LOST Revisited: Pre-Game for “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”
Kelli, who’s got an awesome catch coming up later, also noted that Lost is largely sibling-free territory. Putting aside my current beliefs that Benry and Locke may be brothers, as are Jacob and Smokey, birth siblings are few and far between. Shannon and Boone were stepsiblings. Let’s see, Eko’s brother was the priest. Charlie had a brother in the band. Juliet has a sister, who Benry revealed to be alive and well. Hurley has a brother who was only mentioned once. Locke was mentioned to have some foster siblings, Desmond alluded to some brothers, Benry said that Charlotte had two sisters, and Jack and Claire would be half-siblings. So, of all the Lostaways, only a few have siblings related by birth. And yet, back when Benry claimed to be Henry Gale, he drew the map to his balloon on the torn title page of The Brothers Karamazov. Are there going to be a key pair of brothers in the narrative yet? I love the Benry/Locke and Jacob/Smokey pairings so much that those ideas really have to be true.
As for last week’s observations, a number of people suggested that Kate might have left Aaron with Claire’s mother. That makes complete sense – Kate’s own mother is too sick to care for a child, and Claire’s mom would be Aaron’s grandmother. Wow, she just popped over to LA to collect a settlement check, and ended up with a toddler.
Jennifer asked a good question – why is Sun so comfortable giving up her daughter? They didn’t reference Ji Yeon last week, but Sun must have committed to leaving her behind, possibly forever. We saw enough of them to know that Sun is a good mother, so this is weird. In my mind, seeing Benry reminded Sun of the level of hatred of which she’s capable. On the Island, she shot and killed an Other, and she was ready to kill Benry. Deep down, Sun doesn’t think that she’s fit to raise her daughter. She’s probably convinced herself that Ji Yeon is better off without her.
Speaking of babies, Brian suggested that Kate’s sudden shift from hot to cold with Jack last week was that she only hooked up with him to get pregnant. As far as any of them know, they’re committing to life on the Island. Kate gave up Aaron, who was actually capable of making her happy. Since Kate can’t get pregnant on the Island and survive, her only chance is to get pregnant before returning. This is a fantastic idea, and I wish I’d thought of it. I’ve often said that I think Kate is infertile, because she didn’t get pregnant while hooking up with Sawyer on the Island of Super-Fertility, but Sawyer’s the kind of guy who probably carries protection when he goes out to get the mail. You never know. Plus, Sawyer picked up a venereal disease in Tallahassee, so maybe he’s extra-cautious. Now, besides this being a good call on Brian’s part, I have to mention two more things. First, in the e-mail he sent me, he used the term “baby batter”. Second, Brian’s a doctor.
Kelli thinks that the guitar case Hurley brought to the Island is a tribute to Charlie. Those two were tight, and Hurley’s been haunted by Charlie since he left the Island. That’s obviously not Charlie’s guitar, since that was left on the Island. But maybe Benry convinced the poor guy that bringing a nice guitar to the Island for Charlie would make him happy. Man, what if that’s how Benry got him on the plane? “Do it for Charlie, Hurley.” I think that guilt is what got Hurley on the plane, one way or another, and the idea that he could bring Ghost Charlie some peace is as good a motivation as any.
I don’t usually do this, but Kelli came up with something I wouldn’t have caught in a million years, so I’m going to quote her directly. “The painting of Doubting Thomas featured at the beginning of the episode is actually by Caravaggio who is known for a technique called “chiaroscuro”. Tell you more, you say? Well, it is a Renaissance technique characterized by shadow and light. Anyone else thinking backgammon? That $15,000 for Freshman Humanities finally paid off, baby!” That right there? That’s good! “Shadow and light” is a good way of describing one of the major themes of Lost. If that was intentional, it’s genius.
Some questions about time came up this week, as we’ve come to expect by now. First off, we don’t really know how long the Island has been skipping through time when Jack and friends arrive. The interesting thing is that it looks as if they arrived at the Island in the late 70’s, rather than in 2008. I was under the impression that they would arrive on the Island in the present, since they had to wait for it to exist in 2008. Luckily, Kelli came up with a perfectly good answer. (She’s sort of this week’s MVP.) White Oracle told Jack and Benry they had 36 hours to get to the Island. OK. After Jack and Hurley found Kate at the beginning, we jumped back 46 hours. There are ten hours missing. Maybe whatever happened to Jack and the rest, they were unconscious or otherwise out of commission for ten hours, which could have taken them on all kinds of time jumps.
The other question is how much time has elapsed for the Lostaways on the Island. Three years have passed for the Oceanic Six since they left the Island. But with the time skips, the Island might have jumped to 2008 immediately after the last time we saw them, or they might have spent years skipping through the timestream. I assume we’ll get into that this week, but I’m completely perplexed by Jin’s Dharma uniform. How did they stay in one time long enough for him to get a job and a van? Just when I’m comfortable with the time travel, they throw me a curveball.
Finally, here’s something that I should have mentioned last week. Who beat Benry up? Why is he bloody and battered when he gets on the plane? Now, as I said, it seems more natural for him to be all beat up. In Seasons Two through Four, we almost never saw him without open wounds and dried blood all over his face. Clearly, the Oceanic Six feel the same way, because nobody ever asked him about it on the trip. Plus, they assume he had it coming.
Anyway, the fact that he called Jack from a marina is very upsetting. Who do we know that lives on a boat? And who did Benry pledge to kill? Yeah, I think Benry went after Penny, and those cuts and bruises are courtesy of Penny and/or Desmond. And I don’t like to think about it because I really need Penny and Desmond to have a happy ending. If Benry attacked Penny and Desmond caught him, there’s no way Benry would leave that encounter alive. Sure, it’s possible that it was Penny herself who put the beating on him. But I don’t anticipate Benry leaving without getting what he came for. He’s very goal-oriented, after all. Right now, I’m going to convince myself that Penny knows Kung-Fu and just whaled on him in an exciting and hilarious sequence. But really, it doesn’t look good.
Well, sorry to end on a down note like that. Once I thought of that, I was depressed for days. So, you know, now I can share the mood! Tonight is “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”, which I have been eagerly anticipating. This will either be the greatest episode ever, or it will leave me insensate with grief. Fingers crossed!
