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The Lost Reading List
4.9 The Shape of Things to Come

Sayid: "What are you doing here?"
Ben: "I'm here to find the man who murdered your wife."

Wow. That was... wow.

As usual, we got a teeny tiny answer or two, and a whole freaking ton of new questions. There was also a lot of death. I've heard it said that Lost is taking the easy path to drama by simply killing off characters, and that may be true. Of course, they also have the biggest cast of characters on television, and television characters tend to die a lot sooner than regular people, so statistically, maybe it's not that far off the mark. Do they have actuarial tables for television characters?

I hadn't even accepted that Danielle Rousseau was truly gone. And now we've lost poor, slingshot-toting Alex. There's just something so wrong about Danielle and Alex both being dead. I even thought Claire was dead when the house exploded (which would have explained Kate raising Aaron) and that Jack would never know Claire was his sister. I was also freaking that Sawyer was going to get shot because Sawyer is always the one who gets hurt. (During the gun battle, Dan and I were both yelling, don't kill Sawyer!) When Sawyer and Locke pulled guns on each other, I thought we actually might lose one of them, too. God forbid.

And Sayid lost his Nadia. I liked Nadia. Sayid searched for her for eight years, found her, they were married briefly, and now she's gone. I'd been looking forward to eventually getting a Sayid/Nadia flashback or flashforward, but apparently, they skipped right over it. Unless we're getting one later. It wouldn't be the same, though.

Sayid is no fool. Why did he just take Ben's word for what happened to Nadia? I think Ben killed Nadia, or had Nadia killed, specifically to gain control over Sayid. What an assassin Sayid makes, huh? Killing Widmore's henchman appeared to be Sayid's idea, but I don't think it was -- because Ben had a small smile on his face when he was walking away from Sayid.

Did Ben truly love Alex? Yes, I think he did. He was in shock when Alex was killed; he looked utterly devastated when he knelt over her body. He didn't think she was in real danger. He didn't think Widmore would change "the rules." Clearly, Ben and Charles Widmore know each other very well. Widmore "owns" the Island. Literally? As in real estate? What sort of Island Geneva convention rules are keeping Ben from killing Widmore outright, and vice versa? Widmore said he knew who and what Ben was. What is Ben? There's talk around the net that Ben and Widmore might be each other's "constant". And isn't that an interesting theory? Which leaves Penelope as Ben's only course for revenge. You know, I like Penelope, too. And I like Desmond even more. Let's not kill off any more characters that I like, shall we?

(That final scene in Widmore's bedroom did suggest that in October 2005, Penelope was on the Island and Ben and Widmore were unable to go back there. Let's hope that Penelope and her Desmond will finally be together, at least for awhile.)

And back to Ben again. How did Ben get to Tunisia? Wormhole? Transporter? Time travel device? That would explain Ben vomiting on arrival, and why he asked the desk clerk for the date, including the year. (October 21, 2005.) Let us recall that Charlotte was in Tunisia when she found the remains of a polar bear with a Dharma Hydra on its collar. When he arrived out of nowhere, Ben was wearing a parka with yet another Dharma symbol on it that looked like a tiny figure inside a spiral. Time travel device? The Monster? And why a parka? Because the Island is floating around somewhere near the frozen wastes we saw at one point?

Finally, something is terribly wrong with Jack. I wondered at first about substance abuse, but it seems to be gastro-intestinal, so I'm thinking appendicitis. Yes, of all of the people on the Island to get appendicitis, it has to be the only surgeon. At least Juliet is a doctor. She's not a surgeon, though. And the ship doctor is dead. But how could the doctor be dead if he's also just fine and on the ship?

Character bits:

-- Ben used the alias we saw awhile back: Dean Moriarty.

-- Ben arrived in Tunisia injured. Who shot flashforward Ben? Then again, who wouldn't shoot Ben?

-- Sawyer was outright heroic. Gun battle, risking his life to rescue Claire, threatening to shoot Locke to save Hurley. And he was the only one to state the obvious: hey, let's throw Ben to the wolves. What do you say, on three?

-- Hurley was also heroic and cool and serious. Throwing the chair through the window and saving Claire and Sawyer. Quietly agreeing to go with Locke and Ben to defuse a nasty situation. I like Hurley this way.

-- Widmore sleeps with a bottle of MacCutcheon by his bed, because of the dreams. What dreams?

-- Nadia was killed in Los Angeles, three blocks from the intersection of La Brea and Santa Monica.

-- Miles was pretty quiet and subdued throughout the entire proceedings. No cocky snark this time.

-- One Sawyer nickname. Sawyer called Hurley "chicken little". Right before the sky fell.

-- The nasty Martin Christopher Keamy (Kevin Durand) was a sergeant in the Marine Corps as well as a mercenary in Uganda.

Bits and pieces:

-- Ben got an eye scene, and it was both eyes. First time that's happened. Dan thought it was maybe because Ben is the one who knows everything.

-- Ben set the Monster on the bad guys. That was really, really interesting. Also exceptionally cool. He obviously lied to Locke about knowing what the Monster was.

-- This week, the flashforwards went to Tozeur, Tunisia; Tikrit, Iraq; and London, England. We don't usually get around so much.

-- Ben asked for Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick in 4E, even though he was going to the Penthouse. One of Hurley's numbers.

-- So. Risk. Australia's the key to the game, dude? Is that supposed to mean something? Hey, everything on Lost means *something*.

-- The phone ringing felt really freaky. So did the doorbell. You just don't expect ringing phones and doorbells on the Island. Plus there was a gun battle. Don't get a lot of those, either.

-- They left us with Sawyer, Miles and Claire going back to the beach, and Locke, Hurley and Ben off to find Jacob. Why is Jacob the only one who can help them?

Quotes:

Jack: "My gut says we're getting off this island."
Kate: "I thought your gut was sick."

Hurley: "We're all gonna die."
I'm starting to wonder. Lost is getting downright Shakespearean. And I'm not talking about the comedies.

Sawyer: "Let me guess. 14J is the code for the pizza boy."

Faraday: "When? 'When' is kind of a relative term."
Another time travel reference.

Jack: "Were you ever going to take us off this island?"
Faraday: "No."
You know, I like Faraday. He really wants to be honest with them.

Ben: "Once you let your grief become anger, it will never go away. I speak from experience."
Alex? Wooden doll woman? Both?

Sawyer: "You harm so much as one hair on his curly head, and I'll kill you."
Locke: "Fair enough."
This just made me smile.

I had no idea how to rate this one. The reader poll gave it four out of four polar bears,

Billie






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