Found in Lost: Thoughts on "The Shape of Things to Come"

Lost is finally back!--and better than ever? See our analysis and leave your thoughts after the break. As usual, MEGA spoiler warnings apply.

TOPH TUCKER '08

Very, very intense. Love the code for "OK I'm opening the fence BUT it's only under duress." Reminiscent of both Naomi's codephrase and Ben's line back in Season 3:

LOCKE: [checking to make sure they've left] The man from Tallahassee? What is that? Some kind of code?
BEN: No, John, unfortunately we don't have a code for "There's a man in my closet with a gun to my daughter's head." Although we obviously should.
http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/The_Man_from_Tallahassee_transcript

Makes me wonder if they DO have a code for that and Ben was just choosing not to use it. :)

Nifty, too, how they exploited our knowledge of what is to come to make us all think Claire was a goner.

Interesting that we have the research arm of the freighter crew, who served as scouts, and now the militant arm. What was the point of the research stuff? Just to see if the coast was clear? And the disarmament of the Tempest seems more signifiacant now that we know the crew had been planning an invasion. Of course, they couldn't stop Cerberus. :) Makes me wonder whether they were worried about it. You'd think they'd put the fence back up after going through. But there the monster was, in the heart of the barracks. Could it have circumvented the fence? Hmm. (It was probably just that they were too dumb to put the fence back up.)

What was up with Ben summoning Cerberus anyway? How'd that work? How come he came out all roughed-up and dirty? At first I though he'd teleported/time-travelled. Which, moving right along, was clearly how he got to Tunisia. The Orchid. That's why he was wearing Halowax's coat.

Poor Alex / Poor Ben. It's sad that the last thing she heard him say was that she was just a pawn, although he clearly didn't mean it. And it's sad for Ben that she died. I thought a few things when he let it happen. (1) How often does that happen in TV and movies? That the guy doesn't give in to the hostage plea, and that the hostage then gets shot? Not too often. (2) When he said he had things under control, he seemed to mean it. Which brought me back to the bizarre "off-island dead people returning on-island" issue. Could it be that even if she was "killed," she wouldn't truly be dead? But no. The writers have talked about this. Even amidst all the craziness, they don't want to introduce a cop-out like that. So scratch that. But as soon as he said "He changed the rules," I thought that (3) Jacob had told Ben that Alex wasn't SUPPOSED to die and thus couldn't, a la Michael. So he thought he had to have faith that the gun would jam, or Keamy wouldn't go through with it, or whatever. But someone brought up a very good point after the episode: (4) Maybe it was WIDMORE who had changed the rules. They're clearly fighting over the island, and maybe they promised each other at some point in the past that they wouldn't target each other's families. You know--civilized war. And thus it had been Widmore who changed the rules, and with that rule broken, Ben felt OK about going after Penny.

Speaking of Widmore--wow. Makes Ben look like the bad guy again after all, eh? I'm guessing Widmore controlled the island before Dharma. (Or maybe he led Dharma, of course--that's in ways the more obvious answer--but in a way it's more interesting if we're introducing him as the group that preceded everything we know, but which is implied via cyclicity to exist. Would certain Hostiles be remnants of that group? Richard, maybe? ...nah...

Interesting the way Ben said Widmore would never find the island, and Widmore said Ben would never find Penny. Seems oddly... parallel, no? What if Widmore *is* associated with Dharma, and the island isn't the only "special spot" on the face of the earth, and Penny's being hidden in another???

And there were definitely Star Wars-esque moments there, especially revolving around fear/anger/grief comments. But the stress in Lost is on revenge. The stress in Star Wars is on fear. Fear is pre-emptive; revenge is retailiatory. In general, there's huge overlap (REVENGE of the Sith, anyone?), but that's an interesting distinction to make. Another Star Wars connection: the Widmore/Ben relationship is reminiscent of the relationship between Sith. Hm.

For the Class of '08'ers out there, could the guy named Ishmael be a reference to the themes of our favorite gorilla book???

OK, I could write more, but I really should be getting back to other things.... oh, and what's up with Jack??? Drug issues????? Already???????