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Thursday, February 14, 2008

Lost 4.3: Thirty Minutes and Big Ben

Lost just keeps getting better and better this season. Tonight's Episode 3 of Season 4 was the best yet - which is saying a lot, since the first two episodes were superb.

Tonight was Sayid's show - his flashforward. (As I mentioned in last week's review, I have a feeling that we'll be seeing flashforwards for all the old hands this year, and flashbacks for the newbies on the island.) Sayid is a hitman in this future. He's working for ... well, I'll tell you about that at the end of this review. Also of importance is when exactly this flashforward is taking place. Before the Hurley-Jack flashforward in the Season 4 premier? After the Jack-Kate flashforward in the Season 3 finale? In between? The answer is important, because it could tell us who Hurley and Jack are afraid of, but at this point it is not clear.

Back on the island, we learn a bunch of significant things, including -

.why Hurley felt so guilty about siding with Locke (Hurley expressed this in his flashforward two weeks ago)

.why Sawyer went with Locke (this was pretty obvious - there's nothing for Sawyer off the island) (and I also think Sawyer likes the way he feels more human on the island)

.a great scene between Sawyer and Kate (which concludes with Sawyer asking Kate to try staying with him on the island - he wants to try playing house with her)

.there's some kind of temporal 30-minute anomaly in play on the island ...

Let's look at that last one. Faraday, the Charlie-like somewhat-mental physicist, discovers that a payload delivered to the island from the ship, at his command, arrives with a clock that reads 31 minutes into the future (after also not arriving at the time it was supposed to arrive). Assuming the clock in the payload is not just broken or running fast (of course not), this is highly significant - and may connect, in some way, to Desmond's visions. (And, for that matter, to the sense of the future that Faraday seemed to have at the beginning of last week's episode 2...)

Desmond and Sayid soon leave the island with Frank and Naomi's body, which Sayid insists on taking. Why? And why is Sayid so affected by Naomi's death? (My best guess is they knew each other before the Oceanic crash, and we'll discover this in some future episode with a new character flashback that includes Naomi.) And who is the "R. G." on the bracelet Sayid takes off of Naomi's wrist? Someone on the boat off the island named Regina?

This is part of the larger puzzle of Sayid in this edge-of-your-seat-and-mind episode. He does some killing in his flashforward, almost falls in love, all on assignment from his boss ... Ben.

It was already clear, before the end of this episode, and in fact from the photo we saw last week, that Ben was lying when he said he never left the island. He lies about most things (but not about Boston winning the World Series, as Jack confirms with Frank - a man after my own heart, a true Yankee fan). But Ben clearly had a international jet-setting life, and in the flashforward, he's in command of an organization fighting the organization that's trying to kill him, and which may or may not be a threat to Jack, Kate, Hurley, and our island friends off and still on the island.

And this also gives a little more weight to the possibility that Ben is in the coffin in the Season 3 finale. Because, at least at this point, we know that he's off the island - in contrast to the other island candidates such as Locke and Michael...

What a series!

See also...

1. Lost's Back Full Paradoxical Blast 4.1 ... 4.2: Five Flashbacks and Three Rational Explanations ... 4.4. Kate and ... ... 4.5 Desmond 1 and Desmond 2 ... 4.6 The True Nature of Ben ... 4.7 Flash Both Ways ... 4.8 Michael and Alex ... 4.9 Daughters, Rules, and Some Truth about Ben ... 4.10: Almost a Dream Come True ... 4.11 Unlocking Locke


and

2. More Thoughts On Lost 4.1: Those Who Went with Hurley and Those Who Stayed with Jack and Two More Points about Lost 4.1







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4 comments:

dawn said...

This is the craziest ,greatest show. There's just so much you don't even know where to start. If Sayeed was with them al along what a shocker that would be. This was a truly great episode , did you notice the braclet on naomi was the same as elsa's.

Paul Levinson said...

Yeah - but I wasn't sure if it was the same bracelet, or another copy of it .... What do you think?

dawn said...

I think it was a copy probably some kind of cult following HAHA. Oh best line last night had to be about the Boston Redsocks. I loved it.

dawn said...

Also what do you think of this theory I found

"Now, if you're going to go all crazy on me and claim that the multiple passports and husky-voiced Flash-Forward Ben are evidence that there multiple Bens in the world thanks to alternate universe/wormhole theory, I'm in! "
This was an article I read interesting and right up your alley

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