Erik's Intial Thoughts: S5E7 'The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham'

Wow, another fantastic episode. Unfortunately I didn't get to enjoy it as fully as I would have liked on my first pass since I had to be here at work tonight... but I managed to catch most of the episode amidst having to vacate my nook to 'work.'

Here's the rundown of what I thought were the most important bits:

• John ended up in the same place that Ben did when he turned the wheel
• This time cameras were posted
• Widmore was waiting for Locke to get tricked into leaving
• As he was by Ben many years ago, exiled.
• Widmore convinces Locke that he's the good guy
• After the wonderment of Locke appearing exactly the same as 50 years before
• Gives him money, a new identity, a wheelchair and a driver
• Matthew Abaddon who's job it is 'to get people where they need to be'
• Locke sets off to find the O6

• Sayid is building houses in the Dominican Republic
• Locke tells Abaddon he wants to find Helen
• Walt isn't recruited because "He's been through enough"
• But Walt has been having dreams about Locke in a suit on the island
• Hurley assumes Locke is dead when he sees him
• Freaks out when he finds out he's alive and actually there
• Also freaks out about Abaddon because he is "EVIL!"
• Kate refuses, asks Locke about love
• "I was angry, obsessed" "Look how far you've come"
• Drives Locke further to find Helen, Abaddon caves
• Helen died of a brain aneurism
• Abaddon is shot at the cemetery; Locke escapes but gets in a wreck
• Which brings him into the hospital bed of Jack
• "Your father says hello"

• Locke writes his letter to Jack
• Prepares to kill himself
• Last second a knocking at the door
• In comes Ben to save the day
• Talks Locke out of it
• And kills him as soon as he gets Eloise Hawkings' name
• Windex can clean ANYthing

• On the island...
• Ceaser explores an apparent Dharma building
• Illana comes in saying they found a man in the water wearing a suit
• It's John Locke, alive
• "You asked me what I remember. I remember dying."
• There was a flash of light and some people on the plane simply disappeared
• Otherwise everyone is accounted for, including the injured...
• Including Ben
• "He's the man who killed me."

A ton of answers, some I didn't even mention here because I wasn't able to hear a whole lot of what I knew was important dialogue. For example, when Widmore was explaining the whole Island situation. Now that we've seen this episode, I think it would have been far worse to have this and '316' in reverse order, it would have been way more confusing. And so, new questions I have...

• Was Widmore telling the truth after all?
• How was Locke resurrected?
• Are the Ajira-ies in a different time from the Return-ies?
• Are Sayid and Sun part of the Ajira-ies?
• Why is Ben such an evil jackass?
• Will we ever visit 1954 again? (ok that one isn't really posed by this episode... but still, I want to know!)

A couple of those aren't really mythology questions; I didn't think this episode really posed many new questions but instead answered a whole lot of them. They wrapped up Abaddon's story in a fairly nice little package, and assuming he's telling the truth, revealed a whole mess of information about Widmore. I also have a couple of other questions but those are just from not being able to pay attention the entire episode.

The only real storytelling technique I took note of this week was the strong references to past episodes throughout the entire hour. Too many to list them all, but the main instance off the top of my head is the structure similarity to Season 4's Meet Kevin Johnson. Another episode with many similarities is The Shape of Things to Come which detailed Ben's happenings off-island after the events of him turning the wheel. I also thought it was really clever that as soon as Locke left the island, he got right back into a wheel chair.

I'll write a new post if I come up with anything I didn't catch due to the whole being at work thing...

That's all I've got, until next post...