Uncharted Island

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.

I’ve read a lot of complaints about how “Exposé” was just fluff, a filler episode that didn’t advance the plot at all.  Many people disliked how Nikki and Paulo were thrown at us and we were suddenly supposed to care about them.  A lot of people hated them and wanted them to die, but I think more were just disinterested and didn’t care one way or another, and thought that giving them their own flashback was a waste of an episode.

I think these people are missing the point.

Sure, most of the episode was just a bit of fun, getting to see the characters who have been dead for a while, giving more of the redshirts a chance at the spotlight.  But then there was the bit that mattered.

When Paulo was hiding in the bathroom of the Pearl station hiding the diamonds in the toilet tank, he overheard quite a conversation between Ben and Juliet.  A lot of things became clear.

Ben knew he needed Jack as his spinal surgeon pretty far back.  Jack was visible on the Pearl monitor, which placed the island timeline in season two, since they had already found the Swan hatch. This means that they already had Walt in their custody, but did not yet have Michael.

I don’t know why Ben felt the need to make Jack come to him, but he did.  He could’ve grabbed Jack, Kate, and Sawyer the same night they caught Michael, but he didn’t.  Ben, the master manipulator, concocted an elaborate plan to get Jack to come to him using Michael.

So instead of grabbing the three people he needed for his plan - since we now know for sure that Kate and Sawyer were only kept in the bear cages to make Jack jealous and make him want to do Ben’s surgery - he only held onto Michael.  That set the wheels into motion that ended in the deaths of Libby and Ana-Lucia.

What else do we know from the brief scene with Ben, Juliet, and Paulo?  Ben was on his way to the Swan for Jack - not Locke, as he said.  He may or may not have gotten caught in Danielle’s trap on purpose.  I used to think it was intentional, so he could get more information on the crash survivors as their prisoner, but now that we know about their surveillance from the Pearl, that wasn’t necessary.  He probably had several plans for how to worm his way into their midst.  Getting caught may have been Plan B or C.  I doubt the crossbow was in his plans, though.

But however Ben ended up in the Swan, he knew what he was there for.  Everything he did and said was a long con to manipulate Jack.  He played Locke and Jack against each other, putting all of the pieces of the puzzle into place.  For most people, the game he was playing was a dangerous one with no guarantee of a favorable payout.  But Ben has perfected his technique; he knew Jack would bend to his will eventually.  It makes me wonder what else he’s done to get so good at it.

Smaller things we learned from the scene with Paulo hiding in the bathroom?

There is a second entrance to the Pearl, just like at the Swan.  If Ben and Juliet had climbed down the ladder the way Paulo had, they would’ve had the conversation about the hatch door being open and Tom having been there a few days ago at the top of the ladder. They also appear to be barefoot, and their feet are clean.  You don’t get clean feet by traipsing through the jungle without shoes on. This is just more evidence that the Others are using tunnels to move around the island.

And, of course, this goes to show how no one tells anyone anything on the island.  Paulo knew of Ben’s plan to use Michael to get Jack to do surgery on him. Sure, he didn’t know the details.  But that might’ve been worth sharing with the rest of the class.  Then again, he’d have a hard time explaining how he knew that, and people might find out about the diamonds.

Oh well. Sorry I don’t have a picture to go with this one. Out of all the screencaps I scrolled through for the episode, not one of them had a shot from inside the Pearl.

Nikki had a sugar daddy.  That was as easy to buy as her being a stripper… even though that was a role she played as an actress.

And she’s… dead.  I think most of us can agree with Sawyer.  “Who the hell is Nikki?”  Well, Nikki, we hardly knew you.

Paulo too? Interesting.

Nice to see Shannon and Boone again.  They do strike you as a couple instead of step-siblings at first!

It took me a minute to figure out whether they had inserted Nikki into footage from the pilot episode or if they had re-shot it, but it would appear to be a combination of both.  Some of the scenes were obviously spliced, but we got a different angle for the guy getting sucked into the engine, and Boone’s hair is definitely at his new longer length.

I would assume that, since Nikki and Paulo are both dead only 20 minutes in, we’ll find out what was in that bag that was worth killing the sugar daddy for. 

Yay Arzt!  So after “The Other 48 Days,” it’s nice to see more of our redshirts-with-names in this flashback montage.

Oh come on… are they really going to find out all of the island’s secrets before the rest of the Losties?  The Nigerian plane?  The Pearl?  Ridiculous.  Suspension of belief is one thing… LOST gets a wide berth there.  This seems a little much, though.

Gratuitous wet Brazilian scene.

Great reveal scene with Paulo skulking in the Pearl with Ben and Juliet!  So now we know for sure… they only wanted Kate and Sawyer as emotional blackmail to get Jack to do the surgery.  There was no other reason.  The Others did not want to impregnate Kate.  It was an elaborate setup for manipulation.  And Paulo knew about it!

Charlie and his need for confession.  Oh dear.  If I were Sun, I don’t know whether I’d want to know or not.

Diamonds.  Eight million dollars worth of diamonds.  Well, at least that could be viewed as worth killing someone for, if you’re a criminal with no regard for human life.  I really didn’t want it to be something stupid like Kate’s little toy plane.

Oh my God.  “I’m paralyzed.”  That was horrifying to watch.  Buried alive.  I hope I’m not going to have nightmares.  That was… terrible.