The Rules of the Game: Lost Recapped

Before I dive into tonight's not-very-surprising yet impeccably excellent episode of LOST, I need to address the ABC Television Network.

Hey guys, you suck at this. Let me give you my impression of the network executives at ABC: "Here's a good idea, let's put LOST on at 10PM on Thursday night! And we'll use Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty as a lead-in. It's going to be awesome!"

Seriously. This sucks. At the rate things are going, the final season will be airing first run episodes at 10PM on Saturday night. I know ABC wants to keep LOST away from American Idol to give it the opportunity to get higher ratings, but really, why bother? The audience LOST has is the audience LOST has. It's that simple. And really, by moving it to Thursday nights at 10PM, the only people you're upsetting are the fans. You couldn't just leave it be on Wednesday nights?

But, I digress.

The first episode of LOST in a month wasn't some slam-bam spectacular of mythology busting reveals and mind-bending twists, even though it did feature a fair amount of explosions and killings. It was exactly what it's title promised: The Shape of Things to Come.

It goes without saying that I loved this episode. Come on! It was Ben-centric. What did you expect me to say? I've been jocking Michael Emerson since I started this blog. And being a Ben episode, it was basically an excuse for Michael Emerson to show off his amazing acting talents. I can't wait to see which clip from this episode they choose to show during the Emmys this year (I am assuming that Emerson will get his well-deserved Emmy nomination.) They could literally needle drop at any point in the episode to find something worthwhile to show. But if I had to guess, I would say something from the very final scene, where Ben confronts Charles Widmore in his posh penthouse suite in Jolly Ol' London.

Despite the "Film School 101" way the scene was shot--Ben is half in the shadows and half in the light! He's good *and* evil! It's, like, so deep!--Emerson was so on point in those final moments, that it would be hard to ignore. He displayed such great and restrained rage, telling Charles that he's going to kill Penelope to avenge his own daughter's death that I almost wanted to applaud as he walked out the door to end the episode.

Oh yeah, Ben has to avenge his daughter's death.

I forgot to mention that Alex was executed by the crazy guy from Smokin' Aces who was firing machine guns off the Widmore boat during the Michael episode (foreshadowing people!)

And when I say executed, I mean executed. I have to say, of all the twists and turns that have taken place during the fourth season, this was one I, 100%, did not see coming. You just don't see something like that on television. In fact, I'm sure I wasn't alone in expecting that the verbose and manipulative Ben would find a way to talk himself out of the awful predicament of having a gun to his child's head.

But for poor Alex's sake, he couldn't.

If dark turns like that are indeed the shape of things to come for LOST, things going to get a whole lot worse. And now that Claire, Aaron, Sawyer and Miles are heading back to meet up with Jack at the beach, I'm sure the worst moments are right around the corner. I'm talking heart-wrenching stuff like Sawyer dying and Claire giving her baby away to make sure at least one of them live. Oh, and don't even get me started on Jin.

While Island Ben was mourning his daughter's death and summoning the Smoke Monster to dispatch of the people who attacked him (Conjuring Smokey? Survey says: AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Flash-Forward Ben was busy globe-trotting, like some weird combination of Tom Ripley and Jason Bourne. Using the name Dean Moriarty (nudge, nudge), Ben magically appeared in the Sahara desert. No, I mean that. He magically showed up. Like he just fell out of the sky. I'm assuming we'll have some time portal explanation for this in a later episode, but right now, it seems like at the very least, that's how the polar bear got to the desert as well.

After a brief stop in Tunisia, where Ben confirmed that it was indeed October 24th of 2005, it was off to Iraq for the funeral of Sayid's beloved Nadia.

And just like that, we were shown just how Sayid and Ben became partners in global assassination: Ben told Sayid that Charles Widmore had Nadia killed, Sayid tortured with grief, killed the man who murdered Nadia, and then told Ben he wanted to help him kill all of the Widmore associates. And with a sly grin, you could tell Ben got just what he desired from the entire situation.

This episode was like that sly grin. Pieces of the LOST puzzle that have been festering for the entire season finally started to come into play. Sayid and Ben. Hurley seeing Jacob's cabin. Aaron ending up with Kate. Jack's prescription pill addiction. Ben's increasing importance to the very fabric of the show. All of those little moments that have been building up for the entire season finally started to pay off.

However since this is LOST, an episode wouldn't be complete without a total head-scratcher: why did the doctor from the freighter, the man who famously called for "Kevin Johnson" to "get a mop" in an earlier episode, wash up on the shore of the island with his throat slit and stitches in his cheek? And why did the Freighter Folk lie about it? Or is that like asking, why is the sky blue?

As I said, for the characters, it's only going to get worse from here on out (I don't think Desmond is going to be very happy when Ben kills Penny.) But if the shape of things to come (how many times can I use that cliche in this piece?) have a lot to do with Michael Emerson,
then us viewers have nothing to be scared of. For us, things can only get better.