tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5425718396565573656.post3353942847905149320..comments2023-10-01T03:49:58.108-07:00Comments on LOST Reflections: The Death and Life of John LockeErinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07191855305749074736noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5425718396565573656.post-87405705950512311132009-03-03T14:19:00.000-08:002009-03-03T14:19:00.000-08:00I just can't figure Ben out at all. I do feel lik...I just can't figure Ben out at all. I do feel like as much as he's manipulating everybody else, he's still not powerful enough to be the ultimate antagonist of the series. I tend to think of him more like Gollum, with the Island the Ring he so desperately desires. But I'm very curious as to the thought process that went into murdering John - especially after that eloquent don't-you-dare-die-on-me-John performance. I'm constantly befuddled by how hard it is to tell where people on this show are coming from! That glimpse of Widmore's past didn't endear him to me any either; Ben and Charles may be opposing forces, but it sure doesn't seem like either of them is an ultimate force for good.<BR/><BR/>The whole recreate-the-conditions-of-that-flight thing makes minimal sense to me. So six of the same people (counting John) are on the plane, plus there's a guitar, a comic book, someone in handcuffs, a late arrival and a guy in a coffin. Similarities, sure, but only a very few in the grand scheme of things. It seems that Christian, like Charles, is much more central to the mythology of the show than it seemed at first.<BR/><BR/>I was reading something the other day talking about how up until this point, John Locke and Jack Shepherd are at odds with their names - that John should be the man of science and Jack the man of faith, and that maybe before the show is over they will have switched places. I've always found myself drawn to John, but he's such a basketcase in so many ways. Now that he's back on the Island, I'd really love to see the writers bring him together with Rose at least once. I feel like she could be such a good influence on him. But sometimes I worry they've all but forgotten she even exists...Erinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07191855305749074736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5425718396565573656.post-88141648615084336532009-03-02T11:53:00.000-08:002009-03-02T11:53:00.000-08:00Hoo-boy. You hit all the issues and questions and ...Hoo-boy. You hit all the issues and questions and then some! D. and I just watched it last night (thanks again!) and wow, it was indeed intense.<BR/><BR/>I wasn't as surprised about Ben murdering John as I probably should have been. Dana and I both thought like he seemed to know more than he was telling people about John's death. When John was about to hang himself the knock sounded on the door, D. said "that's Ben." And then I had a definite sense of what was about to happen for just a few seconds before it actually did...I tried to rewind and pinpoint when I figured it out, but couldn't. The real question does seem to be whether or not it was premeditated or if Ben just snapped. If premeditated, he picked an odd way to do it (why bother talking John down unless a) he wanted to get whatever information he could out of him before he died...i.e. the kind of information he got about Jin or b) unless Ben is harboring some weird thought that John's death had to be a murder not a suicide. Other than that, all we can figure is that Eloise's name just sent him into a frenzy. Ben's so emotionally wound, I suppose that's possible. <BR/><BR/>I still don't get why John had to die (or why Richard would have told him he had to). If the only point was that Jack needed a coffin with a body in it on the plane, to somehow recreate the circumstances surrounding the original flight, John's death seems like an extreme way to accomplish that. I'm also not convinced that it was John's death that really got the survivors together. Heck, we still have no clue how or why Hurley or Sayid ended up on flight 316, or where Sayid or Sun are now, for that matter.<BR/><BR/>Ben tends to tick me off more than Widmore, simply because we've seen more of him, I think, and because he's so overtly and creepily manipulative of people. It drives me batty how he will use anything or anyone to his seeming advantage -- and the fact that we don't really know what he's up to or trying to do just complicates things further. He KNOWS that John made a promise to Jin not to bring Sun back, and yet what does he do with that ring? He uses it to get Sun to go back. I know HE didn't make the promise, but now that he knows Jin's wishes it seems sort of sick that he'd do it. <BR/><BR/>I felt deeply sorry for Jack in this episode. Clearly the scene with John came at a very low point in Jack's post-island years. The writers love to play those two off, don't they -- the old "man of science/man of faith" thing again, with John saying "It's FATE that I wound up in your hospital, Jack!" and with Jack crying out "It's PROBABILITY!" and sticking to statistics. The ironic thing for me is that I've always related more to Jack and his need for certainty. John's "faith" always seems like a blind, groping faith... he wants to believe in something larger than himself, but he just doesn't know who or what that larger thing might be. So he's open to all sorts of people pulling him in various directions. I think deep down Jack wants more too, and wants to believe more, but he's too wounded to believe even as much as John does. They all just seem so...lost.<BR/><BR/>Hmm. The title is beginning to reverberate deeply, isn't it?!Bethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08589856495993730380noreply@blogger.com