We’re experiencing technical difficulties! This here’s page 3, and you’ll want to start on page 1. Click to the next page, start from there, and then circle back to read this page last. You can do it. Jacob has faith in you.

-MMorse and the good folks at Chud

• Ben makes like Creedence Clearwater Revival and runs through the jungle, hotly pursued by Ilana. He makes it to the gun that Anti-Locke promised him, but he doesn’t shoot Jacob’s sworn protector. Instead, he tells her that he wants to explain. And with that, all of the lies, the oily self-protectiveness, melt away. Ben lays his soul bare, and confesses. He tells Ilana the truth. He admits his sin. And he begs her to just let him leave. With that, we get this exchange:

Ilana: “Where will you go?”
Ben: “To Locke.”
Ilana: “Why?”
Ben: “Because he’s the only one who will have me.”

That’s despair. Real, honest despair. Ben will join Anti-Locke’s Island renegades because it’s all he’s been offered. It’s all he thinks he has left. He’s lost everything and everyone he cared about due to his own decisions, and the only alternatives in his eyes are death or damnation.

But then something happens. Something I genuinely didn’t expect – something powerful and simple and immensely moving. With three simple words, Ilana offers the fallen Benjamin another alternative:

Ilana: “I’ll have you.”

I get shivers just typing the words, which is totally ridiculous. Commence your chortling. But if I can get all mushy on you for a minute:

Forgiveness. Grace. Compassion. Call it what you will. It adds up to the same thing – a second chance. Biblically-speaking, Ben is the Prodigal Son here, and Ilana has welcomed him home again. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Read this:

“A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want…

And when he came to himself, he said: ‘How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.’

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” – Luke 15:11-24

The Prodigal Son understood that he did not deserve his father’s forgiveness. He understood that he had acted rashly, wrongly, that he had sinned. And he fully expected his father to take this into account – to judge him, to treat him as though he had sinned. To treat him as an “Other.” And yet, the Prodigal’s father does none of these things – maybe because he sees the honesty in his son, and maybe, simply, because the love of a parent for a child is a holy thing, almost impossible to destroy. The parable is designed to illustrate God’s love and capacity for forgiveness, and to urge us all to exercise it in our lives. That  forgiveness is mirrored in Ilana’s brief words.

• Notice that Ben’s attitude toward Jacob in the Season 5 finale more-or-less reflects the attitude of the Older Son in the Parable of the Prodigal.

“Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.”

Sound familiar? It should. It’s essentially what Ben said to Jacob, just before he gutted the Island’s God/Father like a stuck pig. Part of the beauty of the Parable of the Prodigal lies in its dualism. At some point in our lives, we are all the Older Son, and we are all the Younger Son. At some point, we all need to be forgiven. And at some other point, we all need to learn to forgive. This goes beyond any idea of religion, any sect or belief or creed. It’s the sort of universal human Truth-with-a-capital-T that we all arguably recognize, whether we’re “religious” or “atheist” or “Jedi” or “Other.”

• Of course, the choice between the position of Principal and the well-being of Alex mirrors Ben’s similar choice from Season 3, where he was forced to choose between the Island and his daughter, and chose poorly (cue disintegrating Alison Doody).

• The final choice for Ben (Job or girl?? Girl or job??) doesn’t necessarily add up, if you’re of the mindset that once Ben has the power he seeks he’ll use it to help Alex. But that perspective fails to account for the “moral calculus” involved here.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” – Mark 8:36

Or, if you prefer your Scripture with musical accompaniment:

“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold.”
-Bob Marley

Ben is clearly in his heart a teacher, not an administrator. To take Atherton’s job and more specifically, to take it in this specific way, would change him. He’d dole out his favors to Arzt, and he’d start making other deals – for the “good” of the school. Only, those Arzt favors probably wouldn’t stop being demanded, as that guy isn’t exactly the type who seems to be above some me-first-and-the-gimme-gimmes-style blackmail. More deals would be made.

Maybe he’d start out with good intentions, but by starting down this road, Ben could easily become the man we’ve seen him as: bug-eyed, Machiavellian and utterly isolated from those around him. Rise to the next level in any organization, or simply in life, and a very real danger exists: the people you’ve left behind can start to look “small.” Unimportant. And the choices that you make from that point on – choices that affect those people on sometimes deep and meaningful levels (see: Reynolds’ casual destruction of Ben’s history club) – start to get hideously easier, because, after all, they’re “only” five students. They’ll live.

And I think Ben understood this on some level (perhaps on an instinctual/subconscious level – see my theory from the Rewatch column for The Constant). He understood that getting what he wants in this manner might result in losing everything he needs. Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, brutha. As Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.”

• Lost hasn’t done a slow-motion beach reunion in a long time, but we get one here and it’s warm, hopeful stuff. Last week’s episode was perhaps Lost’s bleakest ever, but “Dr. Linus” offered us something like Grace – the possibility of redemption. I’m at my most eye-rollingly sincere when I say that I hope Ben’s choice made the difference for him, and that it was made honestly (and I have no reason to think it’s not, despite Ben’s well-established reputation as a Lying Liar with pants very much afire).

• As if all of the above weren’t enough (I’ve somehow managed to churn out my longest column ever – “lucky” you!), the episode ends on a decidedly sinister note: Widmore has returned to the Island.

We spent a good portion of Season 5 being told how difficult it was to travel to the Island – that the conditions of the Oceanic flight had to be replicated as precisely as possible in order to return. This was backed up, implicitly, by all of the stuff we’d learned previously about the submarine homing beacon, and how, once disabled, the Island apparently became “cut off.”

So: How in blue blazes does Widmore suddenly show up in a submarine?

Three possibilities off the top of my head:

(1)The writers forgot all about that complicated find-the-Island stuff and just said: “You know what would be SUPERCOOL?! If we had Widmore show up in a SUBMARINE at the end of the episode!” Then they high-fived, lit another joint, began wrestling one another atop a giant pile of crisp hundred dollar bills, and never spoke/thought about it again.

(2)Widmore’s sub can travel at/around the same speed as a plane, or was awaiting the arrival of the Ajira flight in the same vicinity as the “Vile Vortice” where the entrance to the Island was temporarily open, and passed through with the plane, parasitically piggybacking off of it to gain access.

(3)There is a “beacon” similar to the one found in the Looking Glass which has been hidden aboard the Ajira flight, giving Widmore the renewed ability to find the Island.

Questions of how he got there aside, what’s he doing there now? Theories? I’ve got a bunch, but this column is LATE.

• While things are still murky and unclear, one refrain continues to repeat, again and again, like a song – a song that we heard Sawyer singing to himself as he left the Island via raft. If there’s a central “message” to Lost, I believe it’s this one, and that this episode only underlined it further:

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds.”

I invite you to point out all of the things I missed (of which, I’m sure, there are many) and tell me what you thought about this episode in the comments section below. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

*****

If you enjoyed this column, please Digg it using the button provided below!

To view the complete Rewatch archive and related articles, please visit Back To The Island.

To talk about/join the discussion about Season Six, jump onto the Message Boards.

• I love that Sawyer’s “Booty Babes” magazine features a cover story called “Getting to the bottom of it.” It’s as though the writers are hinting that we’re “getting to the bottom” of the major Island mysteries – that soon, some big secrets will be revealed. It’s also really amusing.

• That other book Ben is holding was apparently authored by Benjamin Disraeli, and it features one of his most famous quotations: “Justice is truth in action.” I’m not particularly familiar with Mr. Disraeli or his writing, but here are a few phrases that seem applicable to Lost, pulled at random. If you know the title of the book that’s shown, let me know:

“Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.”

“”What is duty, and what is faith? What ought I to do, and what ought I to believe?”

“The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.”

• Also in “the library”: Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen.” Obviously, the book’s title can be seen to refer to the candidates on the Island, but I wonder whether Lost is also giving us a bigger hint about the narrative. The Chosen focuses on the friendship between two boys, the tense relationship between one of those boys and his father, the idea of duty, the burden of expectation, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s good. Very moving stuff, even if I never quite bought the Rabbi’s reasoning at the end. You should read it. Remembering the novel’s basic plot, I began wondering if, perhaps, the central relationship of the two boys might mirror the as-yet-unseen origins of Jacob and the Man in Black.

It also occurs to me that the relationship between the Rabbi and his son mirrors the relationship between Jacob and Ben. SPOILERS FOR THE CHOSEN: In the novel, the Rabbi has been seen as distant and uncaring toward his son. At the novel’s end we discover that the boy’s father had discovered the boy’s fierce intelligence when he was very young, and was worried that his son might become a cold, hard person, without a real idea of what suffering actually is. And so he decided to become distant, in order to teach the boy a lesson about its importance.

Think of the way in which Jacob treated Ben – his figurative son. Was Ben’s dip in the Temple waters the equivalent of the Rabbi’s glimpsing his son’s intellect? Did Jacob intentionally distance himself because he wanted Ben to learn something? And is there an echo of this dynamic in the back-story of the MiB?

Ben: “I can get off this Island, and when I do I have a vast network of people and resources that will get you that money.”

• Ben bargains with Miles to set him free (one of the seven stages of grief – something I’ll get into a little further down in the column), and tells Miles what we think Miles already knows (remember his comment to Ben in Season 4: “I know what you can do.”): Ben can leave the Island, probably through the same means that Richard may have obliquely referred to earlier. But Miles has apparently picked up on Nikki and Paolo’s beyond-the-grave-broadcasting, and knows all about the diamonds that were scattered over them as they were buried alive (check out the Rewatch Column for “Expose” to take a nostalgic trip back and revisit the audience’s two FAVORITE CHARACTERS). And so, Ben is rendered effectually impotent. He has nothing to offer – nothing to bargain with.

• Miles’ use of “Jabronies” makes me smile. Who says that anymore?

Miles: “Right up until the second the knife went through his heart, he was hoping he was wrong about you.  I guess he wasn’t.” 

• If Miles is telling the truth here (and we’ve no reason to believe otherwise), then Jacob isn’t really some all-seeing, all-knowing “God” figure (although he is, in the metaphorical sense). He’s more like a guy who’s figured out the odds on human behavior either through repetition or through the Lighthouse mirrors or through his “thing for numbers” or through these Island tests he’s running. He’s kind of a scientist, no?

In the Season 6 thread, there’s been an ongoing and fascinating discussion about what Jacob does, what his plans are, how much he knows or knew, and just how “omnipotent/omniscient” he really is. It’s an interesting debate, and I encourage you to read it. Here’s my opinion:

“Dr. Linus” gave us confirmation that Jacob had been hoping to have been wrong about Ben right up until the moment he was killed. That pretty much explicitly confirms that Jacob doesn’t control (and doesn’t want to control) everyone’s actions – it also confirms that he isn’t certain about outcomes. Which means, to my mind, that he’s operating at a “higher plane” than the castaways, with more information, but that ultimately he’s relying on these characters to make their own choices.

And getting back to the scientist analogy – it seems as though Jacob spent a fair amount of his time “playing the odds,” so to speak. He seems to have had some kind of “future knowledge,” but Miles’ comment above confirms that he wasn’t/isn’t certain about the potential outcomes of events. Rather, it seems that he’s aware of the potential possibilities, and is attempting to shepherd (Shephard?) the candidates toward an as-yet-undefined goal – offering them choices that they must decide between. To do this, he’s been pulling people to the Island for a long time. He’s been testing them, presumably recording/noting the results, and then re-testing other groups. While this gives him a “God”-like quality that I’m enjoying exploring in these columns, it’s also arguable that it gives him a “Scientist” quality as well. Which again unites the concepts of faith and science.

Richard: “There’s something I need to do.”
Jack: “To do what?”
Richard: “Die.”

“Thus I draw from the Absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

• Richard, Hurley and Jack re-enter the Black Rock – a location that we haven’t returned to since Season 3. We get confirmation that Richard arrived on the Island via this ship, as one of its slaves/prisoners. We also learn something fascinating and illuminating about Richard’s unlikely immortality:

Richard: “Jacob touched me. And when Jacob touches you it’s considered a gift – only, it’s not a gift at all. It’s a curse.”

When Jacob touched Richard it made him “immortal.” But that’s not all it did. It also took away Richard’s ability to kill himself. How might these two things be inter-related? Is the process of aging (by which our body slowly dies, over a period of 70-some-odd years if we’re lucky) a form of self-harm, perhaps? The body hurting itself?

• Richard isn’t the only person to have been touched by Jacob – all of Jacob’s “candidates” have received this gift, as we saw in the Season 5 finale. So, by implication, none of the “candidates” are able to take their own lives, and suddenly we understand why it is that Jack’s suicidal attempt to jump off of a bridge was interrupted by a car crash, why Michael wasn’t able to kill himself in a car crash or with a firearm.

• As several commenters on the message boards have pointed out, taking away Richard’s ability to commit suicide hampers Richard’s free will. As we’ve seen, Jacob appears to be all about letting people make choices. So what gives?

Obviously, we don’t really know the “actual” answer to this question. But I’d like to suggest that there’s an interesting philosophical element to Jacob’s “gift” and Richard’s subsequent inability to take his own life. And what’s that element? Well, it’s Absurd.

Jean Paul Sartre (who should be familiar to you if you’ve read the Lost: Rewatch columns), Soren Kierkegaard (the author of “Fear and Trembling,” the book Hurley found in the tunnels leading to the Temple) and Albert Camus all wrote and thought about “the Absurd,” or “Absurdism.” What’s Absurdism? The “simple” answer (haha!) is that Absurdism is a philosophy stating that “the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning in the universe ultimately fail (and hence are absurd), because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to the individual” (a very Existentialist POV). The disconnect between the meaning we seek and the apparent meaningless of the universe results in “the Absurd.” If that sounds a lot like Exitentialism, you’re right. It does.

Sartre, that famed Existentialist, wrote on the Absurdity of existence, Kierkegaard on the Absurdity of certain religious truths, and how they can block us from finding “God.” Camus focused on the dualism of life (two sides, one black, one white). Camus believed that happiness was momentary, but death was forever. Morbid as this sounds, it was meant to be a positive and life-affirming idea. We KNOW we’re going to die. And as in Existentialism, the Absurdist believes that life and the universe are meaningless, rendering our lives meaningless. And yet, despite this knowledge, we crave meaning. This is Absurd. It is a paradox. And yet it’s still true, says Mr. Camus.

Camus believed that lives must have meaning in order to be valued and that, despite the lack of meaning in the universe, we are capable of creating that meaning. What does all of this have to do with Richard’s inability to kill himself? Well, Kierkegaard and Camus believed that there were three options available to humanity to resolve the disconnect between seeking meaning and outward meaninglessness:

(1) Suicide.
(2) Religious belief.
(3) Acceptance.

Both Camus and Kierkegaard rejected suicide as an option. According to Camus, suicide serves only to proclaim that life is “too much.” To Camus, suicide was, in fact, a rejection of freedom – a surrendering of all options to the void. He and Sartre seem to share some of the same basic views, and as discussed in past Rewatch/Back To The Island columns, existentialism is splattered all over this show (Camus, as you probably know, didn’t consider himself an Existentialist, but despite this there’s still a lot of overlap in their ideas).

Suicide, under this view, is a form of nihilism. It’s a rejection of choice and of created meaning – a rejection of what Jacob arguably stands for. Nihilism – a belief in the meaninglessness of things – is the domain of the Man in Black. So it makes perfect sense that Jacob’s gift wouldn’t allow that particular choice, from a way-too-heady point of view.

Does all of that make any sense at all? It does to me, but then, I’m writing this silly thing. I encourage you to leave questions and thoughts in the comments section, to post them on the message boards, and if those options aren’t available to you, to visit Back to the Island and leave your thoughts there.

Richard: “I devoted my life – longer than you can possibly imagine – in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason – that he had a plan; a plan that I was a part of…”

• The parallels between Jacob/God and Others/followers grows stronger with every episode. Something interesting to note: this is the second time that Jack has been instrumental in renewing Richard’s faith.

• Jack makes the Jacobian choice to let Richard make his own choice, and agrees to help him try and die.

Great Hurley Line: “If you change your mind I’ll be, like, a mile away.”

• There’s an exquisite instance of JACKFACE! in this episode, but I can’t seem to find a screencap of it. Dammit.

• By letting the dynamite’s fuse burn down, Jack takes the “leap of faith” that Kierkegaard described in his book “Fear and Trembling.” In this way, he brings Richard “back to life” and away from death essentially.

• Anti-Locke makes a sneaky appearance to Ben and offers him a chance to live – he sets Ben free of his physical chains (which was interesting – is the Man in Black capable of coaxing physical matter, whereas Jacob is capable of guiding the spirit/consciousness?), tells him where to find a weapon, and tells him where to find Anti-Locke’s growing group of disgruntled grunts. Essentially, Anti-Locke offers Ben a chance to escape his responsibility for what he’s done and Ben, slippery snake-oil salesman that he is, totally takes him up on the deal.

• Since murdering Jacob, Benjamin Linus has arguably progressed through the Kübler-Ross grief cycle. What’s the grief cycle? It’s a defined series of stages through which most human beings process grief in the wake of a shocking/tragic event or a death. They are: (1) Shock Stage (initial paralysis), (2) Denial Stage (Trying to avoid the inevitable), (3) Anger Stage (Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion), (4) Bargaining Stage (Seeking a way out), (5) Depression Stage (Final realization of the inevitable), (6) Testing Stage (Seeking realistic solutions), and (7) Acceptance (Finding a way forward).

These stages were established by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss doctor who challenged the then-conventional wisdom that there was nothing to be done for a grieving person. We’ve seen Ben pass through shock, and we’ve seen him deny his role in the death of Jacob (an echo, as well, of Peter’s denial of Christ – does Ben deny three times?). In this episode, we see his initial fear and anger over being confronted with the possibility of his own death. We watch as he attempts to bargain his way out of what he sees as an inevitable death by offering Miles money. We watch as he sinks into a depression, realizing that there’s no way out for him this time. We see him seek a solution to his problem by taking Anti-Locke’s offer, and we see his eventual acceptance in the jungle. And speaking of which, let’s talk about my favorite moment in the episode – and what might be one of my favorite moments in the entirety of the show.

STILL MORE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!

Dr. Linus (S6, ep. 7)

“The Absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.” – Sartre

“If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.” – Albert Camus, Second Letter to a German Friend, December 1943

Jack: “I just came from a lighthouse where my name was etched in wood on a dial. I turned a mirror that somehow reflected the image of the house I grew up in. Jacob’s lighthouse. He got Hurley to bring me out there because he wanted me to see what was reflected in that mirror. For some reason he wanted me to know that he had been watching me ever since I was a kid.”
Richard: “Why ?”
Jack: “I have no idea why. But I’m willing to bet you that if Jacob went to that trouble, then he brought me to this island for a reason, and it’s not to blow up sitting here with you right now.”

Remember Hurley and his Dharma Bus, way back in Season 3? When Jin, Charlie and Sawyer helped push that rattling contraption over the edge, sending our favorite “PU” representin’ castaway on a wild ride, none of them seemed convinced that it would work, that Hurley and the Dharma Van wouldn’t end up smeared messily all over the landscape.

And for those first few agonizing moments, we weren’t either. For a minute, we (or I at any rate) allowed ourselves to imagine that goofy van ramming straight into a big honkin’ rock, sending Hurley hurtling through the air like the bird who bears his name.

Reading up on the reactions of folks here at Chud and elsewhere, it occurs to me that I’m able to draw a shaky comparison between the first five episodes of this season and that initial stretch of deceptively-dangerous hillside. Those first episodes, if the reactions I’ve read are any kind of indication of the overall reaction, were largely well-liked, but also kind of scary, with an underlying feeling/fear that the whole enterprise might suddenly pitch over on us and just die – skidding out in a smoking heap, or smashing into the rocks below. With LA X and that initial push, the show’s speed was up and things were looking hopeful. With What Kate Does, the show hit some bumps, spooked some folks, provoked unease. The Substitute reassured us all, but then Lighthouse hit and scared everyone anew. Was this going to work? Could the show get its engine started in time? Or were we in the process of watching a car accident in progress?

Starting last week however, and continuing into this week, there’s the distinct feeling that Lost’s writers have finally turned that engine over, have swerved, have (perhaps narrowly) avoided smashing their show on the rocks of Obvious Metaphor. If we listen closely, we can hear the far-off, figurative whoop of the drivers as they steer their unwieldy-yet-lovable creation away from imminent destruction and out into the open fields. Both “Sundown” and “Dr. Linus” have been exhilarating episodes for me as a viewer, and while I understand that this episode didn’t impress some of you the way that it impressed me, I stand by that basic analogy. We’ve cleared the rocks, people. Get ready to feel that engine rev.

Thoughts:

• Ilana was told that she and her group would be safe at the Temple. Whoops.

• The Temple wall adorned with a “Shen Ring” (the Egyptian symbol for protection) – why is it there to begin with? What did the (assumed) Egyptians need protection from? Has all of this happened before, as was implied in the back-and-forth between Jacob and the Man in Black (seen in the Season 5 finale)? Did the ancient builders of the Temple see all of this coming? If so, how? Did Jacob instruct them, way back in the day? Has the knowledge of what’s to come somehow been sent “back” through time to them? Have the castaways themselves somehow helped to engineer this? Or is it just, like, a cool looking symbol to stick on a wall?

Ben: “It was on this island that everything changed – that everything finally became clear. Elba. It’s where Napoleon faced his greatest test, because exile wasn’t the worst of his fate. What was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power.”

• I’m quite sure that Jeff Jensen, Noel Murray from the AV Club, and the rest of the folks I like to read after I’m done slaving over a hot column have talked this quote up. I’m willing to bet that Mr. Jensen’s probably written a paragraph or two about Napoleon’s life, etc. et al, and about the parallels between this mini-history and Ben’s Island history. I’ve heard from a few people that they thought this stuff was too “on the nose,” but while that’s a valid criticism if you’re the sort of fan who makes those connections naturally, Lost also has a devoted group of fans who love the show’s ridiculous (in the good way) mysteries, but aren’t spending their time talking about it with other people, or, say, writing obsessively-composed columns. As a for instance.  I enjoy a little underlining from time to time if it’s to make a point, or sharpen a theme, or comment on what’s happening and for the most part I thought Lost walked the right side of that line with this episode.

• Principal Reynolds is played by the immortally-sleazy William Atherton, who you probably know from films like Ghostbusters (Walter Peck, dickless EPA employee), Die Hard (Richard Thornburg), Real Genius (Professor Jerry Hathaway), and Biodome (Professor Somebodyorother). Both Atherton and his fellow Real Genius actor Jon Gries make appearances in this episode – all we needed was a quick Kilmer appearance (preferably in full-on bunny-killing Island of Doctor Moreau mode) and we’d have a reunion.

Can you imagine Kilmer playing Jacob? I can. Specifically as Elvis in True Romance. “I like you, Jack. Always have. Always will.”

• Ben’s off-Island and on-Island storylines offer up a virtual Hall of Mirrors for you and I to get lost in. The relationship between Ben and Principal Reynolds mirrors, depending on your angle, both Ben’s Island coup where he deposed Widmore and the murder of Jacob, in which Anti-Locke helped distill Ben’s rage and wounded pride into a perfect cocktail of murderous impulse.

• I don’t like Arzt. It feels good to say it. Say it with me, because you don’t really like Arzt either. This is hopefully the last mention of him you’ll see in this column. Begone, Arzt! Back to the hammy, scenery-chewing depths from whence you came!

Locke: “It just sounds like you care about this place. And if the man in charge doesn’t, then maybe its time for a change.”

• That’s a nice line. It’s as though both off-Island Locke and Anti-Locke are speaking at the same time, but from entirely different emotional/psychological places (or so it seems). Don’t you love that we’ve reached a point in the show where there are three separate ways to refer to Locke in a given episode? There’s Anti-Locke, the form that the Man in Black has assumed, there’s off-Island Locke, who may or may not be participating in a Second Snake, and there’s Classic Locke, whose story we’d been following for Five seasons before he was ingloriously strangled. That’s alotta Lockes!

Off-Island Locke plants the seed of ambition that sparks Ben’s power grab, niftily mirroring the way Anti-Locke slyly coaxed him into murdering Jacob. Here, however, off-Island Locke seems more like the “wise teacher/advisor” Locke of Season 1. Remember him? The guy Charlie trusted with his life? The guy without the crippling Messiah complex? That’s the Locke we seem to be seeing here – more Merlin than wannabe-Arthur.

Miles gives us more info about his superfreakyghostpowers – it involves picking up “their last thoughts before they check out.” This continues to suggest to me that, when someone on the Island dies, the Smoke Monster/Man in Black is somehow able to access that person’s memeories, appearance and behavior. Have you read my “Well of Souls” theory? Wanna?

Ilana: “Jacob was the closest thing I ever had to a father.”

• How literal is this? I suspect it isn’t literal at all. But it does make me wonder: Are some/all of the “candidates” descendants of Jacob and/or Jacob’s family line? Is that, perhaps, part of the reason that they were chosen as candidates? I’m reminded of those lengthy so-and-so begat so-and-so passages from the Bible. Did Jacob begat Jack, for instance? And if so, then allegorically-speaking, aren’t they looking for “God’s” son? Aka Christ? Aka “the Redeemer?”

Great Miles Delivery: “Uh-oh.”

• Continuing the theme of reflection in the literal, figurative, metaphorical, allegorical and (use your imagination)al senses, Ben takes a long look at himself in the window of his microwave oven.

• In the off-Island reality, Ben’s father is alive, living with him, and apparently needs continuous Oxygen through one of those nose tube thingies, a sight which always saddens me and creeps me out just a little. As you remember, Ben killed his father during the Purge by gassing him. This scene serves as a kind of benign mirror to that event, with Ben changing the Oxygen tank for his father so that he’ll continue to live.

• Great make up work, by the way.

Roger Linus: “This isn’t the life I wanted for you, Ben. I wanted so much more.”
Ben: “I know.”
Roger: “That’s why I signed up for that damn Dharma Initiative and took you to the Island and they were decent people – smarter than I’ll ever be. Imagine how different our lives would have been if we’d stayed.”

• There’s a lot of punch packed into that exchange. For one, Roger Linus is not a total dillweed. This is a significant change from the Roger we’ve seen previously, to say the least. This makes two broken father/son relationships that the off-Island universe has shown (or implied to) us to be healed: Ben and Roger Linus, and John Locke and Anthony Cooper.

For another, we now know that Ben and Roger were on the Island at one point. Why they left, and when, is unclear. Did they leave because of the warnings that Faraday and Miles gave to Pierre Chang? Did they leave for a different reason?

We don’t see Emily Linus in this episode, and neither Ben nor Roger talk about her. Is she even dead? If she is, Roger doesn’t seem to carry the same beer can-chucking grudge against his son that we’ve seen him lugging around before. Did she perhaps die on the Island?

If that’s the case, it would potentially explain why young Ben was able to see her in the past. Out of all the “ghosts” we’ve seen on the show, all but three of the “ghosts” we’ve seen on the show have died on the Island, or have had their dead bodies transported to the Island. One of those three is Ben’s mother, who appeared at his Dharma bungalow window one night. If she died on the Island in the off-Island universe, and the Island is a kind of “nexus of realities/timelines,” then perhaps he was seeing that Emily’s ghost.

Finally, why did they leave the Island? How long before it sank? Did they leave out of grief? And how old was Ben when they left? Did she still die in childbirth?

• Alex Rousseau makes her first appearance in the off-Island universe, as Ben Linus’ most promising student. Their relationship over the course of this episode helps shore up my Second Snake theory – that the off-Island “flashes” we are watching this season are actually a look at a “second chance” reset. In essence, so my wacky theory goes, the off-Island scenes we’re watching are actually flash-forwards AND flash-backs, all at once. They’re flash-forwards, because the events that have to happen in order to cause these “off-Island flashes” haven’t happened yet in the on-Island scenes we’re watching. They’re the result of what happens in those scenes, in the same way that “Through the Looking Glass” functioned to show us “the future” for Jack and Kate, a result of their on-Island actions. But if I’m right (and it’s a big if) then these off-Island scenes are also flash-BACKS, because the event that hasn’t happened yet will function to “reset” the timeline and/or jump everyone’s consciousness into an alternate timeline at an earlier point in time. If that sounds confusing, just think of it as being like what happened when everyone went back to the 70’s, looping through time. Here, it’s the same basic trip, but instead of keeping all of their memories and living in the present from that point on as they do in Dharma times, they’d instead have no memory of anything that had happened, because whatever the “event” is that’s still to come, it’s going to reset time itself, including the castaways.

Assuming any of that has any kind of potential validity whatsoever, then the question for us is: Are the off-Island flashes a karmic “reward” of sorts that await the castaways as a result of Jacob’s plan, or does this “Second Snake” represent the result of Anti-Locke’s successful escape from the Island?

• Ben’s off-Island relationship with Alex is warm and supportive in a way that their on-Island relationship never was. And through the events of this episode, Ben gets another chance to save the girl he raised in another life, and to see that she gets the life she was denied on the Island. If you’re invested in these characters on that enjoyable, emotional level, then this was probably pretty touching for you to watch. It was for me.

Ilana: “You’re candidates – to replace Jacob.”

• The “candidate” issue is now out in the open, with both sides in the growing Island conflict now aware of the purported purpose behind their being on the Island.

• We learn that Ilana’s mission is to protect these candidates – but how? And from what, exactly? It’s not from death, I don’t think, since Anti-Locke doesn’t seem willing/able to kill candidates. Is it to protect them from him, then? From being “converted”? Is she essentially protecting them from themselves?

• The six candidates Ilana refers to are: Shephard, Reyes, Austen (whose name apparently was somewhere in the Cave, but got cut out/cut off for some reason), Jarrah, Ford, and Kwon. If Ilana’s already crossed Jarrah off her mental list, then that means both Kwons are being counted.

• Last we saw, Jacob was telling Hurley that it was too late to save his friends at the Temple. We rejoin our two most likely Jacob candidates the morning after the destruction of the Temple, where Hurley’s apparently fallen asleep while waiting for Jack to finish staring at the ocean.

Hurley: “What’s the rush? Maybe we should…take our time?”

• Some folks are tired of Hurley voicing the thoughts of the audience, but I usually enjoy it. Here, it seems almost as though he’s speaking for the writers. I also like Hurley’s trepidation – his unwillingness to head straight back because of what he’s been told by Jacob. It’s a very human touch.

ack: “Where did you come from?”
Richard: “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

• Has Richard just come from a place on the Island that allows you to “project” yourself? The place Ben will refer to when he tells Miles that he can get off of the Island? The place Harper Stanhope visited in order to suddenly, spookily appear to Kate and Juliet? The place that allows the Others to suddenly appear in general?

MORE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!