Episode 302 - Dancing wth "The Glass Ballerina"

“My name is Benjamin Linus, and I’ve lived my entire life on this island.” With these words at the end of the episode entitled “The Glass Ballerina,” the former Henry Gale threw another great mystery into the greater story of the Others. This entire scene of Ben giving Jack his first glimpse into something larger, and into life in the outside world, was one of Lost’s finest to date. But it was also the end of the episode…

This week’s flashbacks, far more effectively than last week’s, gave us new color on old material. In the beginning, we flashed back, way back, to young Sun, who had just broken the titular glass ballerina that sat on her father’s mantle. Confronted with this deed by mean Mr. Paik, Sun looked her father in the eye and lied. She told him the maid broke the statue, and stuck to the story even when her father said that he would have to fire the maid. Translation – Sun can lie to those she loves.

In the rest of the flashback scenes, we are given an alternative explanation to Sun’s pregnancy. While it may be fun to surmise the island repaired Jin’s swimmers just as it has Locke’s legs, the flashback to Sun’s adulterous tryst with hotel heir and English tutor Jae Lee added fuel to the fire of the most likely alternate explanation. Jae suggested now was the time for Sun to leave Jin, and offered her a pearl necklace, only to be interrupted by a very perturbed Mr. Paik. Not one to put up with such shenanigans, Mr. Paik called Jin into his office, showed him a picture of Jae, and told Jin that Jae was stealing from him. He ordered Jin to do more than just “send a message” and, for the first time, called Jin his son.

Jin returned home to Sun and mentioned having seen her father, and being ordered to send a message to someone who stole from Mr. Paik. Sun, fully aware that her father was ordering a hit on Jae, begged Jin to run away with her instead of following orders, apparently trying to save Jae’s life and Jin’s soul in one move. Frustrated, Jin left the apartment after telling Sun this is what it takes to be her husband.

Just as we’ve seen him do in the past, Jin gave Jae a righteous beating, leaving wreckage and blood all over Jae’s hotel suite (room number 1516). But then Jin did what he did on his last “assignment” – he spared Jae and told him to leave the country. Jin returned to his car, secure in his belief that he had just rescued Jae from Mr. Paik’s wrath, when Jae crashed onto Jin’s hood from several floors above, his mangled body clutching the pearl necklace. Sun attended Jae’s funeral but was sent home by her scowling father, who frowned that it is not his place to tell Jin about the affair. For the next few months, Sun would believe she got away with it…

Until, on the beach near the Dharma Initiative Pala Ferry dock, Jin tells Sun that he knew she had betrayed him. This admission gives much greater depth to the Jin-Sun relationship. But it also came in the middle of our episode, and there’s no need to get out of order.

This week on the island, we met two new Others, welcomed back a familiar other Other, and learned a little more about last week’s new additions, Juliet and Carl.

The new Others are Denny, a somewhat militant type, and his apparent lover, Colleen. Colleen also has a tough streak, and when she returns to Ben with a scouting report indicating that Sayid is searching for Jack’s crew with a sailboat, Ben tells her to put a team together and get that boat. Ben had been sitting in a bank of TV monitors much like the one in the Pearl hatch, only these appear to be (mostly) working and covering various angles of the Hyrda station. This of course makes sense in the greater Dharma picture – animals studied in the zoological research center are more likely to act “natural” on camera than with prying scientist eyes on them…

Denny gives Sawyer a lunchbox and orders him and Kate out to a work detail. Still sporting the pretty dress, Kate is ordered to swing a pickax at a pile of rocks, and Sawyer is ordered to transport Kate’s busted stones via a wheelbarrow over to another spot. Any problems, Denny tells them, and they will be “shocked.” Denny demonstrates his little stun gun device on Sawyer, and tells him that was only a quarter charge. Meanwhile, Denny greets Colleen with a kiss, and Sawyer gives a knowing look – he is taking in all he can about this new bunch of Others. Juliet is also on hand, and appears to show a bit of tenderness when she offers Sawyer her canteen, only to watch him snidely dump it out onto the dirt.

As the work detail progresses, Kate hears a whispering from the bushes, where she finds Alex, the Other who we’ve certainly been led to believe is Rousseau’s kidnapped daughter. Alex appears worried that these Others would be upset to see her talking to Kate when she mentions the dress, which Kate is still wearing as her ridiculous work outfit, is in fact hers. Why is Alex hiding from the other Others? Why did Ben and Tom give Kate Alex’s dress? But most interesting is the question Alex asks Kate – in the cages, did you see a boy about my age named Carl? Kate honestly says she did not (the Others had led Carl into the jungle last week before Kate was placed in his cell). Of course, all of this happens out of Sawyer’s earshot, a typical bit of dramatic irony, given that Sawyer actually did see Carl.

So now Alex and Carl appear tied to each other, somehow in opposition to Ben’s Others. And the idea that Carl would be Alex’s age – Rousseau did not mention having twins, and was apparently the only woman amongst her shipwrecked crew, so where could Carl have come from? And what put Carl and Alex on the outs with Ben’s gang? (In this week’s podcast, producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindeloff revealed there are multiple factions of Others, and teased that the Carl story will be revealed in episode 6, the end of the mini season we’re now watching).

As already discussed, this episode brought back three more of our mainstay characters. When we last left Sayid, Sun and Jin, they were sailing on Desmond’s boat, Elizabeth, past the four-toed statue to the fake Other camp, where Sayid realized he’d been duped. Fully aware that Jack’s crew has likely been captured, Sayid wants to venture after them, but is scared that Jin and Sun will turn around if he tells them what he’s up to. So Sayid sticks to the ridiculous story that he needs to sail further North to light another signal fire for Jack in case the latter’s party couldn’t see the fire they’d already lit. Sun of course picks up on the lie, but defies Jin by insisting they proceed. When she confronts Sayid, he tells her that he plans to lure out a party of Others, kill all but two, then go to town on the two captives to get information on where Jack’s crew is.

Unfortunately, as we’re coming to realize by now, Sayid is a good soldier and effective interrogator, but not much of a strategist. While he and Jin wait in the trees for Others to arrive, leaving Sun “safely” on Elizabeth at the Pala Ferry dock, they manage to completely miss a party of five Others (aha! Another “Party of Five” reference on ABC’s Wednesday night…) who snuck aboard and began to sail off, with Sun alone in the galley. Colleen finds Sun, who threatens to shoot if Colleen moves closer. She tells Sun that they’re there to help and they’re not enemies, calling Sun by her full name, but warning that should Sun shoot her, their camps would become enemies. Colleen calls Sun’s apparent bluff, only to get plugged in the gut by the tougher-than-she-appears Korean, leading to a shootout. Sun makes it to the deck, but Tom spots her and his cronies start shooting. Sun makes it over the side, to find Jin in the water, frantic that he let his wife get taken from him. Back on the beach, Jin, apparently a well of forgiveness now that he’s admitted that he know about Sun’s betrayal, wraps her in a blanket. Sayid apologizes, but then urges that they have a long walk ahead of them.

Back at the work detail, Sawyer can’t help himself. After staring at Kate’s posterior on the chain gang, he swaggers over and plants one on her lips. This riles Denny, who, with help from some more Others, tries to take Sawyer down with the butt end of his rifle. Sawyer grabs one of the guns and pummels a few Others himself, stopped only when Juliet holds a pistol to Kate, calls out “James,” and gives a look that he understands. Sawyer puts down his gun and is promptly dropped by Denny. They’re taken back to the cages, where Kate asks what Sawyer was thinking, and why Juliet called him “James.” Confessing for the first time to Kate that that’s his name, Sawyer at first pretends he simply couldn’t resist her charms, but then clues her in that he intended to get attacked so he could learn what these Others would bring to a fight. His realizations – most of the Others had never seen a real fight, though Denny is a tough one with some martial arts knowledge, and Juliet would easily have shot Kate if Sawyer had forced her to. Sawyer’s con game is on, and his new mark is the Others…

Or it would be, if it had occurred to him that Ben would have the cages mic’ed up and on camera. Ben’s monitor room is down the hall from Jack’s tank, where Jack spends most of the episode sulking in a corner. When Juliet brings him soup and says, though she made it herself she won’t be offended if he doesn’t like it, Jack stares off into space. Ben, however, grins and points out that Juliet never made him soup (what's that about?).

All of this sets up the final scene, in which Ben, after commenting on how he and Jack had reversed positions in only a week of island time, introduces himself with the line that starts this posting. He tells Jack he will have a proposition and if Jack goes along with it, he’ll be sent home. Jack, still incredulous, scoffs at the idea that Ben could have actually sent Michael and Walt “home.” He observes that, if Ben could have left the island, he would have left the island. Another of Ben’s great lines, that only Michael Emerson could deliver: “yes, Jack, why would I still be here?” In one of the best bits of dialog on Lost to date, Ben tells Jack what he’s missed in the outside world in the 69 days between the September 24, 2004 crash of flight 815 and his current incarceration: Bush has been re-elected, Christopher Reeve has passed away, and the Red Sox have won the world series. Aha! Jack now knows Ben must be lying, because if he wanted to be credible, he would have come up with any team but the Red Sox. Ben throws fuel on Jack’s smug fire by telling him that the Bosox won by overcoming a three-oh deficit to the Yankees in the ALCS en route to eight straight wins, prompting an incredulous look of “yeah, right.” But then Ben plays his trump card – on the monitor he had wheeled into the tank, Ben shows Jack videotape from the historic Red Sox victory. This is just too real – and Jack realizes that this guy does have a link to the outside world.

So what does all this mean? Why are the Others factionalized? Why are the teens in one group and the grownups in another? How did Ben get that Red Sox tape, and is it tied to how Juliet got the dossier on Jack (if that’s a “real” file)? What did Ben mean he’s lived there all his life – surely he must be older than the Dharma Initiative, which only began in the 1970s? More lies, or do these Others pre-date Dharma on the island? If so, does that turn Juliet’s response to Jack’s question last week into a lie? Or did the island’s inhabitants and the Dharma Initiative merge into a new group? Is the Others' considerable knowledge of the 815 survivors limited, or does this baby-happy group not want Sun's baby for some reason (i.e. because Jae's kid would be impure)? And is Jae really Sun’s baby-daddy? For that matter, was it Mr. Paik who tossed Jae out the window, or did Jae jump? Did Colleen die when Sun shot her? If so, what will that do to Denny, who already seems more than a little high-strung? Will James “Sawyer” Ford outsmart any Others, or will he keep accidentally revealing his plan to Ben via the hidden mic? Will Ben take off his shoes and reveal four-toed feet (think about that one for a minute)? And, since the scenes from next week reveal that we’ll finally learn the fates of Locke, Eko and Desmond, who by rights should have died in the Swan hatch, and get a reappearance of the smokey monster, when will we ever get answers to any of these questions?