The more I think about it, the more I realize how weak this episode was. I wish someone would tell me exactly what they found so incredibly great about it. It seems to me it was poor in every scene (except for the climax with Ben and Locke and possibly the conversation between Locke and Hurley). It was an absolute disaster in regard to the motivations of the Oceanic 6 about going back to the island, and elevated the lack of shared information between the characters to the paroxysm.
Let's see: - Locke shows up where Sayid is working. We never see the beginning of the conversation, but it feels like Sayid didn't even ask Locke how the hell did he get off the island, and never seems to worry about how the friends they left behind were. The lame excuse that the writers wanna hold information from us does not even apply here, since we knew the answers to all these questions. But remains the fact that Sayid didn't, and it would be only natural that he wanted to know them. That being said, there's no reason why Sayid wouldn't want to go back to the island. Nadia was dead, and he spent most of those three years killing people for Ben, believing that he was revenging Nadia's death, just to find out, in the end, that those murders were rather pointless, as far as he was concerned. The only possible meaning the guy can still find in his life is to go back to the island and save his friends; when this opportunity presents itself, he declines? It doesn't make any sense to me.
Bearing in mind that these conversations were the spine of the episode, and that they reflected all the psychological reasons for the Oceanic 6 to come back (or not) to the island, reasons that were built up through all the flash-forwards we've seen since the season three finale... The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham pretty much wrecked this whole building up, making everything that happened since the O6 left the island looking silly and without meaning, and resuming Sayid, Jack and Kate to selfish bastards who don't even bother to ask or care about their friends.
The only reason this episode received these four stars I gave it is the phenomenal acting Terry O'Quinn gave us here, in spite of the poor writing. (Okay, the dialogues in itself weren't bad; there was some pretty good stuff, as far as great lines go. But what the dialogues really meant in the bigger picture... that's what ruined the whole thing). Michael Emerson, too, did, once again, an excellent job, and the climax of the episode was all kinds of wonderful. In itself, that scene was one of the best Lost has ever presented us with; but, as the rest of the episode was so inexcusably bad, it wasn't enough to save it.
Let's see: - Locke shows up where Sayid is working. We never see the beginning of the conversation, but it feels like Sayid didn't even ask Locke how the hell did he get off the island, and never seems to worry about how the friends they left behind were. The lame excuse that the writers wanna hold information from us does not even apply here, since we knew the answers to all these questions. But remains the fact that Sayid didn't, and it would be only natural that he wanted to know them. That being said, there's no reason why Sayid wouldn't want to go back to the island. Nadia was dead, and he spent most of those three years killing people for Ben, believing that he was revenging Nadia's death, just to find out, in the end, that those murders were rather pointless, as far as he was concerned. The only possible meaning the guy can still find in his life is to go back to the island and save his friends; when this opportunity presents itself, he declines? It doesn't make any sense to me.
- Jack's life is a mess. Kate doesn't wanna see him, he's being kept away from his nephew, his ex-wife is with another man, his father is dead and he's seeing visions of him at night, he's drunk. Thus, the "we have to go back" line from the season three finale is completely plausible. As we see in that same scene, he tells Kate that he's been flying "every Friday night", hoping to crash. He implies that this has been going on for some time now. And yet, he and Kate have this conversation one day after Locke's death. And what do we learn in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham? That, a few hours before his death, Locke was in the hospital trying to convince Jack that he had to go back to the island (it's safe to assume that it was the same day, or at least the dates were close, since, in his suicide scene, Locke is still showing the bruises from the accident that put him in the hospital). And yet, Jack refuses, without even asking (just like Sayid) how did Locke get off the island, how their friends - including his sister - were, and so on. But, judging by his conversation with Kate in Through The Looking Glass, we have to assume that, at this point, he was already flying back and forth, obsessed with coming back to the island. So what the reason could Jack possibly have for lying to Locke about this? The bald guy was the first concrete chance Jack had to go back to the island! You'd think he'd grasp at the chance fiercely. It doesn't make any sense to me that Jack didn't ask any questions to Locke, and that he didn't agree with coming back.
- The conversation with Kate was a little easier to buy, in the light of the recent developments shown in Whatever Happened, Happened. She was comfortable in the role of a mother, she didn't have to run anymore, she was in relative peace. It makes sense that she wouldn't want to go back, having to leave Aaron and, worse, confronting Claire. But, still, she could have asked John some questions - the same basic ones already mentioned: "how did you leave the island?", "how is everybody else?", "how the heck did the island disappear?", and so on.
- Walt, too, failed to ask questions - he did ask about his father (with understandable coldness, since he must have discovered the horrible things Michal had done), but you'd expect the kid to ask about Vincent and everybody else. Besides, both Walt and Locke were acting like this meeting was no big deal, that it was perfectly normal. Of course, one could argue that since Walt and Locke are "special", they understand each other in a deeper level, that they share some kind of connection, and therefore were aware of each other's thoughts. Or something like that. I, personally, find this explanation a bit contrived.
Bearing in mind that these conversations were the spine of the episode, and that they reflected all the psychological reasons for the Oceanic 6 to come back (or not) to the island, reasons that were built up through all the flash-forwards we've seen since the season three finale... The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham pretty much wrecked this whole building up, making everything that happened since the O6 left the island looking silly and without meaning, and resuming Sayid, Jack and Kate to selfish bastards who don't even bother to ask or care about their friends.
The only reason this episode received these four stars I gave it is the phenomenal acting Terry O'Quinn gave us here, in spite of the poor writing. (Okay, the dialogues in itself weren't bad; there was some pretty good stuff, as far as great lines go. But what the dialogues really meant in the bigger picture... that's what ruined the whole thing). Michael Emerson, too, did, once again, an excellent job, and the climax of the episode was all kinds of wonderful. In itself, that scene was one of the best Lost has ever presented us with; but, as the rest of the episode was so inexcusably bad, it wasn't enough to save it.
