Tonight’s episode – Dead Is Dead
It’s all about Ben tonight, you say? Sign me up!
Ben is one of the best characters on television. He is totally and utterly unpredictable, yet, everything he does makes total sense in character. It’s amazing.
I can’t wait to find out what happened to Ben at the docks. Who kicked his ass?
Speculations, theories, reactions, live blogs, you know the drill.
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Oh I’m as giddy as a school girl!
Ben? Smoke Monster? Answers? YES!
Come on lets have fun tonight guys! This is gonna be a big episode! We need everyone on board for this
Here we go!
Gotta be Desmond who kicked his ass, right? Also, last week’s preview seemed to show the inside of the temple…. can’t wait!
Richard, throw me the whip!
No, Ben, kill your father in a oedipus complex visualization and then we’ll talk.
Your chariot awaits Benjaman
Ben’s gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do when he wakes up.
Is that Widmore?
For a kid that got shot he sure isnt scared
Whew, for a second I thought he was gonna say Jacob…dont ask me why
Richard can get away with anything by saying "it’s what Jacob wants".
He’s like a cult leader!
First time I think we’ve ever seen Ben shocked/surprised
So the monster is the judge of the island?
how did ben break the rules?
Well, we already saw it judge Mr. Eko.
It found him wanting.
@conor: Well I guess that’s the slight hint of what the monster is….but this might be the first time we true explaination on what this is
@nickmaynard – My guess is that he effed with Desmond who would be seen as innocent.
TNC@ if it is that would kind of explain why Eko could stare it down.
Does anyone think Penny might be the mother of her own father?…….
Unusuals looks really good, finally a show I can watch after Lost
Jeez that girl looks exactely like Ana Lucia
muhahahaha, the monster
Heh, Ben is really bad at lying sometimes
Chris Kirkpatrick is on the island?! I hope someone beats him for what he did to Natalie. ((Does anyone get that reference?))
annnnd once again Ben is trying to fuck up Locke
You know, I’ve flown on a lot of planes and I barely register the faces of like four or five people.
Ben looks like a reject for My Chemical Romance
Mop Top Ben.
The flashbacks we have all wanted to see!! This is just awesome.
i am loving young danielle.
So far I dont think Ben is gonna be judged well
@TNC – He was rejected for not wearing black and looking like a girl. (I still like their music and The Umbrella Academy was really good)
Brian K. Vaughan!
Good thing BKV is writing this. He always writes Ben well
@Kreider: It was wild times for Ben back then; Rolling Stones didnt come for the concert…Bad times
If only murderers could get off that easily
The use of the desk in this scene is great. It’s like Locke is a corporate fat cat and Ben is an underling. Awesome use of sets.
Whoa!
Well there goes Ceasar…Who needs character development?
I kid
Apology accepted!
OMG, Ben pwned him, HAHAHA
i love ben.
I loves me a mythology episode.
I love it we worry about who this guy could be. Cause he seems to be a bit mysterious and always seems to want to know everything about everyone….
But one shotgun blast to the chest later; he was no threat at all.
Ben, you so crazy.
That was awesome!
A creepy version of Dawson’s Creek
Ben talking to Locke is one of the joys of life
Ooooo Locke cut ‘em deep on that one.
Locke almost always has at least a half smile on his face. He loves his life on the island, no matter how much peril it is in.
Ben showing compassion for once
Plus young Widmore is kick ass
The are dangerously close to the edge of unintentional comedy with all these young wigs on old men.
One, Two Freddy’s coming for you….
I can’t recall for sure. But it seems to me that the actor who portrays Ben has aged a lot in the past few years. I recall him looking younger when we were introduced to him.
@Connor – That’s one of my favorite aspects of Locke. He’s eternaly greatful to the island and enjoying the ride. It almost makes the show more enjoyable just because of that.
Either Locke is just making conversation or he’s laying it on to Ben….like not letting up on him cause he’s a bad man
@KreiderDesgins: Totally agree.
helloooo!
For Sun and Frank, this is all kind of crazy.
Plus that wave at the end was priceless
Locke: Hello neighbor! I made cookies!
So what caused the mess at the barracks in the present time?
this is already my fave episode! <3 <3
Ok, so who believes Ben? Does he really not remember?
@s1lent: The mercenaries from season 4
This is awsome on a level i don’t think I was at all prepared for
Frank was spot on with Locke being alive
my roommate has never watched an episode. everytime the mood muisc hits he’s like "oh shit! why’s that important?" imagine trying to explain all this back story to someone.
More of that secret cave….is he batman?
Draining a puddle?….That’s what you need to do?
It’s a Sarlaac Pit.
Middle-aged dad Ben is a new look. Different then Hitler Youth Ben.
Seriously…..a puddle? That’s what you need to do to get the monster?
I thought a donkey wheel was ridiculous…
velvet – Had to explain some stuff to my g/f when it was the Locke episode when he went back to the world then got killed…you sound like an idiot when you try to explain that stuff don’t you?
they need to hit locke upside the head with a blunt object. It’s the only way to kill a zombie.
so Smokey lives in an ancient toilet?
Wow. oh WOW.
Connor – explain?
I would think Widmore got banned for a better reason then sleeping with someone outside the island
@KreiderDesgins: It’s a Star Wars joke.
Conor – ahhhhh. Gotcha now. Well played.
That would make Locke jesus wouldnt it?
pet cemetary!
bum ba da bum ba ba da, bum ba ba da daaa (SMOKE ON THE WATER? No, ok, i’ll stop)
‘It’s not a train John, it doesnt run on a schedule’
Classic
TNC – Widmore wanted Alex dead. Sleeping with an outsider was probably more of an excuse Ben used to gain power.
I love how Locke keeps pushing Ben.. this is great.
Clean shaven Locke is freaking me out.
@Crippler: I guess that’s the excuse…I would just think like he did something really bad. Like put firecrackers under Jacob’s toilet
Temple time!
Conor, you know you love Zombie Locke
@KreiderDesgins: i’ve just given up on the explaining. luckily he has short attn span.
Who’s going to check out the Unusuals after LOST?
@Crippler: I will, looks good
Not me.
Hmm seeing this coming
I realize how strange this all is, me, you, here.. but I assure you I’m the same man I’ve always been… and I still love you Sun…. hehe WHAT?
It would be great if it was Widmore that kicked Ben’s ass.
here comes the beatdown!
Oh no!
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND! DESMOND’S BOOK!
Either Ben does the deed and gets his ass kicked….or he just gets his ass kicked…
oops not gonna see it yet
Conor – Penny Widmore!
Oh boy…I’m going to guess he succeeds.. Penny’s going to die.
Pay back is a BIATCH, BEN!
Hey it’s a temple you can barely see….heh
No not under!!
What’s in the actual temple!?
I can’t tell if this is the first time we’ve truly seen Ben not in control (other than when Alex died) or if he’s playing Locke.
thank god walking dead doesn’t use zombie lockes. It would not be nearly as interesting.
I will never forgive his character if he actually did it.
Nooo not Desmond!!
At this point… Locke thanks God for all those years he spent playing Dungeons and Dragons…. Dungeon crawl coming up!
If Ben does this I will forever hate him.
Annnd he gets his ass kicked
SCOTTISH RAGE!
Not since William Wallace has a scotsman been that badass! Ben maybe the best character on the show but I think Des is still my favorite! Also, everytime i hear them say charlie, it kinda chokes me up, not gonna lie.
phew, Penny wasn’t killed
I knew it! I knew it I knew it I knew it!
I had hope!
Wow. WOW what a great episode.
At least this reconfirms for me that Ben is not evil. He’s strongly utilitarian, but not evil.
Ben is a hero! I knew it!
I agree Conor. I really enjoy Ben as a character, but that would be too much. Penny/Desmond may be my all-time favorite love story, and if Ben screwed that up I’d hate him. No more liking any aspect of his character.
Desmond: If it was up to me Ben, I’d let you go. But these hands….they have such a temper….and they’ve been drinking all night!!
My favorite characters in one scene. Wonderful!
whew I am so glad that’s how that went down, well played desmon well played
so what sort of groceries will stop a bullet? i’d say more canned goods and less eggs and fresh produce. there’s gotta be a website that’ll answer these types of questions popping up over the next day or two.
Yeah, I choke up a bit when I hear them call the kid Charlier as well.
@velvet: It looked like a milk bottle stopped the bullet. Gotta freeze frame it but that’s what looked like what stopped it
velvet, TNC @ Who said the bullet was stopped? I say Des is awesome enough to withstand a shot and still beat the crap out of someone.
Oh no….dont kill him…
Aaaaand they’ve gone nuts.
Holy shit! What?!
the sickness? or is she an other?
Are these more mercenaries?
Conor – You don’t think they’re some of Widmore’s people?
The Shadow Cult!
It’d be weird of The Phantom showed up all of a sudden
I forgive you, Ben!
If playing D&D has taugh me anything, it’s that you need a torchbearer for a place like this. Any KoDT fans here? This show needs a knobbyfoot!
@KriederDesigns: Don’t know yet. Could be Widmore’s people. Could be the sickness. Could be the in-flight food went bad on them.
Oh this wont end well…..
This is why you should always have a whip whenever you explore ancient temples.
Conor – Or maybe they showed Last Holiday on the plane.
Oh…shit!
Okay they are definitely Egyptains…
Ben is going to shave his head and put on eye liner and call himself King Tut.
My wife just asked why we’re watching Smallville season 3…. haha!
Koachi caves….
I seriously thought she was going to stab him with something. Holy shit.
Wow…..That was all kinds of crazy
That was in-tense!
me too paul.
I dont think Ben is happy to be alive….I think he wanted to die
and now… that show with the hebrew hammer
AWESOME EPISODE
Okay, I can breathe now.
Fan-fucking-tastic episode.
We need more Ben episodes……let it be Ben 24/7…
P-Money – Not me, not yet. This show just doesn’t cease to amaze me!
I’m sure there will be tons of fallout over this episode because it introduced some crazy new questions. Personally, I LOVE it!
I can’t believe we’re getting a Myles episode next week!
Well one thing is for sure…..The primative islanders were Egyptains. The smoke monster definitely cares about Locke. Plus, I think Ben is in for a lot more suffering then he thought. He truely looked unhappy when he told Locke ‘It let me live’.
Mooooooorrrrrreeeeee please!
P-Money – Agreed. If we didn’t like crazy new questions we wouldn’t be watching in season 5.
@TNC – I don’t know if those hieroglyphs are confirmation of Egyptian roots or not. Many things on the island are a fabrication. It’s possible, but not solid evidence.
@Paul: That cave looked legit…..plus it was an Anubis head where the Smoke Monster came out of…Then you look at the status Sawyer and the others saw a couple of weeks ago. It has to be Eygptain. It explains a whole lot for some of the mythos of the show….and why Richard looks so gorgeous…
It’s possible. But there’s a big ‘legit’ four-toed statue too.
Here’s how ‘legit’ all of these things are: A design crew made them in the 2000s’. ;)
@Paul: That’s the reveal at the end of the series. Jack opens the door and it’s the writers room for the show. Brilliant!
@TheNextChampion: Ta da!
So, it seems to me, regardless of who Illana and company work for, they are the ones who Walt was having dreams about. So the question becomes, why do they want John Locke dead?
Actually, thinking about it, Illana and Co are probably not Widmore people, if they were passed out Ben Linus would not be alive.
Ben will not be able to follow John for long…and that will very likely get him killed.
Ben isn’t a villain he just popped that guy in the chest for no reason. I still love the character, but their is no denying he’s a villain. Sure he will probably wind up redeeming himself, but hero he is not.
Ben is definitely not a hero, but he is still a great and complex character.
Ben is my hero.
I am thinking that Illana and Co, are part of Ben’s plan to get rid of Locke. So, his weird look at the end of the episode, is an ‘oh sh*t’, how am I going to fix this problem. Because if he doesn’t he is dead, as per Alex’s threat.
I really hope whatever number ‘The Others’ did on lil’Ben, didn’t somehow wipe his memory. It would add an interesting layer or three to his relationship with Sayid….
I really love this ‘everything is eventual’ approach to time travel. That no matter what circumstances you change, events will rearrange themselves to end up being the exactly the same. You can stomp on butterflies all day, but no matter what, what happens, happens. What do you guys think? Is this what is going on OR is this just all stuff that happened off camera in previous flashbacks? After all Richard did recognize lil’Ben…
Also, Emerson is so great on this show, he’s such an understated actor, effortless complex and hugely entertaining to watch as he rope-a-dopes the other characters and the viewer. I bet if we go back to those interrogation scenes all those episodes ago between Ben and Sayid (and this is why I hope Ben’s brain hasn’t been all tabula rasa’ed post Others patch-up) you’d be able to project a glimmer of recognition in his face. I’m not saying that they had this AAALLLL planned out way-back when, but Emerson is so good and just giving you inches, that any of that interaction could mean anything and knowing what we know now, it’d be easy to imagine that subtext.
And if not that, it makes that whole, ‘You’re a killer’ line ALOT more interesting.
Great Ep!
@nextchampion AWESOME! I never even considered Richard’s looking like he goes a bit heavy on the eyeliner as a nod to island’s Egyptian tendencies. That’s a solid point.
*Woops meant to say Ben is not a Hero, my bad.
Aapep (‘moon-snake’, also known as Apep and, in Greek, Apophis, ‘Aa-snake’), in Egyptian myth, was Nothingness, the gulf that swallows Light. He took the form of a huge snake, not coiling but forming a concertina of S-bends, and instead of hissing he uttered a silent roar – the opening of the abyss – which filled the entire world and terrified all who heard it. This roar was also his own nourishment, and he needed no other food. His main task was to snatch the souls of the Dead in their precarious journey between one life and the next; those he swallowed entered non-existence, and stayed there until one of the gods rescued them. Aapep lay in wait for Ra the Sun each day, opening his mouth to engulf him as he sailed towards evening on the Sun-ship. It took the concerted efforts of gods and mortals to kill Aapep and help Ra to escape each day: in one typical story, everyone else was eaten and it was only when Set speared Aapep in the gullet that he disgorged his prey again. Each time Aapep was destroyed, all the souls he had eaten were regurgitated and could travel on to judgement in the Underworld. But Aapep himself regenerated, ready to lie in wait on the Western Mountains at the edge of the universe for the next day’s Sun.
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Aapep. (1996). In Bloomsbury Dictionary of Myth. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://www.credoreference.com.ezproxy.dom.edu/entry/2119992/.
I love the lovecraftian element of this show … when Ben mentioned the temple was a 1/2 mile away, I was hallf-hoping to see the city from BPRD this week
The Shape of the Earth
The Greeks speculated on the shape of the earth, the science of geodesy. The Ionian Greeks of western Anatolia (Turkey) were the first to hypothesize that the earth was not a flat disk: Anaximander of Miletus during the sixth century BCE, who reputedly drew the first map of the world, believed that the earth was a cylinder. Parmenides, a century later, speculated that the earth must have zones of heat and cold: torrid, frigid, and temperate zones. The Athenian Plato, in his dialogue Phaedo, followed the Pythagoreans in arguing that since the sphere is the most perfect form, this must be the earth’s shape. Plato’s student, the greatest scientist of classical Greece, Aristotle, provided empirical proof of the earth’s sphericity by observing the earth’s shadow cast upon the surface of the moon during a lunar eclipse. However, Aristotle still had a limited view of earth, underestimating the extent of Asia, believing that the Caspian Sea flows into the outer Ocean, and conceiving that India marks the eastern extreme of the continent. Aristotle had the genius to conceive of a hemispheric world, north and south, perhaps basing his ideas on the reports of Phoenician and Carthaginian sailors.
The speculative Greeks, and later the Romans, wondered what lay to the west, across the Atlantic. The fifth-century historian Herodotus’s report that the Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa in about 600 BCE, sailing from the Indian to the Atlantic oceans, was believed by few, who were beholden to the myth of the ring of fire encircling earth’s equator. There circulated other vague reports that the Carthaginians explored the North Atlantic to the British Isles, the Azores in the North Atlantic, and the west African coastline almost to the equator. Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian of the first century BCE and author of Universal History, reported that the Carthaginians discovered a vast, fruitful, and temperate island with large rivers in the Atlantic Ocean. So wonderful were these isles that upon returning to Carthage all who knew of them were murdered so as to keep the islands secret and prevent a mass migration from Carthage.
The Greek biographer and scientist Plutarch, ever on the lookout to substantiate myth with fact, studied the nature and origin of stories about the Isles of the Blessed and Calypso’s island of Ogygia. This island is featured in Homer’s Odyssey. Homer placed the island, where Calypso held Odysseus against his will for seven years, somewhere in the west, which made sense since Calypso was the daughter of Atlas. Later legends placed Ogygia in the Atlantic, where Cronos, a god of Phoenician origin, held sway. In his dialogue “Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon,” Plutarch discussed in detail the myth, trying to put the best face on what might be true about it. He hypothesized that Ogygia lies to the west of Britain; the route is difficult going, in part because the sea is of a cold thickness and it is a land of the midnight sun. Pytheas discovered such conditions on his voyage, and it is possible that Plutarch used Pytheas’s account as evidence for his discussion of Ogygia. Pytheas claimed to have visited Thule, which the Stoic Seneca also briefly mentioned in his play Medea. Likewise Ferdinando Columbus, in his biography of his father Christopher, claimed that the young Columbus in the 1470s sailed to the North Atlantic and visited Thule.
Plutarch, in his Life of Sertorius, also reported the legend of the Isles of the Blessed. Sertorius, a Roman general who was in Spain around 80 BCE, met with mariners who claimed to have just returned from islands twelve hundred miles off the coast of Spain. Why they left such a wonderful place of abundant fruits and continuous mild breezes is a mystery, but they convinced Sertorius (and Plutarch) of their reality, and made the Roman long to sail there to live his life in perfect repose.
The Elder Pliny also provided detailed descriptions of these isles in a failed attempt to make fiction fact. The daughters of the setting sun, he wrote, inhabited the Hesperides. He also discussed uncritically the island of Atlantis. Plato wrote of Atlantis in the Timaeus. The Athenian lawgiver Solon on his travels heard from the Egyptians about Atlantis, a large island hosting an advanced civilization that was destroyed by a tidal wave. From Plato’s account it is not clear whether Atlantis, a vast island civilization that mysteriously vanished, was an actual place, the legends of which Plato had read, or merely the product of his (or another’s) fertile imagination.
Geography/Geodesy. (2004). In Science in the Ancient World: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://www.credoreference.com.ezproxy.dom.edu/entry/7921308
In Greek mythology, lands situated at the western end of the world, near Oceanus (the river believed to encircle the Earth), where heroes and other mortals favoured by the gods were sent to enjoy a life after death, or carried there alive to be endowed with immortality.
Homer identified the Islands of the Blessed with Elysium which later became a separate paradise in Hades, the underworld
Associated myth
Several nations believed in a mythical paradise or afterlife in the west. Tradition placed the underworld of the ancient Egyptians, ruled by the goddessAmentet, to the west; and the Babylonians believed in an isle of the blessed encircled by four rivers. In Timaeus and Critias, the Greek philosopher Plato recounted a story told by Egyptian priests, which described the utopian island continent Atlantis. It lay in the western ocean and was overwhelmed by thesea; the surviving islands were called the Fortunate Isles, another term for the Islands of the Blessed. Celtic mythology included King Arthur’s Avalon, a fruitful land of youth and health; and the Land of Promise, a magical Otherworld paradise in the west, visited by King Cormac of Ireland and St Brendan, head of a brotherhood of monks at Clonfert, western Ireland, whose legendary voyage in an ox-hide curragh (long-shaped boat) has been interpreted by some as the first European landing in America.
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Islands of the Blessed. (2008). In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide. Abington: Helicon. Retrieved April 11, 2009, from http://www.credoreference.com.ezproxy.dom.edu/entry/7958114/.