Dr. Linus (S6, ep. 7)

“The Absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.” – Sartre

“If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.” – Albert Camus, Second Letter to a German Friend, December 1943

Jack: “I just came from a lighthouse where my name was etched in wood on a dial. I turned a mirror that somehow reflected the image of the house I grew up in. Jacob’s lighthouse. He got Hurley to bring me out there because he wanted me to see what was reflected in that mirror. For some reason he wanted me to know that he had been watching me ever since I was a kid.”
Richard: “Why ?”
Jack: “I have no idea why. But I’m willing to bet you that if Jacob went to that trouble, then he brought me to this island for a reason, and it’s not to blow up sitting here with you right now.”

Remember Hurley and his Dharma Bus, way back in Season 3? When Jin, Charlie and Sawyer helped push that rattling contraption over the edge, sending our favorite “PU” representin’ castaway on a wild ride, none of them seemed convinced that it would work, that Hurley and the Dharma Van wouldn’t end up smeared messily all over the landscape.

And for those first few agonizing moments, we weren’t either. For a minute, we (or I at any rate) allowed ourselves to imagine that goofy van ramming straight into a big honkin’ rock, sending Hurley hurtling through the air like the bird who bears his name.

Reading up on the reactions of folks here at Chud and elsewhere, it occurs to me that I’m able to draw a shaky comparison between the first five episodes of this season and that initial stretch of deceptively-dangerous hillside. Those first episodes, if the reactions I’ve read are any kind of indication of the overall reaction, were largely well-liked, but also kind of scary, with an underlying feeling/fear that the whole enterprise might suddenly pitch over on us and just die – skidding out in a smoking heap, or smashing into the rocks below. With LA X and that initial push, the show’s speed was up and things were looking hopeful. With What Kate Does, the show hit some bumps, spooked some folks, provoked unease. The Substitute reassured us all, but then Lighthouse hit and scared everyone anew. Was this going to work? Could the show get its engine started in time? Or were we in the process of watching a car accident in progress?

Starting last week however, and continuing into this week, there’s the distinct feeling that Lost’s writers have finally turned that engine over, have swerved, have (perhaps narrowly) avoided smashing their show on the rocks of Obvious Metaphor. If we listen closely, we can hear the far-off, figurative whoop of the drivers as they steer their unwieldy-yet-lovable creation away from imminent destruction and out into the open fields. Both “Sundown” and “Dr. Linus” have been exhilarating episodes for me as a viewer, and while I understand that this episode didn’t impress some of you the way that it impressed me, I stand by that basic analogy. We’ve cleared the rocks, people. Get ready to feel that engine rev.

Thoughts:

• Ilana was told that she and her group would be safe at the Temple. Whoops.

• The Temple wall adorned with a “Shen Ring” (the Egyptian symbol for protection) – why is it there to begin with? What did the (assumed) Egyptians need protection from? Has all of this happened before, as was implied in the back-and-forth between Jacob and the Man in Black (seen in the Season 5 finale)? Did the ancient builders of the Temple see all of this coming? If so, how? Did Jacob instruct them, way back in the day? Has the knowledge of what’s to come somehow been sent “back” through time to them? Have the castaways themselves somehow helped to engineer this? Or is it just, like, a cool looking symbol to stick on a wall?

Ben: “It was on this island that everything changed – that everything finally became clear. Elba. It’s where Napoleon faced his greatest test, because exile wasn’t the worst of his fate. What was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power.”

• I’m quite sure that Jeff Jensen, Noel Murray from the AV Club, and the rest of the folks I like to read after I’m done slaving over a hot column have talked this quote up. I’m willing to bet that Mr. Jensen’s probably written a paragraph or two about Napoleon’s life, etc. et al, and about the parallels between this mini-history and Ben’s Island history. I’ve heard from a few people that they thought this stuff was too “on the nose,” but while that’s a valid criticism if you’re the sort of fan who makes those connections naturally, Lost also has a devoted group of fans who love the show’s ridiculous (in the good way) mysteries, but aren’t spending their time talking about it with other people, or, say, writing obsessively-composed columns. As a for instance.  I enjoy a little underlining from time to time if it’s to make a point, or sharpen a theme, or comment on what’s happening and for the most part I thought Lost walked the right side of that line with this episode.

• Principal Reynolds is played by the immortally-sleazy William Atherton, who you probably know from films like Ghostbusters (Walter Peck, dickless EPA employee), Die Hard (Richard Thornburg), Real Genius (Professor Jerry Hathaway), and Biodome (Professor Somebodyorother). Both Atherton and his fellow Real Genius actor Jon Gries make appearances in this episode – all we needed was a quick Kilmer appearance (preferably in full-on bunny-killing Island of Doctor Moreau mode) and we’d have a reunion.

Can you imagine Kilmer playing Jacob? I can. Specifically as Elvis in True Romance. “I like you, Jack. Always have. Always will.”

• Ben’s off-Island and on-Island storylines offer up a virtual Hall of Mirrors for you and I to get lost in. The relationship between Ben and Principal Reynolds mirrors, depending on your angle, both Ben’s Island coup where he deposed Widmore and the murder of Jacob, in which Anti-Locke helped distill Ben’s rage and wounded pride into a perfect cocktail of murderous impulse.

• I don’t like Arzt. It feels good to say it. Say it with me, because you don’t really like Arzt either. This is hopefully the last mention of him you’ll see in this column. Begone, Arzt! Back to the hammy, scenery-chewing depths from whence you came!

Locke: “It just sounds like you care about this place. And if the man in charge doesn’t, then maybe its time for a change.”

• That’s a nice line. It’s as though both off-Island Locke and Anti-Locke are speaking at the same time, but from entirely different emotional/psychological places (or so it seems). Don’t you love that we’ve reached a point in the show where there are three separate ways to refer to Locke in a given episode? There’s Anti-Locke, the form that the Man in Black has assumed, there’s off-Island Locke, who may or may not be participating in a Second Snake, and there’s Classic Locke, whose story we’d been following for Five seasons before he was ingloriously strangled. That’s alotta Lockes!

Off-Island Locke plants the seed of ambition that sparks Ben’s power grab, niftily mirroring the way Anti-Locke slyly coaxed him into murdering Jacob. Here, however, off-Island Locke seems more like the “wise teacher/advisor” Locke of Season 1. Remember him? The guy Charlie trusted with his life? The guy without the crippling Messiah complex? That’s the Locke we seem to be seeing here – more Merlin than wannabe-Arthur.

Miles gives us more info about his superfreakyghostpowers – it involves picking up “their last thoughts before they check out.” This continues to suggest to me that, when someone on the Island dies, the Smoke Monster/Man in Black is somehow able to access that person’s memeories, appearance and behavior. Have you read my “Well of Souls” theory? Wanna?

Ilana: “Jacob was the closest thing I ever had to a father.”

• How literal is this? I suspect it isn’t literal at all. But it does make me wonder: Are some/all of the “candidates” descendants of Jacob and/or Jacob’s family line? Is that, perhaps, part of the reason that they were chosen as candidates? I’m reminded of those lengthy so-and-so begat so-and-so passages from the Bible. Did Jacob begat Jack, for instance? And if so, then allegorically-speaking, aren’t they looking for “God’s” son? Aka Christ? Aka “the Redeemer?”

Great Miles Delivery: “Uh-oh.”

• Continuing the theme of reflection in the literal, figurative, metaphorical, allegorical and (use your imagination)al senses, Ben takes a long look at himself in the window of his microwave oven.

• In the off-Island reality, Ben’s father is alive, living with him, and apparently needs continuous Oxygen through one of those nose tube thingies, a sight which always saddens me and creeps me out just a little. As you remember, Ben killed his father during the Purge by gassing him. This scene serves as a kind of benign mirror to that event, with Ben changing the Oxygen tank for his father so that he’ll continue to live.

• Great make up work, by the way.

Roger Linus: “This isn’t the life I wanted for you, Ben. I wanted so much more.”
Ben: “I know.”
Roger: “That’s why I signed up for that damn Dharma Initiative and took you to the Island and they were decent people – smarter than I’ll ever be. Imagine how different our lives would have been if we’d stayed.”

• There’s a lot of punch packed into that exchange. For one, Roger Linus is not a total dillweed. This is a significant change from the Roger we’ve seen previously, to say the least. This makes two broken father/son relationships that the off-Island universe has shown (or implied to) us to be healed: Ben and Roger Linus, and John Locke and Anthony Cooper.

For another, we now know that Ben and Roger were on the Island at one point. Why they left, and when, is unclear. Did they leave because of the warnings that Faraday and Miles gave to Pierre Chang? Did they leave for a different reason?

We don’t see Emily Linus in this episode, and neither Ben nor Roger talk about her. Is she even dead? If she is, Roger doesn’t seem to carry the same beer can-chucking grudge against his son that we’ve seen him lugging around before. Did she perhaps die on the Island?

If that’s the case, it would potentially explain why young Ben was able to see her in the past. Out of all the “ghosts” we’ve seen on the show, all but three of the “ghosts” we’ve seen on the show have died on the Island, or have had their dead bodies transported to the Island. One of those three is Ben’s mother, who appeared at his Dharma bungalow window one night. If she died on the Island in the off-Island universe, and the Island is a kind of “nexus of realities/timelines,” then perhaps he was seeing that Emily’s ghost.

Finally, why did they leave the Island? How long before it sank? Did they leave out of grief? And how old was Ben when they left? Did she still die in childbirth?

• Alex Rousseau makes her first appearance in the off-Island universe, as Ben Linus’ most promising student. Their relationship over the course of this episode helps shore up my Second Snake theory – that the off-Island “flashes” we are watching this season are actually a look at a “second chance” reset. In essence, so my wacky theory goes, the off-Island scenes we’re watching are actually flash-forwards AND flash-backs, all at once. They’re flash-forwards, because the events that have to happen in order to cause these “off-Island flashes” haven’t happened yet in the on-Island scenes we’re watching. They’re the result of what happens in those scenes, in the same way that “Through the Looking Glass” functioned to show us “the future” for Jack and Kate, a result of their on-Island actions. But if I’m right (and it’s a big if) then these off-Island scenes are also flash-BACKS, because the event that hasn’t happened yet will function to “reset” the timeline and/or jump everyone’s consciousness into an alternate timeline at an earlier point in time. If that sounds confusing, just think of it as being like what happened when everyone went back to the 70’s, looping through time. Here, it’s the same basic trip, but instead of keeping all of their memories and living in the present from that point on as they do in Dharma times, they’d instead have no memory of anything that had happened, because whatever the “event” is that’s still to come, it’s going to reset time itself, including the castaways.

Assuming any of that has any kind of potential validity whatsoever, then the question for us is: Are the off-Island flashes a karmic “reward” of sorts that await the castaways as a result of Jacob’s plan, or does this “Second Snake” represent the result of Anti-Locke’s successful escape from the Island?

• Ben’s off-Island relationship with Alex is warm and supportive in a way that their on-Island relationship never was. And through the events of this episode, Ben gets another chance to save the girl he raised in another life, and to see that she gets the life she was denied on the Island. If you’re invested in these characters on that enjoyable, emotional level, then this was probably pretty touching for you to watch. It was for me.

Ilana: “You’re candidates – to replace Jacob.”

• The “candidate” issue is now out in the open, with both sides in the growing Island conflict now aware of the purported purpose behind their being on the Island.

• We learn that Ilana’s mission is to protect these candidates – but how? And from what, exactly? It’s not from death, I don’t think, since Anti-Locke doesn’t seem willing/able to kill candidates. Is it to protect them from him, then? From being “converted”? Is she essentially protecting them from themselves?

• The six candidates Ilana refers to are: Shephard, Reyes, Austen (whose name apparently was somewhere in the Cave, but got cut out/cut off for some reason), Jarrah, Ford, and Kwon. If Ilana’s already crossed Jarrah off her mental list, then that means both Kwons are being counted.

• Last we saw, Jacob was telling Hurley that it was too late to save his friends at the Temple. We rejoin our two most likely Jacob candidates the morning after the destruction of the Temple, where Hurley’s apparently fallen asleep while waiting for Jack to finish staring at the ocean.

Hurley: “What’s the rush? Maybe we should…take our time?”

• Some folks are tired of Hurley voicing the thoughts of the audience, but I usually enjoy it. Here, it seems almost as though he’s speaking for the writers. I also like Hurley’s trepidation – his unwillingness to head straight back because of what he’s been told by Jacob. It’s a very human touch.

ack: “Where did you come from?”
Richard: “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

• Has Richard just come from a place on the Island that allows you to “project” yourself? The place Ben will refer to when he tells Miles that he can get off of the Island? The place Harper Stanhope visited in order to suddenly, spookily appear to Kate and Juliet? The place that allows the Others to suddenly appear in general?

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