Lost continues to impress me. I really do think it's one of the great TV dramas of all-time, and last night's episode was rock solid. Except for one thing I'm going to be nit-picky about.OK, so Sawyer and Kate bring young injured Ben to the Others so they can save him, and Richard tells them that, yeah, I can save him, but he won't remember what happened to him and he'll lose his innocence. Up until now we (and Hurley and Miles, in one of the episodes best scenes) were wondering why Ben didn't remember that Sayid shot him as a kid when he became an adult. And the writers quickly solve this by just having his memory erased?
That seems really, really...lame.
Isn't it just an easy out for the writers, to explain all of that away? Wouldn't it have been more interesting if Ben had actually remembered all this time that Sayid had shot him back in 1977 and this was why he became what he became and why he had been doing certain things since the start of the show? It's another clue that the writers haven't really known where this has been going since the beginning, which is fine (I don't expect every single plot thread and episode to be consistent when this is all over), but it just seems a little random and easy for me.
So here's my question (and it's what some readers are wondering about too): why can't someone just tell Ben that this happened?
Maybe it could be Richard, maybe Sayid, maybe Locke once he finds out. Not that any of these people would want to get Sayid in trouble by exposing that he shot young Ben, but it seems to me they could talk to older Mr. Linus. "Oh Ben, by the way? Sayid shot you in 1977 and then you were taken to the Others who brought you into a weird temple which made you forget everything."
Of course, I might be getting ahead of the game here. Maybe the Lost folks already have the answers to all of this planned. Maybe Ben already found this out some how in the past several years. Ben has woken up now and seen that Locke is still alive (still not sure if that was surprise on his face or if he always knew that Locke would come back) and the description for next week's episode says that Ben goes to find the smoke monster so he can be judged, so maybe all of this will be answered.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-02-2009 @ 1:31PM
Brian said...
Or maybe next weeks episode, when he returns to the temple for his "judgment" it's revealed to him how he became what he is today.
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4-02-2009 @ 1:47PM
Jason said...
Or maybe Richard wanted to remove the memories in order to make Ben loyal to him, and chase out all the prejudices about the Others that Ben might still have, especially the one where someone he believed was an Other shot him and left him for dead.
Or maybe Richard always had his eye on Ben and wanted him for his own, to mold him like the father he should have had but didn't find in his own biological father.
Or quite possibly he took Ben to reprogram him, or replace him with a clone, or maybe he's from Hulu.
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4-02-2009 @ 1:58PM
gmmr said...
In my review of LOST I questioned a similar notion as it relate to Sayid and Ben. I'm not 100% convinced that Ben has forgotten what happened to him. I think he remembers and that's why he has the relationship he does with Sayid today.
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4-02-2009 @ 1:59PM
amazo said...
i thought this happened because it showed the irony that because Jack didn't want to save Ben because he thought Ben would become who he is, that thus, Ben became who he is.
that's the most obvious explanation, i think.
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4-02-2009 @ 5:53PM
M. Stephen Lukac said...
This was my thought as well.
4-04-2009 @ 3:22AM
Tom said...
I liked this too.
4-02-2009 @ 1:59PM
Gene Cowan said...
It sounds like a quick plot device, but I'm thinking that it is opening to door to explaining "The Sickness" and the smoke monster. Remember that when people enter the temple, they become "sick" as we saw with Rousseau. I'd venture to say that Ben has had The Sickness this whole time...
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4-02-2009 @ 2:09PM
Jamie said...
Ben obviously keeps some memories as he knew to build a runway on the small island in 2004 in order to save himself and the Oceanic 6 in 2008. It is possible that Richard ordered the thing built without telling Ben what it was, but i cannot imagine him staying in the dark over something like that. plus, none of the others yet know the O6 are from the future anyway.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:27PM
scott said...
Jacob gave the orders. Ben followed them.
4-02-2009 @ 2:12PM
cdawg said...
as I said in my comments about the episode, we don't know whether Ben actually remembers or not... He very well could have remembered the names Sayid et al as soon as he got the lists compiled by Ethan and Goodwin.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:20PM
Patrick R said...
"why can't someone just tell Ben that this happened? Maybe it could be Richard, maybe Sayid, maybe Locke once he finds out."
First, why would they? Second, not many people who know would have had a chance. Richard could have, but it might be in his best interests to keep quiet. Locke has no way of knowing what happened in 1977, since he wasn't there. And Sayid hasn't been back to the present since the shooting (that's been shown), so he couldn't either. And again, why would he? Basically, everybody who knows about the shooting and COULD tell adult Ben (and might actually want to) is currently stuck in the 70s.
Anyway, there's another explanation they could have used for why Ben doesn't remember, which I think would have been much easier: he simply forgot. It's been 30 years, so I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that maybe Ben doesn't remember the specific facial features of the man who shot him. There are certainly significant people from my childhood who I have a hard time picturing, and I'm only 30 years old now. When you don't see someone for 3 decades, that can happen.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:40PM
Suntzu said...
3rd they haven't been given a chance to tell Ben what with the whole only having one episode a week issue. Give it time it all pans out
4-02-2009 @ 2:24PM
Lisa said...
I don't think it's as simple as a memory erasure. Richard looked positively Satanic when he spoke of what would happen to Ben. Which made me wonder- maybe he really IS Satan. That sent me off on another tangent. If that's true- then maybe Juliet is working for him secretly, or he has a hold on her. Because after all, the entire sending Ben to Richard scenario was her idea in the first place, and she obviously played on Kate's maternal instinct and Sawyer's guilt to make it happen. It was manipulative from the get-go, which I would not have thought characteristic of Juliet. But now I am extremely suspicious of her.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:24PM
MikeR said...
Wasn't it an adult Ben who killed his father and wiped out the whole dharma camp? He knew who his father was then. I don't think them saying that his memory will be erased as a kid resolves anything yet. There's obviously more to it that's still unexplained.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:30PM
scott said...
I think for some reason you're completely forgetting about Jacob. The 'person' who put the list together, and gave orders to build the runway.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:39PM
Suntzu said...
Wow or maybe we can just wait till the next episode before we dedicate whole posts to nit picky stuff in an otherwise great show. It seems to me when the french ladys guys went in there they came out not right. Maybe even NOT them so who knows what Ben Linus actually is.
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4-02-2009 @ 2:46PM
bruce said...
Exactly what I said - HORRIBLY lame. So is the "he'll lose his innocence" (whatever that means - become an evil bastard I assume, at the very least) if he gets the Others' medical treatment.
I don't see why Ben wouldn't have just suddenly remembered Sayid shooting him as a boy the way Desmond suddenly remembered Daniel Faraday talking to him in the Hatch. It seems they came up with a dumb way of solving a problem to which they already had an answer. Someone said that Desmond is different the rules of the island time travel don't apply to him the way they do to Ben and the others. But that's not clear at all, nor is there any basis for thinking that. Unless I've missed some episodes (I haven't).
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4-02-2009 @ 3:59PM
Patrick R said...
There was indeed an episode where Daniel explicitly said that Desmond's relationship with the island and time is unique in that he is able to change it in ways that others can't. It was kind of vague, but they did hint that Desmond is unique when it comes to the time travel rules.
4-03-2009 @ 11:58AM
cindy said...
What I'm getting, is that the past and present are taking place simultaneously. In other words, Desmond didn't remember Faraday telling him to go see his mom until it actually happened in the past. Therefore, Ben won't remember being shot until now, because it just happened in the past. This is why Hurley and Miles were having such a hard time getting what the time warp is doing in the present.
I'm not sure what them giving Ben to the "others" means, but what I want to know is when Richard took Ben, one of the others asked him if he should run this by ?Neely and Charles? I'm guessing Charles is Widmore, but who's ?Neely? I listened twice, and I think this is who he said? Could this be Jacob?
4-02-2009 @ 3:05PM
D said...
We don't really truely know if Ben will actually remember or not.Just because Richard said he wouldn't doesn't mean he actually won't.
My ultimate question is this:Given everything the Lostiesw know,why would they 1) try to save Ben's life and 2) give him to the Others full well knowing what the outcome of that action would be?
Jack was right to not help.Ben should have been allowed to die.The death of one,kid or not,would have saved many many lives.
But that's tough to write into the storyline of a show that maybe has 20-25 total episodes at most left before a planned ending.
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