Injured arm? What injured arm. It's just a flesh wound. Ben can still kill you in seconds with a pair of nail clippers. Considering that basically everybody on the island but Aaron has beaten the living hell out of him at one point or another, this sudden ninja-facation seems...odd. Almost like we're supposed to start seeing Ben in a whole new light...
Back in the barracks, Ben is leading Sawyer and Locke back to his old house. Note that Ben, capable, calm, in control Ben, is walking. While Sawyer and Locke are almost jogging to keep up. Ben is the leader now. Locke doesn't know it, but Ben is using this emergency to exert control and more importantly, take control away from Locke. Locke doesn't realize it, but Ben could have killed him at any moment using nothing more than the melon rind from his breakfast. He's a fucking ninja.
Of course, Ben still needs Locke.
Ben explains that the code on the phone is a panic code telling him that one of his people has been compromised and forced to deactivate the fence. When he finds out that they debated asking him about the code for nearly five minutes, Ben isn't impressed.
"Well, so much for our head start."
Against Ben's better judgement, Sawyer rushes off to get Claire. Ben keeps Locke close.
"It's very important that you survive what's about to happen here, John, so I need you to stay close to me."
"And why would I do that?"
"Because the people that are coming won't risk hurting me. You want to live? I'm your best chance." And, I'm a fucking ninja.
On the beach, Jack is still trying to figure out the dead doctor. He asks Charlotte and Faraday if they know anything about it, but the good doctor was fine the last time they saw him.
"Which was when?"
"When? 'When' is kind of a relative term."
The look on Jack's face says that he's not buying the whole time travel thing at the moment. Charlotte changes the tack of the conversation by interjecting that the two of them simply don't know what happened.
Jack asks about the sat phone, but the microphone was broken and that's one component you can't bypass. Trust this former cell phone repair guy on that. Bernard suggests that they could use the phone to transmit a telegraph type message and Daniel agrees, providing they have some essential parts. Kate thinks that they might have salvaged what he'd need from the plane and Mr. Wizard is happy to have something to do that doesn't involve dead doctors and awkward questions.
Jack catches Bernard before he wanders off.
"Bernard, you got a second?"
In Ben's house, Ben and Locke are fortifying the weak points with furniture when Hurley comes into the room with Aaron. When he sees what the two men are doing, he wonders how Sawyer is going to get back in.
"He's not."
Speaking of Sawyer, he runs into a redshirt gathering firewood and asks him if he's seen Claire recently. He hasn't, but he has seen his final moments as a gunshot from nowhere takes him out. Redshirt number two comes bounding out to see what all the commotion is about and promptly finds out the hard way. Redshirt number three, not wanting to miss his big scene, jumps out the door to check on his fellow disposable castaways and gets a nice bullet in the chest as his reward. The whole time Sawyer is yelling at them to get back in the house, but no one is listening to him.
I was waiting for redshirt number four and a smart ass remark from Sawyer, but alas, redshirt dominoes ended after three large caliber rounds.
This is all your fault, you damn dirty baby.
Sawyer shoots back, runs through a hail of bullets across the compound, returns fire from behind an upturned picnic table. As he runs for Claire's house, someone in the tree line fires a rocket propelled grenade and turns it into matchsticks.
Sawyer can do nothing but shout her name as her house goes up in a gout of flame.
Ben finds his way into a hotel lobby, still wearing the dead man's headscarf as a tourniquet. The receptionist speaks excellent English and asks him if it's his first time in Tunisia.
"No, but it's been a while." Last time he rode a polar bear in...
It turns out that Ben's alias, Dean Moriarty, is a preferred guest at the hotel and by the look on the receptionist's face, an important one.
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Comments (12)
I didn't understand why Ben & Locke were taking Hugo to Jacob's cabin when Ben clearly knows how to get there on his own. I don't get the logic there. Was Ben lying to Locke about why they needed Hugo?
1 of 12 | Posted by kellyt | Posted on April 30, 2008 7:27 AM
On a previous episode, Hurley pointed out that the cabin was "the other way", earning a big time stink eye from John. Perhaps Hurley has been granted the ability to "see" the cabin that neither John nor Ben currently have . . .
2 of 12 | Posted by SOCKMONKEY | Posted on April 30, 2008 8:47 AM
kellyt: Jacob's cabin has moved since the time we saw Locke and Ben visit. Hugo was the one to stumble across its new location. Apparently, Ben does not know where it is at the moment. Which is puzzling, if Jacob's cabin moves all the time, does Ben spend a lot of his time looking for it?
What a great episode! Lots of action, the return of the smoke monster, and a Ben centric!
Kinda bummed that Alex died, but holy cow, it's worth it for Ben's reaction. I saw someone say that they would only read the transcripts of episodes now because the show "had become a bloodbath". *sigh* Ya know, we're kinda running out of time for Libby and Daniel's backstories. I have trouble imagining how they are going to fit them in without it looking really shoehorned in.
The Ben/Widmore scene at the end was extremely intriguing.
The first scene of the flashforward - Oh ma gaw, how awesomely weird was that? My little theory is that there's some sort of teleporter in the Arctic. Just as a polar bear mysteriously appeared in Tunisia, I think Ben got that arm wound via an angry polar bear. And hey, according to Wikipedia, polar bears live in some parts of Siberia, which was also mentioned in this episode! Perhaps the symbol on Ben's coat is for a hatch in Siberia?
One question: Do you all think the "Freighter Four" are going to be regular characters, or just recurring roles? It seemed like we were going to see quite a lot of them at first, but they've had little to do the past few episodes. Miles and Faraday certainly seem to have more characterization ahead, but Charlotte and Frank?
3 of 12 | Posted by Merick | Posted on April 30, 2008 8:48 AM
I found this little tid bit on the net and thought it was pretty cool. Gotta love google earth
There is a time portal/wormhole that connects Tunisia to the Island. That's how Ben ends up seemingly fallen from the sky in the Tunisian desert. That's how a polar bear skull is excavated from the Tunisian sand. And that how a small prop plane can take off from Nigeria and end up on the island. The proof: according to Google Earth, the coordinates for 'Tunisia' are: 33 deg, 53 sec N and 9 deg, 31 sec E. The polar opposite of those coordinates is: 33 deg, 53 53 sec S and 170 deg 29 sec W. If you follow those coordinates, you end up....just NE of Sydney, Australia in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, enroute to LA, and not far from Fiji.
4 of 12 | Posted by pauliewalnutz | Posted on April 30, 2008 9:26 AM
I love Ben. I don't care if we were meant to think of him as a 'bad' guy from the beginning, I still loved him lol.
He deserves any and all awards this show gets from now on. No one can deliver a line quite like him =)
5 of 12 | Posted by pixi-stix | Posted on April 30, 2008 9:55 AM
Great recap Grey. Worth the wait!
Someone got new headshots LOL!
I suppose it's not surprising that she'd see a munchkin...er, hobbit after having a house dropped on her. OMG LOL!!!!
I never thought of Ben as the hero. He always seemed so evil to me. But I look forward to more of your hero hypothesis.
6 of 12 | Posted by akgirl7 | Posted on April 30, 2008 10:30 AM
Interesting theory pauliewalnutz. I understand Ben in the desert and the prop plane, but don't see how this theory explains the polar bear excavation. Polar bears wouldn't typically be found on an island in the south pacific or in the desert in Tunisia. Am I missing something?
7 of 12 | Posted by Bryant92 | Posted on April 30, 2008 11:26 AM
so many gigglez taday:)
coconut radio jokes, fuk'n ninja jokes...
shaken not stirred...
sigh :)
aha! nobody else has mentioned.. i know iknow it's really nothing.. but noone noticed the painting, back wall bedroom (of the 'black rock' that widmore won at the auction, when confronted by dez during an episodic timetrip.....
yah.. and whaz up w/the 'we need hurley to find jacob's shack?
sounds like pfffft ta me....
great review.. i have sorely missed these..
how many more shows do we have left in the season....anybody?
8 of 12 | Posted by kikz | Posted on April 30, 2008 12:21 PM
I've been looking forward to this recap all week and you did not disappoint me!!! It was great once again and the comments from everyone were quite insightful. Thanks you guys. I've always loved Ben and those horrible eyes.... Ben deserves the Emmy!
9 of 12 | Posted by chooch850 | Posted on April 30, 2008 12:47 PM
I've been looking forward to this recap all week and you did not disappoint me!!! It was great once again and the comments from everyone were quite insightful. Thanks you guys. I've always loved Ben and those horrible eyes.... Ben deserves the Emmy!
10 of 12 | Posted by chooch850 | Posted on April 30, 2008 12:50 PM
Bryant92:
I'm pretty sure they kept polar bears in the Dharma Zoo, where Kate and Sawyer were kept. They weren't native to the island, but they were there.
11 of 12 | Posted by puregold | Posted on May 9, 2008 3:26 PM
Bryant92, I'm pretty sure they kept polar bears in that Dharma Zoo where Kate & Sawyer were held. They aren't native to the island, but they were there!
12 of 12 | Posted by puregold | Posted on May 9, 2008 3:27 PM