Fantastic episode, I thought. (Of course, I always do.) We got to look a little more at folks' motivations (e.g. who needs whom)... the Love Parallelogram struggled to sort itself out... we found out what happened to Aaron...
Oh yeah, and Ben. First, Roger (who seems perfectly likeable) clearly aims to make this a Love Pentagon. But who cares? Ben. Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben. There was a lot going on here... and what seems like some interesting inverted Fall of Man / original sin religion overtones.
I appreciated the compassion for the poor kid, but also sympathized with Jack. I mean, come on, he and Sayid had good intentions. And yet, we now see they brought about the very future they were desperately trying to avoid. Tragic. Ironic. And a staple in tales of Fate.
Serves them right for their immoral behavior, eh?
Richard is quite a guy. Now, what's up with the temple!?!?!? It's been such a tantalizing subject since the first mentions in, what, Season 3? Crazy. Aside from being Smoke Monster HQ, I'm still caught up in this Garden of Eden business, so I'm thinking it's an enclosure for the Tree of Life and/or Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Adam and Eve got knowledge, sacrificed eternal life, right? And with it they lost (ahem) their innocence. Now Ben is sacrifing knowledge for life... but he, too, is losing his innocence. And as an adult, he certainly seems to have plenty of knowledge, including of Good and Evil ("we're the good guys"). Hm. Maybe I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, as my Calc professor likes to say.
Ben's mind-wipe also seems to throw Diego's "Ben Knows The Future Because He's Met It In The Past" theory out the window (at least to some degree). Oh well. I was a fan.
Jack trying to fix things vs. letting the island fix things for itself was very interesting. Active vs. passive. Does a belief in fate and predestination and all that make you more passive? We certainly seem to be seeing a certain sad resignation in some of our time-travelers. That's a real risk of disbelief in free will (etc.). And Jack's situation serves as an important reminder of the consequences. Good.
Hurley and Miles were pretty funny trying to explain to us, the audience, about time travel. Now, Miles said that Our Heroes can die, whereas other people can't. This disturbed me a bit. Pending elaboration, I'm going to (hope / ) say Miles was a wee bit off. Obviously, I have no authority to overrule the show, haha. But it seems more logical to say that, say, Ben's fate is known, whereas the time travelers' fates are not.
So of course Ben "can" die. He's not immortal or invincible or anything. Same with all these other characters of the past. Rather, the time-travelers KNOW Ben's future, but not their own. It's not that he couldn't die. He just didn't. Doesn't. Won't. Yet.
Tons of irony in this episode...even meta-irony (if that exists) in the conversation between Hurley and Miles.
ReplyDeleteFree will is in question right now, which makes for a big mess. I don't know how a story maintains drama if we find out that characters can't make their own decisions. Maybe the problem only comes up when you've got characters who are AWARE of their own helplessness.
In the next episode, maybe we'll get some real info about Richard/Jacob/the temple.
Toph--your theories about the Garden of Eden look like they might be right.
I guess the drama is in trying to see whether or not free will exists.
ReplyDeleteI still like the idea that free will can coexist with a known future. I know now, today, that I chose A yesterday when I could have chosen B. I *know* it, and it's *set*, yet it was still (as far as we can tell) a free choice.
Now imagine I traveled back in time two days. Watching my younger self choose between A and B, I would *know* what would happen, and it would be *set*, and yet it would still be a free choice.
Then we have to complicate that by letting the time traveler interact as much as he or she wishes with the past. Can we *still* maintain that things just always happened that way, and that, while the future is set, and pieces of the future are already known, the characters still have free will?
This might be fun reading for anyone with a spare hour or so. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
I've been buried so I haven't had time to post, and this is going to be quick, but...
ReplyDelete*First, of course I loved the Jack scene when he refused to save Ben. Jack has been a little lame lately, but I thought it was fascinating that, as a doctor, he basically was going against the Hippocratic Oath ("Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest") and the Good Samaritan Law (that doomed the Seinfeld gang). This is a HUGE moment, in my opinion, about the free will issue, the leadership theme, and the element of character development.
*In addition, Jack also threw in the line that he was "supposed" to come back, but doesn't know why. Thus, there's still a lot to be sorted out with all of these people who are "supposed" to be doing things.
*GREAT term on lostpedia: "Due to nature of Lost, many fans experience apophenia when attempting to solve the many mysteries of the show. Apophenia is the perception of patterns, or connections, where in fact none exist."
Oh yeah, and I follow "LOST on ABC" on Twitter, and it "tweeted" that more about the smoke monster will be revealed in the upcoming episode.
ReplyDeleteSome of you guys may have already read this comic:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mysterytales40.com/march-has-32-days-last-story-from-the-mystery-tales-40-comic-book-96555
I was wandering through the ever expanding universe that is Lostpedia, and it mentioned that this comic wrestles with the same issue of time travel and predestination that Hurley and Miles keep discussing. And, since Lost writers love to tie everything together, is actually one of the stories from issue #40 of Mystery Tales, a comic book from 1956. That comic book is one of the items that Richard Alpert asked young John Locke to choose from. Fun!
Nice. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, apophenia is something we all need to watch out for, haha...