Hard to make a bad Benjamin Linus episode. Let’s discuss after the jump.
Let’s just be totally honest. People are supposed to identify with Jack or Sawyer. They are nominally the heroes. But, you can bet there are plenty of people out there like me, who identify with Ben. And what a kick in the pants to see, what many of us fear deep down inside: We may want to be the over-educated Machiavellian manipulator, with the clever quips of a Bond villain. But, we know that, after all is sad and done, we’re more like Flash Sideways Ben: a sad, lonely little man who is more Shylock than Iago.
Flash Sideways Ben seems like a nice enough guy: taking care of his ailing father (giving him oxygen instead of nerve gas to breathe), concerned about his students (although there was a creepy vibe between Ben and not-daughter Alex Rousseau). But, life doesn’t treat people like Ben very well. His planned cout blew up in his face and you have to wonder, did Alex manipulate the whole plan? Poor Ben.
Island Ben didn’t fare much better. First, it looked like Ilana was fixin’ to have a necktie party with Ben as the guest of honor. But, instead, she just made him dig what would be his own grave? As my friend Matt says, just pretend Ilana is really Ana-Lucia and it’s even more fun. Did we really see Ben have a babyface turn there at the end of the episode? Could his salvation really be the key to the series? Was MIB being square with Ben about being the island’s protector after he and his heel faction leave?
If there’s one flaw with Lost the TV show, it’s that annoying thing where guest stars have to be listed in the opening credits. Don’t you wish they could not reveal them, so we didn’t know that Widmore would be making his return to the show tonight? Conversely, anyone frustrated that Henry Ian Cusick is in the credits every week, yet we’ve only about 3 minutes of Desmond this season?
Don’t you wish Miles had been around since the beginning of the show? Could he have used his “ghost whisperer” powers on the Adam and Eve skeletons in season one? And the callback to Nikki and Paolo was great. I wonder if Sawyer would have gone looking for the diamonds later and wondered who stole them from the graves?
I hate to bury this amazing comment, but it’s true: I like new Jack. Let’s hope he doesn’t turn out to be New Coke. And please, stop teasing and give us the Richard Alpert flashback already. And who else expected to see Ghost Jacob show up in the Black Rock after all the bad mouthing he was taking from Richard?
We already knew that the Island wouldn’t let people kill themselves. We saw that with Michael and maybe with Hurley during his car chase. And why does the Island let some people die (Michael, Boone, Charlie) and have others end up like Sayid and Claire?
It seemed fitting to see William Atherton show up on TV this week, just a few days after the great tribute to John Hughes at the Academy Awards.
Shame on me for devolving into tabloid gossipy tidbits, but I couldn’t be the only one thinking, everything that Alex was on screen tonight, “Jeff Goldblum? Really?”
All in all, best episode of the season so far probably. Mail Michael Emerson his Emmy already, thank you.
Hey, that’s the longest Palindrome I know! Cannibals! Come up with a new one! That was printed in Celtic dictionaries hundreds of years ago.
Come on guys, this isn’t hip hop and we’re not doing the soundtrack to Godzilla.
Have you tried simply *not reading* the credits? It’s not as if they display them against a blank background and read the names aloud…. there’s a scene happening. Watch it.
Jerry Hathaway’s counter to Ben’s blackmail attempt made no sense. OK, so now that Alex HAS her scholarship, what’s to stop Ben from going through with it?
I’d have to disagree. It wasn’t a bad episode, but it certainly wasn’t great. The Flash sideways was interesting, but I think we’ve got the idea now that everyone’s life, except maybe Sayid, is better sideways (with the irony that Locke and Ben don’t realise it).
The on island stuff continued the frustrating “Juliet” syndrome. Richard, Ilyana and supposedly Ben are now allied with Jack and company. Why, when they have nothing to lose now, aren’t they spilling their guts about what they know (which is more than most of us).
It was decent enough, but with the clock winding down on the series, this episode could have accomplished a lot more.
Jeff Goldbloom?
Here’s something from the credits you missed: directed by Mario Van Peebles!
Next week’s a Sawyer episode but in two weeks (23rd) is a Richard episode! So we’re finally going to get his backstory.
I thought the whole “if you blackmail me I’ll trash Alex” was WAY too convenient! Did I miss something there? I mean, HOW did the principal even know to play that card? Did he just randomly pick an email, or did he know Ben and Alex had a connection? I think maybe they missed out on showing just how close the two were; platonically, I mean.
But then again, perhaps I just missed what was really going on?
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
No, sir, away! A papaya war is on!
…
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/02/demetri-martins-palindrome-poem.html
“I mean, HOW did the principal even know to play that card? Did he just randomly pick an email, or did he know Ben and Alex had a connection? I think maybe they missed out on showing just how close the two were; platonically, I mean.”
While not made explicit in the episode, I think that from the early conversation about cancelling the history club so Linus could supervise detention, it’s easy enough to accept that the principal knew that Dr. Linus was exceptionally devoted to his students and would be persuaded by anything that would hurt them, and that Alex was one of his most promising/favorite students from that club.
But still, yes, it does seem that once Alex is accepted to college, there would be nothing to stop Dr. Linus from re-staging his coup, unless the principal continued to threaten Linus’s best students, of course…
I liked the talk between Linus & Dad about the Dharma Initiative. Since we saw the island sunk underwater in the first ep, I’ve been kinda wondering how (and when) that was supposed to have happened in the “flash-sideways” universe.
Reading perhaps a little too much in that wasn’t there, I presumed that there was a detente between Ben and the Principal; hence Ben’s ability to demand re-scheduling on the spot for the after school History Club. The Principal must have believed that Ben was a man of his word (which in this reality he seemed to be), and accepted a figurative hand shake agreement.
Ben’s “because nobody else will have me” breakdown and Ilana’s reaction was the most heartbreaking moment in this series outside a Desmond/Penny episode.
Also, Richard did spill his guts. His crisis of faith said buckets about Jacob, as did Ilana’s unconditional forgiveness of Ben.
yes the ilana ben moment was tops
Why read the opening credits? I don’t even notice them when the show is starting.
For some reason, I find the credits difficult not to read, mostly because they go on so long that it’s tough to know when I can stop avoiding that part of the screen.
So I actually hold my hand up over the screen when they start up. It helps with the surprises.
Well I think we know what’s going to be on Michael Emerson’s Emmy reel this year:
http://abc.go.com/watch/clip/lost/SH006723620000/165261/253530
Ben has become the most compelling character on the show for many, and with good reason.
Also, unless the writers for the “enhanced”(pop up) repeats that precede each new episode are either not supervised or are deliberately misleading viewers, NotLocke and MIB have been officially identified as “bad” and the “wrong side.”
My only gripe is that I found it very difficult to imagine a scenario that would have placed Alex in the U.S. at the same school as Linus in this time-line. A forgivable contrivance, but still.
Last night was the first time I consciously sat and watch the pop-up episode.
It’s so funny that they explain every little thing, as if someone was watching the show for the first time at this point. “Jin was a survivor of flight 815 and doesn’t speak English.”
“My only gripe is that I found it very difficult to imagine a scenario that would have placed Alex in the U.S. at the same school as Linus in this time-line. A forgivable contrivance, but still.”
Yeah, but to some extent, this show has always been rife with those sorts of character-interaction-coincidencies all gussied up as Fate.
For what it’s worth, if I understand the timelines right, in the “real” timeline, Rosseau’s team didn’t come to the island, where Alex would ultimately be born, until the late 1980s. If in the alternate timeline, the island sank before then–in the 1977 “incident” or before–then it’s very possible that Danielle and Alex Rosseau’s lives would be very, very different. Different enough for Alex to be attending school in the U.S. may be a stretch, but it’s not the most imagination-stretching this show has asked of viewers
@ HABE, didn’t the flash-sideways reboot initiate in 1977, well before Alex was even born? If that’s the case, the events of her birth and everything thereafter were a clean slate from what we saw before.
Jake sez: “…didn’t the flash-sideways reboot initiate in 1977…”
FWIW, because some of the differences in the flash-sideways timeline seem to originate from before 1977, there are those who theorize that the divergence point between the “real” timeline and the “sideways” timeline, might not be the 1977 incident but rather something else…
Another of those fun LOST mysteries…
The flash-sideways is no more fate than the stuff on the island. They’re just events being manipulated by different entities. Over at the Pop Candy blog at USA Today, the theory is that the sideways flashes are what life would be like if each of the main characters sided with MIB. It’s sort of a monkey’s paw, where the greatest desire of the primary character is granted, but with a cost that makes that wish meaningless.
Kate: Claire has Aaron, but she still wants to give him up.
Sayid: Nadia is alive, but married to his brother.
Locke: Is getting married, but still in a wheelchair and a loser.
Ben: Alex is alive, but she’s not his daughter and he’s stuck in a job he hates.
Jack: … I admit I haven’t figured Jack out yet.
David Hackett : I see it completely different, apart from Hurley it is clear to me that all the other characters lives are worse in the sideways episodes. Sure they arent in mortal danger every week, but the theme seems to be that they are all lacking something, something is missing in their lives they dont know what it is, just that it makes them miserable
Ever since Todd Alcott started posting his analysis of A Serious Man, I can’t help but look at the Flashes sideways in that light. Either the characters are being tested by “Hashem/Jacob”… or they’re not. Regardless of how literal the good/evil breakdown turns out to be in Lost, I love the way this season is forcing each character, removed from the context of monsters, polar bears and Others, to come to terms with the question “am I a good man?”
Jake, I like the Hashem analysis!
Everything about the school storyline that wasn’t emotional was incredibly phony — uh you can’t just get a teacher to be a principal — but getting to see Michael Emerson act like a whole different person was a treat.
I also enjoyed Mario Van Peebles direction — it was very different from the usual Lost look, very vivid and saturated and quick cut, but an interesting change.
Now that’s how you “redeem” a Bad Guy! Don’t know if it’ll hold up, but Ben NOT shooting Ilana in the back when he had a chance to, and joining the now-reunited LOSTies’ Team Jacob shows promise… if it’s not just another pointless character turnaround.
As for the LOST: For Dummies pop-up factoids: are Lindehof and Cruse behind these, or is it just ABC’s
re-run team? Its gotta be the latter, as those
‘clarifications’ describe the flash-sideways as ‘what would’ve happened if the 815ers landed instead of crashing’— when it’s obviously not: Hurley being lucky instead of cursed, Jack having a son, Locke marrying Teela, Nadia married to Sayid’s brother. Still have to see how side-Kate and side-Sawyer’s side-life pans out. (And still expecting the side-flash to Oswald Correctional Facility to see where side-Michael and side-Eko ended up…)
Darlton does not do the LOST For Dummies captions. They are not canon.
that’s why I suggested someone on staff should do them.
it seems stupid for ABC to stick them on the show if there is misinformation.
Since Jacob touched Linus when he was dying, he may be a secret candidate.
I think Heidi confused William Atherton (who played the dick teacher in Real Genius, a Martha Coolidge movie) with Jeffrey Jones who played the dick principal in Ferris Bueller (and also the bad guy in Howard the Duck).
I couldn’t find a Hughes credit for Atherton.
So much to explain with just a few episodes left, they’re going to jam a lot of stuff down our throats the upcoming weeks. Linus joining Team Jacob was as unexpected to me as Sayid joining Team Fake Locke.