Oh, sorry. I just thought that you didn’t follow why I thought it was rape. But if you missed something, I did too.
Someone on another message board thought that “her” might be his childhood crush - was her name Anne?
Annie. 
Who is not blond in Ben’s flashback, but hey, you never know. (I think it is Annie–I know Carrie Preston, Michael Emerson’s wife, plays Ben’s mom on the show, but I don’t think Ben is quite so looney tunes as to have an Oedipal complex. Maybe.)
Ben is one of my favourite characters, and this whole Jack / Juliet thing is kind of growing on me. I thought this ep was pretty solid.
I have to say that if Locke is worried about Ben’s warning that ‘his’ people might revolt then letting Ben walk around free is about as big a mistake as he could make.
Getting answers to some of the mysteries that plague him is great, but probably not worth the second-guessing that this decision is going to generate. Not to mention the mischief that you just know Ben is going to get into.
I’m definitely enjoying this season, but after 4 years, I’m getting pretty sick of “never tell anyone anything” syndrome. We have an important task that will save everyone’s lives. Do we TELL the people who we have befriended about it, or sneak away, looking suspicious, thus risking that they will chase us and then stop us before we can explain what’s going on?
You’d think the choice would be clear…
And how has no one ever sat down and asked Juliet to explain everything that happened to her in her life as an other?
On the other hand, these are all old complaints, so you’d think I would be used to it.
Just now caught up with the last several episodes, via TiVo marathon. Damn life, getting in the way of Lost. Stupid life. 
I agree, they’ve dipped out of this well way too many times. Had our two parachutists announced, “Ben has a weapon up there and we’re going to go disable it,” they would have been swamped with people volunteering to assist.
So, nowhere near as good as last week’s freakin’-awesome installment, but still a worthwhile hour if only for Ben’s B-plot arc: first, sashaying around the kitchen preparing for his date (“oh yeah, probably should have said it was just the two of us”), followed by “YOU ARE MY PROPERTY take all the time you need” (mince mince mince). Oh my God, what a great, great character.
Ben is a great character, but I’m a bit worried about anything which can lead to soap opera hell.
Jack loves Kate
Jack loves Juliet
Kate loves Jack
Kate loves Sawyer
Sawyer loves Kate
Ben loves Juliet
So Chuck Widmore is on his way to exploit the island. And his people don’t actually want to kill every single living thing. While Ben has, in fact, been involved in killing a large chunk of people on the island.
I’m willing to grant that Mr. Widmore is a nasty corporate asshole. But I’m not sure why I shouldn’t want him coming to the island. Hell, if he want’s to build the Mystery Island Hotel and Resort Complex, complete with Jackob’s Haunted Cabin, I’m willing to invest at this point. And if people want to come to the island to see Locke, I say put him in a cage and charge people three bucks a heat to take a look and - for an added fee - poke him with a stick.
Oh, that bugged me last night, when Charlotte told Kate and Jack “Come on into the complex and I’ll explain how Ben was trying to kill you and we stopped him” and Jack says, “Nope, I’m good” so he can stay outside and get smooshy face with Juliet. And we couldn’t follow Kate!!
I do think Ben is going to start a revolution against Locke. Remember, as Juliet said, Ben is exactly where he wants to be. Locke, being the honorable soul he is, will stick to his agreement to let Ben wander free in exchange for information (which, if you think about it, isn’t really information at all. Penny’s father wants to get his hands on the island. So what? We still don’t know what the island’s secret is!) and Sawyer didn’t look none too pleased about that.
I was confused in the beginning, if it was a flash forward or a flash back (Juliet having to admit the attention makes her nervous, made me think this was post-rescue.)
I think Charlotte and Faraday didn’t say what they were up to because they don’t trust the Losties; they don’t know who may be working for Ben. (They know Kate was with Locke’s camp for a while so that may be why they didn’t trust her.)
I thought Ben’s whole “You’re mnie!” speech was out of character. It seemed kind of forced to me, like maybe TPTB thought we were getting to sympathetic towards Ben and so needed to do something to make us dislike him more. I dunno.
And someone explain to me how this makes sense… Ben (who is locked up in Locke’s basement) somehow contacts the Others. Instead of having one of them go to the Orchid and simply wait for Charlotte and/or Faraday to show up, they instead send someone to go to the beach and recruit Juliet to do it, even though he knows that Juliet has already betrayed him once. What the hell does Ben think he is doing? (And how did Ben get in touch with his people anyway?)
Speaking of Ben’s people… Yeah, it’s obvious that Michael is the person on the boat. Well, we should know next week.
So the big plot is that Widmore wants to “exploit” the Island by charging people to come there and witness miracles and Ben wants to stop him. That’s it? Really? That’s about the most mundane, uninteresting explanation I can think of. I’m disappointed in that one.
I dunno… I thought the episode was “meh” at best. A lot of it felt like forced retcon to me, and retcon to introduce some boring, uninteresting background and motivation too. Worst episode of the season so far in my opinion.
That was Harper. [/nitpick]
Couple questions -
Has a live person every whisper-appeared in the jungle? Is Harper supposed to be actually alive or dead? If dead, does Juliet know she’s dead (and she’s just failing to explain that little detail to Jack) or maybe she’s died since Juliet’s been with the Losties (maybe answering where all those people Ben was ferrying are…gasssssssssed)?
Also, did Jack previously know Kate was a fugitive from a murder charge? I’m pretty sure that he told her he didn’t want to hear the explanation before ( :rolleyes: ) and that last night was the first time the whole murder thing was brought up.
But I could be wrong. I’m having increasing trouble keeping track of everything.
One more thing…are these people no longer scared of the smoke monster? First season, if it started to rain, they were running for the baobabs. Now, they’re grabbing the torches and heading off for walkabout.
I know this is probably a pipe dream, but when they announced that the man on the boat would be “someone you’d never expect,” I turned to MrWhatsit and said… “ARZT?!”
Locke is holed up in Ben’s house, so he may have an easy means of communicating with them.
That’s a tough one. Except, as Juliet later points out, Ben is going to win the war, and he wanted Juliet and Jack to know. Still this seems like a crazy way to send that message.
I’m not so convinced that Charlotte and Daniel were trying to prevent the gas from being dispersed. Juliet barges in on them as Daniel is typing frantically (and amazingly fast while wearing gigantic HazMat gloves.) She then rips off his hood and gas mask as well as Charlotte’s. So, perhaps at that point Daniel decides to “abort” the mission because, hello, he’ll die. Did anyone catch what was being typed?
It really bothers me that Ben acted like a spoiled brat with his whole “You’re mine!” tantrum. He usually seems so calculated and stoic, and here were seeing the frantic ego self massage of a classic dictator. I’m still unclear as to what his ultimate goal might be. Is it to live on this island in a utopian society or is it to live on the island as The King?
Someone asked why Sayid, in the flash forwards, would be working for Ben. I’m thinking that after the Oceanic Six get off the island, Ben blackmails Sayid into joining an alliance by threatening to kill those left on the island, threatening to out the six for betraying the remaining survivors, or by promising some sort of return to the island to help them. Of course, if he was the one in the coffin, that meant their chances of returning were gone, hence Jack’s alcoholic melt down and his pleading with Kate about going back.
ETA: Oh and goddammit Locke! Will that man never learn? Jeeeezuz!
Walt appeared to Shannon and Sayid with the whispers, so there’s another living person seen by more than 1 person.
I kept wondering when they planned on sleeping. They walk all night, find Kate sometime in the morning, Juliet goes and almost kills Faraday (and almost gets killed by Charlotte (And I guess that Faraday and Charlotte also walked the entire night)) and yet not a single yawn from any of them.
All in all a relatively weak episode.
My wife opined that Sayid is Ben’s man on the boat. When I argued that Ben couldn’t have known that Sayid would get on the helicopter, she countered with “well, there really is no way to know that Goodwin would’ve been killed, is there?” Point, that.
Not one of the better episodes. I’m not too crazy about the plot device of suddenly introducing some new person from the past-- one of The Others that we conveniently haven’t met yet. I want to learn more about what’s going on off The Island, and this episode just seemed out of place wrt the rest of the season.
It sure is convenient how they keep stumbling on each other on The Island. Kate just happened to be where Charlotte and Faraday were.
I hope things pick up next week.
For some reason, I thought that had already been established, which was part of my irritation about last night’s episode - I kept thinking “We already know they’re (Jules and Ben) bumping uglies, why are we wasting our time with this flashback?”
How’s this for a wild-assed-guess:
Ben is the one controlling the smoke monster and uses it to shape shift into various people and communicate with them.
Juliette knows Ben has the ability to do this.
When pshychiatrist lady shows up it’s just the smoke monster taking form controlled by Ben and Juliette doesn’t act all that suprised.
Psychiatrist lady / smoke monster / Ben tells Juliette to kill the two heading towards the chemicals.
Later Juliette lets slip in front of Jack that it was Ben who told her to kill them.