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?
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