Little Ben (Run For Your Life, John Lennon / Paul McCartney)

Little Ben: I really hate it here.  If I let you out... will you take me with you, to your people?

Sayid: Yes, Ben, I will.  That's why I'm here.
- He's Our You

I've been trying to find my way back into filking, and the other day, I heard the Beatles' Run For Your Life for the first time.  It got stuck so firmly in my head that it became my natural starting point.  Here's Sayid coaxing Little Ben into trusting him in season five; the words all seem soothing, but there's a sinister undertone as he has ulterior motives.  

Little Ben

Well, your father’s in your head, Little Ben.

He’s a hard and unfeeling man.

Ignore the things he said, Little Ben.

Now’s the time to take a stand.

You haven’t much of a life with this clan, Little Ben.

I’m the key to your plan, Little Ben.

Put your future in the hands

Of a friend, Little Ben.

Well, I admit, at first I wondered why

I ended up here to be confined.

But purpose now has filled my mind.

How could I have been so blind?

You haven’t much of a life with this clan, Little Ben.

I’m the key to your plan, Little Ben.

Put your future in the hands

Of a friend, Little Ben.

Will your father squirm,

Or will he write you off for dead?

You may never learn;

You’ll find a Hostile home instead.

You haven’t much of a life with this clan, Little Ben.

I’m the key to your plan, Little Ben.

Put your future in the hands

Of a friend, Little Ben.

Your father’s in your head, Little Ben,

He’s a hard and unfeeling man.

Ignore the things he said, Little Ben.

Now’s the time to take a stand.

You haven’t much of a life with this clan, Little Ben.

I’m the key to your plan, Little Ben.

Put your future in the hands

Of a friend, Little Ben.

Little Ben, Little Ben, Little Ben…

The Once and Future Ben

I wrote this poem today in response to a poetry month writing prompt. Of course, knowing LOST was on in a few hours, I had my favorite show on the brain. Tonight's episode seems to have answered a question or two about Ben, but the mysteries are only beginning to be unraveled. How much did Ben know about what was about to happen when he hopped the plane back to the Island? Did he realize what he'd been pruning Sayid to do? We shall see...

The Once and Future Ben

A broken man with malice in his heart
Sits calmly in his seat and reads a book
That hints at epic journeys. But a look
Into his eyes does not reveal the part
That he will shortly play. Does he suspect
The doom that he has brought upon the lad
He loves and loathes, the boy whose bitter dad
Was caustic in his efforts to connect?
"Whatever happened, happened," so they say.
Then does the man recall the treachery
That, for another, still is yet to be?
Or did his past unfold another way?
Did bloodied Ben facilitate a crime
Defining the direction of his youth,
Or, when we are presented with the truth,
Will we discover that the course of time
Is not so fixed as many would insist?
A child is shot by one consumed with wrath.
Perhaps this sets him on the villain's path;
Perhaps he simply ceases to exist.

"A 12-Year-Old Ben Linus Brought Me a Chicken Salad Sandwich. How Do You Think I'm Doing?"

I was hoping the title He's Our You would have some great mythological significance, something to do with Christian or John or Jacob or even Ben. Its use was more mundane than that, introducing a character who doesn't seem that likely to pop up again. Oldham carried himself in a really creepy manner, but when it came down to it, his interrogation wasn't actually all that brutal. He just strapped Sayid to a tree and let the truth serum do its work. Sawyer didn't seem to be getting any visceral satisfaction from seeing the roles reversed from his own interrogation early in season one. Part of his discomfort was fear that Sayid would reveal something damaging, but there was sympathy there too, and I was relieved to see him trying to help Sayid in various ways throughout the episode despite the misleading trailer. The whole interrogation scene started out so frightening, I was surprised to see it end on such a comical note. Sayid told the truth, and what good did it do Horace's crew? To the uninitiated, Sayid's story sounds just plain ridiculous - though there's still the matter of his knowledge of the hatches, which could prove problematic.

How exactly does Sayid know he's from the future? Nobody told him. I guess he knows enough about the Island to have deduced it, and maybe his experience with Desmond planted the nugget of the possibility of time travel in his mind. Ben only introduced himself by first name, but Sayid seemed to know immediately that he was Ben Linus. There wasn't much to dislike about 12-year-old Ben. He was soft-spoken and kind, and we learned that Roger was an even bigger jerk than he seemed in The Man Behind the Curtain. I knew he was verbally abusive, but I thought maybe that was as far as it went. Apparently knocking Ben around wasn't so uncommon; it was clear from the way Ben froze in the doorway upon seeing his father that he was downright scared of Roger. Of course, there was an ulterior motive behind Ben's compassion toward Sayid, but he came right out and said what it was, and can you really blame him for wanting to leave? I wonder, though, if Annie might have already been gone at this point, or if Ben was so miserable in every other aspect of his DHARMA life that he was willing to leave his best friend. Either way, I can't think of Ben and Annie without thinking of Snape and Lily. Maybe that's one reason I keep holding out hope for Ben...

Sayid flashbacks (or flash-forwards) have a degree of intensity and despair beyond those of just about any character. Each one reveals more dark deeds and often makes him more difficult to defend. This one certainly did. I have a tendency to think of him as a very conflicted character who is deeply disturbed when he resorts to violence and wants to atone for it; didn't his work with Build Our World seem a bit reminiscent of Eko building Yemi's church? Of course, that opening scene was so similar to the scene in The 23rd Psalm that it was hard not to look for Eko echoes throughout the episode. It wasn't clear at first which boy was Sayid; I think we were supposed to think it was the older boy, the one who got queasy about the thought of killing a chicken. That's what we wanted to believe of him - that he viewed killing with revulsion. But like Eko, Sayid strode right in and unflinchingly did the job to spare his brother the trauma. Like Eko, he was praised for it. Though this was not entirely a comparable situation - killing a chicken for dinner isn't the same as murdering a headmaster - both end with a man suggesting that a violent streak is an admirable trait.

Sayid's father did not come across as a very nice guy, so I wondered if seeing Roger interact with Ben had an especially strong impact on him. I thought that Sayid might see both fathers as driving forces behind their sons' behavior, and that maybe he could change the course of Ben's life by helping him to escape from DHARMA. Though I wasn't sure how he was going to manage that without an in with the Hostiles, I preferred it to the eerily likely idea of him trying to nip Ben in the bud by killing him. Penance or revenge? That seemed to be the fundamental debate at play here. Could Sayid admit his mistakes and be the bigger man? One of the most disturbing moments in the episode, I think, came when he killed the last guy on Ben's list, and he actually seemed bitterly disappointed that his days as a hit man were over. I guess it gave him a sense of purpose. But the chilling feeling I got from most of his violent post-Island encounters was that he actually relished this job, at least in the moment. If Further Instructions showed that John is not a killer (with the troubling, desperation-induced exception of Naomi), He's Our You demonstrated that Sayid is. It was his least sympathetic flashback yet. I also wonder if it may be his last...

So Sayid really was on the plane independently of everyone else, and not because he wanted to return to the Island. He actually requested a later flight to avoid returning. There's still a possibility Ilana knew more than she was telling; for instance, how did she even know to arrest him in the first place? But Hurley didn't find out about the flight from Sayid. I imagine that's a story for a future flashback. I wonder if Sayid is now going to try to join the Hostiles or if he'll just strike out on his own and hope he doesn't run into anybody. At this point, I think he'd better watch his back for Smokey. The big question here, of course, is whether Sayid actually killed Ben. Frankly, I can't believe he succeeded. John looked pretty hopeless lying in that ditch in season three, too, but he made it out. The repercussions of Ben dying as a 12-year-old would just be staggering. It would completely change the castaways' experience. It would be rife with paradoxes. So I have to think that Ben will survive somehow. Maybe Richard will step in at this point and lend a hand before returning an embittered Ben to his people. In The Economist, Sayid snapped at Ben, "What do you know of friendship?" and Ben answered, "I know it's no use having friends you can't trust." Could he have been referring back to this very incident? I could certainly see how attempted murder by a guy who seemed like a friend could shatter your faith in humanity.

We didn't learn too much about the other DHARMA folks this time around, but I'm still finding Radzinsky's paranoia strangely endearing. Sawyer actually owes him one, since Sayid was about two seconds away from blowing his cover and it was only Radzinsky's exasperated interruption that cut him off. I had to laugh when Horace came into Sayid's cell, because Dad had just been saying how Horace kinda creeped him out, and I was defending him, and then he pulled out a pair of pliers. "Aw, man," I grumbled, halfway to admitting defeat, when I remembered Sayid's handcuffs. Suddenly Horace seemed pretty harmless again. He wasn't too keen on executing Sayid; Amy and Radzinsky had to pressure him into a vote. But he did seem prepared to carry out the sentence, or have somebody else carry it out, anyway. Just how does DHARMA handle those things? Has it ever happened before? Given the fact that the Truce is still in place, I'm thinking no. I suspect he'll feel a little relieved when he finds out Sayid has escaped.

I love that Hurley gets to be a DHARMA Chef. Kate and Jack just get stuck in jobs where they can be easily supervised; Hurley gets to do something he actually enjoys. He could have been a little more sensitive about Kate and Jack's feelings when discussing the Sawyer / Juliet development, but I guess he was so startled by Kate's cluelessness that his surprise overrode his empathy. Juliet and Kate continue to circle each other with pasted-on smiles; I can't imagine it will be long until the claws come out. First they were fighting over Jack, now it's Sawyer. I think Juliet's line about playing house was more pointedly about Kate breaking her and Sawyer up, and Sawyer changed the direction of the conversation. Obviously, she's worried. She may have even more reason to worry if Kate ever gets back to saying why she came back. It was funny to see Jack so laid-back. He seemed more bemused than bitter about his conversation with Sawyer. Maybe the new Jack doesn't mind taking a back seat so much. Perhaps he's glad to catch a break for a change and let somebody else do the worrying. Poor Jin really got the short end of the stick, though I'm relieved he just got knocked out; there was a horrified second there when I thought Sayid might actually kill him.

He's Our You was my least favorite episode so far this season, but I don't despise it as I do The Shape of Things to Come. It raises all sorts of intriguing questions, most pressing of which is whether Sayid just changed the future or set it in motion. And if the wound was fatal, should he actually be commended for killing Ben, even though he was just a kid at the time? The line from the season premiere about killing Hitler seems pretty apt here. With a title like Whatever Happened, Happened, you can bet that the next episode is going to address these issues, though probably not as much as we'd like. I hope it puts us back in touch with Daniel. I also hope it's a little more cheerful than this one was, but I'm not holding my breath...