Smokey and the Ben

''Okay. Have a great day!''

OMG! Lost was SICK last week! And the producers totally gave a shout-out to me having to endure "There's No Sedar, Like Our Sedar!" (sung to the tune of "There's No Business, Like Show Business!") while I anxiously waited for our guests to clear out and give me a moment of zen with my favorite show. Ahhh! And it was SO worth the wait!

A Ben episode!

Which basically means that everything in it can't be taken at face value. Paul and were having a conversation about some random social gossip, after the show, and I kept judging the validity of sources within the story, like anyone is as ambigious as Ben is! I finally realized I was doing it and laughed at myself -- Ben episodes make me think everyone's potentially telling half-truths. He's that good! Because of him, the questions section will be quite long this week!

I think I'm the only one one the planet who genuinely LOVES the character of Benjamin Linus. He's pure evil, but yet not... I feel like his whole life is this black vs. white - bad vs. good - thing was explored a bit tonight.

And who knew Ben had such a soft spot for babies/children and mommies? The Angel of Death really is an angel, because he passed over our Penny. Chag Pesach Sameach.

So - to look at a BROAD overview, in this episode, "Dead is Dead," Ben wakes up where we left him, being starred down by John Locke. And Locke's non-to-thrilled by having been murdered by Mr. Linus - but rather than looking to kill him, he just wants an apology and explanation. Ben offers up something satisfactory and the two "team up" to take Ben to be judged by the Smoke monster. In the process, Ben shoots up Cesar (who may or may not be dead, because if "Dead is Dead" - then how is John Locke alive?). They travel to the main island, where they hook up with Lapidus and Sun, but Lapidus heads back to Hydra -- just in time to witness Ilana and her evil band of Aijra Losties ratcheting up the evil factor -- with guns and secret passwords (CLEARLY this bitch has been here before and is working for someone, probably Widmore) readying her crew for Lord knows what! Lapidus doesn't know her secret Egyptian code and gets knocked up, but with the cryptic promise from Ilana -- we're taking him with us.

I don't know if anyone else saw it, but is Ilana the new Ana Lucia? She's obviously taking a page from the Michelle Rodriguez Book of Acting Tough - and I loathe her! AND I really hated Ana Lucia when she was "in charge" of the Tailies -- so it totally works! I could deal with her more when Jack showed up and schooled her as to who's really in charge, although at that time, even Jack didn't realize who was really in charge and stupidly brought back "Henry Gale" to infiltrate their Swan hatch. Heh! They were dumb in Season 2... little did we know!

Anyway, back to the action -- Ben "summons" the smoke monster from his secret room via this giant septic-tank looking thing. I swear, when it happened, I was like, "Is he unclogging Smokey? Is the Smoke Monster really the Shit Monster?!?" But then nothing happened, and Locke (acting in the new and improved, none of that lost-little-boy stuff, way one would act if they were newly resurrected! Go figure!) decided to take them where they needed to go -- the Temple. Or more specifically, the outer Temple wall (leading us to believe that the actual "Temple" might not be as "ancient" as the outer wall may lead people to believe -- it could be a state-of-the-art technology-grant-given Temple of the future, that would be COOL!). Or it might REALLY be an ancient Egyptian relic, then COOL!

En route to the Temple, Ben tells John that he remembers being taken here when they saved him. So... was that whole thing where Richard was like, "He won't remember any of this" total bull roar? Because Ben clearly remembers stuff! But what? What does he really remember and what is lying about? Darn you, awesome Ben!

So, back in the action - Locke tells Ben that they're not going TO the temple... they're going UNDER it. It was here that I found myself mildly questioning Locke (for the first time in the entire episode - normally it happens about every four minutes when he's onscreen muddling through his destiny - but since he's back from the dead, me likey!) - remember Montaigne's arm? Didn't it get pulled off when he was being sucked down into THAT VERY SAME hole? Scary! And that makes me wonder what really happened to Rousseu's crew -- did they get judged in the judgement chamber, like Ben?

Speaking of the judgement chamber - WOW. Okay, so they get to the Temple and climb down the scary, scary hole of judgement (picture that as Disney's latest theme park attraction - heh! "The Scary, Scary Hole of Judgement!" - probably need an age limit to ride that bad boy!)... where Ben proceeds to fall down into a BIGGER hole of judgement (literally, like the floor gave way and he, painfully, fell through it) into the judgement chamber. He walks to this alter-like thing, where he sees this (which I'll talk about in a second):

After he takes a good look at all the ancient Egyptian carvings and whatnot -- looking around with genuine awe and wonder. I say genuine, because there wasn't anyone else there for him to be lying to, and for him to put on a charade to fool himself is a bit much, even for Benjamin Linus, right?! Okay, so out of the giant island sewer system (this grate with holes in it) Smokey shows up -- full of the requisite clicking noises and flashes of light (that we've seen when Smokey encountered "Others" in the past), only this time Smokey danced for us! He expanded into a giant Smokey donut with a Benjamin Linus jelly-filling. And the Smokey donut enveloped Ben like the Ghost of Island's past - thrusting him directly into his memories. Forcing him to relive the events that he has true remorse and pain as the result of -- everything having to do with Alex.

The jungle trek is peppered with Ben's flashback's to how he and Widmore met -- Widmore was NOT happy that Richard saved Ben, but was shut down by a "Jacob wanted it done." I swear, I'm totally getting that put on a t-shirt!

AND we find out how Ben got all those mysterious bumps and bruises that preceded his Aijra flight -- pretty much what we thought. He tried to kill Penny (love, love, LOVED his phone call to Charles Widmore -- "How did you get this number?" "[sing-song] Nevermind that..." This was the one time I was happy to see Ben's plan crash and burn (or get the shit kicked out of it by a not-dead Desmond). But his hand was TOTALLY shaking when he was holding the gun, and he put the gun down when he was baby Charlie. I told ya, Ben has a soft spot for those babies and their newly-made Mommies! Like Alex in the past, he just can't pull the trigger - and gives Desmond a moment to come to and kick the ever-loving stew smacked out of him -- which, BTW, how did he survive that one? They weren't on the island!

Curious about that jackal-headed creature who appears to be having some sort of communication with Smokey (vis a vis the carvings)? Here's a little background on Anubis

(from http://www.touregypt.net/godsofegypt/anubis.htm) -- I've bolded some things that I find INTERESTING...!

Anubis -- (Lord-of-the-Place-of-Embalming).

Patron of: mummification, and the dead on their path through the underworld.

Appearance: A man with the head of a jackal-like animal. Unlike a real jackal, Anubis' head is black, representing his position as a god of the dead. He is rarely shown fully-human, but he is depicted so in the Temple of Abydos of Rameses II. There is a beautiful statue of him as a full jackal in the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Description: Anubis is an incredibly ancient god, and was the original god of the dead before Osiris "took over" the position. After that point, Anubis was changed to be one of the many sons of Osiris and the psychopomp (conductor of souls) of the underworld. His totem of the jackal is probably due to the fact that jackals would hunt at the edges of the desert, near the necropolis and cemeteries throughout Egypt.

Prayers to Anubis are found carved on the most ancient tombs in Egypt, and his duties apparently are many. He watches over the mummification process to ensure that all is done properly. He conducts the souls through the underworld, testing their knowledge of the gods and their faith. He places their heart on the Scales of Justice during the Judging of the Heart, and he feeds the souls of wicked people to Ammit.

In some stories, Anubis is the son of Ra (There is a great deal of speculation over whether or not Richard Alpert is really RA...) and Nephthys, or Set and Nephthys (probably due to Set and Anubis having the same totem animal). Some have Heset as his mother, and still others say Bast. This apparent confusion is still another sign of Anubis' origins in the most ancient of times. He also has a daughter, Kabechet, who helps him in the mummification.

Worship: Worshipped widely throughout all of Egypt, his cult center was Cynopolis.

So... Let's wrap it up with a giant question session --

TARA'S BIG LIST OF LOST QUESTIONS

1. Where the HECK is Daniel Faraday? We'd better be seeing him next week, or this is REALLY getting redundant!
2. When the heck is Ben EVER telling the truth?!? And how can I know?
3. Who was Ben telling the truth to -- Sun or John? Did or did he not know that John was going to come back to life? Or is it a little bit of both -- where he thinks it might happen, but he didn't know? Or was he full of crap the whole time? I guess time will tell on that one...
4. Am I the only one who feels badly for Ben? He's had the crappiest life EVER. Seriously, from birth, he was touted as a murderer for "killing" his mother. He grew up verbally and physically assaulted by his shitty father. He got SHOT when he was a mere lad, taken by the Others (but only briefly, and forced to go undercover for awhile -- see #5), healed by "the island," spoken to by "Jacob" and instructed to do crazy shit -- all in the name of the island, made to kill mommies and forced to steal babies, "had to" gas his Dad to death, was betrayed again and again by his daughter - all because he tried to act in her best interest by keeping her from getting preggers, inevitably caused his daughter's death with his self-confidence in his powers of manipulation, and then forced to be John Locke's #2 by his dead daughter's ghost. Conclusion: Ben's had a tough life!
5. Which, BTW, brings us to a questionable discrepency in the timeline -- despite the hair piece it was difficult to place Ben in the timeline when he was stealing Alex from Rousseu -- he had more hair, but it was clearly only around 1989, Pre-purge, so how was he hanging out with The Others AND with Dharma? Because he as on the inside during the Purge... Then later, when he's pushing Alex on the swing, it's clearly Post-Purge -- which means that Charles Widmore was totally a part of the Purge... do we think he was in charge of it? Because Ben alludes to the fact that it wasn't his idea alone... but then, that could have just been another Ben lie.
6. Just how much do you age when you leave the island? Because young Widmore looked significantly younger than the aged Widmore (even with his fro-style hairpiece) -- so just how much time has Widmore been spending off the island?
7. And why is he leaving so frequently if he loves it so much?
8. Are Others not allowed to recruit people to the island? If that's the case, then how did Ben recruit all the "new" Others that he refers to in "The Man From Tallahassee" - and why are all those people on Jacob's magical lists allowed to stay?
9. Did anyone else equate Ben summoning Smokey to a giant toilet?
10. What's with all the freaky Egyptian connections? It's such a cool concept to think that they've been harnassing ancient technology -- but what if it's all fake? What if the ancient stuff is really to mask for the fact that they've traveled to the future and created all this stuff there.
11. Is Richard Alpert RA? And is Smokey working for him?
12. Why is Richard always Second-in-Command, in the 50's he was in charge, what happened?And if he's so ageless, why isn't he the boss?
13. Is Alex Ben's achilles heel?
14. When the heck are we going to meet Jacob?
15. If that's the temple wall, what does the real temple look like?
16. Ilana, and her band of misfits with big boxes of something that looks like guns -- what are they up to? And how many times has she been on this island before? Is she working for Widmore?
17. Where's Walt? I like that kid... I think he's got more work for John Locke to do. (Remember the end of Season 3? Hee!)
18. Do you think the only reason the island didn't kill Ben was because he confessed to being responsible for Alex's death? Did his confession save him? Or was saving him more evil than killing him?
19. How much does Ben hate John at this point? Will he truly help him? Even with the threat of Alex - is that enough to put him on the path of the straight and narrow?
20. Is Cesar dead? My vote is no - he's probably just REALLY pissed at Ben and John!
21. Was Desmond's milk carton bullet-proof? How the heck is not dead? Darlton says he might not be okay -- I think we'll find out in the episode "The Variable" (after the April 24th catch-up show).
22. How is John going to help Sun reach Jin?
23. How does Locke know all this crazy shit about the island all of a sudden? Did the resurrection infuse him with info?
24. "It was the only way to get you back to the island. Along with as many of those who left as possible. You do remember, John, that's why you left in the first place, to convince them to come back? But you failed. And the only way to bring them together was by your death. And you understood that, that's why you were about to kill yourself and I stopped you." "If all I had to do was die, why did you stop me?" What did Ben mean in the conversation between he and John, towards the beginning, when he said, "You had critical information that would have died with you. And once you'd given it to me ... [eye roll] well, I just didn't have time to talk you back into hanging yourself. So I took a shortcut." - it doesn't make sense... right? Why would it make a difference how John died if, as Ben says, "Dead is dead"?
25. Was I the only one who got lost in Ben's circles of speech? He's goood!
26. Were Lapidus and Sun hooking up in Ben's old house? She hasn't seen Jin in YEARS.
27. Do you think Ben was lying when he looked in surprise at the Dharma folk?
28. Do you think every time Ben looks surprised, he's really full of shit?
29. Am I the only one who's excited to hear Miles talk to dead people, next week? Is he Chang's baby? Probably -- cool!

Namaste Losties! Until Wednesday!