Spoil the Broth

Incidentally, I think the word “broth” is a very strange sounding word. But that’s neither here nor there.

Lost Spoilers Below

So Eko kicked the bucket last night. I thought it was a suitable death although I more or less pieced together that he was marked for passing ahead of time. I agree with some of the forum monkeys who point out that having Eko die at this point sort of undermines the whole point of Locke’s vision quest or whatever which indicated he was supposed to save Eko. I guess the act of saving him alone accomplished whatever needed to be accomplished but it still made it seem kind of pointless.

The big revelations of this episode were the eyepatch man viewed in the monitors, presumably located in another station. A glass eye was found by the tailies in the station we know from the blast door map to be The Arrow so maybe the glass eye belongs to him. Also the videotape played for Jack by Juliet while she was rambling on with the company line was creepy and, I thought, one of the most effective old-school “Lost Moments” of the whole year.

Of course a lot of discussion has centered around whether Juliet and Ben are really on the outs or if this is part of a long con to get Jack to comply with their wishes. I think the excuse that Ben had for his actions (“We had a complicated plan to break you and get you to think we were the good guys”) was kind of limp. We’re talking about Jack who has seen the deaths of several people, the attempted murders of some other people and plenty of kidnappings at the hands of the Others, not to mention that while Ben (nee Henry Gale) was a captive of the Losties he actively lied and manipulated in order to be freed or gain information. Jack knows all this. Did they really think they could change his mind, especially since they seem to be so well informed about Jack’s personality: The writers have gone well out of their way to establish Jack as a very stubborn, unyielding person. Are we supposed to believe that these people—The Others—made such a monumental mistake as to try to break the one person who is most likely to take an incredibly long time to wear down when time was a critical factor since the longer they take the more likely Ben is to die from his cancer?

I don’t think so.

I’m more of the mind that the whole thing is an elaborate con (the Others have already proved they can con a conman with Sawyer so they are good at this) and while it’s debatable whether this was the original plan all along or if they are just experts at improvisation, the point is that they are playing a very elaborate game of good cop/bad cop. But what frustrates me is that, if I’m Jack, I tell Ben this: “You want me to save your life? Fine. But I think if I do that, you owe me big. Huge. Massive. So here’s the deal: Right here and now, you tell me what the heck is going on here. Who are you people? How did you get here? What do you want with us? Gimme the whole story. After I hear what you have to say, you send my friends (that would be Sawyer and Kate) back to our camp. As proof, you’ll take all three of us there. When they’re safe, I come back with you and perform the operation. If anything—anything, about your story, the return, the surgery, my subsequent release, anything at all—seems suspect, you won’t know until you don’t wake up. If you’re on the level, you’ll live. If you try to play me, you die. That’s the deal, take it or leave it. Otherwise, kill me now. Of course, if you go that route, you die too.”

Of course that would be very un-Lost like since, apparently, none of the characters are really all that concerned with what the deal is with this place, the Others or anything else. They spend a lot of time doing stuff to figure it out, but they never actually try to think or talk it out.

Your Routine is Changeless

I had this long thing written about how I got a new job. But it was pretty boring and when I start boring myself I assume that the rest of you have long since dozed off. I guess some people check the site while at work and since I don’t want anyone to get in trouble with their bosses for snoozing at work, I try to avoid the interminable anecdotes.

So yeah, I have a new job that I start in about three weeks. Woo!