I thought Juliet’s problems with Ben(ry) were emotional, not political. With her sadness at the beginning, the absent-mindedness with the muffins, and the defensiveness with Pretentious Guy at the book club, it seemed to me that Ben and she used to be an item (married, maybe) and had a bad break-up. However, the break-up could have been partly or entirely caused by their having differing views about whatever it is that they were doing on the Island before the Losties showed up.
Oh, and I don’t think this was said definitively, but all of the tattoos on Jack’s arm have been there since season 1, including the stars.
I think a bigger question is how they’re going to explain Charlie’s “nine” tattoo in elvish!
OK, just as I posted that, this crazy idea popped into my head so of course I must share. Maybe Juliet and Ben broke up because she’s infertile, and as the presumed alpha-male of the Others, Benry…must…breed! That would explain the combinations of hurt and anger that Juliet was expressing (great actress, by the way! The casting folks are really doing an excellent job on this show).
Add to that the extreme creepiness in the way Ben told Kate how he wanted her to “feel like a lady” in that sundress, I wonder if Kate is the unfortunate object of Ben’s attention towards that end?
It seems a little too cliche and squicky for Lost to sink so far into the “every male person in the whole world wants to bang Kate” idea, but then again that’s pretty much what they’ve been implying all along.
That’s easy enough – he was a fan of LOTR before he arrived on the island. Hey, some of us have been fans for nearly 40 years, so it’s not altogether improbable – although I will confess I’ve never gotten a tattoo to celebrate that fact.
It’s too early for me to really speculate on what’s going on between Juliet and Ben; all I can do thus far is observe that it’s obviously pretty nasty. I need more information before I can get a handle on the why’s of their interaction thus far. As we’ve seen, one episode isn’t always a very good indicator of what’s happening on the Island.
Actually, we don’t know this for certain. It’s possible there’s one-way contact only, or at least a version of it.
Was it Juliet who said that line about “who we were then may not be connected to who we are now”? I’d have to look at it again to get the wording exactly right, but I was struck by that line as being a nearly on-the-nose expression of one of the show’s central themes. There was a scene early in season one between Jack and Kate on the beach wherein they suggested they may have an opportunity to leave behind their old identities and make themselves anew. Every character reflects this idea to some extent: Locke, whose paralysis is apparently but not definitely healed; Charlie, who wants to stop thinking of himself as a heroin addict; Eko, whose past almost literally dropped out of the sky in the form of his dead brother; Hurley and the numbers; and so on, and so on.
Since this is such an important concept, why wouldn’t it be true for the Others as well?
Based on what we saw in this episode, and some of the little clues in the dialogue and scenario, I have a new operating theory. Goes like this: The Hanso Foundation set up this isolated island to perform their offbeat experiments in life extension and remote viewing and all that stuff. They established the super-magnetic-whoozywhatsis to protect themselves from outside detection and interference. The mainland Hanso organization knows they aren’t likely to hear from the island team, regularly or at all, because of this protective field, so arrangements are made for regular shipments of food, supplies, and maintenance type stuff. These supply drops are set to continue until the company is ordered to stop or change things.
Except that the Hanso research group, once they’re installed on the island, finds that they’ve done the job too well, and have accidentally isolated themselves, without means of communicating or escaping. They have some version of the Internet, whereby they can research things and get information, but they cannot contact their compatriots back home.
Perhaps only the leader (Ben/Henry) truly realizes this. Perhaps he’s been stringing his people along this whole time, keeping them involved in research, telling them how important their role is, maintaining order via recruitment into some brand of scientific zealotry. That’s why, when the plane showed up, he ordered everybody to go into detached-experimenter mode, and they responded.
This would explain why Desmond’s girlfriend, who is associated with the Hanso group, has been trying to find the island; friends and family members set off on this grand experiment and then apparently vanished without a trace. It would explain why the animal enclosures have been apparently abandoned. It explains the need for the security system. It explains the 70’s-vintage books and music the Others have (though not that fancy new washing machine ;)). It explains the food shipments.
However: It doesn’t explain where the Black Rock came from. It doesn’t explain the Others’ fascination with children, unless Ben is feeding his people some version of “and a child shall lead us” re getting themselves off the island, and that they therefore obsessively pursue every young person they come across in hopes that this one is the one. It doesn’t explain how or why everybody seems to be connected to everybody else (Locke working at Hurley’s box company, for example). It doesn’t explain Walt’s apparent precognition.
Nevertheless, it fits the available information better than any other scenario I’ve heard up to this point, so I’m going to use it as a conceptual model and see how new information fits in as we continue.
By the way, I should add that this scenario doesn’t preclude the possibility of something else going on. I mean, there may yet be something even stranger about the island; the Hanso Foundation may have been extremely unlucky in their choice of research base. Maybe they set themselves up, told the home office it’d be many years before they heard anything, and then gradually discovered they were stuck; and while at first they thought they had simply trapped themselves somehow, after much investigation and experimentation, they can’t figure out what exactly they did or how to reverse it, and are beginning to suspect the presence of additional forces or factors of some variety. The hypothesis above is just about the Hanso group, not necessarily the island in general.
In re: to the bandages. The AC (inside of the elbow) is a common spot for both IVs and blood draws. So, either they got blood tests or some heavy duty IV meds.
My vote is for blood draw. I think the drugs Juliet referred to were in the darts.
But the three of them, in the Others’ capable interrogating hands, after a couple of days on IV drugs may answer the question of where Juliet got all the information she’s ‘reading’ from the Aquarium Cleaning Manual. I don’t really believe they have the autopsy report. I think Benry has sucked all the info he needs about each Lostie from their own lips, and that the two unpleasant weeks to come are simply a way to break them all using what he already knows as a tool against them.
Am I the only one who thought Juliet wasn’t going to feed Jack after she finally got him to sit against the wall? That would have been a great mundfick after her speech about trust, and how his compliance in no way indicated giving in or cooperation…just a willingness to be fed.
While I really enjoyed the opening, (season 3 and we’re still shocked and engaged by the original event!) this episode left me flat overall. If I understand the direction of the show (a solid explanation and a meandering path to reach it) each new season requires the creation of a new layer, new characters and storylines to draw out x episodes. My fear is that the show may collapse under the weight of too many layers. I hope they are considering a wrap up before our interest is lost.
My bf and I discussed this. It could just be a simple answer like he’s gay or he prefers redheads with some meat on their bones, however I had another theory. It’s already been speculated that they were doing DNA testing. Suppose she is not genetically his type? The boyfriend then commented that, in that case, Mr. Friendly still wouldn’t mind peeking at her and I said “how do we know he didn’t peek?”.
For those of you complaining about all the commercials who don’t have DVRs… The complete episode of Lost is available on ABCs website for free . There are a couple of 30 seconds commercials spread out during the entire episode. It runs 43 minutes and change. New episodes seem to be posted right after it is shown on the west coast.
My guess on Zeke is that he reads her “type” as “likely to break my kneecaps and run for the hills if given half a chance, which would annoy Ben pretty seriously, something I seriously want to avoid.”
I think I read something pre-air that was either by a reviewer in EW or TV Guide…or my brother read somewhere that in the big, wonderful first episode of the third season “one of the characters is revealed to be gay.”
Of course this could be a reviewer who got to see the episode before we did and came to the conclusion that Zeke is gay. Or it could have been someone who was told by the creators that someone was going to be revealed as being gay.
Nonetheless…I thought Zeke’s line to Kate meant that he was gay but that’s because I was looking for it.
Believe it or not, it is possible for a straight man to decide that Kate isn’t what he finds attractive. Beauty is more subjective than the media would lead you to believe.
