Holy Mackerel!!

Ok Lost fans...What the f#*&?? I don't have time to read any of the message boards or recaps this morning, so this is not informed by any other opinions/theories - just my attempt to process that very troubling, yet entertaining, hour of TV we saw last night...

So, we know Ben lied when he claimed to be born on the island. He was actually born two months prematurely on a hiking trip somewhere around Portland (Portland! Recall Juliet's first flashback ep. "Not in Portland." Is Portland the gateway to Hell, er...the Island?) resulting in his mother's hemorrhaging to death (or not? Though not the first case of dead parents appearing on the island, young Ben saw her repeatedly.) And Ben's father? Roger, as in "Work Man." Judgement apparently clouded by grief, he rejoins the hippy dippy Dharma dude who gave them a lift after Ben's early/tragic birth and heads for the Island. And he (of course, because all father's on this show do) treats Ben like crap and blames him for his mother's death and lays around in a Dharma beer stupor most of the time...

Young Ben cleverly turns off the security fence one night to go into "hostile"/native islander territory (an air raid type drill in Ben's school one day gave hint that the hostile/natives and the Dharma bums don't play nice) in search of dead mommy - she tells him he's not ready, whatever that means, and then he bumps into...Richard Alpert! With longer hair, but still nicely made up eyes. I always find it amusing how the show uses a longer 'do to portray the actor at a younger phase (recall Jack's pseudo mullet in flashback.) Dude hasn't aged a bit while Ben evolved from pre-teen to adult, only clipped his hair. So, anyway, Richard Alpert is a native? And then, fast forward to an older Ben - now a "Work Man" himself (this Dharma caste system is the pits) reminding his father it's his birthday and Roger suggests they have a father-son moment over a few brews after he makes his run to Pearl or Swan or one of the stations and Ben calmly grills him about whether he's really blamed him for his mother's death for all these years, then takes out and puts on a gas mask and gasses dear daddy to death! But that's not all. When he returns to camp, we see that Richard and his hostile band have gassed all the Dharmas to death in a genocidal fashion (looked like Jonestown!!) Yikes.

And the creepiest part of all, as if genocide is not creepy enough, Locke has returned to the Others/hostiles/whoevers with dead daddy in a bag and his balls apparently intact and insists that Ben take him to see Jacob. Ben pulls all this you don't go to Jacob, Jacob summons you wishy washy stuff, but Locke stands firm. Alex appears out of nowhere to give Locke a gun and tells him he'll need it if he's going to see Jacob. Ben and Locke get to Jacob's cabin in the dark of night and Ben instructs Locke to turn off his flashlight because Jacob, like you and I (??) doesn't like technology. They enter the cabin with a lantern and Ben starts speaking to Jacob - ummm...an empty chair - in apologetic terms. Locke is all hate to break it to you Ben, but you are KUH-RAZY. But then there's a very odd sequence of events where Locke shines his flashlight on empty chair/Jacob and there's this flash of flame zipping across the floor and Locke turns in the direction the flame's going and hears a deep voice clearly say "Help Me." But Locke thinks the voice is Ben playing tricks on him because Ben is clearly delusional! Now when they first entered Jacob's lair, I was thinking that maybe Jacob is actually "smokey", but the whole scene played out to me very reminiscent of Harry Potter - you know, when Voldemort is in hiding when he's first gaining his powers back...Does Ben speak Parseltongue? Does Locke speak Parseltongue? I'm sorry, DID Locke speak Parseltongue? Past tense because we end with Ben showing Locke the shallow, OPEN (now we know where Vincent disappears to on his prolongued absences - lots o' crunchy munchy bones there) mass Dharma grave, and shooting Locke at close range and leaving him to perish in said grave after getting Locke to admit that the words he heard Jacob say were "Help Me." And that, dear reader, is what I say. Help me make some sense of this!!

And there was some other stuff going on at the beach camp with Juliet's tape and Ben's response with the timing of their raid and Jack suggesting that they had some catching up to do, but I'll have to leave that for next week.