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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

LOST season 5 (with Spoilers)

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Keith, like a scientist

13:48 / 26.03.09

One of the many reasons I think UK shows are better -- because they know at the start it will only be so many episodes long. Planning like that would've prevented the plotholes we're now mired in. We're supposed to believe that Ben, who's been around since Season 2, actually knew the Losties when he was a kid...feeding Sayid sandwhiches, even! All the more ridiculous when you realize that the actor playing Ben was originally contracted TO ONLY APPEAR IN A FEW EPISODES. Not only did they then elaborate his character and make him a much bigger part...but now they've even given him a retroactive role in the past. I know the fans will come on here and defend this until they're blue in the face..."Ben's a manipulator and has been hiding it all along" and yadda yadda, but really it's just...well, it's just stupid. What we're seeing this season is the writers crawling so far up their own asses that they can't find their way back out.

You really gotta get over this aspect or stop watching the show. We all know that Lost was originally conceived as a mini-series, Ben was a guest star, the writers didn't have an answer for most things, etc. etc.

But, as of the tail-end of the 3rd season, they were given a stop date to work towards, and they have begun to plot very tightly (as evidenced by the intricate Season 4, for my money, the best season of sequential television ever). I'm not in love with this turn of events regarding Dharma Days, but I can see that the Dharma Initiative is really the lynchpin of the entire series, so focusing on it and telling us some of the history this season makes sense.

I remember reading that they figured out that each season would have a theme. S1 = Fuselage Survivors, S2 = Tail Survivors, S3 = Others, S4 = Oceanic Six, S5 = The Island, etc.

In that light, bringing us into an important chapter of the Island's history makes sense. I think it's slightly goofy but it feels like it's leading to an important revelation about the relationship of Dharma to the Others and to the Island. I loved the first half of the season and after the aforementioned strength of S4, I'm happy to give them a little leeway while putting pieces into place.

14:11 / 26.03.09

Oh, I could easily get over it if they were doing a better job. There's a bunch of better stuff they could have our characters doing than...this.

And I too had a deep love for Season 4. By far my favorite season of the show. I'd even say it was one of the best seasons of any show ever (only topped by Arrested Development seasons 1, 2, and 3). All of which makes this season seem like such a bitch-slap.

00:44 / 27.03.09

Ben's dad throwing away Sayid's sandwhich. I laughed aloud at that, because Ben's dad is the janitor...so he's eventually gonna have to go pick up that sandwhich.

I said out loud, "better pick that up."

But, yes, it is ridiculous. I'm not quite sure how you can complain about that now. Is it somehow straining your credulity at this point in some way that it did not before? If you start getting too caught up in the absurd parts, you can't enjoy the rest of it, and (I think) the rest of it is good. I grouse a little at every show, but most of the time it's fun to watch.
Seriously. None of the things you're complaining about are any more absurd than some of the things that occurred in every other season.

09:09 / 27.03.09

I just discovered something that you maybe also didn´t and might like to know: There´s a gap of more than a month between the last two episodes (April 8 and May 13)!

Keith, like a scientist

12:28 / 27.03.09

We're supposed to believe that Ben, who's been around since Season 2, actually knew the Losties when he was a kid.

Actually, doesn't this seem just like Ben's characterization, though? To know more than he lets on? To pretend to be frightened or feign ignorance when he does actually know what's going on? In that way, the entire Ben knew the Losties as a kid plotline works completely. Ben always has a plan, as he says, because he knows how events play out.

I choose to ignore the behind the scenes stuff about casting and direction when watching the show. The behind the scenes stuff has no bearing on the plot they are putting forward.

22:32 / 28.03.09

Mist, are you referring to the Wikipedia edp list? Because there's also a gap of three numbers between 12 and 16... I don't know why we don't have preliminary details for those episodes there, but this season's been set at 17 episodes for a while now...

Do we have evidence that Ben didn't just die? He has always said he was born on the Island (although why someone would want to take that guy's name I'm unsure...)

09:12 / 29.03.09

Yes pin, that´s where I saw that gap. Let´s hope those three episodes will only be missing on wikipedia.

A film professional on a different forum said, that the producers made sure, that the viewer could clearly see, that Young Ben was shot in the heart. The missing head shot was explained with the fear of negative audience reaction if a child that has already been shot, was shot again.

But even with these convincing arguments, that we are to believe he really was killed, I refuse to believe it, until YB is buried. There are too many formerly very dead people walking around the show doing fine to just accept what the show producers want me to believe. I guess they wanted a cliffhanger effect, but thanks to the "anything is possible" nature of the show, that is not the actual effect here for many viewers.

13:33 / 29.03.09

Having read back up on continuity, it would appear that Ben continues to live with the Dharmas, and work with his father, up to the Purge (aside: I guess this season's Incident in the reason we got the buttons, since Sayid called it by that name).

One would imagine his father would have noticed his kid was not his kid.

00:12 / 30.03.09

Ben won't be dead, Sayid is not going to get away with a time paradox of that magintude. I don't care how much acid was on that sugarcube!!! I am intrigued by the notion that Ben always knew Sayid, even when he was first captured and tortured by him way back in season 2.

10:55 / 30.03.09

If Ben is dead, and I don't think he is/will stay that way, then its an extremely big deal. A violation of Faraday's primary chronal law that would *need to be explained in terms of the fictional space's physical laws* and would probably have profound consequences for the overarching plot.

14:57 / 30.03.09

To be totally honest, my theory was that only Richard knew what Young Ben looked like, so he could easily be someone else (who grew up on the Island) who becomes purging Adult Ben, although this lacks any sense of WHY.

As it is, magical healing / time paradox ahoy!

I want 1st and 3rd and lot more than 2nd, obvs., but doubt my luck.

20:52 / 31.03.09

Deets for the next few episodes are up. I would guess, without much evidence, that they were being sat on for dramatic effect, re: the final scenes of "He's Our You".

Keith, like a scientist

23:23 / 31.03.09

_pin, I was hoping I wasn't going to have to say this, but we generally frown upon "advance spoilers" of episodes. The minute an episode finishes airing in the US, details through that episode are free game, but anything not aired is not nice to talk about.

alex supertramp

02:02 / 01.04.09

I just want to throw something out there.

Ben was the leader of the others.

Locke is now, for all intents and purposes, the leader of the others. Locke was resurrected.

Maybe young Ben was resurrected, as well? Richard sees this as significant, but can't take Ben because Dharma would frown upon kidnapping a kid and might carpet bomb the others back to the stone age. Dharma, however, doesn't see it as a resurrection so much as a near death experience, flat-lining or what have you.

Anyways. Allow me to post my number 1 theory.

4815162342. The core factors of the Valenzetti equation, which was meant to predict the end of the world.

April 8th, 2015. Four o'clock, twenty three minutes. And forty two seconds.

08:08 / 01.04.09

They better not pull that. Something like this was already done in Cube II, and Lost could look cheap copying that movie. I´d rather they not explain them all. From the producers comments, it sounds as if they don´t want to give an explanation anyway.

And has anyone read who will be directing next year´s finale? I won´t tell, but you could think of this pick as a big twist.

08:30 / 01.04.09

I've been thinking that we might be in for a genuine resurrection with Ben. I'd like that.

Keith, like a scientist

12:31 / 01.04.09

And has anyone read who will be directing next year´s finale? I won´t tell, but you could think of this pick as a big twist.

May want to check the date...

15:00 / 01.04.09

Ssssssshhhhh!

20:24 / 01.04.09

Um, Keith? Can you point to the bit in my reply where I've spoiled anything?

I'll walk you through what I said, to give you bigger targets to point at:

Deets for the next few episodes are up. - Well this might be considered a spoiler for Wikipedia, but really, that's like saying "S05E11 has aired". I don't think this constitutes a substantive spoiler. It's an empty fact.

I would guess, without much evidence, - I think this might imply pretty clearly that I don't really know anything about forthcoming episodes

that they were being sat on - We already knew they weren't available, which was kind of odd. This is simply a potential reason for their not being available. Since a spoiler = a fact about a forthcoming episode, surely Mist spoiled first by suggesting that there might not even be future episodes? Play fair, Keith.

for dramatic effect, re: the final scenes of "He's Our You". - Is this is? Is this the problem? That I've suggested that a scene in which a character goes back in time to shoot another character in the heart may have ramifications in future episodes? And that the synopses of future episodes may refer back to it?

If, after watching S05E09 I went ahead and read that S05E11 had the synopsis "Everyone is still totally shocked that Jack didn't cry at the end of last week", I would have a pretty good idea of the shocking scenes of not crying at the end of S05E10, even if all the TV guide said about that one was "Miles doesn't show up. Screwface."

Seriously, Keith, what did I spoil? Why do you have to sound so disappointed about it? Why didn't you just emergency spoiler-tag it if you thought it was so awful, instead of being publicly disappointed, but letting the offense stand to disappoint others?

Keith, like a scientist

21:54 / 01.04.09

I was only letting you know that the details that you alluded to in your post shouldn't make an appearance in this thread until said upcoming episodes and events have aired. Call me paranoid, but you seemed to be suggesting that you had knowledge of said "deets" and I was attempting to head you off at the pass by saying to please hold on to them instead of discussing them any further. This is not so much for me (who has been somewhat of a bad boy and checked out the press releases for upcoming episodes, which include short teases and cast lists... and wish I hadn't), as it is for everyone else.

From time to time, the Lost threads veer into non-aired plot element discussion and the notion of what is a spoiler and what isn't. Sometimes there is an outcry, sometimes there isn't.

Didn't spoil anything, didn't ruin me, didn't sadden me, didn't warrant such an elaborate and somewhat snide response.

alex supertramp

03:17 / 02.04.09

Seems like I may have been on the right track. Magic island rejuvenation for Ben.

11:17 / 02.04.09

More like Magic Bullet Teleportation for Ben. He clearly got shot in the chest. All of a sudden the wound is on his right side and 20 cm lower? That is just lame and lazy.

Keith, like a scientist

13:02 / 02.04.09

That was pretty fishy. I wonder why they would consciously have him shot almost directly in the heart then reverse it? I can't believe it's a simple writer's room seat-of-their-pants thing where they originally were thinking Young Ben would die...

The other fishy thing that is somewhat lazy is Richard's statement that Ben would forget what happened. Deus ex machina for "Why doesn't Adult Ben note that he met the O6 as a young kid on the island?" I guess we'll have to see exactly what he forgets. I'm wondering about how young Ben gets back to the D.I. and how long that takes? Does he return to the D.I. years later or the next day? A huge swath of Ben's formative years is still unknown.

I really like Richard's character. Carbonell does a great job with making an extremely mysterious person human and caring.

13:44 / 02.04.09

Yes, that was also fishy and lazy. It has been established again and again, that Ben is a master of lying and deception. There is no need for an amnesia copout. For example, when Hurley asked Miles why Ben didn´t remember Sayid, Miles could have simply said, "Maybe he did."

With less than a full season´s number of episodes left, I guess the writers finally reached the limits of "we´ll explain later" and now have to start with cheating (changing bullet wounds and charlotte´s birthday, using amnesia and sooner or later deus ex machina).

Keith, like a scientist

14:46 / 02.04.09

Yeah I'm really disappointed that they aren't just having Ben turn out to have prior knowledge of the O6. A secret of that magnitude would be completely in character with Ben and with the island's time shenanigans. Well, we still have to see how Young Ben's reentry into the D.I. is handled.

Charlotte's age appears to have been a large mistake, not a cheat.

19:33 / 02.04.09

Of course it was snide, Keith; you were then, and are again, being patronising. Snide is what patronised people do.

While I haven't been right about any I-hopes all season, I'm still going to go right ahead and hope that Richard is lying, and Ben is turned into a sleeper agent with a convincing alibi (although this will only convince James and Kate that he's not evil yet, as can they really tell DI how he was saved?).

Certainly it would seem that Ben is being born again in that there temple, although their biblical symbolism might be getting a bit confused ("lose his innocence" etc.)

Also, did Miles really mean that the wheel-turning unstuck them, and not the Island, from time's straight line?

Also, I'm not sure I mind the idea that Ben doesn't remember these facts. He's getting a bit overloaded with omnipotence again. I think I prefer him when he's just capable of shocking acts of violence, instead of shocking acts of forethought and planning.

But if they keep going with that, we'll also loose Annie. I can buy that they just decide to stop working with kids on these timescales and drop her, but it would still make me sad.

alex supertramp

00:27 / 03.04.09

I think Miles was talking more about the people transplanted in time than the island. For them, time is no longer a straight line. Its more like a circle. They are in the past (their present), shaping the circumstances that will affect the future (their past).

12:50 / 03.04.09

Yeah, I understood what Miles was saying. It made totally easy sense (and really should have to Hurely (or I thought that until I remembered that he is basically having a singularly bed day)), but it also totally not the usual Island-based explanation, which seemed interesting.

He/they was/were pretty clear on the "He turned the wheel and now time is wrong for us" point. I don't know how I would feel about the "fate/"destiny" thing being hung on the idea that they've all been marked with chronotrons from the wheel, but it seems like an elegant solution to a problem.

Really, right now, I just want elegant solutions to their own problems.

13:24 / 03.04.09

About the only thing I'm liking so far is how they're making Jack into Sawyer and Sawyer into Jack. Not sure WHY they're doing this, but I hope it will pan out into something.

And the bizarro-Claire who took Aaron at the supermarket...that scene was David Lynch creepy. It was like we were watching either a very early or a very late episode of Twin Peaks.

01:39 / 04.04.09

I thought that Jack was more John Locke, in his "I'm supposed to be here" but not knowing why.

03:09 / 05.04.09

I think it's very obvious how they're doing it...

Jack's now unkempt looking and dejected about everything...and he refused to help Young Ben. 100% NOT the Jack of previous seasons, but certainly along the lines of Sawyer.

Sawyer's now Mr. Obey The Rules and bosses people around, helping wherever and whenever he can. 100% NOT the Sawyer of previous seasons, but certainly along the lines of Jack.

07:59 / 06.04.09

Mist, I'm not sure I'm seeing much on the way of laziness. The gunshot wound was almost certainly just an honest mistake, and the (mistaken in my opinion) amnesia idea strikes me as attempting to solve a problem which doesn't exist, i.e. it actually creates more work! Mind you, I haven't actually been bothered to think through all the implications of Ben having prior knowledge of the losties so it's quite possible that the showrunners have spotted serious continuity or plausibility problems that I haven't.

Course, the real problem is that photograph Christian showed Sun and Lapidus. Why was Ben unaware of that? Maybe he wasn't...

Seems to me that what's underlying a lot of this griping is the fact that it reveals areas where the plot looks a bit thin, where it hasn't been very well worked out and possibly requires patches to hold it together. That sort of thing damages the verisimilitude and fucks people off.

Why the Jack and Sawyer role swap? Because it's novel and fun, the real question is whether it's plausible, which I kinda think it is. I agree that skeins of Locke are showing in Jack's personality, however, and I think that's the much more interesting and significant character change to have come over him. His journey to Locke's brand of faith has been built for a very long time indeed - Jack has fought Locke's faith based decisions every step of the way for a good number of seasons now, but he was always gonna cave. The seeds were planted a couple of seasons ago when he hit rock bottom, this season faith in the Island pulled him back, time will tell how that will play out, but it's bound to be interesting.

17:23 / 06.04.09

That photograph is an odd one, isn't it? Why make such an obvious problem for themselves, with such little time left?

Unless they've been lying their fans and the tape, and actually you can, and they did, change the course of events by going back in time.

17:40 / 06.04.09

Well like I said above, that could be the REALLY BIG DEAL that's no doubt on the horizon. The thing that pulls us into the end game

Keith, like a scientist

18:27 / 06.04.09

Yeah the "paradoxes" and "continuity problems" aren't something that the LOST writers are ignoring. For them to create this scenario, it must mean that these very problems/issues mean something in their game plan now.

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