Lost: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham
If you’re the type of person that’s likely to grow tired of wondering who the hell you’re supposed to trust anymore in Lost you’re probably not too thrilled with The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, this week’s installment in the ongoing paranormal soap opera. I think conventional wisdom would lead us the conclusion that both Ben Linus and Charles Widmore are simply right bastards.
Both of these men have performed despicable acts. It’s obvious that both have virtually no good intentions in any of this mess. And here I am after pointing out previously that Ben Linus really hadn’t been the kind to do his own killing shows us that he’s willing to put two men down in cold blood. He shoots Widmore’s lackey in broad daylight and then basically strangles John Locke to death with his bare hands.
Granted, we don’t know for sure that Ben didn’t know that Locke’s destiny would be to get resurrected during his return trip to the island, but his final, less than touching goodbye to Locke’s swinging corpse didn’t really make it seem like he expected to see him walking around again.
In any case, this does put a new light on doubts we may have had that he probably wouldn’t have had the testicles to murder Penny Widmore. Of course, if he did, he probably will have to face the wrath of Desmond at some point in the near future. But where the hell is Desmond about now anyway, brother?
I can’t say at this point that I’m quite as enthralled with Lost right now as I was mid-way through season one or even season four, but I have to admit I’m in for the ride now and found this week’s episode to be a refreshing return to the more conventional Lost storytelling style. I still have to kind of step back and raise a little bullshit flag over the fact that a corpse that’s been sitting in a meat packers freezer is now walking around the island again. In addition to that rather major skeptical conundrum I have to ask, as silly as it may seem, but wasn’t he in a wheelchair with a compound fractured leg when Linus gave him the kiss of death? So not only did he get resurrected from the dead, but it all managed to heal his leg as well. I know, silly to bring it up.
At this point, while I’m looking forward to see what type of craziness is going to ensue on the island between the original castaways, the Oceanic Six and the survivors of Frank Lapidus’s flight to Guam, I’m not really looking forward to the reunion of Kate and Sawyer and starting this whole sordid Jack, Kate, Sawyer triangle again. That business had pretty much run it’s course for me over the first four seasons.
Now that they’ve got all the key chess pieces in place, though, it’s definitely time to start clarifying some sort of goal for the end game. They’ve managed to string season 5 through long enough without really giving us any real information, so my patience is going to run thin if there isn’t some sort of movement towards trying to clarify whey they hell they all needed to come back there in the first place.
So for the Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, I am skipping my usual bullet point list summary to simply propose my current theory: This entire complex web that is being weaved is all an intricate plot for Christian Shepherd to get his shoes back.
Now living happily on the island with his biological daughter, Claire, he absolutely needed those shoes. He knew that there would be no way to retrieve them without sending Ben Linus and John Locke back to the mainland and involving themselves in a series of events that would wind up with Locke dead in a coffin in a cargo hold of a an airplane bound for Guam wearing his shoes!
If my theory is correct we are in for a Christian Shepherd shoe reunion in the very near future, but will Locke give them up?
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Tags: Lost, TV Reviews
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2 Responses to “Lost: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”
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February 27th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Since his broken spine was fixed the first time he landed on the island, his abilty to walk now isn’t so surprising. I just wonder what his body temperature is, and if he gets shot or cut, will he bleed embalming fluid?
February 27th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Holy crap, I hadn’t even thought about the embalming. Good catch! When I mentioned this to my wife she made the keen observation that this may be why Richard Alpert hasn’t aged all those years! Maybe that’s the secret…embalming fluid. Seemed to work for Christian Shepherd, too.