving. What were considered main characters in seasons one and two are suddenly back seated, and what were once side stories are now the main event. I don't think this was intentional. In fact, I'll bet just the opposite is true. I think the writers have expanded in the direction of what's most interesting, on a constantly changing basis, no matter what that may be.
Back at camp, Kate's mad about Naomi. Sayid's mad at Kate. Sun supports Jack. Sawyer doesn't. Truth be told I really couldn't give much of a crap about all that stuff this episode. I've loved these characters for so long I felt almost guilty not giving a crap about them, but the story back at the 815 camp really isn't all that interesting right now. Especially not in light of everything else.
So I'm skipping that whole scene this week. I just hope this end-of-season "The Others Are Coming!" storyline explodes into the full-scale battle shown on the previews instead of a dead-end cop-out the way it did in season one.
Roger Linus - Master of Bad Timing There are some things that you just don't do... like take your 7-month old pregnant wife on a nature hike in the middle of nowhere. Little Ben arrives early, which just might be a lifelong metaphor for how far ahead of everyone he always seems to be. His mother's death during childbirth was sad, but it went a long way toward explaining Ben's later obsession with fertility and the dying mothers of LOST island.
Bolting the forest Roger then meets Horace, the man who would later sell him the one-way ticket to DHARMA's janitorial program. If he'd been a minute faster or a minute slower he would've missed that car - just another perfectly timed ripple in the waters of LOST.
Tom's Coffee... Good to the Last Drop Alright, it's taken a long time but I'm finally willing to admit it: Ben's losing control. From the nervous desperation of "Tom, have you seen my recorder?" to his utter shock at Mikhail's mentioning of Naomi, things are, at long last, not going according to Ben's plan. On top of that, Locke's reappearance in camp couldn't have been at a worse time for him.
I laughed my ass off watching Tom casually sip coffee while Locke beat the snot out of poor Mikhail. I actually felt bad for him. He's filthy dirty, was 99% dead, just got his ass kicked by Jin, and ran halfway across the island just so Locke could deliver more punishment? I'll bet right after this scene someone manifested him some vodka.
Ben's henchmen might've obeyed his orders and stepped in to stop the fight had it not been for the line Locke delivered just before the beating: "He and I are going to see Jacob". This is why no one intervened. Seeing Jacob was BIG. Richard, Tom, everyone else - either they disbelieved Jacob was real or (more likely) they disbelieved Ben's translation of Jacob's agenda all this time. Richard has already told Locke he thinks Ben has lost sight of their true goals, so if Ben really is the only person able to communicate with Jacob the rest of the Others can only benefit from having Locke tag along. Especially the demolition specialist no-bullshit 'I wanna know what the hell going on' version of Locke everyone has seen lately, who will no doubt deliver them the truth.
At Least They Have Guns And Beer We got our first real look at DHARMA's hippy Communist regime this episode, where everyone got classified and categorized and assigned a crisp new jumpsuit and a very important job (like beer-running, for example). A fleet of jeeps to get around the lush undergrowth of the island you say? Nah, let's buy a bunch of cumbersome VW vans - in periwinkle blue, no less. A community in the middle of nowhere supplying beer to subterranean specialists watching other subterranean specialists while filling notebook after marbled notebook with useless minutia... and then vaccuum-launching them into the middle of nowhere. It all makes perfect sense now.
Sorry, but DHARMA is still bullshit.
As Ben said last season "This? This place is a joke!" We now know that Ben was a part of that joke, which only must've added to his cynicism toward it. Ben's DHARMA days were not happy ones, with the exception of Annie, which is why he took the doll with him on the day of the purge. It was the only thing pure... the only thing that reminded him of anything joyful, so it was the only thing he took from that time. When Ben says he was born on the island, he means it in the metaphorical sense - not the physical one. He was born again on the day of the purge; born on the day he killed his father just as he was born on the day he killed his mother. See you in another life.
Harry Potter And The Swashbuckling Immortal Of huge interest this episode was Ben's first meeting with Richard. We learned many things here, the most important of them being that Richard doesn't seem to age. He looked exactly the same in Ben's flashback as he does now - at least twenty-five or thirty years later. No attempt was made to 'age' him whatsoever.
Richard's also a part of the hostile natives, and not from the DHARMA initiative. A local of the island, he was dressed in some very dated (yet non-descript) clothing. Add this to the non-aging factor, and he really could be from any period in history. "You do remember birthdays, don't you Richard?" Not if he hasn't had them in a long, long time.
Ben became a whole lot more interesting to Richard once he mentioned he'd seen his long-dead mother. This made Ben special to Richard the way Walt was special... in much the way Locke is special to him now. His mother had even spoken to him, which instead might've been the island speaking through him, perhaps even delivering the message to it's intended recipient: Richard. "It's not yet time" could've been Richard's cue to wait on young Benjamin Linus. To give him the time necessary to kill his father and prove his commitment to the island, or even more far-fetched, to become of proper AGE before joining. If the island can heal, can it not prevent aging? With no new children being born, surely it must protect its children in some other way?
This is all due to the TIME anomaly on the island. Perhaps aging does occur, but at a very VERY slow pace. Slow enough even to make time stand still. Slow enough to make cancer non-existent. Which makes the fact that Ben developed cancer extremely important, because it can only mean one thing: the island has forsaken him as one of it's children.
The Purge... Now With 50% More Sarin Gas! The most human thing Ben did so far, even more human than keeping Annie's doll, was to close Horace's eyes after the purge. For some reason this seemed touching to me. It was as if Ben was being apologetic to Horace and the DHARMA crew, who in retrospect had never truly wronged him.
The body of the guy holding the hose really got me thinking. Somehow, after all this went down, Ben was able to persuade the Others (hostiles) to take over the Dharma community. He taught them to run the generators, to live in the homes, to hold a weekly book club. In the end they were cutting the grass and mending the fences and had every bit become those who they'd deemed must be purged from the island. In the end, they became the same enemy they couldn't co-exist with.
This explains much of Richard's displeasure with Ben's leadership. He led them to stray from the native paths of the island. He introduced technology under the guise of fixing the fertility problem, but in doing so he destroyed their purity.
Jacob Needs an Extreme Home Makeover Alright, let's get to the good stuff. This scene is the reason we all watch LOST. I usually watch an episode twice before writing this, but I put this scene through the paces at least a half dozen times - and two of those were on slow-mo. Lots of important stuff here.
First impression: Ben's a lunatic. He really REALLY didn't seem to want Locke to go in there, and did everything he could to talk him out of it. I originally thought Ben was bluffing. Once inside the empty shack, I figured his bluff was called. So did Locke. The whole invisible man thing seemed a put-on, and for a moment I thought the writers were going to pull the ultimate cop out. Man was I wrong.
"Help me" was easily one of the creepiest things I've heard in a long time. It was skin-crawlingly perfect. Locke's incredulity at what he perceived to be Ben's continued ruse was shattered by his realization that someone really was in that chair. And in that one moment, everything changed. Even Locke's fearless demeanor, as he bolted the house.
What really changed however, was Jacob's org chart. Here's the breakdown, so stay with me:
BEN (To Jacob): "I told you he wouldn't".
Ben's telling Jacob that Locke can't see him. As the only one to see and hear Jacob, Ben wants it to stay that way. To keep in power he's vehemently kept anyone else from Jacob - especially someone as special as Locke.
BEN (To Locke): "You can't see him?" (slightly mockingly) "He's sitting right there, in this chair".
Ben's giddily relieved that Locke can't see Jacob. He thinks Locke doesn't have the faith. He doesn't want him to.
BEN (To Jacob): "Yes I know, but he insisted".
Jacob just told Ben that Locke wasn't ready. Apparently Jacob wanted Locke to come, but only once he would be able to see him. Ben's half apologetic and half making excuses. Secretly, he's glad Locke came early.
BEN (To Jacob): "I am not. He made me bring him here, did you think that it was my-"
Jacob just accused Ben of conspiring to fail by bringing Locke early. Jacob's smart. He knows Ben wants to maintain control... he knows Ben doesn't want Locke to see him. Jacob is realizing that Ben's agenda is not his own.
LOCKE (To Ben): "Do you think there's someone there?"
BEN (To Locke): "I KNOW there is. I'm sorry John, (snootily) that you're too limited to see".
Ben's not sorry at all, he's glad as hell. With Locke unable to see or hear Jacob Ben maintains control over his people AND he fulfills Jacob's orders to bring Locke to see him (if a bit early). He's in the clear on both counts.
What happens next is Jacob gets pissed. Forget Locke's flashlight, Jacob is angry with Ben's complete lack of progress. It is at this point that Jacob abandons Ben. The transition occurs here. This is when he speaks to Locke, and for the first time Locke can hear him. For the first time, Ben cannot.
After tossing stuff around the cabin, Jacob suddenly becomes visible to Locke (yes I missed it too the first time around). And if you watch Ben's reaction, I think Jacob actually disappears out of the chair to him. Ben's expression makes me think he just saw Jacob for the last time - at least while Locke is still alive - and I think Ben knows it.
Okay, now here's my Jacob theory: Jacob is trapped in time. Something happened with the island phasing in and out, maybe the sky turned purple, the monkeys threw poo... who the hell knows at this point. Whatever happened, Jacob is stuck in a Langolier-type limbo that he can't escape from. A hellish, Jaunt-like, endless eternity. Maybe Jacob IS the island. Maybe Jacob IS the smoke monster. I'm not sure of that stuff, but one thing is for certain: Jacob needs help. Jacob is LOST. Hell, Jacob may be the reason that LOST is called LOST.
Relying on Ben all this time has gotten him nowhere, so Jacob now speaks to Locke. Ben's gamble that Locke wasn't special enough has failed. With nothing else to do, he steals Locke's gun and tries to off him (I think Jacob will save him of course). Alex knew Ben might do this, which is why she armed Locke in the first place. And I have to say... I'm a bit disappointed in knife-throwing island-gear dynamite Locke. After all the times he was chumped, I thought he'd be smarter than that.
Two More Things First, watch the Jacob scene again in slow motion and you'll pick up on something. The lantern Ben placed on the table smashes to the floor, throwing fire everywhere. Locke's looking right at it. We see a few frames of the firelight glinting off Locke's face, and then suddenly - BAM! The next frame shows a firelight-free Locke in a slightly different position with a disbelieving look on his face. And after he bolts the cabin, guess what? Ben walks out with the lantern INTACT.
You can't chalk this up to sloppy editing. I think something happened here, timewise. I think Jacob's rage might've caused a hiccup in time. Maybe leaping back five seconds or so, to before the lantern broke. I wouldn't be surprised to see all the jars of red liquid intact on the shelf just before Locke left, despite the fact Jacob threw one across the room.
The second thing, of course, is Jacob himself. I've seen the screencaps and I have to side with team Locke. The nose is 90% right, but the forehead is dead on. The rest of the facial characteristics fit him too. Could Jacob be another version of Locke, trapped in time, maybe because of something that happened (the hatch implosion), or maybe because of something that's going to happen (series finale?) in the future? Dunno for sure, but I'll say this: the exact same thing happened on Land of the Lost, episode 'Elsewhen'. ;)
"Lost" (10:00-11:00 p.m.) Growing from its lead-in by 7.7 million viewers (12.1 million vs. 4.4 million) and by 163% in young adults (5.0/13 vs. 1.9/5), "Lost" won its Wednesday time period and was No. 1 scripted-program of the night across the adult demographics: Adults 18-34 (4.3/13), Adults 18-49 (5.0/13) and Adults 25-54 (5.6/14). In fact the ABC drama has won its hour in the key Adult 18-49 sales demographic on all 14 telecasts since entering its new time slot.
* Despite its late time period and declining TV usage levels, "Lost" grew by 1.0 million viewers (11.6 million to 12.6 million) and by 11% among young adults (4.7/12 to 5.2/15) from its first half-hour to its second half-hour.
* "Lost" improved the hour for ABC over the same night last year by 4.5 million viewers and 67% in Adults 18-49 (7.7 million & 3.0/8 on 5/10/06).
Review of The Man Behind the Curtain by Jeff Jensen.
'Help me.''
These are the first words to be uttered on Lost by Jacob, the elusive phantom leader of the Others, maker of Lists and curer of cancer. (Allegedly.) ''Help me,'' said the voice, warped and rumbly as if congested with impending death. They were uttered in the freaky final act of the episode titled ''The Man Behind the Curtain'' to John Locke, our surrogate secret seeker, shortly before Big Bad Ben shot him and left the pappy-killing man of faith to die in an open grave filled with rotting corpses, the putrefying remains of the hippie-era world-saving endeavor that was the Dharma Initiative.
''Help me.''
Tell me about it. The 20th episode of Lost's trippy and getting-trippier-by-the-minute third season was one big data dump of Island mythology, character revelations, and What the hell is going on? twists. Perhaps the place to begin would be with my new theory that Ben's profoundly lonely, deeply father-scarred persona has imprinted itself on the Island; it is, in fact, the operating system that runs this freaky fantasyland. Or maybe I should start by offering my condolences to those who've been clinging to the belief that sound science, not sci-fi, will explain all of Lost, as I believe I heard that belief shattering into a thousand little pieces inside Jacob's rocking-'n'-rolling haunted hillbilly mansion. Or maybe I should just shut up with the quasi-intellectual analysis for a change and just break down the story. Yes, let's do that. Because that might actually be doable here at 12:10 a.m., with a 3 a.m. deadline rapidly approaching. Trying to actually figure this sucker out — oh, man, that's gonna take us weeks.
''Help me,'' indeed.
The Flashback: The Secret Origin of Benjamin Linus
The very first scene: Ben is born. Prematurely, too. His mother, Emily, seven months pregnant, was hiking a trail in the forests outside Portland, Ore., with his father, Roger, when she unexpectedly went into labor. Set amid lush green foliage, the sequence echoed with Garden of Eden resonance; with all the blood and Emily's ominous complaints of pain, we were reminded of the curse that resulted from the Fall — that men would be doomed to work the suddenly unfriendly soil and women would be doomed to experience a world of pain during childbirth. Roger would become a literal ''work man'' — a Dharma Initiative janitor — and Emily would die as a result of bringing Ben into the world. Two things: 1. Surely it can't be mere coincidence that Ben was born at seven months and that on the Island, pregnant women die at the end of their second trimester, or roughly at the seven-month mark. (Again, I tell you: Ben's persona, imprinted on the Island.) 2. And surely it can't be mere coincidence that the Linus family was fatefully forged 32 mile outside of Portland (most likely near Salem, the capital of Oregon) and Mittelos Biosciences, through which the Others recruited miracle-grow baby-maker Juliet to the Island, is based outside of Portland. (The episode, which didn't elaborate on the Dharma Initiative as much as I thought it would, didn't clarify its relationship, if any, with Mittelos.)
The next time we saw him, Ben had grown into a bookish, bug-eyed, barely talking boy, and he and his father were arriving on Fantasy Island — er, I mean, the Island during the heyday of the Dharma Initiative. (You gotta admit, the way they stepped off the sub and were greeted by the Dharma welcome wagon with leis and chipper cries of ''Namaste!'' was very Fantasy Island. All that was missing was the obligatory scene in which Mr. Roarke sizes up his newest visitor and explains to Tattoo what's at stake: ''You see, my friend, Ben and his father have come here looking for a job and an education — a new life. Instead, they will find the dark consequences of unresolved anguish and misdirected anger.'' Tattoo would reply, ''Whatever, boss. I just ring the bell when da plane comes.'')
We learned Roger was invited to the Island by Horace Goodspeed, a Dharma doc who with his wife, Olivia, discovered the Linuses stumbling out of the woods shortly after Ben was born. We saw a scene where Roger and Ben were processed in a way that reminded me of either (a) prisoners being processed into jail or (b) immigrants being processed through Ellis Island. Same difference for Roger: The Island, a would-be land of new opportunity for him, would soon become his prison. While Roger bristled at being assigned mere janitorial work (yet another character whose Great Man aspirations are undermined by the Man; see also Jack, Locke, and Desmond), Ben met a young girl who would become his only friend, Annie. We also caught a fleeting glimpse of yet another Dharma video hosted by Dr. Marvin Candle/Dr. Mark Wickmund, speaking ominously of wildlife and sonar fences.
Ben's time in Dharma utopia/captivity was far from blissful. His schooldays were interrupted by explosions and gunfire from Dharma's ''skirmishes'' with elusive, barely seen ''Hostiles.'' His nights, presumably, were filled with taking care of his drunken, disenchanted father, who in his worst moments had no problem telling Ben how he blamed the boy for killing his one true love, Emily. On one emotionally bruising evening, Ben looked out his bedroom window, and who should he see but his mother — a creepy moment that evoked a whole body of ''white lady'' ghost lore, not to mention the underrated 1988 supernatural thriller Lady in White.
Ben became obsessed with being reunited with his mom, who was surely an Island apparition, conjured by and embedded with Ben's deepest yearnings. When he first tried to run away into the jungle to find her, she appeared to him on the other side of the sonic fence and told him that he must wait: ''It's not yet time,'' she said. The next time, Ben escaped with his pet white rabbit (take your pick: an allusion to Alice in Wonderland or to Harvey, the famous Jimmy Stewart film about a man with an imaginary friend) and encountered a Hostile in the whispering jungles: none other than Richard Alpert, looking no younger than he does in the Island present (apparently, Island ''natives'' either don't age or age very slowly) and sporting some nifty guerrilla-rebel togs. The thing I thought was most interesting about this encounter was Alpert's challenging Ben on his use of the word ''Hostiles'': ''Do you even know what that word means?'' Alpert's reaction was similar to Ben's own offense over the use of the term ''Others'' to describe his people. But I also wonder if his question to Ben is an invitation to us to investigate the true definition of the word. Check out this explanation of ''hostility'' from Wikipedia:
''In psychological terms, George Kelly defined hostility as the willful refusal to accept evidence that one's perceptions of the world are wrong. Instead of reconsidering, the hostile person attempts to force or coerce the world to fit their view, even if this is a forlorn hope, and however harmful the cost....Psychologically, it can be said that reality is being held to ransom, and in this sense hostility is a form of psychological extortion — an attempt to force reality to produce the desired feedback, in order that preconceptions become validated.''
How does this apply to Lost? You tell me. Send to: JeffJensenEW@aol.com.
Alpert was clearly intrigued with Ben and his claims of seeing his dead mother on the Island, but he still denied Ben's request to join his forest-dwelling merry men. Instead, Alpert told him to be patient, and to wait. And Ben did. Years passed. Ben became an adult, still living on the Island, a workman now, just like his dad. On his birthday, Ben and his neglectful pop (seems Roger can never actually remember his son's birthday) made a beer run out to the Pearl Station — the only time any of the stations of Dharma were referenced in the episode. (Guess those video-screen watchers need to stay a little buzzed while they keep their diaries.) Roger tried vainly to connect with Ben, but it was too little, too late, and the coldly brilliant young man had made up his mind and a plan: Unable to abide his father's resentment toward him, Ben killed him with poison gas inside a Dharma bus (now we know the backstory from that Hurley episode) and, moreover, either gassed all of the Dharma folk or helped the Hostiles do so. Hence, ''the Purge.''
As a result of his treachery, Ben gained entry into the Hostile community, as well as an extraordinary amount of luster in their eyes. Apparently, nothing says ''Island glory boy'' like patricide. Which helps to explain why Ben was so eager to humiliate Locke in front of the Others last week. Locke presented a challenge to his authority and perhaps to his control over the Island. When Locke wimped out, Ben was basically saying, ''Who's your daddy? I'm your daddy. Why? Because I can kill my daddy.''
But as it turned out, Locke could, too. (With a little help from Sawyer, of course.)
Ben and Locke: Holy War
Ben's flashback was interwoven with a present-day Island story that began with Locke showing up with his dead dad in a sack and demanding the answers Ben had promised should he pull off the feat. Ben told Locke that the answers lay with Jacob, the true boss of the Others, but that, unfortunately, Ben was a little too tied up plotting the Passover-style abduction of Sun and all the child-bearing castaway ladies on the Beach. Apparently, the plan was collapsing — Alpert seemed to have forgotten to get new instructions to Juliet. And when Mikhail Bakunin showed up to reveal that Naomi had fallen out of the sky and has a ship 170 clicks off shore waiting to rescue the castaways, Ben had even more reason to back-burner Locke. But the man of faith wouldn't be denied and forced the issue by brutally beating up Bakunin, who appeared to be Ben's only certain ally among the Others at the moment. There's a crisis of leadership — and you got the sense that the Others would like nothing more than for Locke to assume the mantle. But why? Why Locke? What does he represent to them? What agenda could his communion with the Island serve?
Naturally, Ben would rather his people not know the answers to any of those questions, and so he decided to drop everything to take a smugly satisfied, prematurely triumphant Locke for a date with destiny. Thus began a passage of scenes that promise to shape the direction of Lost for moons to come. Locke and Ben arrived at the shack, home to Jacob. They found a trail of ashes leading to the door. Ashes — a symbol of mortal decay in the Bible; a symbol of penance and forgiveness in Christianity; and, perhaps most pertinent here, part and parcel of the phoenix resurrection myth in Egyptian mythology.
Before they entered the shack, Ben told Locke to turn off his flashlight; Jacob is a technology-hating Luddite, and Ben conspicuously pointed out that it's a trait Locke shares. This, I'm guessing, is either a clue or a red herring suggesting/denying that Jacob is actually a time-warped Locke, from either the future or an alternate reality. But more interesting was Ben asking Locke, ''Are you sure this is what you want?'' That, of course, is also a question for us in the audience: We say we want answers, but do we really? What happens when we get them? Will we really be satisfied? For me, Ben's line was what ''The Man Behind the Curtain'' was all about: this tension between the romance of mystery and the quest for certainty.
Lucky for us, the truth waiting inside Jacob's house — your typical creepy cabin in the woods, home to your Blair Witches and garden-variety chainsaw-wielding Texan inbreds — was the kind that doesn't puncture mysteries but begets more of them. Inside a cobwebby room (what was this house, anyway?) was an empty rocking chair — except according to Ben, it wasn't empty. Jacob was sitting in it. And talking to him, too. The simple madness of it all broke Locke's heart. Ben was either playing with him or just crazy. You know, kinda like another famous true-believer pop-culture Linus — Charlie Brown's friend Linus, the guy with the zany delusion/belief in the Great Pumpkin. Locke turned to leave, then heard it. ''Help me.'' Locke spun around and turned on his flashlight to investigate, and suddenly, the room went wild with psychic weirdness, like the end of Carrie or Poltergeist. Ben was thrown against the wall, and when the camera panned back to the rocking chair — there! A fleeting glimpse of a man, weakened and half bald. From the voice and silhouette, I'm going to agree with the time-loop/alternate-reality crowd on this one: Jacob is Locke.
In the aftermath, Locke denied his own eyes and demanded that Ben come clean about faking the ''Help me'' voice. Ben allowed that he had stretched the truth before — like his claiming that he's always lived on the Island. Clearly not the literal truth, but perhaps, in Ben's mind, it's true in that Ben Kenobi ''from a certain point of view'' kind of way. In the episode's final scene, Ben took Locke to the Dharma mass grave — a grotesque marker of the event that made Ben into the monster he is today. And there, Ben shot Locke. The reason seems self-explanatory: In order to preserve everything that gives his life meaning, Ben needed to put down the threat that Locke embodied: being replaced, becoming obsolete. You saw it in his eyes when he heard what Jacob had said to Locke. It was the look of a man who had just been told that his idealized father — a father who genuinely needed him; a father who gave his life importance — had found a new favorite son.
Questions
1. In the other subplot, Sawyer brought back the tape Locke gave him incriminating Juliet, but just when it seemed the castaways were about to string her up, Juliet revealed that there was more content on the back of the tape — content that spelled out Ben's master plan to raid the camp and swipe Sun. All of this seemed a little rushed to me, and I wanted more, especially from Jack, but I guess we'll have to wait one more week for his conversion back to hero of the beach. What do you think his plan is? And do you think Naomi is on the up-and-up about her rescue boat, or is this a trick?
2. I'd love to hear your thoughts about Ben's friend, Annie, and the significance of the dolls she gave him. What did they mean to Ben? And where did Annie go?
3. What do you think is the backstory about Alpert and his gang of Hostiles?
4. Bakunin revealed that he survived his encounter with the sonic fence because, fortunately, the fence was set at a ''nonlethal level.'' Do you believe him?
5. Finally, do you think there's a link between the emphasis on patience and waiting for fate and destiny to play out (think: Ben's mom, telling him to wait; Alpert, telling him to wait) and the Room 23 brainwashing/aversion-therapy video, whose messages were all thematically linked by the idea of patience, waiting, trusting, etc.? Has Ben been maintaining his hold on his people by using the video?
Here is the final Season 3 Episode League table as voted for by you the fans. The Top 5 are all so close but the winner was Wednesday's finale episode, Through the Looking Glass and is set to become the most voted for episode. Do these correspond to your personal top 5? My Top 5 would have to be.
