Here we are again: Thoughts on Lost "Dead is Dead"

So, here we are again. All in all I would say that the episode was a success...except for one little thing. That little thing was, yes, the special effect with Ben and the whole "Lion King" flashback inside the smoke. It was, dare I say it, a Heroes level special effect, but it served it's purpose and I can look past it. And a lot of other business went down. Firstly Ceasar bit it. I guess he wasn't working for Widmore, but what's her name obviously is, the had a freaking code...la le lu li lo. And I think we're about to, at some point, see one of them finally get shot by Juliet...eventually. And the smoke monster showed up as Alex this time. Who is a dead person on the island. And it was trying to protect the island and...Christian Shepard is the smoke monster I can't harp on this enough. And, hey, Ben did the right thing for once by not offing Penny, and getting his ass beat by Desmond. Who I guess isn't going back to the island. Can't win them all. We got to see Ben steal Alex. Which was actually kind of easy really. And we got to see that Charles Widmore looked like with hair. And that he very well may be the bad guy. Although the fact that it took them so long to realize this seems a little suspect. What also seems suspect: Ben's total lack of knowledge that James Le Fluer was Sawyer. It's probably some sltered reality time travel shit that they do in comics, but...I don't want to explain this as it is both time consuming and any conclusion I come to will be unsatisfying. And I'm also more curious to see how the writers explain it...it will be more elegant then the explination I would give...hopefully. So what have we learned this week? Precious little really. Ben didn't kill Penny, which was a fifty fifty proposition anyway. It did show that Ben has a soft spot for the kinder, which would be obvious given his own less then pleasant childhood. Ben feels guilty over Alex's death...which he sould. That maybe he didn't plan for Locke's ressurection. But he kind of said he did in 316 so... He's a hard character to read what with the lying and the quality of acting. Oh, slight side note: the hair only adds so much to making Ben look younger. And Ethan looked kind of rough for being 27. He was born in 77 and died in 2004. It's small, but I'm just saying. As for next week. Looks to be a lot of Miles working with Marvin Candle (I forget his actual name and...you know who I'm talking aobut) Could we finally see that Miles is Marvin Candle's son? I'm going to say yes. And, maybe, just maybe, we'll see Farraday again...someday. He may be one of the dead people Miles talks with. I just don't know. And the future: Well, apparently the theme for this season finale is the fork in the outlet as last year was the frozen donkey wheel. So, I guess the time travel is going to come from the 70's and someone is probably going to short out the time travel pod in the Orchid. (You know people were freaked out by the polar bear at one point. How quaint.) Although Locke may set some wheels in motion in the present as well. I assume that he's going to have to do something with that wheel. Or at this point I don't even know really. It just poils down to that. They could discover just about anything on the island that would meet the purpose of time travel thus and such. So, yep that's about it. Good episode all told. They seem to be hitting the late season stride that happens just about every year. On a Matthew Fox side note: I saw Speed Racer the other day on Cinemax. I, honestly, don't understand why it was universally panned for one major reason: It's a movie based on the Speed Racer TV show. Have you ever watched a full episode of Speed Racer? It isn't exactly King Lear. It's actually kind of silly and nonsensical. And the movie was intentionally silly in the same vein so I thought it worked. That's about it really. And granted, they could have gone after the traditional Speed Racer viewers of old, but unless the movie came with free weed I think a lot of the older fans of the original show would wonder why they watched it in the first place. That is all.