Lost: The Shape of Things to Come Review
Lost’s Fourth Season Returns With the Beginning of an All Out War
Photo Courtesy of ABC.com
*SPOILER WARNING*
April 25th, 2008 - Hot damn, a lot happened in last night’s episode, which kicked off the post-writer’s strike hiatus of Season Four. We weren’t given a ton of new information, but the new questions that have been posed are intriguing.
Picking up where “Meet Kevin Johnson” left off, Alex is held hostage by the people who killed Karl and Danielle. Though some speculated that Ben had the rest of his people pick off those two, that theory evaporated quickly. Rather, we seem to have been given an answer as to the nature of Frank’s helicopter “errand” - he was dropping off Kearny and his men to capture Ben. The savage nature of the killings by Kearny and his men very quickly made the Others and Ben look tame by comparison. Though the three random Losties who were killed were only background characters (poor redshirts), the way they were shot without so much as a warning shows that Ben was right about the true nature of the people on the freighter, and the question of how even six of our people get off the Island is now even more of a mystery.
Ben clearly didn’t think that Kearny was going to shoot Alex, because of the “rules” that he and Widmore were supposed to be using. It still makes her death all the more tragic that the last words she heard were that the man who raised her didn’t care about her at all, even though it wasn’t true. Still, I couldn’t help but think that if Ben really wanted to protect Alex, he could have just hid her in that passage under the house where he called the monster. And how cool was it when Ben summoned the monster? Has it always operated under his command? Was he lying to Locke when he said that he didn’t know what it was? Just because he knows how to command it doesn’t necessarily mean he knows its true origins, in theory at least. And why is it suddenly so important to Ben for Locke to live? Remember, Ben shot Locke not so long ago. Although part of me thinks that was just a warning shot; since Ben knew Locke was missing that kidney, he knew that shot wouldn’t kill him. If he really wanted to kill Locke, a bullet in his bald head would have done the trick.
And let’s hear it for Sawyer; this episode showed Mr. Con Man showing an awful lot of emotion, particularly for Claire and Hurley. In fact, Hurley helped out Sawyer and Claire by ignoring Ben and letting them into the house. These three characters very quickly understood that even though Locke and Ben were right about the freighter people not being friendly, they were clearly wrong about the barracks being a safe place for them to hide.
Back at the beach, Jack appears to be under the weather, and Kate is becoming anxious that Desmond and Sayid haven’t yet returned from the boat. Ray, the ship’s doctor, washing up on the beach with his throat slit seemed to make Faraday and Charlotte nervous, and possibly with good cause. But why did Faraday lie about the Morse code message? He hasn’t been shy about the time discrepancy before. And way to go Bernard for knowing Morse code! That guy is the coolest dentist ever. I’m not convinced that Faraday is a bad guy, I just think he doesn’t know how to handle doing experiments surrounded by people that he will ultimately have to abandon.
On to Ben’s flash forward. The biggest question is how he ended up in the middle of the Sahara desert, wearing a parka and seemingly having just sustained some sort of injury. I am convinced that Ben and the Others have the ability to jump around through space (possibly time, too, but definitely space), but if he could have done that at any time, he probably would have done so while under attack at the house. Or when he was held prisoner back in the hatch way back in Season Two, for that matter. We already knew that Ben had multiple passports, aliases, and access to places all over the world, but it was nice to seem him actually using those things.
We also knew that Sayid would end up working as an assassin for Ben, but we didn’t know how. It is easy to understand why Sayid would be heart-broken over the death of his beloved Nadia, but it is a little surprising that he takes everything Ben says at face value. Sayid wonders why Widmore would want to kill Nadia, and quite frankly, that’s a very good question. He knows how manipulative Benjamin Linus can be, so you think he would question his motives. Also, looking back at their conversation at the end of “The Economist,” Ben says that the reason he was able to recruit Sayid is because of what happened the last time Sayid followed his heart instead of his gun. How did Sayid following his heart allow Widmore’s guy to kill Nadia? On the one hand, I hope we get to find out in a future episode, but at the same time, it would have to be handled really well for it to not be anti-climactic since we now know Nadia’s fate.
The show’s big finale, of Ben confronting Widmore, was an amazing scene. Ben says that he can’t kill Widmore, which may also be why Kearny and company couldn’t kill Ben on the Island. But why would the Island not allow either man to be killed? Shouldn’t It be siding with one man or the other? Ben’s anger about Alex is justified, but Widmore has a point as well; she wasn’t really his daughter, and Ben did let her die. The fact that Ben is now targeting Penny is completely unnerving, as the Desmond/Penny story has been so great, it’s heart-breaking to imagine it ending as tragically as the Sayid/Nadia affair. The two men are racing each other to find the Island and Penny, but as viewers we can’t root for one side or the other. This ending scene was altogether chilling, as it foreshadows the battle between these two, which is apparently far from new, and also nowhere near its end.
My only complaint about the episode is the use of locator chyrons, telling us where Ben was every time he popped up in another location. This kind of goes along with my “things are being spoon fed to the audience” argument. The hotel clerk literally asks Ben if it’s his first time in Tunisia, so why did we need it literally spelled out for us on screen first? We could have figured out Iraq, the Sahara, and London as well, thank you very much. It’s a minor gripe, I know, I just had to get it off my chest.
Looking at the promo for next week’s episode, two big questions emerge: Does Jack really have appendicitis, and how did Kearny survive the Monster’s attack? I for one am thinking that Jack might have “the sickness”, but either way there is less drama of putting Jack in mortal jeopardy when we already know he gets off the Island. And perhaps Smokey spared Kearny so he could tell the tale to the rest of his crew. Still, I cannot wait for the rest of this season to play out, and I hope that the rest of the episodes we get continue as strongly as this one.
Alan’s Score: 8.9 out of 10
For more information visit the Official Lost Website.