Lost 4.09: The Shape Of Things To Come

Aaaaaaand... we're back. Boy, are we ever. Was that Lost I watched the other night, or an old rerun of The A-Team? Ben Linus as Hannibal Smith! Sawyer as Face! Frank Lapidus as Murdock! Mr. Eko's corpse as BA Baracus! Anyway, our favorite show is back with a vengeance for the next... um, however many more weeks it is, and with how much asskickery we got in the masterful Brian K. Vaughan/Drew Goddard-penned "The Shape of Things To Come", well, I really hope that that title holds true. Let's get Lost after the jump...

Well, damn! I knew the Lost team was going to have to start consolidating stuff into fewer episodes what with The End of Everything coming up in just two short years, but holy geez! What DIDN'T we get to see this week? Ben! Locke! Sawyer! Jack! Hurley! Sayid! Kate's naked shoulder! Redshirts! A NEW DHARMA LOGO, for crying out loud! What else could we possibly ask for? Oh, the Smoke Monster being unfurled at will and set loose on some big bads in truly Biblical proportions? Not a problem! It was like the end of Raiders up in Ben's front yard, man. Awesome.

To the talking points!

MINNESOTA LINUS AND THE DHARMA TEMPLE OF DOOM - We found out many things about our friend Ben this week. First off, he can do whatever kind of wacky time-travel/teleportation trickery that the island seems to provide, and assumedly, he's been doing it for years. Did you see the look of terror on that hotel clerk's face in Tunisia when she realized who her new preferred guest was? GAH. You KNOW she'll be answering room service calls asking for more fresh goat's heads and a pot to boil them in all night long.

We started this episode with Ben waking up in the middle of the desert after BAMFing in from who knows where with a big winter parka on, a puff of cold air escaping his lips, and a mysterious bloody gash on his arm. Well, the parka DID have a Dharma logo on it, so does that mean Ben was coming from somewhere cold? Or was he expecting to turn up somewhere cold? See, by the look of utter confusion on Ben's face as he woke up in the desert and looked around to see where he was, I'm not convinced that this whole teleporting thing is just a Point-A-To-Point-B kind of deal. Actually, I think that the basic endpoints of where it can take someone or something (i.e. a polar bear) are pretty much known, but it's not like there are two metal boxes on either side of the Earth that you just magically appear in. It's not like it's some sort of horizontal space-time elevator, and it's also not like this is Goldblum's masterpiece 'The Fly' or anything, you know? All I really mean is that I think it's a crapshoot - you land where you land in the basic vicinity of where you want to go.

I think we've established that there are three basic endpoints of Lost-ian teleporting - the island, of course, Tunisia, and quite more than likely, somewhere in the Arctic. Remember those guys that turned up at the end of Season 2? The Jack lookalike and his buddy out in the snowbound hellhole that called Penny Widmore when they thought they found the island? Well, to me, that snowbound hellhole is destination number three, and it's more than likely that that's where Ben was before he jumped to Tunisia, hence the winter parka. Er, Dharka.

So not only did we see Ben at his absolute finest this week (his beating the crap out of those guys in the desert was one of my favorite Lost scenes ever, and the Shakespearean tete-a-tete with Widmore? OMG), but we also saw him at a critical low, as well. Lost continued its tradition of genuinely shocking character deaths this week, and unfortunately, the victim was the lovely, scrappy Alex. After being taken hostage by the paramilitary group that is apparently being led by the freighter's captain (anyone else see that coming? how many ship captains do you know that go skeet shooting with automatic weapons?), Alex is used as a pawn to get Ben out of his house and into the custody of the soldiers outside. Well, as you probably knew, Ben's not exactly that easy to capture when he's not allowing it to happen himself, so he attempts to bluff his way through her execution in his front yard when BLAM!

Ben's face as he watches her crumple to the ground is unforgettable, as is his first response - "He changed the rules". Given that we know the military group outside was undoubtedly sent by Widmore to regain control of the island, we can also assume that this mysterious rule-changing "he" is none other than Charles himself. Does this mean that Ben and Charles Widmore are engaged in some kind of globe-spanning chess game to wrest control of the island and all it provides from one another? I think so, but why? We know Ben's history with the island, but what of Widmore's? Has he been there before? If he has, why isn't he there anymore? Is this why he can't die? Why won't the island let him?

DEATH FROM ABOVE - Ben's second response to Alex's murder isn't exactly too shabby, either, as he then goes into a secret room inside his other secret room (down the rabbit hole, I guess) and seems to summon the ultimate big bad itself - Smokey. Hell hath no fury like a smoke monster scorned, and soon the military guys are little more than piles of camouflaged carnage. Awesome. Just AWESOME.

The weird side of me that is actually rooting for Ben in this whole mess wants to believe that he's got HR Puffenstuff at his beck and call, but I don't know. Is that what he was really doing in that secret room in the secret room? You know, the one with all the cool-ass hieroglyphics carved into the door? Well, maybe, but consider this - what if the scene in London at the end of the episode took place right in that little pocket of time when Ben excused himself from the festivities in his living room and vanished down his rabbit hole? That would of course mean time travel, however, and I'm not sure that that's what we're dealing with here. All I do know is that if I just saw my daughter being executed assassination-squad-style in my front freaking yard, I'd probably want an immmediate word with the man who was no doubt responsible for it.

We'll get to Ben's and Widmore's conversation later, but I do believe that in that exchange, we witnessed a declaration of war. I love the Sherlock Holmes-ian overtones in this subplot (wrong Moriarty, I know, but any mention of that name always gets my mind working), and I can't wait to see it unfold a little more. We know very little about this Widmore character, which makes it fairly impossible to want to root for or against him. Hell, we barely know anything about Ben, either. Who do you root for when both sides seem fairly despicable?

JACK'S GOTTA POOP - What? He might. I'm sure that Paolo's not the only man with hyperactive bowels on this godforsaken rock. Anyway, let's take a break from all the yummy Benalicious-ness this week and talk about all the other involved characters. First off, Jack. I know that watching Kate take off her shirt and flirt with me would probably cure any kind of stomachache I happened to have, but Jack's a different kind of cat altogether. His newfound stomach condition (and resulting pill-popping habit) couldn't have been helped by discovering the freighter's doctor washed up on the beach with his throat slit, nor the Morse Code transmission from the freighter stating that the doctor was still there with them, alive and well. Um, what? That means to me that the freighter is in the past in relation to the island, which more or less adheres to Faraday's discovery of the time lapse between the two locations. However, at this point, that's kind of irrelevant, as we already knew it.

More importantly, why is the doctor dead? And thrown overboard? With his throat slit? An interesting theory I stumbled upon last night is that with his new illness, Jack is going to want to contact the still-living version of the doctor to determine what exactly is wrong with him. Would that even be possible? If he went to the freighter, wouldn't he in effect catch up with the timeline and only find the doctor dead? Again?

DING-DONG! AVON CALLING - Okay, now the group back at the Barracks, namely Locke, Sawyer, Hurley, Miles, Claire and Aaron. Oh, and Ben, of course. You know, a lot of people are bitching about Claire's miraculous survival of an RPG attack on her house, but I think there's more to it than just convenience for the writers. Claire's remarkably indestructible, isn't she? First, she survives a car wreck with her mother (granted, that was pre-island, but still), then she gives birth in a place where it's a big no-no to do so, barely misses getting crushed by a flying hatch door, nearly drowns in the ocean, gets pre-cognitively rescued by Desmond from being hit by lightning, and NOW she survives her house blowing up all around her. Come on - I know you're probably just as much of a bitchy internet fanboy as I am, but you've got to see that there's probably more to all that than just supposedly lazy writing. Why keep her alive this long if there wasn't a reason for doing it?

I'd have to say that one of the funniest moments in the episode came in the form of Miles' entrance. Ding-dong! It's nice to know that at least someone still has their manners in the face of all hell breaking loose. I'm surprised that in addition to the walkie-talkie he brought Ben, he didn't walk in with a fresh-baked cherry pie, as well. Could you take off your shoes, too? They've got some mysterious grey ashes and army guy guts all over them. Thank you.

After saving Claire from the military dudes outside, Sawyer nearly blows a gasket when Ben pulls a freakin' shotgun out of his piano bench. See, it's the small things that count on this show. How many times has Ben had the chance to pull that shotgun and blast his way out of whatever form of bondage the Losties had him in? Dozens? Point is, he didn't. Ben doesn't play that way. He's a strategist, a gentleman, and perhaps most importantly, he plays fair. To pull an ace from his sleeve like that would be a cheat, and as questionable as Ben's ethics and practices sometime seem to be, that just wouldn't be his style. Ben will move whatever pieces on the board he needs to in order to win the game, but it's not like he'd ever just knock over the board and stalk off in a huff if he thought there was any chance he was going to lose. Besides, we've always known that Ben is one or more steps ahead of the game at any given point (hence the forethought to hide a shotgun in a place where he knew he could get it if he needed it), but dammit - how the hell is he ALWAYS managing to pull that off? Is it because he... KNOWS THE FUTURE? Dun-dun-DUUUUUUH!!!

So after Smokey takes out the trash, the group splits up, and Hurley's the one that both sides seem to want. Ben and Locke want him because apparently, he's the only one who knows where Jacob's cabin now is, and Sawyer wants him because he's his comic relief. Guns are drawn, deals are made, and in the end, Hurley goes peacefully with Ben and Locke. Sawyer makes it clear to John that if Hurley is harmed, it's his ass on the line. Locke agrees, and the two camps split up. It's the last we see of these two groups on the island in this episode, but I'm wondering - why does Hurley now hold the key to Jacob's cabin? Why is Ben so compelled with John Locke? Will ghostbustin'-ass Miles Straume ever get the chance to square off with Jacob?

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE EAST WITH YOU - Just when you thought they couldn't pack any more storylines into this thing, here comes yet another one, and it involves Sayid, Ben's future hired assassin. Ben runs into him in Iraq, his second destination after Tunisia, apparently. Ben seems to be on some sort of reconaissance mission here, and he's ducking amongst the rooftops above a funeral procession in the streets below. As seems to be customary in this part of the world, there are many framed photos of the recently deceased being hoisted above the coffin, and hey! It's Nadia, Sayid's wife! As one would expect, Sayid is one of the pallbearers, too. Ben noticed Sayid on the television back in the hotel in Tunisia, as he was on the news being hounded by paparazzi. The dialogue of the clip was in a foreign tongue, of course, but translated, it reads "One of the sons of Iraq, and despite the terrible causes for his return, Sayid Jarrah, one of the members of the Oceanic Six, returned to Baghdad after his wife had passed away. Sayid Jarrah and his wife are from the Tikrit area."

Interesting! So apparently the news of the Oceanic Six is worldwide, and not even the death of his wife can stop the press from hounding poor Sayid about it. As he carries the coffin of his dead wife through the streets of Tikrit, Sayid spots Ben watching him from up on the rooftops. Ben attempts to flee, but come on - this is Sayid we're talking about. Captain Bad Ass himself. Who's the Iraqi hired killer who's a sex machine to all the chicks? Sayid! Damn right. Sayid throws one of his trademark flying tackles at Ben as he runs for it, thinking he's just another paparazzo stalking him for his involvement with the Oceanic Six. When it becomes apparent that he's not, Sayid is stunned. "What are you doing here?" he asks. Ben explains that the man he's really tailing (well, also tailing, anyway) is one Ishmael Bakir, a Widmore henchman who Ben explains was sent to Los Angeles by his boss to kill Nadia. Well, that may be true, but is that really the extent of Bakir's crimes? Seeming he's tied to Widmore, I have the feeling that Ben and Bakir have a history, one that Ben hopes to incorporate into his plans to gain Sayid's loyalty and do in Charles Widmore once and for all.

Ben lies to Sayid and tells him that he left the island in Desmond's boat, not mentioning his otherworldly travels through time/space/whatever at all. Upon hearing that Bakir is the man who murdered Nadia, Sayid swears his revenge. He partially gets it when he shoots Bakir dead as he's holding Ben at gunpoint for following him, but since he knows that Bakir was hardly a lone gunman in the assassination, Sayid isn't done. Ben pleads Sayid to leave Iraq and the situation immediately, claiming that what has happened involves Ben and Ben alone. He even goes all Yoda on his ass and tells him to not let his grief become anger. Hmm, where have we heard Ben say that before? "The Economist", perhaps? Anyway, the vengeful, remorseful Sayid disagrees, and his question to Ben speaks volumes - "Who's next?" Ben tells him he'll be in touch, and as he walks away, that devilish smirk that we all know, love, and fear makes a cameo appearance. The trap is set.

WEREWOLVES OF LONDON - Alright, so according to Damon and Carleton in this week's podcast, the scene in Widmore's apartment in London was shot on location due to actor Alan Dale's role in "Spamalot" on the West End of the city. It is the first international shoot in the history of Lost, a claim that seems odd to make given the many locations all over the world that the show has seemingly taken place in. You mean that really wasn't war-torn Iraq? Wow.

Anyway, we're dumped into the London scene without pretense, as Ben climbs out of one of those cool British taxis and makes his way into an apartment building. After bluffing his way past the doorman (despite the presence of his collapsible baton behind his back - a reference to Agent 355 in Brian K. Vaughan's 'Y: The Last Man', perhaps?), Ben takes the elevator and lockpicks his way into the penthouse apartment. The card on the mailbox of Apartment 4E might read "THE HENDRICKS", but the man we actually find asleep in the bedroom of this apartment is someone else entirely - Charles Widmore. Ben wakes him up, and after Charles has a long pull off the bottle of MacCutcheon by his bedside table ("for the nightmares," he says), Ben brings up the real reason he's there - you've killed my daughter, Charles. You changed the rules.

Nonsense, replies Charles. You killed her yourself. Charles admonishes Ben for having the audacity to portray himself as the victim in all of this, and he also tells him that he "knows who he is. What he is. I know everything you took from me, Ben. That island's mine, and it will be again." Widmore asks Ben if he's come to kill him, but Ben just laughs that off. "You know I can't kill you, Charles." Hmm. Who, or, more importantly, what is Ben? Time traveler? Island stealer? International man of mystery? Ben shrugs off Charles' idle threats, but not before he dares Widmore to come find what he thinks is rightfully his. In addition, he makes a threat of his own - in exchange for the unsanctioned murder of his daughter Alex, Ben makes it known that he's now out to even the score. His target? Penelope Widmore, daughter of Charles. Eye for an eye, daughter for a daughter. Ben lets himself out the way he came in, and the game is afoot.

So was Widmore an original inhabitant of the island? Is he the same brand of person as Richard Alpert, only now that he's off the island, he's not nearly as happy as you'd think an immortal, fabulously wealthy man might be? I think we can almost rule out Widmore as only being a greedy capitalist that wants to build strip malls and theme parks all over the island. It seems much deeper than just that now. What I'm much more interested in is how he first came into contact with Ben. My money is going towards these two men being former colleagues, both interested in the preservation and utilization of the island and its vast untold resources. However, something happened, the two men became rivals, Widmore was somehow booted from the island and lost its location, and the war to regain control of it was on.

It's funny how Widmore reminded me of Jack as he lie there in bed - troubled, drinking, and wanting to get back to the island more than anything. What I REALLY found interesting about this scene, though, was Ben's claim that he knew he couldn't kill him. Well, why not? Does Widmore have the same sort of pre-determined mission to accomplish for the island, much like Michael? In effect, can he not be killed until it is done? Maybe his mission is to regain control of the island, but because Ben is standing in his way of doing that, he won't be able to die until Ben does. Even then, he'd still have to find the island in the first place. Poor Charles. Throw in some sleeping pills on top of that whiskey, man.

That's one theory about why Ben can't kill Charles, but here's another - maybe Widmore is Ben's constant. Interesting, right? As we learned from Faraday back in Desmond's kick-ass episode "The Constant" (and I quote directly from Lostpedia here), when a consciousness travels back and forth through time, it needs a constant to latch on to. A constant is an object or person that exists in both periods of time, that the traveller deeply cares about and could recognize. If a constant is not found, the oscillations between different times will become more frequent and chaotic until the individual dies from what appears to be a severe brain aneurysm. It's all just a metaphor for finding love and a place in the world, but it makes sense, too. Remember Faraday's rat Heloise? No constant. Boom - dead. What about Minkowski? Remember him? Yeah, no constant, either. A constant to me is an anchor, something that keeps you buoyed to reality as you hop through time. Apparently it's got to be something you care about, and if Widmore really is Ben's constant, that point affirms my theory that the two men were once friends. Come on! It's the classic tale that always seems to exist behind archenemies - they were once friends, compatriots, freedom fighters who fought for the same side or at least held the same beliefs and intellectual goals. They're often of the same superior intellect, making it all the more difficult for either one to best the other. Superman and Lex Luthor. Beatrix Kiddo and Bill. Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. Donald Duck and Chip & Dale. Do I need to draw you a picture?

MISSING PIECES - Faraday's finally admitting to Jack that he and his crew are uh, gosh, um, not really uh, there to save them at all had to be pretty tough to hear. You think that's why Jack doubled over in pain from his stomach after hearing it? Yeah, me too. I think Jack's got an ulcer (or maybe it really is appendicitis, as Juliet claimed in the previews), and what with Jack being the kind of guy he is, it wouldn't surprise me at all. I think that whatever this sickness is is the beginning of his post-rescue pill-popping days, and I also think it's the first step towards Jack realizing that he was wrong about the freighter people. Hell, it's the ONLY step towards Jack realizing he was wrong about the damn freighter people.

Could Charles Widmore be Magnus Hanso, captain & owner of the Black Rock? I've long theorized that Richard Alpert was a deckhand or something on that ill-fated ship, so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Widmore turned out to be a childhood friend of Ben's that he later grew to become enemies with and expelled from the island. If Widmore really was on the island when Ben got there, how long had he been around? 50 years? A hundred? Two hundred? By the way, did anyone notice that the painting on Widmore's bedroom wall was the same one being sold at the auction a few weeks ago? The auction where Charles picked up the original captain's log from the Black Rock? Yeah, that one.

Line of the night - After Sayid empties his clip and then some into Ishmael Bakir in Iraq, Ben says to him, "I believe that will do." Heh.
 Hey, it's just the kind of man Sayid is, Ben. Don't be hatin'.

Anyone out there a Risk fan? Australia usually is a key point in the game, so it fits that Australia is where all this mess got started. Anyone see Hurley roll that 15? Nice touch.

Okay, so if Ben really can summon and control the smoke monster, was it him who was responsible for Eko's death? If so, why? Did he also try to pull Locke down into that rabbit hole back in Season 1? What about Juliet's scanning when she was (yum) handcuffed to Kate out in the jungle? Did Ben do that, too?

Why is it that whenever I see a grenade launcher being fired on television or the movies, I always yell "GRENAAAAAAAAAAAADE!" It's kind of sad, really. Especially for the people sitting around me.

OMG, did you see whose name was on the parka that Ben had on at the beginning of the episode? 'Halliwax', right? Edgar Halliwax is one of Marvin Candle's aliases, and being that we saw Marvin in the orientation video for the Orchid station earlier this year, it proves that Marvin had a very real role in whatever the hell the Dharma peeps were doing out there years ago. We have yet to see the Orchid station in the show itself, but once again, Damon and Carleton have promised that we will by the end of the season. I still have my theory that Miles Straume is the son of Marvin Candle, but that, too, remains to be seen.

Alex's death may be more significant than we realize. Look at Ben's face right after it happens. Sure, he's stunned because he just watched his daughter die, but to me, it's more than that. His eyes tell me that this wasn't supposed to happen; it's a move on the board that shouldn't have been made according to the very rules of the game itself. "He changed the rules" indeed. Think back on all of Ben's calculated moves that we've seen - has he ever been this wrong? Never. Not even once. Alex's death was either a very large chink out of Ben's armor, or something that just shouldn't have happened. Couldn't have happened. Wasn't SUPPOSED to happen. Interesting.

Okay, I think I'm done. For now. It's 2 AM EST as I type this, and because I'm starting to analyze what place my cats have in the mission of Benjamin Linus and why I'm starting to hear them speak to one another in Arabic, I'm thinking it might be time to to go to bed. A big juicy recap for a big juicy episode, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it. We learn more about Jack next week, but after that, it's time for what I've been waiting for since the end of Season 3 - a flash-forward from our savior himself, Mr. John Locke. I wonder how many Arabic-speaking cats he's got.

Namaste,

-littlebigmouth.