Lost Review: “Dr. Linus”
The rollercoaster ride screaming to the end of Lost continues again this week, with things settling down a wee bit after Smokey raided the Other temple and massacred pretty much everyone there. Surprisingly, we got a Linus-centric episode this week, as I was expecting a Jin adventure due to his sudden appearance in a freezer last week. But alas, he’s still missing, and that makes two weeks in a row now. I guess bear trap wounds take a while to heal.
Linus is with the “Jacob” group as I guess we should call them, which is now made up of Illana, Sun, Lapedus and Miles. On the hike back from the temple, Ilana gives Miles Jacob’s ashes to confirm how he died and whoops! It’s Linus, a fact that quickly turns Ilana’s mood toward him from distrusteful to murderous.
The gang marches back to the 815’s original beach camp, because why the hell not, and Ilana immediately shackles Ben to a tree and tells him to start digging a grave next to Nikki and Paolo, a gun pointed at his head as he does so.
Meanwhile, this week’s obligatory alterverse episode centers around Ben Linus: History Teacher, and it’s exactly as riveting as it sounds. Cameos abound as Locke, Artz and even Alex show up, because of course her French explorer mother would relocate to LA and send her to the exact school where Ben Linus teaches.
I’m frankly surprised she still wasn’t dating that douchey kid.
Through Alex, Linus discovers some incriminating evidence about the sleezebag principal and his illict affair with the school nurse, and he uses to it to blackmail him into giving him his job. But the principal retaliates with a threat that he will sink his beloved Alex’s chances at going to Yale. Ben now has to choose between POWER and his (surrogate) DAUGHTER. Get it? Well, in case you don’t, flash back to the island where Ben tells Ilana with teary eyes that he once had to choose between POWER and his DAUGHTER. It’s the same!
Well, unlike his island self, Ben chooses Alex, and she gets to go to Yale, thus ending the most retarded metaphor in Lost history. It is interesting to note that in this universe, Ben is taking care of his ailing father, who acknowledges the island (for the first time in this alterverse) and wonders what life could have been like if they stayed. No reference to anything blowing up though. And no real explanation about how leaving the island makes them stop hating each other.
Back in real life, we’re treated to a rather interesting subplot that has Jack and Hurley running into a very confused and despondent Richard, who is now hell bent on killing himself because the man he served for over a hundred years has died and left him without any answers. He returns to the vessel from whence he came (The Black Rock) and tries to blow himself up with dynamite, but Jack plays chicken with the island and sits in on the suicide attempt, confident Jacob’s ghost won’t let them detonate. He doesn’t.
I’d watch a whole miniseries about Richard’s adventures on The Black Rock.
Richard’s immortality is explained away by him saying that “Jacob touched him and gave him a gift” which I guess is about as good as an explanation as we could have hoped for. This begs the question though, does EVERYONE Jacob touch get that same gift? Will all the candidates still be walking around looking pretty in a hundred years? I sort of doubt it, but they do make a big deal about Jacob’s “touch.”
Ben is still digging his own grave when he’s approached by Not-Locke who says he’s been looking for him. He tells Ben of his plan to take everyone off the island, and he wants Ben to have the very special duty of taking care of the place while he’s gone. Due to his past assertions, I didn’t think he really gave a shit about the fate of the island, so maybe this is some new ploy he’s working. Then he frees Ben from his shackles with magic telekinetic powers that I’m too tired to even complain about.
Ben runs off and finds a stashed gun, and confronts Ilana giving the aforementioned POWER vs. DAUGHTER speech. Truly, this exchange was one of the most powerfully acted moments I’ve ever seen on Lost, and the depth of emotion Michael Emerson display in this scene is simply astounding. I’ve always maintained that Lost is one of the best acted shows on TV today, but Emerson truly does take it to another level entirely.
Moving stuff.
The final moments of the episode show a periscope popping up under the water attached to a submarine carrying (drumroll, please) Widmore to the island. Damn, I was really hoping it was Desmond. He better get back here at some point and not merely be relegated to an alterverse cameo. I was wondering just what the hell happens now as the beach group is essentially sitting around without a plan, but I guess we’ll see what happens once Widmore beaches his submarine.
This was a good episode to be sure that contained some powerful dramatic moments. Aside from Linus’ teary mea culpa, Richard’s plight was equally tragic, and it just goes to show how deep it is as it can create sympathetic characters out of the two people who were once essentially the mysterious rulers of the island.
Sadly, we had to deal with the world’s most annoying alterverse episode which tainted things a bit, but at least it spit out one or two interesting bits of info amidst all its nonsense. As always, I skipped the previous for next week, but I assume I’m looking forward to seeing Sawyer and Jin again.
Fire torpedo!
Great episode 🙂
Jacob’s ‘gift’ isn’t immortality to everyone. he touched locke. locke = dead.
Immortality and not aging are two very different things. And Locke ended up not killing himself, same with Jack come to think of it. Both attempts may have failed if carried out. From what i gathered Richard needed someone else to kill him. He could die, just not without help.
@jprlk: Richard can die. He flat out said so. He has to be killed by someone else, perhaps a candidate. Locke was killed by Ben, candidate 117. This is why Locke survived his fall. He was dying until Jacob touched him. His father wasn’t a candidate and so he couldn’t kill Locke if Jacob had touched him. And the fact that Jacob himself was killed by one of the candidates further supports that.
As for the touching thing, I think it is pretty obvious that they all have it now. Jack certainly thinks so. He had a sudden realization the second Richard said that and knew with absolute certainty that the dynamite wouldn’t go off. I am willing to guess that Richard didn’t know that Jacob had touched most, if not all, of his candidates at one point in their life. I am thinking that the agelessness is activated by the island, though, as Sawyer and Kate were quite young when Jacob touched them.
A sudden thought… could this also be the reason why Michael was unable to kill himself? 124 is Dawson, which I thought would have been Walt but Michael has really meant much more to the island than Walt and the fact that he couldn’t kill himself makes me think it was him. Only problem is that Keamy was never a candidate and that would blow my “only candidates can kill those touched by Jacob” theory out of the water.
…another thought. Jacob is not a person, it is a guardian. The candidates are candidates to become the new Jacob. So… essentially what I am thinking is that only Jacob can kill those that Jacob has touched. Make sense? Maybe? Perhaps I am really reaching on that one.
Once again, great summary. I, too, am starting to boo and hiss at the insane amount of side-flash cameos.
Though the whole ‘touch’ thing is starting to piss me off. I mean, I am touching your life right now through words, did I physically touch you?
Before you answer, have the writers of Lost intentionally led us down the wrong path before? By simply saying something like that ‘slip’? (remember “Give us the boy”?)
Have we seen any other characters escape death? Mike and suicide thing but that was attributed to ‘the island’, via the fat Other guy.
Mike ended up seeing Christian before died on the boat, yeah? Isn’t/Wasn’t Christian Esau?
And how is not being able to kill yourself a curse? The island is populated by people, most of them armed with guns, and more often than not guided there by Jacob as Candidates.
The whole thing is convoluted.
Best episode so far. Best alterverse material as well. Sure, the comparison was a bit strong, but I still found just as impacting. It’s nice to see Ben as much more of a gentle person.
As I watched the exchange between Linus and the principle I found myself getting upset.
If you threaten the principle with outing him, and he gives in. ONLY to turn around and give in so quickly when he says he wont right a letter for the girl that is ridiculous.
Island Linus would have said “Ok, nice play there bossman. So I’ll just have to rephrase then. Give me your job, AND write the letter. If not, I’ll give this information to the school board, your wife, your pastor, hell I’ll have it hand delivered to your parents to”.
i agree with Sean… it was the best episode this season so far… even though i knew widmore was coming, i still got goosebumps.
i completely agree with you about emerson; man he’s great. and nestor carbonell is amazingly intense…. such great acting.
i think that widmore’s arrival is the second “plot point” of the season (the first being the temple stuff) where it will start to take a much different turn and the pace will pick up…. i just hope it doesn’t pick up drastically and throw too much out each episode.
Banditone ~ You got it, man. This wasn’t the redeeming point for Teacher Ben. Oh, you got out of detention? Zing!
I loved the underlying thought that he was kinda getting in touch with his island self. His goofy science teacher friend even said it. He could be ruthless.
But then he backed down. Fail.
This is one of my favorite episodes ever, if not the most favorite. Damn, Emerson is a great actor. Sympathy won’t even begin to describe how I feel for him when the camera cuts to him after Jack noticed him after arriving at the beach.
It’s kind of how I feel about Noah Bennett in “Company Man” for those that know what I’m talking about. Great insight/revelation for the character. Bravo Michael!!!
About the story moving forward, I think it’s back to the Lost that I loved from the Sundown and its kicking on now…
“Company Man” is one of the greatest episodes of any show in TV history. I’m stunned that episode came out of such a consistently terrible show as Heroes.
@Banditone – I agree completely. It would have made a ton more sense for Linus either to just add the Yale letter to his blackmail request, as you said, or call the principal’s bluff and take over as principal. Yes, I know Alex really really wanted to go to Yale. But there are other schools out there. Really good schools. If Ben really wanted to make a difference, he could have, for year after year of students. Instead, he sold all of those students out so that one single girl could go to the college she wanted to.
I really want to believe the “touch” is a metaphorical thing, but then again, they really went out of the way to show Jacob touching the candidates in The Incident. Oh well.