Review: Lost 5.12: Dead Is Dead

Ben is judged.

Thank goodness we've arrived at Ben's centric episode. It felt like we'd never get here. Season Four's A Shape Of Things To Come was a mish-mash of excellent character work and strokes on the mytharc that made the series' final hours that more intense. Dead Is Dead, much more saturated with evil demons and with stunted plotlines, still manages to retain the sense of raw power behind the main chunk of Ben's storyline. This was the least-watched episode of Lost in the show's history, which surprises me greatly, as it's one of the season's best.
     In Ben's flashbacks, we see the history of his relationship with his adopted daughter Alex, who was killed in that previous episode indirectly due to Ben. In 1977, Charles Widmore welcomes Ben into the Others. In 1988, after Dannielle Rousseau has gone gaga and then had her baby, Ben steals her daughter Alex and scares her away. Widmore wants the baby killed, but ultimately he refuses to do the deed himself. A few years later, Ben replaces Widmore after his daughter Penny is revealed; he promises that Alex will one day die. In 2007, Ben approaches Desmond's boat and threatens to kill Penny, only to be distracted by their son Charlie. In a moment mirroring when he found Alex, Ben can't bring himself to do it.
     On the Island, Flocke (the Man in Black as Locke) confronted Ben as he recovered and travelled over with him to the main island. There they met the astonished Sun and Lapidus, who had heard of Locke's death, and Ben admitted that even he is scared of what he believes to be Locke's ressurection. Ben summons the Smoke Monster, which of course doesn't arrive while Flocke is still around. They decide to go to The Temple, where Ben and Flocke are seperated in the tunnells. Of course, then, the Smoke Monster appears and judges Ben. It then appears in the form of Alex and tells Ben, strangely enough, that he must follow everything that Locke says.

Ben prepares to kill Rousseau, and ends up stealing Alex instead.

      Ben is a murderer. He's an amoral man whose lies outnumber his values. And yet we feel sorry for him. He's one of the show's most sympathetic characters, and the fact that he does this despite being a Machiavellian schemer means that we love him all the more. Ben, like Kate and Sayid before him, takes his opportunity in this episode to be judged for his actions. All his life, Ben has been a tool of The Man In Black; it was The MiB who arranged for Ben to be inducted into the Others, the one who helped him to take over from Widmore, allowing him to shape events so that he could become Locke in the present. It's a wonderful turning of tables - Ben, the legendary chessmaster of the Island, was being manipulated all along.
      Really, what else was I gonna say? It's a Ben episode, and they are almost always absolutely smashing. Dead Is Dead summed up the pre-MiB storylines for Ben in a nutshell and led the way for the demonic future ahead of him. Despite its initially low popularity, the episode is spot-on and represents Lost at its best.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: And I will walk one-thousand Miles and I, will walk one thousand more.... it's Some Like It Hoth.