Whatever Happened Happened & Dead Is Dead (S5, eps. 11 & 12)

Whatever Happened Happened (S5, ep. 11)

Thoughts:

• Roger Linus shows something approaching warmth and/or humanity toward Kate, which is surprising and welcome. Of course, he’s still a raging douche. Is he upset because someone else got the chance to shoot Ben before he could?

• Kate sings “Catch a falling star” to Aaron. In Season One, Claire requested that Aaron’s adoptive parents sing that song to him. “Catch a falling star” was also the lullaby that the mobile the Others provided to Aaron played. Is Jacob secretly Perry Como?

Kate: “Sawyer sent me.”

• Kate visits Cassidy, James/Sawyer’s old flame, and gives her a bundle of cash to “take care of Clementine,” Sawyer’s daughter. Kate and Cassidy met and became friends prior to the Oceanic crash, yet Cassidy doesn’t seem all that surprised that Kate and Sawyer were both on that flight. You’d think she’d be slightly more amazed, but Cassidy’s a tough broad I guess?

• Apparently all the janitors in Dharma have jail keys. I guess this makes sense, as they need to clean the cells, but still.

Miles: “The hell are you doing, tubby?”
Hurley: “Checking to see if I’m disappearing.”

• Have I mentioned lately that I love Hurley? Using him to raise the “Back to the Future” theory of time travel is amusing, and it asks us to consider the consequences of Ben dying in a pretty clever way.

James: “If you don’t come with me, Jack, that kid’s gonna die.”
Jack: “Then he dies.”
 
• In a mirror of Season 3, Ben is in dire need of operation, and Jack is the only available surgeon on the Island. In S3 Jack refuses to operate, but is convinced to do so by Kate. In S5, he again refuses to operate, and it’s Kate who steps in to save Ben. In S3, her motivation was James/Sawyer’s life. In S5, it’s the life of Ben. This episode carefully reminds us again of Kate’s maternal instinct, in caring for Aaron, in taking care of Clementine, and finally, in bringing Ben to be saved.

• Jack tells Kate that he’s “already done this once.” He’s already saved Ben. But if the castaways are looping, and need to make certain different choices in order to “move on,” then Jack may need to leave his pride and anger behind and step up to make a different choice the “next time.”

• To save young Ben Linus or not? It’s the age-old “if you could go back in time and kill Hitler” question, only here Hitler is a bug-eyed Island despot. Juliet’s argument, that whoever Ben will grow up to be he’s just a child now, is more compassionate than Jack’s “leave it to the Island”/natural selection viewpoint. But while Juliet’s compassion saves a child, it also preserves the life of the man who’s made them all so miserable.

Hurley: “But when we first captured Ben and Sayid, like, tortured him, then why wouldn’t he remember getting shot by the same guy when he was a kid?”

• Out of Hurley and Miles’ very amusing conversation comes a very good question – why wouldn’t Ben remember Sayid as an adult? Apparently, a trip to the Temple can give you convenient amnesia.

• Young Ben’s situation seems hopeless, until Juliet suggests that there may be something that the Others can do. The look on her face tells us that she already regrets saying anything about it, and I’m left thinking about Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, and about how Louis Creed brought his son up to it despite the fact that “sometimes, dead is better.”

Harper: “You look just like her.”

• Remember that line? I’d assumed at the time that Harper was referring to Annie when she told Juliet this. But is it possible that the “her” Harper refers to is the woman who saved Ben’s life? We know young Ben loses some memories after visiting the Temple, but not how extensive that loss was. Clearly he still remembers Dharma and his father. Would he also remember Juliet’s face?

If so, that makes Ben’s pursuit of her extra-tragic to my eyes, and it underlines the sense that Ben has been twisted, bent, his empathy and vulnerability as a boy masked by cool calculation.

Juliet: “You came back here for you. Please do me the courtesy of telling me why.”
Jack: “I came back…because I was supposed to.”

• Kate’s surrender of Aaron to Claire’s mother is very touching, and her reason for returning to the Island is finally made clear – she wants to find Claire and bring her home. What is the consequence of this? Christian tells Locke that the baby is “where its supposed to be, and that’s not here.” Richard Malkin warns Claire not to let her baby be raised by another. Who is Aaron, really?

Richard: If I take him…he’s not ever going to be the same again.”
Kate: “What do you mean by that?”
Richard: “What I mean is that he’ll forget this ever happened, and that his innocence will be gone. He will always be one of us.”

• One of the spookiest lines in the show. What happens to Ben when he’s taken into the Temple? Does Richard taking Ben to see Smokey? If Ben has been “changed” by Smokey (something we saw implied with Rousseau’s crew), is he somehow dangerous to Jacob in a way that other people are not? How is he changed? Again I’m thinking about Pet Semetary of all things, and the creepy sound of Gage Creed’s laughter…

Unnamed Other: “Richard – you shouldn’t do this without asking Elie. If Charles finds out–”
Richard: “Let him find out. I don’t answer to either of them.”

• Who is it that Richard does answer to? And what has been done to Ben? I’ll bore you more on that subject after the page break, where we’ll look at “Dead Is Dead.”