Saturday, April 05, 2008

>: 77 MEET KEVIN JOHNSON (815 words!)

So, Ben did it.

Always has done, always will. I’ve been (ya-hah) thinking it for a little while now, but seems to me he might just be the ultimate Big Bad. He’s a liar. The Liar. That’s his trait. Kate runs, Jack saves, Sawyer cons, Ben lies. And we’ve always known that. Except, sometimes I make exceptions for him. Like when he told Michael “We’re the good guys.” That was the first time I was like, “All right, at last.” Then, of course, he keeps bullshitting until he shows Locke the Widmore tape and like a damn gullible fool, I just step right up, yes Widmore’s the Big Bad, but Ben’s the Spinner of Tales, no question. What’s triggering this is the way in this episode, when Alex asks him if the Freighter People are more dangerous than him, the look in his eyes, the facial expression, the genius Emerson acting, No, he’s lying. When he says he’s not more dangerous than Them, clearly lathering it on, calling Rousseau Alex’s mother for the first time on camera, what a big deal that is to the freaking biological manufacturing engine of the child, the power he holds over her, even now. He’s exactly where he wants to be. Setting his daughter’s two closest up to get sniped.

(and paused on her last glance at him, I renew my weekly horror that the show’s DP is named Cort, which withstands all manner of objections as to the existence of a fully integrated and retroactive fictive continuity)

So glad to get some more Cass Elliot in the mix. On Michael’s suicide run.

Then a bunch of teases. Nothing of note on his speedometer. His pulse-rate when he woke up was 18 bpm over what it ought to’ve been! (then 15 higher when he woke up) But I guess that’s all too easy, now. But, worst, his roommate looks like an old Clancy Brown. Not quite, but so close. All of those things together. Amounting to nothing.

But hell, then for 10 seconds, if you recognize her voice, you think Libby treated him in a pre-815 flashback. But no, she’s just a phantom. And that’s the great thing about all this, when he was in the car, it was completely possible that he was in a flash-forward and about to really die.

Wow, I honestly didn’t think that was MD Kelley in the window-sill, but apparently it was.

So good to see Tom again. What a waste, losing him.

Insane. “The Island won’t let you.” Best words of the evening.

Tom opening the door, delivering the line, he really is a gaping loss in the cast, no pun intended. He asks Arturo to get some air. Galaxies away from Starbuck telling Lee she needs same. Light-years, yikes.

And Tom tells Michael that Widmore staged the crash. But he’s under Ben’s control. Just the fact that we’re getting the pictures of the dug-up graves and the shipping records right now almost guarantees the fact that we SHOULD NOT believe what we’re being fed. And Miles’s multi-million dollar demand implies that Ben has the assets to stage this madness.

Viva Henry Gale!

Fairly improbable that even Ben could deliver Michael’s bomb to Widmore’s freighter in a crate.

“I figure flying can’t be too fun for you.”

Great to see Frank arguing with Naomi before her last flight.

Ha, Michael’s finger poised above the EXECUTE button is fantastic, not even counting the Libby shot.

Okay, the conversation between Michael and Ben, Ben says he doesn’t kill innocents when he’s at war (of course, why ever believe him?). But the crucial line is, “What wouldn’t a man do for his son?” The way he delivers it. Switch “son” for “daughter” and the mystery melts away from the ending, even though Frank took the chopper out off-screen a couple episodes ago and there could be a new Freighter Strike Force on the Island even now, with Alex in their sights. But I think it’s Richard. The Temple-people killed Karl and killed/shot Rousseau.

But backing-up, Sayid’s fury at Michael working for Ben is pretty wonderful and a definite condemnation of any Reds not feeling the flash-forwards at this point.

You can hear the rattling previously associated to the Monster during most of the last scene. So great they give Karl the doomed so-close-to-Star Wars quote “I just have a bad feeling about this.” (original: “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Every movie. Once by Luke and Han, both). Wow, and then he immediately questions that Ben is playing them. That almost invalidates that Ben set them up, just because it’s so obvious, but every clue up until then paints Ben as the CIA that ordered the Shooter. And there are two random rustles before the Karl-killing shot, which casts Shooter as less than professional (leaning more toward Ben-ordered, than Freighter-sanctioned)(without factoring target practice)

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