So last night I caught up on the two episodes of Lost I missed while traveling. You can tell it’s getting close to season finale time, because things are getting even weirder than usual. First, Locke’s con-man-attempted-murderer father shows up on the island, held captive by the Others, totally convinced he’s dead and in hell. And the strange girl who parachuted onto the island from her helicopter HAS told everyone that the wreckage of flight 815 was found, along with the bodies of all the passengers. However, the creators of Lost have repeatedly, and quite vehemently, asserted that the Losties are NOT dead – not in heaven, not in hell, not in purgatory. They are, in fact, quite alive, having improbably survived a plane crash from tens of thousands of feet in the air. So, I can only assume that the “wreckage” – or the story of the wreckage – was planted by the Others, in an effort to prevent a search for the REAL crash site.
And then Crazy Ben tells Locke that he has to kill his father if he wants to learn more about the Others’ secrets. But Locke, as much as he hates his dad, is unable to kill him. So who better to handle the task than Sawyer? And hey, guess what – it just happens to turn out that Locke’s dad is the guy Sawyer meant to kill to begin with, so it all works out fine and dandy. So Locke is able to return to Crazy Ben with his dead dad and demand to know the secrets of the island.
And this is when things start getting REALLY weird. Crazy Ben claims that he is not, in fact, the leader of the Others. No, the LEADER leader is some guy named Jacob. So Locke and Crazy Ben head off to Jacob’s place, which turns out to be a dilapidated cabin in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by some sort of grayish powdery stuff (what WAS that? Gunpowder? Volcanic ash?). And of course they show up in the middle of the night, in the soupy, scary darkness… and to make sure it STAYS dark (because what fun would a bright, sunny, dilapidated cabin be?), Crazy Ben announces that Jacob is anti-technology and they must not take flashlights into the cabin. So he lights an unreasonably dim kerosene lantern, opens the door, and introduces Locke to Jacob – who turns out to be, well, a lone vacant chair. Crazy Ben stands there talking to the empty chair in the much-too-dark cabin, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who thought Crazy Ben should be committed at that point. I was like, “wow – he really IS crazy… he’s got all these people convinced that he knows what he’s talking about, but he’s just some kind of loony nut…”
That was Locke’s reaction, too, of course, so he turns to leave the strange scene. And then, all of a sudden, out of the dusty cabin darkness, a creepy voice says, “help me.” Whoa – huh? Where did the voice come from? What in the name of Jack Bauer’s missing bathroom breaks was THAT? I nearly jumped off the couch. Rick, who was watching from back in his study, hit the pause button on the Tivo and yelled out, “this is really weird.” I think he may have been afraid to hit “play” again, and when he did, more strangeness ensued – Locke turns on his flashlight, after being warned not to, and the whole cabin explodes in “Poltergeist” fashion, furniture rattling around, windows shattering, floor buckling. And for a split second – this is when it’s great to have the pause/slow motion features on Tivo – there was a person sitting in the empty chair. It was easily the creepiest episode of Lost ever…
To cap off the episode, we discover that the Others on the island now are NOT, in fact, the original “Dharma Initiative” people who created all the experiments and research. No, the Others were apparently the “natives” of the island, and they gassed all the Dharma people and threw them in a mass grave. Wow. Talk about the natives being restless… And at the end of the episode, Crazy Ben shoots Locke and he falls into the mass grave. Crazy Ben seemed quite distraught over the fact that Jacob had said “help me” to Locke. I don’t know what that was about… so now Locke is severely injured and lying in a grave, and who knows if anyone will find him there. I can’t imagine they’d kill off Locke, but who knows – they do a lot of weird stuff on this show. Just in case nobody noticed that.
And we only have to wait until 2010 before it all makes sense…
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