Countdown to the Incident.

What's going on in Lost?
Well, there are two time periods having their story's told concurrently; 1977 and 2007.
In 2007, Locke was leading Sun and the Others in a Mad Quest to kill Jacob, Claire was still M.I.A., Christian hadn't creeped anybody out for a few episodes and oh yeah, the Shadow-statue people, Iliana and Bram and so forth, had enacted their own coup, conked Lapidus on the head, and were marching off to an undisclosed location with a very awkward looking metal box.
Also, gone bot not forgotten, Desmond was recovering in a hospital somewhere and Charles Widmore was scheming.
And back in Dharmaville 1977, things were on a collision course: 'the incident' is coming, and Daniel was determined to prevent it by way of nuclear detonation. Then his mother shot him in the back. Very sad. Jack took up his crusade and enlisted the help Daniel's murderous but repentant mother and the always welcome Richard Alpert to finish the task and wipe out all life on the Island for good. Kate took exception to this and left, Sayid showed up and had no problems with it.
In Dharmaville proper, the jig was up; Sawyer and Juliet were on the sub (cue Kate), and Miles, Jin and Hurley were lurking by the dock spying through binoculars. While their original plan was to head to the Beach for the whole 'starting over' plan, it remains unseen as to whether Hurley will try to force some kind of rescue plan. It's not as farfetched as you might think; he saved Sawyer and Juliet's bacon back in the Season 3 finale.
Now it seems to me that to satisfy a literary completeness, we must see these two disparate groups reunite. They parted ways in last years finale and have been working towards each other (whether they knew it or not) all year. It also seems that Desmond has been so thoroughly under-used this year that he must play a huge part. Because it's not like they've let us forget about Desmond. Every now and again they'll pull him out like a magic trick - now you see him, now you don't- just to remind us that he's still around, and still unpredictable.
In regards to the bomb I am of two minds. I mean, how cool and fucked up and Lost would it be to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the finale? Cool and fucked up, yes, but also rather consequential. That, and, Jack's an idiot. He won me over for awhile there in Namaste and He's Our You, but I just can't support any of this whole 'let's undo the entire show' sort of nonsense. I'm siding with (shudder) Team Kate on this one.
'Don't Nuke our Imaginations, dude!'
Now, I'm afraid that, despite my best intentions, I do not go into this evening totally unspoiled. This is mostly because Dave's a jerk, and I'm weak. So what I know is this: We will see a much older version of a present day character, indicating some kind of time shift to the far future.
What?
So basically, I know that I know nothing. This was just a way to bring my mind up to date and kill a bit of time. 8 hours, 20 minutes now.

Take me to your Leader

Some episodes of Lost are like potato chips; great while it lasts but you feel hungry again right afterwards. Others, like the penultimate episode of the penultimate season Follow the Leader are more like full-fledged buffets; we gorge and then spend days afterwards, bloated and happily digesting.
And, if by chance you can see Star Trek in the interrum, it makes the week long wait to the finale that much more palatable.
I'm done saying that 'Such and such was the best episode ever', but I am ready and able to accept this latest offering and happily digest it while I try to keep myself off spoiler sites for the next 5 days.
As far as spoilers go, I'm a Title Man. I like to get the title in advance and ponder it's meaning, dissecting the few words and reading the entrails. With Follow the Leader, the immediate question was 'Well, who is the Leader to be followed?'
Dead is Dead seemed to indicate that man was John Locke, and while the episode didn't exactly disagree with that assertion, it also threw up a lot of alternatives. Put simply, Follow the Leader was lousy with leaders.
There were new leaders (Radzinsky), old leaders (Widmore), ageless leaders (Richard), resurrected leaders (Locke), 'redeemed' leaders (Jack) deposed leaders (Ben & Horace); it seemed in fact, that everyone but Hurley was calling the shots. Or trying to. Even Miles had a plan and they were sticking to it.
When leaders abound, whom do you follow?
This guy?


This guy?


Not this guy, surely:


Wait. Maybe this guy:



Sorry, wrong show (and yet, I can't somehow wonder how Tom Zerrick would do as an Other. Look out, Widmore!).

But I digress.
Follow the Leader was an episode without flashbacks, which are pretty well my favourite kind. The story featured 4 primary arcs - Jack's retarded quest to detonate a hydrogen bomb, Sawyer getting the Jack Bauer treatment from Radzinsky, Hurley and company planning their great escape (and spilling the beans to Chang), and finally, John Locke and his Other friends.

First things first: I was really glad that somebody was not on board with the whole "nuke the Swan" plan, even if that happened to be Kate. I fear that in Jack's brief stint as a janitor he may have inhaled a few of the chemicals. As happy as I was to hear Kate's dissent, I was even happier to see this:


Sayid has spent the last few days hanging out in the jungle waiting for someone to kill, apparently, and I believe that's all the explanation we are ever likely to get. Whatever. He's back, he's in black (I hated that purple shirt soooo much) and he's kickin' ass. He is also, unfortunately, lending his not inconsiderable talents to Team Jack and it's mad quest, which causes me no small amount of distress. But I think whereas Jack is talking out his ass and living out his ultimate 'Fixing Things' fantasy, Sayid has actually thought this through.
There's this wonderful little moment that occurs after he learns that his own plans to change the future were unravelled by none other than Kate, and before he says his wonderfully nuanced line: "Why did you do that?"
You can practically see the wheels turning inside his brain as he sees the timeline course-correcting. I believe Sayid is accompanying Jack precisely because he believes his plan will fail. I think Sayid just wants to see how.
Of course, it's equally plausible that his inability to change the future has given Sayid a bleak and nihilistic viewpoint, as evidenced by the line: "Well if this works you may just save us all. And if it doesn't, at least you'll put us out of our misery."
I'm betting the former, and let's hope I'm right because we left Jack, Sayid, Richard and Ellie standing in a tunnel before the bomb. Cue: Season Finale.
Meanwhile in Dharmaville, Sawyer spent much of the episode paying for his stupidity in the two previous ones; the capricious Gods of Lost deemed he would pay for his sins by being repeatedly punched in the face and it was so. What struck me about this scene was how Phil turned out to be so much more of a dick than Radzinsky. Phil, we've got a finale coming up here; it is not a wise time to be replacing Radzinsky as the most hated character on the show (remember Keamy?). Also, you shouldn't hit girls.
Sawyer made his deal with the Devil(s) and bought himself a ticket on the submarine. I guess I wasn't surprised to see Sawyer taken in by the whole 'sub scam', but shouldn't Juliet know better? The whole 'strike a bargain with fel powers in exchange for exit by sub' plan never works.
Also, and we will discover the validity of this statement very soon, but I still don't think that sub is how Dharma gets too and from the Island. Something very fishy about the sub. Just when James and Juliet appeared to be sailing off into an underwater sunset for their Happily Ever After, Kate came back and ruined everything. Cue season finale.
Miles, Hurley and Jin, meanwhile, were splitting back to the beach as was the original plan before Sawyer blew it. Hurley had some problems with this, which is so Hurley. Man, what's with that guy and caring about people? Claire last year and now Sawyer and Juliet? That kind of group minded thinking will never get him anywhere on Lost.
In addition to the hilarious exchange between Chang and Hurley, we also got to see Miles come to terms with his Daddy Issues. Seeing his father put him and his mother on the sub, realizing the lie he's labored under. "It's the only way he can get her to leave," he says, and you can hear the forgiveness, the understanding in his voice. Warning Miles: the episode before the season finale is not, repeat not the best time to resolve your issues. You're a dead man, dude.
This episode was also great because we got so much Richard Alpert. We got Richard in the past with Team Jack, and we also got Richard in the present with Team Locke. In fact, if this episode was 'centric' to anyone, it was Richard Alpert. By far the coolest bit here was the re-play of the Richard & Locke scene from 'Because you Left'. Just the way this story folds back on itself sometimes is just so brilliant. Also, we recieved a little (very little) bit of clarification regarding Richard's status with the Others. He's a kind of... advisor. Which, of course, tells us nothing that we couldn't already have surmised. The real question is, why? Why all these puppet regimes? Why wield power from behind the throne? I find it hard to believe that it's because he doesn't believe in himself. At no point have we seen Richard Alpert suffering from any sort of self-esteem issues.
No doubt this is another one of the 'rules' of Lost; one that can't be broken. If we were to run with my own half-baked purgatory/rebel angels theory, it would make sense that Richard can only influence, he can't overtly lead people into damnation or salvation.
It was interesting to see the lengths that John was willing to go to protect the time line. Again, he and Jack are on the opposite ends of the spectrum here. While Jack is trying to undo the past 3 years, Locke goes out of his way to prevent paradox. He tells Richard to tell his past self to bring everybody back to the Island; though he will later admit to Ben that he has no interest in helping his friends. He's playing for bigger stakes now, and truth be told, he has been since as far back as 'the Brig', when he told Sawyer he was on his own path.
Only now, he's got a whole bunch of people following him, the Leader.



Next week: the Death of Jacob, the Bomb drops and Lost is gone forever.
Can't wait.

The Variable Wtf?

Lost's 100th episode. Our first Faraday flashback. The mirror episode of this series' best so far: the Constant.
It's safe to say that my expectations were running high, and unreasonably so. Quite possibly nothing short of the the next Citizen Kane would have satisfied me.
That being so, could they not even have tried?
Okay, I get that we're in one of the building episodes to the finale and that a lot of cool shit must needs be set up here. And sometimes set-up isn't the most gripping stuff ever. But. Still.
We'll just put aside the fact for now that Daniel has joined those who 'Eat chocolate before Dinner in the Sky'; this episode featured a lot of characters, some who are smart, some who are Jack, acting in unbelievably stupid ways. Daniel grabs a sub from Michigan with a notebook of equations and his head all full of Nuclear Detonation dreams (wtf?!??!). His first order of business then, of course, is to barge over to Jack's house in the middle of the night. I understand that Dan's out of the loop and not aware that Jack's been demoted to janitor, but what I do not understand is the exchange that happens next.
After demanding how Jack got back and who sent him and learning, as best as he was going to anyway, the answers he says:
"You don't belong here at all, Jack. She was wrong." Cue spooky music.
Now, unless Dan hates Jack as much as I do, it's difficult to see just what exactly he's talking about, especially in context with the rest of the episode. He could be referring to his plan to prevent the Incident and 815's crash, but considering this is more or less his plan come to fruition (started way back when he sought out Desmond in the season premier) he seems less than impressed.
After the teaser comes our first flashback, and I was right and it is Daniel and, damn!, can that kid ever play piano! However, his evil murderous of a mother is more interested that he can keep exact count of the metronome ticks while he plays (which I admit is super-cool), rather than his playing itself. She takes some liberties with the definition of the word 'Destiny' and more or less begins her long and cold pre-meditated murder.
Seen in retrospect, this scene gives me chills. Mrs. Hawking gives me chills. Creepy bitch.
Anyways. After barging in, waking Jack up, Miles feels the pull of the writers pen. He has no time to explain, he says. The writers need him over at the Orchid, stat! Something about an obligatory scene from the season premiere.
I mean, the whole thing just felt awkward. Miles is the driver because... I don't know. Circle of trust? All Dharma security guards are also drivers? Actually, as obsessive as Dharma is about giving everybody One Task to do (and stitching it on the overalls), I find it dubious that they don't have Designated Drivers. Miles is along for the ride because he was meant to be, Mrs Hawking would tell us. Miles is there because his name was on the script.
The awkwardness continues at the Orchid, where Daniel, racing the clock as we later learn, walks past Chang to have his brief aside with the foreman. ('Time travel. How stupid does that guy think we are?')
WHY does he walk past Chang? Oh Lords of Kobol, tell me why??!!!!
Whatever they wrote, happened.
I am out of time, having put this recap off again until -literally- the last moment. In 6 minutes it's 'Follow the Leader'; an episode I have seen naught but the trailer for; an episode which is the penultimate this fine, fine season.
The Variable was balls though.
Lost is a drug so I love it while it's happening. But sometimes the skag is better than others. Sometimes, you go to Thailand.
Sometimes, very smart characters are written stupidly.
Chaos ensues.

Better Living through Star Wars metaphors: Some Like it Hoth recap

Some like it Hoth-some is more like it; just prior to an agonizing 2 week break (now nearly over, thank God) the writers got down to giving us our first full blown flashback episode on one of the 'Freighties' - introduced way back in Season 4 before we started skipping through time like a stone. I've been waiting for one of these, and the only thing that kept me from having a hernia that it was not a Faraday flashback, was the fact that I'm pretty sure his will be next week. We'll see. Fingers crossed. The very fact that, as of the last scene of this episode, our man Faraday is back (in black) makes it at least a possibility that Wednesday's 'The Variable' (the opposite of a Constant, if you will) will be Faraday-centric. And it looks like he's forgotten all about what's-her-face with the red hair and accent and such, so that bodes well.
Anyways, this was not Daniel's story, this was Miles Straume's time in the limelight and to be truthful, the new kid held up pretty well. In standard, old school, flashback style we saw the child, the angry youth and the circumstances which brought him to the island. We saw the daddy angst which set up the most awkward time travel scene yet:


"How awesome would that be?"

In the present, the longest day ever continued, as Roger returned from his bullshit errand to discover Ben missing, and Juliet, in very un-Juliet fashion was fresh out of lies. In fact, both our Betty and Veronica of deceit were in the room and came up dry. It would fall to Jack then to make things much, much worse for all.
Sawyer also spent the episode more-or-less making a mess of things, and the fact that we leave him tying up his employee pretty much makes it curtains for his and Juliet's cozy life in Dharmaville.
Jin was absent this episode, ditto Sayid, same for Rose and Bernard and... oh, who the hell cares anymore? Let's just say the Smoke Monster ate Rose and Bernard and move on (My crackpot theory of the week: their Others, now).
The rest of the action then, belonged to Miles and Hurley who have become yet another comedic team this season. Actually, pretty much anyone Hurley pals around with becomes funnier by virtue of his Care Bear stare, as we saw last season when he teamed up with Locke and Ben.
Hurley would give us the title of this episode, with his re-writing of the Empire Strikes Back. His efforts here represent in microscosm, the struggle going right now in Lost, the battle for it's very heart and soul - can the future be changed or can't it?
If it can't then Hurley's efforts are in vain. Even if he writes it, changes and all, the same movie will get made. It's just the way it always happened. But if the future can be changed, then his plan is not only feasible, but admirable. Because Ewoks do suck.
But whether it's feasible or not -and I think that more and more we must accept that it is- it is so very Hurley.
'Make your own luck' was the lesson he learned (and learned well) from his own father. Making your own luck does not sound deterministic at all. Making your own luck would get right in the face of Whatever Happened, Happened and it is we, the viewers who will reap the benefits of the spectacle to come.
What was most interesting about their cross-island adventures was the glimpse of the massive Swan construction site. We've progressed way past the model making stage seen a few episodes previous; the Swan is now a sprawling excavation crawling with men (but not any men with fillings, we can presume). Of course, the question which leaps to mind is, what do the Others make of all this? I mean, for all we know they've been there since the Fall of Lucifer, and they know their territory pretty well. Also, being as all this construction is going down in Widmore's time, you just know he's gonna be pissy about it. How long until we see the ramifications of breaking The Truce?
And finally, we got a ret-con on Miles's powers; despite what his mini flashback in 'Confirmed Dead' would have us believe, he doesn't actually talk to dead people, nor they to him. Instead their entire lives become an open book for him to read. Or something. This is in direct contrast to Hurley's power ('cooler' or not; 'power' or hallucination), wherein he is able to see his old friends and communicate with them. They help him out of jam's (Ana Lucia) and give him direction (Charlie).
Yet another interesting dichotomy on Lost. I love the writers.
Our last flash of Miles had him waylaid by none other than Iliana's henchmen, Bram. Here our show of mysteries may have given us our most compelling yet. What does lie in the shadow of the statue? Who the hell are these Shadow/Statue people? We may have to wait until the following episode "Follow the Leader" to find that out.
My guess with all the info we've been given thus far is that they represent some kind of reconstituted Dharma Initiative, perhaps a splinter cell of the Ann Arbor folk. What I don't know is where Widmore falls into this. Could they represent his people as well? We did see a brief flash of a Dharma logo on Keamy's secondary protocols in Season 4; perhaps Widmore, desperate to get back, to get Ben, has struck up an alliance with his former adversaries. The Enemy of my Enemy and all that.
As I finish this, it is 45 minutes until 'The Variable' airs. Way to wait until the very last minute, Jer.

Dead is the new Living

Alas, Caesar, we barely knew ye.
And yet, in the short time that you were with us, parading your thickly accented machismo cool across Alcatraz Island, you were the greatest threat to my heterosexuality since I saw Sayid kill a man with his bare feet (or the time I saw him kill a man with a dishwasher with 2 tranquilizer darts sticking out of him: that was pretty hot).
Don’t get me wrong, the scars have not quite yet healed from the Nikki and Paulo debacle; I scrutinize every single noob on this show for signs of weakness and (more importantly) lameness. For instance I was already coming down hard on Iliana for being able to best Our Man Sayid (drunk or not), or for having what my sister accurately describes as a funny-looking face.
And while I must say newcomer Iliana made herself a whole lot cooler by staging a little coup de tat and posing her own riddle of the sphinx, I never had the slightest doubts about Caesar. I knew from the second he was squirreling away a gun in the Hydra station that this guy was the Business and then Henry Gale had to go and kill him with the very gun that made him cool in the first place.
Sorry, Benjamin Linus. Slip of the tongue.
And yet, upon watching Ben and Caesar’s initial interaction on the beach I was very much reminded of Henry Gale’s initial deceptions to our very own Lostaways. Let’s face it, there’s not one of them that would have been fooled by the nervous, high-pitched but somehow disarming laugh which Ben gives here. And Caesar, had he lived, would not have been fooled again either… my friend.
A quote:

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.
-Julius Caesar

And another:

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.
-Julius Caesar

So Iliana proved to be a most valued addition to Team Lost this week, and I believe she gave us our best WTF moment in an episode that certainly had no shortage of those.
‘What Lies In The Shadow Of The Statue?’, has ‘Smells Like Carrots’ written all over it – meaning that those Dharma folk sure do love their riddles and passwords and what-not. Meaning that we can pretty much assume this chick works for Widmore and that her presence signifies the beginning of our Island War. My biggest pet-peeve is that it’ll probably be a few episodes before they come back to this; meaning a few episodes before we get to know what’s in the big metal crate.
What I found most suspicious about Iliana’s coup was the timing. Not until Caesar is shot dead does Iliana make her move. It could be a coincidence. But it’s a weird coincidence.
Next up is the part where I bitch about the ABC promo department. The preview to this episode clearly showed Jack and Kate and Dharmaville folk, whereas they were not to be seen in this episode.
That’s false advertising, people!
Okay, moving on (and really, I’m racing to get this done because tonite is the night) ‘Dead is Dead’ was our third Ben flashback, after Season 3’s ‘Man Behind the Curtain’ and Season 4’s “Shape of Things To Come’, and I must admit, I found the flashbacks, for the most part, underwhelming.
The story of Lost resembles, to my literary eyes, a horribly mutilated bleeding body and now we are seeing those wounds being plugged up with plot.
Flashback 1, Widmore and Ben meet, flashback 2 Ben and Rosseau meet, Flashback 3…
First off, about the second flash, that Ethan is fucking creepy. No wonder when Ben needed someone to kidnap a pregnant girl he fell upon this particular specimen. Proper tool for the job and all that, and Ethan clearly displays a very blood-thisty, un-doctorly attitude in this flash.
Next up, of course, our mighty hunters return and here we have the first significant face-off between the leaders of the Others.
I, for one, was pleasantly surprised at this twist; you could just tell from Richard’s expression at the end of the exchange that the power had just shifted, and it was a baby that brought down the Widmore regime.
Another thing to note is that if you accept that (as per The Shape of Things to Come) the War to come is between Widmore and Ben, this scene gives us a clearer indication of just who we should be cheering for: as bad as Ben may be, he never once sent another to kill a child.
Flashback the fourth takes place after the purge and we see the end-result of this baby-stand-off. Widmore gets the others equivalent of a gold watch – handcuffs and an armed escort off the Island.
I gotta side with mine fellow recappers who said that they expected Widmore to have turned the Frozen Donkey Wheel. I expected something a bit more dramatic.
Also, and I know I’m quibbling here, but Widmore’s little speech seemed a little weak to me.
“And one day, you’ll be the one standing where I am, you’ll be the one being banished.”
This is the downside to non-linear story-telling; the entire tension of this scene is diffused by our own knowledge of future events. Of course we know that there is something to Widmore’s prophecy, just as we know that the writers know. It saps the speech of it’s power.
I will say one thing in regard to all these Widmore flashbacks: they did a wonderful job of re-casting and then aging him. I can’t even tell when the actors switched.
Anyways, one last thing to take away from this flash is the fact that it’s post-purge. ‘Previously on Lost’ we had seen Ben deny responsibility for the Purge, though he did admit to making a decision that cost his people their lives. I think from this newest info we can infer that the Purge was Widmore’s call.
The next flashbacks tie up the loose plot thread started waaaaay back in 316 when we see a bloodied Ben calling Jack from a marina. This time, of course, we see him unbloodied and I honestly thought Penny was dead. I’d been predicting it the entire season since I thought it was the only way to get Desmond back to the Island.
However the writers still surprise me, and Penny was saved by a curious anomaly in Ben’s character: that man has a soft spot for kids.
Little Charlie Hume saves the day and becomes the central focus for my kooky Lost theory of the week.
More on that later.
The meat of ‘Dead is dead’ of course, came from the journey of Ben towards Judgement, and the return of John Locke to ‘the land of the living’. Now, it’s worth pointing out here, that I haven’t been this creeped out by John before, ever. He reminds me, much as I hate to say it, of Christian Shepard.
Most important to take away from these things, I think, is the balance of power, shifted now in Locke’s favour.
Ben’s been gone awhile, seemingly, and his Island has moved on –literally- without him. He doesn’t know who Christian is, he’s genuinely surprised to Kate and Hurley and so forth in that Dharma picture. He doesn’t know where to find the smoke monster, but, John Locke does.
John leads them deep into the Dark Territory, to where Montand lost his arm, and tells Ben he must go under. But of course. Where else does one go to be judged but the underworld?
Though Cerberus (thought to be a code word for the monster) comes from greek mythology, it is the Egyptisan’s who rule this temple. Note the picture of Anubis facing down a ‘smoke-monster-like-creature’.


Anubis, of course, was the eater of souls; the one who devoured those who had been judged and found wanting (My Egyptology is a bit weak and I can’t recall what happens to those whose hearts are lighter than the feather they are weighed against. Can we assume from this that they get bossed around and abused by their dead daughters?).
Here we get a very potent and powerful Smokey appearance, as well as another top-notch performance from Michael Emerson.
Judgement is passed and I think by the time this is all over, Ben will have wished he had simply died.
His voice is mournful and haunted as he accepts the rope from John – the man he must now follow and obey- and he laments, “It let me live.”
As we leave John and Ben and Sun, presumably for a few episodes, as we bid farewell to Frank and Iliana and Great Caesar’s Ghost, a few thoughts linger.
First, John told Sun he “has some ideas” about how to find Jin and the others, but first they had to escort Ben to his rendezvouz. So presumably, that’s next.
I expect a monkey wrench to this plan will prove to be Iliana and Co., whom we can assume now will end up chasing Sawyer and Juliet and the others in the scene from early on in the season.
Since our merry time-traveling band found the boats at the site of their old camp, we can also assume that Iliana and her posse will end up there. The plot thickens.
Meanwhile, in my kooky, half-cocked theory of the week I am now convinced that Penny and Desmond will end up being Adam and Eve and that little Charlie Hume will grow up to be Charles Widmore.
But how?
Well, if you accept the fact that that Desmond will somehow return to the island, the fact that his wife and child are still alive at least allow the possibility that they will come back with them. And since we know that the Island is a wacky place for time, we can also allow that some unknown series of events could lead to them crashing on the Island in the distant past. Like, statue days. Like, the days of the Zombie Queen Charlotte.
So follow me a bit futher. The nuclear family crashes and somehow, Penny and Desmond die (very sad). They get buried in the cave with a pair of stones (perhaps to stop the Island from re-animating their bodies) and Little Charlie is left to join the Island’s native inhabitants. We’ll further assume that he blames his father for what happened and so rejects his name, instead taking his mother’s last name – Widmore.
It’s full of holes, I know, but hey, that’s what flashbacks are for. They’re to plug up the holes and stem the tide of story blood.
You wait. You’ll see.
In closing, the episode ‘Dead is Dead’ leaves it up in the air as to whether that is actually the case. We have already seen numerous examples of how dead may not actually be dead, but none so potent as the symbol of a resurrected, reinvigorated John Locke.

Ben: You don’t have the first idea what this Island wants.
John: Are you sure about that?

dammit I suck.

It's been almost 2 weeks since I posted a recap, and I must admit, it's part laziness, part insecurity.
For the record, there a lot of great recappers out there already. This is not the place to come to read great re-caps, which nobody does, so it's fine that I felt too embarrassed to post last weeks recap; or to even attempt one this week.
Better late than never, as they say.
(For the record, 'Better Late Than Never' will be the title of an episode in season 6. I forsee it. And, so long as I'm prophesying here, I fortell that it shall be a Claire flashback, if only 'cause I think that would be really sweet. Does anyone else besides me care that Emile de Ravin must work in order to eat?)

Anyway, my thoughts on Whatever happened, Happened; followed (as soon as I write them) by my thoughts on Dead is Dead:

What the Hell Happened, Happened.

I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but Best Episode Ever.
And then I’ll go onto say something like “okay, so it wasn’t the Best…” (which is still the Constant, really), and this time around is no different. Whatever happened, happened, man. The Constant was the best episode ever before, and it still is.
Whatever Happened, Happened was the best Kate-centric episode ever, however, and it turned enough gears and pulleys of the plot wheel to keep this monster of a story lurching onto it’s inexorable conclusion.
This episode had a lot of ‘twists’ in it, but what I enjoyed the most was that they weren’t gimmicky in the slightest; they revolved around old, familiar characters acting in new and unexpected ways.
Jack as a man of faith, but also using a powerfully consise and reasonable argument for why he wouldn’t save the life of Little Ben.
Sawyer helping Kate for Juliet’s sake was a nice touch also but of course, the true kudos this episode was (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) Kate herself. Evangaline Lily pulls out all the stops, Michael Giachinno backs her up on the music front and for a change, the writers don’t completely undermine the character of Kate.
We see her make selfless, difficult decisions after painful soul-searching; we literally see the character grow before our eyes.
She didn’t come back to the Island for Sawyer. Not really. She came back for Claire.
When I heard that I almost balled in my relief. Finaly somebody cares about Claire!
Also, and is it just me, or does Kate’s excuse for ‘the Lie’ seems pretty flimsy when going up against a deprived grandmother’s rage? There was no mention of ‘protecting’ anybody in that scene. The truth was stark and cold and… a bit a lame, really.
We left them.
This episode played like a symphony, although I’ll be honest, Cassidy sucks my ass. Never has a woman appeared less impressed to receive a giant envelope of money in my memory.
One other thing that really a struck a false chord…
“He’s not going to remember any of this.”
Are the writers seriously going to cop out on us here? Because to be perfectly honest, I saw no problem with Ben remembering everything – it added a ‘Holy Fuck’ element for later viewing: You could watch “One of Them’ again and get chills knowing that ‘Henry Gale’ has come face to face at last with the man who shot him as a boy.
It made sense also, in that Ben has always shown a prescient side.
But no.
Whatever else he’s getting out of his deal with the Devil in the temple, it is like drinking from the River Styx. No memory.

Little Ben is Dead(!) and I don’t feel so good myself -thoughts on Lost 'He's our You'

The entire time I was like, they’re not going to do it, they’re not gonna do it- Bang.
I haven’t been this shocked by a death since Alex last season, and that was just tragic and sad (and possibly poignant? More to follow). The death of Little Ben was both tragic and sad, but with a whole whack of temporal paradox mindfuck thrown in for good measure.
Like, if Little Ben is dead, then we no longer have a show. Our entire show just came undone. Way to go, Sayid.
But, as we have been told, there are rules; whatever happened, happened.
Dead is dead.
And, up until now, we’ve been able to go along with that. But the rules themselves are at contradiction with each other now. The world of Whatever happened, happened cannot exist now within the world of Dead is dead.
How they resolve this incongruity will decide the course of the rest of the show.
I’m so stoked. That was the best episode ever. Little Ben is dead.
Is Ben ever going to be pissed about this.

Of course, it wasn’t the best episode ever. For instance, I for one, am going to go thumbs down on the flashback/forward things. I mean, yes, it was cool to see a little Sayid who, like erstwhile Eko always had a bit of the bad ass in him, and yes, we always assumed we’d see how they came to be on 316 in flashback. I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be so… mundane. This new girl is not interesting and her face is funny and I’d like her to go away now please. Thank-you.
Caesar interests me a little more, what with his get up and go to check out Hydra Station and score a hidden firearm.
And yet I can appreciate how having Caesar seduce and detain Sayid is not the sort of twist Lost writers are going for this late in the game. So I’ll just back off on this. We had to explain how Sayid got in handcuffs and now we have. Fantastic. Fortunately, in the glorious present day of 1977, things were a lot more … I want to say awesome. I want so say intense. I want to say the word that’s the intellectual equivalent of an orgasm but there isn’t one; I want to pound on the keys of my keyboard as hard as I can because that’s just how unbelievably great everything else was.
The return of Roger Workman. The Carlos Castaneda nod. Olden (?) and his wondrous sugar cubes.
This guy deserves his own aside because he’s my favorite Dharma to date, and because he’s the ‘He’ of the ‘He’s our You’. Now aside from the fact that he appears to be a torturer, he doesn’t actually seem to do anything worse than tie his prisoner’s to a tree and dose them with acid. And the fact that he listens to a gramophone and lives in a teepee just warms my heart.
Did anyone get a chance to read his job title off his uniform? Does anyone have a screencap of that? Because I want that job.
The scene where Sayid is tied to that tree and tripping shall go down as one of my favourites of the series. Comparable to the scene where Hurley spills the beans in ‘the Lie’, it had a whole whack of temporal paradox mindfuck barely averted by the fact that –unlike Hurley’s mother- they didn’t believe him.
I still believe that Radzinsky now possesses many of the pieces of puzzle; namely that Jin was freaking out about a plane moments before Sayid was found within the perimeter; Sayid, who then claimed to have arrived on an airplane.
Not that anything like this could possibly matter anymore, now that Little Ben is dead and we don’t have a show.
Can’t wait til next week.

Oh yeah, I can’t believe I almost forgot to go into the whole ‘death of Alex/death of Little Ben’ connection. Aside from being the two most shocking deaths on the series thus far, I think we can see now just how messed up ‘changing the rules’ is going to make us. That was the point where things began to diverge.
“Haven’t I told you John? I always have a plan.”
So sayeth Ben in ‘There’s No Place Like Home.’
Well, he’d better have a really good plan, now.

My quick and dirty theory as to how disaster could be averted: okay, well, I don’t really have one. But we know the Island is a pretty funky temporal place, a place where miracles happen. So either the Island will protect future Ben from the changes in the timeline long enough for him to … I really have no idea what he could do here, actually, but he’d do something badass… Or, we will see a scene wherein Little Ben meets his Mom and she says words to the effect of: “Get up Ben. You have work to do.”