Uncharted Island

Record players again. Who is this chick? Emily? Is that Locke’s mom? It is!

And he was born like three months premature. Was Emily crazy before she got hit by the car, or because of a traumatic brain jinury from the car accident? And man, those ’50s chicks sure knew how to hide a pregnancy!

And there’s a very alive ship doctor. And Keamy’s going rat hunting. Except… the Island really won’t let Michael die. But now they know he’s the mole. Uh oh.

On the Island, apparently ghosts can cut down trees. Horace’s ghost can, at least. “I’m not making any sense, am I? That’s probably because I’ve been dead for the past 12 years.” Horace’s ghost is chopping down trees and telling Locke that Jacob has been waiting for him for a really long time.

Oh, it was just a dream. I hate when that happens. I have a terrible habit of dreaming that I’m awake.

“I used to have dreams.” So it would appear that Ben is no longer having dreams.

Locke was the youngest premie to ever surprise in the hospital. And he survived a number of infections, including pneumonia. I had pneumonia when I was born, and I spent the first two weeks of my life in an incubator.

WHOA! In case you didn’t get it about Richard Alpert’s eternal youthfulness… he appears as a young man in a nice suit, hanging out outside the room where little baby John Locke’s incubator was. Richard Alpert has not aged since John Locke was a baby. And for how long before then?

More than that, Richard Alpert - representative for Mittelos Bioscience and DHARMA exterminator - knew that John Locke was special way back before he’d even left his little incubator. How many strings were pulled to steer him toward the day when he boarded Flight 815? Fate and destiny are funny things…

Young John Locke actually spoke with Richard, at an age where he should be able to remember it. And of course, John is playing backgammon. That kid looks familiar. I’ll have to IMDB him.

John drew Smokey when he was a kid?

“Which of these things belong to you?
“To keep?”
“No, John. Already.”

“Are you sure the knife belongs to you? It doesn’t.”

And because he took the knife, he wasn’t ready for Richard Alpert’s special school.

Ben says he really wasn’t “thinking clearly” when he shot Locke.

Locke found the blueprint to the cabin that Horace was building before he was gassed in the Purge. Jacob’s cabin?

Secondary protocol. It’s what Ben is doing. Widmore has his ways of knowing.

They’re going to torch the island, and there’s only one place Ben can go. The cabin? Protected by the circle of ash? Keamy seems to be the only one (other than Naomi, perhaps) who is okay with this whole torching the island business. The other guy thought he was on an extraction mission, and wants to help Sayid and Desmond stay alive. They’re going to ferry people off the island with a little boat?

“He actually thinks staying is his idea.”
“I’m not you.”
“You’re certainly not.”

Gawky teenage John Locke was stuffed in a locker. And way back then, Dr. Alpert from Mittelos Laboratories wanted to get him to go to “Science Camp” up near Portland. They’ve been trying to get their hands on him for a long time. Wow.

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” I believe we’ve heard that from Locke before!

Frank and Michael are teaming up. Michael told him that Keamy plans to kill everyone on the island, and, “You don’t want that on your conscience, man. Trust me.”

Desmond’s not going back to the island, not when Penny’s coming for him. I hope that decision doens’t get him killed before he can see Penny! We know that Sayid lives. We haven’t seen Desmond in a flash forward off the island, so we don’t have any guarantees of his safety. I have to say that I will be seriously ticked off if he dies before he can get back to Penny.

“Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch.” QUOTE OF THE NIGHT!

“Guys? Cabin.” Thanks, Hurley.

And now, here’s balding non-gray John Locke in physical therapy. And… Matthew Abaddon is wheeling him back to his room.And he’s the one who told him about the Walkabout.

“Oh, I’m a lot more than just an orderly, John.” Understatement of the year?

“When you and me run into each other again, you’ll owe me one.” Say what? I hardly think Locke would believe he owes Abaddon anything for that advice, even if it did help him to find his destiny.

So Keamy killed the doctor because Frank wouldn’t fly him in the plane. So we know how the doc died, now, we just don’t know how his body washed up on the beach while Keamy’s team was still on the island from the first trip.

What’s Frank going to do now? He doesn’t want Keamy to torch the island. Is he going to take a wrong heading or something?

Randomly back to the beach, with only five minutes left. Because the helicopter is coming. Who dropped the pack, Keamy or Frank?

Ben’s not going into the cabin. “My time is over.” And Hurley’s cool with Locke going in alone, too. LOL.

“Are you Jacob?”
“No, but I can speak on his behalf.”

And it’s Christian. But I could tell that before we saw his face.

And yes, Locke is there because he was chosen to be. And… Claire’s there. Is she… alive? Or dead?

“The baby’s where he’s supposed to be. And that’s not here.”

What’s the one question that does matter?

“How do I save the island?”

OMG, Claire’s totally dead.

And there’s Hurley sitting there with Ben, ripping into a candy bar. Ha! He gave him half! It’s almost like a Snickers commercial.

“He wants us to move the island.”

Huh wha…?

Okay, I don’t think time travel is as much fun as my own pet time theory, but I now have to seriously consider it.

When we saw Ben land on his back in the middle of the Sahara Desert in Tunisia, was it a flash forward? Or is that where he went when he ran back into his little panic room tunnel while his house was under siege from Captain Keamy and the Kahana crew?

If I recall correctly, there was no whoosh sound when Ben first appeared in the desert.

This would be very interesting for many reasons.

Ben asks the Tunisian hotel clerk for the date, including the year. It would seem that he’s used to showing up in unexpected places in the time/space continuum.

If Ben’s trip is in “real time” with the episode - at least partially, because I think we did get a whooshing sound later on, perhaps after he reappeared in the house? - this is very telling. Then he would know that Sayid lives and makes it off the island before October 24, 2005.

I made a flip remark about The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe while I was watching the episode, but the time compression seen in the Narnia trips could hold true for Ben’s little jaunts… If he stayed in Tunisia long enough to hear about (or orchestrate) Nadia’s murder, he could make a little stop in Tikrit to gain Sayid’s loyalty… and still be back in time for his little showdown with Captain Keamy, resulting in the preventable death of his pseudo-daughter Alex.

The only issue with this line of thought is his midnight visit to Charles Widmore at the end. Perhaps that was a separate trip and truly a flash forward?

Jack still has quite a store of medication left in that suitcase! I wonder if the drugs are still as effective after sitting out in the heat and direct sunlight for so long.

Vincent and Bernard have discovered the body of… is that the doctor from the Kahana? Okay, thanks for that Dan.

“We’re all gonna die.” Thanks, Hurley. LOL! They’re playing Risk. And Hurley plays like I play… Australia is definitely the key to the whole game.

1627? Is that the keycode to shut down the sonic fence?

The phone rang. Code 14J. The Others had a code for I have a gun to my head and someone’s making me turn the fence off? I guess it sounds cooler than tell my sister I love her. I guess it makes sense. After all, Ben did help orchestrate the systematic disposal of everyone in the Barracks once before.

Ben! In… the Sahara Desert. Lying on his back in a furry DHARMA jacket. Men with guns riding horses.

Wow. Ben’s a lot more badass than we thought. Concealed weapon, produced while at gunpoint, then takes out the guy on horseback with his partner’s machine gun. Just… wow.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Ben is chastising Locke and Sawyer for waiting to ask him about the phone.

The boat doc’s throat was slit. “When is a… relative term.” I don’t think I have that wording right. I was still typing up the bit about the phone call when Dan said it.

They’re barricading the house. Hurley has Aaron. Sawyer’s not getting in. Three Redshirts just bit the dust. Sawyer’s getting shot at while running along a white picket fence. (Don’t shoot Sawyer!)

Claire’s house just got blown up! No way… Commercial break. Claire can’t have that unceremonious of a death. Off-camera. I know something has to happen to her in order for Kate to end up raising Aaron back in the real world, but she at least deserves to die on camera.

And… here’s Ben in Tunisia. Although he’s Dean Moriarty, a preferred guest at whatever establishment this is. October 24, 2005. Is Ben like Hiro Nakamora?

Sayid was on the television. “I just want to bury my wife in peace.” So the timeline is a little less fuzzy now, but we still have more questions.

Okay, Sawyer has an injured but conscious Claire, asking for Charlie. They told Hurley not to open the door for him, so Hurley threw a chair through the window. I love the new, gutsier Hurley.

And Miles is out. With a radio. The Kahana folks want to talk. (I guess I’ll take to moment to admit it… Fine, I was wrong about Alex’s kidnapping being a Ben setup with the Others pulling the trigger. It is still possible that Ben is somehow pulling the strings to influence events, though.)

So Sayid did find Nadia, and married her, and now she’s dead. In Tikrit. On October 24, 2005. (I guess my theory about time as related to the ARG is completely whacked now, too.)

Who’s that guy that Ben’s snapping pictures of? Even as a pallbearer, Sayid knew Ben was there. Ben wants to help Sayid find the man who murdered Nadia. And he’s lying about how he got off the island, with Desmond’s boat. Desmond’s boat didn’t land him in the middle of the Sahara. And Nadia was murdered in Los Angeles.

Something Ben actually wasn’t prepared for. They have Alex as a hostage. Ben knows exactly who the captain is and what he’s capable of. Poor Alex. How in the world does Ben have this under control?

OMG, did he just kill Alex? ALEX? WHAT IS WITH ALL OF THIS DEATH?

“He changed the rules.” So Ben was pulling the strings. And now, with Alex dead because of him, he hopped into his little panic room and disappeared into some secret passageway that I can only assume is like the one from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.

Sayid got his revenge, killing that man. But was it the man who really killed Nadia? Or Ben’s little patsy? “Once you let your grief become anger, it will never go away. I speak from experience.” He makes himself sound almost human.

This is where Sayid starts working for Ben. “This is my war.” “Benjamin, who’s next?” Oh, what a creepy smile. It’s what Ben wanted all along. I wouldn’t doubt that the man was a patsy.

Smokey! Smokey with lightning! And I think that it’s… feasting on the Kahana boys.

And Alex is really dead. There’s no miraculous recovery scene here.

The scary thing? If we thought Ben was bad before… now he has nothing to lose.

Back at the beach. Dan’s tapping Morse code to the Kahana. Bernard knows Morse code. I knew someone would understand! “What are you talking about? The doctor is fine.” And they were never going to rescue the castaways. Big surprise. We can only wonder how that changes.

So Ben does control the smoke monster, and Jacob can tell Locke all about it, because Hurley knows where the cabin is.

Sawyer’s taking Claire and Aaron back to the beach, and Miles is going with them. Hurley wants to go to the beach, but Locke wants him to stay to guide them to Jacob’s cabin.

“You harm as much as just one curly hair on his head, I’ll kill you.” Aww Sawyer, we didn’t know you cared.

And… Ben knows the way anyways.

Now Ben’s in London. To see Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick in Room E. With his special secret weapon in hand.

“Wake up, Charles.”

This is the sound of jaws dropping on floors.

Ben is going after Penny. He wants to take her away from Charles Widmore the way his (stolen) daughter was taken away from him.

Charles Widmore says that the island is his, always was, and always will be. But he doesn’t know how to find it. How does that work?

I half-expected to hear them discuss how to kill Superman.

I’m agog that we actually got given so much information tonight.

It’s not just a Star Wars quote any more. Not that Karl has ever seen Star Wars before.

Karl was right. Ben was playing them. He sent Alex off to the Temple with the two people who are the biggest thread to his relationship with her - her mother and her boyfriend. He arranged for them to be not-so-tidily disposed of so that Alex has no one left in the world except for him, her lying, murderous surrogate father.

Is this the final nail in the coffin for the hope of a Danielle flashback? Or is she not really dead yet?

We have to wait a few more weeks to find out.

Look at that, a flashback! It looked like a building out of New Otherton from the first shot, so I did suspect. I knew not to make any snap judgments, though - this is LOST. Juliet’s seeing an on-island therapist. That’s kinda funny. And Tom had a mustache! Has he lost weight since filming his death scene last season? The actor, of course. In the case of the character, he would’ve gained weight from that time up until the island’s present time.

And Juliet meets up with her old therapist, Harper, in the jungle. Is she really there, perhaps on an excursion from the Temple? She is all wet with rain.

Ah yes, she’s delivering a message from Ben. Her appearance and disappearance was accompanied by the whispers. Could she be like Richard, one of the island’s original inhabitants? Juliet seems confused by them, so it would seem that ordinary Others aren’t responsible for the whispers.

“Ben is exactly where he wants to be.” Isn’t that what Miles said as prisoner in the boathouse? Just a few scenes before he ended up with a live grenade shoved into his mouth?

Aww, and Juliet met Goodwin to bandage up his arm. He was married to Harper? I guess there’s a good reason for Harper to have more than a little animosity toward her, considering Juliet ended up sleeping with him.

The Tempest is the power station. And did I hear Harper say that the gas canisters were also being stored there? The kind of gas used in the Purge?

What doesn’t Dan think he can do? The easy answer would be to speculate that he and Charlotte will orchestrate a second Purge. But that would be too obvious, wouldn’t it?

Kate knows that Charlotte is lying about the satellite phone being out of juice and looking for the packs they threw from the chopper. She saw the phone’s light on. And… she got pistol-whipped. Doh.

Harper seemed “hostile” for a therapist. Would that be hostile or Hostile?

So apparently, during a woman’s second trimester, the woman’s immune system turns on the fetus. And… we don’t know what she was about to say next. I wonder if Goodwin’s visit was really about an egg salad sandwich, or if it was meant to be a booty call.

Yikes. Harper is not a very good therapist. You don’t confront your patient about sleeping with your husband - at least not during her session. Threats are not cool, either. Who does Juliet look like, and why would Ben harm Goodwin for sleeping with Juliet? Does Juliet look like a grown up Annie, maybe? Is she one of the women who died in pregnancy?

Claire makes a good point to Locke. It sounds a lot like what we fans said all along about the Others and how they treated the castaways.

Ben wants to know if the rabbit he’s eating for dinner had a number on it. We know what that means, but apparently the experiments run on the rabbits weren’t too bad. Ben still ate it.

What could Ben do to Goodwin? Now we know. He could send him over to the Tailies, which would lead to his death. Did Ben know how it would turn out when he chose him? And if so, what did Ethan do to get on Ben’s bad side? I mean, Ethan was their surgeon.

36-15-28 opens Ben’s secret safe. With the Red Sox tape in it? “I taped over the game.” LOL. Charles Widmore! Confirmation that he owns the freighter and is looking for the island. We “knew” that, but now we know that. And Widmore does his own dirty work. I would’ve thought he’d hire someone like Jin to beat people up for him.

Oh come on, just tell us who the man on the boat is. Stupid commercial break. Tell us it’s Michael. That’s what most of us fans think, anyway. And if it’s not Michael, we need to know that, too. And then we need to know why Harold Perrineau’s name has been in the opening credits all season!

So Ben sent Goodwin on a death mission, then cooked a romantic candlelit ham dinner for Juliet. Wine. Opera music.

The children from Flight 815 were on Jacob’s list. Hmm. And Ben says that Goodwin is trying to bring Ana-Lucia to New Otherton, trying to make it sound like Goodwin “wants” Ana-Lucia in a sexual way. To make Juliet jealous.

I get a Season Four Mishear Award! I thought that Chemical Suit Daniel just told Juliet, “Don’t shoot me yet!” I was so taken aback by the phrase that I repeated it out loud. My husband turned to me and said, “Juliet. He said, ‘Juliet.’” So it was “Juliet, what are you doing here?” That makes a bit more sense.

That alarm sounds familiar. I’d be having flashbacks if I were so surprised that Charlotte is so… violent. “That was a close one.” They rendered the gas inert so that Ben couldn’t use it again.

Ben’s not more excited about Jack being a spinal surgeon because they just found Goodwin’s dead body. And he took Juliet to it.

“You’re mine.” Ben thinks he owns Juliet. He’s a bit sicker than we thought.

“Okay, what do I react to first?” That’s what I’d be thinking if I were Juliet. The impaled body of her dead lopver, and being told she belongs to a man she hates.

Jack will take their word for it, about Daniel and Charlotte saving their lives. When did he become such a man of faith?

Hurley says he’s lucky, playing horseshoes with Sawyer. Never thought he’d say that.

And is Ben now roomies with Locke? They’re awfully chummy.

Previews: Sun is almost certainly the last of the Oceanic 6. And Michael is almost definitely the man on the boat. “The face we thought we’d never see again.” Yeah, except for his name in the credits every week.

It drove me crazy that we never got to know who was in that coffin. We never got a really clear shot of the obituary that Jack ripped out of the newspaper. Well, that’s not entirely true. Some clever folks with TiVo and hi-def grabbed some screencaps to try and make sense of it all. But the props and editing folks were on the ball, and made it difficult to draw any real conclusions.

Facts revealed to the casual LOST viewer:

• No one showed up to the funeral except for Jack, who said he was neither friend nor family.
• The coffin looked small.

From the first part, we know it cannot be Claire or Christian in the coffin. (I know, Christian is supposed to be dead. But there are those who think he’s not.) Because Jack talks to Kate after the funeral, we know it’s not her either. From the second part, it’s not likely to be Hurley. We’re looking at the coffin’s occupant being either a child, someone really short, or someone who ends up as an amputee. Because of the [remote] possibility of an amputation, this really doesn’t rule anyone out.

We get a little bit more information dangled in front of us from an insider who leaked the text of the obituary, which admittedly may be a hoax.

What did we learn from this, the devout fans who scour the internet for this type of thing? (Assuming this information is legitimate, of course.)

• John Lantham, the alias of the dead guy, is from New York.
• He is survived by a teenage son.
• He appeared to have hung himself.
• He is a man.

The only concrete evidence this gives us is that the coffin is not occupied by a woman. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that it’s most likely Ben, because he’s short and would be an obvious choice for having no friends to attend his funeral. Who would be his teenage son, though? I find it unlikely that he’d let Karl masquerade as his son if they both ended up off the island.

Other people think it may be Sawyer, but I think Sawyer is the “he” that Kate has to get back to.

I think the dead guy in the coffin is Michael. Assuming he and Walt didn’t perish in the open sea, he probably wouldn’t want to use his real name and draw attention to the fact that he was supposed to be dead in a plane crash. There would be far too many questions that he just doesn’t have the answer for. Let’s not forget that he murdered a few people in cold blood. It would be far harder for any of his fellow survivors to identify him if they should ever get rescued. Although it wouldn’t appear that any of them would want to attach themselves to the plane crash anyway, and certainly not to anything that happened on the island. They’ve all done things they’re not proud of.

Michael wouldn’t have many friends from the island because of his killings and because he betrayed them to the Others in order to leave with Walt. He has a teenage son that wouldn’t have to be contrived. And he’d likely have a lot of issues that could drive him to suicide - perhaps guilty feelings, perhaps estrangement from his son.

If I were a betting woman, my money would be on Michael. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

In “The Man Behind the Curtain,” we saw Ben unflinchingly murder his father with a nasty nerve gas, part of a greater plot that exterminated his fellow members of Dharma in the same horrifying manner. The systematic destruction of an entire people - genocide. Haunting echoes of the gas chambers used by the Nazis.

In “Through the Looking Glass,” Ben became even more Hitler-like. He ordered Tom and the Others sent to the beach to kill any of the castaways who got in the way of kidnapping the pregnant women. When he finally got radio contact with Tom after he met up with Jack and the crew, he ordered him to shoot Sayid, Jin, and Bernard. Although it’s a bit confusing, since Ryan told Tom it was on order they had to follow, and Tom muses they should’ve shot the men instead of the sand. Were we not privy to a previous order to shoot in the sand instead, that he was going to bluff Jack? In any case, Ryan was very clear about following Ben’s orders.

Bonnie tried to explain to Mikhail that she and Greta were following Ben’s orders. But Mikhail turns it back on her, confessing that he’s only following Ben’s orders by killing both women. He is a “loyalist” to Ben, he follows Ben’s orders to preserve Ben’s secret. And he follows through by pulling the pin on the grenade to finish off Charlie, since he wasn’t able to shoot him, possibly sacrificing himself in the process.

A lot of people who were not inherently bad people did a lot of terrible things by following orders. A famous psychological study by Stanley Milgram attempted to explain how ordinary Nazi soldiers could’ve senselessly killed so many innocent people based on Hitler’s orders. And what Milgram found was a horrifying glance at human nature; ordinary Americans, instructed by an experimenter in a lab coat, administered what they believed to be a lethal dose of electric shock to a man they believed to have a heart condition - just because they were told to. (I knew my Master’s degree in Psychology would come in handy some day.) People will follow dubious orders from an authority figure. And authority figures with as much charisma as Hitler or the character of Ben can get people to follow far more sinister orders.

The creators of LOST have gone to some lengths to make sure we acknowledge the similarities between Ben and Hitler. I believe that. For one thing, Hitler was not a member of his ideal Aryan race, blond haired and blue eyed. Ben was not a member of the group of Hostiles he came to lead; he was a member of the group he helped to murder.

It’s all very disturbing.

I do wonder if Ben will meet the same fate in the end, if he’ll end up taking his own life. I guess that’s one more argument for Ben being in the coffin in the flash forward in the season three finale; the man in the coffin killed himself.

“God loves you as he loved Jacob.”

That was one of the frames on the screen Karl was forced to watch in Room 23.

Jacob also had a list, and Jack was not on it. There has been much speculation about Jacob since he was first mentioned on LOST. There was speculation about him even before his name was first mentioned… more correctly, speculation about Him.

Did “The Man Behind the Curtain” really give us answers about Jacob?

Some people seem to think that everything witnessed in Jacob’s cabin was more of Ben’s smoke and mirrors, possibly assisted by Richard or someone else, since Ben made a big point of telling everyone where they were going. I’ll admit that I thought Ben was more than a little bit crazy talk to an empty chair for a while. But when Locke heard the voice, I did believe it to be Jacob’s voice. The fans who managed to grab a screencap of Jacob’s profile helped confirm that in my mind. I tried not to blink during the scene, but I certainly never saw Jacob in the chair until I signed on to read the fan forums.

So who - or what - is Jacob?

Some people believe that Jacob is a ghost or a spirit. The dust on the ground that Locke had stopped to check out may have been ash used as a binding circle to keep the ghost inside. I’m not sure I hold with this theory. My first thought was that the dust was powder from the dynamite that Danielle was swiping from the Black Rock. Ben could’ve been taking it as well. But I won’t completely count this out as a possibility. After all, Jacob was invisible to Locke and to us for all but a fraction of a second. Without TiVo, I don’t think any of us would’ve known he was there at all.

But does that hold with the interviews given by Damon and Carlton saying that the show would remain grounded in science and pseudoscience?

Ben’s original bit about how no one else had ever seen or spoken to Jacob did make him sound like his imaginary friend, but it became apparent that Jacob only reveals himself to those he chooses. How does he do this? He appears invisible somehow. Is this because he does not have substantial corporeal form, or because he is able to bend the light around himself so you can’t see him even if you’re looking right at him? He “speaks” to people telepathically. Is this a choice, or does he not have an audible voice? When Locke “heard” Jacob, I was reminded of reading the character of Death in Neil Gaiman’s books, where there aren’t any quotation marks to denote speech. He would’ve said HELP ME to Locke… in capital letters, denoting a voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere.

Whatever he is, it’s possible that Jacob is Ben’s prisoner. Perhaps that ash line really does confine him to the spooky hermit shack. Is that why he said HELP ME to Locke? Or was it, as I’ve seen suggested, an interrupted thought, such as HELP ME GET RID OF THIS ANNOYING LITTLE GNAT?

That line of dust does seem to me like it should have some significance, but it really opposes my own personal concept of Jacob. My first thought, which I admit is hard to shake, is that Jacob is what we’ve been referring to as Smokey. If the dust or ash keeps Jacob confined, then he cannot be Smokey. But I’m going to ignore the dust for now, and explain my line of thinking.

The way Ben first described Him when he was a prisoner in the Swan hatch made Him sound like a great and terrible man. Unforgiving. Harsh. The Others certainly seemed intimidated by Jacob even though they’d never met him. And what do we know about Smokey? We don’t know what Smokey physically is, but great and terrible certainly seems to fit the bill. It seems to have a consciousness. It came face to face with Locke, killed Mr. Eko, threatened Kate and Juliet… among many other incidents. I hate to take a comic book approach, but maybe Jacob was a man who came to draw too much of the island’s mysterious power, and now he can take on the form of this shape-shifting smoke creature. Or - and this could accommodate for the binding circle that keeps Jacob in - Smokey answers to Jacob, like a familiar, and serves as Jacob’s scout and servant while he is imprisoned.

Much more discussion is sure to come, as more fans come together to brainstorm, and more secrets are revealed.

After seeing the carnage of the orchestrated gas attack, it’s hard to see how Ben can possibly think that his group is really made up of the “good guys” he claims they are. The castaways versus Others fatality tally really doesn’t matter anymore. We know now that the Others brutally murdered a whole town full of hippies. Would the term genocide apply in this case? I’m not quite sure.

Ben was exposed as a liar from the moment we first met him. He had claimed to be Henry Gale; he had an elaborate backstory that was entirely believable until Sayid and company dug up the grave containing the body of the real Henry Gale. Now we know the extent and depth of his lies. Everyone he’s recruited believes he was born on the island. Why is that so important to him for them to believe that? What would happen if they knew the truth? And more importantly, why hasn’t Richard come out and exposed him for the fraud he is? He gave Locke a means to take Ben down, but he has some damning information of his own. Does he keep Ben’s secret because it would also expose him as a murderer?

I get that Ben was screwed up by his drunk father’s bitterness over his mother’s death and being pigeonholed as a janitor when he thought he was going to be doing something more glamorous on the island. But even that doesn’t explain why he became the monster he is now. Sawyer’s daddy issues are far worse, but he only wanted to kill one man because of it, not a whole village full of people. I wonder if the grown-up Annie had left the island at the time of the Purge, or if Ben allowed her to become a mere casualty.

I was right about one thing, Ben does believe, in some way, that he was reborn after the Purge. He told Locke that that’s where he came from. I guess it’s the truth… from a certain, rather twisted point of view.

And what about Ben’s connection with Jacob? Who or what Jacob is will be the subject of another entry. But Ben certainly looked like a raving lunatic talking to an invisible Jacob, from Locke’s perspective. But then Locke heard Jacob, too. And that’s when Ben lost it. Ben had told Locke that no one else has ever seen Jacob. Apparently that’s because Jacob had never wanted to show himself to anyone else. Ben jealously guarded that honor. I think he shot Locke because he couldn’t stand that Jacob had chosen to reveal himself to someone else. After Locke told him what Jacob had said, it looked as if Ben wondered if shooting Locke had been a mistake, but maybe it just confirmed his need to eliminate the competition.

I want to know why Richard and the other “Hostiles,” the island natives, allowed Ben to step into the role of leader. They had obviously been there for quite some time. It had to be more than just his help in the systematic extermination of Dharma from their island. Was it because of Jacob? I guess it’s with that question that I leave this Ben-centered piece to start working on some Jacob speculation.

I’ve been looking forward to this episode ever since I heard the title of it a few weeks back. A shoutout to Ben’s alias Henry Gale… and so promising when it comes to the real story behind the Others.

A few things before the first commercial break: Ben’s parents were named Roger (Work Man?) and Emily, and he was not born on the island - and Locke absconding with the tape recorder that he handed to Sawyer was not a part of one of Ben’s convoluted schemes.

As expected, Ben is middle management, and he answers to Jacob. I have to say I agree with Locke in believing that Jacob just another manipulation. I mean, we’ve just seen that Ben was not born on the island, as he claims. He has not spent his whole life there… Unless he’s telling the truth in his mind, that we’ll have a scene coming up where Ben sees himself to have been born again on the island.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! The balance of power has shifted… already. Locke calls Ben out on the carpet. Ben looks to the… Others for backup, and they just sit idly by while Locke beats the crap out of Mikhail. Locke grates on my nerves a lot, but that was awesome. I cheered out loud. Not too loudly, of course - I don’t want to wake up my son.

Ben’s class has an alarm for Hostile attacks. So the Hostiles from the Dharma films are not our Others, they’re island natives. And then Ben sees his dead mother outside his window. Smokey?

Are we going to find out that Annie ends up being Alex’s mom… for real? Is Danielle that crazy? I hope I’m wrong about this. But I can’t shake the feeling…

Little Ben didn’t turn the pylons back on. And there are those whispers. And… Richard looks the same age as he does now.

… I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene with Jacob. What the…? Jacob would appear to be real, although Locke couldn’t see or hear him until he turned his back to leave. And Ben was right, Jacob really gets ticked off about technology. Does Jacob take the form of Smokey to prowl about the jungle? So freaky. That scene had all the creepiness of the first season.

Wow, we all knew that Ben was a liar with a questionable set of morals involving the sanctity of human life. After last week’s ultimatum to Locke about killing his father, and seeing how Roger treated Ben all his life this week, I figured he must’ve killed him. But gassing him like that… and sitting there while he died, that was just cruel. It’s like I said about the difference between Sawyer shooting the one guy and then strangling Cooper with the chain. And Richard and the rest of the natives gassed the rest of the hippie Dharma folks. We saw the Purge. Was this the Incident, too?

And it would appear that there is, indeed, some sort of fountain of youth type thing going on here. Richard doesn’t look a day older than he did when Ben was a kid, although he dresses far less like a hippie now. How long ago did this occur? It would seem that something must be done to retain the look of youth, or else how would the kids be able to age and grow up?

This episode was supposed to answer “all our questions” about the Others. Well, I know by now not to listen to the promos, but I was hoping for at least one or two more answers.

Is Locke going to die after being shot in the gut and left for dead in the mass Dharma grave? I’m thinking that Ben’s snarky words about hoping Jacob will help him now may turn out to be prophetic. Jacob seems to be, for lack of a better word, the island deity. People can only see him if he allows them to see him, hear him if he wants them to. Now I understand why Him was always pronounced with a capital letter. Early on in the episode, I did think that Locke was right, and Jacob was fake… and I even thought that the alarm in the school scene might have been a Village-like scenario where the beasts were a contrivance to keep the villagers in line. But both of those thoughts were summarily shot down.

So much more to work out in my head after tonight’s episode, but my son just woke up screaming, so that will have to wait for another day.