OK, so Ben is obsessed with Juliet. He will go so far as to kill one of his own people. He believes quite emphatically that she's "his". Crazy much?
You know, I always wondered what happened to that little boy we met in "The Man Behind the Curtain". Well I think we saw him in TOW. The way he pursed his lips after growling, "you're mine" was a very childlike end to a lunatic rant. His giddiness when Juliet showed up for dinner was also, um... weird. On the one hand he's this brilliant mastermind, and on the other he's a lonely little boy who never knew his mommy.
Which brings me to my next point (already touched on in the comments for Part 1). When Harper tells Juliet "you look just like her", the "her" has to be his mother. Annie is a possibility, if only because she's the only other person we know Ben has cared about. But Juliet doesn't look just like Annie. In that respect, Mom is a much better candidate.
Plus, we don't know much about Annie, or what happened to her in the Purge, or any lingering feeling he may have had for her. We do know that his dad made him feel guilty about his mom's death (adding on to whatever guilt he would have had anyway), he has a painting of her in his house, an apparition of his dead mother started a chain of events that would lead to the murder of all DI personnel... this is a woman who has influenced his life without ever knowing him.
But it can't just be that Juliet looks like her. Is the fertility thing part of it? Maybe she's not just well suited to deal with the island fertility issue, but maybe on a personal level as a way for Ben to atone for the death of his mother? Or is it more complicated than that?
Maybe the details don't matter so much as what it means for the future. We've already seen Ben kill one man that was standing in his way with regard to Juliet, and Juliet has warned that same fate could befall Jack. (As a side note, she seems very sure Ben will win the coming war. What makes her so sure?)
But I guess the question is, how much will his obsession with Juliet sway his decisions and actions in his plan to save the island? Will an error in judgment have dire consequences? Will he try to kill Jack? I guess we'll find out!
On another note, I have indicated in the past that I believe Ben might be the good guy he claims. The killing of Goodwin would seem to be contradictory to that. No "save the island" justification works for that; that's just cold.
But I think there was a deliberate Biblical parallel here with David and Bathsheba. David was in love with Uriah's wife Bathsheba, so he sent Uriah off to the front lines, where he was killed. David proceeded to marry Bathsheba.
This was a bad thing to do, and David paid with the life of his son, but it was the only bad thing David ever did in the eyes of the Lord. Otherwise he was a great king. I hope this doesn't mean that Alex is on the chopping block, but I do think it means that Ben might still be the good guy, just all too human as well. (And creepy!)
Well that about sums up my thinking right now on the Ben and Juliet situation. I guess remaining questions from this episode include:
What's up with Ben and Locke's new relationship? I know I wondered why they weren't working together, but now that they are, is Ben playing Locke? Does he still believe in him? Is he still threatened by him?
Was Ben really seconds away from killing everyone on the island if Dan and Charlotte hadn't intervened?
Where are Jacob and Smokey while all this is going on?
And many others that make my brain hurt.
Namaste
4 comments:
I'm not so sure that we can actually blame Ben for Goodwin's death. Unless Ben is privy to knowing the future, there's no way he could predict that Goodwin would end up dead. It's not like he was infiltrating the Hell's Angels. And if he did know the future, well, Daniel said "You can't change the future" so again, it's not Ben's fault, it was meant to be in the space/time continuum.
What are you, his lawyer? :-D
I think he knew full well what would happen. "Goodwin's assignment will be over soon enough (creepy smile)" and his failure to deny Juliet's accusation that he knew both lead me to believe he had some way of knowing. Either he knew Ana Lucia's personality well enough to predict, or maybe he has some other influence...
Remember the whispers from Shannon's death scene? One of them says "Ana Lucia is our trigger". What if that wasn't the first time she was used?
Well, like I said, if he DID know the future, it's still not his fault for then adhering to what he's "supposed" to do anyway. It may have been fortunate for him, but he hardly pulled the trigger himself. And if he chose not to send Goodwin, the universe would course correct and eventually kill Goodwin anyway. I mean, Jacob could have sat him down and let him know what was to be. And Ben would've smiled creepily and said, OK, woo hoo! But it does not make him responsible for the death. C'mon, you have to apply logic here!! Overzealous, crazed theorizing does nothing for me!
Speaking of Goodwin, what about the mysterious chemical burn? What was he working on??
I just can't see how it makes sense that he didn't know Goodwin would die. Juliet accuses him point blank of knowing it would happen, and asks him why. Ben doesn't deny it, and he does tell her why. By answering the why question, he is tacitly admitting he did know. Plus, the biblical parallel is just too obvious. And of course, David couldn't have known Uriah would be killed either, but God didn't accept that as an excuse. And finally, if it weren't deliberate on Ben's part, Juliet's warning to Jack would have no meaning. Crazed? Overzealous? Illogical? Not a chance!
I assumed the chemicals had something to do with manufacturing the gas? But I'm still not sure what the Tempest is for. Is it really a power station? Is it just for mass gassing, or was it modified to do that? Of course, we all got the reference to Shakespeare's The Tempest, but have you read this? I wonder if it's significant.
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