Seriously, that’s what I’m calling Lost from now on: The Ben Show. Time and again, he has duped us (think Henry Gale and the Hot-Air Balloon… which sounds like an awesome fantastic amalgam of Harry Potter with Harold and the Purple Crayon), thrilled us (well, maybe just me; I find him deliciously diabolical), and pissed us off (especially when threatening Penny’s life), but he has never, ever bored us. And in last night’s episode, he even went as far as to provide us with a few private insights into the dark, dark intricacies of his multifarious soul.
(1) We witnessed his ability to feel anything beyond cold-hearted stoicism, such as the genuine guilt over the death of his daughter (…”daughter”) Alex that ate away at him to the point of seeking his Final Judgment from the Temple-dwelling smoke monster. And if it happens to go by way of Mr. Eko, well… dead is dead. Luckily for Ben—and, I firmly believe, for the sake of the show as well—though, the monster opts to give him a message via the corporeal form of his beloved (but rather aggressive) Alex instead of, say, tossing his mangled body into a tree. The message is to not try any funny business with Locke (i.e., kill him… again) and just follow his lead or else, and I think Ben is both distraught and shell-shocked enough to actually heed it for a while. However:
(2) He… still kills people. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Ben pulled a fast one (and, you know, a trigger) on Caesar, but I was starting to get used to having that fellow around. So sue me for believing that he was going to serve some greater purpose after he first offered his condolences to Jack at the airport and then ended up in the same cabin as the rest of the Oceanic 6. But given the show—and Ben’s—habit of deceiving me, it will probably turn out that Caesar is not dead after all. Fatal-looking gunshot wounds to the chest? Been there, survived that. (Besides, someone needs to stick around to tell Ilana that she is just like Ana Lucia except slightly less surly and with curlier hair.)
(3) He… doesn’t kill people if they have a baby. Danielle was spared, as well as Penny, in one of the show’s most emotionally excruciating scenes ever, the kind where you can actually feel your soul being ripped apart by its heartstrings. GOD.
(4) His relationship with Charles Widmore (sporting a terrible mop of feeble white curls on the back half of his scalp) is further elucidated, with the two sharing more in common than anyone might have expected based on how well they get along nowadays: they were both, at some point, forced to choose between the island and their respective daughters. Well, the element of “choice” that Charles had is not so clear, as he was essentially banished from the island for “breaking the rules” (and has apparently spent the last 20 years trying to get back to it—although why he doesn’t just speed-dial their mutual acquaintance Eloise Hawking for directions is something I haven’t quite figured out). And Ben did not physically pull the trigger on Alex himself, although in his mind he might as well have. Still, the fact that both end up “choosing” opposite sides of the coin certainly plays up the eventual war that, I’m still presuming, will be waged by one against the other. Any other thoughts?
Sound bites, the Ben and Locke edition
- Locke, after Ben feeds him a line about how killing him was in the best interest of the island: “I was just hoping for an apology.”
- Locke to Ben about the latter’s past moral digressions: “I’m sure the monster will understand.”
- Ben on the monster: “It’s not a train, John. It doesn’t run on a schedule.”
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