Goddard and Pinkner deliver an episode which sets the stage (and whets your appetite) for an amazing home stretch in late Season 3. The best part is it never really feels like a setup episode.
The flashback storyline reveals what we've been dying to know for two and a half seasons: what the hell put Locke in his wheelchair? With the preponderence of crash-related injuries on the show I don't think many people would've guessed what paralyzed him. The despicable Anthony Cooper wasn't about to allow John to thwart his con-in-progress, so he did what any loving father would do — pushed him out an eight-story window.
But the big payoff comes in the island storyline, where the A-team finally penetrates the barracks. Kate and Sayid end up captured in Jack's house, but Locke has stealthily made his way to Ben's bedside. This kicks off several consecutive scenes with some of my favorite dialogue between the two.
The first brilliant scene is in Ben's kitchen, where Locke pegs Ben as the ultimate hypocrite and Pharissee for rigging the game, for lying to his people. The exchange that follows is LOST dialogue at its best:
. . .
BEN: You've been here 80 days, John. I've been here my entire life! So how is it that you think you know this island better than I do?
LOCKE: Because you're in a wheelchair and I'm not.
. . .
Two lines of dialogue, millions of LOST fans simultaneously saying "Ohhhh snap!". But alas, Ben evens the score just a bit later. Locke blows up a submarine that was supposed to take Jack home in a few hours, then he's captured and brought back to Ben's basement. There he's forced to hear Ben's eloquent summary of his predicament.
Letting Jack go home (as in, home-home) would be a sign of weakness, but killing him or keeping him captive would be breaking his word. Either way he was doomed to lose favor with the Others, "his" people. It didn't really matter to Ben what Locke's motives were for blowing up the sub, it solved his dilemma either way.
This is just the first round of a chess game that would get more complex and intriguing as the series went on, sometimes it'd even involve additional players such as Charles Widmore. Thank God the writers and producers recognized the magic they had with Locke/Ben scenes and kept striking while the iron was hot.
The math is pretty simple here, we have two Emmy winners sharing the stage for a healthy portion of the episode. The thing that's so great about Emerson and O'Quinn is that they both know when to yield to one another, to set each other up such that their lines carry maximum impact. It's a polished brand of chemistry you rarely see, certainly not one you can plan for in advance.
It's difficult to comprehend sometimes, the fact that the man going toe-to-toe with Ben is also the hopeless, depressed man in flashbacks drinking instant coffee in a grungy apartment. It's equally difficult to imagine anyone BUT Emerson delivering dry, witty lines such as:
"So tell me, John. How do you expect to pilot our submarine? I mean, it's a complicated piece of machinery. You don't just press 'submerge'."
"Seems fairly obvious that when a person's back smashes into a hard surface after being thrown from a building, that's going to sting a little."
Okay, enough gushing over the acting heavyweights. The rest of the main cast appeared sparingly but did their usual quality work. Bonus points for Cleo King (government worker), who only appeared briefly but had me cracking up with her tone and expressions.
This is another ambitious effort from Jack Bender and the effects teams and for the most part they get high marks.
The submarine explosion: great timing, editing, and execution. Loved the visual of Locke in a surrender pose as hell breaks loose behind him.
The eight-story fall: not bad by television-budget standards, but speaking strictly from a visual perspective I'd give it a B+. There's an obvious cut when Cooper's pushing Locke toward the window, just as a pillar engulfs most of the screen. It's obviously the right place for the cut but there's an abrupt jump in the transition that any scrutinous eye will detect. Locke's fall also seems a bit "off" in terms of the physics, it's too clean of a drop in the top-down view. The ground-level view was brief but far more convincing.
A couple shot selections that I really enjoyed:
1. Putting us at the back of Ben's refrigerator as he slides in a plate of chicken.
2. Richard opening the door to "the box"; he opens the door right "into" the camera, followed by a near-seamless transition to that same door pulling away to reveal Locke. Hard to describe, easy to appreciate.
This is a case of "half and half", that is to say I could rewatch Locke/Ben scenes any day of the week and be consistently amused and entertained.
But the flashbacks, while decent, don't introduce a whole lot of new material. We've seen the Locke-Cooper anguish in Deus Ex Machina and Orientation so it was approaching the point of wearing a little thin. Thankfully The Powers That Be recognized this and took steps to wind down this particular arc, while simultaneously setting up a spectacular moment for "The Brig".
There are various levels of significance in this episode. Locke preventing Jack from getting his ticket home would further drive a wedge between the two, and they were already anxious to get at each other's throats. It's equally important that Ben starts to display signs of jealousy toward Locke's "communion" with the island.
But one other thing should never be underestimated: getting our answer to what caused Locke's paralysis. The writers needed to throw the audience a bone at this stage of the series, to remind them that some answers would come sooner rather than later and not be hopelessly drawn out.
I actually thought the atmosphere in the Barracks was quite thrilling and tense. There was no way to know whether there were 2 or 200 Others patrolling the grounds, so when Locke slipped into Ben's room it almost seemed too easy, like he'd walked right into a trap.
Seeing Locke get lifted from his hospital bed and placed into his wheelchair was a heartbreaking moment, just when I didn't think I had any more sympathy to give for that whole situation. Thank God they showed Cooper in the magic box as the cliffhanger, because I was tired of thinking he'd gotten away with years of disgusting behavior.
Tangent: I think I now understand why the next episode — Exposé — got so much heat from the LOST fan base. After this cliffhanger fans were desperately craving some bloody justice for Anthony Cooper and instead got something much, much different.
