The Shape Of Things To Come

LOST came back from the mini hiatus with a bang. With several actually. This episode we started to feel just how fast the writers are going to begin giving us answers. And before you even start I know that while they are giving us some answers they are also giving us more questions. Remember a few months ago when i told you that TPTB (the powers that be) on LOST said the smoke monster was going to be explained but it was not something that was going to be done in a fifteen minute scene? They didn't say they "couldn't" because they probably could. Why? Because they know it is one of the biggest mysteries on the list and they are not done with creating the entire mythology of the island and therefore since I believe Smokey is one of the oldest parts of the island myths we will continue to get more and more until we finally get the answers. Ben said he didn't know what it was, maybe that's not a lie. He certainly does know how to call it, but he doesn't know what it is is, exactly or how to control it. He then tells Locke that Jacob will answer all his questions. That part I have a harder time believing if the truth be told. Jacob, like Ben will only tell them what they need to know. Nothing more. Just like the writers won't tell us. Why? They need us to continue following the mystery. So with any mystery, lets start sifting some clues from this episode.



The future has become unknowable and unreliable — at least as far as the once great and powerful Oz of the Others, is concerned. ''He changed the rules,'' muttered Ben, his battered and bloodied face dawning with horrifying awareness. ''He'' is Charles Widmore, the man on the other side of the cosmic chessboard to which fate-whipped Ben is shackled. The whiskey-soused, nightmare-plagued billionaire Brit made a desperate, most unexpected move against Ben in his mad bid to gain (or is that regain?) that which was once his in the past, or (buckle up for this one, kids) that which was supposed to be his in the future. But did he really? I'm not convinced that Widmore gave the freighters orders to kill Alex. We heard Ben run down the list of Keamey's credentials. He might be one of the loosest cannons on the island yet. He was a good soldier and he doesn't have a problem with killing. Maybe too much. Either way, putting a bullet into the back of Alex's head surprised me a little bit. Before the episode I was told someone would die execution style with a bullet to the brain. But I was also told it wouldn't be who I thought it would be. Well, from the previews my first guess was that it was going to be Alex. So I figured according to my spoiler it therefore wouldn't be Alex. And then it was Alex. One of the reasons I haven't been posting many spoilers lately is many of them are either very vague very obvious or very wrong. Seems TPTB are doing a better job of keeping the spoilers lighter than they were last season.




Indiana Ben found himself lying in the middle of the Sahara wearing a parka with the name Halliwax on it. Let's take a look at that parka for a minute that might or might not have been borrowed from an arctic station populated by two Portuguese speaking guys playing chess. Halliwax is the name of the man in the Orchid station orientation video. He may or may not also be Wickman and Candle. So the question is either did Ben think he was going to the frigid climate or just come from it? If you watch the scene again you can see some quickly dissipating frost around. Or could it be something else like say ectoplasm material dissipating when you "jump" in say oh I don't know ... a time machine? He looks shocked and pained and immediately he pukes up the same orange gak Ethan made Juliet drink before she unknowingly slept through her own time jump. This tells us two things: Ben knew in advance he was going to make the trip, and that someone was probably trying to kill him as he made his escape. He also comes with a wound on his arm. Is that connected to the fake arm that we have seen on one of the twiners from the Wickman/Halliwax/Candle trilogy of doctors? We have to be looking at some sort of time bending teleportation hoo ha here at this point. That's where the Orchid station comes into play. The yet to be explored station, but soon will be, may have been used to conduct teleportation and/or time-travel experiments. Perhaps they were using polar bears as guinea pigs. We'll have to ask Charlotte about that one. I have never loved Ben more than I did this episode. He smirks, he lies, he manipulates… standard Ben fare, but then he startles us with facets of his persona we've never seen before: ass-kicking time mercenary, for one. "Oh, you do speak English?" I cheered at that line and I hope I wasn't the only one.




After dispatching two gun-toting Bedouins on horseback, Ben wearily trekked to Tunisia. Like Peter O'Toole walking out of the desert in Lawrence of Arabia, Ben walked into a hotel dusty and parched and checked in under his On the Road-inspired alias, Dean Moriarty. How often has Ben been here? He claimed that he was a ''preferred guest,'' and the clerk's nervous eyes confirmed that he was either an important client or a really notorious one. "Oh, no, not the guy who poops in the corner of the room instead of the toilet." She was also a little weirded out by Ben asking for the date. It was October 24, 2005. I can't resist noting that October 24 is Take Back Your Time Day, appropriate to this season's time-travel themes, and October 24, 1593, is the day in which a Spanish soldier named Gil Perez ''suddenly appeared'' in Mexico City, claiming that he had just teleported from the Philippines. As a good friend to this blog once said, "Believe it ... or not."




It's Better to have Loved and Lost than to Never have Loved at all … unless you're in love with Sayid Jarrah, because that guy is an absolute DEATH-MAGNET. Fresh from the island he's managed to find, marry, and get Nadia killed – all within less than a year. Not quite as fast as he did with Shannon or Elsa, but an impressive time nonetheless. What brought Ben to Iraq? Giving flash-forward Sayid his avenging-angel makeover. We discovered that early in his off-Island Oceanic 6 life, Sayid reunited with lost love Nadia and married her. Alas, shortly before the events of this episode, she was killed, and according to Ben, the murderer was an assassin in the employ of Charles Widmore. Ben's pursuit of this Widmore pawn was merely an elaborate setup designed to manipulate Sayid into wanting to become his dark-knight avenger — confirmation of and payoff to Sayid's cryptic assertion in the climactic twist ending to ''The Economist.'' But the revelation here is that both master and servant — the Darth Sidious and Darth Maul of Lost — are motivated by deep personal loss. With just a few scenes to execute this business in a busy-busy episode, Michael Emerson and Naveen Andrews did some really nice work selling us on everything we needed to know and feel about their angry, bloody alliance. (Coincidence or conspiracy? Bob Kane — creator of pop culture's most famous heartbreak-spawned dark knight, Batman — was born in 1915 on...October 24.) What was "the heart before the head" event that Ben referenced in "The Economist" when he bandaged up Sayid's gunshot wound after Sayid killed Elsa?
Recall this dialogue:

BEN: Why are you crying? Because it hurts? Or because you were stupid enough to care for her? These people don’t deserve our sympathies. Need I remind you what they did the last time you thought with your heart instead of your gun?
SAYID: You used that to recruit me into killing for you.
BEN: Do you want to protect your friends or not, Sayid? I have another name for you.
SAYID: But they know I’m after them now.
BEN: Good.

From what we now know of their first off-Island encounter, Ben didn't really recruit Sayid. Sayid jumped at the chance to work for Ben. So what were the two talking about above?

Here are three ideas:
1) Sayid later finds out that he played right into Ben's plan to get him to become an assassin.
2) Something happens to one of the Lostaways because of Sayid at a later point, and we don't know what it is yet.
3) All of the Oceanic Six were told to not contact people from their lives before the crash, in addition to being ordered to keep quiet about what really happened on the Island. Sayid broke one or both of those rules by seeking out and then marrying Nadia, and so whoever is behind the O6 cover-up had Nadia killed.
More so, what was the smirk on Ben's face after Sayid joins him? Was it just that once again a plan has come together or did Ben have Nadia killed? That may seem far fetched but it's LOST! It's a possibility but I am still holding out hope that in the end, Ben will be "one of the good guys.".





Back on the island we start to connect flash forward Ben with where his vendetta comes from. Widmore's freighter mercenaries stormed New Otherton determined to abduct their boss' nemesis. I liked the comedic touches: the high-stakes game of Risk. We see incredibly lucky Hurley loose a die roll (are these rules changing as well?). Up until now, the only person to beat him in a game has been Walt – perhaps the one person more akin to the island than anyone else. Hurley then goes on to mention that Australia's 'the key' to the whole game. Could LOST turn out to be just that - a giant game played between Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore, with everyone else acting as the pieces? Well guess what? It already is.




When you've got a secret monster cave under your secret room, you definitely need a code 14J. And if you're in need of a code 14J, you gotta get a phone with no numbers on it. You're also required to hide a snub-nosed pump shotgun in your piano bench. These things just go without saying. As Keamy's crew unleashed on the barracks, Sawyer continued to accumulate hero points by going back for Claire. Splattered in the blood of red-shirts (one who was even wearing a red shirt!), he once again pulled off some very unselfish maneuvers. Sawyer's star keeps rising, and he continues to have the best lines of dialogue in the whole show. "Let me guess... "14-J" ain't the code for the pizza boy." "You harm so much as one hair on his curly head... I'll kill you." And I for one, believe he would as he is the only bonafide "action hero" in the group.




Sawyer's foolish if successful play for Siberia foreshadowed Ben's mad and unsuccessful gambit to save Alex; the ringing phone (that no one ever saw before???) signaling the deactivation of the sonic fence ''I think it's for Ben''. Code 14J as opposed to code 14W which states more wine-in-a-box is gong to be air dropped by a Dharma plane. I was also amused to learn Ben was hiding a shotgun in his piano bench; so much for being under house arrest. The action was intense; lots of red shirts got wasted, while Claire's house was obliterated by a rocket, though Aaron's mama herself survived. Obvious she has more to do according to the island. ( A scene in which Claire experienced a hallucination/prophetic vision with Charlie was shot for this episode but cut for lack of running time, we can expect Claire intrigue to ramp up next week.) Perhaps my favorite scene of the hour was when the doorbell rang. It was played brilliantly, as everyone looked at each other with "Huh?" expressions and then scurried about trying to figure out what to do. And then there stood freakin' Miles. The only way to make if better was is Hurley had said "Who is it?" and Miles was to answer "Candygram" and of course Miles would have needed a land shark costume but c'mon how funny would that have been? Why did they make a point of telling Hurley to keep that baby away from the window? That's gotta mean something more than, well, keep the baby from the window.

End of part 1. In an effort to listen to some of my blog readers I am going to be breaking some of the episode chat into parts. I will post part 2 and a part 3 if needed later.