Driving Mister Bentham

Locke and AbbadonSo you’re on a path to sacrificing your life to get your friends back to a magical island.  You turn a magical frozen donkey wheel (the wrong way).  You’re about to find out the love of your life is dead while being driven around by a really creepy guy you had a spooky encounter with in the past.  Your leg is broken and you’re stranded in the middle of the Tunisian desert. Once night falls, you’re apprehended by a bunch of guys in a pickup truck and taken to what passes for a Tunisian hospital.  Once there, you’re attended to by the Tunisian version of House.  

Welcome back to civilization, John Locke Jeremy Bentham.

I hope that with everything Locke went through tonight together with his pre-Island life, he now knows enough that he should never ever, under any circumstances, leave the island again.  

Because of Locke’s connection to the island, he puts more stock in his faith than other characters.  And as a fan of the mythology of the show (rather than the romance), he’s very relatable because he asks the questions and does the things that I want to see the chracters on the island doing.  There have been other characters (Eko (briefly), Desmond, Ben, Sawyer (recently)) that are on the same level as Locke, but Locke has been there the longest.  And as a fan of Locke, it was great to have an episode devoted to him and his attempt to get the band back together.

Unfortunately, that could only happen with his death, and a little help from the two people who are in a battle for control of the island, Ben Linus and Charles Widmore.  Despite everything shown in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, I still want to believe that Ben is a good guy.  Or at least a Stone Cold Steve Austin-esque character who lives in the gray area between light and dark.  He appeared willing to help Locke until Locke mentioned Jin being alive.  Once Locke mentioned Jin, Ben’s eyes started bugging out and once Mrs. Hawking’s name was thrown out there, you knew that poor Locke was a goner.  

Although, my Ben’s still a good argument goes thusly: Locke needed Ben’s help.  Ben needed information from Locke.  Locke needed to die.  Once he had that information, Ben could have taken care of things on his own, while having Locke around would have just messed things up (and Locke would have been more reluctant to die).  So Locke spills the beans, Ben chokes him out and everyone gets back to the island and they all live happily ever after.  Water under the bridge and all that.

Other thoughts from this episode:

-Maybe Cesar and Illana aren’t part of a bigger picture, but simply interesting people who just happened to end up on the island.  For some reason, I don’t think the whole rest of the people who landed on Flight 316 have much longer to live.  Compared with the original plane crash, they’ve just sped this one along.  Of course, it looks like their plane landed in one piece and right in the vicinity of some type of manmade structure (which we know as the Hydra).  Whereas Flight 815 broke up and landed on the beach, without the benefit of a nearby DHARMA installation.

-In that opening scene where Locke pulled back the blanket to show his face, was any one else thinking he was resuerrected as a Dark Lord of the Sith? No? Just me? Okay…

-No matter what, you’d think Locke is happy to be back on the island.  Not to mention to be alive.

-So Widmore says that Ben tricked him into leaving the island. I knew it! From my comments on Jughead:

First off- bombshell number one- Widmore was an Other.  Now that we know that, I’m trying to think of all sorts of scenarios about how he got to be who he is today (relatively speaking).  My guess?  We’ve seen his personality as a youngster and in older form, and I’m guessing he’s the impetuous type who got passed over for leadership of the Others.  That’s the reason for his vendetta against Ben.  I’m also guessing he’s the last one to have turned the famous frozen donkey wheel, which is why he’s banished from the island.

-I have to say it: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt!

-I wouldn’t have blamed Locke for wanting to slap Kate after the whole “have you ever loved anyone” speech.  Her life is so great off the island.

-With Widmore’s billions, he couldn’t have gotten Locke a better hotel?

-While I appreciate Ben cleaning up after Locke’s ‘suicide,’ any CSI/Forensics specialist worth a damn will know it’s a faked suicide.  There’s no way a no-tell motel could ever get as clean as Ben was making it.

-This was a great episode, but I think they cut corners on some of the time elements.  Sayid was the only person (we saw) Locke tell about his Jeremy Bentham persona.  And Jack just booked his first flight overseas.  But later on, he says he’s been doing it for a while.  Oh well, if more awesomeness is on the way, I’m willing to overlook that.

What did you think?

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2 thoughts on “Driving Mister Bentham

  1. Widmore said he protected the island for three decades, right? Well, if he started in the fifties, three decades later is the seventies, or if you push it, the eighties.

    Ben arrived on the island in the mid seventies.

    So does he expect us to believe that a teenage (or younger) Ben “tricked” him into turning the wheel?

    I don’t buy it.

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