OK, first off, I'm aware the last post was a little spacy. It was late at night, and I was tiredly trying to get something up. That's my excuse. I know, I had the whole weekend. What can I say?
Anyway, on to the rest of the discussion.
Let's take a minute to grieve for Alex. She was a sweet kid who helped out the Losties numerous times, and she had a horrible final hour.
This scene was high drama in the best LOST fashion, and Michael Emerson, as always, was sublime. If you didn't have sympathy for Ben before then (see last post), you must have felt something for him there. Even if he appeared to be acting recklessly and selfishly, he still obviously did not expect Keamy to actually shoot Alex. It clearly wounded and shocked him, and he apparently did have reason to believe she was safe, due to...
The Rules!! What are the rules? Why are there rules? Games have been a big theme in LOST, and chess lingo and Risk both make an appearance in this episode. Are Ben and Widmore playing a real life chess and/or Risk game? Is it Mob rules (no family members)? In this case, family seems to be the relevant rule, but are there more? Why can't Ben kill Widmore?
There are many rational reasons for their struggle over the island, especially Widmore's greed and desire to exploit the island, and Ben's desire to protect it (at least, that's how I'm leaning). I'm not sure how an actual "game" with agreed upon rules fits in with those motives. Is it Trading Places? Did they bet a dollar on whether or not a bunch of people "lost" in their lives could find redemption if brought to the island? Are they simply doing everything possible to win, short of (at least, previously) harming family members? I can't believe that the stakes are not more real than that. Besides, Ben doesn't appear to be trying to get people to redeem themselves; he's already made up his mind (or allowed Jacob to tell him) who's good or bad.
In Widmore's bedroom, Widmore says to Ben, "All you have, you took from me." Obviously, he means the island, its resources, the Dharma facilities, and whatever Ben has been able to gain with them. Of course, we've known of a Widmore/Hanso connection, but I believe this is the first relatively direct evidence we have that Widmore was ultimately the one against whom Ben rebelled in the Purge.
It's hard to reconcile the Widmore we know with the hippie/Dharmic do-goodism of the DeGroots, but what if Widmore somehow learned about the island from a history of the Black Rock, figured out the DeGroots knew how to find it, tracked down a descendant of Magnus Hanso (Alvar), had him set up a front company through which Widmore channeled the funds for the Dharma Initiative, with the ultimate goal of acquiring the island for himself? But he didn't count on immortal Black Rock survivors who would find a kinship in a young Dharma boy, who would steal the island out from under his nose? Crazy? Or is it so sane you just BLEW your mind?
But back to the rules. Ben's first action after his daughter is killed, preceded by the statement "he changed the rules" was to, apparently, release Smokey. It seems like it might have been prudent to do that earlier, and the fact that it took a deep, personal tragedy coupled with a feeling of betrayal to instigate this action leads me think that may have been against the rules also. But why? (Have you noticed how many of my sentences end in question marks?)
Of course, the very fact that he apparently at least had the means to summon the monster was a big reveal. Did he lie when Locke asked him what it was and he said he didn't know? Or does he really have no idea what it is, he just knows how to call it? The secret door has hieroglyphs (highlighted here) for which DocArzt has provided a translation. Here's the whole description on DarkUFO.
Well, even though there is so much more to talk about, I think I'm going to have to leave it there for now. Maybe I'll squeeze one more in before this week's episode.
Again, thanks for reading!
Namaste
5 comments:
I had an idea earlier: What if the smoke monster summoned by Ben was not the same one as we have seen roaming about the island? Can the "security system" be in more than one place at a time?
Also, on the hidden room Ben went into: Was that there for millenia? Was the house built around it? Why is there a secret room built into that house, in front of the ancient room? Dharma would have had to build the house. Did The Others know of the room before killing off the Initiative?
Interesting idea. I suspect it is the same, but then again...Cerberus, with whom Smokey has been identified, has three heads. In the scene at the sonic fence with Kate and Juliet, it appeared to have three "heads". Am I remembering correctly that it split around a tree and came back together again when it was fleeing? Maybe it can split itself up.
The room is interesting; it did seem (now that you mention it) that it could be much older than the house. (It did have ancient writing on the door.)
I still get tripped up by the question of whence Smokey? Is it part of the island? Or did Dharma design it? I've thought the mechanical sounds could mean it was man-made, but then again the sonic fence seems well designed to keep it out of the barracks (and not so good at keeping out Kate, Locke, et al).
For me, these kinds of questions get at the root of what LOST is all about, and trying to figure them out is such sweet frustration!
Yeah, the room looked really old to me. It wasn't a Dharma-designed room. It looked like something Indiana Jones would be stepping into. It has to be part of the ruins, part of the ancient culture, and so does Smokey. I don't believe Dharma has anything to do with Smokey. They built the fence to keep Smokey out, I'm sure. And yeah, it does seem able to split itself, and reform. I lean toward it being something very high tech, possibly alien technology. I don't believe anymore that it has anything to do with apparitions, at least, I don't think it forms itself into the apparitions. There must be a connection, though, because it showed up to kill Eko right after he talked to the entity that appeared as Yemi. Who summoned it? Or did they? Speaking of Eko, did you know he was in The Mummy Returns? It's been so long since I had seen it, that I didn't remember when I saw him appear on LOST for the first time! I watched it the other night and I was like "Hey! It's Eko!"
Yeah, for a long time I thought Smokey was connected to Dharma, but I agree, it's more connected to the island itself. I was always skeptical of the idea that it was transforming into the apparitions, but like you say, it was at least working in concert with the Yemi apparition. Also, in my post for "Something Nice" I mentioned the smoke clues before the appearances of Charlie and Christian in the FFs. So I do think they are connected.
How much credence do you think we can give to Damon's list (apparition, monster, neither) from the OLP a few weeks ago? Speaking of OLP, did you here them confirm that Harper was Harper in the woods with Juliet? If that's so, what was up with the whispers? Is that how she found Juliet? Were the whispers saying, "Over here, here she is", or what?
Yeah, Smokey is definitely connected to the island/ancient culture/spaceship whatever. It's much too advanced/technological/mystical to have anything to do with Dharma. I don't think there is anything sinister about Dharma, I think they were what they were: a well-funded scientific research project. Who funded them does of course have deeper implications, as we know that Alvar Hanso and the Hanso family has been associated with the island since Magnus crashed there.
Yeah, I heard all the stuff Damon said, and I would assume he was mostly telling the truth about what was a monster and what was an apparition, but I only listened to it once and so haven't analyzed exactly what he said. I do remember him saying Harper was real, which made me think that ok, perhaps she is with the Others, and was guided there somehow, and she is indeed alive, but even if she is, maybe she wasn't really "there" when she spoke to Juliet. She popped in after whispers, and popped away again after whispers, so either she's extremely agile and stealthy, or she was "astral-projected" there, much like we believe Walt is capable of doing.
I have so much swimming around in my head about this show, especially after Thursday's episode, it's hard to get all the thoughts together and put them into ordered, meaningful paragraphs! I have new theories about things and new predictions for the finale, so we need to discuss at length!
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