This week on Lost, it's father-daughter time! Having trouble thinking of all the proud papas on the island (that is, those who are alive and have living children)? Maybe that's because the gents in question are both power-hungry nutbags harboring unhealthy obsessions with the island and a constant desire to hate on the men their daughters love.
Yes, this week it's all about Ben vs. Charles Widmore-- Lost is bringing out the big guns, quite literally, after yet another damn hiatus. The island is under siege from some faceless dudes who may or may not have killed Karl and Rousseau, and the battle for the island is on.
”I'm attacking Siberia.” Yeah, you heard Sawyer right. Ben isn't the only one who gets to fight wars! OK, so opening the episode with Locke, Hurley and Sawyer playing Risk is a bit of a cop-out, but it's nice to see the boys do something other than yell at each other and needlessly torment Miles. Plus, it's all about to go down-- the jungle shooters have Alex hostage, and she's disarmed the security fence. Soon Locke is blocking the door to Ben's cabin with furniture, Sawyer is rescuing Claire from the ashes of a bombed-out cabin (for real!) and Ben is pulling a shotgun from the compartment in his piano bench. Just like the promos promised, the battle for the island has begun.
”Oh, so you do know English.” Meanwhile, in the future, Ben appears to be a lost, parka-wearing traveler in the desert of Tunisia. That is, until he pulls the ol' Henry Gale rope-a-dope on some passersby and, as usual, kicks some serious ass. Did he get deposited in Tunisia the same way the poor Dharma polar bear did? Probably, but where Ben is really headed is Iraq, where Sayid-- brace yourselves-- is burying Nadia. The woman for whom he lived has been murdered, and Ben thinks he knows who did it-- an operative of Charles Widmore's. Before too long Ben tracks the guy down, but so does Sayid, and after disposing of this particular baddie he essentially volunteers to help Ben fight his battle against Widmore. After all, he also took someone Sayid loved. Give me a second to explain that “also.”
”You know Morse Code.” Let's take a break and check in with the beach, which was the safe but boring place to be this week-- the kiddie pool of the island. Bernard gets a big ol' shock when he finds a dead guy washed up on the beach, and it turns out to be the doctor from the freighter who had Minkowski strapped down. But after Daniel starts jiggering with the satellite phone to make a weird Morse Code telegraph machine, he's even for an even bigger shock, thanks to Bernard. Daniel translates the message from the freighter as saying that the helicopter is back on its way, but Bernard, somehow knows Morse Code. When Daniel asked the freighter what happened to doc, the freighter responded that the doctor was fine. Suspicious, Jack asks Daniel whether or not he ever intended to rescue the Lostaways. Daniel, under pressure, admits he didn't. In the words of Hurley from a while back, “Yeah dude, we knew that like forever ago.”
“I know exactly what kind of man you are, Mr. Keamy, and we can dispose with the formalities.” As many of us suspected, Keamy and his skeet-shooting friends who Michael saw on the freighter are also the guys who shot Karl and Rousseau in the woods. Now Keamy is in the camp, and has a gun pointed to Alex's temple , threatening to shoot her if Ben doesn't surrender. Ben calls his bluff, claiming that Alex isn't really his daughter (true) and that she means nothing to him (not true). And Keamy actually shoots Alex. Wow. Never saw that one coming. Ben, livid, dashes away into his secret closet, and when he returns he tells his fellow campers to run for the treeline. Just when you start to wonder how they'll avoid the heavy artillery fire that's out there, the smoke monster makes a triumphant comeback! Was Ben lying a few weeks ago when he told Locke he didn't know what the smoke monster was and couldn't control it? You betcha. Smokey dispatches the freighters and everyone runs away into the jungle, while Ben takes a moment to say an honest-to-God tearjerking goodbye to his daughter.
”You'll wish you hadn't changed the rules.” On the island, Ben is left to go find Jacob and find out what to do next, with Locke and Hurley along for company. Sawyer, Claire and Miles bail on the expedition, which is probably a smart move. But in the future, globetrotting Ben is in London, and sneaks his way into a glitzy penthouse apartment owned by... you saw it coming... Charles Widmore. Ben tells Widmore he isn't there to kill him-- “We both know I can't do that”-- while Widmore volleys back with, “Don't stand there looking at me with those horrible eyes.” Touche. Ben repeats his statement from earlier that Widmore has broken the rules, and apparently one of those rules was daughter-killing, since Ben proceeds to threaten to kill Penny. Oh, and Widmore tells Ben the island is his, and everything Ben has he stole from Widmore. And Widmore admits he can't find the island. Yeah, that was some kind of jam-packed final scene.
So what did we learn tonight? Well, the curse of women who have sex on the island-- presuming Alex and Karl had sex at some point-- lives on, as does the curse of women with remotely interesting personalities. Ben seems to be able to teleport, and control the smoke monster, and possibly also have Nadia killed in order to recruit Sayid into his Killing Olympics. And Sawyer cares a whole lot more about Hurley and Claire than I ever would have given him credit for. Remember how the writers warned us that these episodes would be coming at us fast and furious? Get ready, kids. It's going to be this crazy and awesome for the rest of the season.
