Lost S04E09
“The Shape of Things to Come”
Thank God. That’s all I was thinking as the latest episode of Lost ended. Imagine having to wait months upon moths for this episode. It nearly happened, if the writer’s strike had dragged on longer we wouldn’t have gotten any new Lost until next year. Now we know what we would’ve been missing.
I don’t think that there has been a single hour of Lost that has moved the story as forward as quickly as last night’s installment. The easiest way to do this is to break up the different pieces of the episode into slightly more manageable chunks.
Camp Locke
I absolutely loved Locke, Sawyer, and Hurley playing Risk. I now need to come up with a new unified theory of Lost that involves Kamchatka. The action gets moving the second Locke answers the phone. It was great seeing the three extras get gunned down right in a row, certainly makes it easier when we’re dealing with less characters.
I have to say that I was pretty sure that Clare was dead when that cabin blew up, which leads into the discussion of whether or not Clare is going to die before the season is out. We’ve been told that the Six get off the island by the end of the season and we know that Kate is pretending to be Aaron’s mother. Does this mean that Clare has died on the island? My gut tells me that she will. There is no other reason that I can think of that would lead her to part from her child. Not only that, she hasn’t been the same since Charlie died, in that she has had absolutely nothing to do this season.
While we’ve been hypothesizing about a possible upcoming death, I have yet to discuss the death that actually occurred. Alex was gunned down in cold blood by those commandos, and it appears that both Karl and Rousseau are gone for good. I had been holding out hope that possibly Rousseau had survived the gunshot but it doesn’t appear to be the case. The look on Ben’s face when Alex was killed was the second most moving moment this season, closely following the phone call between Desmond and Penelope. I never liked Alex, she never had anything to do and she was by far one of the weakest actors on the show. That said, I was moved by her death and Ben mourning his daughter.
As Ben said at several points in this episode, following his daughter’s death, the rules of the game have changed. Unleashing Smokey on the commandos was a brilliant move, though it opens up many more questions about the nature of the beast. The division at the end of the episode was important because I think we are moving towards the decision that Hurley regrets. I’m guessing that the trip to see Jacob is going to be a game-changer.
The Jack Pack
Other than some momentum killing flirtation between Jack and Kate, the beach story was much stronger than its been in weeks. Mostly because of the addition of Farraday to the beach crowd, he is far and away my favorite new character this season. The doctor’s body washing up on the island was ominous enough, Daniel only added to that by lying about the message that the ship was sending him. It is clear that Daniel is more than a mild-mannered physicist, he either knows much more of what is going on or he is intimately involved in it. Plus, how great is it that Bernard knows Morse Code?
Though it was in the background this week, I’m sure we are going to see more of this illness that Jack is suffering from. I don’t know what effect it will have, but it certainly won’t help with the tension levels throughout the island. It’s clear that Jack survives, but there is supposed to be something ominous suggested by it. What do you think it is.
The Flashforward
Ben awakes in the middle of the Sahara desert wearing a parka. WTF!?!? It should be remembered that this is not too far from where the Dharma polar bear was unearthed by Charlotte, that took place in neighboring Algeria Tunisia as well. Watching Ben dispense of those two men on horseback made me wish to never meet him in real life. He then makes his way to Tunisia (where we learn that it is currently October 2005), where he sees Sayid on the television and goes to meet him in Iraq. We learn that Sayid’s wife Nadia has been killed by a man working for Charles Widmore.
By the end of the episode, we learn what eventually draws the two into a partnership. I have to admit that I was very surprised when Ben tried to convince Sayid not to work with him. This season especially has gone to great depths to humanize Ben. While he is still the maniacal genius who is two steps ahead of everyone else, his humanity has also come through, which makes it easier to believe him when he told Michael, “We are the good guys.”
Sayid has lost himself following the death of Nadia. As Ben says, “Once you let your grief become anger it never goes away. I speak from experience.” Sayid is the character on the show who has grappled with his humanity the most. Being a torturer has led him to do unspeakable things, things that he regrets. Things that have slowly but surely cost him a piece of his soul. With Nadia dead, he now gives himself over to his own inhumanity. He allows the programming to take over, to give up his soul completely rather than suffer the pain that would plague him continually.
The episode ends with Ben going to visit Charles Widmore in his penthouse suite. The conversation between the two is cryptic and raises many more questions than I could ever hope to ask. Though, it is clear that there is some sort of relationship between the two that extends further than we think. Widmore actually claims the island as his own. More important than the clues meant to tease us is the promise that Ben makes at the end of the conversation. He is going to kill Penelope. This is the sort of morally ambiguous conflict that I’ve come to love from this show. As much as I want Penelope and Desmond to be reunited once more, it is clear that Widmore must pay for what he did to Ben’s daughter. I’m very curious by what Widmore meant when he said that Ben wouldn’t be able to find Penelope, is she being hidden somewhere? And if so, why?
Thoughts, questions, or answers? Feel free to share below:
