I don’t know if the darkness of the episode was such a surprise to me. They set this up in Sawyer’s flashback pretty early on, when he killed the guy in Australia. He strangled the guy, this time, because his gun had no bullets, and the knife was outside with Locke. The thing that surprises me is that Locke has become manipulative. In all of his flashbacks he was nice and kind of wimpy, now he is confident and forceful and he manipulated Sawyer into killing this guy.
Interesting parallel there too. Both times he killed someone, he was manipulated into doing it. And the manipulator’s had their own reasons for wanting that person killed.
I wouldn’t say Sawyer was manipulated here. Sort of. He was lied to, to get him in the room with the guy, but there was no manipulation required. Sawyer wanted to find this man to kill him for most of his life. It only took putting them together in a room to accomplish it. It’s not like with the guy in Australia, where he was tricked/CONNED into killing the wrong guy.
That’s Bat-Man(uel).
Quite hippy, though. Anyway, as for her expressions, I think it’s a matter of “I look constipated and botoxed, but I’m trying to convey repressed guilt”.
Pretty much what I posited last week.
He did it to buy Locke. Ben flat out said that he manipulates people by dangling what they want the most. Cooper was what Locke wanted. As soon as Ben realized that Locke was special he had him brought to the island. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Cooper came over on the last sub trip before the Purple Sky Incident.
Because Ben needs Locke, but Ben is afraid of losing control of his cult to someone who is more in tune with the island. So Ben is keeping Locke close and trying to control him while simultaneously keeping him from any sort of leadership position.
Or that he wanted to die.
-Joe
Well, I thought this was a really well-executed episode, compelling in its own right and setup for a number of anticipated payoffs next week.
Disorganized thoughts:
I thought Cooper’s behavior was tremendously realistic. I mean, you get rear ended on a highway in Tallahassee and wake up not in a fancy hospital bed, but in a prison cell underground. Everyone seems to know you and know everything you’ve ever done wrong. After a little while, a bag goes over your head; when the darkness lifts, the first thing you see is your own son, from who you stole a kidney and who as far as you know is dead, dead, dead (and paralyzed when he was alive). I think you’d be a little unhinged, right? I think the idea was that Cooper had basically just lost his mind. He thought maybe he was in Hell. I figure the constant taunting people, basically asking them to kill him, was less about “You can’t kill me, I’m already dead,” but more about trying to prove himself wrong - “if they kill me, well, at least that means I’m not in Hell.”
I still hate Juliet. I hate her smug facial expressions. And for the first time, I hate Jack, too. He’s completely adopted the Other attitude that makes me loathe them - “I am shocked and appalled that anyone wouldn’t trust me, just because I’m obviously keeping secrets while keeping company with the woman who imprisoned me and my friends, admitted to making Claire sick, and is closely associated with a gang of kidnappers/murderers.” Putz. But it works dramatically, because I couldn’t possibly be more excited to see the two of them busted next week. Even if they have some ultimately benign master plan, as the conversation with Kate seemed to suggest, the fact that they won’t tell anyone about it means they deserve alienation from the rest of the society.
Oh, please, let Sun shoot Juliet when she hears that tape. Oh, please, oh, please…
The Ben / Locke stuff is completely incomprehensible at this point, but I am confident that next week will clarify a lot of it.
… especialy if a delivery van pulls up on the out-skirts of the Others’ new camp, some freaked out guy delivers a box to Ben, and inside the box is…
Does anyone have a good answer for why the Others abandonned Suburbia to go camping in a meadow for a few days? And then pack up to move on to…what? another meadow?
The losties knew where they were, for one. Maybe there was some other mysterious reason.
If I were the losties, I’d probably train and arm a group of 10 or 20 people to storm their little village in the middle of the night and kill all of them. So it’s probably a good idea for them to leave.
What’s in the box?
Or did anyone see anything that made that meadow an “old place” as Ben refered to it?
I guessed that Cooper would turn out to be the original “Sawyer” some time ago. I don’t know exactly when, but it was before tonight.
I’d love to say that we’ll be getting some answeres soon, but I get a feeling that next week will be all about leading up to the big thing, then the last few seconds will be flashes like we saw in the previews. I like this series, but there’d better be some damn big reveals by the end of the season. :dubious:
Aren’t they running out of places to hide . . . and personnel?
Sand.
The big metal thing that Cooper was strapped to.
I really don’t understand this complaint anymore. In the past couple of episodes, we’ve learned a TON. A little about the monster (hates the sonic fence, wasn’t created by The Others), a TON of stuff about pregnancies, why they kidnapped Claire back in Season 1, confirmation that Jack and Claire are half-siblings, confirmation that Locke’s dad is the original Sawyer, how Locke ended up in the wheelchair, who the father of Sun’s baby is, how everyone ends up at the island, what the “outside world” believes happened to Flight 815, the significance of Penelope and that mysterious arctic phone call she received, a better handle on the reach and power of the Others, and I’m sure I’m skipping a ton. For a couple episodes, I agree, they were slow about things. Lately they’ve been revealing all sorts of stuff.
It is clear that Ben’s control over the Others is slipping; Juliet’s plot to kill him in surgery, the Alex/boyfriend mutiny, the recruiter quietly handing Sawyer’s file over to Locke–all of these point to a political struggle within the Others camp.
The fact that, for all intents and purposes, the Others live in a police state (cameras everywhere, obsession with backgrounds/details of people’s lives, not to mention the constant deception) makes it likely that Ben fears a coup of some kind. Locke’s story is so amazing–the island makes a paralyzed man walk–that he may be viewed by some of the Others as a savior, something outside of Ben’s control. They all believe the island is special somehow–amazing things happen there–but clearly the rank-and-file Others have lost their wonder at this as the manipulations of leader Ben become too much to tolerate. They are doubting him, and Locke provides an easy rally point for a potential change.
Ben knows this, and knows he can’t get away with eliminating Locke directly. So he’s pretending to ally with Locke, but setting up these little public challenges that make him appear weak in the eyes of potential supporters. In the 2nd season, when a captive Ben tells Locke “I came here for you John…you’re special,” I think he saw how Locke could potentially challenge him and spark a coup within the Others; he was hoping to grab Locke and cleverly nip the problem in the bud (i.e. before Locke’s self-reflection on the island led him to overcome his limitations).
Now it’s nearly too late: Locke is mentally strong enough to withstand Ben, and Ben is physically enfeebled by the operation; his position is extremely precarious, and he knows it. I believe Ben convinced the Others to move based on Locke’s demonstrated inability to overcome his greatest demon (his father). Ben had to “leave a trail” as a way to appease those of the Others who wanted to give Locke a second chance, but his comment “unless you’re carrying your dead father on your back, don’t bother” was sarcastic rather than an actual request: Ben does not believe Locke would kill his father (and, technically, he’s right, but he doesn’t anticipate Locke’s cunning or the intrigue within his own group). To Ben, he might as well have asked Locke “unless you’re dragging the Chrysler building, don’t bother.”
My prediction is that when Locke shows up with his dead father, Ben is going to be scared out of his wits, and we’ll see the beginning of a real manipulation battle for control of the Others. It should be interesting; I didn’t think the writers could make Locke’s character more intriguing, but in providing Locke’s character with this challenge they have succeeded admirably.
Here here! I too was rather annoyed with the early episodes’ lack of solutions, and although I liked the strategy of placing a ~13 week gap between episodes 1-6 and the rest of the season, they couldn’t have picked a worse place to stick the break.
In the second half, they have taken the time to explain a lot; yeah there are still some major mysteries, but that’s to be expected. Folks complaining about the “lack of answers” now will likely never be satisfied; even if they get the answers, they’ll complain that they’re not air-tight enough.
When Ben was encouraging Locke to kill Cooper while the others were standing around in the meadow, I thought I saw one of the others crying, possibly at the violence that Ben was encouraging and his manipulation. So I agree that his hold on the others is weakening. (BTW, how did Locke get Cooper from the meadow to the Black Rock?)
That looked like a stone pillar to me, something you might see at a Roman or Egyptian ruin.
-rainy
Yeah, that was the weirdest thing-- how casual the encounter was.
I have to assume that the die-no-mite is somehow involved in a plot she has to get Alex back. Donde esta Alex? Ou est Alex? Wo ist Alex?
Great episode, but these 10:00PM showings are killing me. Everyone in my “Lost” group is so loaded by the time the show airs that we have to watch it again the next day…
Atlantis!!
I thought it was a stone pillar too. Would be consistent with the partial statue stone foot seen earlier this season (last season?). Whenever.
CJJ*, your exposition on the dynamics between Locke and Ben seem logical and reasonable, but if it is as you suggest I wish someone on the show would simply articulate some of this.
But… it’s complicated, I know.
Oh, man, I loved the little moment between Locke and Rousseau. I was giggling like a six-year-old. It was just so… they’re both basically crazy at this point, right? So they just have this moment of recognition and acknowledgement; Locke understands that Rousseau is going to do something crazy with the dynamite, and Rousseau understands that Locke is currently doing something crazy involving the screaming man in the brig. So it’s almost like they both pause during a busy day at the Office of Being Crazy, working on their own separate crazy tasks, to acknowledge one another. Certainly they’d never dream of interfering with one another; professional courtesy, don’t you know?
Well, but… how would you suggest this be accomplished? If the Locke/Ben dynamics are as CJJ* suggested - and I think it’s a great theory - than the only person with the perspective to explain it all is Ben. And he has absolutely no motivation to articulate any of it to anyone. Explaining to anyone - to Locke, to Batmanuel, to any of the other Others - would keep Ben’s putative plan from working.